Something Magic This Way Comes

by Sarah A. Hoyt

  A ganger sobbed and ran. The wolf chased running prey. She brought him down in three bounds, and her jaws snapped his neck as if it were made from balsa wood. The last three stayed together for protection.

  Prey often chose the illusory safety of numbers. She prowled around them, forcing them into a closer and closer huddle. She howled and leaped in among them, jaws tearing flesh and crunching bone. She tasted blood, so much blood.

  * * *

  The sheets were laundered stiff, and the room smelled of antiseptic. She opened her eyes.

  “You’re supposed to ask where you are,” a woman in white said. “It’s traditional.”

  “This is a hospital, and you’re a nurse,” said Rhian.

  A parade of doctors examined and prodded her.

  She felt empty. Why didn’t she feel anything? The nurse persuaded her to bathe and then gave her a ghastly nightdress to wear. James would have laughed to see her in it. That was when she cried.

  “The police would like to interview you. You don’t have to see them if you don’t want to,” said the nurse.

  “I can’t avoid them forever,” said Rhian. “Let’s get it over with.” The brooch lay comfortingly cold between her breasts.

  A CID detective and a woman constable interviewed her.

  Rhian ran through the events of the night.

  “And you can’t remember anything after they hit you?” asked the detective.

  “Not until I woke up in here,” said Rhian. She looked the detective straight in the eye.

  “Did you see any dogs?” asked the detective.

  “I don’t recall any,” said Rhian. “Why do you ask?”

  “The gang were killed by dogs, after—” The detective stopped.

  “After they killed James.” Rhian finished the sentence for him.

  “I’m sorry,” the detective said.

  “I’m very sleepy,” Rhian said. “The sedatives, you know.” She shut her eyes.

  “That’s enough for now,” said the nurse. She pushed the police out the door.

  Rhian pretended to be asleep, but she could hear them clearly.

  “We may as well go,” said the detective.

  “We can’t leave it at that,” said the constable.

  “That girl was found stark naked and covered in blood. She was raped.”

  “And whom do we charge?” asked the detective.

  “The scrotes who did it are dead, and, by God, they paid. Why rake it all up if she can’t remember?”

  “But what about Rayman?” the constable asked “He gets away scot free, does he?”

  “There’s no evidence against him that would make a charge stick,” said the detective. “He attends the same lodge as the Chief Superintendent.”

  “I wonder why we can’t find the dogs?” said the constable.

  “They must have been bloody big, rottweilers or something. They will be covered in blood as well. They’ll turn up. Those idiots must have brought attack dogs with them. That girl was lucky that she was unconscious when the dogs went wild.”

  The detective’s voice faded into the distance. Rhian took from under her pillow the scalpel that she had stolen on her way back from the bathroom. Rolling up the sleeve of her nightdress, she carefully cut her arm, welcoming the stinging pain.

  * * *

  The clouds cleared, and moonlight flooded London. The sun would soon dominate the sky, but for the moment Morgana the moon goddess ruled. The pub and restaurant crowd had long gone home, but the nightclubs were only just starting to empty. Rhian felt the silver moonlight on her skin.

  Rayman was arguing with a woman who slapped his face. She stormed off, her high heels clicking on the concrete car park floor. He adjusted his tie and walked toward a Mercedes. Rhian stepped out in front of him.

  “What?” he said. “You seem to have lost your clothes, girly.” He leered at her.

  Rhian stood silently, watching him.

  “Cat got your tongue?” he asked, coming closer.

  “Wait a minute. I know you from the coroner’s court. You cost me a fortune, girly, you and your stupid friends. What are you up to now, you stupid bint?”

  Rhian studied him unemotionally. Her beautiful, lovely James had been killed because of this shallow, greedy, worthless man. She showed him the razor in her right hand and drew it slowly across her left arm, adding another cut to the parallel scars that already disfigured her skin.

  “You mad bitch,” he said. “Kill yourself for all I care.”

  She pressed the blood against the brooch. She intended just to scare him, and it might have stopped at that if he had stood his ground, but he ran.

  The wolf did not intellectualize; the wolf hunted fleeing prey.

  OPUS NO. 1

  Barbara Nickless

  “ALEX, he’s playing your favorite.” My lover moved closer in our private box. “Chopin! Isn’t that the—”

  I smiled and placed a finger to my lips. The cadenza whispered past, a scintillation, and I leaned forward in delight.

  She tapped me lightly on the forearm in protest but returned her attention to the stage.

  * * *

  Outside, shadows gathered. These shadows didn’t move with the failing sun, but merged into pools of Stygian darkness. After some hesitation, they surged toward the orchestra hall, intent and swift, whispering my name.

  * * *

  A thread of unease wove through my enjoyment of the pianist. I tilted my head, listening to something other than the nocturne.

  She noticed. “Alex?”

  Now I looked at her. Her blonde hair gleamed in the soft lights from the stage. Her warm skin smelled of lavender and musk. Her perfume was a whiff of the wilds, and I missed the wilds.

  She raised an eyebrow.

  “It’s nothing.” I reached for my coat. “A bit of indigestion. I’ll take a taxi and call you later.”

  “Don’t be silly. If you’re sick, I’m coming too. Daniel can drive us both home.”

  “I need some fresh air.”

  “That’s usually what a man says when he’s leaving a woman for good.”

  I bent and kissed her. “Later, love.”

  At the door I hesitated and looked back. She hadn’t turned to watch me. Angry. Hurt. I blew a kiss she would never see.

  I let myself out of the box, ran down the redcarpeted stairs, and shoved open the door to the lobby. By the window, I hesitated.

  Through the glass, the faraway darkness considered me. It was a singular gloom that I could singularly appreciate.

  The door closed behind me, and the forte section of the nocturne plummeted to the hush of sotto voce.

  “Call a taxi for you, Mr. Smith?” the doorman asked. “Looks like a storm is coming.”

  “No, thank you, John. I enjoy the wind.”

  “Good evening, then, sir.”

  Outside, a swirl of dust pirouetted on the sidewalk.

  The street was empty, one of those moments of quiet occasionally visited upon Fourth Street in the early hours of the evening.

  The wind rose suddenly, howling down the avenue.

  It yanked at my coat and threw grit in my eyes. Leaves needled my skin like tiny, golden wasps. The shadows deepened where they crouched between the automobiles and lurked among the buildings.

  Perhaps the taxi would have been a good idea.

  I strode quickly along the brick exterior of the concert hall, eager for home. But at the alley, I paused.

  A faint light, a glow of pearl, shone deep in the passage that ran along the concert hall.

  A child’s sobs trembled on the night air. I hurried down the pathway.

  A small girl crouched near the brick wall. A velvet dress peeked from beneath her navy blue wool coat.

  Her patent leather shoes were dull with dust, and the wind had tugged her short red curls loose.

  “Elise.” I recognized the little girl who had moved into the apartment below mine a week ago. I’d never seen her parents. Only Elise, water
ing the flowers on the balcony and sometimes dancing to unseen music the way children and madmen do.

  She looked up. Tears sparkled on her thin face.

  “Are you the one who made me come outside?”

  “No, Elise. I’m your neighbor. Upstairs. The one with the bonsai trees on the railing.”

  Her lip trembled. “I’ve never seen you.”

  Of course not. “I’m one of the good guys.”

  “You’re supposed to say that.”

  I studied her with new appreciation. The light that hung about her was too faint to be seen in the daylight.

  That was my excuse for not noticing before that she wasn’t wholly mortal.

  “But in my case it’s true.” I held out my hand.

  “Were you at the concert?”

  “Yes.”

  “And something made you come outside?”

  She nodded. “Something in the shadows.”

  “You can sense it?”

  “I heard it. When I went to use the bathroom.” She let me pull her to her feet.

  “Where are your parents?”

  “Mother’s inside, listening to the pianist. She thinks I’m in the bathroom. But the shadow-sound was so lovely at first. I had to come outside and see.” She looked up at me with light green eyes, witch eyes.

  “Something magic is coming, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “And not all magic is good, is it?”

  “Some of it is very bad.”

  “Are you the only grownup who knows about it?”

  She screwed up her face. “The only one who knows about them?”

  “Are you the only child?”

  For a moment we stared at each other in something between fear and delight. I’d been alone for so long, and now here was someone with a touch of Faerie.

  She must have wondered what it was all about.

  I tucked her hand in mine. “Let me take you back inside the concert hall. You can stay with your mother until the end of the program. By then the darkness will be gone.”

  “You think it’s you they’re after.”

  I shrugged, but she shook her head.

  “It won’t do any good, for me to go inside. They’re after me, too.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because they said my real name. The name I use in my dreams. Not even my mother knows that name.”

  Could a seven or eight-year-old guess at the power of one’s true name?

  Only one with more than a little bit of Faerie about her.

  I glanced toward the end of the alley. The dusk had darkened unnaturally to a midnight blackness. “I’ll take you to my apartment. You’ll be safe there. But we’d better hurry.”

  She clutched my hand more tightly, stumbling next to me as we hurried along the alley and onto the street. The hairs on my neck rose. Even in mortal guise, my long strides were too much for Elsie. I took deep breaths and made myself walk more slowly, forcing down a quivering urge to shape-shift into a swifter form.

  We had a little time, I thought.

  We crossed the street to the next block. I glanced over my shoulder. The shadows had swallowed half the road. Street lights and window displays shone like ships’ lights through thick fog. A pedestrian walking his dog stepped from neon into shadow and disappeared.

  I wanted to cry a warning, but I knew that he wouldn’t see the shadows or be harmed by them.

  Elise’s hand sweated in mine.

  I bent to place my face close to hers. “What if I carry you?”

  She nodded and when I knelt, she clambered onto my back. I could have changed into a swiftly charging horse, and magicked her into forgetting the entire trip home. But something in me protested. A spell would leave her confused and in pain. I would use magic only if the shadows got close enough to strike.

  I leaned forward.

  “Hang on.”

  * * *

  Half a block from our apartments I stopped, gasping for air. I expected trouble, but the building soared serenely in the blue-black night.

  Elise gave a little cry.

  Something burned against my heels.

  I grasped Elise’s ankles and sped forward, more wind than man. We were part of a whispering breeze that slipped us past the doorman before he knew we were there. I shoved the door closed behind us.

  “Mr. Smith!” Thomas straightened his uniform coat.

  “I didn’t see you.”

  The pursuing shadows crested against the door. The charms I’d placed there a year earlier glowed a pale blue. Reluctantly, the shadows fell away, a receding wave.

  “It’s all right, Thomas. Elise and I were playing a little game.”

  I stood the girl on her feet, but she kept my hand.

  “Are we safe?” she whispered as we moved toward the elevator.

  “We’re safe.”

  For now.

  * * *

  I made Elise hot chocolate while she used her cell phone to try to reach her mother.

  “Mother keeps her phone off during the music. When I don’t come back from the bathroom, she’ll go into the lobby and try to call me. She’ll also tell the man who works there to search everywhere and to call the police. But she won’t really mean it, so he won’t do it.”

  “Why won’t she mean it? She must be worried.”

  “She’s used to it. I wander off a lot. Mother says it’s in my blood. Along with the bad thing.”

  “What bad thing?”

  But the sound of Jane’s voice echoed through Elise’s phone. Her mother must have reached the lobby.

  I checked the charms placed around the windows, wondering how long they would offer protection. A few days, perhaps, now that the shadows had found me.

  I found a bag of miniature marshmallows, which I softened in the microwave and dropped into the chocolate.

  Elise talked into the phone.

  “I’m okay, Mommy. Yes. The man upstairs. Mr. Smith. I’ll wait for you.”

  She hung up and sipped her chocolate, then wiped her mouth daintily with the napkin. “Will they be back?”

  “Not tonight.”

  “Tomorrow night?”

  “Possibly. But we’re safe for now.”

  “Meaning not for always?”

  I looked at her, trying to find the light that had surrounded her in the alley. But in the incandescent bulbs of the apartment, she looked as mortal as anyone else. Rather thin. And perhaps a bit pale, but that was understandable. “You’ll be fine, once I move away.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “To another city. Maybe another country.”

  “Will they still find you?”

  “Yes. I’ll just move again. I’ve done it many times.”

  “What are they?”

  What to say? How much to reveal to this child with green eyes and a secret name? Perhaps she had faerie blood in her from some long-ago ancestor. It wasn’t unheard of, as I very well knew.

  “I call them the Old Ones. They have other names. They’re one of the tuatha, which is an ancient word for tribe.”

  “Tribes? Like the Native Americans my teacher told me about?”

  “Sort of.”

  “Is there more than one tribe?”

  I glanced at the shelves around the room, crammed with books and journals and maps, every bit of research and detritus I had collected in order to find the tribes who practiced peace and love and beauty.

  “Once there were many. A very long time ago.”

  “But not any more?”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  “What happened to them?”

  I pressed my fingers against the heat of my untasted mug of chocolate. “They died.”

  “How come?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Were they bad, too?”

  “No. They weren’t.”

  “Why are these Old Ones after you?”

  “They want me to play music for them.”

  She pointed at th
e Steinway. “Is that your piano?”

  “Yes.”

  “Will you play for me?”

  Normally, I would have refused. But it had been years—years!—since I’d played for an audience. None of my lovers had ever heard me play, though all of them had pleaded and teased. None of my neighbors, either, for I soundproofed my walls and closed the windows and placed the charms of silencing.

  And none of my people. Not since that terrible war, when I’d realized the horror of my gift and fled, burying myself among mortals, denying myself immortality, suffering the misfortunes only mortals can suffer.

  I sat at the Steinway Grand, pushing my tuxedo tails out of the way and poising my right foot over the damper pedal, the left over the una corda.

  My fingers pressed into the opening notes. The Steinway returned rich tones as I played legatissimo, blending one note into the other like pulling a bow on a cello.

  War, violence. I knew Liszt didn’t intend that. The Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 was a piece of joy, a delight of the composer with his country’s native songs.

  I moved into the friska, struggling to keep my fingers gentle. The tremendous speed of the piece offered me no challenge. The lightness terrified me. A trickle of sweat loosed itself from my scalp and rolled past my ear. Under my hands, the Rhapsody became a eulogy to war, an ode to bloodshed.

  But Elise felt none of my angst. When I was done, she clapped with delight. “That’s the clown music!”

  “What?”

  “That’s what they always play at the circus when the clowns come out.”

  I looked at her. “I’ve never been to the circus. I don’t know how to play for clowns.”

  “You’ll have to go, then.”

  “It won’t help. I know only how to play war music.”

  “I bet it will. Haven’t you heard about the kittens?”

  “What kittens?”

  “The ones in the experiment. They grew up where everything had lines that only went from side to side. The ones like the mountains against the sky.”

  “Horizontal.”

  “Yes! The kittens had to live like that for weeks. Then the scientists put them in a regular room. Guess what happened?”

  “I can’t imagine.”

  “They ran into everything that went up and down. They couldn’t see the watchacallem lines.”