Dust Girl: The American Fairy Trilogy Book 1 (25 page)

“Well now.” Mr. Basie smiled, but his voice was hoarse from smoke and thirst. “What can I do for you?”

“I just wanted to say how much I’ve been enjoying your music,” I said. Then I whispered, “How long have you been here, Mr. Basie?”

Count Basie blinked, then coughed. “You ain’t like them,” he whispered back. “You gotta get outta here.”

“We’re all gettin’ outta here,” I told him. I couldn’t leave these other people any more than I could leave Jack. It wouldn’t be right.

Mr. Basie was looking toward the throne. “I took this gig and I thought, I thought I’d be gettin’ me some good luck with it.” He shook his head. “Ain’t been like that so much.”

“Can you play ‘Midnight Special’?” I asked.

“That ain’t a dance tune. They”—he nodded toward my relatives—“might not like it.”

“Then you turn it into a dance tune. Make it swing. You can do it. Please, Mr. Basie.”

The piano player looked at me a long time. He had seen the fairy in me; now I had to pray he saw the human.

“Okay.” He nodded. “Freddie!” He jerked his chin to the guitar player. They conferred for a moment, shuffling around sheets of music. The rest of the band kept on playing. The trumpet and the saxophone wailed to each other, carrying on the dance.

Grandmother glanced at me. I smiled big and broad at her and swayed a little, moving my fingers like I was snapping them. Jack swayed where he stood, but he stared at the buffet tables heaped with food like he couldn’t see anything else.

Freddie was back with the band, giving them their instructions. Somewhere a long ways away, a siren sounded.

“And now, ladies and gentlemen,” said Mr. Basie with a smile that was as bright as any Shake had ever used against me, “me and the boys would like to do our version of ‘The Midnight Special.’ And as an extra treat, we have Fairyland’s very own Callie LeRoux to sing for us. Miss Callie?”

Applause rose up all around me. I had to let go of Jack’s hand. He dropped into a chair beside the piano. My grandparents’ approval poured over me as I stepped up to the microphone. I was adding to the current of music and magic. They were happy about that. They wanted me to sweep all these people away and be swept away myself.

The microphone was big and square and shining black and silver in the fairy lights. I thought about Mama’s humming as she moved around the Imperial, singing a song about wishing for freedom. I thought about the hobo families in the train yard. I thought about Jack’s hand in mine as
we ran from Bull Morgan, and how Jack always seemed to know which way to go.

I opened my mouth, and I sang.

“Let the Midnight Special shine a light on me …”

The current of magic around me doubled. I wasn’t just in it now, I was truly a part of it. I could feel the people dance. I could feel their love and their happiness to have all their wishes fulfilled, and how that good feeling meant more than anything in the world. More than life itself.

“Ain’t nothin’ on the table, ain’t nothin’ in the pan …”

Mr. Basie played. It was the tune I knew, but it leapt and danced all on its own, the meaning of the words hidden down deep behind the syncopation. The music had power, but not from the fairy magic. Mr. Basie was right; this wasn’t their song. This wasn’t a happy dance tune. This was a song of the dust and the trains and everybody trapped on the work gangs, wishing they would lose their chains. This was the song my mama sang to me, wishing for my papa to come home.

“Yonder come Miss Lucy. How in the world do you know?”

I swayed and I turned, dancing there all on my own. On the floor, someone faltered, and someone fell. I turned again, not fighting the current, letting it carry me around. Like the words, the power of this song was hidden deep down, but I could feel it. It was an entirely different spark from the fairy power. It burned, burned as bright as the matches and the cigarettes the musicians brought in with them.

“She come to see the governor. She gonna free her man …”

I grabbed the cigarette burning in the tray, and I stabbed that nasty thing hard against Mr. Basie’s sheet music. The sharp smell of smoke hit me a second before the yellow flame jumped up.

Mr. Basie jumped up too.

“Fire!” he yelled. “Fire!”

I snatched the paper. Heat bit my fingertips. But I didn’t wave the flame out; I ran for the curtains rippling behind the bandstand and dropped the burning paper on the floor. The heavy velveteen caught, and the flames started licking their way up the dark fabric.

The musicians took up Mr. Basie’s shout. “Fire! Fire!” They grabbed their instruments and ran for the doors.

Slowly, the dancers staggered to a halt. They blinked. I felt the moment every one of them smelled the smoke, and the moment they saw the flames chewing on the curtains.

They screamed. They screamed and broke and ran, following the musicians racing for the big open doors.

“Stop!” shouted a bass voice. It was Grandfather, on his feet in front of his throne. “Stop!”

But fire is stronger than magic, and it was spreading. It was licking across the curtains. One of the trumpet players tripped over his chair, and a bunch of chairs and papers and drinks spilled across the bandstand. The liquid hit the burning curtains, and blue alcohol flames leapt up from the floor. The pavilion was burning, and the crowd was shoving its
way out the doors, past the point where any glamour, any wishing magic could call them back.

“Time to go, Jack.” I grabbed his hand. He blinked too, and looked at me, really looked at me. He was still sick and gray and weak, but he was back. He stumbled to his feet behind me.

The doorway was clogged with struggling people. There was no getting out that way. But there were windows. I jerked open the curtains and saw the bright lights of the midway. Jack and I knew what to do with windows.

Jack yanked off his tuxedo jacket and I pressed my hand right up against his, lacing our fingers. He got the idea and wrapped the jacket around both our arms, tying us together.

“On three!” I reached for my magic. Jack reached for the last of his strength. “One, two, three!”

“STOP!” The force of wish and will tumbled over us, but it was too late. Together, we punched out that sparkling glass. The world key turned, and turned again. I grabbed Jack’s shoulders, pulled us forward, and we fell.

And we kept on falling.

We fell through a blaze of color. We tumbled and pinged and slammed back and forth. Jack screamed. I screamed. I wanted to pull out my powers and stop the storm. But if I did, we’d stop flying. We’d be stuck in whatever world this was. Their world.

I let us fall.

We hit the boardwalk hard. I screamed some more, and Jack cussed and groaned. I couldn’t see straight. The crazy colors we fell through had blinded me. But then I smelled the smoke and cotton candy. I heard the other screams, and something in my brain beyond all the magic jerked itself upright and took me with it. The world cleared, and we were in the amusement park again.

The white pavilion was burning down. People streamed
out of the building, adding their screams to the roar of the fire. There were sirens and bells clanging, and everybody who wasn’t running away from the fire was running toward it to watch the show and cheer it on. A fire engine thundered up the boardwalk, and men in heavy coats and red helmets swarmed out and started shouting orders.

“We made it,” gasped Jack. He was doubled over, his hand pressed against his belly. “We made it.”

But I looked up and saw the green-skinned carnival barker who’d given me my ring. The goblin from the test-of-strength tower sat on the counter at his right hand, and they both had their beady fairy eyes trained on me.

“Not yet, we haven’t,” I said, more to myself than to Jack. We were back in the tunnel, the passage between. I grabbed Jack’s arm. “Come on, we got to get to the outside gate.”

But Jack staggered forward two steps and sank to his knees.

“I can’t …,” he gasped. “I can’t.…”

He had to. I looked around us and spied an abandoned cart advertising soda pop, five cents a bottle. I reached into its cooler, grabbed a bottle of root beer, and used the opener. I felt no magic or glamour around it, and I ran back to Jack.

He turned the bottle up and drank that root beer like he meant to down it in a single gulp. The screams had lessened, but the smoke was filling the air around us and firelight flickered on the boards. White sparks flew overhead,
and the artificial lights all winked. There was just the fire now.

“Come on, come on, come on,” I murmured, hoping Jack wouldn’t hear me over all the other noise.

But that was a mistake. Because that was me making a wish.

Thhhheeeerrrre shhhheeee issss.…
It was the voice again, the soft, beautiful, deep voice that had followed me from that first awful day when I’d wished so hard to get out of Slow Run.

No. Oh, no, no, no, not
here
!
“Get up, Jack! They’re coming!”

Jack surged to his feet. He followed me as I ran through the heat and the flickering firelight. The stupid Mary Janes pinched my toes, and the slick leather soles skidded against the boards, making me stumble.

“Calliope!” a woman’s voice called. “Calliope, where are you going, child? Come home!”

Hearing the sound of my name was like slamming up against a brick wall. I couldn’t go forward. It hurt. My feet turned, skidding and sloppy under me.

“Come home!” called Grandmother. “Calliope deMinuit! Come home!”

“Callie, no!” Jack grabbed for my hand.

But Jack wasn’t strong enough. I was slogging forward, as helpless against the pull of my own name as he had been against the pull of the dance music.

The touch of Jack’s hand slipped away. He was gone,
run off. Again. He’d left me alone to stumble through the stinking smoke and hot ash toward the fire. The little imps in evening dress circled around my knees, cheering. I looked up and saw my grandparents silhouetted against the flames, their arms out in welcome. A deep hole filled with the swirling colors of madness opened behind them.

WHAM!

I was sprawled on my belly. Jack rolled off me before I knew what had hit me, and he stuffed something in my hands. I stared.

It was a frying pan. A big black cast-iron frying pan. Over his shoulder I saw the lunch counter with its stove top, and the human fry cook hollering and leaping over the counter.

“Calliope deMinuit!” called Grandmother again.

But this time, the drag was gone. Jack looked down at me and grinned.

“Let’s go!” he said.

I was on my feet and we ran, fast and crazy, away from the fry cook and my grandparents and everything. We were going toward the gate. I didn’t need my magic to tell me. Jack always knew the right way to go.

The shot exploded past my ear without warning.

I screamed, Jack screamed, and we both faltered and skidded sideways around the Tilt-A-Whirl.

Bull Morgan walked out of the smoke. And he wasn’t alone. A slim male silhouette walked beside him.

Where issss shhhheeee?
The voice rode the wind and swirled together with the smoke.

“There!” said Bull Morgan, who despite everything was a human being and couldn’t be fooled by iron or steel. He pointed at us with his revolver.

“Thou good and faithful servant!” laughed the man at his side. No. Not a man. I knew the voice now. I’d heard it calling to Bull Morgan, raising him up and driving him back down into the dust. But I’d also heard it singing “St. James Infirmary Blues” in a deserted honky-tonk, and trying to talk me into believing lies about who my father was.

It hadn’t been the Seelie who had sent Morgan after us. It had been my uncle, my father’s younger brother, the one who would have been the heir to the Midnight Throne if it wasn’t for me being born. The one who told me straight-out that I was the heir, as long as I drew breath.

“You’re slow, Callie deMinuit.” Uncle Lorcan smiled his big white smile down at me. “But then, so was your papa.” He turned calmly to Bull Morgan. “Shoot them. We’ll toss them into the fire afterward.”

“You planned this. You wanted me to start the fire so you could kill me and make it look like an accident.”

He bowed. “Their Majesties would be most upset if I spilled family blood, even bastard blood. But a tragic accident, precipitated by your unwise passion for this little mortal boy … ah, well. Shoot them,” he said again to Morgan.

“You left Shimmy to die,” I croaked. “You never told her she was helping to get me killed.”

“Poor Shimmy.” He shook his head, but his smile never once wavered. “She was so anxious to curry the favor of the court. As if any half-and-half who wasn’t the prophecy girl could ever find welcome here. Yes, I used her, and she was glad to be used.”

“She never let me down.”

“Never, pathetic creature.”

“She’s behind you!”

He jerked around. I whacked him hard with my frying pan in the small of the back. Jack tackled Bull Morgan, and they rolled over and over on the boardwalk. The ground shook underneath us. The boardwalk was made of wood, and it was still burning. There was a shot. The frying pan in my hands shuddered, and something smacked against my head so hard I staggered. Something went squelch. Now I couldn’t see straight. Salt stung my eyes, and all the strength left my hands, so I had to drop the frying pan.

“Callie!” Jack grabbed my hand and dragged me after him. “You gotta wish us outta here, Callie!”

But I couldn’t see. There was something dark getting into my eyes. My ears rang louder than the fire alarms. My head was burning, and I wondered if I’d caught fire.

“Stop!” bawled Morgan. “Stop in the name of the law!”

“ ‘The Midnight Special,’ Callie!” cried Jack. “Sing it!”

I wanted to get away. I wanted to get Jack away. I felt my name being called, and I had no iron to get in the way of that summons. I opened my mouth, but I could only whisper:

“Let the Midnight Special shine a light on me …”

My head was spinning. I couldn’t hold my thoughts together. All the other train songs rattled around in my frightened skull: “Rock Island Line,” “This Train,” “Little Black Train.” All the words all mixed up in the wishes and commands and fire.