A Crack in Everything (5 page)

‘Where is the spark?’ His voice rumbled through the air and the earth, shaking everything in between.

‘It’s gone.’ Jinx wasn’t sure where he found his own voice. It sounded pitiful after the other, and that galled him. He clenched his fists at his side until his fingernails bit into his palms. He had nothing to fear here. He had done nothing wrong. Other than be what he was. And be here when they arrived. ‘It was gone when I got here.’ He said the words with more force than he meant to.

The first figure hadn’t said a word or opened his mouth and for that Jinx was grateful. It did no good to hear some voices. But the second stood very still as if listening to him. Then he spoke again, his voice winding its way around Jinx, tightening like a python’s coils.

‘If you know where it is, you must tell us, faeling. Time is short.’

Jinx scowled at them.
Must
. It was always
must
with the likes of them. He kicked a can aside and the first one flicked his eyes after it like a cat following a fly.

‘Right now?’ He forced his face into a smile that never
went beyond his upper lip. ‘Right now, I have no idea where it is. Am I free to go?’

The second one spat out a curse in a language Jinx couldn’t hope to comprehend. It sounded like music defiled by anger. He knew its name though. Once, the elders taught, his people had spoken it as well.

‘We’re finished here. But I warn you, we shall be tracking the spark. We will bring it home. It came with one of our brethren and it belongs to the Holy Court. The Word has spoken it. If we see you again, faeling, it will go worse for you. Far worse.’

In another whirl of wind and debris, they were gone and Jinx stood alone in the alley. He gritted his teeth and allowed himself to relax. Only slowly though. He was too wound up.

Izzy had the spark, the divine spark that could be left behind in the after-image when one of these sanctimonious cretins fell from grace. And they’d been sent to get it. Nothing would stop them, and nothing would stand before them. They were always right. That was the problem. Even if they weren’t.

They’d kill her. They’d do worse than kill her, they’d damn her as well. And for them, that really meant something.

Angels were all the same.

Chapter Four

Small Lies

I
t was after seven when Izzy got home. Apart from the beeps of the alarm looking for its deactivation code, the house was still and silent. She kicked off her shoes in the hall, dropped her bag and coat under the stairs and padded down to the kitchen. No sign of anyone.

Not unusual, of course, not these days. Since the bankers had shot the Celtic Tiger, her parents spent every hour God sent at work, struggling to keep their architecture business afloat.

At least the house was safe, because it was Gran’s and even her folks hadn’t been mental enough to drag Gran into their finances. Izzy’s grandmother didn’t like the city, she said, and preferred to live in the mountains near Glendalough, the middle of absolutely nowhere as far as Izzy was concerned. But that didn’t mean Gran couldn’t own any number of
properties – the ultimate absentee landlord, especially as she was currently on one of her many world cruises.

Izzy opened the fridge and blinked in the garishly bright light. She grabbed the milk and a packet of ham slices before kicking the door closed behind her.

Nothing beats ham sandwiches and a glass of ice cold milk for dinner, she told herself. The false bravado didn’t convince her stomach.

She flicked on the TV in the lounge, found a rom-com and curled up on the sofa. The knot that had twisted itself tight inside her slowly began to unwind. Her arm burned, and the back of her neck. Crap, maybe she had caught something off the weirdo in the alley. Or maybe – more likely, her rational mind assured her – she was going into shock. The TV picture blurred, images melting and reforming until the twist in her gut returned with a vengeance.

Izzy shook her head, tried to get up, but her legs had turned to jelly.

‘Damn,’ she told herself. ‘Bedtime.’ How to get there was going to be another matter.

Except it wasn’t that late. It wasn’t even dark outside. Not really. The shadows in the garden stretched out towards the French windows like fingers. Izzy heaved herself onto her feet and wobbled a little. She leaned on the arm of the sofa, staring outside.

The shadows darkened, like someone messing with the contrast control. Even as she watched, they crept onwards, brushing
the glass. But they didn’t come through. They crossed the pool of light that fell onto the patio, but they didn’t venture inside the house. They stopped, impossibly, and crawled up the glass.

A hard, heavy rhythm filled her ears, surging like waves on shingle. Izzy watched the shadows twist and turn, looking for a gap, a chink, some sort of way inside. Tendrils of darkness probed at the gap between the doors, tapped on the
window-panes
.

The handle rattled, shaken by unseen hands.

‘
Ward yourself
,’ said a whisper in the back of her mind. ‘
You must ward yourself
.’

Izzy slid head on into full-blown panic.

‘Stop it!’ she shouted, and her voice surged from her, louder than it should have been, shaking the air itself. ‘Stop it right now!’

In a moment the garden fell still, and everything snapped back to normal. A summer’s evening. Too still. Too quiet.

Izzy fled, tearing from the room and up the stairs. She slammed her bedroom door and wedged the chair in front of it. Her chest heaved, and she stood there with balled fists at her side, waiting, listening.

Nothing moved inside the house. No glass broke, nothing crashed over, nothing. She hadn’t reset the alarm though. If anything had followed her inside, she’d never hear it.

A wave of nausea hit her and she lurched towards the ensuite as her stomach brought up everything in it. Shivering
with sweat, her throat burning, she sat on the icy cold tiles next to the basket of spare toilet rolls.

Tears poured down Izzy’s cheeks, salty on her lips. She was too hot, far too bloody hot. And probably in shock.

Jesus,
shock
! Was that her answer for everything? But she’d heard it could do this, set in much later, make you throw up and shake. And see things.

She should have reported the attack, but maybe it was just as well she hadn’t now that she was hallucinating.

Because that was what it had to be. Right? Shadows didn’t move that way. They certainly didn’t make attempts at breaking and entering.

The shivers passed, leaving only a burning sensation akin to itching below the back of her neck, right at the top of her spine. She tried to rub it with a weak hand, but that just aggravated the sensation.

Using her legs as leverage, Izzy slid her body up the wall. The marble tiles felt gloriously cool on her burning neck. She bunched up her hair and tried to check out the most painful point in the mirror. When she couldn’t do that, she remembered the small dressing table mirror Gran had given her.

Heavy silver, a relic from another age, she hardly ever touched it. She had to rummage through the jumble of ephemera on her dressing table even to find it, under some scarves and a couple of perfume boxes she hadn’t moved since she got them at Christmas.

She twisted the mirror this way and that as she stood with
her back to the dressing table mirror, until she could see the top of her collar in it.

And the dark blue marks that peeked out above it, etched into her skin.

Izzy almost dropped the mirror in shock. She pulled off her shirt, knotted her hair up with a clip and looked again.

Like filigree, like Celtic knotwork, like an intricate design from untold ages ago, the lines twisted in on themselves. She couldn’t tell if they were many, or just one, eternally wrapped around itself. Overall it formed a circle with a cross running through it, the top of a Celtic cross, but with every glance the patterns inside it changed, twisting and turning, becoming ever more intricate. The chain of her silver necklace stood out like a line of moonlight against the indigo of the new tattoo.

On her skin.
In
her skin.

Marking her.

Oh God, Mum was going to freak. Never mind that Izzy didn’t know where it had come from, how she had got it or when. That just made everything worse.

The mirror slipped from her numb fingers and thudded onto the carpet.

Jinx. He’d know. The marks covering his skin had been the same colour, the same sort of details. He had to know.

Izzy had already pulled on a black polo neck and was halfway down the stairs when she remembered the shadows in the garden. What if they were in the front garden as well, waiting for her? What if—

The front door opened with a clatter and Izzy choked on a scream.

Mum stepped inside. Just her mum.

On a glance she was sleek and elegant as ever, perfectly groomed, her golden hair swept up in a chignon, the
consummate
professional. You had to look closely to see the shadows under her eyes, or the slump in her shoulders.

‘Sweetheart?’ Mum gasped. ‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’

The urge to tell her what she had seen gripped Izzy in its jaws. But she couldn’t. Tell her one thing and she’d have to tell her everything. And she looked so tired.

Izzy forced a smile. ‘You startled me. That’s all. Are you okay?’

‘I tried to ring you, to let you know I’d be late, but it went to voicemail.’

Shit, the phone. ‘I— I’m sorry Mum. I dropped the mobile and it broke.’

A flicker of something more than disappointment crossed her mother’s face. Izzy knew the look, was becoming all too familiar with it – another stress, another expense, another worry none of them needed.

But Mum swallowed it down, hid it under a veneer of coping. It made Izzy’s guilt burn all the hotter.

‘I’ll let you have some cash to get a new one tomorrow, okay?’ Mum kicked off her shoes and nudged them under the stairs next to Izzy’s. She dropped her bag beside them.

‘Where’s Dad?’

‘He stayed on, going over the contract with the lawyer. Did you eat?’ Izzy nodded and then her mum took in the jacket and the bag Izzy carried. ‘Were you going out? At this hour?’

‘I was just … just going over to Clodagh’s.’

It was a small lie and those were okay, weren’t they? Her parents both told enough of them.

‘Not tonight, Isabel, and certainly not so late.’

‘But it’s only—’ She checked the hall clock. Only just after nine. But the tone of Mum’s voice said it all. No arguments. Arguments would lead to questions and Izzy wasn’t sure she could handle many of those. She had to make sure Mum didn’t find out about the tattoo, or whatever the hell it was. That would be a miserable conversation.

‘Okay. I’ll turn in then.’

Mum just stared at her. ‘Did you do something with your hair?’

She couldn’t know. She couldn’t possibly know. Izzy moved her hand self-consciously to her head, where the claw clip still held her hair up in an unruly knot. The back of her neck tingled.

‘No.’

Mum made a bemused sound, not quite belief, not quite disbelief. As if she sensed a change. Izzy didn’t like it. Not at all.

‘Maybe it’s the top. Really brings out your colouring. You look different.
Good
different.’ Mum smiled and held out her
arms. Izzy descended the last few steps into a warm embrace. ‘Sleep tight, mouse. It won’t be like this forever. Promise.’

‘I know.’ Small lies? Maybe. Izzy closed her eyes and tried to pretend she hadn’t thought that. ‘Are you going to get some dinner?’

‘I’ll have something while I wait for your dad. Night night.’

Izzy climbed the stairs and waited, checking the shadows through the chink in the curtain. Nothing moved. Nothing at all. Not until a car turned at the top of the road, its headlights sweeping across the street. It picked out a figure on the other side. He wore a long black coat and Izzy couldn’t make out much more than that before he vanished into the darkness.

She blinked. Nothing there. Had she imagined it?

A chill ran through her, like ants under her skin. Not fear. Not this time. It was more like a warning. A premonition. Like the voice that had whispered to her. But of what, she didn’t know. She crept out onto the landing again, down the stairs, carefully avoiding the squeaky floorboard. She heard the chink of a bottle on the rim of a glass, and the glugging sound of a drink being poured out like a heavy dose of medicine.

Izzy slipped on her shoes. Her breath hitched in her throat as she drew back the latch and pulled the door open. She’d never done anything like this. God, there had never been a need. Nothing had ever felt as urgent. But she needed to see Jinx. She needed to find out what was going on.

Chapter Five

Along the Sídhe-ways

J
inx checked the amp again and played a couple of chords, listening intently to the layers of sound that only one of the fae – or perhaps a mortal who carried a drop of fae blood somewhere deep inside them, or whose musical ability transcended the mundane – could hear.

The tone was everything. It set the whole energy of the night. Silver had taught him that and she'd learned it from the Dagda himself. And no one played like the Dagda. It didn't matter that Jinx didn't play the harp. The guitar was a modern equivalent, and in his hands it sang with magic almost as potent as Dagda's golden harp,
Daurdabla
.

Tonight, the tone was tight and sharp – tense, irritating. He clenched his jaw and made the necessary adjustments. He knew where the undercurrent of annoyance came from. He'd managed to follow the girl's trail as far as the train station on
Westland Row but then he lost her. No way to tell which direction she'd gone or where she had got off. She might as well have vanished on a breeze. Ironic really. His people were meant to do that, not humans. Even immortals – the angels and demons above and below – left some sort of trace. Izzy had left nothing.

And yet, somehow, he knew she was out there. Knew it deep inside himself, where nothing usually touched him, and he wished with all his heart that he didn't. He had a job to do and he would find her. He didn't like it, but he had no choice but to do it. Find her. Bring her to Holly. And to whatever fate befell her there. The Market wasn't a place for humankind to wander. It wasn't a place for anyone with half a brain. Only Brí's domain was more dangerous. As someone who'd had reason to endure both, Jinx wanted to stay clear of them from now on. And that made him angry.

Aggression had no part in his music. The results, if transmitted to an audience, could wreck the place. But longing could be just as dangerous. The fae, especially those of the Sídhe tribes who remembered the War, knew all about longing. Even those, like him, who had only heard the stories of the fall could feel the ghost of the bliss before, could see it lingering in their elders' eyes, sapping away their joy. Longing reminded them what they had lost, and that was dangerous indeed.

Perhaps that was why the fae, all the fae, celebrated their joys so very hard. Only that could drive the memories away
– drink, drugs, sex, partying hard as could be – if only for a little while.

‘Get this into you,' said Sage. The drummer handed him a beer. Ice cold, dripping with moisture. Better than any fairy brew. Jinx knocked it back. Too late, he saw Silver's warning glare. She didn't like them to drink before a show. Pity about that. He drained the bottle with a satisfied growl.

‘It's showtime.' She reached out her hands to take his right and Sage's left, and the others followed suit until they stood in a ring. Jinx hated this part, but there was no telling her. Silver was about as old-fashioned as they came. ‘Dagda guide our music.' Her voice was a murmur, a rising cadence that shivered through his body, stimulating every nerve. He'd seen warriors weep at her laments, seen their passions rise with her love songs. No one made music like Silver. Her voice was a weapon, even when all she did was speak. ‘Ancestors guide our muse. Bring the fire of truth to our songs.'

Her prayer done, Silver relaxed again and light flooded through her. It filled them all. Without her prayer, Jinx didn't even know if they could play, not in the way they would play now anyway. Expertise and practice would let them make music, but it wouldn't be what it could be. What it would be now. It didn't matter though. While she couldn't say ‘thank you', her geis demanded that thanks be given, and that was her way. No different from human superstitions, he supposed. The old gods had left them, the Creator was far away. And geis bound all of the Sídhe, himself included, though his had yet
to manifest –
No hand but your own can save you, or it will hold you fast
.

When Brí handed down a geis, no one got a chance to ask what the hell it meant. She delighted in making them as obtuse as possible. You figured them out at your peril. And you ignored them to your doom.

Silver gave a shimmy, the thin gauze of her dress hiding only the bare essentials, and the stage lights came on in the same instant.

Jinx pulled out the pick from its home amid the strings on the neck of the guitar and began to play, pouring himself into his music, where he could finally forget what he was.

The city centre heaved with its usual Saturday night hordes of revellers, from the fine diners to the stag and hen nights. Recession nothing, Izzy thought bitterly. Her parents seemed to be the only ones affected tonight. Or perhaps partying hard was a way to avoid what everyone knew, to hide from the inevitable.

Off the main thoroughfares, South William Street took on a seedier aspect by night. The arse-end of restaurants and basement sex shops dominated once the other places had shut.

The alley was empty. It smelled not of piss now, but something like battery acid. Izzy stood there, the entrance like a mouth around her, staring at the place where the angel should
have been. All that remained of the stunning image was a smear of paint amid the shadows clinging to the fringes of the night.

It was gone.

Disappointment twisted her stomach. How could it be gone already? And without her phone she couldn't even check for the picture.

‘Izzy? Is that you?'

Izzy turned around sharply, only to see Dylan. He was standing at the entrance to the alley, with Marianne and Clodagh trailing along behind him, bemused by the sight of Izzy standing in a filthy alley.

‘What on earth are you doing here?' Dylan asked, starting forward, reaching out to her. ‘We thought you had to go home earlier.'

‘I was just … just …' She sighed. What was the point? If she told them they'd never believe her, not the angel, nor the shadows. They probably wouldn't even think it possible she'd sneak out of home like she just had. She wouldn't have believed it of herself. They stopped awkwardly, and Dylan let his hands fall to his side. She smiled at him as if she hadn't a care in the world. ‘What are you guys up to?'

Marianne frowned, suspicion making her perfectly-made-up eyes just a little too beady, but she didn't ask another question. ‘Clubbing. We're meeting the band and Dylan'll get us in. You coming?'

Dylan rolled his eyes and offered her an apologetic grin. Yeah, Izzy could tell how much he was looking forward to
the evening with his sister and her friend. ‘Come on, Izzy, you can keep me sane.'

Last thing Izzy wanted was to head off to some nightclub and pretend to be someone she wasn't for the night, but she rolled her shoulders nonchalantly. She wasn't dressed for it. Not like Mari and Clo, in their sparkling high heels and skirts that were completely hidden by their short jackets.

She didn't glitter. Never had. Never wanted to. Even as a kid, pink and sparkles had looked blatantly ridiculous on her. But the clothes she wore now felt like rags. Even Dylan in his black t-shirt, jacket and jeans looked like he was dressed to the nines while she felt like a bag lady.

‘Whatever,' Mari drawled, her thin patience tearing. ‘We aren't going to get in if we leave it much later. Come on.'

‘Quit being a bitch, Mari,' said Dylan in that warning tone he always used with her when she got like this. ‘No one's impressed.' Marianne stuck her tongue out at him. ‘Do you want to come with me or not? I can just as easily stick you in a taxi and let you explain to Mum why, as you persuade her to pay the fare.'

Marianne raised her hands in mock defeat. ‘All right, all right, I'll be the picture of charm.'

Dylan looked far from convinced, but gave her his easy grin. ‘Coming, Izzy? Since you're here.' Izzy closed her eyes and reached out to touch the wall. It felt cold and sticky. The mark on her neck tingled and squirmed beneath her skin as if it recognised where it had come from.

And then she heard it. Music. The most amazing music.

Her eyes snapped open and she could still hear it. It echoed down the alley, from the maze of narrow streets and narrower lanes beyond it.

‘Can you hear that?' Izzy whispered. If it wasn't real, if she was hearing things or imagining it, she wanted to know right away.

Dylan stepped up beside her, ignoring Marianne's renewed complaints. His eyes darkened with desire, the pupils dilating, and his face filled with such longing. The music just brushed against Izzy's senses, but as she looked at Dylan, she saw it consume him.

‘What is it?' His voice sounded different, strained but at the same time deeper, darker. His whole body tensed with expectation and Izzy felt the urge to touch him, an unexpected, forbidden need. To kiss him.

Cold disgust knotted in her stomach. Dylan? God, he was like a brother. She'd known him all her life.

Clodagh cleared her throat like she had something sharp lodged there.

Izzy glanced over her shoulder and met with Clodagh's most adversarial glare. She knew that look, saw it whenever Dylan wanted to talk books or music and Clo didn't have a clue what he was on about.

‘Can't you hear it?' she asked.

‘Hear what?' Marianne said in stubborn tones. But her eyes flickered with the same light as Dylan's. Izzy frowned. She had
to be able to hear it. Why pretend she couldn't?

She remembered the look on Dylan's face when she'd told him about the alley, Mistle, Jinx and her phone earlier. He'd urged her to call the cops, but what could she tell them that wouldn't sound insane? And that was before all the real craziness had kicked off at home. She couldn't tell them about that now.

‘The music.' Like a man under a spell, Dylan started forwards into the alley. ‘I can hear music, can't you? Come on. It's amazing. We have to find it.'

Izzy's feet could barely keep up with her headlong rush down the alley. All fear fell away as she and Dylan pursued the music echoing off the stone walls. Mari and Clodagh followed behind, but Izzy barely heard their complaints. Relief surged through her, wild and desperate relief. Dylan could hear it too. She wasn't going mad.

And at the same time, it felt like they both were.

The music. That was all that mattered. It called her. More, it commanded her to follow it.

Lost in a maze of narrow lanes, she turned this way and that, heedless of direction. Lanes widened to streets, to squares and open spaces. The rational part of her mind veered close to panic. There was no area like this in any part of the city. It looked more like a fever dream of Dickensian London than modern-day Dublin. There was no litter, no chip wrappers, no cans or ripped flyers, but everything felt tattered, dusty, as if it was mostly unused. There were cobbles underfoot,
everywhere, and high curbstones lined the edges. The deep gutters glistened with some kind of pungent oily sludge she didn't want to investigate too closely. The doors they passed were closed, faceless things that gave away nothing. Elaborate fanlights with coloured glass stood over them, unfurled like a peacock's tail. There were no shops, no neon or chrome, and no sign of anything twenty-first century. It was like stepping back in time. What light there was flickered, orange and uncertain.

And yet it was also like the Dublin she knew, the narrow, forgotten bits of Dublin, the ratty and forgotten corners that wound in and out of the modern city. It was like the type of places Dad showed her, hidden beneath the new world, an older one of magic and wonder, where you could find sculpture, gardens, or murals, or crenellated rooftops, gothic spires and bronze domes. Where stone mice ran around the base of a pillar and stone monkeys played the clarinet. Hidden places. Right in the middle of places she thought she knew.

Admittedly Dad never brought her down alleys that were quite so grim and miserable as this. He would never drag her down here. She ran past buildings which carried echoes of the elaborate red façade of George's Street, or the grey front of St Ann's, hints of the hodge-podge of building squashed into the grounds of the Castle painted with the wrong colours, glimpses of jewel-bright stained glass that would have made Harry Clarke's students weep.