Magic City

by Paula Guran

  “You shouldn’t have come so early. We were looking for you.” And to the others: “Inchy’s been here since daylight.”

  “Stupid,” said Vick, who always had some reason not to like anyone.

  “Shut up,” Inchy said. “I had to come. They saw me seeing Clyde—the cops did.”

  “You saw him?” Mina said, holding him in the regard of her blemished spectacles. “After . . . ?”

  “Pearlywhite sent me to look at him. Yeah, it was after.”

  “What happened to him, then?” Cassandra asked. She was a plump, unsmiling girl with stringy brown hair; Clyde had tried many times to make her laugh, even for a moment, and failed. Her face looked broken from inside, more than usual; and Inchy found himself wondering if she had maybe hoped that Clyde would make her really laugh some day . . . and now that far-off hope was gone.

  “I don’t know. He was on the ground . . . just lying there in Naiad Lane.”

  “We know where,” Vick said. “They took him away and we scouted the place. But we don’t know what happened.”

  “And the cops or somebody got his charm,” said Rosalie. “His homebase.”

  “No,” said Inchy. “That’s why Pearly sent me. See.” He put out his hand. The ball of string lay there, unmoving. “Koil came out. Pearlywhite called him and he came out and said something I couldn’t hardly understand, but . . . but whoever hurt Clyde, they got Koil too.”

  “Clyde’s not hurt,” Vick said savagely. “He’s dead.”

  “K-killed,” Inchy said. “I know.”

  “But . . . but that’s impossible,” Mina said softly, and they all turned to look at her because she spoke so rarely. “The Invisibles are . . . they can’t die. Nothing can hurt them.”

  “Maybe if they kill you, your Invisible goes away,” Inchy said.

  “The hell with maybes,” Garvey said. “Why don’t we just up and ask ’em?”

  They looked from one to the other, there in the gently twinkling light, and reached silent agreement. One by one, each of the children standing ringed around the wall of the tank put out a hand holding his or her homebase, whatever precious object their Invisible had chosen to inhabit.

  Inchy pulled the remainders of his mother’s pearl necklace from his pocket; the beads dangled from his fingers, in the same hand that held Koil’s ragged ball. He felt Pearlywhite stirring. Smoke seeped from the pearls and pooled in the palm of his hand, and the wise dragon eyes blinked open to stare at the other kids.

  Next to him, Garvey slowly drew the red handkerchief from his pocket and draped it across his hand. A dark stain muddied the middle of the cloth. The stain never went away, no matter how often Garvey washed it. That was his father’s blood, from the chest wound where the bullet went in, when the cop who shot Garvey’s father had mistaken a black iris for a gun.

  The kerchief seemed to stir, something rising up from the stain, then subsiding. Garvey looked impatient and he took the cloth by a corner and snapped it, then settled it again on his palm. “Come on, Slink!” His Invisible was slow to wake tonight.

  Mina took off her glasses, which weren’t hers after all, but had belonged to her lost brother. Her eyes were 20/20. She wore the thick lenses despite the blurred vision they gave her, the dizzying headaches. They had all stopped trying to talk her out of wearing the things; Garvey sometimes said she ought to at least smash out the lenses, but she would never do that, nor would any of them. Mina’s Invisible lived in there somewhere, and now came out in a subtle warping of the ambient light, as if the air itself had turned into a thick lens. This was Glimmish. It flickered up into the air before Mina’s eyes, and Inchy gladdened to see her clear-eyed, knowing that for once she was able to see him as well as he saw her. He wished she would look at him the way she looked at Glimmish. But Glimmish, really, was the only thing she trusted anymore.

  So it went around the circle. Vick’s Invisible, Catseye, sprang from a red and white marble, and it was a thing like a mottled glass eye that spun and stared and sang when it spoke, which was rarely. The twins carried two halves of a golden locket, each half with its own chain, and their Invisible was likewise twinned, so that two shapes sprang from the locket-halves and twisted around each other until the seething shape settled into one form with two faces peering in opposite directions with eyes of emerald and ever-murmuring mouths. Cassandra was the last of them to put out her hand; she did it with a sigh, slowly straightening her fingers until they could see the crucifix with the shortest bit broken off so it now resembled a T. Hers was the only somewhat humanoid Invisible: A luminous, ethereal Christ, dripping crusted blood from hands and feet and brow. The little bearded man, glowing like a night light, stood erect on her palm with a pained expression that mirrored Cassandra’s. She called him Jessie.

  By then, finally, Slink had taken up the task of animating Garvey’s handkerchief. The red cloth sat on his hand like a wrinkled four legged doll, its legs drawn from the corners of the kerchief, its central body a bunched mass marked with the dark bloodstain. The crumpled red doll wriggled and dropped to the floor, freeing itself from Garvey’s fingers, then stumped out into the middle of the Thinking Tank. It walked with a scaled-down version of Garvey’s swagger.

  Pearlywhite swirled down to meet Slink. Catseye whirled toward them, giving off a sound like singing crystal. The other Invisibles joined them, making their own smaller circle at the center of the Tank, taking up positions between the kids.

  “Koil no longer manifests,” Pearlywhite said. “I tried . . . ” Pearly’s speech dissolved into susurration, and the other Invisibles merged their comments into the hiss. After a few minutes the sounds became something the children could understand again, mostly.

  “One stalks,” said Glimmish, in words that flashed along the inner walls of the tank. “Stalks children.”

  “Children?” said Cassandra. The horror Inchy felt struck all of them; even Vick and Garvey, too tough to show fear in their different ways, seemed to take the news badly. Cassandra clenched tight to the glowing figure in her hand, and they heard it gasp in a smallish voice: “Calm down, Cass!”

  “But . . . but why?” she said.

  “I got another question,” Garvey said. “One we could maybe answer. Where’s Niall? Where’s Leafjacket?”

  The kids began to murmur. Niall was missing . . . the only other kid aside from Clyde who had failed to reach the Thinking Tank tonight. He was usually down at the library, hidden in the darkest reaches of the stacks, reading some big old book of useless knowledge. And Leafjacket was his Invisible, a papery rustling thing that lived inside a waterlogged, yellowed paperback with pages so thoroughly stuck together that Niall himself didn’t know what was written inside.

  The Invisibles began to murmur. The mouths of the Twins’ Invisible contorted in something like fear, and Inchy realized he had never known them to show anything of the sort. What could frighten Invisibles?

  But then again, they had all thought Invisibles were immortals and apparently that was not the case.

  “I thought you were gonna tell Niall about the meeting,” Vick told Garvey.

  “I was,” he said. “Then I ran into the Twins and they were headed toward the library, and they said they’d tell him.”

  “We did,” said Rosalie.

  “He said he’d be here,” Junebug agreed.

  “Then something’s happened . . . ”

  “Yesssssss,” sang Catseye. “Happening now. Leafjacket—”

  Slink suddenly stiffened. “Leafjacket! Something . . . something!”

  They feel it, Inchy thought. They’re in touch with Leafjacket. And if something’s happening to the Invisible, it’s happening to his boy. Niall’s in trouble too.

  “We gotta find him!” Inchy said. “Where are they? Where’s Leafjacket, can you tell us that?”

  But even as he threw out the question, the Invisibles were slipping away. The red handkerchief settled to the floor. Catseye dropped and rolled back toward Vick’s feet. Pearlywh
ite leapt catlike back into the string of pearls. All the kids fell quiet, their sense of panic perfectly preserved, and listened to the night.

  Something out there—night the stalker now, night with a predator’s hunger, sniffing for them.

  A footstep on the rooftop, just outside the Tank; a heavier than usual crunch in the glass. And then the soft creak of the metal flap pulling open. Inchy smiled, thinking it must be Niall at last, joining up with them, late as always.

  But the Invisibles wouldn’t have fled then.

  And the person who ducked and came into the Tank was not Niall at all.

  “I thought I’d find you here,” said Officer Cat.

  She straightened up, smiling around at the blinking Christmas lights. She was Chinese—she’d married a white guy and taken his name—but she had no accent, she’d lived here all her life. She had a round face and small eyes and a wide flexible mouth; when she smiled, her whole face moved.

  Garvey and Inchy looked at each other; a flicker of mutual understanding. They went to stand in front of Officer Cat, their backs close to the curved, rusty metal wall, to keep her attention focused on them so the others could get away.

  “How long you know about this place?” Garvey asked.

  “A little while. I looked in once when you guys weren’t here.” Officer Cat amiably rested a hand on the butt of her gun. Her belt radio crackled and talked to itself. Some numbers and a description of someone on foot on East Third. She didn’t seem to pay it any attention; she was absorbed in looking at Garvey and Inchy. “I had a feeling you’d be meeting here tonight. You guys tired of living on the streets yet?”

  Inchy glanced past her and saw Mina slip through the door. Vick and the others were going, one by one.

  Officer Cat turned her head a little at the sound of their going, but she didn’t try to stop them. She probably figured she could only get one or two kids at a time, if that’s what she was here for.

  “Who’s livin’ on the streets?” Garvey asked, offended, one hand clasping the lapel of his coat like a politician. “I live with my cousins.”

  Officer Cat shook her head. “Far as I can find out, you live in that car in Old Mule’s Pit, most of the time. Aren’t you tired of it? I know the system is a drag for a while but if you’re patient they’ll eventually find you either an adoption or foster care—”

  “Nobody’s going to adopt us. They like babies,” Inchy said.

  “I done foster homes. No thanks. That’s why I’m—I’m living with my cousins. Don’t tell me where I’m living, Officer Cat, I got to have my props.”

  “Uh huh. Well. I think you might be in danger on these streets, more than usual. There’s a guy out there killing kids, we think. We don’t think Clyde was the first one. We don’t want one of you to be next.”

  Inchy nodded gravely, but he had no intention of going with her. He knew Pearlywhite wouldn’t follow him to any foster home. Like Garvey, he remembered what being in the system was like.

  “Is that supposed to be some kind of threat?” Garvey said.

  “We can’t protect you out here, and you boys are way overdue for . . . Whoa, hold on there now—”

  She spread her arms as the two boys started to move away from each other, circling her, in opposite directions, to make a dash for the doorway. “Inchy, Garvey—I mean it! Don’t take another step!”

  She reached for her walkie-talkie, to call for someone to help her round them up, Inchy guessed. As she pulled the radio out of its belt loop, Garvey slapped it from her hand.

  “Damn it, Garvey!” she yelled, as the radio tumbled to bounce low on the wall. Instinctively, she bent to retrieve it, giving the boys the moment they needed to dart past her.

  Garvey was hunkered over, scurrying through the crude door, Inchy crowding after—but she caught Inchy by the ankle and held on as she followed onto the roof, dragging him back into her grip.

  “Inchy, shit, hold still! I’m trying to save your life, here! Come on!”

  He stopped struggling—he didn’t want her to put cuffs on him. He might get his chance later, if she didn’t do that. Garvey had gotten away, anyhow.

  “Okay,” she said, turning him to face her. “How about if we get something to eat?”

  He shrugged. “I’m not hungry.”

  “Oh really?” She didn’t believe him for an instant. “I remember you like fresh hot pizza slices, right? I’ll buy you one, any kind you like, and we’ll figure out how to get you to someplace safe and warm. And a bath. You could definitely use a bath.”

  She kept a good strong grip on him down the fire escape, to the street, muttering to herself about what a death trap the fire escape was, with its bolts grinding loose in the powdering concrete sockets as they passed.

  He pretended to be eager for the pizza. He would’ve liked it, too; but if he accepted a slice and then ran away after eating it, he’d feel bad about that, somehow. Pearlywhite wouldn’t approve, he knew. Pearly believed in living by a code of honor.

  When they got to the sidewalk-service pizza window at Enrico’s, he waited till she was giving her order, and then did that twisting-jump that had gotten him loose from so many adult grips. He dodged behind her and slipped down the alley by Enrico’s. She shouted but he could already hear the resignation in her voice. She must’ve known she couldn’t catch him once he’d gotten such a start on her. He angled down the narrow passage between two buildings—piled with trash, rotting blankets, and old metal buckets to jump over—and around another turn of the familiar way, gasping when he got to the street, a block from Enrico’s. He was surprised to hear pursuit—but turned to see Garvey coming.

  Garvey grinned, leaping over a pile of old paintbrushes as he came. Huffing, he skidded to a stop beside Inchy on the sidewalk, both of them looking up and down the street for Officer Cat. “Why you make me run through that trash?” Garvey asked, not really expecting an answer. “Get shit all over my damn clothes. Look at this, scrape up my shoes. Shit, man.”

  “Yours tell you where she was taking us?” Meaning Garvey’s Invisible.

  “I was hiding behind the Tank, I heard her talk about it. I don’t need Slink to tell me everydamnthing like you and that dragon. Come on, let’s find Niall.”

  Getting past the librarians required a certain strategy—one they had practiced. It was an old library, but it had a modern security gate and a librarian sitting at the checkout desk where she could keep an eye on who went in and out.

  Sometimes Inchy came in to get out of the weather and look at picture books. He couldn’t read, much. Mina would take off her glasses and read to him now and then.

  Inchy was grubby and smelled sour, and he knew it. They had a policy of keeping the homeless out, and he was pretty obvious.

  Sometimes he waited till the librarian’s back was turned, and vaulted the low railing by the gate, then ducked under a reading table and ran between the stacks. Today, though, they were in a hurry, so they did another bait and switch, with Garvey—who never got stopped—asking the librarian why they didn’t have more books on black culture, and her protesting they had a great many of them, and him shaking his head in pretended outrage, waving his arms, to keep her attention on him, so that Inchy could vault the railing without her seeing.

  After a minute Garvey said, “Hey—tell you what, white lady, I will check out what you got myself, and then we’ll see.”

  He strutted into the library, heading for the Black History stacks, where he met Inchy as prearranged. They were between a high shelf filled with magazines and slender books, and a silver painted radiator under an old, high, smoked-glass window. The ceilings were high, in here, with dusty glass fixtures, way up there, that were almost spider shaped. “Where you think Niall’d be, Inch?”

  “I don’t know. Pearly feels distant. Ask yours.”

  He looked around; they were alone in the stacks. He took out his kerchief and bunched it up in his palm, whispering, “Slink . . . ?”

  This time the little re
d-stained dollshape emerged, translucent and shivering, almost immediately. “What’s the matter, Slink?” Garvey asked. “You’re shakin’.”

  “The fear . . . like a scent in the air . . . I see books on the ancient gods, there . . . that way . . . ” He pointed with a tiny indistinct hand, then surprised them by jumping to the floor and pointing again, urgently.

  “Ancient gods,” Garvey muttered. “Niall likes to read about mythology and stuff. Greek gods . . . ”

  They followed Slink, who was running down the aisle like a runaway puppet, ahead of them, pausing now and then to turn and gesture. Follow, follow . . .

  A middle-aged lady with hair like a dyed-blond helmet turned her quietly angry eyes toward them as they ran past. She couldn’t see Slink, but she snorted out a single derisive laugh, shaking her head and muttering something about grungy little urchins running in here, and she seemed happier, Inchy thought, to have something specific to be angry about besides the thing that frightened her that she never let come into the front of her mind—

  He knew that view of the lady came to him from Pearly somehow—

  Garvey and Inchy left her behind, jogging around a corner after Slink who was leaping and weaving down increasingly dim aisles, between high shelves of musty books; the aisles seemed to get narrower, edging closer and closer, and Inchy felt like they were starting to lean in, toward him; like the books were all going to tumble furiously down like the pictures Mina had shown him of the playing cards coming at Alice in Wonderland, when she’d read the book to him—

  (Was Mina safe?)

  —and then Slink turned another corner, went down another aisle, turned another corner, they were zigzagging through the library, past a startled black man and a tall man with a beard, and it seemed to Inchy that Slink must be confused, lost, because they were going back the way they’d come, until he realized that they were following some kind of trail in the air itself, a trace left by someone or something that had gone here before . . .