Golden Girl

by Sarah Zettel

  “Wh-what?” Ivy drew back a step, confused.

  I strained with all my might, and slowly, painfully, my finger slid off the gun’s trigger. “We’ll bust out of here, one way or another. You can come with us.”

  She glanced at Jack. He turned his back on me. I couldn’t lower the gun, but he could take both Ivy’s hands. “Do it, Ivy. Come with us.”

  Jealousy tried to surface and shift my finger back. I fought it, harder than I’d ever fought any monster.

  “I can’t promise you power or movies or anything, but I know you could stay with us,” I said. “My parents would understand.”

  A sob caught in Ivy’s throat. “You don’t want me around any more than anybody else. You think I’m after Jack.”

  “That’s gonna be what it’s gonna be.” I was proud of myself for getting those words out at all, considering. The iron bar that seemed to be holding my arm in place gave way, just a little, and I was able to lower the gun, just a little. “But you don’t have to stay here and be a stooge for somebody who kicked you out when you didn’t measure up. You can come with us and just … be Ivy.”

  “But Ivy’s nobody,” she whispered.

  “She could be somebody if she had a chance,” said Jack. “But she’ll never get that chance if she stays here.”

  The gun lowered another tick. The room was beginning to blur around us. The movie was fading to black. We were getting past the story, back to real life.

  “You said you wanted a real friend, Ivy. This is what real friends do. We can help each other get out of here, all of us.”

  She swallowed. “But what about … what about …” She wrapped her hand around Jack’s. My arm quivered. We were back in the lamplight at the top of the marble stairs. The Midnight Club and the movie lights were all gone. But those masked fairies were back; so was the Seelie king. They all watched, and listened to the question Ivy asked, and we all knew what she really meant. There was nothing I could do. I still held the gun, though. I could still lose this. I gritted my teeth, drew up every bit of self and strength I had, and pointed that gun I’d been given—the one I was supposed to try to kill my rival with—toward the floor.

  The Seelie king and Miss Davies sat grim-faced. Beyond them, I saw my parents. They were moving—slowly and stiffly, but they were moving. Straightening up, lowering their arms, blinking at the world around them, at the Seelie king and his consort. At me.

  I’d won. I’d won. It had already happened. Jack had already decided. The contest was over, and the spell was already broken. I knew it.

  But what Ivy Bright knew was that she’d failed.

  “I’m sorry, Ivy,” Jack was saying to her. “I really am. But that doesn’t mean—”

  Ivy screamed. She hurled herself past him right at me, her fingers hooked, ready to claw my eyes out. Somebody else screamed, and hands grabbed me from behind. Ivy was right against my face, and I jerked my hands up to shove her away.

  The gun went off. Its thunderclap echoed off walls and hills. The kick knocked me back, and Mama’s arms enveloped me, pulling me away.

  In front of me, Ivy’s blue eyes went wide, and she fell back. But she had no one behind her, just the flight of stairs. She fell, rolling down the expanse of white marble, leaving a trail of scarlet behind.

  “No!” Jack dove after her.

  I stared at the gun. I stared at the Seelie king and Miss Davies, neither of whom had moved. I stared at my parents, whose freedom I had just won.

  I tossed the gun away and ran down the stairs.

  The masquerade crowd was still there. They all drew back. Not like the patrons in the nightclub scene trying to save themselves, but like people trying not to get their hems dirty. Jack crouched beside Ivy. She was bent in all kinds of wrong directions, but none of that was as bad as the big red stain in the middle of her chest.

  I dropped to my knees and grabbed her face in both hands. I had my magic back. I could feel it, and I shoved it out toward her like a lifeline. “Come back, Ivy. Come back!”

  Slowly she turned her face in my hands. Slowly her eyes blinked at me.

  “That’s it, Ivy. You can do it. Come back.”

  Her mouth struggled for a minute, and finally she croaked, “What for? You won.”

  And just like that, Ivy Bright died.

  24

  Your Castles Come

  Tumblin’ Down

  I stood up. I couldn’t feel my hands. My head was spinning and the world was going gray at the edges. Bony arms wrapped around me and turned me away from Ivy’s broken body.

  Mama. She looked thin. The tattered ballerina outfit was truly pathetic on her, and she still had gray Kansas dust on her arms. I hugged her hard, and she hugged me back. I smelled that dust and felt her hot tears on my forehead.

  “Callie.” My mama rocked me back and forth. “It’s okay, Callie. It’s okay.”

  It wasn’t. I’d killed a girl who was just like me. She’d just wanted her parents and to be part of a family.

  But at the same time, I was in Mama’s arms for the first time in forever.

  “Margaret?”

  Mama and I lifted our faces. Papa was standing there, staring, a prince of the fairy world who could not believe what he saw.

  “Daniel?” Mama reached out her hand. “Oh my God—Daniel.”

  Their fingers touched, then knotted around each other.

  A shadow fell over us all. The Seelie king had gotten to his feet. There was a smile on his face like nothing I’d ever seen. It was ten times worse than Lorcan’s. A thousand times.

  “You killed her,” he said, climbing ponderously down the steps. “You killed my daughter.”

  Papa pulled my mother and me back, getting between us and the king. Jack stood slowly, his face soaked with tears.

  “This is your fault!” Ivy’s blood stained Jack’s shirt and hands. “You did it on purpose!”

  “I did nothing.” The king was down on the deck now, with his court closing in at his back. Beads and sequins sparkled in the lamplight, but their eyes remained blank, black holes. Miss Davies hadn’t moved. Her daughter was dead down here with us, and she stayed up there patting her curls back into place.

  “The terms of the contest have been met.” Papa drew himself up. I felt a shiver of magic. The clown outfit and makeup were gone. He was neatly dressed in a dark suit with gloves and a hat. He looked serious and dignified. He looked like a prince. He’d fixed up Mama too. She was clean and dressed for church, all sober and respectable. “You cannot interfere.”

  “Oh, no,” replied the king. “She was killed after the contest was won. That makes it murder, Donchail deMinuit. Murder by your daughter’s hand. Murder done against the Shining Court by the Midnight Throne!” He spread his arms, and the whole Seelie court inhaled. “It is war!” he boomed. “By the laws and the power of starlight and shadow, I claim the blood right!”

  Mama yanked me and Jack backward. I didn’t resist. The world was spinning again. It had been a setup from the very beginning. Everything, from Ivy being stashed at MGM to them egging her into believing they’d love her if she rubbed me out. She’d been used as a sacrifice. She’d been used to start the war.

  I’m sorry, Ivy. I was crying. I’m sorry!

  Jack was lunging for the king, but my father shoved him back. Papa swung his arms up and his magic lashed out. It hit the Seelie king in the chest, right where my bullet had hit Ivy. Except he only hit Mr. Hearst. The Seelie king was gone—I felt him leap into the air, leaving the human skin he’d borrowed to crumple to the marble floor. Finally Miss Davies noticed that something might be wrong. She screeched and ran down the stairs.

  Papa wasn’t waiting. He was herding all of us away from the fallen human and the crowding fairies. “Run! Run!”

  Jack and Mama were stumbling, trying to obey. The crowd of fairies surged behind us, laughing and howling. What were they waiting for? They could have been all over us in a half second. Jack was sprinting up the nearest stairs,
leading us into the maze of gardens, heading for the gilded gates. I followed as fast as I could. And suddenly I knew what the fairies were waiting for: the Seelie king. He wasn’t gone. I could feel him in the air around us, laughing.

  The ground shook with a noise like thunder. I staggered and bumped against Jack and Mama. Behind us, the masked court laughed and joined hands, dancing in delight at the coming of war. The thunder spread out from the pool and up to the top of the hill. It crawled up the walls of the Spanish castle. The castle shuddered once, twice. I thought it was falling, but it wasn’t. It was unfolding.

  The crenellations and filigrees worked together like tiny bones. The foyer stretched out, becoming a neck. The windows opened to turn into eyes, and the double doors twisted sideways, changing to a set of jaws. The two bell towers were horns on a monstrous head, and the sprawling wings of the castle spread and lifted into the air. This was where the king had gone. He’d slipped into the castle the way he’d slipped into Mr. Hearst, and now it wasn’t a castle at all. It was a dragon, ivory white and terra-cotta red, glittering with great glass scales. It raised its wings and arched its neck.

  The dragon of glass and stone tore itself free of the foundations with a mighty splintering noise. I stared, unable to move. It was too big. Nothing could be that big and still be alive. It blocked out sun and sky. When it opened its great jaws, the world spun and the ground slammed into me and a weight knocked all the breath out of me. Fire blazed overhead, sizzling the air and filling the world with the scent of ash and blood.

  Jack … But it wasn’t Jack climbing off me. It was Mama.

  “Run, Callie!” she shouted. “Daniel! Wish it gone, Daniel! I wish it gone!”

  The dragon laughed, and the contempt was worse than the fire, because it got down inside you and paralyzed your heart. My father grabbed up Mama’s wish and the love and tossed it at the king. The dragon’s flame poured down, and Papa stood in the middle, like a stone in a river. It flooded around him, making the air sizzle and hiss. The wish flew forward, an arrow, a sword, and the flame winked out. The dragon flickered, like a skip in a film.

  But it wasn’t enough. My father staggered, and the Seelies laughed. The dragon reared back. It swooped down, its mouth open, its hunger raging beyond the limits of imagination. It would swallow us whole.

  Next thing I knew, Jack was beside me. “The gate, Callie!” he bawled in my ear. “The pool gate!” And I knew what he meant. Of course. Of course.

  I grabbed my father’s coat and my mother’s hand. “Run!” I screamed to whoever was listening. “Run!”

  “Where?” cried Mama. “There’s nowhere!”

  “Yes, there is!” There had to be. I plunged into the crowd of masked fairies, ducking, twisting, shoving. They laughed like it was a great joke, though the world was dark from the dragon’s shadow. They parted, but not for me. For the monster behind us. We were already dead. They were just here to watch the finish of that particular show.

  My papa had my hand. I felt him throw his magic over us for a shield. Jack wanted to live, Mama wanted to live, and heaven knew I did. He was a full-blooded fairy. They could not change his nature; they had not taken his power. He took our wanting and granted it. His magic sheltered us as I ran up to the hilltop, straight under that dragon. There wasn’t enough air. Ash clogged my throat. I heard Jack and Mama choking behind me. Papa fell back, catching them up, one in each hand, hauling them along with him, trusting me to lead us.

  The king hadn’t expected us to run toward him, and he had to twist now, awkwardly, because the dragon’s body was so big. Infuriated, he roared, and the fire leapt up to fill the air with smoke and the smell of hot stone and green wood burning.

  A massive hole stretched out where the dragon had ripped itself free. We stumbled up to the very edge. It was like looking into a dollhouse smashed by some spoiled child. There was a wine cellar filled with broken bottles, a movie theater half covered in crushed marble. The second swimming pool, the blue-and-gold one, lay broken beneath the fallen stones, its waters swirling away down the holes and cracks.

  But the gate was still there. I’d never closed it. If we could get to it, I could get us through.

  “Papa!” I coughed. “Papa, we need to be down there! In the pool.”

  “Hold on!” He snatched me up under his arm and grabbed Mama with the other. I grabbed hold of Jack. I felt Papa steel himself and start running, carrying us all with him, right over the edge of that cliff.

  We were falling, we were screaming, and then, impossibly, we slowed and settled in a tiny cleared space among the ruin.

  Unfortunately, the dragon, the Seelie king, had finally caught on. It roared again, and magic shivered through the smoke and fire. Around us, fallen statues of old Romans and naked women moved. They lifted their white arms and raised their weapons.

  Anger poured through me. There was a burst of golden light and heat. Papa had aimed another bolt at the dragon, but he was faltering. I stretched, trying to grab up some wish, any wish. I was surrounded by frozen wishes, stored up like treasure, and I couldn’t touch any of them. They belonged to the Seelie king, who was laughing in his dragon shape and raising one great taloned foot to flatten us all.

  Except they didn’t really belong to him. He’d stolen them and locked them away up here. All those wishes, all those people. One of them must want to get away. Somebody, something out there wanted to be free. I knew what that felt like, and I reached through the chaos and the fear. And I found it. A tiny wish, a little crack in the roiling wall of power. I touched that wish, and I granted it.

  The ground shook again, and the statue froze and fell, the soul inside it gone. The dragon screamed.

  That was mine! The king’s fury rolled through my brain. Mine!

  It wasn’t much in terms of defiance, but it was enough, because there was another wish out there, and another after that. Freedom, escape. They did not want to fight, and they did not want to burn, any more than we did. They wanted to be gone. I could grant those wishes easily, because I understood them. I knew what it was to need to run, to break free, and I gave them that. One by one the statues toppled, cold marble shattering against the ruined tiles.

  The dragon bellowed again, and its magic pulled back from us. The king was snatching at the wishes, at the people as they flew free. I shouted wordlessly and dove forward, straight down into the pool. I heard Jack shouting at my parents to follow me. I had to trust they’d do it, because I needed everything I had left to focus on the gate in front of me. I felt somebody crowding close. I grabbed the hand and kicked into the roiling waters. I twisted, pressed down, and leaned sideways, hauling the heavy weight of my family into betwixt and between. They were shouting and struggling in the chaos. They were too heavy, and I couldn’t make them hold still. My hand was slipping. There was something else too, and it hated me, and it jammed itself into the gate.

  We burst up into the black and oily studio lake, choking and coughing. Mama and Papa and Jack splashed and coughed and fought to find their feet.

  “We did it!” shouted Jack.

  “Not yet!” cried Papa.

  The lake exploded. The world spun all over again, a rush of noise and blazing light and pain. I skidded and rolled across the ground and should have broken my neck, but something caught me and slowed me down.

  The Waterloo Bridge was gone. Where it had been, the dragon’s head reared up. It struggled and roared, its flame shooting up toward the sky.

  “Callie!” shouted Papa.

  I staggered to my feet. Jack was helping Mama stand, and they stared at the dragon coming through the gate, coming for us all.

  “This way!” Jack hauled Mama sideways, getting her out of the way. Good. Maybe they could live. The dragon shook its head free of the pathetic ruins of the Waterloo Bridge, and its neck shoved through the gate, raising that head high into the air. I could feel the dragon straining against the gate, distorting and tearing the passageway, making room for its clawed legs, for its
spreading skeletal wings.

  I reached for the gate edges, but I couldn’t find them. The dragon was in the way. I couldn’t get my magic around it. It was too big. It was too strong. Its struggles shifted the edges of the gate, snatching them away from me. I hurt in every bone of my body, and I couldn’t breathe because of the smoke and ash. Jack and Mama had run away, and I was alone with the dragon.

  Except I wasn’t. Papa was there. His strong musician’s hands clamped around my shoulders, and his magic surged into me. But not just magic. Love. My father’s love and pride poured into my blood, extinguishing the pain and fear and lending me strength, enough to face a dragon. Enough to see Jack and Mama ducking into that fake farmhouse.

  Jack had a plan. Of course he did. Jack always had a plan, and I knew what this one was. In front of us, the dragon had worked one skeletal wing loose to stretch up and over the sky. It bellowed in triumph. Air and ground shook. People shouted and screamed, and lights and alarms flashed.

  “Hey!” My voice sounded pitifully hoarse and small. “Hey, ugly!”

  The dragon swiveled its glittering neck. The contempt in its eyes pinned me in place. It saw that I was small, and that I was not moving. I was not moving a single inch.

  “Yeah, you!” I shouted. Papa was trying not to be afraid. Jack and Mama were running out of the farmhouse, carrying something awkwardly between them. “I can’t believe you were dumb enough to follow me! You oughta be president of the Complete Dope Society, you big, ugly—”

  The dragon opened its jaws and swooped down. It smelled of hot stone and rotten eggs, and the ground shook.

  Jack and Mama were in front of us.

  “Now!” shouted Jack.

  They swung the barrel they were carrying between them, heaving it straight into the dragon’s maw. Its jaws snapped shut, exploding the keg. The nails, each one a pointed shard of black iron, flew every which way, including into the monster’s skin and straight down its fire-breathing throat.

  The dragon bellowed, a sound of raw pain. Flame spewed in all directions. I was burning. Fear and rage and a thousand wishes all battered my brain. I reached, I reached, I reached, and I had it. The gate was torn open, wide enough to hold a dragon, but it was a gate, and it was my power. I could close it. I would close it, if it was the last thing I ever did.