Golden Girl (8 page)

I changed out of my dress and finally got that stuffed bra off. I looked at my shoulder in the mirror. Four dark, scabby dots stood out in a neat line just below the collarbone. There was a lot of blood smeared around them, but the dots themselves were little more than pinpricks. I shrugged. This time it didn’t hurt.

I washed my shoulder with water from the basin I kept on the dresser. I pulled on my too-big secondhand nightgown. My silk stockings were ruined, but I hung them carefully over the back of the chair anyway. I lay down on the bed, setting up my own mess of spring creaks.
City crickets
, I thought, and closed my eyes. I opened them again. I stared at the streetlight working its way through the curtains, and at those torn stockings hanging like a pair of baby ghosts over the back of the chair. I told myself I was too tired to pay attention to some raggedy idea that was way too dangerous to work.

That raggedy idea wasn’t listening. It just kept picking up more pieces from around my brain and sticking them onto its sides. It grabbed hold of how I didn’t know what to do next, even though we’d found the fairies, and how Uncle Shake might really mean it when he said he wanted me on the Midnight Throne, and how he knew how to use magic in ways the Seelies couldn’t catch hold of. Last of all, it sussed out how I knew exactly what Shake wanted from
me, and the way I could give it to him. In return, I could make him tell me all the things I didn’t know, including how to free my parents.

My idea used all these bits to make itself bigger and better, while I stayed awake and watched.

It took until the sun rose over the Los Angeles rooftops, but I finally found a way to make my raggedy idea back off. Before I did anything else, I was going to talk to Mr. Robeson. He knew plenty of important things about the Seelies, like how to stay free when they were after you. Plus, he’d already saved me and Jack from them once, which was one hundred percent more times than my uncle had. Maybe I could even find a way to tell him about Shake without mentioning that he was my uncle. The idea of explaining to Mr. Robeson how I was part fairy made my stomach squirm and start looking for a back door.

I told myself over and over again while I got dressed that this was the best plan, trying to settle it down in my head. It wasn’t easy. From the beginning, Jack and I had been on our own. We’d gotten used to hiding and to keeping secrets.
The thought of telling someone else what we were aiming for was awfully slow to take root.

I was back in normal clothes today—a brown skirt I’d hemmed up so it wasn’t too long, a white blouse that was only a little too big, white socks, and almost-new shoes. I caught myself taking my own sweet time braiding up my hair. I knew as soon as I finished I’d have to do something about Shake. If he was even still there. Which he might not be.

That idea dropped like a brick into my mind. Shake could have snuck away while I was trying to figure out how not to have to do any kind of deal with him. He said he didn’t have his magic anymore and that we should be one big happy family now, but that could just be a fresh batch of moonshine. He could be anywhere, doing anything.
Anything
.

I shot across the hall to bang on Shake’s door.

You better be in there. You just better!
At the same time I had no idea what I’d do if he wasn’t.

“What on earth!” Miss Patty stuck her head out her door. “Callie? What’s wrong?”

“I … uh …”

Shake’s door opened too. He slapped his cold hand down around my wrist. Before I could do more than yelp, he’d siphoned off enough magic to pull on his disguise like other folks pull on their bathrobe.

“Callie. What is the matter?” Shake looked like he was
dressed in a good dark suit, a clean blue shirt, and a straight black tie. He saw Miss Patty and smiled at her. “Good morning, ma’am. Lawrence LeRoux. Sorry if we disturbed you.”

“I … uh … it’s breakfast time … Uncle Lawrence,” I mumbled. “I didn’t want you to be late.”

“I appreciate that, Callie, but there’s no need to raise the roof about it. Do excuse us, ma’am.” He smiled once more at Miss Patty and, still holding my wrist, steered me into his room and shut the door.

I shook him off and backed away until I was up against the wall.

“You have got to stop calling attention to yourself,” scolded Shake—or Lawrence, or Lorcan. He was piling up names faster than he was piling up disguises.

“You don’t tell me what to do!”

He didn’t even flinch. “Somebody’s got to; otherwise you’re not going to make it six feet from this door now that the Seelies know you’re here.”

“I don’t need your help. We’ve been doing just fine.”

He shrugged. “Probably you’re right. Probably I need you much more than you need me. So, what are you going to do about that?”

Which was a really good question, and I hated him hard for saying it out loud.

“I’ve got to go talk to somebody.” I sure didn’t want to tell him what I was planning, or about the idea that had
built itself up so big in my head the night before. That didn’t leave a whole lot I could tell him. “You stay here until I get back. You don’t go anywhere, you don’t talk to anybody, and you especially don’t magic anybody.”

“I’ve told you, Callie, without you, I can’t lay any spells at all. That’s gone from me.”

“I know what you said. Why should I believe you?”

Shake was silent for a minute, as if this was a brand-new idea. “Very well.” He held up his hand. “See for yourself.”

I stared at him. “What are you talking about?”

“Come into my mind. You know it’s within your power. See for yourself what I am doing here.”

I didn’t doubt I could do it. When I opened my magic, I could feel people’s wishes and wants. The idea that I could hear thoughts wasn’t that much of a stretch. But I saw the starlight sparkling in the back of Shake’s amber eye, and all of a sudden, memory took hold. I saw my mother, standing in the kitchen, arms folded. It was right after the banker had left. He’d been trying to get her to put up the Imperial as collateral for a new loan.

Come into my parlor
, Mama muttered,
said the spider to the fly.…

“No,” I told Shake. “You’re not getting hold of me that easy.” He’d already proved he could siphon off some of my power when I didn’t want him to; what was he going to be able to grab if I opened all the way up to him?

“Callie, Callie.” Shake’s fist shook as he closed it. “You have to trust me.”

“I don’t
have
to do anything. You’re nothing but a liar. You lied your way right in here!”

“Your landlady did that to herself. She wished I was a respectable man, someone who could make the rent, and so I was.”

“When I met you back in Kansas, you said you were my papa!”

“I never did. I may have let you think I said it, but I never out-and-out said it myself.
We
are very good with words, Callie. We have to be in order to survive being near humans. But lies … that’s different. Every lie is a new story, and that kind of creativity is difficult for us.”

I shook my head. I didn’t want to be talking about this, and I especially didn’t want to think about how humans might be dangerous to fairies. That did not sit well at all. Neither did the idea that my inability to lie might be a consequence of my fairy half. “You just stay here, and don’t do anything until I get back,” I muttered.

“Am I allowed breakfast? After you made such a fuss in the hallway, it will look extremely odd if I don’t put in an appearance.”

I gritted my teeth. “Okay. But you go straight back to your room afterward.”

“I am your obedient uncle and servant, Callie.”

There weren’t words enough in Webster’s dictionary for how much I did not believe that “obedient” bit.

*  *  *

Shake and I were the last ones into the dining room. Mrs. Constantine was bustling around, laying out ham, eggs, biscuits and gravy, milk, and coffee so her guests could help themselves. Not that everybody ate all that. Miss Whitman just had a half grapefruit and coffee, because she was an actress and had to watch her figure, she said. Mr. and Mrs. Jones kept to toast and butter and maybe a slice of ham. Miss Patty, though, she ate everything that came her way. She was the personal assistant to Miss Gina Lords, who was starring in a new picture this summer, and Miss Lords sometimes kept her running around all day and didn’t remember to give her time to get lunch.

“Good morning, good morning!” said Shake as we took our seats at the table. He proceeded to introduce himself to one and all as my uncle Lawrence LeRoux. He shook hands with Mr. Jones, bestowed a sweet smile on all the ladies, and settled down to enjoy Mrs. Constantine’s breakfast.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen anybody eat so much, not even Jack after we’d been on the bum for a week getting from Kansas City to Los Angeles. Shake didn’t even have to help himself after the first biscuit. He just talked so much sugar to the ladies at the table, they were all batting their eyelashes at him and urging him to take another helping, even Mrs. Jones. Shake joked with Mr. Jones too and asked him about his work in dry goods and what he thought about California politics and the latest crisis in Europe. Before
long, the whole table had decided Shake was a long-lost friend.

While Shake worked his way through a fourth ham slice, I couldn’t seem to manage to do more than cut my biscuits into little pieces and push them around in puddles of gravy. I didn’t dare look up. Somebody would see that the only person at the table who wasn’t glad Shake had joined them was his niece.

“Callie.” Mrs. Constantine came out of the kitchen, a fresh pot of coffee in her hand. “Your friend Jack is here. I put him in the parlor.”

I threw down my napkin and ran out without an “excuse me” or a backward glance.

“Callie! I got great news!” shouted Jack as I came through the curtains. I glanced back over my shoulder, waving at him to keep it down. Jack just rolled his eyes and grinned at me. He sure didn’t seem any the worse for our late night. In fact, he looked ready to wrestle bears or monsters, whichever he could find first. “I got a telephone call from Ivy Bright!”

“You did? How’d she know where to find you?”

It was pretty plain this wasn’t anything close to the reaction he’d hoped for. Jack’s face went sour as he shrugged. “Asked at the office, I guess. That doesn’t matter. What matters is she wants to meet you.”

“Me? What for?”

“Dopey! She wants to say thank you. I don’t think she remembers exactly what happened, but she knows somebody
tried to kidnap her and
we
saved her.” He pulled himself up straight and proud, every inch the conquering hero. “This is your chance, Callie. If she likes you, she can get you a job on the lot, just like that.” He snapped his fingers.

I thought about properly meeting the most famous girl in the country. Then I thought about how I’d kind of already met her in the first place. “I don’t know, Jack.…”

“What don’t you know? You need a job, don’t you?” Jack’s salary was having a hard time stretching to cover two rooms and two boards, plus streetcar fares and clothes and all the other little expenses that seemed to keep marching in.

“Mr. Robeson said he could get me a job,” I reminded him.

“He said
maybe
, and he didn’t say it was with the studio. It could be hotel work or something. That won’t get you any closer to finding your folks, will it?”

Something in the way Jack said all that dug under my skin. He spent a lot of time acting like he knew more than I did. Sometimes it was true, but sometimes it wasn’t. “Yeah, well, it might not be a good idea to have me hanging around where the Seelies can come calling anytime they darn well please.” That stopped him in his tracks, and I admit I kind of enjoyed it. I would have enjoyed it more if the thought hadn’t come out of my conversation with Shake. I did not want to start trusting what my uncle told me. “Besides,” I said before Jack could start up again, “we got a problem.”

I told Jack about Shake. All the excitement that had
been brimming over in him drained away. So did most of the color in his cheeks, which turned a kind of sick yellow shade. “You let him in here?”

“I didn’t let him. He just sort of got in, and then once Mrs. Constantine saw him, there was nothing I could do.”

“You coulda called the cops or … or something.”

“And tell them what? He hasn’t done anything.”

“Except try to kill us!”

“Callie?” Right on cue, Shake pushed his way through the parlor curtain. I guess he’d gotten worried about how long I’d been gone. “Who’s your young man?”

“You know good and well who I am, mister,” Jack answered, soft and low. The friendly kid vanished. This was the tough Jack, the Jack who’d been a bootlegger, ridden the rails across the country, and even been on a chain gang. You didn’t see this Jack a whole lot, and you really didn’t want to.

“So I do.” Shake smiled, all sly and secret, as he sat on the nearest sofa and crossed his ankles. “But you understand the importance of keeping up appearances, don’t you? I wonder, what can you two have been talking about in here for so long? Callie’s breakfast has gone stone cold.”

“It’s none of your business,” snapped Jack. “You shouldn’t even be here.”

“Where else should I be?” Shake asked with a fake, patient smile that could have gotten a rise out of Mahatma Gandhi. “She’s my niece, after all. Who else is going to take care of her? You?”

Jack’s fist balled up. For a second I thought he was going to knock out a few more of Shake’s teeth.

“Don’t.” I got in front of him. “He’s trying to get to you.” I turned around and walked over to Shake. I needed to show I wasn’t afraid. It didn’t matter who he was related to; he wasn’t pushing me around. I leaned in close and whispered in Shake’s ear, “You better get back to your room. You don’t want Mrs. Constantine finding out what you really look like, do you?”

I straightened up. Shake was looking at me, first with his good eye, then with the scarred eye. I had no idea what he saw, but eventually he sighed and got to his feet.

“If you insist,” Shake said. “Be careful today, Callie. I can’t promise I’ll be able to do much once the Seelie court gets hold of you as well.”