Ghost of Doors (City of Doors)

by Jennifer Paetsch

  "You never know, son. It might save your life."

  Wolfgang held it reverently. "Thanks, Dad. What did you used to fight with?"

  "Something a little more direct," he said, and produced a handgun from an end table drawer. He waggled it a little, then returned it to its resting place. "Without bullets, it's pretty useless. I haven't asked for any more because SUN and I have made better weapons since then, like my snare gun. It creates a temporal pocket in any reflective object to trap fae in. Powerful, but has to be recharged often. And of course, against humans, there's always the soul stealer, but there's no point in using it here."

  Marie fluttered her eyes as if waking from sleep. "Soul stealer?" she asked.

  Dr. Schäfer nodded. He showed her a needle-like device, no larger than the barrel of a pistol. "It doesn't seem like much, but when this is attached to a weapon, it can drain the life force from its victim, in the same way that a ghoul or a wraith does."

  "Interesting," she said. "Then what?"

  "Well, then it can be used in the same way those monsters might use a human’s life force: For food, or to create something."

  "Life force in a can?" she asked.

  "Basically, yes." He put the soul stealer away and went back to delving into various drawers as he had been when they had first arrived. "Anyway, for the knife, we can find something to use as a holster...somewhere in this mess. And...oh my," he added as he discovered a slim, dark stone like a long teardrop, its golden chain swinging wildly, seeking escape. He used two hands to hold it as a snake handler might, keeping it gingerly restrained. "Here's something important. Speaking of souls." It was cold in Wolfgang's hand, strange in something so small. "You would do well to wear that." Wolfgang searched for a clue as to what his father meant in its dark surface, but it answered him only with the reflection of a pale blue eye. "Go ahead. Put it on. No, no, not with the ward. You have to take that off." Not wanting to doubt his father, he none-the-less offered a confused glance at Marie, who, for once, mimicked him. But he did as his father told him, unclasped the iron token, and slipped it into his pocket to join the other. He didn't feel any different after putting the dark stone on, but he trusted his father knew what he was talking about. "It's something new I've designed. Something for all the humans in Doors. You'll see. Soon they'll be everywhere. Well, wherever there are souls, anyway."

  "Do I have to do anything...?"

  "No." His father's slight smile grew taut. "It will work when the time is right."

  "What will it do?" Marie asked.

  "Keep him from doing something he'll regret."

  "I already regret it," said Pilgrim. "Even if he doesn't. I think Doors needs him way more than he thinks."

  Wolfgang kept his skepticism to himself.

  It wasn't long before his father found what he was looking for, and handed a leather-and-steel sheath to his son. "For the knife. You might also want this map," he said, handing it over. Wolfgang waved a little moth away from the nearby candlelight as he spread out the map before it. Hand-drawn and yellowed, the map fractured at the edges as it unfolded. A bird's-eye view of a place he had never been--the Hindernis--lay before him, and he tried to commit to memory the position and names of some of the larger regions of the map. As the names seemed to indicate what he would find there, he wasn't so sure he wanted to visit "Fog That Blinds" or "Vomit Water" all that much. "That should do. And Wolfgang," his father added, "you should probably go back home and say goodbye to your mother properly."

  Wolfgang refolded the map and eased the knife into the sheath--it fit perfectly. "I will."

  ☽☉✩

  OUTSIDE ON THE STREET, MARIE leaned over Pilgrim to climb aboard, her long, blond hair melting across her arms in the summer sun, and slid a leg easily over the horse's side as he knelt down before her. Her face, elegant and haughty, caught the afternoon light that shifted, diffused through the trees into a gentle glow. The sudden realization that her beauty was stolen struck him. Someone else had had that face--another child had been born with that face. A child who had never lived to see a single birthday because Marie had taken her place. Marie's parents saw to that, or else she wouldn't be here, now, riding through Doors with him on Pilgrim.

  Seeing that Dr. Schäfer's Touren-AWO had already started off, Pilgrim stood and took a brisk pace on the empty setted street. Wolfgang turned around quickly in his place in front of her so he wouldn't have to look her in the eye. "Marie," he began, "have you ever thought about having children?"

  There was a pause. "Why?" she said slyly. "Are you asking..?"

  He chuckled. "That's not what I meant. I meant, if you have children, could you...do what you might have to do."

  "Oh, I know what I have to do to have children," she said, leaning forward and pressing her cat suit hard against the back of his hooded sweat shirt as the trotting tossed them up and down. "Want me to show you?"

  "No, I mean..." He struggled to get his words right--something that was becoming increasingly harder to do. He doubted that this line of thought was even worth discussing. The summer day, warm and alive with its unearthly glow, made it a terrible day to leave. It was deceptive in its gentleness, and the city, on its surface, was a wonderland of ethereal peace despite the tragedy of the door. It made a person feel strong, no matter how weak and helpless he really was. It was as charming as the girl on his horse, a woman he knew better than he knew himself and yet didn't know at all, like a child who knows the ocean because he lives near the seashore but only explores the water up to his knees.

  It would be easy to love Marie. He had come to that conclusion a long time ago. But why she was interested in him wasn't too clear; at least he couldn't see it. He used to think she was interested in everyone because he confused her charm for desire, but she spent too much time with him and was too aggressive for that to be true. Maybe that was it--the more he drew away, the harder she pulled on him. After all, he was merely human. The only human who could resist her, who chose to resist her. And why?

  Just as the city held a glamour, just as the ocean was sparkling and scintillating on the surface, unseen were the abattoirs, unseen were the sharks. Ugly things. Things that were hard to deal with and even harder to understand. Why did it have to be like that? "If you had children, you'd have to leave them in another world. And you might have to...murder another child. To leave yours in its place." The clamour of horse's hooves cursed him for Marie in the looming space before her reply.

  "I know how it works," she said quietly. He turned around as far as he could in his seat, but he still could barely make out her face, in the fuzzy part of his vision behind his glasses. She must have realized he was expecting an answer, so she added simply, "I try not to think about it."

  He turned back around to face front. "I do."

  "You shouldn't."

  "Why not?"

  "Because it might never happen. For all sorts of reasons." He could hear her sad smile when she spoke; he didn't need to see it. "Is that a good answer?"

  "Is that an honest answer?"

  "Honest enough."

  "Then it must be good enough."

  If the weather in Doors was a living thing--and Wolfgang wasn't so sure that it wasn't--it wouldn't be too hard to imagine that it was as fickle as every other creature that called it home. Wolfgang shivered slightly at the breeze that assaulted him through the rustling trees above. Believing it to be meaningful, he turned and started at the scintillating figure that formed behind them. The dust and linden blossoms Pilgrim kicked up swirled around it, drawn to it, as if trying to become a part of it.

  "Hey, what's up?" the figure asked, solidifying from a human-like white mist into a young man, all cropped hair kaleidoscope colors and shapes, threadbare T-shirt, dirt-stained canvas sneakers, and ill-fitting fitting jeans. "Where you guys goin' on this beautiful day I made?"

  "Where no sprite has gone before," Wolfgang said.

  "Hey, I ain't a sprite," Johnny said, hovering easily alongside the horse. "I'm
a zephyr, dude. A howlin' tempest; a force a' nature--"

  "You mean, 'freak of nature,'" Marie said.

  He grinned in spite of himself. "Yeah. And you like that, doncha?"

  Maybe he'd thought she was kidding, but her growing sneer was harsher than any slap in the face, at least to Wolfgang. "I like a guy who sticks with a plan best of all."

  The lanky cherub scowled. "It ain't my fault the city shifted, Marie. Pretty sure it was already too late when I got there." Short, pale yellow curls hovered around his head like wisps of summer clouds, breaking away and changing color as they went, giving him the incongruous appearance of a halo. The occasional St. Elmo's fire crackled through. "When all the doors on the block lock and go red, whatcha gonna do?" Wolfgang chewed on his lower lip. He knew that Marie had her doubts about a zephyr that couldn't get anywhere on time, particularly when her own life was at stake. More than once the word "double agent" had left her lips when talking about Johnny Merriweather, and, as much as Wolfgang didn't like where those thoughts led, he had to admit it was possible, perhaps even the only logical conclusion anyone could draw. "Anyway, I only sunk to your level because it looks like you could use some help with your sense of direction. A little bird told me you're headed to No-Man's-Land."

  Wolfgang grimaced. He felt exposed. Just as Marie had said, there was no place in Doors that was private. "Maybe," Wolfgang replied.

  "You guys got a death wish or something? Whattaya wanna go there for?"

  "Since you've been spying on us for at least as long as we've been here on the street, you should already know that."

  "Hey, it's kind of hard not to follow people when you're doing an eagle's eye view all the time. You see a lot up there. Trust me." Wolfgang didn't doubt this. And being nosy--Johnny's natural state--didn't hurt.

  "Listen, Johnny," Wolfgang explained, unable to put away his anger, "I'm trying to get to the human world and I don't want anyone to know."

  "Woah, ok." He held his hands up in mock fear. "What's with the friggin' mystery, Sherlock?"

  "The mystery is why no one's punched your pushy face in yet."

  "Yeah, yeah, okay, I hear ya." Johnny waved a hand at him in a sort of dismissive, weak salute. His eyebrows raised into his tousled hair-mist as he asked, "Yo, Marie, you got the feeling we're being watched?"

  Pilgrim slowed and stopped. They were back in Wolfgang's neighborhood, almost to the block where the door had imploded. A sudden cold wind fondled Marie's hair, pawed slick fingers through it and spread it out wildly, then pushed past her and Wolfgang. He could smell river water and dank leaves in its touch as the neighborhood darkened from the clouds it brought drifting past the sun. Johnny looked up, his eyes distant, seeing or feeling something in the wind that only a zephyr could. It was then Wolfgang noticed one of the doors at the end of the street was no longer blue. It had gone red, and Wolfgang was sure that when they had left, the entire block, all the way around, had been blue. Marie suddenly looked distracted, her eyes and head shifting slightly to one side, a listening posture.

  "Is the street--?"

  Marie had held up a finger to shush him and she listened, her eyes narrowing in concentration to slits of gleaming blue-green. "We can't go yet," she said.

  "What's wrong?"

  "This block is shifting," she explained. "All around us, it's red. It's only a matter of time before they assimilate the rest."

  Wolfgang cringed. Since before he was born, SUN had control of this ward. His family's apartment was on the adjoining block. How long would it be before the whole ward fell to MOON?

  "Then I'll stay and help," he said. "We can go when it's over."

  She took out another cigarette and a match from somewhere on her cat suit with a natural sleight of hand that rivaled magic. "Fair enough," she said, lighting up.

  "Yeah, well, I don't want to be no party pooper," Johnny said as a wisp of Marie's cigarette smoke became a curl in his hair, "but I don't want to die, especially not for you."

  Wolfgang bristled. "Who said you had to?" he asked.

  "I mean, for humans," Johnny explained. "In general. I'm beginning to rethink this whole 'humans are just like us' stuff."

  "Aren't we?" Wolfgang asked.

  "Can you fly?" Johnny asked.

  "Look, SUN has a plan..." Marie began.

  "No they don't!" Johnny argued. "Trust me. They just want us here as a living blockade. Soon to be a dead blockade. For the greater good, or some crap. What about my good? Why is theirs greater than mine? Don't I count, too?"

  "Okay, so humans suck. Fine. What about this neighborhood? These are your own people."

  "The neighborhood was going to turn, Wolfgang," Johnny said. "With or without us. That's why most of SUN already beat it out of here a long time ago. That's why the neighborhood is gone. If we get in MOON's way, it's only going to slow them down, not stop them."

  "That's a crappy way of looking at it," Wolfgang said.

  "Dying is worse than having a crappy attitude," said Johnny. "Look, I think we should fight them, too. But not like this, where we can't win. SUN needs more foot soldiers, or it's just a matter of time." He rose up high above the ground, looking like he was going to take off any second, as if he wanted to escape just before it was too late, if he had to. "What about you, Wolfgang? You joined SUN yet?"

  Wolfgang didn't answer. Johnny knew as well as anyone that Wolfgang wanted no part in Doors anymore. He had, in fact, just told him that he wanted to leave.

  "You remember," Johnny goaded, "SUN, the only faction in Doors who actually bends over backwards to protect humans?"

  Marie avoided everyone's gaze. Even Pilgrim volunteered nothing. Wolfgang knew where his friends stood. No one wanted him to leave this hell.

  "No," Wolfgang answered finally, when it became apparent that Johnny wouldn't budge until he got his answer--until Wolfgang admitted that Johnny was right.

  "Yeah, that's what I thought. Don't you want to help your 'own people?' SUN is on your side, fighting for you. And you won't even join them. But I'm the bad guy. Whatever." And with that, he lunged deep into the sky, looking for all the world like a white rocket streaking through the gathering clouds.

  "He's right," Marie said with a soft sigh. "What can the two of us do when MOON bursts through those doors from the human world?"

  "Wait a minute," Wolfgang said, "you mean no one else is coming? Where is everyone?"

  "Holding off other parts of the city," Marie explained. She took a deep drag on her cigarette. "Wolfgang," she said quietly. "Sometimes I don't know what you want from me. I'm just a shapeshifter."

  "I know, Marie, I know." He patted Pilgrim gently. Lost in thought for a moment, Wolfgang scanned the empty streets. His father would be several minutes. Cars and motorcycles, mere status symbols here, always traveled slower than the fae, who could by nature move much faster, some faster than a human could think. "My mom should be at home. I wonder why she hasn't shown up yet." Shrugging, Marie put out her cigarette. Looking up at his parents' apartment building, he said, "Let's go find out."

  Chapter 3

  THE DOOR TO HIS FAMILY'S apartment building and the door to the apartment itself were just normal doors. There were, of course, many like them in the city, maybe more of them than the enchanted kind. Wolfgang got a strange feeling before entering his family's apartment. It had been set on fire and burned to a cinder on the other side of that door, everything inside burnt to a charred, black mess, and the front was a facade. The door gave way to his trembling key easily enough, and after that sickening premonition, he was relieved to see that it all looked perfectly pleasant, his mother bustling about in the kitchen just to the right of the entrance. "Hey, mom," he said, stepping inside and making way for Marie. The place even smelled of the tell-tale freshness that said mom had been cleaning, a weak combination of old stone walls, vinegar, and lemons. What had made him envision a blackened shell of death? For once, he was grateful he was wrong. When he had premonitions, they were usually right. "What
are you doing? The block is turning. We have to go."

  She laughed at that, but Wolfgang didn't know what was so funny. "Oh, that's nothing to worry about," she said. There was something creepy and unpleasant about her smile, as if she was holding back a great deal of pain. "You have a lot more to worry about right here." Gun in his face, he started as her voice deepened to a snarl. "I'm really going to enjoy this."

  Before Wolfgang or Marie could react, Lorelei pulled the trigger. The gun made a slow whine, then nothing. Eyes wide, she sputtered at the gun, "But-- what--"

  That was all she got out when Wolfgang struck with Vogelfang, knocking the gun swiftly from her grip after connecting with her fingers hard. Using more than enough force against a fellow changeling taken by surprise, Marie slid forward and shoved her to the floor.

  "Hey, be careful," Wolfgang scolded. "That's my mom!"

  "Out," Marie said, shoving Wolfgang through the open door. As they darted into the apartment stairwell, she added, "She might be your mom, but I think she's trying to kill you. Shut the door." Pulled hard, the door swung fast when something blocked it at the last moment. A scream followed, and as Wolfgang struggled, he felt himself losing, Lorelei on the other side pulling back with a strength only the Fair Folk were capable of.

  Marie took over. After pushing the door hard inward to knock Lorelei off balance, she pulled with all her strength. The scream that burst through the door was deafening. Inhuman. Demonic. But no one saw what had dropped from the door and now laid on the welcome mat.

  It was a finger.

  Grabbing Wolfgang's arm, Marie tugged him along, almost carrying him as she fled down the stairs. "Are you crazy?" he howled at Marie. "My mom--"