Bad Luck Girl

by Sarah Zettel

  “Engine, engine number nine!” I shouted, pulling together all the magic I could muster. “Going down Chicago line! If that train should jump the track, crows, crows, get in the sack!”

  It wasn’t easy. This wasn’t my magic, and this sack didn’t like me. I didn’t have names to work with, but the nearest crow man vanished into Dan Ryan’s bag. And I turned and I shouted, and the next one tumbled in, and the next.

  “Duck!” hollered Jack, and I did. Something whistled over my head, and went thwang! A crow man hit the ground beside me. And I saw Jack standing over him, a metal bar with a curved end clutched in both hands.

  “Crowbar?” I gasped. Jack grinned and turned, and waded back into the fight.

  More Halfers grabbed up the scrap iron. Glowing Man was with them, shouting more orders. The Halfers spread out in a kind of formation, ringing around the crow men, driving them down into the hollow of the amphitheater. But their enemies were still birds, and they could still fly. Black-robed men jumped into the air, changing into birds again, with talons that could gouge and wicked sharp beaks that could stab. They wheeled out of the way of the bird shot and the arrows and came down screaming on the Halfer archers, tearing them from the trees and carrying them away. I felt one of my pages tear, and then another, and then a whole book’s worth. More crows swallowed my words by the handful. Tears stood out in my eyes to feel them die, but I couldn’t stop. I shook the sack and hollered the incantation and shoved the crow men in with all my might and magic. But the crows just kept on coming. I saw a crow man grab up Cedar and shove it under his robe. Ashland staggered on the roof where she stood and a crow dove low, aiming straight for her. A gun banged and the crow dodged, and it dove down again.

  I opened the bag, and my mouth. Then I saw another crow shoot up into the air. This one had a squirming wad of paper in its claws.

  “Touhy!” I shrieked, and I heard her scream in answer. But only just for a second. Then she was beyond hearing at all.

  Jack grabbed my hand. I’d lost track of him, but he hadn’t left my side. He’d gone dead white, but I knew that crazy look in his eye. He didn’t like Touhy, but he wasn’t going to let her be lost to these monsters, and he had a plan.

  “Callie,” he said. “I wish you could fly.”

  We stared at each other for a single heartbeat. Then I turned and took off at a run, my arms spread out to catch the wind and the force of Jack’s wish behind me. I jumped.

  And I flew.

  The air hit hard, and the cold followed fast as I shoved head and shoulders through a wind that felt as near solid as the Halferville barrier had. But the wind was worse because it didn’t stay still. It twisted around me, tangling me like ropes. It pushed me up one second, and dropped out from under me the next. The world was nothing but a colored blur on the other side of my tears. If there hadn’t been so many crows, and they hadn’t been so black against the blue sky, I never would have been able to follow them because I wouldn’t have been able to see them.

  But they were and I could. They made a black cloud straight in front of me, and I plowed through the wind after them. I tried not to think about what I’d do if any one of them turned around and came at me. It was taking every ounce of concentration and magic I had to keep after them. I had nothing left to fight with.

  Slowly, slowly I started gaining on them. Smokestacks flashed by, and church steeples. I swear a carved angel turned its head when I skirted too close to its marble wing. The crows dropped lower and I pulled my arms in, kicking at the air like I was diving down to the bottom of a swimming pool. The wind was worse down here, funneled through solid walls of brick buildings, becoming a rushing river, and I was trying to force my way against the current.

  The crows banked, and something brushed against my arm. Pain burst through me and I saw stars. When they cleared, I saw a sprawling hulk of a burnt-out building rushing to meet me. The crows flew into it like flakes of ash settling over a dead fire. I felt a familiar sensation blossoming inside me. I was near a gate. The crows were flying in and through. I stretched my magic out in front of me. I wobbled and the world tilted, but I had the edges, I had them …

  Arms wrapped around my waist and the next thing I knew, I plowed into the ground, toppling head over heels, fighting with someone big and heavy who was cussing and calling my name. But I finally got free and scrambled to my feet.

  And I looked down at Papa, groaning and clutching his shoulder as he lay on the sooty steps of that burnt-out mansion.

  22

  Gonna Get Real Tough

  “What are you doing?” I struggled to my feet.

  “I could ask you the same thing.” Papa wheezed and pushed himself up on his knees.

  Crows screamed somewhere up ahead. So did Touhy. Touhy.

  I hurt and I couldn’t catch my breath, but I staggered up the steps toward that ruined house anyway.

  “Callie!” Papa shouted. I ignored him. If he wanted me, he could follow me.

  He did, faster than I would have figured. He grabbed me by the arm and spun me around. “Callie, you stop this, now.”

  “No!” I shook him off. “They got Touhy! And Dan Ryan and Ashland! I can’t leave them!”

  “Daughter, listen to me carefully.” Papa had lost his hat somewhere, and his fairy eyes shone bright, even in that broad city daylight. “You are coming with me. I will spellbind your arms and legs so you can’t move yourself without permission for a month if I have to. But you will come. Do I make myself clear?”

  He did. His words and his will dropped like stones against my thoughts. Maybe if I’d been whole and strong, I could have shifted him, but I wasn’t. I was banged up, exhausted, and out of breath, and I was pretty sure I was bleeding on my arms and forehead. And Touhy and Dan Ryan and who-knew-how-many others were gone. I could feel it. I stared at the burnt-out building they’d vanished into. It had been a mansion once, but now all its arched windows were broken and blind. Ash and soot turned its sides black, and the roof was nothing but a mass of broken timber. The gate was in there. I could feel that too, and the crows had taken their prisoners to the other side of it.

  It hadn’t been enough. We’d fought back with everything we had, and they’d still gotten snatched right out of their home. And I didn’t even know who had them.

  “I’ll find you,” I said to whatever waited on the other side of those ruined doors. “I will.”

  “No.” My father cut me off solid and sharp just as I finished the word.

  “Whaddaya mean no?”

  “I mean no.” He raised his face, checking the wind and the light. I could feel his every nerve standing on end. “As soon as we’ve gotten Jack and your mother, we’re leaving. The Midnight Throne has fallen. I felt it,” he added in a whisper, his shining eyes drifting toward that old, ruined mansion. “I felt my parents’ will swallowed whole.”

  I closed my mouth. His fear was cold and it woke up all the fear I hadn’t had time to feel yet. I wanted to run, just like he said. Run fast and run far.

  But I couldn’t. “They took friends of mine, Papa. I can’t leave them.”

  “You have to. Callie, don’t you understand?” He jabbed his finger toward the broken house. “You’ve been seen. They know you’re here now. They know we’re all here. We have to run before they come back!”

  But run where? Where was left?

  “I know you feel for these Undone …,” Papa was saying.

  “Halfers. They call themselves Halfers.” My thoughts were stumbling in all kinds of directions. I thought about my pages and my words. I didn’t even have names for any of them. I didn’t know for sure what they even were, but they’d given themselves up to help me, and the Halferville. And it still hadn’t been enough.

  Papa waved his hand hard, the gesture showing how little this mattered to him. “Whatever they are called, they have nothing to do with us. We have to get your mother and Jack and get out of this city. When we’ve found a safe place …”

  I shook my
head. New understanding was rising up in me, slow and quiet, like the dust rising in the distance. “There is nowhere safe,” I said. “You know that, Papa. Same as me.” It was here. I saw it. It spread across the horizon of my thoughts and I was never getting away from it, not ever. “We both tried running away. You abdicated. I lit out. It didn’t work and it isn’t ever going to work. We have to turn around, Papa. We have to face this. All of it.”

  Papa lifted his hand like he was going to tug on his hat brim, but when it wasn’t there, he smoothed down his close-cropped hair. I’d stunned him, but not for long. “How do you suggest we do that?” The contempt in his words smacked hard against my new understanding. “We’re alone here.”

  “We’ve got each other. And Jack, and Mama. That’s a lot right there.”

  “Not anything like enough to defeat the Seelie army if their king takes it into his head to send them through that gate in the next thirty seconds.” Papa grabbed my hand again. “We are getting out of here. Now.”

  For a second I thought he was going to magic me, but he just pulled me down the old, uneven steps behind him.

  “Wait, Papa. Stop.”

  “Wait?” he rounded on me. “Wait for what? For the corbies to come back and find us? Or perhaps we should wait for these Undone you’ve taken such a shine to?”

  Which was just about enough of that. “Stop it!” I yanked my hand out of his. We both stood there in the middle of the sidewalk, with the traffic rattling past and the clouds scuttling overhead. Just an ordinary city street on an ordinary city day. But there was nothing ordinary about what I had to say next. I walked up to my father, and looked him right in the face. I could feel the Unseelie light shining behind my own eyes and I wanted to make sure he saw it there. “You’re as bad as the rest. You look at them and see something different and ugly, something that doesn’t fit. Well, I don’t fit either, Papa. Maybe, just maybe it’s because I don’t fit that I’ve got this power the courts are falling over themselves to get hold of. Just imagine what kind of power the rest of the Halfers have!”

  “What power could they possibly have? They’ve got no place, no country, no true shape. They barely even have names!”

  “They work together,” I shot back. “They care about each other.”

  “And you think you can make use of this happy Undone family?”

  “I don’t want to use them. But I might be able to talk them into helping us. Or Jack might. Jack’s good at that.” I paused. “I thought we could make a deal with the courts. Get them all to sit down like the League of Nations. I’d promise them I’d leave the gates how they are as long as they promised to leave us alone. But that’s never going to happen. Even if they did let us go, they’ll keep making things miserable for … too many other people. We have to fight back, Papa.”

  “Fight?” he breathed. “You actually believe you and a gaggle of scraps and bones held together with a little spilled blood and careless wishing can take on the high courts and all their power?”

  I didn’t answer. What could I say? He was right. I was standing a block away from the gate to the fairy country, and I was talking about nothing less than a full-blown, flat-out war with a whole world’s worth of power that I barely understood. Papa stared down at me for one second longer. Then he turned on his heel and marched away, so I had to run to catch up.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Back to your mother. Maybe you won’t be so anxious to charge into a new fire fight when you see the state you’ve already thrown her into.”

  That shut me up, and fast. Papa didn’t bother to squelch any of the grim satisfaction that oozed out of him as he led me around the corner.

  There was a cab parked next to the curb, and the driver leaned on the fender, whistling. I could tell by the staticky feel around him, he’d been magicked, and I tried not to wince. As Papa strode forward, the cabbie jumped up and opened the car door. Papa stood back, making sure I climbed in first.

  Mama was in the backseat. She sat bolt upright, both hands wrapped tight around her clutch purse. She didn’t look at me as I scooted across the seat. It took a second for my eyes to adjust to the dim inside of the cab, but when I did, I saw the tears streaming silently down her cheeks. Papa climbed in behind us, and signaled to the cabbie to drive. The man pulled away from the curb, without once looking back to ask us where to go.

  “Mama,” I croaked. “I’m s—”

  She shook her head, but she didn’t turn her eyes toward me. “Anything else, Callie.” A tear dripped off her chin, and another followed it. “I could have stood anything else. But you vanished. No one could find you. Not your father. Not Jack. You. Just. Vanished.”

  “It won’t happen again. I pr—”

  “Don’t,” she said heavily. “Not another magic promise. No more, Callie. I’m done with it.”

  I wanted to tell her it wasn’t my fault. I wanted to tell her she wasn’t being fair. I wanted to yell something really, truly awful, so she would have to look at me. I wanted to swear to her with all the magic in me that I’d never make another mistake this bad. I’d never leave her alone again. I wanted to find the one word, any word, that would make it all right, that would finally end this mess between us so she would wrap her arms around me again, and she’d just be Mama and I’d just be Callie and none of the rest of it—not the magic, not the craziness, none of it—would ever have happened.

  But that word didn’t exist. Perhaps it would one day, but right now all I had was the truth. “I’m finished running,” I said. “I thought I could get clear … that I could get you clear of it. But I was wrong. The only way we’re ever going to get clear is to fight.”

  She still didn’t look at me. Not for a long time. Then she took in a deep breath and let it all out. And she did look at me. Then she looked at Papa.

  “Daniel?” she said.

  “No, Margaret,” he said back.

  “But she’s right, Daniel,” said Mama. “They won’t stop. Ever. It’s only a matter of time before they kill us, or worse.” And when Mama said worse, she knew what she was talking about. Papa knew it too. I put my hand over hers. She grabbed my fingers and held on tight.

  Papa turned his face away and stared out the window for a long time. I could feel his magic prowling through the confined space of the cab. I could feel him hating the metal and the confusion that surrounded him and wishing for a way out.

  “I’ve got a plan,” I told him, told them both.

  “And why do I suspect it involves the … Halfers?” said Papa.

  “Because they’re the only help we’ve got.”

  He was quiet for a long time after that. When he spoke again, his words were slow and very tired.

  “Callie, if I asked you, as your father, to come away now for your mother’s sake …” He looked over my head to Mama. “Would you?”

  I squeezed Mama’s hand and felt her answering pressure. She was telling me to go ahead and speak the truth.

  So I did. “No,” I said.

  Slowly, Papa dragged that prowling feeling deep inside himself and closed the door against it. Whatever was going on inside him now, I could only feel the barest brush of emotion and magic. “Could I have expected any less after … after all?” he asked the window glass. He waited for an answer, but none came and he bowed his head. “All right, then, Callie. We’ll go.” He lifted his eyes to Mama. “For better or for worse, we’ll go together.”

  The cabbie dropped us off at Lincoln Park and drove away without asking for his fare. I remembered the Halfers and their meeting the night before, and felt like a real cheapskate. I’d have to find a way to pay him back. If I lived long enough.

  It didn’t take long to find the Halferville barrier, or to tell that it was still cracked open. I led my parents through to the other side, and to a disaster area.

  Houses were torn open. Electric poles lay crisscrossed on the ground like giant pickup sticks. The stink of blood and burning still hung in the air, so did the mag
ic. Halfers had been laid out on stretchers and blankets in the middle of the ’ville. Others had been covered over in quilts, with their people sitting stupefied beside them. Some of those covered-over figures were just too small.

  But what I saw most clearly was that Jack was there, and Jack was okay. He manned the handle of an old-fashioned pump, helping fill basins with clean water so some scrap-and-string Halfers could carry them over to the wounded on their blankets. He saw me too, and he left them all. I opened my arms. I didn’t care about who might see. I just wrapped myself around him so we could hold each other tight.

  “You’re okay,” he breathed, pressing his cheek against the top of my head. “You’re okay.”

  I couldn’t talk around the lump in my throat, so I just nodded and hugged him harder.

  “What’s he doing here?”

  Jack and I broke apart like somebody fired off a shot. But it wasn’t us being talked about. Calumet and Glowing Man had stood up from where they’d been sitting with the wounded, and they faced my father. They weren’t the only ones either. It seemed like every Halfer who could still stand was crowding around, and most of them had pieces of iron in their fists.

  Papa just pulled himself up straight. Magic and anger swirled slowly through him, and he had plenty of both.

  “You said she was going after Touhy and Dan Ryan,” said Glowing Man to Jack. “We believed you.”

  “She did,” answered Jack. “These are her parents, Mr. and Mrs. LeRoux.”

  “Mr. LeRoux.” Calumet drew Papa’s name out slowly, like he wanted to make sure he didn’t miss any of it. “We’ve heard about you. The shame of the high court.”

  Papa’s eyes flashed like summer lightning. “What did you call me?”

  “Please, Mr. LeRoux,” said Jack. “Please, Calumet. Nobody’s the enemy here. What happened, Callie?”

  “I did try to save them,” I said to Calumet, and the others. “But the … the corbies got through the gate before I could stop them.”