by Sarah Zettel
“You turned them down?” squawked Jack. Nobody turned the fairies down. They could make all your wishes come true, or at least make you think they had come true. All the fame and fortune Ruth Markham thought she was getting for handing over Ivy Bright? She’d have it. She might not live very long after she got it, but she would have it.
“You get around a little, you find out that people who offer you the whole world usually want everything you’ve got in return. I gave up believing that kind of promise a long time ago.” The anger in those softly spoken words sent shivers down my spine. “Anyway, the Seelies, as you call them, seemed to take it as a kind of challenge, and they’ve been sending their people around after me ever since. Amerda was their latest attempt, and you walked into the middle of it.”
Which meant Amerda hadn’t really wanted Ivy Bright at all. She’d just been trying to set things up so that Mr. Robeson would jump in and try to save the brightest little star in Hollywood. Except Jack and I got there first.
And got caught, I added to myself. And now they know who I am, and that I’m hanging around the movie studios. My head felt seasick, and a giggly little thought in the back of my brain started up another imaginary letter. Dear Mama: Guess what …?
We were back in New York by now. The hollow, unfinished buildings with their jagged tops and their long shadows fenced us in. I didn’t like it here anymore. Those fake buildings could all be hiding more monsters. Without thinking about it, I crowded a little closer to Jack.
Mr. Robeson looked the whole long way down at me. “Now, suppose you two tell me how you came to draw the attention of Amerda and her kind.”
“I, um, well …”
“I work here,” said Jack quickly. “I’m a script boy.” His head must have been spinning too. Usually Jack makes up much better explanations.
Mr. Robeson’s face screwed up, like we’d just offered him a rotten lemon. “And I suppose you wanted to get into pictures?” he said to me.
“No! Nothing like that. I mean, I am looking for work, but not acting work. Kitchen work, maybe. Housekeeping, things like that.”
Mr. Robeson squinted down at me, trying hard to figure out the story behind what we were telling him. I wasn’t so sure he liked what he was figuring either. I bit my lip. I didn’t really want to talk about any of this. Not with those buildings and all their holes and hiding places around us. Anybody might be listening, and for us “anybody” covered a whole lot of ground. Mr. Robeson saw me looking at that fake New York and he nodded like he understood. He didn’t ask any more questions, but he did pick up the pace, so Jack and I were all but running to keep up. That was okay by me. Amerda and her brother might not be able to touch us, but sure as the California sunrise, they had Seelie kin. Those kin had other kin and friends and maybe a few enemies on the lookout for some fun. They could put their heads together and find a way around the bargain Mr. Robeson had made. After all, they’d only promised to leave him alone, not us. They could all turn up spoiling for a fight any second now.
It came home to me cold and ugly that Jack and I had made a mistake walking in here without a real plan. We’d been putting that off until we actually found the Seelies. Well, now we had found them. Problem was, they’d found us too. Fear leaned in on me again and brought all my shakes back.
We finally reached the gate to Overland Avenue. Solly was gone. Instead, the shack was occupied by a black man reading what looked like a schoolbook.
“Good evening, George,” said Paul. “Does Michael have the car out?”
“Evenin’, Mr. Robeson. I think so. You need to go someplace?” He eyed me, then Jack, then me again. He didn’t like whatever he was thinking. I was pretty sure I didn’t like it either.
“These two need to be driven back home.”
“Oh, sure. Lemme call over.” George picked up the phone and dialed. Mr. Robeson took me and Jack each by the arm and led us toward the gate.
“Now,” he said firmly, “you will go straight home and into your rooms. You will not stop for anything or open the door to any strangers.”
This was a little too much for Jack, who’d been on the bum pretty much since he was twelve. He pulled himself up as far as he could and tried to look tough. He went a fair way toward doing it too. “Listen, we really appreciate your help, Mr. Robeson, but it’s not like we’re babies or anything.”
“No, you’re not. But you are in danger and you need to take care. And stay out of here.” This last was said to me. “If you’re really looking for work, you can come see me tomorrow morning. I’m staying at the Dunbar. Maybe I can find something for you.”
Jack was making a face, and I got the feeling he was hoping I’d refuse. I wasn’t sure why, though. Mr. Robeson might just be a regular human, but he could fight off the Seelie fairies and twist a bargain so tight they got lost in it. If we told him about my parents, he might be able to help.
“Yes, sir,” I said. “Thank you.”
Before I could say anything else, a big white Cadillac pulled up to the gate. The chauffeur who climbed out was a bent old man in a gray suit and peaked cap, but he gave Mr. Robeson’s hand a hearty shake like they were longtime friends. “What is it I can do for you tonight, Mr. Robeson?”
Paul explained how we needed a ride. Michael agreed right away and gestured us into the back of the white car. We scrambled up onto the plush seats. I was used to cars that choked and popped when they started, but the Cadillac just cleared its throat politely as Michael pulled into traffic.
“Holy smokes!” I flopped back in the seat. “You ever see anybody like that? I mean anybody?”
“Nope, I never.” Jack took off his cap and scrubbed his hair. “I wonder what his story is,” he added in a whisper, so Michael wouldn’t hear. “Do you think he could really have met your pop?”
I wondered too. He sure hadn’t told us anything like the whole story. But then, we’d been pretty skimpy with our own set of details, so I guess I couldn’t blame him. “He’s got something going for him,” I whispered back. “Otherwise he’d be singing for the Seelies, not wrestling ’em.”
“I guess.” Jack looked out the window for a long time at the city lights going past. “Do you think Ivy Bright’s okay?”
Guilt closed my mouth. I’d almost forgotten about Ivy, the original bait for the original trap. I’d sent her home, but she’d been tricked and magicked and scared. None of that could have done her any good.
No way, no how was I going to go using any magic right then, but I did open up my inside eyes to peek a little, just to find out if there was any magic flying around the vicinity. Just a quick peek couldn’t hurt, I told myself.
Unfortunately, it didn’t do a whole lot of good either. All I felt was city—no magic, no fairy gloating. That could mean something, or nothing at all. There was just no telling. But from the way Jack was holding his face, I figured this was not the time to try to explain all that. “I think she’s okay,” I told him.
“Good,” Jack said softly.
We both had too much to think about to talk after that.
Michael let me off in front of Mrs. Constantine’s boardinghouse and headed out to take Jack back to Ma Lehner’s. We had to stay in two different houses. In the City of Angels, where they’ve seen just about every shade in God’s paint pot, not even Jack could convince any woman who advertised “clean and respectable accommodations” we were brother and sister. Women like Mrs. Constantine had reputations to protect, so they looked at you a lot closer than the guard on any gate.
I climbed up the creaky steps to the crooked porch. Whatever old Mr. Constantine had done for a living, he couldn’t have been much good at it. If he’d left his widow any kind of money, she wouldn’t have had to take in boarders like me. I had a hunch Mr. Constantine did not exist, or that he had never married her. She could have pegged the Mrs. onto her name to keep up appearances. But my mama had done the same thing, so who was I to get snooty about that?
I was so tired, all I wante
d right then was to get this stupid, lopsided stuffed bra and my ruined stockings off and crawl into bed. I turned the knob and pushed on the front door, but the door didn’t open. I stared. Slowly it occurred to me that it was after midnight. Mrs. Constantine locked the door at twelve on the dot, and if you weren’t on the right side of it, it was just your tough luck.
I dropped onto the porch swing and buried my face in my hands. The car and Jack were long gone. I was going to have to stay out here all night, and then Mrs. Constantine’d kick me out in the morning, because I wouldn’t have any kind of good reason for being out past curfew and she had been clear about this being a respectable house. She’d been real nice, and she’d been looking after me just like you would a person who was real to you, not just a stranger in a back room. I didn’t want her thinking I was a liar, or a tramp. Tears pricked my eyes. It was a little thing after all that had happened, but it was also that last straw everybody talks about. Especially when my shoulder hurt so bad where the crocodile woman had gotten hold of me. Because of that stupid prophecy and my parents and maybe a whole bunch of other things I didn’t even know about yet, she and Rougarou and all the other Seelies were out there someplace, making plans about how to come get me, and I couldn’t even get into the house to hide under the bed.
“Dear Mama,” I whispered to my hands. “I’m sorry. I’m trying. I really am, but I don’t know what to do.”
A porch board creaked.
“There she is,” said a soft, familiar voice. “Callie LeRoux. There she is.”
6
Come to Keep Me Company
The porch creaked again. From around the corner of the house, a shadow slid along the warped boards, and a man’s silhouette followed it.
“Is this what you want, Callie LeRoux?” It was the bum, the one who’d tried to stop me on the way to the studio that morning. His crooked hand opened with a jerky, painful motion to show a door key lying on his palm.
“Here. I’ll make it a present to you.” He held it out.
I’d’ve as soon touched a live rattlesnake as anything this man had to give. “You get outta here! I’ll scream and have the whole neighborhood down on you.” That might have made a better threat if I’d been able to talk louder than a whisper.
“Sure you will, sure you will,” the bum crooned. “Because you don’t know me yet, do you, Callie?” Then, to my surprise, that raggedy man swept off his broken-down hat and began to sing. “Let him go, let him go, God bless him …”
The song plowed straight through my brain, tossing up memories left and right. I was in a dusty honky-tonk. A lean man at the upright piano coaxed “St. James Infirmary Blues” out of the keys. Later, that same man in evening clothes and a flowing cape stood beside my Unseelie grandparents and looked down on me with a big, fake smile on his face. Later still, he stood in the middle of fire and ruin and gunshots, with me as good as dead, and he laughed about it.
“Oh, no, no,” I whispered. I wanted to back away, but there was no place to go. He had me, trapped, alone in the dark. “Shake!”
“Now you see me.” The bum bowed low. His white eye gleamed like a pearl in the porch light. “Your uncle Shake. What’s left of him, anyway.”
“But … but you’re dead.” Last time I’d seen Shake, a boardwalk amusement park had been burning down around him, and I’d whacked him hard upside the head with a cast-iron frying pan. That kind of thing tended to make a person dead in a hurry, even a fairy. I’d gotten out, of course, and so had Jack, but we’d had help from outside. I just plain never stopped to think that Shake might have gotten out too.
“Oh, no. Not dead. No more than you are.”
“No thanks to you!” My fists bunched up. Fear took it on the lam and left anger behind, spoiling for a fight. “You get out of here, or so help me I’ll magic you into the middle of next week!”
“Now there’s your father’s daughter!” That big, sloppy grin split Shake’s scarred face again. Three of his front teeth were nothing but jagged stumps, and a couple others were flat-out missing. He’d been hit in the face, hard, and there was a dent in his skull that pushed his forehead out of shape. “Don’t you worry, Callie. Things have changed. I want us to be friends. Best of friends.”
Before I could think of any kind of answer to that, the porch light snapped on overhead, and we both froze.
“What on earth is going on out there?” Mrs. Constantine’s voice sounded over a flurry of snapping of locks on the other side of the front door. She appeared on the threshold in a pink housecoat with her hair all knotted up in white rags.
“Callie LeRoux! What are you doing out this time of night? And who is this … fine gentleman?” She crossed her arms and blocked the door, all the while looking Shake up and down like the cat had not only dragged him in but took a few good chomps out of him in the process.
“Oh, um, ah …”
While I sputtered like a fool and wished Jack was here, my uncle shuffled up to my side. Before I knew what was what, he had his hand on my shoulder. His bent fingers felt thick and heavy and too cold to be normal. Something sharp dug into my mind and I felt just a little magic welling up, like blood around a splinter.
“Mrs. Constantine?” Shake held his hat over his breast. “How do you do? Lawrence LeRoux. I understand you’ve been looking after my niece Callie since she’s been in town?”
As Shake spoke, Mrs. Constantine’s eyes went fuzzy, like she wasn’t quite seeing what was in front of her. Which she wasn’t. I knew just what she was seeing because Shake was pulling it out of me along with the magic. Whether I wanted to or not—and I really didn’t—I was conjuring up a vision of a well-dressed man holding a new snap-brim fedora as he smiled politely at my landlady. He had shiny wingtip shoes on his feet and a leather suitcase beside him with stickers on it for places such as St. Louis and Chicago.
“Mm-hmm.” Mrs. Constantine pasted a frown on her face, but now only because she thought she should. The anger had drained away as the illusion took hold. “Well, Mr. LeRoux, where’re you in from?”
“Kansas City.” Shake stepped us into the front hall so smoothly I wasn’t even sure how it happened. “What a charming house,” he said, and Mrs. Constantine puffed up with pride. “I am so sorry to have to disturb you at such an hour, but the train broke down on the way across the border. Callie had come to meet me at the station. Wound up asleep on a bench, poor girl.” He shrugged.
“Land sakes.” Mrs. Constantine shook her head in sympathy. But then, because she didn’t want it to look like she was letting anybody off the hook too easily, she added, “Callie, why didn’t you tell me your uncle was coming today?”
I opened my mouth, searching for an excuse, but Uncle Shake squeezed my shoulder hard. It was a good thing it wasn’t the one Amerda’d gotten hold of, or the noise I’d have made would have startled everybody. As it was, I understood what he was trying to signal. He’d already got a spell around Mrs. Constantine. If I tried to say something different now, she might not believe me. Even if she did, once I broke the spell I’d still have to try to get away from Shake and throw him out of the house and the neighborhood. Then I’d have to explain to my landlady how things had gone so far that this broken bum could have said even once that he was my uncle. I wasn’t sure I could do any of that, because my legs were going all shaky again and my other shoulder was starting to set up a whole jazz band’s worth of pain. Plus, with this magic leaking out of me, I was putting myself in a spotlight. If Amerda and the Seelies had set anybody on my tail, they’d follow the feel of magic like a hungry cat following the smell of fish straight to the market door.
I had to stop this whole thing, fast, and the fastest way was to go along with it.
“But I did, Mrs. Constantine,” I said, feeling every bit the liar I was. She didn’t deserve this. She’d been nice to me. “You saw the letter when it came. I said he’d be arriving on the twelfth, and you said you’d have a room for him.”
“So you did!” Mrs. Cons
tantine slapped her forehead, as if she was really remembering something, instead of just finding the new idea Shake and I had put into her mind. “I’d forget my head if it wasn’t screwed on my shoulders. Well. You just rest yourself in the parlor while I get your bed made up, Mr. LeRoux.”
Mrs. Constantine bustled into the house and up the stairs. Shake steered me through the brocade curtains to the parlor. The big cabinet radio was the only new thing in the room. It was sure newer than the pair of sofas, the four armchairs, and the card table with its mended leg. There was a grand piano covered with silver-framed photos of a plump, pretty little girl, who I had a feeling was Mrs. Constantine’s daughter. Miss Patty played that piano sometimes. I could have too, but I didn’t dare. Music brought out the magic in me even faster than people wishing.
The curtains dropped shut behind us. Shake let go of my shoulder and groped for one of the saggy armchairs. It was clear he was in pretty sad shape, but I wasn’t in the mood to feel sorry for him.
“What’d you do to me?” I wished I could shout, but I held my voice to a whisper. I couldn’t risk anybody else waking up.
“Just used a little of your magic, Callie.” Shake sat down slowly and carefully, like an old man. “Nothing to get on your high horse about.”
“Are you cracked? Slinging my magic around! They’ll find us!”
“Who will?”
“The Seelies! Every time I make a wish they’re all over me!”
“That’s because you don’t know what you’re doing.” He had the nerve to shake his head at me. “My magisterial parents have taken my power, but they didn’t take my brains and my skill. No one beyond our Mrs. Constantine felt a thing.”
“You promise?” I hated how scared I sounded when I said it.
“I do.” He turned his amber eye to me as he looked me up and down. That eye had both light and darkness behind it, midnight and starshine all mixed up together. “Hmmm. I would have thought Shimmy would have done better by you.”