Echo City

by Layla Lawlor

  "George, Skathi, Epona—" Felipa ticked them off on her fingers. "Scáthach and Wolfe. Merle, of course. Brigit. Rob, I think—"

  "Robin was later," Irmingard said. "Not one of the originals at all. Though most of them had known him for centuries anyway. I think the O'Connors came into it pretty early, too, since they were already in New York and that's been one of the Gatekeeper locuses from near the beginning."

  "Please don't tell me you're talking about Robin Hood," I said.

  Taza winked. "Aren't you glad you asked?"

  "It's mostly a bunch of immortals who knew each other in the British Isles since God knows when," Millie said, grinning. "The good ol' boys monster-hunting club. And then those of us who came in later—because we knew someone, usually—"

  "Or were in the wrong place at the wrong time," Felipa said, her gaze distant.

  "Like me," I offered.

  Taza patted my shoulder. "Like a lot of us."

  The warmth of camaraderie among us—for all that it felt like we were being treated as the kids playing in the living room, while the grownups talked in the kitchen—gave me the courage to ask, "How do you deal with being, you know, the people coming in from outside, getting involved in local disputes? Do you ask, or work with local people, or how do you handle that?"

  "Well, I never really thought about it that way," Millie said. "We have a job to do, and we do it."

  Felipa wrinkled her nose. "I know what she means. I feel that sometimes, too."

  "You think too much," Taza informed her, kissing her nose.

  "You think not enough," she retorted, smacking him lightly and knocking his plumed hat askew.

  "But seriously," I said. "I don't know how to handle it. I've thought about talking to the Cayuga—they're the local Native American tribe, where I am. Muirin doesn't seem to feel it's necessary."

  Millie flopped back on the couch, head tipped back. "Kay, I really do think you're overthinking this. You've been doing it for all of two months, right?"

  "Right," I said stiffly. I could feel my back hitting a metaphorical wall.

  "It's about helping people. That's the point. That's what you have to keep in mind."

  "Don't fight," Irmingard protested.

  Millie made a pacifying gesture, palms down. "I'm just saying give it some time, at least. You'll figure out your system. Everyone has their own. Maybe the way Muirin used to work with Bill won't work for you, but two months is a little early to be making those decisions."

  "Girlfriend has a point," Taza said. "Hang with us, get a feel for how it works on the ground. Talk to people. Make decisions later. Felipa and I, we don't do things like the old guard does. That's okay. But you walk lightly around those old ones, Saint George and the rest. They don't like someone coming in and telling them how to do things."

  "Voice of experience?" Felipa murmured. She kissed me on the cheek. "It's not so easy to be young among all of these ancient ones, is it?"

  "Not exactly," I said. "Saint George? Seriously? And Amelia Earhart. Isn't there anybody in this group who's just a nobody?"

  "People who live a long time and can do what this bunch can do tend to get noticed, one way or another," Felipa said. "You won't find many nobodies among this set."

  "I'll be your token nobody," Irmingard offered. "Kobolds like to stay in the shadows. I don't want to be famous."

  "Well, you'll never have your own shadow on the other side, then," Millie said, poking her.

  Which diverted me to a different topic, made me think of something Taliesin had told me. You can walk straight from Greenwich Village in the '60s to Harlem in the 1920s ... "Is everyone who ever lived here reflected over there?" I asked.

  Taza raised his hands. "Don't ask me. Not an expert."

  "I'm not sure," Millie said. "Shadow New York is a mystery, even to people who know it well."

  "Don't be modest," Irmingard said. "You know that place like the back of your hand."

  Millie laughed. "Not well enough to have met everyone who lives in it! Did you want to look for someone specific, Kay?"

  "My great-grandmother," I said. "Lily-Bell Taylor. She was in New York during the Harlem Renaissance, and I thought she might be there now." Or at points farther north and west. I now could guess exactly who and what I'd talked to yesterday by Cayuga Lake: not the real Lily-Bell, but her shadow. The problem would be finding her again.

  "There's something familiar about that name," Millie mused. "I can ask around the other city, see if I can find anything out. Unless you wanted to go there today?"

  "Not today," I said. "I need to be thinking about getting back to—hoshit." I scrabbled for my phone. "Shit, shit, shit. I was supposed to be at work half an hour ago, and it's a four-hour drive away."

  My voice mail was awash in messages: two from Mom (which I ignored), two from work (also ignored; I could guess their content all too well), and one from Fresca wanting to know when I'd be back.

  "Where's Muirin? I need her to drive me home. Please tell me she didn't leave already!"

  Seth, overhearing me, turned around from the kitchen klatch. "She's in my office. Down that hall."

  "Sorry, guys," I told the others, and hopped up from the couch. Away from the living room, the apartment was something of a warren, with several bedrooms like the one where I'd spent the night. Eventually I found the bedroom that had been converted into an office. A huge window overlooked the colorful sky and autumn trees of Shadow New York, filling the room with gentle, shifting colors. The equipment in the room was sleek and modern—an enormous flatscreen monitor, a small and stylish printer, and so forth. Muirin was printing something out.

  "Hey," I said, and she glanced up. "Muirin, I gotta get back to Ithaca. I'm going to miss a whole day of work, and I kinda have a life there, you know."

  "Already ahead of you," Muirin said. She handed me the printout. "This is a boarding pass for a flight to Ithaca this afternoon. You'll have to get one of the others to drive you to the airport, or take a cab or one of those uber-lift things. You're leaving from Newark, in New Jersey. It's not that much farther than JFK, and I could get a nonstop flight today."

  "Wait, where are you going to be?"

  "I'm not going back quite yet. I have some things to take care of here first. Kay, I am—" She paused, then squared her shoulders and tilted her head back to bridge the eight-inch difference in our heights and look me in the eyes. "I'm sorry that I haven't been a better teacher to you. I did tell you in the beginning that I'm not particularly good at it."

  I stared at her. It wasn't like her to talk this way. "Muirin, are you all right?"

  A tiny smile flickered around her thin lips. "Don't be childish. If anything tries to kill you that you can't handle until I get back, call Seth or anyone here. And don't forget that you're supposed to be researching a fencing instructor."

  That sounded more like the Muirin I knew, and less like Muirin saying goodbye. "How long are you going to be gone?" I asked, but she merely turned away, brushing past me. By the time I got back to the living room, she was already engaged in conversation with Seth and company.

  "Is everything all right?" Irmingard asked me.

  "Yeah." I wrenched myself away from staring after Muirin. "Assuming I still have a job. Uh, can anyone give me a ride to the airport?"

  Chapter 9

  Fresca picked me up from the Ithaca airport, driving my car. She greeted me with a quick hug; the car greeted me with a ringing clatter as part of its rear bumper fell off. Fresca helped me wire it back into place. I tried not to be too acutely aware of the warm brush of her fingers, the bump of her shoulder against mine.

  "You can drive us home," she said. "I thought starting it with the screwdriver was the worst part, but that was before I tried to shift gears. Did the bookstore get hold of you?"

  "More or less." I'd called them sheepishly while Millie drove me to Newark. They had found someone else to cover my shift, but no one was happy about it. I'd ended up swapping a shift next week with
the girl who was working mine today.

  I stopped to take the sword off and put it in the backseat, and Fresca said, "Are you wearing it? Wait, you flew with that thing?"

  "Today I learned that it doesn't set off airport metal detectors." I had actually forgotten I was wearing it—I'd gotten that used to the feel of it on my hip—until I was already in line. Crossing my fingers and all other appendages, I'd decided to hope that whatever made it invisible to people and cameras also worked on machines. Apparently so.

  "So, did you see anything fun in the big city?" Fresca asked as I shifted the car into gear, and then answered her own question. "You were with Muirin. Of course you didn't."

  I laughed. "Better than fun. Better than the Empire State Building. Fresca, there's a whole secret world."

  I started telling her about Shadow New York, but I wasn't getting the enthusiastic response I'd expected. She listened quietly, her lips pressed together. As we turned into our driveway, I asked, "Fresca, are you okay? Did something happen while I was gone?"

  She looked at me miserably. The skin around her eyes was so dark from sleepless nights that it appeared bruised. "I just ... I try, Kay. It's not us, it's not you, it's not even Muirin. It's bad enough knowing that there are things like—like Scylla out there, but I can't think about them, Kay. I just can't."

  "Oh, Fresca," I said softly.

  I knew it had been weighing on her. I just hadn't known how much. No—I hadn't wanted to know, had deliberately turned my mind away from it. For a whole day my best friend had waited in a wet, stinking monster's lair in the dark, waited for me to come, for anyone to come. I couldn't imagine what it had been like for her.

  "Are you—" I began, faltered and tried again. "Could you talk to someone, maybe?"

  A tiny, unhappy laugh escaped her. "Oh, right. Because I can totally tell a therapist that I'm fucked in the head because a sea monster from Greek myth dragged me up a waterfall. Just—let me have the happy make-believe for a little while that there are no such things as monsters under the bed, Kay." Her lips wobbled.

  "Fresca—"

  "Conversation over," Fresca said flatly. She opened the door, and after a moment I followed suit. "You didn't bring me anything from the city?" she asked, in something that almost might be a normal voice, if not for the way it cracked at the end.

  "Like what, a tiny little plastic Statue of Liberty?" I said, sliding into the meaningless banter because I didn't know what else to do. All my worst fears were true: I'd broken Fresca, or had been a party to it, at least.

  "But I don't have a plastic Statue of Liberty, Kay. I would totally go for that. Think of me next time."

  "I'll try," I said, and I didn't think we were talking about cheap souvenirs anymore.

  Since Fresca wasn't in a sociable mood, I went up to the university to poke around the anthropology department.

  Taza and Millie had both said, in different ways, that the newer and younger members of the Gatekeepers had their own ways of doing things. Perhaps mine could be a more open relationship with the locals. At least, I didn't think it would be a terrible idea.

  I knew from online spelunking via my phone that the Cayuga had a website, but I balked at just sending them an email asking about it—mostly because I knew exactly how I would react if someone emailed me out of the blue about African folklore. Well, prior to the last couple of months, that is; it would be a little more understandable now. But that was exactly the problem—I didn't know enough to even find out who to talk to without coming across as a clueless jerk.

  So I figured I'd start by talking to a folklorist, if I could find one.

  I had forgotten the department would be deserted for the summer break, the faculty having scattering into their seasonal fieldwork like migratory birds. The only person I could find was the department secretary. I asked her about folklorists and said that I was specifically interested in Cayuga myth.

  "You could talk to Valerie Wheelock. I'm not sure if she's around this summer, but I can give you her email."

  I sent "vwheelock" a brief email from my phone. There was another voice mail from Mom, which I ignored. I couldn't deal with Mom right now. Instead, I went to see someone else, someone I'd once promised to visit. I hadn't fulfilled that promise yet. Maybe it was time; maybe she could help.

  Elena lived west of Ithaca, past Trumansburg, out in farm country. The last time I'd been this way was the day I'd fought Scylla. The fields had been full of mud and last year's stubble. Now they were flush with summer growth, so intensely green it looked like someone had cranked up the color saturation on the world. This was also wine country, a local industry that took advantage of the lakes' moderating effect on the climate. Rows of neatly staked grapevines marched along the road.

  I parked in the gravel driveway of Elena's farm, just outside her gate. Her weatherbeaten sign swung from the top crossbar of the gate: CIRCLE P, with a silhouette of a hog. The "L" and the "E" were just a little too close together, in a way that appeared to be the careless work of a novice sign painter.

  Hiding in plain sight.

  I wasn't sure if I believed that Elena Feliciani, Ithaca hog farmer, was truly Circe of Odyssey fame, as she claimed. But I didn't ask any awkward questions about where the pigs came from, just in case. (At least not more than once. And she hadn't answered me that time.)

  I left the sword in the car and let myself in, feeling, as before, the subtle tingle of magic as I crossed Elena's circle of protection. The last time I came here, Elena had been waiting for me in the driveway with a shotgun, but today there was no sign of her. I crossed the yard to the farmhouse and knocked on the door, but no one answered.

  As I waited on her front porch, I became aware of music playing faintly somewhere outside. I followed the sound around the corner of the house, and eventually found a radio sitting on an upturned bucket outside the hog barn. A couple of piglets trotted up to me curiously, nosed about and lost interest when they saw I had nothing for them. Most of Elena's pigs were allowed to roam freely around her farm, so I watched my step.

  "Elena?" I called.

  "Here," Elena called back. She appeared from one of the ramshackle sheds behind the barn, dressed as before in mud-spattered boots and a plaid shirt trailing its tails over faded jeans, dragging a large roll of wire fencing. "Kay! Still alive, I see! I'm mending fences; care to lend a hand?"

  And so I ended up kneeling on damp grass with curious pigs snuffling around, holding one end of a bundle of hog wire while Elena tacked it to wooden fence posts.

  "I assume you came out because you wanted to ask me something," Elena said, deftly snipping with a pair of wire cutters.

  "Hey, I wanted to see you too," I protested. "And I wanted to thank you for the help. I got my friend back." If only Scylla's long shadow didn't still hang over us.

  "I'm glad to hear it." Elena moved on to the next fence post. "And what of yourself?"

  "Hanging in there," I said, and Elena nodded noncommittally. "Elena, you're tied into the local supernatural scene, right?"

  "I keep to myself, mainly. I don't mess in things."

  "Some of the Gatekeepers think there's been an increase in supernatural activity lately."

  "I have noticed more incidents in recent years," Elena allowed. "I can't tell you if it's a pattern or not. One harsh winter doesn't prove that the weather is growing colder. I'd take everything the Gatekeepers tell you with a grain of salt. Their information isn't always the best."

  "I'm still trying to figure out how I feel about them." I couldn't admit that to Muirin, but Elena's general disdain for the Gatekeepers made it easier.

  "They're well-intentioned, I will give them that." Elena tucked the wire cutters into her back pocket and unrolled more wire, then gestured to me to hold it against the post for her. "But you know what they say about the road to Hell and what it's paved with."

  "They're idealistic to a really scary degree," I agreed.

  "Have they explained their philosophy to you? Their
mission?"

  I nodded.

  "Parts of it sound good, I suppose," Elena said. "Putting Pandora's demons back in their jar, the spilled water back in the bucket. Would that we all could fix the world. I don't doubt they believe wholeheartedly that they're doing the right thing. And I'm sure they have helped a number of people. But the world is not so simple as they think it is."

  "Do you know if there are any indigenous equivalents to the Gatekeepers?" I asked, helping her hoist another roll of fencing. "Local people doing the same thing, Cayuga or whatnot."

  "I don't know. But as I told you, I don't meddle in such things myself."

  When I got back to the house, vibrating from too many cups of Elena's powerful black coffee, Fresca greeted me with, "Would you please call your mother back so she'll stop calling my phone?"

  "Did she say what she wants?"

  "She just said call her. So I told her I'd pass it along. Message passed."

  "Sorry," I said.

  Fresca snorted and used her reflection in the darkened kitchen window to touch up her lipstick. She was dressed to go out, in tight red pants and what looked like a leopardskin bustier under her favorite sparkly jacket. Her hair was touched up with temporary dye, neon green and pink. I felt a little twinge; in the old days she would have asked me to help her with that.

  She'd been going out a lot the past few weeks. I guess I ought to be glad that she wasn't hiding in her room being depressed, except the party scene had never been Fresca's style. Usually it was just the two of us heading down to have a drink or two with some of her friends, then coming home to drink wine coolers and watch anime.

  But she did look hot in those pants. It made me think about how often I'd noticed Fresca's clothes in the past, thinking it was the clothes I was looking at, not the woman in them.

  "Is my lipstick on crooked?" Fresca asked.

  "Your lipstick looks great. I like the hair, too."