Golden Girl (27 page)

I didn’t even bother to answer. It was already too late to back out. I could feel it in my Unseelie blood and my human bones.

“Make us proud, Ivy,” said Miss Davies. “We are counting on you for the victory.”

Ivy beamed—a real smile, not an acting smile. It was the smile of someone who had just been handed the chance of a lifetime. She swung around, and the Seelie light flashed gold in her eyes.

“What shall be the contest?” asked the Seelie king. “As challenged, Ivy Bright, the choice is yours.”

Ivy raised her arm and pointed one finger right at Jack.

“Him.”

Jack stiffened.

“Wait!” I shouted.

The world went black.

Reality swam slowly to the surface. I wasn’t on the hill anymore. Hot and blinding lights shone in my face. Voices shouted orders from every direction. I was in a chair and someone was slathering stuff on my face and yanking at my hair. I glimpsed Jack sitting beside Ivy Bright on a folding chair, reading a set of pages.

This is a movie set
, I realized.
We’re making a movie
.

The world went black again.

“Rolling!” shouted a voice.

“Playback!” shouted a second.

“And … action!” shouted a third.

The lights came up slowly. I raised my head, looked out across the room, and smiled.

It was the Midnight Club, exactly as I’d pictured it—a big room with curved walls, fancy chandeliers, and bunches of round tables with white cloths. The band, big and brassy, filled the stage at my back. Papa was sitting at his piano to the right, sketching time. Waiters streamed out of the kitchen carrying Mama’s food to the patrons. The whole place was filled with the scents of warm spices, tobacco, and ladies’ perfume. Jack was there too, at the best table in the
house, right at the foot of the stage. He was in evening dress with his hair slicked back. He was smiling up at me in the way I liked best.

Cameras whirred beyond the solid wall of blinding lights. Filming had begun, and I knew my part perfectly. I stood at a microphone. I had on a gorgeous, heavy gown of beaded silver, with a matching band on my forehead. I wrapped one hand around the microphone stand and waited for Papa to signal my intro. Two long, loving bars of slow blues rolled through that room—the movie set, my dream of a nightclub—and I began to sing.

“Love, oh love, oh careless love. You fly to my head like wine.”

Jack’s grin widened. This was his favorite song, and mine too. Everything was perfect. I finally had everything I’d ever wanted, and everybody I’d ever wanted was here with me. I held this audience in the palm of my hand. My voice was low and smoky, just as it should be, caressing the lyrics, turning them sad and just a tiny bit seductive.
I’ve won
, I thought.
I’ve won
.

“Love, oh love,”
I crooned.
“Oh careless love …”

All at once, I wasn’t singing alone. Another voice, higher than mine, sweeter, took up the lyrics, strong and true.

“You’ve ruined the life of many a poor girl. And you nearly wrecked this life of mine.”

The doors at the back of the club, the back of the set, opened, and she stepped in. The room fell silent, and everybody turned to see her.

“All my happiness has left. You filled my heart with these weary blues.…”

She was beautiful. A white cloak with a fur collar fell from her shoulders. Snow sparkled in her golden curls. There was nothing seductive in the way she sang. For her, it was all sorrow. My throat closed down around my own song. Backstory filled in. We’d been friends as children, but she’d gotten a part in the movies and gone on to stardom, while I’d been stuck singing in nightclubs and dying of jealousy. But worse than that, I knew Jack loved her. He always had. He always would. He was here tonight only because I’d tricked him.

I was the dark-haired, dark-skinned bad girl in this movie, and Ivy was the good girl, the golden girl.

“I trusted you, now it’s too late …,”
she sang.

Jack was on his feet, walking toward Ivy. She smiled up at him, and tears swam in her perfect, innocent eyes.

“I love you, Jack Holland,” she whispered. “Don’t leave me alone.” She lifted her hand, palm out. Jack swallowed and gazed down at her. He lifted his palm too, and pressed it to hers.

Anger filled me, anger and, yes, jealousy. I had every right to be jealous. This was my dream.
Mine
. She was a little thief. She’d already tried to steal everything else from me. She wasn’t going to steal Jack Holland or the Midnight Club.

I had a gun in my hand. I didn’t know where it’d come from and it didn’t matter. It felt good and solid as I curled
my fingers around it. It swung around, or I swung it around, to point straight at Ivy Bright. All I had to do was pull the trigger and she was gone. Dead. Everybody called me the Bad Luck Girl? I’d show them just how right they were. Somebody was going to die tonight.

No
, said a voice way in the back of my head.
No, this isn’t what you want to happen
.

Except it didn’t matter what I wanted to happen. This was a movie. There was only one way it could go. When I pointed my gun at Ivy, Jack would get between us. He’d try to save her and I’d kill him, and I’d be arrested and dragged away, leaving Ivy weeping over his body and everybody feeling sorry for her. Loving her. That was the script. I’d read it. I’d seen it a dozen times.

But movies aren’t real
, protested the voice in the back of my head. My own voice.
This isn’t real. It’s just a dream
.

The problem was, this script was built around a core of my dream. I was tied to it the way I’d been tied to Lorcan. I couldn’t get loose, because I was holding on to this.

And because I really did hate Ivy. I hated her and I wanted her gone. I wanted her dead. I remembered every single time she’d laughed with Jack. I remembered how he’d tried to save her and she’d nearly gotten him killed, and how it had taken everything I had to bring him back. She was doing it again. He was on her side. She was making him do this. She’d never let him go. He was mine, but he wouldn’t know that as long as she was alive.

Papa stopped playing. The band was shouting, and
so were the patrons. Mama burst out of the kitchen and pressed both hands to her mouth to cover her shriek of terror. People were running and screaming and turning over the tables, trying to get away from me.

I hooked my finger around the gun’s cold trigger and pulled it back.

“Jack,” I whispered. “Jack. Look at me. Please.”

But what I shouted was, “Out of the way, Jack!”

He turned and put himself right between my gun and Ivy, just like the script said he should. He spoke his line.

“No, Callie.” That was the line. That was all he was supposed to say. But Jack’s jaw shook, and he kept going. “This isn’t you. This isn’t who you are.”

“Then who am I?” I couldn’t see him clearly. All I could see was Ivy Bright standing there, beautiful, pure, perfect, and out to steal everything I’d ever had. I couldn’t let her do it. I couldn’t. I had to kill her. That was the way the movie went.

Jack didn’t answer. He was supposed to. I’d messed up his cue but he could still get us on track. He’d toed his mark. I knew what his line was supposed to be, but he kept his mouth shut. We’d left the script. He didn’t shake his head the way he was supposed to. He didn’t reach for the gun the way he was supposed to. He just looked at me.

They’d dressed him up in a grown man’s clothes. They’d given him a part in this movie that was nothing like his own life. But they couldn’t change his eyes. I knew those eyes. I remembered them, and I remembered Jack. I remembered
how I’d first seen him in the cell of a small-town jail. I remembered walking with him through the dust storms, and running through rail yards, and him teaching me how to hop a freight, and lying our way across the California line.

These were not wishes, not dreams or shiny movie feelings where you knew how it was going to go. These were the memories of what we’d really been through. This was our friendship that came pouring back to me.

Ivy must have felt it too. She raised her chin and stepped out from behind Jack.

“I’m not afraid of you anymore, Callie,” she said. “You cannot win, no matter what you do to me.”

I felt her magic. She took hold of my arm and my head. She was forcing me back into the movie, back into her world, where she had the power. She was the good girl, the golden girl. The one who would always be there at the finish. I was the bad girl. I had to lose. That was how these things went.

But it was more than that. Ivy had a real world beyond this living movie, just like I did, and in that other world she was desperate. She had to win. Victory would buy her the love of her father—what love there was, anyway. She’d thought she could get the gate powers from me, but that had failed. The only thing left for her was to win this twisted challenge. That was the only way they’d ever love her.

Her magic tightened around my body and my mind, forcing me back down into the script. My finger tensed
around the trigger. One tiny little movement and she’d be dead.

But I had my real memories back now. I thought about all the times I’d hated her, and the other times I’d wished I could be her. Ivy Bright was a liar, a thief, and a pathetic girl. She’d tricked us and betrayed us, all to try to earn love from someone who was incapable of giving it.

Then I thought about what Mr. Robeson had said.
It’s not about who they are. It is never about who they are. It’s about who
you
are, and who you want to be
.

I was the Prophecy Girl and the Bad Luck Girl, but before that I’d been the dust girl, and before that I’d been just plain Callie LeRoux. And it was Callie LeRoux I wanted to stay.

This was my cue. I had my line, right on the tip of my tongue. I was supposed to say, “Get out of here, Ivy Bright!”

But I didn’t. Instead, I said, “Ivy … come with us.”

“Wh-what?” Ivy drew back a step, confused.

I strained with all my might, and slowly, painfully, my finger slid off the gun’s trigger. “We’ll bust out of here, one way or another. You can come with us.”

She glanced at Jack. He turned his back on me. I couldn’t lower the gun, but he could take both Ivy’s hands. “Do it, Ivy. Come with us.”

Jealousy tried to surface and shift my finger back. I fought it, harder than I’d ever fought any monster.

“I can’t promise you power or movies or anything, but I know you could stay with us,” I said. “My parents would understand.”

A sob caught in Ivy’s throat. “You don’t want me around any more than anybody else. You think I’m after Jack.”

“That’s gonna be what it’s gonna be.” I was proud of myself for getting those words out at all, considering. The iron bar that seemed to be holding my arm in place gave way, just a little, and I was able to lower the gun, just a little. “But you don’t have to stay here and be a stooge for somebody who kicked you out when you didn’t measure up. You can come with us and just … be Ivy.”

“But Ivy’s nobody,” she whispered.

“She could be somebody if she had a chance,” said Jack. “But she’ll never get that chance if she stays here.”

The gun lowered another tick. The room was beginning to blur around us. The movie was fading to black. We were getting past the story, back to real life.

“You said you wanted a real friend, Ivy. This is what real friends do. We can help each other get out of here, all of us.”

She swallowed. “But what about … what about …” She wrapped her hand around Jack’s. My arm quivered. We were back in the lamplight at the top of the marble stairs. The Midnight Club and the movie lights were all gone. But those masked fairies were back; so was the Seelie king. They all watched, and listened to the question Ivy asked, and we all knew what she really meant. There was nothing I could
do. I still held the gun, though. I could still lose this. I gritted my teeth, drew up every bit of self and strength I had, and pointed that gun I’d been given—the one I was supposed to try to kill my rival with—toward the floor.

The Seelie king and Miss Davies sat grim-faced. Beyond them, I saw my parents. They were moving—slowly and stiffly, but they were moving. Straightening up, lowering their arms, blinking at the world around them, at the Seelie king and his consort. At me.

I’d won. I’d won. It had already happened. Jack had already decided. The contest was over, and the spell was already broken. I knew it.

But what Ivy Bright knew was that she’d failed.

“I’m sorry, Ivy,” Jack was saying to her. “I really am. But that doesn’t mean—”

Ivy screamed. She hurled herself past him right at me, her fingers hooked, ready to claw my eyes out. Somebody else screamed, and hands grabbed me from behind. Ivy was right against my face, and I jerked my hands up to shove her away.

The gun went off. Its thunderclap echoed off walls and hills. The kick knocked me back, and Mama’s arms enveloped me, pulling me away.

In front of me, Ivy’s blue eyes went wide, and she fell back. But she had no one behind her, just the flight of stairs. She fell, rolling down the expanse of white marble, leaving a trail of scarlet behind.

“No!” Jack dove after her.

I stared at the gun. I stared at the Seelie king and Miss Davies, neither of whom had moved. I stared at my parents, whose freedom I had just won.

I tossed the gun away and ran down the stairs.

The masquerade crowd was still there. They all drew back. Not like the patrons in the nightclub scene trying to save themselves, but like people trying not to get their hems dirty. Jack crouched beside Ivy. She was bent in all kinds of wrong directions, but none of that was as bad as the big red stain in the middle of her chest.

I dropped to my knees and grabbed her face in both hands. I had my magic back. I could feel it, and I shoved it out toward her like a lifeline. “Come back, Ivy. Come back!”

Slowly she turned her face in my hands. Slowly her eyes blinked at me.

“That’s it, Ivy. You can do it. Come back.”

Her mouth struggled for a minute, and finally she croaked, “What for? You won.”