Echo City

by Layla Lawlor

  Skathi turned out to be very quiet, sipping a glass of white wine and listening to the rest of us—well, mostly Millie and Irmingard, who were clearly good friends and prone to cracking up at each other's rude jokes. After Skathi finished her wine, she excused herself politely and left to go back to Seth's, leaving the rest of us to another round of drinks.

  Possibly it was the alcohol's influence, but I found myself liking Irmingard a lot. She was cheerful and funny, and, to my surprise, we had similar taste in video games and movies. I was a little ashamed that I'd judged her at first based on her appearance, and glad, now, that I could still see through her glamour to the person underneath.

  "Do you mind if I ask what you are?" I asked her. "Supernaturally, I mean. I still don't know if it's impolite to ask."

  "Whether it's impolite depends on what circles you're in, but usually it's not." She smiled and crossed her arms. "Guess!"

  I faltered, poring over my limited knowledge of folklore. I was learning on the job as fast as possible, but there was just so much. I hated to risk offending her. Was it rude to call someone a goblin if they actually were one? "I'm sorry, I just don't know."

  "I'm a kobold," Irmingard said. "A household spirit, a keeper of the hearth."

  "What do you do? You guard someone's house?"

  "I do everything," Irmingard said proudly. "You've heard of brownies who fix things at night? A contented kobold will put them to shame. On the other hand, if I feel like it, I can also sour the milk or hide one-half of every pair of shoes—or, in the modern world, blow the fuses in all the electrical appliances or fix it so the TV only picks up Bulgarian music videos."

  "But mostly you sneak upstairs at night to play Biosphere," Millie said.

  "BioShock. What? I'm discreet about it, and I clean up all their takeout cartons afterwards."

  It turned out that when she wasn't traveling on Gatekeeper business, Irmingard inhabited an apartment building in Hamburg that was mainly rented by young singles and university students. Through the tenants, she'd gained an appreciation of video games, German death metal, and junk food.

  "Kobolds are shaped by the sort of house where they live," she explained to me, raising a hand to the bartender for another beer. "Not entirely—I'm still me, of course. It's a subtle sort of effect, but noticeable over the centuries. If I were living in a single-family residence with a married couple and children, I'd be a rather different person."

  Muirin rarely bothered to wear a glamour around me, and when she did it was generally pretty similar to her usual shape except glammed up, so I hadn't appreciated the sophistication of fairy illusions until watching Irmingard sip her drink. Her glamour-self was a good two feet taller than her real body, and the drink was considerably lower than it appeared to be when she raised it to her lips, but she integrated them seamlessly.

  "Centuries," Millie echoed. "You guys make me feel like such a kid."

  "When were you born?" I asked her.

  "1897." She patted my shoulder. "At least I have the satisfaction of knowing that I'm not the youngest person in the room for a change."

  "I thought you said you were human," I said. "But—"

  Millie held up a finger. "Ah, ah. Human with benefits. Well, one benefit, really."

  "She can't be killed," Irmingard said.

  "I haven't found anything that can kill me yet," Millie corrected her. "Not that I'm trying. I'd really rather not know."

  "Ignorance is bliss?" I asked.

  "Most definitely in this case." She raised her beer. "To ignorance!"

  Irmingard took her up on the toast, clinking their beers together. Then she nodded at me. "C'mon, Millie, tell her your real name. We're all friends here."

  Millie looked discomfited for the first time. "I don't know about that. I really enjoy not getting the look."

  "She won't give you the look. Kay is cool."

  "Fiver says you're wrong." Millie slapped it onto the bar.

  "You're on."

  I watched this interplay bemusedly. I was on my second Tequila Sunrise and nicely buzzed; I'm a cheap date. "Your name's not Millie?"

  "It's a childhood nickname. I answer to it easily." She watched my face as she went on, "It beats going around telling people my name's Amelia Earhart."

  "No way," I said.

  "Damn." Irmingard handed over a five-dollar bill.

  I felt like I'd let them down, or maybe failed to pass some kind of hazing ritual. "You guys aren't jerking me around, are you?"

  "Scout's honor," Millie said, raising her hand in a Boy Scout salute.

  The thought occurred to me that we must sound completely insane to the other denizens of the bar. Several times I'd noticed people sit down near us, give us strange looks and move away. Even the bartender spent most of her time down at the other end of the bar. Maybe Irmingard was glamming them away from us somehow.

  "So what happened?" I asked her. "If you don't mind my asking, I mean. You crashed in the Pacific or—something?"

  "She doesn't talk about it," Irmingard said. "Well, unless you get a few drinks in her."

  "You make me sound like a lush." Millie crooked a finger at the bartender. "But I do need another drink ..." She stopped, going abruptly still.

  In the same moment, a cold chill washed over me. For a minute I thought that it was the drinks—that I'd overdone it and was about to be sick. But I really hadn't had that much. And a moment later, I recognized the feeling as the same one I'd had in Gwyn's bookstore a couple of hours ago. The lights in the bar seemed a little dimmer, the music muted, like something was sucking the light and air out of the room.

  I looked around wildly and saw an alarmed look on Irmingard's face that must have mirrored my own. Millie's face was calm and alert. She was looking toward the doorway.

  Something big and dark hulked in the open space between the front of the bar and the hotel lobby. I couldn't see more than a vague silhouette. It was hard to look directly at it, like it was vibrating against my eyeballs.

  I knew what it was, though. Wide and bulky and taller than Skathi, bent over in a hunch-shouldered, apelike sort of way—the last time I'd encountered one of these was in a forest near Ithaca.

  No one in the bar reacted to it. A couple entering the bar, in fact, nearly walked into it before faltering and detouring around it with confused expressions. I'd seen people respond the same way to Muirin's dump truck when she had it glamour-cloaked.

  I felt the gentle tingle of magic on my skin, and shot a quick glance at Irmingard. Her eyes were huge, her hand gently touching my arm.

  "There's a tiger in the doorway," Irmingard whispered. "I'm hiding us as well as I can, but I don't know how long it'll hold. What weapons do we have?"

  "I have a rifle and a handgun in our room," Millie murmured, "broken down for travel. I don't have a carry permit for New York and I didn't want to risk taking anything on the street with me. New York cops aren't something to fuck around with."

  "Neither are tigers," Irmingard said between her teeth.

  Tigers and shadows, Taliesin had said. The usual hazards. "I have the sword," I said quietly, and put my hand on the hilt.

  "Not here!" Irmingard drew a shuddering breath. She'd dropped her human-girl glamour; the spell she was casting seemed to be taking most of her concentration, and sweat had broken out on her face. "We've got to get out of the bar. We can't fight here. There's no room to maneuver, and it won't care about hurting people."

  "I'll draw it away from us," Millie whispered, and began to slip down from her bar stool.

  Irmingard caught her sleeve. "No, stay with me. If any of us leaves the cloak, it'll break the illusion." She drew another labored breath. "Cell transmissions, loud noises, other magic—anything like that will shatter the cloak. Just move slowly and quietly, and stay close to me. I'm going to try to slip us past it. I may not be able to fight worth a damn, but no one can hide like a kobold."

  "I've never heard of one in regular New York," Millie murmured, her fac
e distant and abstracted, eyes focused a million miles away.

  "Me neither." Irmingard sounded strained, as well as frustrated. "Maybe they're getting stronger. I've heard rumors ... Kay, you can see it, right?"

  "Yes," I said, my eyes on that big gorilla shape. It swung its shaggy head like a dog hunting for a scent. Maybe that's exactly what it was doing.

  "Stay with me, both of you. Don't touch it, or anyone else if you can help it."

  We began a slow sidle away from the bar, among the tables and people, trying not to bump into anyone. The tiger took a few slow steps and stopped again, still looking around. Millie and Irmingard acted like it was looking for us, but maybe, I thought, we were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  "Eaten by tigers," I murmured, "due to a case of mistaken identity."

  "Tigers don't eat people," Millie whispered, and then added, "Well, not in any literal sense, anyway." She put a hand on my arm; I wasn't sure if she was trying to reassure me or just make sure that we all stayed together if we had to run, but her fingers were cold as ice.

  "That's reassuring."

  "Guys, stop talking," Irmingard hissed at us. Her face was white, her hands clenched in fists.

  The closer we drew to the hulking gorilla-shape, the more out of breath I got. Everything seemed to waver around us. I couldn't tell if the lights were really getting dimmer, the glow bleeding out of the bulbs, or if it was just my own failing eyesight. The darkness seemed to telescope outward from the tiger, filling the room.

  Keeping one hand on my arm, Millie put her free hand under Irmingard's elbow to aid the kobold's faltering steps. Even this close to the tiger—and we were no more than ten feet away—I couldn't focus on it; all I managed to do when I tried was give myself eyestrain. Out of the corner of my eye, I could make out that it was dull orange and tiger-striped, but bipedal. I thought it might be wearing pants.

  The tiger dropped to all fours and lumbered into the bar, its frontquarters significantly higher than its hindquarters due to the much longer front limbs.

  And then Irmingard fainted, crumpling against Millie.

  Millie pointed wordlessly towards the lobby and the elevators, swept up Irmingard and sprinted in that direction. I didn't wait to see what the tiger would do; I dashed after her. At the elevators we slid to a stop on the marble floor, smacking into the wall, and I pounded the elevator buttons. Millie cradled Irmingard against her chest like a child.

  I looked over my shoulder and wished I hadn't. The tiger bounded out of the bar in a series of long leaps, bowling over a very confused bellman and scattering the bags he'd been carrying. It was headed straight for us.

  The elevator doors opened and we dived inside. I slapped the "door close" button. The doors slid shut just as the tiger crashed into them. The whole thing shook.

  "How smart are they?" I gasped, punching Millie and Irmingard's floor—the twenty-sixth—and then, for good measure, every floor above it to keep the elevator tied up. I didn't draw the sword; in the confines of the elevator, I was too afraid of hurting someone.

  "Smart enough. It'll either use the stairs or take the other elevator." Millie leaned against the wall, resting Irmingard's oversized head against her shoulder, and fumbled in her pocket for her phone. "We need to call in some backup. As you can see, the two of us aren't exactly heavy hitters as Gatekeepers go, and I gather you're not either."

  I tried calling Muirin. It went straight to voice mail. "Muirin," I said, "there's something from Shadow New York trying to kill me—us, actually; I'm at Millie and Irmingard's hotel, that's the Marriot Marquis, and since it's a very large something, a little help—" The elevator doors opened. "Sooner rather than later," I finished hastily, and peeked out into the corridor. Nothing yet.

  Millie's conversation seemed to go better; on her end it consisted solely of "Tiger, yes, here" and "Hotel" before she hung up. "Skathi's on her way," she said, letting us into the suite. She laid Irmingard on the couch in the common room before grabbing her suitcase and dumping it on the floor.

  I fastened the chain on the door. Millie, meanwhile, opened a matte black case and begun snapping together the pieces of a very large rifle.

  "Millie, do you have any idea what it wants?"

  "No clue, and right now I don't care." Millie snapped the rifle's stock into place and sighted at the wall. "This won't kill it, but hopefully it'll slow it down long enough for Skathi to get here. How's Irmingard?"

  I crouched to examine her. Her face was gray and her skin felt cool, but I wasn't sure if either of those things were normal for a kobold. The glamour had collapsed entirely. "She's breathing okay," I said.

  "Seth should take a look at her—or George if he's still here; they know healing magic and I don't." Millie peeked out the window, chambering a bullet with the rifle's barrel pointed at the floor, and then backpedaled as fast as I'd ever seen a human being move, almost approaching Muirin's preternatural fighting speed. "Jesus Christ!"

  The window exploded inward, shredded curtains and glass flying everywhere. Millie dived out of the way and I stumbled back into the wall, flinging up my arms to shield my face. The tiger landed in the middle of the room on all fours.

  Why bother taking the elevator when you can climb a building?

  I drew the sword, and the tiger whirled in my direction as blue fire flashed up the blade. I raised the sword in my favorite defensive stance, and spread my feet so that I could pivot my weight as needed.

  It's just like the exercises with Muirin. Empty your mind. Be in the moment.

  The tiger sprang at me. It was very fast, but not faster than Muirin when we sparred with broomstick training swords. And in addition to getting bruised a lot, I'd learned the only thing that worked for dealing with that kind of speed: you can't be faster, so you have to be first. When it jumped, I was already moving and swinging. I missed, but rather than taking me in the face, it missed too, clipping me with its massive hairy shoulder. The impact hipchecked me into the wall—I was gonna be feeling that later—and sent me staggering into the arm of the couch. I bounced off it and hit the floor. Irmingard didn't stir.

  Millie jockeyed for a shot as the tiger recovered and oriented on me again. "What are you waiting for?" I demanded breathlessly.

  "If I miss, this'll go right through the wall," Millie snapped back. "We're not the only people here, you know."

  The door crashed open, snapping the chain lock and splintering the wood around the doorknob. Skathi filled the doorway, one hand extended. I glimpsed Taza in the hallway behind her, impossible to mistake in his flamboyant lilac suit.

  Skathi said nothing and made no grand gestures, but pointed two fingers at the tiger. A flash of silver stabbed from her fingertips and burst out the tiger's back in a spray of dark blood. An instant later, crackling ice sheathed the tiger from snout to tailtip.

  I got a brief but clear look at it without whatever made it eyeball-searing and impossible to look at it normally. It was like the bastard lovechild of a big cat and a gorilla, with a leonine mane and massive, muscular shoulders.

  And it was, indeed, wearing pants, rumpled and stained, with a crease up the front as if they'd once been part of a three-piece suit. It also wore a pair of men's wingtip shoes.

  Then it splintered and rained on the carpet in thousands of flash-frozen pieces.

  Skathi shook her hand as if it stung. Bits of frost flaked to the carpet. The temperature in the room had dropped noticeably.

  Taza slipped past Skathi and helped me to my feet. "Are you all right, sweetheart?" he asked, with a gentle hand under my elbow.

  "Been better," I said shakily.

  The tiger's remains began to dissolve into wisps of smoke, unwinding into the air until nothing was left at all.

  Chapter 7

  Skathi and Taza stayed behind to "handle" the situation in the hotel—I had no idea if this meant somehow fixing the room, or doing a mind-whammy on the hotel staff, but after seeing Skathi handle the tiger, I believed them capabl
e of either. Millie drove me and Irmingard, who was still out, to Seth's place for magical first aid. Millie was white and shaking—from fear or anger, I couldn't tell. Perhaps both.

  "Irmingard's going to need some patching up. I can't do anything for her."

  "What happened to her?" I asked, glancing at the small, fragile shape in the backseat.

  "She drained herself badly, covering us. I told her not to extend herself that much." Millie clenched her fists on the steering wheel. Her hands were trembling.

  "I hope Taliesin's all right," I said. "I left him in Shadow New York—or I guess I should say, he left me. But if things like this are running around loose ..."

  "Oh, he can take care of himself," Millie said. "He'll be fine."

  "He said he's not one of you—not a Gatekeeper."

  "Perish the thought."

  "What is he, then?"

  "He's human," Millie said. "Or he once was. He seems to know everybody, everywhere. And the supernatural types think he's really annoying because he can find his way around in the other world better than they can."

  "Shadow New York, you mean?"

  "No, the other world in general. All the other worlds. There are a bunch of them, you know; they sort of overlap with each other, but if you want, say, the Welsh otherworld, it's not going to be at all the same as, I don't know, the Inuit otherworld." She took advantage of a tiny gap in traffic for a fast lane change; I heard a squeal of brakes. "And the gods and fairy-types and all of them, they can't easily go to the other ones besides their own. I'm not sure if they actually can't or just don't like to, but it's hard for them. Humans, on the other hand, have no such restrictions. And Taliesin takes full advantage of that. He's been exploring for centuries, and he knows a lot of forgotten side roads—some people call them the Ways of Taliesin, though really it's just a collective term for all the shortcuts he knows for getting around. If anyone can dodge tigers in Shadow New York, Taliesin's your guy."

  "Is he on our side, though?"

  "Honey, you'll never get anywhere with this bunch if you go around trying to stuff people like Taliesin or Seth or any of them into neat little boxes." She pulled to the curb in front of Seth's building, flopped an arm over the back of her seat and turned to look at me. "I'd trust Taliesin to give me a good time in bed or a sympathetic shoulder to cry on. I wouldn't loan money to him and I'm not sure I'd want him at my back in a fight. Does that answer your question?"