by Sarah Zettel
Jack, as usual, didn’t hesitate. He just double-checked to make sure nobody was around and then sloshed forward as though he did this every day. Together we plowed toward the bridge.
The underside of the Waterloo Bridge was a bunch of metal beams and bracing draped with weed, birds’ nests, and spiderwebs that glistened in the fuzzy sunbeams that slanted through the arches. The stink had been trapped under here long enough to grow big and strong. I was pretty sure something scuttled away from us. It squeaked too.
“See anything?” hissed Ivy from overhead, where she was dry and not in the middle of the world’s most unbelievably bad smell.
“Well? Are we close enough?” Jack’s whisper bounced back from about six different directions. I swallowed, and as carefully as I could, I opened up my magic one more time.
It was different here. The squirmy uncertainty was behind us. I felt like I’d opened a window: warmth and the clean scents of sunshine and rain spilled through the far side of the gate. I could feel its jagged edges as clearly as if I rested my palms against them. If I leaned forward in just the right way, I’d be able to see through it to what was beyond.
What would I see this time? All at once I wanted to get closer, open up further. I squashed that feeling. My magic liked to be let out to play a little too much sometimes, and when it was, my good sense took a powder.
“Find it?” Jack’s voice sounded a long way off. I was already halfway out of the human world. I felt myself teetering. One more step with my magic open like this and I’d be all the way gone.
I grabbed Jack’s hand to keep me steady, and I stretched out the way I would stretch out one finger, easing forward, trying to trace all those jagged, rippling edges so I could bundle them together and squeeze them shut.
“What’s going on?” Ivy stage-whispered from overhead. I tried to ignore her and keep focused on the gate. “Have you found it? What do you see?”
“Ivy, no—” Jack croaked.
But he was too late. She was screaming. “Ahhhh!”
Splash!
I got a gout of water in the face, and it tasted as bad as it smelled. I slammed back into the human world, and the whole place was churning, with Ivy screaming and Jack saying, “Hold on, hold on!”
I knuckled filthy water out of my eyes. When I could see anything again, what I saw was Ivy, looking about as miserable as a drowned cat, all scrunched up against Jack, and he had his arms around her.
“It’s okay, it’s okay,” Jack told her. “You’re safe. I got you.”
“What’re you doing?” I demanded in a loud whisper.
“I just wanted to see!” she wailed, and tried to push her dripping curls out of her eyes and shake the water off her hands. For a second I thought she was going to be sick. “I leaned over too far. I’m sorry!”
“It’s okay,” said Jack again, and he glared at me. “It was an accident.”
“An accident that’s going to have the whole studio breathing down our necks, you little screwball faker!”
“Callie!” exclaimed Jack.
“What?”
“Don’t be mad,” whimpered Ivy. “Jack, please, tell her I’m sorry.”
“Of course you’re sorry. And you’re sorry too, aren’t you, Callie?”
No, I wasn’t. Not one little bit. She kept messing things up, and I couldn’t get rid of her. She was worse than a bad penny. Plus she was a total faker and couldn’t even help her mother when she needed it.
“Jack, get her out of here,” I ordered, adding, “She might get hurt.” If he was going to keep being sweet and stupid on her after everything we’d seen, maybe I could get it to work for us.
“She’s right,” Jack said to Ivy.
“No! Don’t leave me alone! I won’t be frightened if you’re with me.”
Oh, brother. Jack wasn’t going to buy that line, was he? But the way he was looking at her, I was afraid he might.
“We’d better hurry,” Jack said.
He meant that I’d better hurry. Well, who needed either of them?
I swung away from Jack. I couldn’t concentrate if I looked at the little faker shivering against him and him standing there with his arms around her. I let out a long, slow breath, then opened up inside and edged forward. The water seemed thicker here as it slid across my skin and around my ankles. The smell was thicker too. All kinds of bad things had been stewing under here for a long time.
The gate was just ahead of me. I could feel it waiting like an open well in the dark. I inched forward. Something brushed against me: a stray scent of lemon, a thread of music, a soft voice. I felt Jack’s worry and Ivy’s worry, and that made things easier. I could pull that out and tuck it into my magic to make me stronger. I found the edges of the gate. I plucked them up one by one, gathering them together, drawing them closed. Something squeaked and scrambled. Ivy screamed. Jack shoved against me hard, and I stumbled—straight into the gate. He grabbed my hand and I spun around, but I couldn’t catch my balance, and we were both falling into the water, through the water, and then past it into the gate.
The last thing I saw before it closed around us was Ivy Bright, looking down on us, gold light gleaming in her baby-blue eyes.
I owed Tully an apology.
17
That Bright World to Which I Go
Betwixt and between rushed around us too fast for me to find anything to grab hold of. I screamed, and Jack screamed with me. There was no direction, nothing to hang on to, no way to stop. We tumbled through a blaze of color until I couldn’t tell whether we were falling down or rising up. Then it didn’t matter which way we were going, because we plunged into cold water.
I gasped. Water filled my lungs. I choked and coughed, fighting for air and getting nothing but more water. My hands flailed and my feet kicked through a wash of blue and bubbles. My lungs were on fire and frozen solid at the same time, and everything was fading down into the dark. I had to breathe but I couldn’t breathe, and I couldn’t breathe and I couldn’t breathe.…
I was rising. Somebody hauled me out of the water across a ledge that grated against all my ribs. I flopped sideways, my body cold and heavy as death. It didn’t matter. I couldn’t breathe.
Somebody whacked me on the back, hard, then did it again. My stomach heaved and I vomited water and pain. I coughed, and my lungs heaved in the other direction, sucking down air. That hurt like blazes too. I threw up more water and coughed and retched, and hurt, and breathed.
After a while, my eyes started working enough to see Jack crouched beside me, soaked to the skin and panting.
“Thanks,” I croaked.
“Anytime,” he answered with an easy grin that lasted just long enough for him to take a look around us. “Where the heck are we?”
That was a really good question. I managed to push myself up into a sitting position so I could see better, and only coughed a little doing it. We sure weren’t under that bridge anymore. We weren’t betwixt and between, nor were we in fairyland. The blue walls surrounding us were decorated with sparkling gold tiles that turned the whole room into a gigantic jewel box. Lights shaped like old-style streetlamps lined both sides of an enormous swimming pool. Arched windows overlooked misted hilltops under a cloudless sky.
We weren’t alone either. People lounged on deck chairs between marble statues of old Roman soldiers and naked women. There was a little tiled stage topped by a shining black piano. A black man in black tie sat on the bench, creating a stream of slow jazz to blend with the lazy talk that echoed off the tiled walls and painted ceiling.
“… and did you see that thing Margaret was wearing? Betty, I swear …”
“… no, no, no, old sport, if you want to get a really good shot, you …”
“… well, of course I turned him down! That desperate I am not.…”
Men in waiter uniforms and women decked out as maids carried trays of martinis and champagne. The servants moved between the loungers, passing out glasses, picking up empties, and dumpi
ng out ashtrays. About half the people on the deck were smoking, and the clouds wreathed their heads like the mist on the hills outside. More people swam in the pool. They called to each other, tossing a volleyball around and laughing and just having a plain old good time.
Nobody looked at us. Two kids in soaking wet street clothes had appeared in the middle of this huge, gorgeous indoor swimming pool, and not one of the people so much as glanced at us. A door opened in the side wall and a new woman walked in. She had a cloud of dark hair and wore a white silk robe. Every head turned and all the people called out to greet her, but none of them looked at us. Jack got himself to his feet and marched up to that dark-haired woman as she shed her robe to show off her scarlet bathing suit. He waved his hand in front of her eyes. She brushed it aside, as if a fly had buzzed in front of her, and walked over to start chatting about the suit to her lady friends, where she got it and how much it cost.
“We’re not here,” he said. “Wherever this is, we’re not all the way here.”
“This cannot be good.” I scrambled to my feet.
A jazz note faltered. I whipped my head around to look at the piano player, just in time to see him drop his gaze back to the keys.
They keep me playing by the pool during the day.…
But right then another door opened, sending a fresh shaft of golden light spilling across the floor. I spun around. The pretty people at the pool party didn’t look up.
Uh-oh. “Jack …”
“My goodness,” said a man. “What have we here?”
He was blond, tall, bronzed, and as perfectly shaped as the marble statues standing sentry by the windows. He wore yellow swim trunks and a white shirt that stretched the word LIFEGUARD tight across his chest. He even had a whistle around his neck. If it wasn’t for the rabbit, he would have looked like he belonged there.
But there was that rabbit. The lifeguard carried a fluffy white bunny in the crook of one overmuscled arm and petted its floppy ears as he walked toward us. And still not one of the swimmers looked up. They couldn’t see him either, but he could sure see us. The piano player missed another note. I felt the wrongness of it under my skin. I felt something else too. Fear.
“I … um …” I glanced desperately at Jack.
“We’re guests of Miss Davies,” Jack said immediately. I nodded in rapid agreement, and tried not to be too obvious about edging closer to him.
The lifeguard ruffled his bunny’s ears. “But you weren’t supposed to be here until tomorrow.”
I about swallowed my tongue. Jack, of course, took it in stride. “We came up a day early. Didn’t Miss Davies tell you?”
The lifeguard was rounding the edge of the pool and coming up on our side now. “No. I had no orders about early arrival.”
“Really? That’s strange.” Jack frowned at me, his face all done up in confusion. “You called, didn’t you?” I nodded fast, widening my eyes in my best Ivy Bright imitation. “You’d better go ask Miss Davies,” Jack said to the lifeguard. “We can wait here until you get back.”
“I could do that, I guess. But …” He squinted at me. “Can you even swim?”
“Um …”
“What’s that got to do with anything?” asked Jack.
“Oh, nothing really.” The lifeguard smiled, and for a moment I understood what it was to be dazzled. “In fact, it makes things easier.”
The lifeguard tossed the rabbit at Jack and himself at me. His shoulder hit my chest. I flew backward and together we sank down into that cold, clear water.
“No!” Jack screamed.
Panic filled me, and I clutched at the nearest solid thing, which was the lifeguard. I climbed him like a tree, trying to get my head above water. I had time to haul in one huge breath and hear Jack shouting and swearing. He was dodging between the deck chairs with their pretty, blind occupants. That rabbit had gotten a whole lot bigger. It didn’t look like a rabbit anymore either. Now it looked like a gigantic white stallion, with red eyes and all its big horse teeth bared.
“Catch!” Jack shouted at me, and he was wishing. Wishing hard. Wishing I could swim. I grabbed that wish, flipped it around, dragged it inside me, and made it come true.
“Uh-oh,” murmured the lifeguard.
All my fear of water vanished. I sucked in a big breath and dove down deep. My arms and legs pushed through the water as though it wasn’t even there, until I crouched on the bottom of that pool. The lifeguard’s legs kicked overhead. I grinned and jumped.
I shot up off the bottom in a geyser of foam and bubbles, coming up behind the lifeguard and wrapping my arms around his neck. “Hey! No fair!” he shouted.
Jack was weaving between the statues. That white horse darted after him. It would have looked as silly as the rabbit if it hadn’t been for the hooves the size of soup plates, the huge snapping teeth, and the fire in its way-too-smart eyes. It somehow managed to flow between the laughing people on the deck chairs, who gossiped and sipped their drinks and ignored the horse and us.
The lifeguard grabbed my arm where I had it looped across his shoulder, and rolled us both over. I kicked at his back, but I couldn’t land a good one. He rolled again and again, trying to hold me under or shake me off. My lungs started to burn, and desperation sank in. I got my face right up to the lifeguard’s shoulder and bit down hard.
He screamed. I kicked off against his back, shot free, and collided with another swimmer. She brushed me back and looked around in confusion. A different pair of hands grabbed hold of me, and I was out of the water, on the deck, and staring straight at the piano player.
This time nobody’d covered him with makeup. I could see his real face. My father was lean and tall, with mahogany skin and his hair cut close to his scalp. He had a strong jaw and high cheekbones, a full mouth, and deep eyes the color of smoke and storms. Those eyes set off memory sparks way in the back of my mind.
“Is it you?” he whispered. “Is it?”
That voice reached into me, and I knew him. I knew him like I knew the feel of my heart hammering against my ribs or the light from the Unseelie country.
“Papa,” I breathed.
But the lifeguard had climbed onto the blue deck and was staring at us both. “Uh-oh,” he said again.
Jack hollered. He tried to duck behind the last of the Roman soldiers, but his foot skidded on the wet tiles and he fell hard. The horse reared and laughed, a high screaming sound, then brought its flashing hooves down toward Jack. I grabbed hold of all my magic and shoved.
The horse screamed again and fell sideways. While it struggled to get back on its feet, Jack launched himself into a run in the other direction. He shoved a waiter into a deck chair, spilling a tray of drinks. Now the pretty people were on their feet crying out and calling the waiter all sorts of rude names. The horse lunged after Jack, snorting.
“Oh, no you don’t!”
I whirled around just in time to see the lifeguard’s fist coming down. But a brown hand caught it, twisted, and yanked. I felt magic too, twisting just as hard, and the lifeguard went sprawling.
“Go!” my father shouted. “Get out of here!”
I charged across the deck, right at that white horse. Jack tried to run toward me, but the horse plunged forward, got hold of his shoulder in its yellow teeth, and hauled him off his feet.
“No!” I shoved at it again with everything I had. The horse dropped Jack onto the deck, turned around, and opened its mouth. My magic drove straight in and got stuck.
It was like punching tar. I yanked and backpedaled, but it was too late. The monster was sucking me in, dragging me down. Jack was hollering. The lifeguard was laughing, and so was the horse. I think I was screaming, but I couldn’t tell because I was being swallowed whole.
Callie!
There was a rope around my middle. I grabbed hold of it.
Now!
And I knew what to do. I aimed straight for the center of the dark and pitched a wish through it. The dark shattered, and I was back on the poo
l deck again. The horse was gone. All the swimmers were back to talking lazily and laughing all around us. The monster was in rabbit shape again, looking flat, wet, harmless, and just about dead on the pool deck. For a second I felt a flash of hatred so strong it made me stagger backward.
“Go! Go!” Papa hollered. “I’ll hold her. Go!”
“But … no!” Something shoved at me, making me turn and look.
The lifeguard was missing. So was Jack. The guard was at the bottom of the pool, and he had Jack down there with him. He had his mouth right up against Jack’s, and Jack wasn’t moving.
I dove in, straight down. I grabbed hold of both the guard’s ears and twisted hard. He howled and shook me off, but he’d let go of Jack, and Jack was floating up. He wasn’t moving. One bubble lifted slowly out of his mouth. He was drowning, maybe drowned. I grabbed the collar of Jack’s shirt and dragged him down toward the gate. I kicked and struggled and held on to Jack’s collar like grim death. I dove again, this time into the whirlwind of colors, into the place where it didn’t matter if you could breathe or not, because it was no place and I was nothing in it, just motion. Just falling.
But I wasn’t the only one. Someone was screaming behind me. I felt the magic, scrabbling, squeezing, trying to yank us back.
Darkness rushed up, but this time I was ready for it. I held my breath, squeezed my eyes shut, and knotted my fingers tighter around Jack’s collar. We burst into the oily, black water under the Waterloo Bridge. I kicked until we broke the surface. The water stank and stung as it dripped into my eyes. Jack wasn’t moving. If it hadn’t been for the bridge supports, I would have fallen into the slime. Jack floated on the water, his eyes shut. I sobbed as I kicked, half swimming and half floundering, to tow him onto the bank. The skin all around his mouth was torn and bloody. And he wasn’t moving.
“Jack!” I grabbed his shoulders. “Jack! Wake up!”
Jack’s eyes opened. His skin was white as a sheet. He was cold. He wasn’t breathing. Footsteps sounded on the bridge. I felt Ivy coming up on us before I saw her.