Bad Luck Girl (26 page)

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 magic. 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.”

“Before you could stop them,” Glowing Man sneered.
“Aren’t you the one who can close the gates? Why didn’t you use this famous magic of yours?”

“You will speak to my daughter with respect, Undone,” snapped Papa.

“Or what?” Glowing Man moved his hand out from behind his back. He was holding a butcher’s cleaver, and it shone white hot.

“Wait, Dearborn,” said Jack. “Just for one second. Callie knows what’s what. She wouldn’t have brought her father here without a good reason. Right, Callie?”

I nodded. Everyone was looking at me now, Jack most of all. I felt him sending out his trust, and his love. I wished he’d stop it. I couldn’t think for feeling when he did that. And I had to think. I had to walk straight and steady up to Calumet and the glowing man, Dearborn.

“We’re here to take the fight to the courts,” I said. “All of us are. I know how we can do it, and we can do it so they’ll never see it coming. But we need your help. Touhy and Dan Ryan and the others … they need all our help.”

“All our help?” said Dearborn to Papa.

But it was Mama who answered. “It’s not what anyone wants, but we’ve been left with no choice. I think you can appreciate that, Mr.… Dearborn, is it?”

Dearborn stared at Mama like he’d never seen her sort before. Maybe he hadn’t. She was an original, my mama, standing there in the middle of a crowd of living bits and pieces and taking it all in stride. Actually, now that I came to think of it, she was an awful lot like Jack in that way.

Calumet turned around and faced the Halfers. “What says the ’ville? Do we fight?”

The feeling in the roar that answered could have knocked me flat. They would fight. They would all fight. I just had to hope it wouldn’t be for nothing. I bit my lip, and tried not to feel the anger trembling through my father. He’d get used to this. He had to.

“So,” said Jack to me. “What’s the plan?”

Of course nothing happened right away. There was a whole lot of talking to be done first. My parents and Jack and I had to sit down with what was left of the Halferville Council in what was left of splintery Calumet’s house so I could explain my plan. Then everybody needed a chance to pick it over, add to it, and argue about this and that until the sun went down. Then, because Calumet and Dearborn insisted, we had to take ourselves out to the Halfer amphitheater and explain everything all over again to the Halfers who were well enough to sit up and listen. There, they had to shout and argue and pick it over some more until the moon rose above the trees, and it felt like there was nothing left of my plan but bare bones.

Much as I hated the idea, I might just have to apologize to Dan Ryan when I saw him again. Now I knew how flat-out crazy-making the council’s way of doing things felt. All I
wanted was for us to get moving. We needed time, we needed to pull everything together, but we had no time and we couldn’t move. We had to agree. We had to make sure of every little point. We had to get through all the sniping and griping and shouting about just what Papa was even doing there. Papa wasn’t helping anything by insisting that Mama should get to safety before we did anything. He even tried to get me on his side by saying Jack could take her out on the train, maybe to Detroit, or maybe all the way to New York. I wanted to agree, more than anything, but we needed them both in the Halferville. Even if I had agreed, it wouldn’t have done any good. Neither one of them would have left without being magicked, and even then they would have come right back on the next train.

Other than that, though, Papa held tight to his temper and let everybody else do the talking. I was kind of proud of him. He still didn’t like the people around him. He sure didn’t trust them. I could feel it in the flicker of the light behind his eyes, and in each of the few words he did speak. But he stayed polite and kept his cool, and I was grateful for it.

By the time the meeting broke up, dawn had come around again. Most everybody headed back to the houses that were still standing to try to get a couple hours’ sleep. Papa, though, said he’d stay up a bit.

“In fact, if you will permit,” he said to Calumet and Dearborn, “I might be of some use helping with your wounded.”

Both councilors looked startled. Then they looked suspicious. Papa waited.

It was Calumet who reached a decision first. “Thank you.” He spoke the words like he was having to drag them out of the dark. “That would be most welcome.”

“I’ll go with you,” said Dearborn to Papa.

“I’d expect no less.” Papa stood aside and let Dearborn walk away first. He gave me a last look, saying we’d talk soon, and I nodded back.

Calumet rubbed his eyes very carefully with his wooden fingers. “You can have Touhy’s place, for now,” he told me. “You remember where it is?”

I did remember, and I took Jack and Mama over to the base of the tree. But when Mama realized she’d have to climb the trunk to get to our borrowed quarters, she put her foot down.

“I don’t wish to seem ungrateful, but I’ve no intention of turning squirrel at this late date.”

That drew a tired smile from Calumet. “I’m sure we can find a space nearer the ground, Mrs. LeRoux. Fifty-four?” He called to a passing Halfer who looked like she’d sprung to life from an assortment of ribbons and wrapping paper. “Can we find Mrs. LeRoux some space?”