Dust City (18 page)

White takes out a pair of hefty cuffs and stands by the fence. “I hope you know you’re about to get yourself into a whole lot of trouble.”

Fiona smiles. “Guess it runs in the family.”

“Evidently,” says White. She looks at me. “A lot of that going around lately.”

“Hurry up, Detective.”

White locks one wrist to the fence.

“Thank you.” Fiona’s clearly pleased with herself. “I’m going to leave your gun here in the bushes. You can get it later, okay?”

“I’m gonna get
you
later is what I’m gonna do.” White looks to me next. “You, too, Whelp.”

I do my best to ignore this comment. Instead, I turn to
Fiona. “Why are you helping me like this? You’re just making trouble for yourself.”

Fiona shrugs. “You said you knew where the fairies are. If anyone can help Roy, if anyone can wake him up, it’s them.”

“Oh.”

“I know they never really granted wishes for animalia before, but if we saved them—you and me, a pair of wolves—they’d have to, right?”

“A pair?”

“Wherever you’re going next, I’m coming with you.”

29

A BAD DESTINY

WE’RE STANDING ON A BRINE-RUSTED PLATFORM OVERLOOKING THE
reservoir. Across the street is the flophouse and the underground refinery. There’s a high wind off the reservoir and the water’s choppy. Tankers full of fairydust look like toys, bobbing gently in a vast concrete bath.

On the way here, I explained everything I know to Fiona, namely, my father’s theory about the perversion of old-time magic and the enslavement of the fairies. She seemed as skeptical as I was, but she’s still here, which means she’s as hopeful as I am, too.

The platform we’re standing on is two floors below street level and, according to the map, opens onto a tunnel that will lead us to the refinery’s forbidden rooms. On the paper, it’s red—one of the tunnels we aren’t supposed to use. I can only hope there’s not another giant chimerical beast lurking inside.

“You sure you wanna come with me?”

Fiona takes my forepaw in hers. I can feel the hair on the
back of her fingers. Not coarse like mine. It’s like silk. “Of course I’m sure. I want my brother back, and besides—” She holds up her camera. “We’ll need pictures, right?”

Thankfully, the tunnel is empty. At the far end, we climb a ladder that leads up to a hatch similar to the one Matt used when he first introduced me to the tunnels. I push it open slowly.

Silence.

The hatch opens onto a large, empty room. This place has the somber austerity of a library—and the shelves to match. Aisle after aisle of them. But instead of books, these shelves are packed with fairydust, glimmering in buckets and packaged into bricks like the one Tom and I delivered. It’s more dust than I’ve ever seen in one place, but there’s nothing unusual about that. The nixies are dealers and smugglers. This sort of room—little more than a fortified stash house—is exactly what you’d expect to find behind closed doors.

“Is this it?” Fiona whispers. “Maybe you should check your map again.”

“It’s the right place.” I can see the conveyors entering the room over our heads. Looking up, we see that second-story scaffolding rims the walls. Every ten feet or so, there are doorways.

“Up there, maybe,” I say, pointing at them. “In those rooms.”

Just as we’re about to climb the stairs, our ears prick up. We hear a
click
. Silently, I lead Fiona behind the shelves to
hide. We watch through the gaps between them as one of the doors opens. It’s Skinner. He’s talking to someone.

“—as fast as we can,” he’s saying. “Isn’t that right, Pa?”

Skinner stands aside and ushers out the person he’s addressing. It’s Pa Nixie. I can’t believe it. Few folks have ever laid eyes on him (and have lived to tell about it, that is). But I recognize him from the handful of grainy photos they’ve been printing in newspapers all my life. I can feel the image of his rubbery mass branding itself into my brain. Fiona snatches my paw and squeezes it.

“Yes,” says Pa. His lower fins shuffle over the floor, carrying his great blubber with careless effort. He casts a glance over one sloping shoulder, back into the room. “We’re still on schedule for, uh—how shall I put this? Market saturation.” He’s speaking to someone else who’s still in the room. My insides flip when I see who it is.

The Nimbus Brothers, Karl and Ludwig, CEOs of Nimbus Thaumaturgical. They come strolling out as if they belong here, in this dingy place. I’ve only ever seen their faces blown up on billboards or plastered across the sides of streetcars. There’s something eerie about seeing them in real life.

Karl, the younger and thinner of the two, looks at his brother, grinning happily.
“Total
market saturation,” he says.

“Indeed,” says Ludwig.

Skinner shuts the door and the four of them move to the staircase that swoops to the floor. They’re coming down.

“You’re certain the new strain has no effect on hominids?” asks Pa.

Karl nods. “Elves, dwarves, you nixies, all of us up in Eden, even those insufferable goblins. We isolated a common gene. There aren’t many, but we found one. I can assure you both this is an enchantment for animalia alone.”

“Excellent,” says Pa.

They’ve reached the bottom of the steps. They’re about to move directly in front of us. Skinner grins like a carnivorous plant. “I trust we can count on the fairies to provide enough to go around, yes?”

Ludwig nods. “As you well know, the fairies have been very good to my brother and me over the years.”

“Indeed,” says Karl. He and his brother glance up at the rooms above. “Very cooperative!”

All four of them laugh.

Now it’s my turn to squeeze Fiona’s paw. She looks at me in wide-eyed silence. My father was right
.
It’s even worse than he suspected. Skinner, the nixies, Nimbus Thaumaturgical. They’re all working together. They’re planning something.

“Won’t be long now,” says Skinner. He unlocks the door to the rest of the refinery and leads them out.

We wait and listen to the door being locked. Once the clicks have died away fully, Fiona nuzzles into me. “So it’s all true,” she says.

As much as I like the idea of having her in my arms, I push her away. I can’t forget where we are. Or why.

“C’mon.” I take her by the paw and lead her up the stairs. An image of Faelynn flashes into my head. Her lithe arms. Her delicate wings. She could be up there right now. What will she look like, after all this time? What will I say to her?

We choose the same door we saw Skinner and the others use. It’s locked.

“Of course it is!” I whisper harshly. I step backward to the railing. “I think I can knock it down.”

Fiona stops me. “They’ll hear you.” Her eyes search the scaffold. “Look for some loose metal. I can pick any lock.”

“You can?”

She smiles at me. “You’re forgetting who my brother is. He taught me years ago. It was kind of a game we played when we were kids.” She crouches down, running her paws over the metal. “I need something long and thin. Preferably two.”

“What about these?” I fish into my pocket and come out with two rods of gold, the one I found in Doc’s office and the one Skinner gave me at the race.

Fiona takes them from me, staring. “Are these gold?”

“It’s a long story.”

“Never worked with gold before, but I’ll try.” She slides in the chewed ends, marred with imprints of Skinner’s teeth. Her face loses all expression as she feels her way. Then a thin smile grows on her face. “Got it,” she says. She twists the rods simultaneously and the lock spins, shifting the dead bolt.

“Let me just say,” I tell her, “I am
so
glad I brought you with me.”

“I’m glad I came.” She passes the stalks back to me and I pocket them both.

I don’t know what I’m expecting to find in here. A fairy prison? A sweatshop full of enchanted creatures? An army of dull eyes and clipped wings? Whatever I’m expecting, it’s not this.

Fiona has opened the door onto nothing more than another room full of fairydust shelves and arcane refinery equipment. In the center is a large, stainless steel table, something you’d expect to find in a thaumaturgical laboratory. Suspended above the table is a bright white lamp, glaring down on a single object.

“Is that a branch of deadwood?”

“Looks like it,” I whisper.

“So where are all the fairies?”

“I don’t know.” I reach out and touch the branch that’s lying there, gnarled and twisted. I run the pads of my fingers over the hard white surface.

“Henry,” Fiona whispers. “I found something.”

She’s over in the corner near a door. It’s hidden on the far side of a cabinet and it’s not locked. As soon as she opens it, we’re hit with a terrible stench. It smells like—like—well, there’s no other way to put it. It smells like
shit
, a whole room of it. For some reason, the smell frightens me more than anything else I’ve ever sniffed. There are noises, too. Frightening, unintelligible grunts. Fiona goes in first and I follow, keeping a firm grip on her shoulders.

“Oh my God,” she whispers.

The room is full of cages. But there are no fairies. Behind every set of bars, there’s a—
wolf?
Maybe that’s what you’d call them, but none of these are like me or Fiona or any other wolf I know. These things are primitive beasts. Naked, mindless animals. These are primordial creatures, the animals you only see on the posters in Mrs. L’s biology class, posters used to teach us about evolution and our primitive ancestry.

Wolves like this don’t exist anymore.

I crouch down for a closer look. I’m fascinated and repelled. These are savages. Their forepaws and hind feet look almost identical, with fingers and toes that are little more than clawed nubs. Yet still, there’s something majestic about them. The way they move, the way they pace in their cages, circling round and round. Imagine being down on all fours, all the time, unable to stand up. Just from looking at them, I know that if we were out in the open, racing through a field, any one of these creatures would beat me every time.

“Henry, look.”

Once again, Fiona’s found another door, this time behind a different cabinet. It seems all the rooms are linked along rear passages.

“There are more of them,” she says.

The next room stinks with a wetter, tangier kind of excrement. It’s also full of cages, but smaller ones, shaped like bullets standing on end. Each cage imprisons a tiny raven, no taller than a pumpkin. When they see us, they flap
and squawk. Dull black eyes flit with terror as we lope past their bars. We must look like monsters to them.

We keep going. Every room houses another species. There’s a room for mules, one each for cats, frogs, pigs, goats. There’s a room full of foxes. I notice they are much like the wolves, only smaller. But they’re just as fierce with energy, padding in cramped circles on primitive paws, careful to sidestep the piles of their own waste.

Fiona’s taking rolls of pictures. It feels like we haven’t said a word in ages.

“Wait,” I say. I crouch down in front of one particular cage. Inside, there’s a gray fox, lurching in circles on four ancient legs. Two shocking black streaks slide along either side of its snout, and its eyes—they’re sodium yellow and shot through with flecks of violet.

“I know this one.”

Fiona comes closer. “What do you mean you know it? How can you—?” Her voice breaks up as it dawns on her. “You mean?”

“His name was Jerry. He was homeless, I think. Sold dust on the street.”

“It’s a coincidence. It only
looks
like someone. It’s not possible.”

“It’s his eyes.”

We both peer into the cage, into Jerry’s distinctive face. In response, seeing the hairy mugs of these two enormous wolves looming over him, Jerry growls. He bares his tiny
perfect teeth and coughs up a bark so small and meaningless it makes me feel nothing but deep sadness.

“But Henry, how? If they used dust—if they used magic—to do this to him, it would’ve worn off by now. It’s impossible.”

“Not for fairies,” I say. “Not for old-time magic.”

“Fairies would
never
do something like this.”

“What if they didn’t have a choice?” I think about what Jerry told me, when he caught me reading Dad’s letters. Good destinies and bad destinies. Old-time magic could send you either way. That’s what this is. A bad destiny. The worst kind of all. A destiny that doesn’t push you forward to some unfulfilled potential, but backward, devolving you to savagery.

Fiona covers her mouth. “So that means . . . in all these rooms?”

“What else can it mean?”

She lets out a tiny cry. “Remember what they said? ‘Total market saturation.’”

Of course. “That’s why Nimbus is down here with the nixies. They control Dockside, and that means the reservoir. Let’s say Nimbus produced a dust potent enough to use in the water system . . .” I gaze around the room. Everywhere, tiny foxes scratch hopelessly against iron bars. “We could all end up like this.”

For a moment, neither of us can speak.

“But then . . .” Fiona looks around. “Where are the fairies?
When they talked about them just now, they were looking right up here. But all that’s here are these—I don’t know—these
animals
.”

“When they talked about the fairies, they were looking up, but not up here. They were looking up to—”

“Eden.”

We both flinch. It wasn’t Fiona who completed my thought.

It was Skinner. He’s standing in the exit that leads out to the scaffolds. We were so shocked by what we were seeing, we never even heard him open the door. Behind him stands a whole army of globs.

“Good,” he says, chewing on yet another stalk of straw. “Just the wolf I was looking for.” His disfigurements crack into an ominous grin. “I have a job for you, Mr. Whelp. And I know you’ll do it, too. After all”—he looks at Fiona—“you were kind enough to bring me a hostage.”

Fiona growls from deep in her throat and the foxes respond in kind, braying and barking and leaping in their cages.

“That reminds me,” says Skinner. “We shall have to find you two
animals
a cage for the night.”