Bad Luck Girl

by Sarah Zettel

  I didn’t really think about what to do next. I let go of Jack and ducked straight into the path of that mess of curly-backed dogs. They pulled up short, yipping and barking. The biggest of them jumped up, straining against its rhinestone-studded collar with its heavy paws waving in the air. One claw caught on the corner of my sash and tore a long strip down the center.

  “Oh, Mimi, no!” The old woman threw up her hands in astonishment, and, incidentally, dropped all the leashes. All Mimi’s curly-backed kin decided she had the right idea. They surrounded me, jumping up, jostling, and pawing, and all barking at the top of their poodle lungs. They smelled like old meat and every last one of them had yellow eyes with pupils shaped like black diamonds.

  “Oh, dear! Oh, dear!” The old lady flapped her gloved hands. “You bad, bad dogs!”

  I grabbed the heavy, furry paws leaning against my chest and shoved them down. The world had gone strangely silent around me. The old lady was working her magic, hiding me and those filthy, stinking poodles from the regular people. But Jack could see us, and Papa. And so, it turned out, could Mama. Because the next thing I knew, Mama was wading in behind me. She didn’t have a saw this time, but she was right there just the same, beating on the backs of those mangy poodles with nothing but her handbag.

  “Get back! Get back! Get off!” Mama seized the nearest dog’s collar and hauled with all the strength in her country woman’s arms. The nearest dog turned and snapped at her hems, and Mama swatted it across the drooly muzzle with her purse. Amazement and a strange sense of pride swelled in me. The dog actually looked affronted, but not as affronted as the Seelie woman.

  “You dare!” The old woman lifted her face, and showed us all how her eyes were as yellow as her dogs’. “My king is coming for you! I’ve already sent him word. He will hollow out your soul, and leave your husk to feed to my darlings.”

  “Will he?” interrupted a low voice. Papa had moved to stand beside Mama. He was sweating with the effort it took to stay upright, but his voice was steady and hard as stone. “Will he indeed?”

  The old woman cringed like she was a dog herself as the force of Papa’s presence and magic rolled over her. Clearly, he’d gotten a lot of his strength back. But not quite enough.

  “Fetch!” the woman shouted. All the dogs howled. Their red leashes lashed out like whips to wrap around Papa’s arms. He shouted again and I felt his magic, but there wasn’t any focus to it. The old woman threw back her head and howled as her dogs dragged my father down. I screamed and tried to dodge forward, but Mimi, the lead poodle, got in my way. While I gaped at her, she swelled up until she was the size of a bear and her teeth grew as long as my pointer finger. Her drool swelled up too and fell in great splashy blotches all over that marble floor.

  “Jack!” I shouted.

  “I wish you were gone!” Jack shouted back. “Wish you were all in the pound!”

  He meant it too. It was a good, hard wish, easy to grab hold of. But Mimi leapt forward, jaws open wide enough to take my head off, and all I could think about was getting out of the way. She landed and skittered on the marble, and turned, and lunged at me again. I dodged sideways, banging up against Jack.

  “Get them out of here!” I shoved him toward my parents to emphasize the point. Mama was grabbing up the leashes that tangled Papa, and together they were struggling and shouting for help that wasn’t going to come.

  “Hey, you!” I shouted to Mimi and her pack. “Come on! Come and get it!”

  Mimi barked something that might have been a command, and two of the other poodles unwound their leashes from Papa. Together, they plunged toward me.

  I ran. The magic bubble of silence and invisibility shattered and voices rolled back down like thunder. People shouted, cursed, and screamed as I ducked and shoved my way between them with those evil, diamond-eyed poodles right behind me. Jack hollered something, but I didn’t dare look back. The dogs moved like snakes and howled like banshees, and people were scrambling to get out of their way, and mine. But those dogs were small enough to dodge the crowd even faster than I could, ducking between legs and leaping over luggage carts. Even Mimi had shrunk again so she could slide through the crowd like a hot knife through butter. I couldn’t get away. Teeth caught my skirt, and I lunged forward, tearing cloth and kicking hard at the little critter that tried to take a chunk out of my ankle.

  But there was one person—a kid with a battered cap and patched dungarees—who wasn’t trying to get out of my way. This kid waved his arm at me. I tried to ignore him, but he ducked forward and grabbed me. In fact, he about yanked me off my feet. The poodles hurtled past and by the time they noticed I wasn’t up front anymore, they were slipping and skidding on the marble, trying to turn around. A police whistle cut the air, and a man in a blue uniform coat came charging up from somewhere, night stick out. The boy who’d grabbed me took off in the opposite direction and I ran with him toward the train platforms.

  Out of the way! I tried to form the thought into a wish and drive it in front of us. I charged under the archway that separated the great hall from the train platforms. Out of the way! The crowd opened out a little, which was the idea, but it turned out not to be a very good one, because it meant the dogs were able to crowd closer to each other, and us.

  “Climb!” the boy hollered. He jumped out of my field of vision. I stared all around me like a fool until I saw him clinging to one of the iron pillars that held up the roof.

  “Climb, you idiot!” The boy caught hold of my wrist and yanked me toward him. I grabbed the pillar more in self-defense than because I knew what I was doing.

  I climbed. We didn’t have a lot of trees in Kansas, but I’d shinnied up plenty of barn poles. The iron pillar with its big rivets was practically a ladder by comparison. Fast as I was, though, the boy ahead of me was loads faster. He swarmed up the pillar, all the way to the girders that crisscrossed the space under the shed’s glass-paneled roof.

  Below us, Mimi barked and whined in frustration. I scrabbled for my magic. The iron that was keeping her back from us was blocking my powers. I could barely even feel the dogs. I had to get them to come closer. All of them.

  I made myself focus on Mimi. She was hungry, starved. If she got me she’d be fed, she’d be full, and she’d be a good dog. “Get in here, girl. You can risk it. You’re strong. Big dog, good dog, good girl, Mimi. I’m right here. Everything you want is right here.”

  It was enough. Mimi pulled back and bayed. Like, well, like magic, the others were there, the big ones and the little ones. Their fangs flashed as they barked and growled. They stood on their hind legs, clawing at the beam, even though they were yipping in pain at the same time. I almost felt sorry for them. Almost.

  Gone. I shaped the wish with every ounce of mad in me and shoved it straight down. Gone to the pound. Gone. Gone!

  The dogs flickered. They howled, and were back solid and strong. The boy lashed out with some cusses I bet Jack didn’t even know and wound his long fingers around my arm. I felt his magic winding around mine too. I didn’t stop to wonder about it. I just reached out and grabbed hold of it. I felt my papa fighting away in the distance, and I took that too. I felt Jack wishing he knew where I was. I felt the driving winds of emotion in the crowd of travelers and railroad crew, and the sharp hunger and greed of the fairy hounds, and I hauled on as much of it as I could, despite the iron, and despite my fear. And I wished again.

  The dogs flickered, and they faded and they were gone.

  My arms and my mind both went limp. I would have fallen if the boy hadn’t caught me. I stared at him, trying to remember what I was doing up here and what he was doing with me.

  He had a sharp face—sharp nose, sharp chin, sharp grin, and pointy little ears. His body managed to be snaky and plump at the same time, but his arms and legs were too long and skinny for the rest of him. His hair was long, dark, and greasy. So were his fingers, where they curled all the way around my upper arm. So were his toes, which I could see because he
wasn’t wearing any shoes on his filthy feet. His dungarees were made of dozens of patches of colored cloth. Instead of a belt, he had a rope tied around his waist. A burlap bag dangled at his hip.

  He giggled. “Engine, engine number nine …”

  Fear started up again. This boy wasn’t just magic, he was completely off his rocker.

  “Going down Chicago line …” The boy laughed as he pulled that bag off his rope belt.

  I tried to scoot away from him on that girder. My tongue had gone all thick in my mouth, but I got it moving anyway. “Who’re you?”

  The boy shoved his battered cap back from his sloping brow and looked up at me with a pair of glittery black eyes. “And if the train should jump the track, Callie LeRoux, get in the sack.”

  And I did.

  8

  Where’d You Come From?

  It may be that sometime I’ll have a more uncomfortable ride, but it ain’t happened yet. My knees were jammed up against my mouth and my arms were all tangled. No matter how I pushed and twisted against the prickly burlap, I couldn’t get a decent grip on anything. There was some hard stuff in there too. It banged against me and dug its corners into my sides. It was pitch-black as well, and getting hotter and stuffier by the second.

  I made myself take a deep, dusty, burlapy breath. And another. I wasn’t hurting all that much, I told myself. I had all my limbs and the other important bits as near as I could tell. I had my magic. I could feel it simmering under my anger. If somebody thought they could steal me like a broody hen out of the coop, they had another think coming.

  I reached out with my magic. The first thing I understood was that there was a whole lot in here besides me. Anything you might pick out of a city’s leavings, in fact: cooing pigeons, broken axles, and gears. There was something that could have been a shovel, along with old bottles and rags. Something squeaked and I decided I didn’t need to do a whole inventory just now. I could look past it all to where the shifting softness of the magic waited underneath all us flotsam. Cramped, uncomfortable, and mad as a hornet I might be, but I could still run my magic along that layer, and find the one place that was firm and had edges. I could shape the key of my power to turn, and to open it up.

  I didn’t forget what happened last time, but I did tell myself there couldn’t possibly be a repeat. That had been in Seelie territory. This boy wasn’t a Seelie. His eyes had been beady and nasty, but they were human, or nearly so. My bet was he was another one like Edison and Stripling, the ones Papa called the Undone. That he might be working for one of the courts like Stripling had been was something I’d deal with when I had to. I grit teeth and nerve, and reached my little finger through my tiny new gate.

  It grabbed hold of me instantly, like tar, like teeth.

  Here!

  Panic bubbled up, seeping around thought and sense. I snatched my finger back, tearing my nail in a bright flash of pain. My magic worked faster than I could think and slapped that little gate shut, and I huddled in my burlap jail, trying to catch my breath.

  I should have known. I should have known from the first. But there was so much going on I hadn’t wanted to put it together. Who would know when I was working my gates but the one who’d taught me how to open them? The one who was still lurking in the back of my nightmares. Uncle Shake was watching me. He was waiting for me to use the one power that made me stronger than the ordinary Unseelies.

  I clutched my hand to my chest, pulled my elbows and knees in close, and tried to think. And tried again. It wasn’t fair. The bad just kept coming. It came from every direction and it didn’t stop, and now it was piling on top of itself. The Seelie king wanted me alive and my uncle wanted me dead and this kid and his sack wanted … I didn’t even know what.

  “Gonna have to get in line, whatever it is,” I muttered, and I wasn’t sure I was laughing or crying.

  Callie? The voice filtered through my mind, soft and scratchy, like a radio that wasn’t quite tuned to the right station. Another wave of panic rolled over me before I realized this time it wasn’t my uncle’s voice.

  Papa? I thought back.

  Where are you, Callie? I can barely hear you.

  I stirred against the burlap and the bumping trash, trying to sit up straighter even though I knew it was foolish. Are you okay?

  Yes, and your mother.

  Relief turned my insides wobbly. What about Jack?

  He said he knew where he could get us a car. I bet he did, and I hoped my parents were both sensible enough not to ask for the details. The list of skills Jack had picked up on the road included hot-wiring engines. I also hoped Papa couldn’t hear my thoughts well enough to hear that part.

  If Papa did hear, he didn’t care. Where are you, Callie?

  It took a minute before I could think of any kind of way to answer him, and even then it wasn’t much. I’m caught. There was this boy—he’s magic, or partway magic, and he’s got me in some kind of bag.

  There were no words in my head for a long moment. Instead, there was a wash of anger, bright and dangerous. Can you open a gate?

  I tried. Papa, Uncle Shake’s on the other side. He’s …

  A beam of daylight slammed against my eyes and I screwed them shut with a shout.

  “Keep quiet down there, youz!” came the boy’s voice from overhead.

  And just like that, Papa was gone. I was alone in the dark with the rest of the trash. I curled in tighter and clutched my hurt hand to my belly. All I could think was that boy, whoever he was, better hope he could run good and fast when I got out of here.

  I don’t know how long that rough, itchy, angry ride lasted, but eventually the bumping stopped, and something hard hit me in the bottom and back, like I’d been dropped. I cussed and after a bit managed to get up onto my knees. I heard traffic noises, roaring close by. But they echoed strangely, almost like we were back indoors. The sack around me lurched and I toppled onto my side and squeaked. I couldn’t help it. The bag and I were being dragged along. I came up against something pointed and cussed again. I was going to be a mass of bruises when I got out of here. Something else I’d be taking up with this beady-eyed boy. I could hear voices out there somewhere. The noise of my own angry breathing was loud in my ears and it muffled their words. I held my breath and swallowed, and did it again, until I quieted down, and strained my ears to listen.

  “Well, well. Dan Ryan,” said a voice that rushed and creaked at the same time. “You actually came back. Will wonders never cease?”

  I shuffled forward on my knees, bringing my face up to the closest fold in the burlap I could find. I knotted my fingers in the material to try to find someplace I could poke or tear to make a hole to see.

  “Course I came back, Cedar,” sneered the beady-eyed boy, who I guessed was Dan Ryan. “What’d you think I was gonna do? Skip town?”

  “How should I know?” That Cedar was out of my sight, but they had rushing, whispery voices and their s’s were twice as long as normal. “You wass gone long enough.”

  “Never mind that.” Whoever was talking now sounded like he had a mouthful of broken china. “What happened? Did you see her?”

  “See her? Claremont, I did better ’n see.”

  I tried to brace myself. It was no good. The burlap wrappings flew apart. Dim light and exhaust-filled wind engulfed me, and I tumbled tail over teacup onto cement. My head spun hard, and when I could see again, I wanted to crawl back into that pitch-black sack.

  The people that surrounded me were all magic; they had to be. But they couldn’t be fairies. Fairies didn’t ever show you their real faces unless they had to, and any face they did show you was as beautiful as it was fake. The half-dozen faces that looked down on me as I blinked and tried to push myself to my knees were real. I could see their eyes clearly, and no matter what the shape of the face, no matter what their bodies seemed to be made of, those eyes were human shapes and shades. But the people were all … awkward. Not ugly, exactly, but they all looked like they’d been meant to
be something else. One person looked like someone had tried to build a kid out of broken bottle shards. That one might have been Claremont. Another was coal black and all hard angles like the girder I’d climbed with Dan Ryan to get away from the Seelie dogs. Another was thin and tall and branching, like a spindly city tree that had been wrapped in checked gingham. It made me think of the prison tree back in Los Angeles and my skin curdled tight around my bones.

  Edison had said he’d put the word out. He’d said the others of his kind would hear it, and if these were his kind and they had heard, they’d heard I’d helped kill one of their own.

  Goose bumps stood up good and strong all up and down my arms. I got to my feet, because I couldn’t think of anything else to do. I couldn’t make any more sense out of the place we were than I could out of the people surrounding me. It was a cavern of cement—cement ceiling, cement pillars with a curving cement wall close at their backs. There was a rumbling overhead that made me think we must be under a bridge, but there was a road alongside as well. Trucks rattled past in both directions, belching out smoke and the daylight that looked too far away, so I guessed it was some kind of tunnel. An idea about running for the street to flag down a truck came and went. They were moving too fast, and I had no idea what kind of glamour I was under here. So instead, I faced my kidnappers. Being stared at by that whole crowd of half-finished magic folks was scaring the daylights out of me, but I didn’t intend to let them see that. Especially because while I turned around to get a good look at them, they were shrinking back, clanking, whispering, and whistling in surprise.

  The boy who brought me here, Dan Ryan, did not shrink back with the rest of his pals. He grinned all over his too-long face and his little piggy eyes glittered. I leveled my best glower at him. You and me ain’t done, I tried to tell him. If he understood, or cared, he gave no sign. That was okay. He’d learn to care later.

  “I’m gonna make a guess you know who I am,” I said, planting my hands on my hips. “Now, who in the heck are you all?”