Nevernever

by Will Shetterly

  I nodded.

  “Was this when you and Goldy first made the rounds?”

  I nodded again.

  Tick-Tick smiled. “Rico might like your theory a little better now.”

  “Yeah,” said Strider. “Some Rats did it. She’ll love that.”

  “Still...” Tick-Tick said.

  “We’ll find them,” Sai announced.

  Strider nodded, not particularly hopeful, and said to Sai, “I thought...”

  “I know,” she said, and Tick-Tick and I looked away again. We talked for another couple of minutes about nothing particularly promising. While we chatted, Strider spelled, W-A-T-C-H-F-L-O-R-I-D-A.

  I nodded. Mickey and Goldy needed to know that one of Crystaviel’s people had been doing something in Bordertown, even if he was just acting like a dink and getting murdered.

  When it was time to go, I gave Strider a four-leaf clover and a poem I’d written late the night before. It was a stupid thing about owls flying over dark forests, but he read it and said, “Nice. I’ll put it on my wall.”

  His own damn wall. That was when I could’ve cried.

  Tick-Tick patted her pockets, came up with the new Stick Wizard, and passed it on, saying, “From Orient and me.”

  Sai looked sad. “I didn’t bring you a thing.”

  “Yes, you did.” He kissed her lightly on the lips. Then his mouth quivered a fraction, and he turned and told the guards, “Let’s go.”

  Sai watched him leave, then said, “Where to?”

  “Orient,” Tick-Tick announced as she headed into the hall.

  “He can find a Rat with round glasses?”

  “I don’t know,” Tick-Tick admitted. “But it’s worth a try.”

  In the street, Sai said, “All right, what was the signing about?”

  I blinked.

  Tick-Tick said, “Are we to think you were both seized simultaneously with Saint Vitus’s Dance? That wouldn’t be easy, but I suppose I could manage it.”

  I pulled a three-by-five and wrote, THE DEAD GUY WAS CRYSTAVIEL’S BLUE-HAIRED BOY. For Tick-Tick, I added, THE FOLKS WHO HIRED ORIENT TO FIND ME.

  Sai said, “Oh.”

  Tick-Tick mulled over my message. She and Orient must have known that something more had been going on that night than it seemed, but they’d never asked. She didn’t ask now.

  I wrote, I DON’T THINK STRIDER DID IT. I THINK HE THOUGHT YOU OR GOLDY DID IT FOR HIS SAKE.

  Sai said, “What a jerk,” and touched the back of her hand to the corner of her eye.

  “We shall save him,” Tick-Tick said, opening her arms. Sai may have hesitated a second—Tick-Tick’s as elvish as they come—but she accepted the embrace.

  I wrote, SOMEONE SHOULD TELL GOLDY AND MICKEY.

  Tick-Tick said, “We’ll run by Elsewhere once we’ve found our good Finder. If you have questions for his former client, he can track her more easily than some Rat with round glasses. It helps to have a name.”

  •

  It would have been a fine plan if we could have found Orient. We went to his flat, where no one answered the door, then to Danceland, where we told Dancer and Val most of what we’d learned. Neither of them had seen Orient. Val was annoyed because he’d promised to buy her lunch at Taco Hell.

  Then Sai said, “Seen Goldy?

  Dancer said, “No. And he should’ve been in by now. I don’t suppose—” As Sai looked for the rest of the sentence, Dancer shook her head. “Nah. You get Strider out of that damn jail. We can get by without the Trio for a few nights, if we have to. But if there’s anything we can do...”

  “Thanks.” Sai saw me pacing as I worried about Goldy. “We better go.”

  •

  The Closed sign was in Elsewhere’s window. That wasn’t unusual; not many people in Soho keep perfectly dependable hours. I tapped out the rhythm that shuts down the guard spell, then turned the door handle. It was locked.

  Maybe that meant Magic Freddy had raised his spellmaking rates and Mickey had decided not to pay him, but I didn’t think so. I ran into the back alley with Sai and Tick-Tick following on their bikes.

  The back door was closed but not locked. I looked at the others, and Sai whispered, “Hell.” We entered. Snicker and Doodle and the kittens, Ditto, Mimeo, Hekto, and Xerox, let us know immediately that they, at least, were fine, but lonely.

  I ran through the bookstore, from the second floor to the basement. No one was in the building. Nothing had been disturbed, so far as I could tell. The cats had food and water in their bowls, but no more than I’d expect to find any day. Bills and coins and magical trinkets waited in the open cash register for anyone to take.

  I unlocked the front and ran next door. Ms. Wu was with a customer by the tea and spice bins. She looked at me, told her customer, “You must excuse me,” and followed me back into Elsewhere.

  Tick-Tick squatted on the floor with a cat on her shoulders, one in her lap, and two of the kittens at her feet. Sai was ignoring a third kitten, who circled her cautiously. Ms. Wu said, “What is it?”

  Sai said, “Everyone’s missing. Correction. Strider’s locked up, and Orient, Goldy, Mickey, and Florida are missing.” She hit the side of Mickey’s desk with her hand. Doodle ran into the basement.

  Tick-Tick told the entire story, as she knew it. I looked at Sai and signed, Tick-Tick and Ms. Wu ought to be told everything.

  Sai nodded.

  Ms. Wu said aloud, “Florida is Faerie’s missing heir. Yes, I know.” As I gaped at her, she signed, You never asked.

  Tick-Tick nodded. “The heir. Ah. Half of Faerie may be against us, then.”

  I stared at her. She was talking casually about a kid I’d sat beside for two nights while she sweated out a fever, a kid who’d made me a booklet for my birthday called Why Wolfboy Is Wonderful, by Florida. Then I nodded. She was talking casually about five people we all loved.

  The nature of the game was simple: Strider and Crystaviel were the players, Florida was the goal, and the rest of us, by helping Strider hide her, had become his gaming pieces. But now he was locked up where he could not play. His game pieces would have to win without him.

  I looked at Sai. Gaming pieces were expendable. We could assume Florida was alive, at least. We had no assurances about the others.

  Ms. Wu mumbled something and moved her arms in a way that suggested all mystical gestures are a form of sign language. She frowned. “I don’t think anyone’s done any magic here lately. Nor have there been any deaths. I’m afraid that’s all I can tell you.”

  “It’s something,” Sai said.

  “Perhaps we overreacted,” Tick-Tick said, clearly not believing that. “We’ll return to Orient’s. I have a spare key.” She smiled. “And I’m not afraid to use it.”

  No one laughed. Ms. Wu said, “I’ll let you know if I learn anything.”

  I signed, Could we break Strider out of the B-town Jail?

  Ms. Wu looked aghast. I thought it was her reaction to a suggestion that we break the law, but she said, “The merchant council pays several magicians, myself included, to set magical wards about that place. Magic cannot free him. Could you free him without magic?”

  Tick-Tick said, “Not without bringing every free-lance police force and every would-be vigilante after us. Which is to say, no.”

  Ms. Wu nodded. “Better to prove his innocence.”

  I signed, Thanks. When everyone was outside of the building, I tapped the rhythm that activates the guard spell. I tried the door. The handle did not turn or rattle; the guard spell was working. I began to feel very, very bad.

  We raced back to Orient’s apartment. No one answered our knock. Tick-Tick used her key, and we went up, quickly and cautiously. As we went, Tick-Tick said, “I’d hate to interrupt him with someone.”

  Sai said, “I wouldn’t,” opened the door, and yelled, “Burglars!” No one answered. Tick-Tick went straight to the bedroom door and walked inside while Sai checked the bathroom and I investigated the kitchen.
/>   We met back in the living room. Tick-Tick sighed. “I would have been very pleased to interrupt him, I confess.”

  “Do we wait?”

  Tick-Tick said, “Anything to drink in his icebox?”

  I shook my head. This was the first time I’d been glad to find nothing in his fridge.

  “A most inconsiderate host,” Tick-Tick said, then, “You shouldn’t read that.”

  Sai was reaching for Orient’s diary, open on the table next to an empty coffee mug and an ashtray half-full of cigarette butts. She turned the page back, then flipped a couple of pages more. “It’s about last night.”

  “Ah,” Tick-Tick said, and she read over Sai’s left shoulder while I read over Sai’s right.

  Most of the entry was an account of the events of Friday night, beginning with meeting the runaway and giving her a B-town name. At Danceland, he didn’t see or hear anything significant that I didn’t. He came up with a suspect I’d missed; in his list of possibilities, he wrote, EVEN THE TICKER’S ALIBI IS LOW-GRADE. HELL, MAYBE THEY ALL DID IT. THE ONLY PERSON WHOSE INNOCENCE I’M CERTAIN OF IS ME. AND IF THIS GOES ON, I’LL BE ASKING PEOPLE TO CORROBORATE MY MEMORIES.

  I looked at Tick-Tick then, and wondered if she minded being among the suspects. It did make me feel better about doubting Strider.

  Here are the last three paragraphs in Orient’s diary:

  THE SUN’S BEEN UP FOR THREE HOURS. I’D FORGOTTEN THIS PARTICULAR TIME OF DAY EXISTED. I WENT BACK TO DANCELAND AFTER WRITING THE LAST PARAGRAPH. I WANTED A CIG, AND I WANTED MY DAMN COPY OF STICK WIZARD, BECAUSE I KNEW I WASN’T GOING TO SLEEP. BOTH THINGS WERE IN THE SIDECAR. THE TICKER PARKED THE BIKE IN DANCELAND’S GARAGE FOR SAFEKEEPING AND WENT TO WAIT UP FOR SAI, TO KEEP HER FROM BOTH BEING ALONE AND FROM DOING SOMETHING STUPID.

  I WENT TO SEE IF SOMEONE WAS AROUND TO LET ME IN, OR IF I COULD GET IN BY MYSELF. I HAD TO GO THROUGH THE CUL-DE-SAC, OF COURSE. I DIDN’T GET IN THE GARAGE, DIDN’T EVEN TRY, BECAUSE I FOUND SOMETHING ON THE GROUND NEAR THE STREET END OF THE CUL-DE-SAC, AND IT DISTRACTED ME.

  SO I DON’T HAVE MY CIGS. I HAVE A PHEASANT FEATHER WITH A DISTINCTIVE NICK OUT OF ONE EDGE, DIRTY NOW FROM LYING IN THE MUD. I’VE BEEN PICKING IT UP AND TWIRLING IT OR SLIDING IT THROUGH MY FINGERS, AS IF IT’S AN IMPRESSION BALL, READY TO POUR OUT ITS STORED SONG AT A TOUCH. I HAVE TO SLEEP NOW, WHATEVER I MIGHT DREAM. BUT I WANT TO KNOW WHAT IT MEANS. CARAMEL, WHERE ARE YOU NOW?

  Sai said, “This Caramel kid killed Yorl?”

  Tick-Tick shrugged. “Why didn’t he come get me?”

  “He didn’t want to wake you?” Sai said hesitantly. “Maybe he didn’t want to wake me.”

  Tick-Tick looked out the window, then said, “I’m spreading the word. I’ll tell the Horn Dance, I’ll tell Scully, I’ll tell Commander X’s Kids. Someone must’ve seen something.”

  •

  Everyone called in favors. Sai had her brother’s friends cruising the wharfs. Tick-Tick spread the word among the Bloods; what with the ones who like her and the ones who admire Strider, there were a lot of elves in red leather cruising B-town. She made a run up the Tooth to speak with Scully and some of the Dragon Fire kids. Dancer and Val talked with the old-timers.

  I wrote up the short version of what had happened and carried it around. King O’Beer gave me a hug and offered to tell people in his karate class. Jeff said he’d speak with the Rough Riders; the Leather and Lace League, a.k.a. the 3Ls; and the Dragon Ladies of Dragontown. (Sometimes I wonder if this place would have one or two fewer dragon things if we had some real dragons.)

  Then I climbed Dragon’s Tooth Hill to the nice little street with the nice little house where one of my many crushes was living. She didn’t come to the door. Leander did. He wore dark slacks and a blue blazer; I don’t know if he thought he looked like the elfin version of James Bond or a tour director.

  He grinned and opened the door. “Wolfboy! Come in, come in! Luce is resting, but I’m sure she’d—”

  I always want to despise Leander when he’s not around, maybe because he’s married to my first B-town crush, the kid I knew as Wiseguy, who he knows as Lucia. But I never can despise him when I’m with him. There’s something about him that exudes, Of course I’m much better bred and much better educated than you or any of your kind can ever hope to be, but I like you ever so much, so our little differences really don’t matter at all, do they, old chap?

  I shook my head and handed him the note. In the clothes I was wearing, I felt like I should squat in the yard in the sun and the dust while he read what I’d written. (Actually, the sky was overcast, and the yard was a lush carpet of grass, but you know what I mean.)

  He said, “I haven’t seen any of them.”

  I handed him a three-by-five card that I hadn’t shown anyone else. He read that Strider believed Tejorinin Yorl to be Crystaviel’s ice-haired companion, and he said, “Ah.” There was nothing of the tour director about him then.

  He said, “It’s a frame, of course.”

  I raised an eyebrow.

  “That was the effect. Better to assume it was intentional, then be pleasantly surprised if we’re wrong.” He shook his head and frowned. “Would that Strider were here. He’d know what to do. Which is, of course, why he is not. Could we post bail?”

  I shook my head. No bail for poor folk from Soho suspected of killing rich folk from Faerie.

  “Has anyone seen Crystaviel within the last month or so?”

  I shook my head. So far as I knew, no one had seen her since she’d hired Orient in the fall.

  “The singer’s the key. Linden?”

  I nodded.

  “Do you know what Crystaviel means?”

  I shook my head.

  “It means, ‘Cool shade of heart-shaped leaves, flowers of cream and gold.’”

  I lifted an eyebrow to ask what that told us.

  Leander nodded. “Exactly. Linden.”

  Do you ever hear a name and see in your mind the face that goes with the name? When Leander said “Linden,” I only saw a mask, as beautiful and as unreal as a model’s face in any lipstick or perfume ad, but I heard a glorious voice singing a snatch of “Heart’s Desire,” Wild Hunt’s second song that Friday night at Danceland.

  I wondered if Strider had been trying to warn me about Crystaviel and Linden with his finger-spelling and decided he had not. We hadn’t recognized Yorl. If Crystaviel was Linden, she was even better disguised in her makeup and strange haircut. Who would’ve looked for her onstage with Wild Hunt?

  Wild Hunt, I thought, and suddenly that seemed like another sly taunt. Leander was right. Crystaviel had arranged this, Strider framed in a way that no one suspected her and Florida seized before anyone realized she was the true target.

  If Florida was across the Border, we had lost. If she remained in Bordertown, there was still hope. With each second, hope fled further away.

  I wrote, TRY TO FREE STRIDER. CAN YOU CONVINCE THEM TO SET BAIL?

  “Without telling who he is? He’d do that himself, if he wished or dared.” Leander straightened his shoulders. “I’ll pour a stream of gold upon the magistrate’s desk until she frees him lest she smother beneath it.”

  That, I suppose, is an example of why Wiseguy married him instead of running off with me. I smiled and ran back to Orient’s apartment, the unofficial command post of the Bordertown Treasure Hunt Society. We’d picked it out of the wild hope that he hadn’t walked right into a trap when he’d followed the runaway, and that therefore he’d walk back in sometime soon and wonder why we’d decided to have a party at his place and not invite him.

  Bordertown’s streets were alive as they’d never been before. We told ourselves we’d find Florida and all of the others, and we’d find the Rats who were in Danceland Friday night too, and maybe we’d even find the person who killed the Elflander. The size of the search made me very proud of this stupid town.

  But it didn’t help us find anyone.

  Chapter 10—Things Go Boom

  I woke o
n Orient’s extremely uncomfortable couch to the sound of running feet, and I leaped up. Tick-Tick and Sai were already at either side of the door. Tick-Tick put a finger to her lips, meaning something had told her the person on the stairs wasn’t Orient. I tensed up—for action, I suppose. The knob rattled as someone touched the handle, I tensed up more, and Tick-Tick yanked the door wide.

  A smudged-gray human-shaped creature fell into the room. It was too solid to be a ghost, too small to be an elf. It looked at me and said, “Wolfboy!”

  I recognized Caramel, our runaway, more by her voice and her odor than her appearance. Her clothes were filthy and torn, her dark brown hair and light brown skin were hidden beneath a film of black powder, her cheek and one knee were bleeding, her black hat was gone where all affectations go. I should’ve congratulated her. She looked extremely Bordertown now.

  Tick-Tick glanced from me to Caramel. “Where’s Orient?” She touched Caramel’s cheek. “Soot?”

  Caramel nodded and began, “I—”

  Sai said, “Where’s everyone, dammit!”

  Tick-Tick held a hand toward Sai for patience, then looked at me.

  I crossed my arms in front of me, pointing one finger at Caramel, one at Sai and Tick-Tick.

  “Intro-bloody-ductions,” said Sai. “Sai. Tick-Tick. If you know where anyone is, take us to ‘em now.”

  “Caramel,” she said. “I only know where Orient is. Or was half an hour ago. I don’t know about anyone else.”

  “Where? If we find him—”

  “Down by the Mad River. There’s a bunch of these, um, Rats, and they locked us up in a room. See, he followed me—”

  Tick-Tick nodded. “We figured that part out.”

  “I got out through a chimney—it was too small for Orient. He’s in bad shape. I think his wrist’s broken, and he was hit on the head, so— I don’t know. The Rats left us nothing to drink except a jar of River water, and Orient said if we drank any, we’d be addicts, like the Rats.”