Bad Luck Girl (34 page)

“Lorcan deMinuit!” I shouted. “Uncle Shake, Seelie king, get in the sack!”

And he did. He never even saw it coming.

Quick as a flash, Dan Ryan twisted the burlap bag shut while Feodor leaned a knee against it to stop its squirming. Dan Ryan pulled off the rope he wore as a belt and he and Jack knotted it tight around the sack’s mouth.

“That’s gonna be trouble later,” muttered Jack.

“We’ll worry about it when later gets here,” said Dan Ryan.

Jack and I ran over to Papa. Jack held Papa tight to keep him still while I struggled with sore fingers and tired magic to unknot the ribbons. The mask fell away and Papa sagged backward. I staggered under his weight, but I caught him. His face was a mass of dark lines where the mask had dug in and I could feel the pain still winding through him. But he blinked open his shining eyes, and he saw me.

“Papa, are you okay?” I choked.

“Yeah, yeah.” He covered my hand with his. “But we need to get out of here.”

“I know, I know, I just …” I turned to the thrones. Some tremor or other had shaken my grandparents. My grandmother had fallen forward, and both her hands dragged on the ground. Grandfather had slumped across her, his arm thrown crookedly around her shoulders. “We can’t leave them like this.”

For a moment, I thought Papa was going to argue. I know Dan Ryan wanted to, but he moved closer to his own father, grim-faced and forcing himself to keep quiet. It’s entirely possible the look Jack shot him had something to do with that.

“Whatever you’re going to do,
Your Highnesses
,” sneered Dan Ryan, “do it fast.”

Papa nodded and we faced the thrones and my flopped-over grandparents. He put his hand on my shoulder and I felt his magic wrapping around mine. We were both exhausted and way too weak, but together, we might just be able to call out loud enough for them to hear.

“Faelen deMinuit, Twilight Lord, King of the Midnight Throne,” called Papa. Grandfather stirred, sluggishly. His fingers wriggled. His arm slid off of Grandmother’s shoulders. Papa clenched his fists. “Luigsech deMinuit, Midnight’s Consort, Twilight’s Queen, Daughter of the Ebony Road and the Bone Forest.” Grandmother’s head shook back and forth. She tried to lift her shoulders. And tried again. I
wished, and I wished. “Come home!” shouted Papa. “Come home, my father! Come home, my mother!”

It wasn’t a physical fight, like freeing Feodor had been. It was simple and natural, like waking up in the morning. My grandparents stirred, and they sat up and opened their eyes and looked around them.

My grandfather climbed slowly to his feet, trembling like an old man. The light shone in his fairy eyes as he looked down at my father. Next to him, my grandmother sat up straight and tall on her throne. For a moment, confusion and fear flickered through her. Then she smiled and slowly, she reached out shaking hands to me. I glanced at Papa. He nodded. Together we walked forward. Papa took his father’s hand and bowed his head. Slowly, half hoping, half afraid, I let my grandmother put her strong arms around me and pull me close.

“Help him,” she whispered in my ear.

Papa screamed. I whirled around. My grandfather shrieked, loud and harsh and terrible. He lifted my father up in his arms.

“No!” Grandmother dove forward, trying to get her arms around her husband, trying to get her son free. Her magic lashed out, but too late, too late. Grandfather reached out with a flicker of will and laughed her name, and she crumpled to the ground.

Because I’d gotten it wrong. It wasn’t my grandfather who stood there. I could see it as he turned his eyes to me. This was the Seelie king.

I didn’t think. I didn’t have time. I looked through my grandfather’s eyes. I looked down into the white and the dark and the emptiness to the Seelie king underneath. I gathered up my power, and I
reached
.

The Seelie king felt me coming, and he turned around, and he ran. I cussed with every inch of myself, and I threw myself after him.

I’d reached inside a person once before. Jack, one time when he’d been almost killed. That had been bad. This was worse. This was warm and squishy and stinking and wrong. It was a long way too. Farther than I’d ever reached before. I couldn’t care about that. I had to reach farther yet. The king had gotten through from somewhere. There was some kind of door, some kind of gate for him to run back to in here. I had to find it and shut it tight.

At last I felt it. It was very small and very strong and very
old. But it was a gate and I was who I was. Its edges were worn smooth and almost butter soft. I found them anyway. I found the lock. I twisted it open, and I was through, and into the Seelie country.

And the Seelie country was filled with dust.

I stood alone, staring and staring some more. White shining dust swirled around me. It grated against my skin. I could taste it in my mouth, and it burned in my throat and lungs. This was why the white cliffs shifted so wildly on the borders of my grandfather’s kingdom. I should have recognized it. It was like the billows of a dust storm, right before it rolled down across the countryside.

“You killed it,” I said, and I coughed and spat. The Seelie dust tasted like cold copper. “You used all the magic in it, and the country dried up and died.” This was why I’d never seen any Seelie soldiers in the palace, or anywhere else. All the fairies had been Unseelies, traitors and friends of my uncle. That was why they wore his masks. It wasn’t just to show their loyalty; it was so they could hide from my grandparents.

Very good, Callie LeRoux
, said the Seelie king. His voice was plain and bland, beyond feeling or weight. He had no shape of his own. That was why he could fit himself anywhere. He’d even used up his own body, trying to feed his hunger.
No one has ever come to meet me in my own palace
.

Well, you haven’t exactly put out the welcome mat, have you?
I put my hand over my mouth to try to stop the dust, but it wormed its way in. I coughed, and coughed again.

So, why did you come? It was a dreadful risk
.

No choice. If I didn’t, you’d be running out the back door. You’re good at that
.

Coming from you, that’s a true compliment
. The king laughed, a flat, hollow sound.
Well, Callie. Now that you are here, what do you propose to do?

He was waiting for me to attack. He was figuring on one last pitched battle, which he’d win. He’d devoured a whole world, and was looking to down another. He was stronger and hungrier than I’d ever be. He was just waiting for me to make the first move. That was his game. He set people up and knocked them down. The despair as they fell fed his greed like nothing else could.

Well, Callie?
said the king.

I reached out with my power. But not to the king. I reached back the way I’d come. To the gate. I found the lock. I twisted it shut.

NO!

The king screamed and roared past me, shaking the edges of his dead kingdom. The dead wind blew cold, forcing the dust into my eyes and throat. But there was nothing to break open, nothing to knock down. He was too late. The gate was already gone.

See her now, three roads to choose
, I said.
Where she goes, where she stays, where she stands, there shall the gates be closed
.

The Seelie king raged; he screamed. His fury battered me, and it hurt. It hurt a lot. But I’d been hurt before.

Open the gate!
he ordered.
Callie LeRoux deMinuit, Prophecy Girl, Bad Luck Girl, Dust Girl, OPEN THIS GATE!

That all you got?
I really missed not having arms to fold, then something occurred to me.
What’s your name, anyway? Or did you eat that up too?

I’d meant it as a kind of joke, but as soon as I shaped the thought, I knew it was true. That was why he had no shape, no heart, nothing but emptiness.
You’ve got no power left, have you? You used it all up. You’ve only got what you devour, other people’s power, other people’s lives, and you’ve eaten everything here
.

I will make you suffer for eternity!

So do it
. I put a shrug into my thoughts.
Make a meal outta me, like you do everything else you get near, but you’ll still be stuck here, and you’re going to starve to death because you’ve got no gate to drag the power through anymore
.

The king surged forward. He grabbed hold of me and started to squeeze. I closed myself up, and I tried not to be scared. He squeezed harder. It hurt. It hurt. But it’d be over soon. This was it. This was the end.

Open the gate!
The king’s order beat against me.
Open it! Open it!

I was really going to die this time.

Open it! Open it! Open it!

Hunger. I’d taken myself to the end of the world and there was nothing here but hunger. After all the fighting and the schemes and the glamour and deception, there was only the king’s hunger and it was going to kill me dead.

Open!

But it was okay. I’d seen what was out that way, and it wasn’t so bad. I’d seen worse. I’d miss my parents. And Jack. I’d always miss Jack, but at least he’d be alive, and he’d be free. The Halfers, the Seelies, the Unseelies, Mama and Papa, and Jack, they’d all be free if I just held on.

Openopenopenopen!

You know what the funny part is?
I said back.
None of this had to happen. If you’d just left us alone, I never would have come after you. I never would have known anything about you!

OPEN!

No
.

Then he whispered.
Then curse you, Callie LeRoux … wish you … wish you …

And there was nothing. I was alone. The king was dead. He’d burned himself up, and there wasn’t even a single extra grain left. The wind fell away, and the dust dropped like snow around me, piling into dead white dunes under a dead white sky.

I pulled my thoughts together. Victory was a strangely quiet, tiny thing. I was so tired. I was hungry too. That wasn’t surprising, or it shouldn’t have been. I was a fairy too, after all. I needed magic just like the rest of them. I turned. Even when I’d closed a gate, I could feel its seams. I could get my power into that and open it again.

But this time there was nothing. The king had cut it off from me, or me off from it. That was what his last wish, his
last curse had been. He’d burned himself trying to trap me in here to die of fear and starvation in this dead dust country, all that remained of a fairy kingdom.

“Don’t be afraid,” I told myself. My voice was thin and small. I coughed. “They’ll find you.” Mama, Papa, and Jack. They’d always find me. I just had to be patient.

I sat down on the crest of the dune. Each movement kicked up a little of the sparkling dust. I coughed. It hurt, a terribly familiar pain I thought I’d left behind. The dust couldn’t get me, but I was going to get hungry soon, for food and for magic. Thirsty too. And there was nothing here. Nothing but me.

They’ll find me. They will. It’ll be okay. I just have to wait
.

There was no time. No motion except my beating heart. There was no sound except my coughing and the grinding of grains of dust when I shifted my weight.

It’ll be okay
, I told myself. It hadn’t been that long yet. They’d find me. I wasn’t that hungry yet. I wasn’t that thirsty. It hadn’t been that long. It’d be all right.

I’d won. We’d won. That was what mattered. Not the endless, still white dust. Not the silence pressing against my ears and my mind. It hadn’t been that long yet. It hadn’t been. I was only shaking because I was scared. I wasn’t getting weak. Not yet. I had plenty in me yet. They’d find me. They’d find me. They wouldn’t leave me alone. Mama, Papa, and Jack, they’d know I had to be somewhere. They wouldn’t give up. They wouldn’t turn away. They couldn’t possibly think I was already dead.

I wasn’t going to end up in the dust. It wasn’t going to end like that. It couldn’t. This wasn’t why I was named the Dust Girl. I wasn’t going to think about how the prophecy talked about the gates closing, but never about them opening. I’d made my stand here, and the gates had closed. But that wasn’t the end. It couldn’t be. My family would find me. They’d come help me. They had to. They had to. Had to. Had to.

I lay down in the dust because I couldn’t sit up anymore. The prophecy had come true, and this was the end. I wondered if Daddy Joe and his train would come for me here. Or if I’d just be the Dust Girl for real and forever.

Thhheeerrre shhheee isss …
, said a voice, and my head jerked up.
I ssseeee hhheeerrr.… Theeerrre shhheee isss!

Papa?
I couldn’t talk. My throat was too dry and dust clogged.

But it wasn’t Papa. And it wasn’t my uncle.

It was Jack.

Of course it was.

And I reached out, and I took his hand, and Jack pulled me through, and home.

Once upon a time, there was a girl named Callie LeRoux. She left her home in the Dust Bowl and traveled across three different worlds to free her parents from the evil king. On the way she found her worst enemy, her best friend, and her own name.

When the evil king had been conquered, and the worst enemy captured, and her grandfather mourned, and all was reconciled with her grandmother, Callie and her parents and her best fella, Jack, all settled down in the great city of Chicago. There, her parents claimed the bones of an old manor house and opened the Midnight Club. People said some strange things about it, but they still came there from all across the country to hear jazz and blues and eat the food and enjoy the scene. On weekends Callie worked as a hostess, or helped her mama in the kitchen, and sometimes she sang with her father’s band. Her best fella, Jack, got a job as a copyboy for the
Chicago Tribune
and wrote stories for
magazines like
Weird Tales
and
Black Mask
and
Thrilling Wonder Stories
. When she was old enough to go to college, Callie got her degree in restaurant management and came home to marry her best fella and open up some of the finest nightspots in all Chicago. And when the war came, Jack went to Europe as a correspondent, and Callie sat up late, listening for his broadcasts on the radio and wishing hard.