Echo City

by Layla Lawlor

  But Jill hadn't been wearing a glamour. I would have been able to tell. Either that, or there were fae out there who could do a glamour that even my second sight couldn't see through.

  "Let me do the talking when we get there," Muirin said once we were in the backseat of the taxi. She took off her trucker cap and ran her fingers through her short, damp hair, raising it in spikes. "Remember, you're a child to them, and you don't know how our world works."

  The taxi let us out in front of a gleaming brass and glass facade across the street from Central Park. I looked over my shoulder at the mist-draped trees before following Muirin into a lobby that looked fancy enough to be a TV show set. We were both damp, rumpled, and completely unsuited to our classy surroundings, but the doorman escorted us like royalty.

  Glamour. It's useful.

  After a murmured conversation with the doorman, Muirin stood back while he summoned the elevator for us. I was half expecting a uniformed elevator operator like in an old movie, but it was just a regular elevator, albeit a really nice one with mirrors and a brass rail. Muirin selected a button near the top.

  "Why haven't you people taken over the world?" I asked Muirin after the doors closed.

  The corner of her mouth tugged up. "We were gods once, Kay. We did."

  Ask a stupid question ...

  A high-stepping, immaculately brushed Afghan hound got on as we got off, along with its equally immaculate and well-brushed owner. The lady smiled at us; I smiled back at her, and patted her dog's head when it sniffed my hand. TV makes rich people seem like snobs, but she seemed nice enough, though I wondered if she'd still be so friendly if I wasn't hidden under a cloud of glamour.

  And that's the other side of it, I mused as I followed Muirin down a lushly carpeted hallway with a classy-hotel sort of look to it. If you walked around cloaked in magic, you could never know who other people really were, either.

  Muirin stopped in front of one of the widely spaced doors in the hallway. She raised a hand to warn me back, and laid her palm on the door. I had no idea what she did, but I was aware of something changing, in a way I couldn't quite define. Then she tapped lightly.

  There was a rattle of the door being unlocked from the inside, and someone opened it a crack. I glimpsed the side of their face and the corner of their mouth as they murmured to Muirin.

  Her answer was clearly audible. "There isn't a password. I wasn't born yesterday, Seth."

  "One of these days, someone's bound to fall for it. Come on in."

  As I crossed the threshold, I felt a gentle tingle as the glamour was swept away. Or maybe more than just that—something about the apartment felt strange to me, like the whole world wobbled on its axis for an instant and then stabilized.

  "Not in this lifetime," Muirin said. They kissed each other's cheek with clear affection, and he pressed the side of his face against hers for a moment. Seth was a small man, not much taller than Muirin, with medium brown skin and long black hair pulled back in a ponytail. A loose white silk shirt flowed around his slender body, and his fine-boned hands were decked with silver jewelry.

  "It's been a long road for you, child of the sea."

  "And growing longer," Muirin said. She stepped back and beckoned me forward. "Seth Kadesh, this is Kay Darrow. I told you of her."

  "You did. It's a pleasure to meet you in person, Kay." He clasped my hand in a firm grip. "Get a drink. Make yourself at home."

  Not likely. The apartment was an ultramodern snowscape of stark white and black. Afraid to touch anything for fear of smudging its finish, I made my way to the kitchen island, where a handful of wine bottles were lined up neatly in an expanse of gleaming dark marble. A slim gray cat with an oddly elongated body and outsized ears sat beside the bottles. It meeped at me.

  "Hi," I said, and petted its head. It was short-haired and soft. Spotless glasses hung from a rack above the sink. I poured myself a glass of red wine and looked around, while Muirin and Seth spoke quietly by the door.

  The plush carpet was pure white, the walls decorated with austere black-and-white prints in abstract designs. Stylish, uncomfortable-looking chairs and glass tables, arranged in small conversational groupings, accommodated about a half-dozen people in the living room. Most of them looked like normal humans. The one exception was an odd, homely little being about three feet high, perched with its short legs dangling from the edge of a curvilinear sofa. It—they? she?—had spindly limbs, a potbelly, and an oversized head with a scrunched-up, Treasure Troll face, and wore a Rammstein T-shirt that fit like a sack. The little being's limp dark hair was neatly brushed and held back with a glittery clasp.

  The woman sitting beside the whatever-it-was looked ordinary enough, though I knew only too well from dealing with Muirin how deceptive appearances could be. She wore a bomber jacket and had strawberry blonde curls framing a strong-jawed face, looked to be in her mid-30s, and she was petting another gray cat on her lap.

  When she saw me looking at her, she smiled. "I'm Millie," she said.

  Encouraged, I joined the two of them, perching on the edge of a cup-shaped chair facing the sofa and shifting the scabbard so that it wasn't poking me too badly. You try sitting down with a sword on your hip. I wasn't sure yet if it was okay to take it off. "Hi. I'm Kay."

  "You're new, aren't you?" Millie asked. "I thought I knew everybody, but I don't think we've met."

  I nodded.

  "Well, let me introduce you 'round, then. She's Irmingard." The tiny figure sitting beside Millie held out a hand to me—it was nearly the size of a human hand, bizarrely huge on her skinny arm. I shook it. "Okay, going around the room—that's Rob." Rob was a redneck-looking white guy with shoulder-length brown hair, a T-shirt with a faded Lynyrd Skynyrd logo, and camo pants. He wore a huge knife at his hip in a homemade-looking leather sheath. Where everyone else was drinking wine, or in Millie's case bottled beer, Rob had a glass of water. He was engaged in conversation with a handsome brown-skinned couple, a woman in her fifties and a much younger man wearing a strikingly garish lilac suit with flared legs and an equally gaudy plumed hat. "That's Felipa and her husband Taza. And Skathi is over there." Skathi was poking through the contents of a floor-to-ceiling bookcase on one wall. She was as lean-bodied as the cats, pale and austere, her wheat-colored braid hanging past her narrow hips.

  "I'm forgetting someone," Millie said. "Who am I forgetting?"

  "Taliesin," Irmingard said. She had a sweet, childlike voice, incongruous coming from her Treasure Troll face. "I think he's in the bathroom."

  "Of course he is," Millie sighed. "All that alcohol has to go somewhere."

  "You speak as if I'm a complete lush, my dear."

  The man who had arrived behind Millie, moving soundlessly on the plush carpet, looked about seventy but had the bearing and grace of someone much younger. His eyes were dark and sharp, settled in an extensive network of laugh lines. Thick white hair was pulled back in a short braid, and he wore jeans and a mind-blowingly garish tropical shirt with pink flamingos and palm trees all over it. Something about him made me think of Willie Nelson; all he needed was a fringed vest and a string tie.

  He settled his hands over Millie's eyes before she could turn around. Millie sighed again, but she wore an indulgent grin as she reached up to pat at his fingers. "Oh, shall I guess who? It's such a mystery."

  Another cat leapt up into my lap. This one was mostly white with dark brindling. I petted it absently.

  "Here." Irmingard picked up a wine glass from the coffee table and handed it up to Taliesin. "We guarded it for you. And refilled it."

  Taliesin caught her outsized hand and kissed it. "You are a princess, my lovely." His voice was deep and melodious, a voice made for theater or radio.

  "What are you doing here?"

  I hadn't heard Muirin approach. She glared at Taliesin in open dislike. I'd rarely seen an emotion so naked on her face.

  "I'm socializing with friends, good lady," the old man said, not at all fazed. "Should our host w
ish me to leave, he need only ask."

  "He does not," Seth said, placing a hand on Muirin's arm. "Go calmly, child of the sea."

  Muirin shook off his hand. "You know who he represents."

  "I know also that he is my friend, and welcome in my home." Seth's voice was quiet, but there was steel underneath. "The Gatekeepers are above political entanglements. We don't play those games. This conversation is done."

  Her face set in grim lines, Muirin strode to the kitchen island. She poured herself a glass of wine.

  Seth glanced at her, then at me. "Taliesin, we need to speak of Gatekeeper business for a while. Why don't you show Kay the City?"

  Muirin raked him with a razor-sharp look. Her glance at me was pointed in a different way, but I had no idea how to read it.

  "I've been to New York before," I said hesitantly.

  Taliesin smiled. "Oh, dear lady—but you haven't been to this New York."

  He tugged the cord on the floor-to-ceiling blinds behind the couch, drawing them open. Sunset-colored light flooded the room, tinting the white carpets and upholstery in a rich spectrum of purple and red.

  It had been early afternoon and raining when we'd walked into this building less than a half hour ago. Now I looked out at a sky the deep purple of late evening, cloudless and serene. There would normally be a few early stars beginning to emerge, but here there were none—just the flaming reds and golds of sunset, climbing the horizon. Literally climbing it, I realized in a heart-stopping moment. The colors were moving, rising, deep red chased by crimson chased by orange, but no sun followed.

  The shifting aurora sky was distracting enough that it took me a moment to notice the buildings were all wrong. I wasn't intimately familiar with the New York skyline, but even I knew there wasn't a giant sphere that looked like a snowglobe over the top of the Empire State Building. The other buildings were a jumbled fever dream, perfectly ordinary skyscrapers jammed together with towering church spires, far too tall to support their own weight, or crazy-quilt buildings that looked like they had been put together from LEGOs.

  Taliesin grinned at the look on my face. "Come out here," he said, and opened the sliding glass doors leading onto the balcony.

  I followed him in a daze, balanced between fear and wonder. The air had an odd smell, not a city smell at all, more of a crisp mustiness like fallen leaves in autumn, laced with woodsmoke and an undercurrent of horse manure. The balcony faced Central Park, or rather a riotous wilderness where Central Park ought to be. I could see blue wisps of smoke rising from it, here and there. The leaves on the trees below us were just starting to turn autumn colors. Light gleamed through the trees: firelight, flickering and gold, and the steady white glare of streetlights.

  The sunset brilliance had reached the celestial meridian. Half the sky was eye-watering red and orange; the other half a more restful purple. Already the colors in the west were beginning to fade to muted violet. It was, I realized, like being inside a slowly turning sphere, bands of colors passing overhead while new ones came up to replace them.

  I leaned over the balcony. I could hear traffic, honking horns, a distant siren—the usual city noises. But there were also bird calls, the jingle of bells, and below us in the park, an eldritch bugle note that made me think of hunting horns in movies about Robin Hood.

  I had to take a quick look behind us to make sure that the apartment was still there. It was. Everyone inside, in fact, had gone back to their conversation as if the psychedelic sky and fever-dream New York skyline were old hat to them. The only person watching us was Millie, who gave me a supportive smile. Muirin had turned her back.

  "Where are we?" I asked.

  Taliesin leaned on the wrought-iron balcony, twirling the stem of his wine glass in his long artist's fingers. "Have you learned of shadows yet? The magic sort, I mean."

  "They're copies of beings from myths and legends." The version of Scylla that I'd fought in Ithaca had been one, a mere shadow of Scylla from the Odyssey, but formidable enough. "Sort of an echo in the collective human unconscious, is how Muirin described it to me. If enough people believe in them, they become real."

  "That's one way of looking at it," Taliesin said. "Now imagine that it works both ways—just as a legendary creature casts a shadow in the mortal world, so a person or place of sufficient vision in the mortal world casts a shadow in the other direction."

  A person or place of vision. I had no idea what that was supposed to mean, but I could tell what I was looking at. "This is a shadow of New York City."

  Taliesin nodded. And held out his hand. "Would you like to see it?"

  "Muirin—" I began. But Muirin was in her element now, talking to Seth, surrounded by people she knew. I was an afterthought, dragged along like a kid.

  So what the hell, why not?

  "Yeah," I said. "I'd love to see it."

  Chapter 5

  I turned away from the balcony, but Taliesin shook his head. "Not that way."

  "The elevator—"

  "If you take the elevator you came up in, then you'll be back in regular New York, and that's not where you want to be, is it?" Taliesin smiled and gestured back into Seth's apartment. "The flat is located in both places at once. It occupies an overlapping space between Shadow New York and the New York that you know—"

  I remembered my sense of dislocation when I'd stepped inside, as if the world had gone sideways and then righted itself.

  "—but out here, we're no longer in between. Just as the hallway of Seth's building is located solidly within your New York, this balcony is wholly in Shadow New York, and the way down to street level is here as well."

  He unlatched a gate at one end of the balcony, leading to a fire escape—an old-fashioned, ugly thing made of wrought iron and bolted to the side of the building. There was no way a shiny high-rise like this should have a tenement-style fire escape, but there it was. In fact, the wall itself was brick, old and grimy. I ran my fingers over it, then looked back into the sleek, stylish apartment, and once again at the crumbling brick wall. There, a Central Park high-rise. Here, a brick turn-of-the-century tenement.

  "You're starting to understand," Taliesin said. He sprang lightly from the balcony to the fire escape. It rocked under his weight.

  "Oh, no way," I said. "I can't walk down fifty flights of stairs."

  "Only on the other side. We're not that high in this place."

  I looked down again. He was right. We were maybe ten or twelve stories up, still an intimidating fall, but nothing like the nightmare climb I'd envisioned.

  Taliesin shifted his wine glass to his left hand and offered me assistance. I looked around for something to do with my drink, finally gave up and left it on the edge of the balcony. I tried not to look down as I made the leap across the two-foot gap between balcony and fire escape. Taliesin leaned over to shut the gate.

  "If we're separated, don't come up without me from this side," he said. "Seth's defenses are excellent. I have safe passage. You don't."

  Morbid curiosity compelled me to ask, "What would happen if I tried?"

  "I don't know and I haven't asked. Most likely you'd be incinerated, but he might have something more creative prepared." Taliesin hooked one finger in a cord around his neck and pulled a pendant out of his shirt, holding it up for my inspection. When I cupped it in my hand, I felt a small snap that made me flinch, like a spark of static electricity. I knew enough to know that this meant there was a spell on it. It was heavy for its size, made of some golden metal—possibly real gold—and shaped like a beetle the size of a domino. The cord was coarse twine.

  "Scarab," Taliesin said. "As well as allowing me safe passage here, it marks me as a friend of Khaemweset, which is useful in some places, less so in others."

  "Who?"

  "In this time and place he's called Seth." He tucked it back inside his shirt. "Perhaps someday you'll have your own. In the meantime, stick with me."

  The fire escape wobbled under us at every step, and parts of the m
etal grating looked nearly rusted through. Below me, I saw treetops splashed with autumn colors, and glimpses of sidewalk between. Looking up did nothing but give me a dizzying view of the aurora colors rotating across the sky. To keep my mind off the odds of plummeting to our deaths, I asked Taliesin, "You're not a Gatekeeper?"

  "Oh, no, dear lady. My allegiance lies elsewhere. But I count some of them as dear friends."

  We descended further, and I asked, "Does every city have a shadow city attached to it?"

  "No. Though I suppose it is possible that some cities' shadows are too faint or difficult to reach. Some had a shadow once but, for various reasons, have them no longer—Carthage, for example, or Tenochtitlan. Others that you might think would cast a long shadow appear to cast none, or at least none that anyone can reach, such as Rome. And some shadows outlast their cities. I walked the streets of the shadow city of Angkor Wat in this century, and learned many things there."

  I glanced up at the light show above us, and wished I hadn't. At least there was a railing to grip until the dizziness passed. "Are they all like this?"

  "They are all different. Some resemble their progenitor cities so closely you might mistake one for the other. Some are thin as water, and you can fall through them if you aren't careful."

  I wondered what would happen if you "fell through" a city, then decided I'd rather not know.

  "I've never seen a shadow that was a perfect copy of its progenitor," Taliesin said. "Though I haven't seen everything, so one may yet exist. But Shadow New York is one of the more interesting of the shadow cities. It's more closely tied to the mortal world than most, for one thing, so crossing back and forth is easier. As you just saw."

  "Can you walk into it by accident?" I asked.

  "Oh yes. People do. In fact, some of the residents are ordinary mortals who crossed by accident and either couldn't get back, or decided to stay."

  "People live here?" But as soon as the words left my mouth, I realized it was a stupid question. I could hear the passing traffic and the sound of voices and music beneath the trees in the park.