Golden Girl (17 page)

“I’ve got Jack outside,” I said. “We need to talk to you, right away.”

Her mouth and eyes went round. Then she giggled. “I’ll get dressed.”

“There’s no time.”

“But I’m in my nightgown. And my …” She tugged at her curling rags. “I’ll be quick.”

Ivy scrambled out of bed and ran for the bathroom. I groaned and sat, gently, in one of the ruffled chairs. I couldn’t get the idea of sugar icing out of my head and was afraid that if I even touched anything, it’d snap in two.

Despite her promise to be quick, Ivy took her own sweet time. I imagined her in a ruffled pink bathroom, carefully taking the rags out of her hair, and gritted my teeth. What if Tully woke up early and found Jack loitering in the hall? We’d never get a second alone with Ivy again. We might even get thrown off the lot, and then what? I got up and wandered over to the mantel to look at the photos, trying to keep myself from shouting at Ivy to hurry.

The collection reminded me a lot of the pictures on Mrs. Constantine’s piano. There was Mrs. Brownlow, smiling brightly with a little baby in her arms. As I moved along, the baby grew to a toddler, then a little girl with a huge bow
in her curls and a perky smile for the camera. Then there were Ivy and Mrs. Brownlow in matching bathing suits by a swimming pool, and Ivy and Mrs. Brownlow standing on a terrace with a pretty blond woman and a big old man with a huge mustache.

My eyes stopped and slowly tracked back and looked again.

“Ivy?” I croaked.

“What is it?” She came out of the bathroom, tying the scarf on a pink and white sailor suit.

“Who’s this?” I pointed to the picture of the man with the mustache.

She came up beside me. “Oh, that’s Mr. Hearst, and that’s Miss Davies with him.”

“Miss Davies?” I said, hoping against hope I sounded just plain curious. I couldn’t hear my own voice properly over the roaring of blood in my ears. “She’s the one who gave you this house, isn’t she?”

“That’s her.” Ivy touched the photo frame gently, like she was afraid it would break. “That was taken at San Simeon. They invite us up there a lot and … Are you okay, Callie?”

No. I wasn’t. My jaw had fallen open and my lungs had stopped working. “San … San Simeon?”

Ivy shrugged. “It’s Spanish. Practically everything in California is San this or that. San Bernardino, San Francisco, San Clemente …”

“St. Simon?” I croaked.
The house of St. Simon, where no saint has ever been
. I took the photo from the mantel.

“I guess.” Ivy cocked her head at me. “Are you sure you’re okay, Callie?”

In the golden mountains of the west, in the house of St. Simon
. That was where my parents were being held prisoner. I had it in my hand. I’d seen it in the nightmare my uncle dragged me into. It had a broad balcony, with hills stretching out into the misty distance. It belonged to a Mr. Hearst and a Miss Davies, and Ivy Bright visited there all the time.

We’d come all this way, we’d been through so much, and here it was. The answer I’d been searching for had been one floor down from where I’d been sleeping.

This is not right. This cannot be right
. I stared at Ivy. She frowned back at me and tried to take the photo out of my hand. I didn’t wait for any more questions. I went and yanked her door open.

“We’ve been set up,” I said to Jack.

Jack darted into the room and locked the door behind him. “What’s happened?”

“Something’s wrong with Callie!” Ivy grabbed hold of his arm and looked up anxiously.

Yes, there was something very wrong, but for a change it wasn’t with me. We’d been played on a longer line than either of us realized. I snatched the photo back from Ivy and shoved it at Jack. “This was taken at San Simeon!
San Simeon
, Jack!”

Jack went white. He actually spoke some Spanish, and picked up on the name even faster than I had.

“Ivy gets invited up there all the time,” I told him. “It really was a trap for us, and she really was the bait!”

“But how? How did they know where we were?”

“Wait! What’s going on?” said Ivy.

“They played like they were kidnapping her so we’d see it and try to help and we’d all get to be friends and she’d invite us up to San Simeon.” Shake had said my grandparents didn’t believe I really wanted to free my parents, but that didn’t mean the Seelies had to be just as dumb. “We’d go because we’d think we were sneaking up on them, but they’d really be waiting for us!”

Jack slammed his fist into his palm and cussed a long blue streak. “I should have seen it before!”

“Cut!”
bellowed Ivy.

Jack and I both jumped and stared. Ivy stood there, breathing hard, fists clenched and eyes bright with frustration. “What. Are. You. Talking. About?”

I swallowed and glanced at Jack. He nodded. There really wasn’t any point in trying to cover this up. Not even Jack could find a lie that would stretch far enough.

“How much has Jack told you about the Seelies?” I asked.

Ivy frowned. “A little, on the way home yesterday. How you escaped those awful Hoppers and that vigilante man, and made it all the way across Kansas looking for your parents. It was better than a movie,” she added. “And believe
me, I know what I’m talking about.” For a second she sounded almost normal, not too babyish or too grown-up.

“Okay. Okay.” I fought for calm. What I really wanted to do was run for the door. We had to get out of here, and now. But we owed Ivy. She needed to know what was going on around her, if only so she wouldn’t be taken in by the same trick again. “It’s like this. There are two kinds of fairies—”

“Seelie and Unseelie,” said Ivy. “Jack did tell me that.”

“They have to use gates to move between our world and their world. We knew they were holding my parents hostage somewhere, and we thought that if we could find a gate to their world, we might be able to sneak through it to find them. The Seelies like movie people. We thought they might have a gate in a movie studio, so we came here to look for one.”

“We figured we’d start with the biggest studio and work our way on down.” Jack perched on the edge of one of those ruffly pink chairs. He looked even more out of place in this room than I felt. “That’s why we came to MGM. And we think …” He stopped, and I could tell he was trying to find some gentle way to break this to her. But there wasn’t any way to tell someone her nightmare didn’t really belong to her. “We think they knew we were coming and that’s why they tried to kidnap you. It was a setup, see? So we’d stay and rescue you and we’d be friends, and you’d invite us up to San Simeon, and they’d trap us there.”

Ivy wrinkled her nose, obviously trying hard to
understand. “But why would anybody
want
you to go to San Simeon?”

“Because it’s one of
their
places,” said Jack.

“How … how could you think that?”

“Somebody who knows told me that my parents are being held prisoner in the house of St. Simon, where no saint has ever been, in the golden mountains of the west, above the valley of smoke.” I didn’t bother with how I’d seen them there last night, being tormented to amuse the party guests. That was way more explaining than Ivy needed.

Ivy was quiet for a minute. I could feel her shifting things around inside her head, and as she did, her whole face changed. It was like a new girl was coming into focus, someone who was a whole lot different from the bubbly, babyish Ivy I’d been trying to get used to. This Ivy had been around a few blocks, if only on the back lot, and maybe had seen a few things.

And then that new girl vanished, leaving little Ivy with us, clasping her hands and all confused.

“I know it’s a lot, Ivy,” said Jack. “And believe me, I know it’s hard to find out you’ve been used. It’s not your fault. Really.”

“No. No. It’s not that. It’s …” She took a deep breath. “So was that how those … monsters came and got me? Through a gate?”

“There must be an opening down under the Waterloo Bridge,” I said. “And now you see why we’ve got to get out
of here. If they think we’re on to them, they won’t wait for us to come out there. They’ll come get us.”

“But you can’t just leave me!” she cried. “What if they come back and you’re not here? What if they think it’s my fault you found out?”

I hadn’t thought of that. Jack’s shoulders slumped.

“They tried to take her once,” said Jack. “They might do it again, just to get at you. Us.”

Anger bit down hard inside me. “Why would they?” I shouted, completely forgetting we were supposed to be keeping this conversation a secret. “They’ve already
got
my parents. How many hostages do they need?”

“As many as it takes.”

He was right. They wouldn’t stop, and I knew that. I just didn’t know why they were so god-awful determined. So I could open and close the gates. How many gates did they need? What did they want with the human world anyway? The fairy world was so beautiful and filled with all that light and welcome and magic—what were any of them even
doing
here?

It was, I realized slowly, a question I’d never thought to ask. I’d been so caught up in trying to find my parents, and trying to keep from getting killed doing it, I hadn’t stopped to ask why this was happening, not really. I mean, my grandmother had been pretty clear. She wanted me because of the gates and the prophecy. I didn’t know much about prophecies, but I did know they didn’t get started about small things.

“I’m afraid of them,” whispered Ivy.

I didn’t want to have to worry about her too. I wanted to break out of this ruffled sugary room and run all the way up to San Simeon, wherever that was, and bang on the doors. I wanted to let all this magic bubbling inside me loose, because I was strong. I had power. I could hurt them all, grant wishes that would have them wishing that they’d never taken my parents, that they’d never been born. I could do it. I could feel the power inside. I could feel the fear and anger close by, just waiting for me to grab them up and put them to work. I could do it. I could.

“Callie. Callie, stop,” said Jack.

“What?”

“Your eyes, Callie. Look.” Jack pointed at the mirror on the dressing table.

I did look. My eyes shone from inside with a silvery gray, like the flash of lightning on a storm cloud. It was fairy light, and it had weight, like a weapon. It could strike. Behind me, I saw Jack swallow. He was scared of the light in my eyes. He was scared of me.

The anger bled away, because I was scared of me too. Slowly the light faded, and my eyes were my eyes again. But we all knew that light was still there waiting underneath.

“It’s okay, Callie,” breathed Jack, but he wasn’t coming any closer to me.

I closed my eyes, but it didn’t help. It was too late. I’d changed. My fairy half wasn’t ever going back to sleep again.
If I didn’t find a way to use it, it was going to come out all on its own, like it almost had just then. I wondered if Shake had known that would happen. I wondered if this was all part of his particular plan.

“Please, Callie,” said Ivy softly. “You’ll help, won’t you?”

She huddled on that frilly bed, a little girl in the middle of something that was way too big for her. I felt bad. At least I’d known how to fend for myself when the Seelies came after me. Ivy’d never had to learn. She’d been sheltered all her life, with whole batches of people to look out for her health and complexion and make sure she turned up to make movies, but here she was alone in this house with a housekeeper who just wanted to keep her job and a mama who couldn’t remember what day of the week it was. She was so used to the studio being a safe place that she went out at night with one of the secretaries just because she was told to.

I took a deep breath. “What if I closed the gate under the bridge? That would at least slow them down.”

“Do you think you can?” asked Jack.

“I know I can.”

“Okay.” He scrubbed at his scalp and looked out through the curtains toward the sunrise. “You close whatever’s under the Waterloo Bridge, and we get out of here. Then what?”

“We go up to San Simeon and we get my parents,” I said
flatly. “And if the Seelies won’t give them back, we tear the place down.”

In the mirror, I watched Ivy stand up. Her plump dolly face had turned pale, sharp, and angled, and she clenched her fists at her sides.

“I’m coming with you.”

“What?” I turned on my heel to stare at Ivy. “No you’re not.”

“You’ll get hurt.” Jack laid a gentle hand on Ivy’s shoulder. “We’ll be back soon, I promise.”

Ivy smiled up at him, all warm and tender. I looked away and waited for the bitter feeling to well up in me, the feeling I had no choice but to call jealousy. But I can honestly say it didn’t come. I just felt a little sad, and I didn’t know why.

“You’re not leaving me here alone.” To my surprise, Ivy actually stuck her chin out. It didn’t look right on her, but the steel in her voice sounded a lot better than the little-girl giggle. “What if they do come for me? What am I going to do?”

Jack and I both knew what kind of monsters the Seelies could send out. Rougarou and his sister were just the start of it. And they weren’t even what I was really worried
about. What really worried me was how it was going on six o’clock and Tully would be up and about soon. Even if she wasn’t working with the Seelies, she would never let Ivy go with us instead of to school and her movie job.

“Besides, you’re going to need me,” said Ivy. “There’s a whole lot of shoots going on today. No one will ask questions if you’re with me.”

I didn’t want somebody else to be responsible for. But I couldn’t see another way out. As little as I wanted to admit it, Jack’s trick with the clipboard probably wasn’t going to be enough cover for us today.

“Okay,” I said. “But you have to do exactly what we say, understand?”

“I will.” Ivy nodded until her curls bounced. “You’ll see. It’ll be—”

The clacking of metal on metal cut her off. A split second later, the door flew open.

“Well!” Tully stood on the threshold and planted her hands on her hips. A ring of keys dangled from her fingers. “What is going on here?” She leveled the words at me.