Golden Girl (25 page)

You too, Jack
. I spread that wish just a little further.
You go too
.

I felt him waver and look at the door. But only for a couple of heartbeats.

“Not a chance, Callie. You are not getting rid of me that easy.”

I shrugged. “It was worth a try.”

We found the spare key under the flowerpot on the back porch. The house was too warm, despite the breeze coming in from the open windows. The foyer smelled like polish and dust and the remains of lunch. The stairs complained under our shoes as we climbed up to my old room. It hadn’t been let out yet. It hadn’t been locked either, and its window hadn’t been opened. It was stifling in there. A trapped fly buzzed against the glass, searching angrily for an exit.

“Nothing to it.” Jack’s smile was forced, but I let it go.

“Be quiet a second. I’ve got to concentrate.”

It was getting easier to open my magic just a little, and it was no trouble at all to feel the gate I’d created last time I was in this room. It was so clear, I was surprised Jack couldn’t spot it. I eased it open, but I didn’t step through. I just reached in and found that warm, dreamy, sleepy feeling I’d wrapped Lorcan up in. I took hold of the end of it and pulled.

It took less than a heartbeat. Lorcan was awake and betwixt and between, and then he wasn’t. He was in front of me, both eyes wide open and his broken teeth bared. He lashed out, grabbing the front of my checked shirt and hauling me in close enough to breathe his hot and sour breath all over my face. For one panicked second I thought he was going to bite my throat.

“Let her go, old man!” Jack swung the room’s rickety chair high over his head. “Let her go now, or I’ll bust your head!”

“Ah.” Shake’s voice was terribly tight. “The young Mr. Holland. Callie, I see you’ve been busy while I was enjoying my little nap.” But he did let go, and stepped back. “Just a little misunderstanding among family. Nothing at all to worry about.” The lid closed down over his milk-white eye, winking at me. I felt a promise swirling around him, but I couldn’t tell what it was.

“I need your help.” I rubbed my neck. The itching redoubled around my throat and on my cheeks where his breath had touched me.

“Do you?” He raised his eyebrows and smoothed his shirt down. “Well, I find I’m a little busy right now, Callie. People to see, places to go. You understand, I’m sure.” He smiled, all polite, and walked out of the room, heading to his own.

“You said you wanted to help me.” I followed him, and Jack followed me. He left the chair, though.

“I did.” Shake picked up his battered hat off the dresser and settled it on his head. “Before. Now things have changed.”

What things? I bit my lip. I did not like this. Something had changed with Shake, and it was something important. Was it possible he hadn’t been as sound asleep as he was letting on? That he’d done something or seen somebody that had changed his ideas about what was going on?

“I’ve got a summons from the Seelie king,” I said out loud.

“I’d be surprised if you didn’t, considering you broke
into his castle with the intent of stealing his property. In fact, I’m surprised it’s just a summons.”

I almost asked how he knew that, but then I remembered I’d slept since I got back. Of course he knew what I’d done. He’d seen it in my head.

“Had you been willing to trust me for two seconds, I could have explained. There are laws, Callie, and when you break them, you pay. It’s an eye for an eye with us, Callie.” He touched his scar. “You went into their territory without an invitation. You, or your stand-in, has to pay the forfeit. Or else.”

“Or else what?”

“War.” He drew the word out long and slow, but not as if he was afraid. He liked the way it rolled off his tongue. “War between the courts, in which you will be the first casualty, because that summons will kill you if you don’t offer a life in answer for what you’ve done.” He smiled at me, ice cold and far too happy. “You can feel it already, can’t you?”

I could. The itch had gone down beneath my blood now. It was gnawing at my fairy magic.

Shake faced the mirror again, straightening his lapels and adjusting the angle of his broken hat. “Of course, since you won’t let them keep either your mama or your papa, it’s going to be war anyway, because your grandparents will not let the Seelies have your special power for themselves.” He nodded at his reflection as if satisfied. “The only thing for a smart fellow to do is get out of the way and wait for it all to blow over.”

And wait for it all to blow over
. The words echoed around my aching head. He meant to let the Seelies and the Unseelies fight it out over me and what I’d done, so he could be the last man standing. I gaped at him. I’d made a mistake. A big one. Another one.

Shake tipped his hat at me. “Good-bye, Callie. Mr. Holland.”

“No, wait. You said you wanted to see me on the Midnight Throne.”

“That was before. Now I don’t need your help, which is just as well for me, because you’re going to be killed.”

“But you don’t know that for sure,” said Jack. He was leaning against the wall, arms folded and eyes narrowed. “We could pull out of this,” he went on. “We’ve done it before. Callie’s still got her power and that prophecy. She could make a deal with the king and queen.” Jack waited until Shake had turned all the way toward him. “Or she could make a deal with you.”

Shake hesitated. He’d thought he was facing just a couple of scared human kids, but now he wasn’t so sure. “What kind of deal?”

I hesitated. If I did this now, I did it for good. “My father, he abdicated, right? That left me as heir to the throne.”

“Yes.”

“Okay. Here’s the deal. You help me find my parents and bring them out safe from wherever they’re at, and I’ll abdicate as heir of the Midnight Throne.”

Shake’s smile drew out long, slow, and dangerous, like a
snake coming out of its hole. His good eye sparkled bright in the dim light of that bare room, and I shivered. I felt him turning the idea over in his mind, felt the stumps and scars of the magic they’d cut out of him trying to stretch toward the idea.

“Almost, little niece. Almost. If you’d made this offer earlier, it might have worked. But I’m afraid it’s too late for that.”

“What do you mean? It’s what you want. I can feel it.”

“Oh, yes. It’s what I want, but why should I bind myself to you with a promise when I can rally my friends and just wait you out? Once you’re dead, I’m the heir, free and clear. And if by some stroke of your bad luck you live …” He leaned close. “I should thank you, Callie. You gave me a chance to watch you up close and see all the weaknesses your mother bred into you. You’re no match for me, little niece, and you never will be.” He pinched my cheek, but snatched his hand back before Jack could swing at him. “I’ll be waiting for you as well, young Mr. Holland.”

He stepped backward, into the gate I’d left open. And he was gone.

I collapsed onto the bed. Jack was cussing and pounding his fist into his palm, pacing around the little space between the door and the dresser. I couldn’t move. Perspiration poured down my face. With each drop, the itch settled deeper. It liked being inside me and intended to make itself at home, from the soles of my feet straight through to the crown of my head. It twitched and circled like a dog finding a comfy spot to lie down. I was bleeding through my skin from my scratching. I was bleeding through my spirit from the relentless, deepening itch, and it was only going to get worse.

“I can’t stand it, Jack,” I whispered. “I have to go.”

Jack stopped in mid-cuss and drew himself up. He took in a deep breath and let it out.

“Then we go,” he said. “You can take us there, right?”

I could, easily. That was not going to be the problem. “I
don’t know what’ll happen, Jack. I have no idea what they can do to us.”

“So what else is new?” He pulled his old newsboy cap out of his back pocket, slapped it against his leg a couple of times to knock out the creases, and settled it on his head. “Make sure it’s through the front door, though. I’m sick and tired of sneaking around.”

And that was that. I got to my feet and walked us back into my old room. There I gripped Jack’s hand and took my own deep breath. Together we stepped sideways, turned in place, rounded a corner, and stepped down.

Daylight blossomed around us, but no warmth. A cool wind blew slow but steady, carrying off the sun’s heat. Jack and I staggered and caught each other. We’d come to rest in front of a white stone wall, set with lampposts and miniature towers and planted all around with roses. A pair of high, arched gates had been set in its center. They reminded me of the ones in front of MGM, except these were gold instead of iron, and they were shut tight. On the other side, the hill had been planted thick with flowers and trees, and set with marble stairs and gravel paths. We weren’t quite at the peak. There was still a long slope up, and it was topped by somebody’s fantasy of a Spanish castle. It had a pair of bell towers, arched windows like you’d see in a cathedral, and more frills and trimmings on its white walls than Ivy’s bedroom had ruffles. Behind us, a white road wound from the gates down the hill, but we couldn’t see very far, because
a fog was rising off the mountainside, blotting out all the world below.

The wind blew again, curdling that pure white fog and bringing it closer.

“Well, there you are!” called a voice from the other side of the gates.

The trim, smiling woman from the picture on Ivy’s mantel trotted down one of the marble staircases. She wore a red-and-white striped top and a long red skirt that wrapped around her hips and tied at the waist. A floppy white hat covered her blond hair, and white sandals decorated her dainty feet. She looked cool, poised, and sophisticated as she sashayed down that path toward the golden gates. There must have been a switch on the other side, because when she laid her hand on the white wall, the gates swung slowly open.

I steeled myself and walked forward. Jack came up right behind me until we both stood under the archway.

“I’m—” I started.

“Callie LeRoux.” The woman took both my hands and gave me a peck on the cheek before I could stop her. “Of course you are. And this must be Jack Holland. Marion Davies.” Jack shook her hand, but he was looking sideways at me as he did. “Ivy said you’d gotten our invitation. Please, do come in.” She swept her hand back.

“Thank you.”

The second I stepped into that garden, the itching stopped. I just about fell over. The burn and the bleeding
vanished and my skin was my own again. Miss Davies smiled brightly, and another gust of cool wind curled around our ankles.

“Where’s Ivy?” asked Jack.

“She’s with Mr. Hearst and the others,” said Miss Davies. “Come along. Everybody’s just
dying
to meet you both.” She flashed us a final bright smile and trotted back up the stairs, as though gravity didn’t matter to her. Jack and I had no choice but to follow.

If anybody’d tried to tell me about the garden she led us into, I wouldn’t have believed them. I didn’t even know so many kinds of flowers existed in the world, let alone that somebody could think to plant them on a mountainside, or create all the different grottoes and alcoves and arbors to hold them.

“This is real, right?” whispered Jack. “This isn’t the fairy country?”

I nodded. This was real. And it wasn’t just a space of flowers and twisting paths. It seemed like under every bush there was a different statue. There were Greek gods, lambs and fawns, and old Romans. But mostly there were women. Naked women carved in marble. The lampposts were shaped like golden women, also naked. Women’s faces decorated the walls around the beds of greenery. Tiny women lifted up their hands to hold up benches where people could make themselves comfortable.

Somebody had bought and built every square inch of this, all these statues and gold-trimmed marble buildings
and acres of gardens. They’d created a paradise, walled it round, and locked it behind golden gates, way up here in the hills, where they never heard about the Depression or the Dust Bowl or anything else bad in the world. Where they didn’t have to care about anything they didn’t want to.

“Something’s going on, though,” I whispered back. It brushed at me like the cool wind and curdled like the fog. The feeling didn’t seem to be coming from any one direction. It was all around, and the inside of my mind—still rubbed raw from the summons—prickled and shifted, trying to get away from it.

Jack nodded and set his sights right between Miss Davies’s shoulder blades. He lengthened his stride so he could get right up next to her, but he also shoved his hands in his pockets, making himself look nonchalant.

“So,” he said, looking up at the gardens rising around us, “this is all Mr. Hearst’s property, right?”

“Of course, dear,” she said. “But he frequently allows his
special
friends the use of the house and grounds.”

“I’ll bet he’s met all kinds of people,” Jack went on in his best gosh-wow voice. “Presidents, maybe kings, even.”

“Oh, everyone who’s anyone comes to San Simeon. Kings, even.” She said it with a big wink. “Many of them come to regard this as their second home.”

It made plenty of sense. This place was beyond beautiful. It was perfect. It would attract the Seelies the way jam
did yellow jackets. Only they weren’t sneaking any more than we were. They’d moved right in.

Miss Davies kept on talking to Jack about the size of the grounds, all the trees and plants carted in specially for the gardens, and how Mr. Hearst had searched the world for the most beautiful art and antiques to bring back and lock up here—not that she put it that way, of course. But the farther in I went, the more sour I felt. I didn’t like this place. It was so elaborate, so perfect and lush, it didn’t feel like there was any room for me here. I wasn’t pretty enough. I wasn’t famous enough or rich enough. Any one of these marble statues was worth twenty times as much as me.

It hit me Miss Davies was doing this on purpose. She was leading Jack and me up these garden paths with the idea of making us feel small and poor. My temper started to smolder, and for the first time since we’d come through the front gate, I felt warm.