Golden Girl (20 page)

I could feel the gate more clearly from here. In fact, it was right underneath us. It was small and had raggedy edges, and it squirmed as I tried to get my magic around it. I kept reaching, but my grip kept slipping. I frowned. Maybe
the squirm was the ward Grandmother had talked about. Maybe it was the Seelie equivalent of a
NO TRESPASSING
sign.

For a minute I wished Shake was here so I could ask him what to do. But that probably wasn’t a good idea.

“Ivy, you keep a lookout.” I took a deep breath. “I’m going under the bridge.”

“In that water?” Ivy pulled a face that couldn’t have been good for her famously delicate complexion. “Yuck!”

I agreed with her, but I wasn’t going to waste any breath on it.

“You’ll be okay up here on your own?” Jack asked Ivy.

“Of course, silly.” She slapped his arm. “You saw. I can get anybody to do anything out here.”

“Okay, then. Let’s go, Callie.”

We hurried down the far side of the bridge. I kept sneaking side glances at Jack, because he kept sneaking side glances back up at Ivy.

“What’re you looking at?” he whispered as we turned toward the water’s edge.

“ ‘You’ll be okay up here on your own?’ ” I singsonged back at him. “She’s a big faker, Jack!”

“Oh, lay off,” he grumbled. “She’s not like you. The act’s all she’s got.”

“I’m not so sure about that. She was awfully good at working the system here.”

“Yeah, and if you had to get around Tully all the time, you would be too.”

I shook my head. It didn’t add up, but there wasn’t time to argue about it now. I had to get myself into that black lake.

Yuck.

I didn’t bother pulling my borrowed penny loafers off. I just sat at the edge of the lake, gritted my teeth, and slid down into the water. It only came up to my waist, which was good, because I didn’t know the first thing about swimming. It was warm and oily, and my feet raised the stink of tar and garbage as I shuffled forward. There was a layer of slime on the bottom that I just plain didn’t want to think about, but it did make me really, really glad I’d kept my shoes on.

Jack, as usual, didn’t hesitate. He just double-checked to make sure nobody was around and then sloshed forward as though he did this every day. Together we plowed toward the bridge.

The underside of the Waterloo Bridge was a bunch of metal beams and bracing draped with weed, birds’ nests, and spiderwebs that glistened in the fuzzy sunbeams that slanted through the arches. The stink had been trapped under here long enough to grow big and strong. I was pretty sure something scuttled away from us. It squeaked too.

“See anything?” hissed Ivy from overhead, where she was dry and not in the middle of the world’s most unbelievably bad smell.

“Well? Are we close enough?” Jack’s whisper bounced
back from about six different directions. I swallowed, and as carefully as I could, I opened up my magic one more time.

It was different here. The squirmy uncertainty was behind us. I felt like I’d opened a window: warmth and the clean scents of sunshine and rain spilled through the far side of the gate. I could feel its jagged edges as clearly as if I rested my palms against them. If I leaned forward in just the right way, I’d be able to see through it to what was beyond.

What would I see this time? All at once I wanted to get closer, open up further. I squashed that feeling. My magic liked to be let out to play a little too much sometimes, and when it was, my good sense took a powder.

“Find it?” Jack’s voice sounded a long way off. I was already halfway out of the human world. I felt myself teetering. One more step with my magic open like this and I’d be all the way gone.

I grabbed Jack’s hand to keep me steady, and I stretched out the way I would stretch out one finger, easing forward, trying to trace all those jagged, rippling edges so I could bundle them together and squeeze them shut.

“What’s going on?” Ivy stage-whispered from overhead. I tried to ignore her and keep focused on the gate. “Have you found it? What do you see?”

“Ivy, no—” Jack croaked.

But he was too late. She was screaming. “Ahhhh!”

Splash!

I got a gout of water in the face, and it tasted as bad as it smelled. I slammed back into the human world, and the whole place was churning, with Ivy screaming and Jack saying, “Hold on, hold on!”

I knuckled filthy water out of my eyes. When I could see anything again, what I saw was Ivy, looking about as miserable as a drowned cat, all scrunched up against Jack, and he had his arms around her.

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” Jack told her. “You’re safe. I got you.”

“What’re you doing?” I demanded in a loud whisper.

“I just wanted to see!” she wailed, and tried to push her dripping curls out of her eyes and shake the water off her hands. For a second I thought she was going to be sick. “I leaned over too far. I’m sorry!”

“It’s okay,” said Jack again, and he glared at me. “It was an
accident
.”

“An accident that’s going to have the whole studio breathing down our necks, you little screwball faker!”

“Callie!” exclaimed Jack.

“What?”

“Don’t be mad,” whimpered Ivy. “Jack, please, tell her I’m sorry.”

“Of course you’re sorry. And you’re sorry too, aren’t you, Callie?”

No, I wasn’t. Not one little bit. She kept messing things up, and I couldn’t get rid of her. She was worse than a bad
penny. Plus she was a total faker and couldn’t even help her mother when she needed it.

“Jack, get her out of here,” I ordered, adding, “She might get hurt.” If he was going to keep being sweet and stupid on her after everything we’d seen, maybe I could get it to work for us.

“She’s right,” Jack said to Ivy.

“No! Don’t leave me alone! I won’t be frightened if you’re with me.”

Oh,
brother
. Jack wasn’t going to buy that line, was he? But the way he was looking at her, I was afraid he might.

“We’d better hurry,” Jack said.

He meant that
I’d
better hurry. Well, who needed either of them?

I swung away from Jack. I couldn’t concentrate if I looked at the little faker shivering against him and him standing there with his arms around her. I let out a long, slow breath, then opened up inside and edged forward. The water seemed thicker here as it slid across my skin and around my ankles. The smell was thicker too. All kinds of bad things had been stewing under here for a long time.

The gate was just ahead of me. I could feel it waiting like an open well in the dark. I inched forward. Something brushed against me: a stray scent of lemon, a thread of music, a soft voice. I felt Jack’s worry and Ivy’s worry, and that made things easier. I could pull that out and tuck it into my magic to make me stronger. I found the edges of
the gate. I plucked them up one by one, gathering them together, drawing them closed. Something squeaked and scrambled. Ivy screamed. Jack shoved against me hard, and I stumbled—straight into the gate. He grabbed my hand and I spun around, but I couldn’t catch my balance, and we were both falling into the water, through the water, and then past it into the gate.

The last thing I saw before it closed around us was Ivy Bright, looking down on us, gold light gleaming in her baby-blue eyes.

I owed Tully an apology.

Betwixt and between rushed around us too fast for me to find anything to grab hold of. I screamed, and Jack screamed with me. There was no direction, nothing to hang on to, no way to stop. We tumbled through a blaze of color until I couldn’t tell whether we were falling down or rising up. Then it didn’t matter which way we were going, because we plunged into cold water.

I gasped. Water filled my lungs. I choked and coughed, fighting for air and getting nothing but more water. My hands flailed and my feet kicked through a wash of blue and bubbles. My lungs were on fire and frozen solid at the same time, and everything was fading down into the dark. I had to breathe but I couldn’t breathe, and I couldn’t breathe and I couldn’t breathe.…

I was rising. Somebody hauled me out of the water across a ledge that grated against all my ribs. I flopped sideways, my body cold and heavy as death. It didn’t matter. I couldn’t breathe.

Somebody whacked me on the back, hard, then did it again. My stomach heaved and I vomited water and pain. I coughed, and my lungs heaved in the other direction, sucking down air. That hurt like blazes too. I threw up more water and coughed and retched, and hurt, and breathed.

After a while, my eyes started working enough to see Jack crouched beside me, soaked to the skin and panting.

“Thanks,” I croaked.

“Anytime,” he answered with an easy grin that lasted just long enough for him to take a look around us. “Where the heck are we?”

That was a really good question. I managed to push myself up into a sitting position so I could see better, and only coughed a little doing it. We sure weren’t under that bridge anymore. We weren’t betwixt and between, nor were we in fairyland. The blue walls surrounding us were decorated with sparkling gold tiles that turned the whole room into a gigantic jewel box. Lights shaped like old-style streetlamps lined both sides of an enormous swimming pool. Arched windows overlooked misted hilltops under a cloudless sky.

We weren’t alone either. People lounged on deck chairs between marble statues of old Roman soldiers and naked women. There was a little tiled stage topped by a shining
black piano. A black man in black tie sat on the bench, creating a stream of slow jazz to blend with the lazy talk that echoed off the tiled walls and painted ceiling.

“… and did you see that thing Margaret was wearing? Betty, I swear …”

“… no, no, no, old sport, if you want to get a really good shot, you …”

“… well, of course I turned him down! That desperate I am not.…”

Men in waiter uniforms and women decked out as maids carried trays of martinis and champagne. The servants moved between the loungers, passing out glasses, picking up empties, and dumping out ashtrays. About half the people on the deck were smoking, and the clouds wreathed their heads like the mist on the hills outside. More people swam in the pool. They called to each other, tossing a volleyball around and laughing and just having a plain old good time.

Nobody looked at us. Two kids in soaking wet street clothes had appeared in the middle of this huge, gorgeous indoor swimming pool, and not one of the people so much as glanced at us. A door opened in the side wall and a new woman walked in. She had a cloud of dark hair and wore a white silk robe. Every head turned and all the people called out to greet her, but none of them looked at us. Jack got himself to his feet and marched up to that dark-haired woman as she shed her robe to show off her scarlet bathing suit. He waved his hand in front of her eyes. She brushed it
aside, as if a fly had buzzed in front of her, and walked over to start chatting about the suit to her lady friends, where she got it and how much it cost.

“We’re not here,” he said. “Wherever this is, we’re not all the way here.”

“This cannot be good.” I scrambled to my feet.

A jazz note faltered. I whipped my head around to look at the piano player, just in time to see him drop his gaze back to the keys.

They keep me playing by the pool during the day.…

But right then another door opened, sending a fresh shaft of golden light spilling across the floor. I spun around. The pretty people at the pool party didn’t look up.

Uh-oh
. “Jack …”

“My goodness,” said a man. “What have we here?”

He was blond, tall, bronzed, and as perfectly shaped as the marble statues standing sentry by the windows. He wore yellow swim trunks and a white shirt that stretched the word
LIFEGUARD
tight across his chest. He even had a whistle around his neck. If it wasn’t for the rabbit, he would have looked like he belonged there.

But there was that rabbit. The lifeguard carried a fluffy white bunny in the crook of one overmuscled arm and petted its floppy ears as he walked toward us. And still not one of the swimmers looked up. They couldn’t see him either, but he could sure see us. The piano player missed another note. I felt the wrongness of it under my skin. I felt something else too. Fear.

“I … um …” I glanced desperately at Jack.

“We’re guests of Miss Davies,” Jack said immediately. I nodded in rapid agreement, and tried not to be too obvious about edging closer to him.

The lifeguard ruffled his bunny’s ears. “But you weren’t supposed to be here until tomorrow.”

I about swallowed my tongue. Jack, of course, took it in stride. “We came up a day early. Didn’t Miss Davies tell you?”

The lifeguard was rounding the edge of the pool and coming up on our side now. “No. I had no orders about early arrival.”

“Really? That’s strange.” Jack frowned at me, his face all done up in confusion. “You called, didn’t you?” I nodded fast, widening my eyes in my best Ivy Bright imitation. “You’d better go ask Miss Davies,” Jack said to the lifeguard. “We can wait here until you get back.”

“I could do that, I guess. But …” He squinted at me. “Can you even swim?”

“Um …”

“What’s that got to do with anything?” asked Jack.

“Oh, nothing really.” The lifeguard smiled, and for a moment I understood what it was to be dazzled. “In fact, it makes things easier.”

The lifeguard tossed the rabbit at Jack and himself at me. His shoulder hit my chest. I flew backward and together we sank down into that cold, clear water.

“No!” Jack screamed.

Panic filled me, and I clutched at the nearest solid thing, which was the lifeguard. I climbed him like a tree, trying to get my head above water. I had time to haul in one huge breath and hear Jack shouting and swearing. He was dodging between the deck chairs with their pretty, blind occupants. That rabbit had gotten a whole lot bigger. It didn’t look like a rabbit anymore either. Now it looked like a gigantic white stallion, with red eyes and all its big horse teeth bared.

“Catch!” Jack shouted at me, and he was wishing. Wishing hard. Wishing I could swim. I grabbed that wish, flipped it around, dragged it inside me, and made it come true.