Bad Luck Girl

by Sarah Zettel

  “How about the Halfers … the Undone?” I asked the question fast, before I could talk myself out of it. “Did he ever say anything about them?”

  “I never heard about them before now. Callie,” said Mama, suddenly stern, “what are you thinking?”

  “I just wondered.” I was lying and doing it badly, of course. “If he’d said anything, because, well, your baby … me … I’m …”

  She took my hand and squeezed, as if contact could force belief into me. “He didn’t know about you, Callie. When he left, neither one of us knew I was pregnant. And you are nothing like those creatures.”

  “How do you know? You don’t know what they are.” You don’t know what I am either. I bit my lip again. Stop this, I told myself. Things were getting better. I had to shut up now, before they jumped the track again.

  “I know they tried to kill you and then they snatched you away from us,” said Mama quietly. “Even without that, your father says they are dangerous.”

  “But you don’t know why!”

  “It doesn’t matter why, Callie.” Mama pushed herself to her feet. “I’ve seen what they are capable of with my own eyes and that’s more than enough.”

  Her voice had turned to iron, and there was more iron behind her eyes. She really didn’t care why Touhy or Dan Ryan or even Stripling had done what they’d done. She didn’t care whether the Seelies or the Unseelies were behind it. She just saw yet more danger to me and Papa. If I kept on trying to push her into seeing what was on the far side of that danger, we’d end up shouting at each other, again. I didn’t think I could stand that.

  So I closed my mouth and turned away. My eyes were stinging. But I couldn’t tell if the tears were building up because Mama wouldn’t understand what I was feeling and thinking, or because I couldn’t seem to manage to just tell her about it.

  “Callie.” Mama moved up behind me and laid her hands on my shoulders. “It’s all right, Callie,” she said. “There have been so many mistakes … we’ll just have to do our best. But promise me you’ll try, all right?”

  “I promise,” I said, and I felt that promise take hold inside me. With a start, I realized I was glad for it. Maybe it would get me to do what I couldn’t seem to do on my own. Maybe it would find me the words to tell her what I was thinking.

  Mama held out her hand, and this time I took it and let her pull me close so we could put our arms around each other and just hold on for a time.

  “So.” Mama finally let go and smoothed her dress down. “What shall we do first? Wash the windows? The whole room needs a good dusting and …” She stopped and watched me shifting my weight from side to side. “You want to go out too.”

  I nodded. Mama gave a wan smile. “And if I asked you to stay? If I said it was dangerous?”

  I shifted my weight and looked out the filthy window. Mama sighed and smoothed her hair back again. “And that’s the way it is. Here.” She held out a scrap of paper. “I had Mrs. Burnstein write down the telephone number. Will you at least call if … if you need anything?”

  I took the paper and tucked it into my pocket. I was going to need to start carrying a purse. I had wishes and presents and now my mother holding out an attempt to touch me without holding on too tight, and I didn’t know where to keep it all.

  She tried to smile. “Go. I’ve got plenty to do. There’s no reason this can’t be a decent place.” By decent, of course, she meant clean.

  I started for the door. I shouldn’t have looked back, but I did, and saw her sit down heavily. Thin, alone, and bone tired, my mama stared out the grimy window, and I felt her wondering if any of us was coming back.

  14

  I’m Reckless

  Thing was, as soon as I got onto the street, I had a problem. I didn’t know which way I should be headed. Jack was long gone, and I didn’t know the first thing about the city around me. I tried to put on a face like I knew what I was doing, so the skinny kids and hard-eyed old ladies wouldn’t stare too much, and started walking.

  I might have been on my own, but there wasn’t any reason I actually had to be lost. If I was stuck with being an Unseelie princess, I might as well get some use out of it. I put my hand into my skirt pocket and touched Jack’s notebook. Then I eased open my magic.

  Jack Holland, I thought. Jack, where are you?

  Probably, I should have just waited for Jack to come home. But I was worried. It just wasn’t like him to do a little stammering and take off. He should have spun some kind of story, no matter what he was up to. And sometimes he got ideas stuck in his head that weren’t the best kind, especially when he was mad. He could get really stubborn about them too. Besides, I needed to talk to him without any chance of my parents overhearing. I still had this idea I’d come up with out on the porch while we’d been talking to Touhy, and I was itching to hear how it sounded out loud. It made sense, I was sure it did, but I could already tell Papa wasn’t going to like it. To have any chance of getting my parents to give it a try, I needed Jack to back me up.

  Jack, where are you?

  And just like that, I knew. I couldn’t see him, exactly, but I knew where he was all the same. More than that, I knew the way he’d walked to get there. I felt it in my bones, and there was nothing in this whole city that could shake it out of me.

  I smiled to myself, and started walking.

  I probably shouldn’t have been so confident about slinging my magic around after just one real lesson. It sure did feel strange at first, to be so certain about where to go without knowing the first thing about the streets or the buildings. But after a couple blocks, I’d settled into it. With my magic open, I could feel more of the currents around me than ever. This time it wasn’t just the wishes and feelings of the people I was aware of, it was the city itself. I could feel the boundaries Papa had talked about, the places where territory and feeling began and ended. There were buried histories here, layers of life and wish and creation piled up like Mama’s griddle cakes. They pushed and pulled on the people who moved through them. The city was living jewels and pretty puzzle pieces under my fingers. It was dazzling and chaotic, but it all fit together, and I found myself scrabbling at the pattern, trying to understand it. Was this what the full-blood fairies felt like when they came to the human world? If it was, I could understand how they might become fascinated by it. Even when I passed the newsstand and saw the papers with headlines screaming MGM OFFERS REWARD FOR INFORMATION ABOUT VANISHED STAR, it was just one more piece of the shimmering whole.

  I was grinning and I knew it. I had Jack’s present in one pocket and my papa’s wish in the other, and my magic in my bones. I knew just where I should be going. I could feel the tug of the right path under the soles of my shoes. I could take on the world.

  It was the cool of the metal door handle under my hand that brought me to myself, hard and sudden. I knuckled my eyes and stared around me.

  Sooty brick buildings crowded on either side, and sooty striped awnings stuck out over doorways that didn’t need them because the sun wasn’t ever making it down here anyhow. The store in front of me had its shade pulled down and LESTER & SHALE painted on the glass in neat black lettering. The green door had been freshly painted and had another shade pulled down behind its double row of square glass panes and the CLOSED sign hung out.

  I’d walked right down this alley off the main street, and I had my hand on the curving brass handle. I heard all the city noises, the voices, and the traffic, and I smelled all the smog and the trash. It was hot. I was perspiring. And I wasn’t anywhere near Jack.

  I’d done it again. I’d trusted my magic, and it had taken me right out of my good sense. Somebody’d reeled me in to this place like a fish on a line, and I hadn’t even noticed. I didn’t even know what part of the city I was in.

  Then I saw how one of the door’s glass panes had been smashed out, right above its handle. I lifted my hand back slow. The door was open, just a crack. You wouldn’t even notice unless you were standing right up cl
ose, like I was now.

  “You came,” said a voice from inside. “By my blood and bones, you came.”

  The door swung open and I jumped back at the same time. The man on the other side stood swaying on his feet. He was a fairy, and he was trying to pull an illusion over himself, but he wasn’t doing a very good job of it. He kept flickering. In one eyeblink, he was a bald, wrinkled little white man in a cardigan sweater. In the next, he was a black man in a torn-up suit, hunched over and breathing hard. One hand was shoved in his coat pocket, and the other clutched a black cane with a handle made out of the biggest diamond ever seen.

  I recognized that cane. “I know you.”

  He didn’t answer right away, and I felt something I never had from a Seelie or an Unseelie either: shame. It was like I’d caught him with his shirttail hanging out. He bent low, and lower, and I realized he was trying to bow.

  “We met, once,” he said. “At the Kansas City gate. I am major domo to the Midnight Throne, and their Unseelie majesties.” He tried to bow again, but he shivered so much doing it, I was afraid he was going to fall flat on his face. He was wearing a gray shirt and a dark suit with a bright red vest. The front of the vest was splotchy. Something wet had been splashed all over it.

  “Will Your Highness be pleased to step inside?” He turned toward the shop. He didn’t pull his one hand out of his pocket. The one that held the cane was covered in a white glove, and it was damp-stained like his vest.

  The major domo noticed how I hadn’t moved. The news he worked for my grandparents did not give me any reason at all to walk anywhere with him, let alone into someplace where the door could be locked behind me. Truth was, I was a lot closer to running away than following. He probably figured that out because he started shaking all over so bad that if he’d been human, I would have thought he had the ague.

  “I swear by my true name you will come to no harm from me or my errand,” he said, his words low and urgent. Perspiration dripped down his shining cheeks. “I am specifically forbidden by my nature and my office from working harm against you. Please, Your Highness.”

  He was telling the truth. I could feel it, like I could feel the effort it was taking for him to stand there. But I didn’t trust any of it. After all the mistakes I’d made and all the trouble I’d met, how could I? But I didn’t run. I kind of sidled up to that doorway, one hand in my own pocket so I could hang on to Papa’s glass marble of a wish. I put my other palm up to the threshold, and waited to feel the twisty lock-and-key sensation that meant this was a door out of the world. But there was nothing. This was a regular human shop on a regular human street.

  The major domo’s right knee buckled and he caught himself. I felt the shame curling out of him again, cold and sad. If this was a trap, somebody was pouring it on pretty thick. But then, that was what they did, wasn’t it?

  “You go first,” I said.

  Major inclined his head, and turned, slowly. His cane thumped heavily on the floorboards as he moved. He was hurting. I wanted to feel sorry for him, but I didn’t dare. But I did take a deep breath and step over the threshold to walk inside.

  Lester & Shale was a bookstore. The smells of paper, ink, and dust surrounded me. High shelves were crammed solidly together and towered over the dim, narrow aisles like the buildings towered over the alley outside. Every shelf was stuffed full of books: all kinds of books, from battered paperbacks to faded magazines with torn and curling covers to antique leather-bound volumes—some as narrow as my pinky finger and some as broad as my whole hand. Maybe half of them were actually in English. Books had been laid flat to fill the spaces above the books that stood upright. More books were piled on the floor between the shelves and yet more books spilled out of cardboard boxes and wooden crates in the corners. At the same time, something important was missing.

  “There ain’t no gate here.”

  “Not here, no. But … places such as this, so full of heart and imaginings … They welcome our kind and can be made useful.” Major thumped and shuffled to the tiny desk at the end of the aisle. Even this was piled high with books and magazines. “You will forgive me, Your Highness.” He groped for the leather-backed chair and sat down, laying his cane on the desk. “I’m afraid … it has been a long journey.”

  I looked around me. My ability to hold on to my suspicions was wearing thin, but I knotted it tight and held on.

  “So, where’s the owner?”

  Major’s mouth twitched. He might have been trying to smile. “Taking his lunchtime walk in the park,” he said. “I expect it will be a little longer today than usual.” He must have seen the look on my face because he added, “But not by much.”

  He was still telling the truth, which was heading into miracle territory. I’d probably never had such a straightforward conversation with a fairy man, and I was counting my father in that. “And you’ve got a message or something from my grandparents, is that it?” I prompted.

  “Yes.” Major groped one-handed among the papers on the desk, and winced. He tried to draw back, but I caught his hand. I wanted to see what he had hold of. But his hand was empty. What made him wince was pain.

  His glove had been slashed open, and that wasn’t all. A gash stretched across his smooth, brown palm. The liquid that filled the cut wasn’t red, like blood. It was clear, like water but with a weak silver shine to it, and I could see down to the bird-thin bones underneath. The light of the fairy lands running out of his veins, trickling onto the papers and the scarred wooden desk.

  He snatched his hand away and shoved it under the desk. “My apologies,” he said.

  “That’s okay,” I whispered as I let him go. I blinked at his damp vest, and his damp coat. I swallowed hard and made up my mind. I didn’t trust him and I wasn’t going to trust him. But I wasn’t going to leave him like this either, and if that made me a chump, well, that was the way it was going to be.

  I took a deep breath and opened my magic. There was nobody near but me and him, but there were all those books, all that work and love and feeling bound into paper and marked out by ink. Tapping into a static book wasn’t as easy as tapping into living music, but there were a whole lot of them to work with and that kind of made up for it.

  Be whole, I wished toward Major. Be well.

  Major shuddered, he hunched up even tighter and gasped, and for a second I was scared I’d hurt him worse and tried to shut the wish down. But then his breathing eased, and he lifted his right hand. The glove was still shredded, but the skin underneath was whole, except for one thin white scar. When he lifted his eyes to me, they were bright with moonlight and starlight like they should have been.

  “Thank you, Your Highness.” He drew himself up tall and straight, and when he bowed this time it was a crisp, sharp gesture.

  “You’re welcome.” I nodded back, already hoping this had not been another mistake. “Now, what’s this message?”

  Major gave another bow, and lifted a folded paper out from among the piles of magazines, bills, and receipts. It was thick, cream-colored parchment tied up with a red ribbon. He held it out toward me. This time I backed up.

  “Oh, no. I am not touching that.” Last time I had fairy paper in my hands, it did not go so good for me. “Every time my grandparents get near me, they try to haul me in.”

  Major sighed. “Their Majesties were afraid you would say something of the kind. They apologize, Your Highness, for past indiscretions. Truly. If you would just …”

  “I said no! You want me to know what it says, you read it out.” I folded my arms and waited.

  Major sighed, but bowed, again. He broke the seal and unfolded the letter. I thought he would start reading, but he didn’t. He turned the paper toward me.

  The other side of the paper was covered in a layer of shining gold. The dim shop light touched it, striking sparks, and bringing up reflections. Being how they were fairy creations, those reflections moved.

  There’s a stone wall at the edge of the Unseelie country, wrapped
round with emerald-and-ruby vines. The stones are living goblins, and the vines are their arms, all linked together so they can keep out anybody who ain’t been invited. That wall shimmered in the golden reflection, except the stones had been split open and the clear silver blood flowed out of them. Other stones wrapped their vine arms around their colleagues, and tossed them away, splitting them open. Little white-winged creatures crowded around the broken stones, pure and perfect and shining, just like the pretty, little-girl fairies you see in a picture book, and they were drinking up the silver blood where it poured out. Other shining beings rode past on white horses, their robes trailing into that silver blood, and their banners flapping in the breeze. Every one of them wore a golden mask beneath a golden helmet.

  They will be here soon, whispered my grandmother’s voice from the page. The army is retreating to the emerald fields. Please, please, you must come. If you do not close the gates, we cannot hold.

  I reached out toward that page, as if I could touch my grandmother’s hand. At the last second, I remembered, and snatched it back. Major winced as if I’d struck him.

  “How?” I croaked. “How are they getting in so easy?”

  “We were all betrayed,” he told me. “You most of all.”

  “Mightily,” added a man’s cheerful voice back in the aisles. “And to top it off, Bad Luck Girl, you’re both too late.”

  15

  And the Boys Will Drag You Down

  There were three of them, one to block each aisle of the shop. They were all white men with white hair and white mustaches, dressed up swell in new suits and two-toned shoes with white hats on their heads and watch chains on their white vests. They could have been bankers, or gangsters. The one who spoke out came up the center aisle, and he stood close enough to me that I could see a little charm in the shape of a golden mask dangling from that chain.