Bad Luck Girl (3 page)

We looked more respectable this time, and the car was starting to fill up with people on their way to work, so we didn’t stand out so much. We got out near Fifth Avenue with a small crowd of men with hard hats and lunch pails. These streets weren’t like any of the Los Angeles I’d seen so far. I’d gotten used to thinking the whole city was white, clean, and brand-spanking-new. In this neighborhood, though, sooty brick alleys sliced apart rows of mismatched buildings, and sagging black power lines stitched them loosely back
together. Raggedy hoboes rolled up in their coats and tried to catch a little sleep in the fading shadows. Chinese men eyed us from the doorways of battered shops and shuttered restaurants, some dressed in shirts and trousers, some in long coats with round caps on their heads. They looked hard and sad, and moved around at their work to the clang and clash rising up from the train tracks behind the jumbled buildings.

It was easy to see what saddened those men. One wall of the street maze had been demolished. Instead of city streets there was a flat expanse of pale dirt with cranes and bulldozers standing guard. It looked like somebody had dropped a piece of Kansas in the middle of Los Angeles, and then fenced it in with barbed wire and wooden slats. The hot, hard California wind stirred up miniature dust devils in the tire tracks. The Chinese men eyed it uneasily, like they were waiting for the day the dirt would stretch out and flatten the last few buildings blocking its view of the tracks.

We paired up as we started up the sidewalk. Papa walked ahead, his arm in Mama’s, and I walked beside Jack. We were all on edge and trying not to show it, but it was hard. Even Papa looked too stiff as we walked the gray line of cement street that cut between the old Chinatown and the new construction site. The railway station, a square granite building with tall windows and wide steps, was up ahead, across a broad, busy intersection. People were heading in and coming out, and everything about it was normal and everyday under the bright morning sun. At the same time, I couldn’t help feeling like I was in one of those dreams where I was in
a long hallway, and no matter how fast I ran, the end kept getting farther and farther away.

Cut it out
, I told myself.
There’s nothing wrong. It’s a normal day, full of normal people. Wherever the Seelies are, they’re not here. Look around. It’s just us
.

It was good advice, even if it came from myself. I did look around. I saw the men heading into work. I saw the broken Chinatown with its people talking with each other or carrying boxes in and out of the stores. Even though it felt like it was taking a million years, we were getting closer to the street corner and to the intersection. It was a matter of taking one step at a time. We just had to get across those streets with their noisy rivers of traffic. We just had to get to the train station. Just one more step, and one more, and one more.

I was all but chanting as we walked. Papa looked over his shoulder once, and I bit my lip. Could he feel me being afraid? I dragged my emotions deeper inside and put some space between me and Jack. And kept walking.
No matter what
, I told myself,
we will keep walking
.

We passed a broken-down shop—if it wasn’t a restaurant—with a neon sign that was a bunch of Chinese characters. It was the last building of the broken Chinatown. On the far side was a lot that would have been vacant except somebody had cobbled together a sad little cluster of shacks from scraps of cardboard, lumber, canvas, and tin.

Jack and I had seen a lot of these places since we’d left Kansas. We’d even stopped overnight in a couple. They were
called Hoovervilles, after President Hoover, who oversaw the stock-market crash that brought the Depression down on the country. Some of them were not okay. They were hobo jungles full of hard, dangerous men looking for a drink or trouble, whichever came by first. But mostly these shanties were built by people who’d lost their homes. They’d been put out, shut out, tractored out, starved out, and now they were here, huddling together, trying to stay alive long enough for things to get better. Probably some of the Hooverville men would be hanging around that construction site’s gate, hoping for a day’s work. The rest would either be out on the bum or curled up in their shacks sleeping off whatever they’d found to ease their way through the night before. If there were families living there, we’d see the kids running around, kicking a can or some such.

At least, we should have. This set of tin-and-scrap shacks, though, was less like the Hoovervilles I’d seen before and more like a miniature ghost town. There weren’t any kids, or anybody else. The crooked doorways waited blank and empty. One black crow perched on a roof and looked out at the morning with its shining eyes. Nobody was hanging around by the fence to ask about a job. The only people at the gates of the construction site were the men with their hard hats and lunch pails.

“Where’re the people?” Jack asked softly. “In the Hooverville?” He’d noticed it too. There were men hunkered down in the broken alleys and pale shadows of Chinatown,
but nobody around those empty houses. Where had they all gone?

Cold worry touched the back of my neck. I didn’t like it, and I could tell by how Jack’s face had gone all tight that he didn’t like it either. Had the cops cleared the place out? That made no sense. If the people had been run off, the Hooverville would’ve been torn down to keep them from coming back. This was a deserted place where there should have been people. Instead, there was only that fat crow, looking very satisfied with itself. That crow, and a smell like burning rubber.

No
, whispered a voice in my head, and I pulled up short. Because that voice was not mine. Jack shot me another worried look. But his look was nowhere near as worried as the way Papa was staring at that crow.

Not them
, said the voice in my head that wasn’t mine. For a wild second, I thought it was the crow talking about us.
Not here. Not yet
.

But it wasn’t the crow I was hearing or Jack. I was hearing my father thinking.

“What is it?” I caught Papa’s sleeve. “What’s happening?”

That startled him. I felt a shift around the edges of my mind, like a very small door closing, and I knew I was right. This was one of the things that could happen when Unseelies got together, and probably Seelies too. Our minds and magics would try to cozy up close to each other, and it took work
to keep them apart, just like it took work to keep out the wishes and feelings of the humans around us. I hated this bit about being part fairy. The last person who got in my head without permission was my uncle Shake. But he had wanted me either under his thumb or under the ground, so he had encouraged the situation. I hadn’t really thought I’d have to watch out for this around my father. His thoughts must have leaked out by accident, or maybe I leaked in because he was so worried he couldn’t completely close his magic self. That was not a comfortable idea. What if my thoughts sprang their own leak? I wanted to get to know Papa, but I had plenty of secrets I wanted to keep to myself, thank you very much.

“Don’t stop.” Papa moved one extra inch closer to Mama’s side and lengthened his stride, forcing me and Jack to pick up our pace. “Keep moving.”

“Why? What is it?” Jack asked.

“Come along, Jack,” said Mama. “You too, Callie. We don’t want to miss the train.” But she didn’t know what time the train left any more than we did. She was just afraid. I could feel the fear beating against the inside of her mind. If we didn’t get away, if we didn’t make it into the safety of the railway station, we could be caught by the Seelies. She could be dragged away again to be locked in another magic prison. But she would not show her fear. She would not look around and let any of us see the terror in her eyes. She would be strong.

I swallowed hard and tried not to know what Mama wanted so badly to keep private.

Papa didn’t bother to answer Jack. He just took a better hold of Mama’s arm and kept right on walking. Something sizzled, and that burning-rubber smell I’d noticed before got stronger. One of the Chinese men came out of the last shop on the edge of the Hooverville and cussed something in his own language. He lifted his battered broom and beat at the switched-off neon sign over his doorway. I swear I saw a spark jump from the sign’s twisted symbol to the black wire sagging overhead. It sizzled again and slid along the power line. Now I smelled smoke.

“Papa?” I said. My father ignored me. I tried again, but silently this time.
Papa?

Not here. Not now
, said his thoughts, but I couldn’t tell if he was actually answering or if I was just eavesdropping some more.

“But what …?” Jack was saying.

“Trouble,” said Papa evenly. “That’s all you need to know.”

We had to stop at the curb and wait for a clear spot in the roaring traffic. Even though this was the intersection of two four-lane streets, nobody had bothered to put up a streetlight on the corner. There was just a little cement island in the middle. All the cars seemed to be taking advantage of this fact to rattle past at top speed. Jack eased himself back behind the rest of us. His worry spiked. I could feel it
pricking at my mind, even sharper than Mama’s. He was getting ready for whatever new, bad thing was set to catch up with us.

I clamped my teeth down on my temper. Papa had no business treating us like we were know-nothing kids. If something was up, we had a right to hear about it. Then we could stop being scared and start being ready. He didn’t know what we’d been through already any more than Mama did. Less even. He’d left us and gotten caught and started this whole mess tumbling across our lives.

Callie, I do know you’ve been through a lot
. Papa’s voice was back in my head, this time on purpose, I could tell. I could also feel him forcing himself to be patient.
But in this city, we are behind enemy lines. We’ve got your mother and Jack to think about, and the only way we can keep them safe is to get out of here as fast as possible
.

He was right, but I didn’t want him to be, especially not while he was brushing Jack off and ordering me around like a little kid. Papa slid his arm around Mama’s waist, letting her know he was close. If I could feel her fear, he definitely could, and I was sorry for my anger. Guilt was another feeling I didn’t need. But I still wasn’t going to let them,
him
, keep us in the dark.

Right then my parents weren’t paying attention to either me or Jack. They were watching the cars honking and swerving and pushing between each other. They were waiting for their chance to get us across that river of moving metal. But on the other side, the iron and steel in the cars might smother
up my magic senses enough to keep me from learning anything on my own about what had Papa so scared. Jack craned his neck, like he was trying to see a break in the traffic, but he nudged my arm with his elbow. I was sure he’d been thinking the same thing. I nodded once. Then I sneaked my fairy senses open and turned them back on that empty Hooverville.

For a couple of seconds, I didn’t feel anything. The worn-down men and the Chinese shopkeepers going about their business were ignoring us. The workers sauntering through the gate around that big, dusty construction site had their minds on their work, or the contents of their lunch boxes, or their wives and families. Normal things. Human things.

But there was something else too, something that dragged itself over my senses like a storm cloud over the sun. It was hunger. It rose up like it was coming straight from the earth. It cramped up my stomach and dried up all other thoughts. Behind us, someone who was invisible even to my fairy eyes was starving to death.

A break in the traffic opened, a heartbeat pause in the noise for two of the four lanes. Papa was leading Mama across, and Jack was following, and I had to go too. But I caught Jack’s sleeve. We reached the island in the middle of the intersection. We were halfway, with traffic in front and traffic behind, and waiting ahead the solid, square lines of the train station, our goal, the place we absolutely had to get to.

Jack looked into my eyes, and he saw immediately there
was a whole lot wrong. He knew, and I knew, that we should keep going, like my parents wanted us to. Like we had every reason to do. Whatever was behind us, it was Seelie.

But the Seelies didn’t build that Hooverville. That was a home for humans, and something had happened to those humans.

Jack swallowed and reached up to his hat brim, like he meant to scratch his head. Instead, he nudged his new straw boater, just a touch. Just enough so that hot California wind and the smoggy traffic breeze caught the brim and whipped it backward off his head.

Jack cussed and turned and ran, chasing after his new straw hat, like anyone would do. The cars screeched and honked and skidded to a halt, sometimes just inches from his flailing fingers. On the far side of the street, Jack, who never, ever missed a step in his life, stumbled hard on the curb. He fell on his knees, right in front of the Hooverville.

“Jack!” I yanked myself out of my father’s grip and dodged into the snarled-up traffic, running after my best friend, like anyone would do.

Both my parents were shouting behind us, but I ignored them. The cars were honking and revving their engines and fighting to get going again.

I knelt beside Jack like I was about to help him get to his feet.

“What do you see?” he whispered, putting out a hand like he was signaling me to back off.

I eased my magic senses open again and lifted my eyes to the Hooverville. I saw the shacks and the crow and the empty doorways. I felt the hunger. It was hot and desperate and it filled the air, but I still couldn’t see where it came from. Now that I was closer, though, I could feel something else underneath that hunger. This new something stole across my senses like a lullaby. It was a wish. There was a wish being granted, right in the middle of the hunger that sloshed through the deserted Hooverville. It was a wish for peace, a wish for rest.
It was sweet and happy, and so completely wrong it made my skin crawl. It crept close to the ground, like fog, like dust. But like the hunger, it seemed to come out of nowhere.