Jack the Flash and the Rainbow Egg (Part 1)

Jack the Flash and the Rainbow Egg (Part 1)

Yuu Godai

1

Can’t say as I ever really liked staring down the barrel of a gun, especially one with some ugly man’s face behind it.

Before he decided to squeeze that trigger, I moved the unseen part of me. A shiver ran down my spine. The wind swirled. The man blinked and shook his head in bemusement, as if I’d just tried to imitate a karate master from some kung fu movie. He clicked his tongue and tried to pull the trigger.

In that instant, a giant wave surged across the carpet beneath his feet.

A tree root rose from beneath the undulating ground, dragging smaller, whiskery roots behind it. The root wrapped the carpet around the struggling man like a lasso. A single bud grew from the massive root, and a single fresh leaf unfurled from it.

“What the hell?” the man said, his voice muffled by carpet and tree root. “Let me out!”

As if in response, the window shattered. A giant wolf jumped in and landed in a shower of glass. Its gray fur stood on end. Golden eyes glared at me. Its teeth were bared.

“You’re late, Larry,” I said. “Weren’t you supposed to get here ahead of me and make sure these guys weren’t trouble?”

“Got caught in traffic,” the wolf mumbled. “And it took me a while to find a place to get undressed and hide my clothes. Didn’t wanna walk back with my dick hanging out, did I?”

Ignoring him, I peeled back a corner of the carpet. The ugly man inside found himself nose to nose with a snarling gray wolf. He shrieked.

The man didn’t seem to notice the young leaves swaying around him. Few humans would. I snatched up his gun from where it’d fallen on the floor. Larry finally seemed to remember why he was here. Wrinkling his muzzle, he let out a growl that seemed to come from the bowels of hell.

“Oh God,” the man wailed. “Keep that thing away from me!”

“Sure, but we’ll need you to talk. Sit, Larry.”

Larry grumbled, but he sat. The gun dangling from my fingertips, I stepped forward, dropping the bullets one by one in my wake.

“You’re gonna answer my questions. First…”

The next day, I faced a different man in a different room in a nondescript building off Broadway. No guns this time, and this dude wasn’t actively ugly. You could maybe describe him as a fatter Mel Gibson with the confidence to make that work. Either way, he wasn’t my type. He took a drag of his cigarette as I counted the contents of the envelope and scowled at him.

“We agreed to $200. This is $150,” I said.

“Expenses and compensation. Bit of this and that, Jack,” he said, stretching.

Evan Dean. An alchemist. My business partner—at least, he seemed to think he was—and the guy who hooked me up with work. Officially, he advertised as a shabby civil lawyer. Made a show of chasing ambulances, but that wasn’t his real job. He put out his foul cigarette, adding yet another butt to the mountain.

“First, you had to pay for the window Larry broke.”

“Unavoidable. Blame the traffic jam on Houston Street. Larry’s big on manners. He doesn’t want to roll up to work naked. Even though no real New Yorker would bat an eye at a streaker.”

“And then there’s the ugly man with the gun,” Dean said.

“I should be the one getting compensated there. There was no intel on that place having any watchdogs, especially armed ones. Forced me to use power I’d rather not use.”

“And third, I had to pay to clear the evidence.”

That shut me up. In modern cities everyone lives on top of one another, and the power balance is delicate enough without throwing magic and alchemy into the equation. Alchemists (and everything else on the fantastical side of things) are woven tightly into that fabric.

We had to operate carefully, making sure normal people never found out magic was real. The web that monitored our interactions had threads everywhere. The power I’d used reflexively to accelerate nature was enough to send a vibration running up one of those threads. Removing the kind of giant tree root you only find in ancient forests from an ordinary room without anyone noticing had to be a hassle.

“Didn’t have a choice,” I said, weakly. “What, did you expect me to handle a gun empty-handed? Maybe alchemists all wear capes that reflect bullets, but I don’t. I may be a changeling, but I can’t just ignore those little lumps of lead.”

“Well, be that as it may, money spent is money you don’t get, Jacqueline.”

“Call me Jacqueline again, and I’ll knock your head off,” I growled.

Dean fished for another cigarette before realizing he was out. With a shrug, he shoved the crumpled pack back in his jacket pocket.

“Got another job for you. You’ll like this one. Vince will deliver the details later. Seems like it’s a delicate matter. All I can tell you is what it pays.”

“It better pay well,” I said. He was getting on my last nerve.

Dean shook his head at my impatience and then made a show of opening his desk drawer and taking out a file. He slipped a photo out of it and held it up.

“Payment when the job’s done. This is all I can show you now.”

I’m sure I froze for a full minute. My eyes might well have jumped clean out of my skull like a goddamn cartoon character. A string of drool fell from my slackened jaw and hit the floor. I bet I was panting out loud.

“And it’ll pay the usual fee,” Dean said, thoroughly enjoying my reaction. He flipped that photo around his fingers like a trump card. “This is a bonus. And I promise it’s real.”

Finally able to move, I threw shame to the wind and snatched the photo out of Dean’s hands, holding it right under my nose. I tried to speak, but the words caught in my throat. I struggled to breathe.

“Not for sale. Only two hundred ever made. Signed by the author and the voice actors. Even features a sketch by the author,” Dean added. “This special booklet was only given to select staff when the movie first released in Japan. It’s got color illustrations never reprinted anywhere else. No copies were given to the public, and almost none have gone up for sale. And none of those were signed by the author or actors.”

Dean had finally found a fresh pack of cigarettes. He paused to light up.

“But I bet you know more about that than I do. So? You’ll do it?”

2

“So you took the job, then?” Larry scoffed, lounging on the couch.

He was not in wolf form. Right now he was a teenage boy with rumpled brown hair that spilled over his collar. He wore a Yankees sweatshirt, and an open gaming magazine rested on his chest. Half-eaten chips and pizza covered the table before him, alongside a can of soda and a Switch. From his pinkish face to his freckles, he looked every bit the typical teenager—except for the two pointy wolf ears poking out of his tangled mass of hair.

I wasn’t listening to him. Larry glared reproachfully, but I continued to stare blissfully at the photo. How many times had I tried to get one of these—well, not exactly one of these, almost none of them had the signatures—at an event or online auction, only to see the price skyrocket beyond my means? All I could offer was drool, and I wasn’t good-hearted enough to be happy for whoever did get to waltz away with a special booklet for my beloved manga. A less principled alchemist

might have employed traditional or electronic spells to pilfer the objective, but I was also a faerie. I had to toe the moral line.

A faerie…

I looked to the corner of my home/office with longing and admiration. At the very top, in a corner carefully camouflaged so guests would not see it, sat the altar of all that I cherished. A collection, gathered over the years, of Japanese manga and anime goods, DVDs, CDs, Blu-rays, figures, posters, key chains, stuffed animals, magazines, comics…and doujinshi. These occupied the seat of honor at the altar’s heart—a row of thin booklets, the sight of which always prompted a forlorn sigh.

Someday I would save enough money to go to Japan, visit Comiket, and buy a trunk full of doujinshi. The few scant volumes I possessed came from online friends who’d given them to me after profusive begging on my part. Whenever I got my hands on one, I knew how Arthur’s knights must have felt when they found the Holy Grail.

“Like, can’t you just go to a comic convention over here? Like San Diego or Los Angeles. You go there on vacation all the time.”

“Comic-Con and Comiket are totally different!” I said.

Larry groaned and hid his face behind the gaming magazine.

Comic book conventions were fun in their own right. There was lots of common ground between different types of fans. Marvel and DC Comics, Star Trek and Star Wars, LotR and D&D—I didn’t hate any of those. Sometimes Japanese manga and anime companies would even have booths there. But that scant selection never satisfied me.

My heart belonged to Ariake, to Big Sight, with the same fervor the Crusaders had felt for Jerusalem. That massive Comiket hall was filled to the brim with doujinshi of every genre, of all kinds of series. You could take them all home with you—if only you had the money.

That was my problem. Money.

Faerie land has no manga, no anime, and certainly no doujinshi.

Faeries hadn’t exactly taken to the internet. Only human alchemists and the youngest, most adventurous faeries had really tried it. Faerie gold couldn’t purchase you anything online. Credit wasn’t even any use. Amateur events like doujinshi booths were all cash only.

Real, hard cash that rustled between your fingers, marked with a government seal of approval. Without money, you couldn’t buy a thing. If a human wandered into Tír na nÓg, they might bring something back with them if they were lucky. But an honest faerie in the world of man couldn’t buy a single thing without earning money.

This was why I worked in the human world, refusing to return home to the land of the faeries. Jack the Flash Detective Agency: “We move like lightning.”

Things happened in this city related to the magical world, and we couldn’t let ordinary humans find out about them. These were garden variety problems, the kinds of things that happened wherever a bunch of different creatures with different views gathered. In a city like this, with humans and non-humans crammed into the subway together like sardines, anything not part of regular human society often failed to get treated like a proper case.

That’s where Jack the Flash came in. I could move swiftly between humans and fae, solving crime for a just reward. Alchemists preferred to stay out of trouble, but they also caused the vast majority of problems. So they needed a third party to settle things. A creature like me, who lived on the border between two worlds, functioned well as the neutral solution.

“Hello?” Someone tapped at the window. “Jack? You there?”

“Oh, Vince.”

I opened the window. The warm breeze of New York in early summer rushed in. Dust and exhaust smoke and the crackling magical energy of May evenings all brushed past my cheeks. With a nighttime view of the Brooklyn Bridge behind him, a young centaur smiled back at me.

Our ancestors were mostly the adventurous sort of Goodfellows, having stowed away on explorers’ vessels bound from the old world to the new, but Vince belonged to a bloodline that was old even by those standards. His ancestors hailed from ancient Greece and had scattered across the world, even landing on this new continent.

Vince’s family had stopped trotting aimlessly about the faerie woods and found paths that carried them through human cities. They’d founded a post office servicing those on this side of the world. Some hard-headed sorts still rebuked them for this, but as far as I could tell, Vince paid their ilk no heed.

Whatever his clan had learned on the long road from Grecian forests to the walls of lower Manhattan, the results spoke for themselves. From his tanned skin that glistened as if oiled, to the bluish black hair of his horse’s body, he was a sight to behold. Any horse lover would gaze in wonder at his wild power. It came from his great-great-grandmother on his mother’s side, didn’t it? The blood of the Great Mare Spirit of Wisconsin trickled down through his family tree.

He had thick black dreadlocks with bird feathers and silver beads woven into them. Nearly a dozen rings and studs pierced his ears, his pleasingly fleshy lips, and his broad nose. He wore a red bandana tied around his forehead. Tribal tattoos decorated his broad chest and sturdy arms, all very artistic. He wore several dozen necklaces of colorful beads around his neck. As if paying homage to his Greek heritage, he wore an antique coin on a string, one that displayed the image of a goddess in a chiton.

My office was on the eighth floor of a four-story building—what can I say, magical citizens have some unique architecture. Vince’s hooves perched on a thin ledge, and he calmly sorted through the contents of the ancient leather bag slung over his shoulder.

“Um…this one…and this one…and this one, too. Wow, ‘Confidential?’ You get yourself mixed up in something, Jack?” he asked.

I just gave him a secretive smile. Behind me, Larry made a strange noise between a sneeze and a hiccup. I snapped my fingers. The potato chip bag exploded, blasting chips all over. Larry whined and jumped to his feet. Served him right.

“Try to stay away from anything too dangerous. I’m warning you. Special service, free of charge,” he said.

“Thanks, Vince. I’ll be careful. Keep up the good work.”

“You, too.”

Vince smiled broadly, slapped me on the back, and turned to go. I stuck my head out the window to watch the centaur gallop away, leaping across roofs and over walls. He seemed less like a horse and more like a serow adapted to the city.

I looked through the mail he’d given me and pulled one envelope. The envelope itself was an ordinary white but sealed with red wax. A crescent shape marked the wax, like a claw had been pressed against it. I took the silver paper knife from my desk and slid it under the seal.

The envelope opened. There was no letter inside. Not a single page. Instead, a single green leaf from a linden tree fluttered out.

The moment the leaf touched my desk, green light shot out of it.

Soon my room had been replaced with stones covered in moss and grass, the walls of peeling paint switched with ancient tree trunks. Wind whistled through the treetops. I smelled pure spring water, the rustling of the plains, far off birdsong, and…

“Protector of the Dragons’ Aerie, Guardian of the Ancient Lives,” I said, getting down on one knee and bowing my head. “From Northern lands, the witness to eternity; great and beloved sage and mage; shepherd to the dragons that embrace the green and their hatchlings—Echos.”

“No need for such formality, Jack the Flash. Well met.”

He raised a hand in greeting. At his prompting, I rose to my feet. This had been a genuine shock. No wonder Dean insisted I should receive the instructions directly. The water of the Dragons’ Aerie in Iceland, one of the few remaining genuine, true mages from days of yore, the song of white flower himself: Lindel. For someone of his stature to contact me directly, this must be a very big deal indeed.

“I rarely sing these days. Just Lindel is plenty. Oh, your other half seems to be doing well!” he said.

This fellow must have been at least four or five hundred years old, but his appearance suggested a man still in his twenties, possibly even younger. But his eyes—somewhere between a pale moss green and a clear sky blue—possessed an unfathomable light unique to those who have lived a very long time. Holding his wand to one side, he sat upon a chair-shaped rock and wore an amused smirk.

He directed his smile at Larry, who came over to me while trying to get the potato chip crumbs out of his hair. Larry muttered something under his breath, his wolf ears twitching. I reached behind him, and he yelped.

“Your tail is out! Come on, now!”

“No need to yank it!” he wailed, tears in his eyes as his ears lay flat.

Lindel chuckled, but then his expression grew grim.

“I’d love to catch up, but this is an emergency. Let’s get down to business. Did the agent tell you anything?” he asked.

“No. Just that the client would give us the details.”

“Mmm. For the best. The less information people have, the better.” Lindel nodded and put both hands on his wand, resting his chin on it. “A dragon egg has been stolen.”

3

“A dragon egg?” I said, frowning.

The few surviving dragons all lived in a valley under Lindel’s protection. New eggs and hatchlings weren’t unheard of, but an alchemist or anything else sneaking into that aerie and trying to steal one certainly was.

“Someone made it into the valley with you watching?”

“This happened where I could not reach,” Lindel sighed. He tapped the wand twice. “Deep in the mountains, where no men tread, a clutch of dragon eggs from a rare breed believed long extinct was discovered. Seven of them had been buried there and lain dormant for many years. I immediately arranged for them to be transported to the Dragons’ Aerie, but when they arrived, I discovered that one of their number had been replaced with a very convincing fake.”

I could feel the hairs on the back of my neck rising. Pulling off a heist like this was absolutely insane. Pilfering one of the dragons Lindel watched over from right under his nose?

“Naturally, I searched for it myself, but it seems the culprits had a falling out. By the time I’d tracked them down, the egg had crossed the sea to your side.”

“To New York?”

“That is its last known location.”

I thought for a minute.

Dragon eggs—obviously—were no normal eggs. They were concentrated magic energy, like crystallized power. If something like that had been brought here, it would have been noticed. Anyone involved in that trade would’ve heard.

Which was odd.

“What does this egg look like? The size and color?”

“About the size of a robin’s egg. The color…well, it’s the color of a rainbow.”

He sketched a little bow in the air.

“At a glance it looks like polished opal, a translucent white base with seven hues of light drifting and sparkling inside it.”

“Sounds like the sort of thing a human thief would pocket without knowing what it was.”

“I’m extremely afraid that’s the case,” he said, sighing. “The men I captured confessed that the one who betrayed them added a silver and platinum setting to hide the magical energy within. He intended to carry it with him disguised as precious jewelry. But he was so focused on hiding it from those who can detect its power that he failed to consider non-magical thieves.”

Just what fate had Lindel prepared for the thieves he’d captured? Were they still suffering? I tried not to think about it.

“Sounds like an idiot,” I said.

“You’re telling me!” Lindel shook his head. “At any rate, things are too different in the new world for those of us from the old to operate. And the egg is likely in human hands, mistaken for jewelry. We must recover it quickly, without being discovered by any alchemists or—of course—humans. If it falls into the hands of someone with the right ambitions, it could be very dangerous indeed.”

I nodded.

“Have you checked the auction house already? I heard recent rumors they put a sleigh beggy up for sale, and Thorn dropped a hefty sum for her. Is that true?”

“Mmm.” Lindel grinned. I wasn’t sure why. “True enough. One reason I didn’t want to poke them. Be that as it may, it seems nothing of the sort has turned up at the auction house. I believe we can trust them on that. The people who prepare the auction lists are professionals, and anything dragon related comes to me. And regardless of the number of well-disguised alchemists and mages who gather there, they’d never put up a dragon egg without someone noticing. I believe it is in the hands of someone who knows nothing of magic.”

“If it’s in the hands of someone who does?” I asked.

Lindel just smiled at me, saying not a word. I looked down at my shoes and then threw my hands up over my head.

“Okay, Okay, I got it. Jack the Flash, at lightning speed. We’ll jump right on it, resolve it just as fast without humans or alchemists noticing. That’s what you’re after, isn’t it?”

“So quick on the uptake! You deserve the name.”

Lindel nodded, satisfied. He rose to his feet, wand in hand. Dragon hatchlings gathered around, begging him to come play. He patted their heads and said, “I’ve sent the reward to your agent in human currency, as always. And I added a bonus to ensure you’d take the job. Was I right?”

Yes, he certainly was. “You were.”

“Good, glad to hear it. I’m counting on you. I hope you’ll have good news for me soon.”

He spun the sleeve of his robes, turned away from us, and followed the hatchlings.

As he did, the effect of his spell faded from the room. The moss-covered stones became desks and tables again, the same old decrepit office furniture. The grand forest gave way to plaster with the paint peeling off.

Larry seemed to be still under the spell; his eyes had turned gold and flaming. Everything from his waist down was wolf. I slapped him on the back of his head. He yelped and rubbed it, glaring at me.

“Why do you always have to hit me?”

“Because your transformation’s slipping,” I said.

On the desk lay the unsealed envelope and the single linden leaf. I picked the leaf up carefully, tucked it in the envelope, sealed it again, and placed it in the drawer. It had served its purpose, but this was a leaf from one of the Dragons’ Aerie’s linden trees sent by Lindel himself. It contained plenty of that place’s magic. There might be use for it someday.

“If you aren’t eating that pizza, stick it in the fridge. And clean up those chip crumbs! You spilled some soda there, so wipe it up! Don’t want the carpet getting sticky. I’ve gotta get ready for tomorrow, so quit playing that game and go to bed early. TV off! If you take a late-night walk, make sure everything’s locked up.”

Muttering about how he wasn’t a child, Larry started transferring the cold pizza to a plate. He’d forgotten to put his tail away again, but I let it go this time.

I sorted the rest of the mail. Electric and water bills (both for human society), receipt for the rent (from the alchemist landlord), dubious—for several reasons—junk mail (two for humans and three for the other side.) One bill made of woven dry grass and black feathers from the crows I’d hired to help with the investigation the other day. The little rock with mixed brown and black was a statement of protest from some earth spirits whose realm I’d entered on a previous investigation.

That’s just how the world of magic went sometimes.

I put the receipt and junk mail and the rest in the right mailboxes, made myself a cup of coffee, and holed up in my bedroom. Staring out the window at the headlights moving through Brooklyn, I sipped and savored my coffee. I could still hear Larry moving around in the office.

Larry. He was human. No, maybe not anymore. He and I had been switched, and he’d been raised among the faeries. The magic of their land had changed him into something no longer human. Now he was half-human, half-wolf, and constantly shifting between the two.

Larry wasn’t a werewolf. Werewolves were either born that way or became so as a result of a curse. Larry’s condition had nothing to do with either. According to him, he was a human, a wolf, and a faerie.

The two of us had been switched at birth, so we should have been the same age. However, he clearly looked like a teenager, while I appeared to be in my mid-twenties. Time flowered differently in the land of the fae.

Once upon a time, human parents would have quickly dealt with a changeling, or the faerie parents would have come to take them home. But this was 21st century America. Changelings were a footnote in the pages of an anthropology textbook, and my actual faerie parents completely forgot that time flowed much faster here.

Faeries were not exactly time-conscious to begin with, and ten or twenty years could fly by while they were just taking a quick rest. Any faerie parents planning on dropping their kid in the human world really ought to be aware of this. And don’t even get me started on why they’d bother swapping kids around in the first place.

I turned on my bedside lamp and powered up my laptop. I cleared the spam email (both human and other) into the trash and opened up the browser. Special order computers made by Magus Craft artificers could run circles around your average Apple or Dell. I entered one of several chat rooms I frequented. There were any number of message boards or social networks only those with magic power could access, a fact I’m sure would surprise regular humans.

Jack_the_F> Hey! Evening. Who’s around?

Baron_Z> Yo, what’s up, Jack? Haven’t seen you in a while, what’s going on?

Score! Exactly the individual I was hoping to find.

Jack_the_F> Glad you’re here, Baron. I’m looking for something. You hear any rumors about a super powerful item showing up over here? A jewel, probably a large opal. About the size of a robin egg. Should be set in something.

Baron_Z> Hmm, haven’t heard anything like that. Hang on a minute, I’ll look around. This something better off kept on the down low?

Jack_the_F> Please do.

Baron_Z> Gotcha.

The screen flashed. Baron had put a lock on the chat room. I relaxed and leaned against the wall. He had no corporeal form, so I always pictured him swimming like a dolphin through a vast sea of data.

Baron Zamedi. When the computer network was first born, some enterprising gremlins met in the unknown domain of the datasphere. The collective consciousness and fatalistic union born from that meeting gave birth to them.

The oldest among them (counted by decades, at the most) began calling themselves Voodoo loa out of respect for William Gibson, an author who’d “discovered” them in the form of a novel. The Baron was one of the oldest of these. Meanwhile, the real Voodoo loa turned a blind eye on the upstarts’ impudence, for now. Thankfully. Like any gods, they were merciless and immense, and once angered, not easily placated.

The electric loa were a new species and so had few relations with alchemists (bound by ancient traditions) or mages (who resided in nature and the earth). But as information merchants, they could comb through all kinds of data, finding things faster and more accurately than anyone else. Data was their source of nourishment, and all information their arms and legs, the very air they breathed.

They were a potent source of information. Searching for rare info was all the reward they required, an invitation to a feast.

The screen blinked a few times, signaling that the Baron had returned.

Baron_Z> I had to dig real deep for this one. Is this it?

One side of the screen showed a beautiful necklace with a large, gorgeous opal set in it. The image quality was terrible; it had clearly been taken from a security camera. I zoomed out and saw a group of men in black suits and sunglasses standing shoulder to shoulder, looking down at the velvet box containing the necklace. Seemed they were in the middle of a deal.

Jack_the_F> Yeah, probably. Who are they?

Baron_Z> Richard Diefenbaker. CEO of Spectrum Industrial Corp.

Richard Diefenbaker…I rolled the name around in my mouth. I’d seen the name before in papers or heard it on the news. Wall Street big shot, huh?

Baron_Z> The rest are his bodyguards. The one with the box is Jeffrey Chandler.

Jack_the_F> Who’s Jeffrey Chandler?

The cursor blinked a bit in uncertainty and then started moving again.

Baron_Z> Um, doesn’t really seem to be anybody. The police have taken him in for parking violations and drunk driving, picked him up a few times for minor thefts but never charged him with anything. Your common thug, I guess. Like well-chewed gum to us.

Jack_the_F> So how does he have such a valuable looking jewel?

Baron_Z> That’s what I’d like to know.

I thought for a minute.

Jack_the_F> Can you send me face shots on everyone there and data on their connections? An enlarged shot of the necklace, too.

Baron_Z> On it.

The email hit my inbox with a ding. It had a zip file attached, and the header winked at me before opening on its own. My desktop filled with images, text, spreadsheets, and other data.

Jack_the_F> Thanks, Baron. I’ve got a lot of work ahead of me, so if you’ll excuse me!

Baron_Z> Let me know if you figure anything out. Enjoy!

Closing the laptop, I stretched. I considered going right to sleep but thought of one more thing I should probably do. I opened the closet door and pulled an empty bottle of aspirin out of a drawer inside. Removing the lid while walking to the window, I flung the bottle’s contents toward the New York skyline.

“Flicker and flap, sneak and spin,” I chanted. “Run, run, little feet. Turn, turn, tired tracks. Take the shadow roads, run to the edge of darkness. Follow, ask, seek and bring home the rumors of the dustbins, memories spoken by the dust of the town.”

Black dust spilled from the bottle, swirled in the air, and gusted away on the wind. I watched it go, satisfied. It was ash made from burning rat whiskers combined with scrapings from old taxi tires. Rats and taxis knew every corner of this city like no one else.

I closed the window and was about to start changing when my smartphone (also an artificer’s work) let out an ominous sound. Darth Vader’s theme. I knew who that was without even glancing at the screen. I let my shirt fall back in place, sighed, took a deep breath, and answered.

“Hello, Mom,” I said. “It’s Jacqueline.”

An hour later, thoroughly annoyed and exhausted, I was finally able to hang up. What the hell did the opening of a jogging-only racetrack in their suburb have to do with me? Certainly, where they lived you were more likely to get trampled by a stampeding group of joggers than run over by a car, but still. My mother—it goes without saying that this was my human one, the one who raised me. Faeries didn’t generally use phones. Anyway, my mother had explained at great length how mental and physical health depended on regular cardio exercise, with a lengthy sidebar on traffic safety, but I had so many other things to worry about.

Why had my real faerie parents deposited me with these super positive, PC-obsessed, ditzy, flustered humans instead of a normal human with the good sense to shun a weird kid like me?

As a result, I couldn’t bring myself to dislike the parents who’d raised me. No matter how many times I swore I was just going to hang up, every time Mom called, I ended up sitting and listening to her rattle on, even though I had set her ring tone to Vader’s theme.

Feeling depressed, I flicked through my playlists. I wasn’t in the mood for Akiko Shikata or ALL PROJECT right now. Vocaloids and Hirosawa Susumu? Not quite right. I ended up switching to an internet radio station that specialized in oldies, put my phone down on the speaker cradle, and let the music play at low volume.

I changed clothes listening to Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” and lay down on the bed while Bob Dylan sang “Blowin’ in the Wind.” I started nodding off to the sweet refrain of Elvis Presley’s “Can’t Help Falling in Love,” and by the time the Bee Gees started singing “How Deep Is Your Love,” I was sound asleep.

4

I was born in a crossfire hurricane…

Mick Jagger’s singing dragged me from slumber. The changeling child, Jumpin’ Jack, the super cool Jumpin’ Jack Flash. A lonely kid, I’d grown up with the constant echo of this song in my head.

I didn’t know if I’d been born during a similar storm. Or, for that matter, why my faerie parents had switched me with a human child. But I’d been switched with baby Larry and spent twenty odd years in the human world without ever knowing I was really a faerie.

I wasn’t super cool. Otaku girls were the bottom tier on school’s social hierarchy. I wasn’t bullied or anything—the other kids just avoided me. In hindsight, perhaps they instinctively knew I fundamentally wasn’t like them. They treated me like I wasn’t there, keeping contact to a minimum. I was fine with that. As long as they left me alone, I was free to get lost in a world of my own fantasies.

The sad tale of Jumpin’ Jack, schooled with a strap right across his back—while my parents were super chill, ordinary, sensible people who never once used a strap. The very thought of raising hands against a child would make them quiver all over. At any rate, they respected my uniqueness, never forcing their introverted daughter to go out and play. I was very grateful for that. I was at a loss as to how to handle Mom’s constant babble about communing with my higher self, being a strong independent woman, revolutionary diets, and natural vitamin healing, but I soon realized that as long as I kept smiling and nodding, I could just think about whatever I wanted. My mother didn’t really seem to care if I was listening or not.

I’d felt like this wasn’t the real version of me. That there was another, better world, and that if I could only get back there, this awful version of me would vanish. I could be my true self, and my life would really matter. Every teenager feels like that at least once, but in my case it came true. One day a half-wolf, half-boy named Larry tapped at my window, introduced himself, and told me what I really was. A changeling. A faerie switched with a human.

Be careful what you wish for. Truer words were never spoken. All this time I’d wanted to be a different version of myself, not this scrawny, freckled, boring girl too scared to talk. My deep dive into Japanese anime and manga was fueled by a desire to be part of some world I had nothing to do with.

But I’d found out there was another world for me. I’d realized it the second I first met Larry. The moment I saw his gleaming golden eyes, those ears and tail, the fangs as he grinned and waved through my window I knew immediately, common sense be damned. I knew he was my brother—in a sense, my twin. A human and a faerie, switched at birth. Oh, God. The thing I’d read about and seen on TV and longed for was actually real.

But not everything about that other world was necessarily great. The faeries didn’t exactly roll out the red carpet and confetti for the homecoming of someone they’d abandoned in the human world. They’d all glanced at me and then ignored me. My real parents didn’t even bother to show up. I still didn’t know their names or what they looked like.

Larry was the only person there that I knew. Manners I’d learned in human society didn’t work in faerie land at all. I was a faerie, but I didn’t know how to be anything but human. The only thing I really got out of my homecoming was the knowledge that the strange powers I’d had since I was a kid were faerie magic. However, that didn’t mean I could easily learn how to be a faerie.

But I had to become something, and quickly. I couldn’t bear being neither human nor faerie, bouncing between the two identities like a jumping jack.

As a human, I’d had this vague idea that I’d go to college, get a job somewhere, maybe fall in love, get married, have a kid. But the second I knew I was a faerie any hopes for that path fell apart completely. I learned just how hard being abnormal was. Not that being normal was simple, but I was abnormal in two worlds at once.

To cope, I latched on to a childhood hero. Long before I discovered manga, I’d idolized Sherlock Holmes. Well, strictly speaking, Irene Adler, the one and only heroine who’d completely fooled the great detective, mocked him, and gone on her way. The one and only woman for him.

When I was a little older, I’d looked up to Vic Warshawski and Kinsey Millhone, tough, cool lady detectives who didn’t bat an eye at the macho posturing around them. One of many reasons I appreciated my parents’ firm belief in allowing their child’s thirst for knowledge and freedom of thought. This allowed me to self-direct as I pleased.

I read any and all books I wanted to, cultivating the ideal heroine in my mind. When I realized I had to become something fast, I ransacked my memories and latched on to these. A tough, cool lady detective who walked the streets of a dirty town searching for the truth. A knight in shining high heels.

Pretty sweet.

I’d left home and rented a room in a corner of Manhattan, put out ads in both human and inhuman society, and worked my butt off to make connections. Eventually, work came my way. Not a lot of it, but I earned a reputation as I handled one job and then another.

With the help of a little suggestion, my parents believed I had a job at a small securities firm and were convinced my career was progressing satisfactorily. Their politically correct trust in their child was so unwavering that I sometimes thought they’d take it in stride even if they found out I was actually a faerie.

Jack the Flash moves like lightning.

Super cool.

As I opened my eyes, the Rolling Stones were giving way to The Beatles’ “Paperback Writer.”

Morning sunlight spilled across the floor. Rubbing my eyes, I sat up and stretched. The window’s glass rattled.

I got off the bed, stopped the radio, and opened the window. Sunlight and a gust of wind brought in a cloud of ash-colored dust. The dust swirled around me, rubbing against my shins before spreading out on the floor and forming letters.

laurawinfreyoffbroadwaydancersingeractress

Like a childish scribble, the letters barely lined up.

“Laura Winfrey,” I whispered. “Off-Broadway. A dancer. Singer. Actress. This woman has something to do with the egg?”

The dust quickly spelled out new words.

manfatmannecklacegiveherforlove

“A fat man. He’s giving her the necklace as a present? Because he wants her to be his lover. Is this the man?”

I opened my laptop and showed them the picture of Richard Diefenbaker from the data the Baron had sent last night. The boss of the Spectrum Industrial Corp. The dust scurried again, writing yesyesyesyes across the floor and positively frothing with excitement.

“You know what this Laura Winfrey looks like?” I asked.

The dust formed a big picture of a woman, as good as any photograph. Vivid colors like a colorized film. Eccentrically styled hair that was almost white. Heavy makeup. Lips so dark red they looked almost blackened, sharp eyeliner, fake lashes so thick they shadowed her hazel eyes. I would have preferred to know what she looked like without all that makeup, but that was probably asking too much.

“Thanks, everyone. You can go back now.”

I opened the lid of the aspirin bottle. The rat whisker and taxi tire ash swirled, burbling happily, and were sucked back home. I’d placed a mix of cheese and gasoline in there last night as a reward. Nothing like a good meal and a nice rest after a hard night’s work.

“Larry!” I shouted, flinging open the office door.

Larry was sprawled out asleep on the couch and jumped to his feet. I knew it! He’d fallen asleep gaming again. His hair was all flattened down, with only the wolf ears sticking up.

“Time to work. Wash your face and get changed, little doggy. Jack the Flash is on the job!”

5

Normally, I was a big fan of off-Broadway. I’d gone to see musicals like Phantom of the Opera, Les Misérables, Chicago, and The Lion King, some of which had been playing since before I was born. I’d always had a great time, but the sheer polished perfection of those could be suffocating. Sometimes you wanted to go to a small theater and get as emotionally worked up as the actors.

I wouldn’t think of entering the place in front of me, even on one of those more emotional days. Though it appeared to have a decent number of seats, this place was less off-Broadway and more Off Off Off Off times infinity Broadway.

Around us, tourists flocked to Stomp or the Blue Man Group, but here was this little air pocket, a place I would never have found if work hadn’t demanded it.

The brightly lit sign was more lurid than enticing, better at annoying or rubbing you the wrong way than being uplifting. Large posters slathered all over the place did not soften that impression at all. The posters’ photos displayed massive close ups of the actress’s face. At the bottom was a title and slogan in a gothic font, stimulating in the same way a headache is.

I glanced them over and quickly decided not to bother reading them. They didn’t seem to be high-class literary material. More the sort of flyer you’d see printed on neon paper, lettering done in magic marker or by some old printer that didn’t spread the ink evenly, and then plastered around a slum in Detroit or whatever.

These posters teetered on the brink of something you’d see outside a strip club. The grinning face belonged to the woman the taxi rats had shown me: Laura Winfrey.

Her name was all over the place, dancing here and there, always in this red gothic font that reminded me of her awful lipstick. Not a single hint at what sort of show this was or why anyone would want to see it.

Heavy lipstick, mascara blotted onto her fake lashes, plaster white foundation, and way too much rouge. A frothy white feather stole wrapped around her neck. The overall impression was of some creepy death mask, possibly because you could tell her eyes weren’t smiling in the slightest. I imagined a bleached skull flashing teeth through that frozen rictus smile. I shuddered.

The overall vibe here felt like one of those lawless New York 1970s alleys Robert De Niro walked down in Taxi Driver. This place didn’t have the right to declare itself Broadway, no matter how Off.

The final nail in the so-called coffin were the theater doors—and I called this place a theater begrudgingly. A man in a black suit and sunglasses leaned against the doors.

I didn’t even need to see the suspicious bulge in the side of his suit to know this guy wasn’t theater staff or any kind of performer. Watching tourists laugh and get sucked into one theater or another, he jutted his massive square jaw, an angry-with-the-world scowl adorning his brow, an unlit cigarette clenched between his teeth.

“What now, Jack?” Larry said softly behind me. Wearing a Yankees cap over his wolf ears and a matching stadium jacket, he looked like any other rabid fanboy. He blew a pink bubblegum balloon, popped it, and said, “That bloke’s not exactly screaming ‘good citizen,’ is he?”

“Bet there’s another one around back. Looks like this Laura Winfrey’s got some dangerous friends.”

With that, I walked straight towards the theater.

“O-oi, Jack!” Larry hastily followed.

“Frontal charge,” I said, and hopped up the stairs. I mean, there were only two sandstone steps, so this wasn’t a challenge.

A few paces later, I faced the sunglasses dude. He pretended not to see me, fiddling with his cigarette filter like he was bored out of his mind.

“Hey!” I said, with a big smile. “What time does the show here start? I’d like to buy tickets.”

“It’s rented out today,” the man growled, as if I should be grateful he’d said that much. The cigarette continued to dangle from his lips.

“That’s a shame! What about tomorrow? The day after? A friend of mine said the show here was the best, and I simply had to see it for myself.”

“Place is rented out tomorrow and the day after.” The man tugged the sunglasses down and gave me a hard look. I could see a warped version of myself in those mirrored lenses.

“It’s always rented out,” he added, hammering the point home. Then he stood, and leaned in. “Get me, toots? I dunno what your friend said, but you’re at the wrong theater. Now be a good girl and run along. Call your friend and find out where you’re supposed to be. Or else.”

“Or else what?” I said, smiling innocently. “My friend said Laura Winfrey is the best actress around, and the opal necklace she wears is simply divine, a true feast for the eyes. She’s here, right?”

The word opal sure got a reaction out of him. Even with his piggy little eyes hidden, I could tell. His cheeks quivered, his mouth flapped a few times. The cigarette fell to the ground, and his giant paws reached for my neck.

Unfortunately for him, they missed. Without any interference, I simply walked right past him, leaving the sunglasses man rooted to the spot with his hands grabbing at nothing.

“Sorry, bro,” I said, stroking his cheek. I glanced down at the cigarette on the pavement. It jumped up into my hand, and I carefully placed it back between his lips.

“I have to meet the star of your show. I know you’re just doing your job, but so am I. Forgive me!”

A massive entrance hall waited inside the doors he had been guarding. Faded posters and flyers lay plastered on top of one another, dangling like rows of dead butterflies. It looked like the tiny bar had gone unused for ages. There were barely any bottles left, and the only remaining glasses lay in pieces on the floor. The pleather stools were white with dust.

“Why not just turn invisible and walk past him?” Larry muttered as he followed me, glancing back at the frozen guard. Raised in the faerie kingdom, he was used to the simple approaches faeries took to problems and often viewed my way of doing things as too theatrical and inconvenient.

“Short conversations like that can often give us extra clues,” I said, shooting him a pitying look.

I stopped in the middle of the hall, looked around, and spied a small door behind the bar. Picking my way through the broken glass, I made my way over and opened it. A cloud of dust billowed outward, and I sneezed. Behind the door a dark hallway waited, one that was seemingly used to carry drinks and snacks to the backstage area.

“Also,” I added, “anybody who calls me ‘toots’ deserves a little retribution.”

I waved Larry in after me and closed the door behind us. As soon as the latch clicked, we heard someone fall down out front, followed by a bang like a Fourth of July firework. People started yelling, and a moment later we heard police sirens.

Passersby must have had quite a fright. That suspicious-looking gangster standing out front had suddenly jumped into the air, done an unsuccessful back flip, and then shrieked as something exploded inches from his face.

Hopefully he hadn’t mistaken the explosion for a gunshot and started waving his own piece around. There he was, bored out of his mind on guard duty, and the next thing he knew he was falling down the stairs, his cigarette bursting and scattering tobacco everywhere. I doubt he had any idea why.

Naturally, he would have no memories of the woman who’d stood right in front of him. Toots, my ass. You should have been on guard against what this toots can do, bro.

“Jack, this place stinks.”

This was the third time Larry had whined about the smell. We were using faerie footsteps, so our passage didn’t disturb the dust, but we couldn’t do anything about the stench.

What bothered Larry wasn’t the real-world stench so much as the human memories seeped into the building itself. Hope and despair; love, hatred, lust, and desperation. I wasn’t oblivious to the odor, but that rotten stench always lingered around abandoned locations. For a half-wolf like Larry, it was undoubtedly pretty tough to bear.

“Just a little longer,” I whispered. “See? There’s the exit.”

Holding his nose, Larry just gave a short whine in response. I hastened my pace.

An open hatch waited at the end of the bare concrete passage, through which drink orders could be placed. I pushed a pile of empty coffee cups and plates out of the way and went through, pulling Larry after me.

“Ugh, I thought I was done for,” he moaned.

In the new area, Larry took off his hat and shook his head. His wolf ears shook, too. For a moment I could see a giant wolf superimposed on him. Like his boy form, every hair stood on end as he shook himself clean.

“Sorry,” I said, rubbing his ears apologetically. “So? Any scents worth following?”

“Slave driver,” he grumbled but lifted his head and sniffed the air. His lips pursed, a hint of gold sweeping over his pale blue eyes. His pointy ears perked up, shifting directions like radar. “That way,” he said, pointing down the corridor.

A number of candle-shaped light bulbs dangled in the hallway, something that seemed really out of place considering how trashed it was upstairs. They didn’t even match the drab linoleum and plaster walls of this corridor. Like the passage above, remnants of the people that had once bustled through here were scattered everywhere like confetti. This time, though, there were signs that it was still in use.

I took a step in the direction indicated.

“What brings you here?”

An upside-down skeleton face dangled in front of me.

I jumped back, bumping into Larry, who yelped.

“Ah, do excuse me,” the skeleton said, still upside down as he pulled himself completely out of the ceiling. Without bending over, he did a 180-degree spin, planted his feet on the floor, and gave a dignified bow.

He was dressed as a 1920s gentleman, with a black frock coat, a starched-front pleated shirt, wide cuffs, and a narrow bow tie. Even the silk hat he doffed was in flawless condition. Everything save the wearer’s flesh had been perfectly preserved.

“It’s been quite some time since anyone came here who could see me. You seem rather different from the rough crowd that’s been stomping around like they own the place.”

“Yes, very different,” I said, recovering somewhat.

He was a ghost. Of course. Most theaters had at least one of these haunting the place. Ghosts were drawn to areas where crowds gathered to enjoy the drama of the theater or movies. They were little more than shadows of human passion. Some theaters had as many as a dozen ghosts wandering around back stage or through the seats, working as invisible staff.

“I’m Jack, and this is Larry. We’re changelings. I’m the faerie.”

“Well, well. Nice to meet you, Jack. Larry.” The gentleman skeleton nodded magnanimously and gingerly returned the silk hat to his head. “I don’t believe I’ve spoken with a lady here since October of 1918. I was busy putting a little spit polish on some Gilbert and Sullivan at the time. Iolanthe, I believe it was. Must meet the demands of the masses, you know. Work in the can-can or what not. Smashing, if I dare say so myself. It was a glorious time, you know. Oh, where are my manners? My name is Roderick Byrne.”

“Nice to meet you, Roderick. Or would you prefer Mr. Byrne?” I asked.

“Roderick will do just fine,” he said, waving bony hands reassuringly. The massive ruby set in the ring on his finger caught the light with a dull gleam. “I don’t suppose you’re here to finally rid me of these boisterous fools, are you? They have no respect for art, not the slightest notion of aesthetics. This theater’s collapse into disuse is a sad consequence of time’s inevitable decline. But if it must be used, then I would much rather it be used for something proper.”

“By boisterous fools, you mean like the guy in the black suit out front? He had a gun.”

“Heavens! I had no idea they were so unscrupulous.” Roderick wiped his brow with a groan. His exposed teeth rattled. “Protecting the safety of a theater is, of course, a necessity, but it will never do to go frightening the audience. I never once permitted such a performance.”

“Didn’t seem like a performance. The lobby was totally trashed, too,” I said.

“That is their doing, I’m afraid. Before them, the place was properly maintained.”

He shook his head in dismay. I suppose he would be upset. This seemed to be a very old and very particular ghost. He had been here long before the efforts to clean up New York began and had protected the theater through several owners and remodels.

“Those who can think of nothing better to do than destroy things out of boredom have no place setting foot in a palace of art. And they have no idea how to treat the actress.”

“Is she here?”

Larry lifted his nose, sniffed the air, and then nodded at me. The actress Roderick referred to was clearly the one we were here to see.

“If it was up to me, I’d handle things quite differently. Hmph!” He snorted indignantly, despite lacking a nose. “You see, actors are quite delicate creatures. The lady is not without talent, but even Sarah Bernhardt—no, particularly Sarah—could hardly produce her best work held captive like that. They keep her locked up in the dressing area and its adjoining room. They won’t ever let her see the light of day. Even the gayest of larks would lose their song treated like that!”

“She’s a prisoner?”

“Their boss claims she’s being protected, but…” Despite his lack of face, Roderick’s brow appeared to furrow in concern. “Protected from what, I do not know. I believe she is in need of protection from these men more than anything. I serve the arts, but where I can, I serve the ladies, too. Even in my current form, I believe I have always treated the fairer sex with the respect they deserve. Men like these should not be allowed within ten yards of a lady.”

“Would you mind helping this lady out, too? I’m afraid I’m not exactly the corset and bustle type,” I proposed. “But we’ve been hired to locate a certain precious jewel. The man who’s locked up this actress, Laura Winfrey, may have something to do with it. We’d like to discuss it with her. Can you take us to her?”

“I certainly can. I would be only too glad to help. Nay, honored!”

Roderick held his hand out to me. I hesitated a second, then realized he was expecting me to act like a lady. Somewhat awkwardly, I took the bone gentleman’s hand. Satisfied, Roderick led me in the direction Larry had indicated.

6

“Assisting a lady on a secret mission!” Roderick said, his teeth chattering happily as he escorted me down the hall. “What a delight! Reminds me of one of my greatest hits. The heroine discovered a despicable nobleman selling out their homeland. She slid a dagger into her garter and snuck right through the nest of villains to get that information to her lover.”

“Sounds great,” I said. I was not wearing any garters. “Bet it ended with them catching all the scoundrels and sharing a passionate kiss.”

“Naturally! How else? The masses crave a happy ending!” The bones in his skull rattled merrily. “Let us endeavor to bring about a happy ending to your mission as well! Here we are!”

Roderick stopped before a door.

This door appeared to have been replaced. Like the candle-shaped light bulbs, it looked cheap, with a fake wood grain plastered on it. Larry in wolf form could easily knock it down. I could possibly do the same. I was somewhat taken aback, as I’d expected to find a guard like the one out front.

“There are these rumors about a ghost in this hall,” Roderick said, guessing my thoughts. “They never come here if they can help it.”

I didn’t need to ask who was responsible for that. I turned, took a half step into the faerie world, and knelt beside the door. Human eyes would not see us now. Running into another sunglasses dude in this hall would be trouble, especially if he saw me walking arm in arm with a skeleton.

The door was as flimsy as it looked. I could hear voices talking inside, a young woman and a man. If the woman was Laura Winfrey, who was the man? The big boss, Richard Diefenbaker? But the voice sounded a little too young to be a big shot CEO, and a little too timid.

“Shall we go in?” Roderick asked. He was in a very good mood; this situation clearly simulated his theatrical flair. He took my hand and gestured towards the door encouragingly. “I’m afraid I do not have the strength to open it myself.”

“Thanks, but don’t worry. Larry, can you keep watch? Let us know if anyone dangerous approaches.”

Larry nodded, a little out of it; he was sniffing the air, sorting through the odors. His wolf ears twitched this way and that like the parabola antenna on the roof of the Pentagon. Entirely caught up in his search for information. He was a bit like the electric spirits that way; when he was chasing something or following a scent, he tuned everything else out.

I made sure he’d hidden himself properly and then passed through the door. There were no anti-magic or anti-fae wards on it. Cheap doors were easy to walk through.

Roderick turned to mist and followed after me, once again taking skeletal form at my side. Keeping myself invisible to the room’s occupants, I looked around.

The mismatched decor was even worse in here. It was a large basement room covered in tastelessly gaudy furniture that failed to disguise what this place was. A miniature opera chandelier covered in glass beads, a footstool of garish pink satin, a carpet so loud it made my eyes hurt, and a makeup stand, table, and couch that looked like they’d aimed for Rococo and ended up with white cake. The filthy concrete walls peeping out between it all just added insult to injury.

At the heart of it all was a petite blonde girl in a thin white nightgown, her head bowed. She cried softly. On the loud carpet, a young, kneeling man tried to comfort her.

His hair was spiked. He wore a T-shirt sporting a punk band’s name and jeans with the knees torn out. I’d seen his face in Baron’s photos. Um, pretty sure his name was Jeffrey Chandler. What was he doing here?

“Come on, Laura. Come with me,” he pleaded, hand on the sobbing girl’s shoulder.

“I won’t. I can’t!” Laura Winfrey said, looking up. She sniffed loudly. “I can’t take one step outside this room. They’d catch me immediately. I don’t have any clothes or shoes, just ridiculous stage costumes and no money.”

Her mascara ran down her face. Her lipstick was peeling, her rouge blotted, and her pale skin clearly showed through the cracks in her foundation. It hurt to see. She was so young! Barely into her twenties.

Possibly not even twenty! This was not at all what I’d been expecting based on the image the taxi rats had brought home. They must have seen the posters out front, but right now the real Laura Winfrey was more like a lost child at a county fair than an actress.

“Until their boss gives up on me, I’m ruined. I’ll be locked up in here, dancing and singing for him alone. And when he grows tired of me, he’ll just put a bullet in my head and dump me in the Hudson River. But I have to at least live that long. I don’t want you ending up like that, Jeffrey.”

“That’s why I have a boss of my own, now.”

Jeffrey looked desperate. He was really young, too. It was painfully obvious he was trying to make himself look way older than he actually was. I was slightly mad at Baron for calling him well-chewed gum. He might be just an average thug, but the way he tried to comfort and help his sobbing girlfriend? That was real.

“I swear! That’s how I made it in here!” he said. “You won’t have to worry about money. Look at this!”

He took a small leather pouch out of the back pocket of his jeans. Opening it, he poured the contents into his hand.

Laura stopped sniveling, and her eyes widened. I’m sure mine did the same.

“My, my,” Roderick said, adjusting the brim of his hat. “In all my days I have never seen the like.”

“That’s…how did you…” Laura whispered.

Her hand shook as she reached out to him. Jeffrey took a firm hold of her tiny, manicured hand.

“I stole it…well, the boss gave it to me. Mmm.”

Even covered by two hands, the jewel’s light was undiminished. It was a rainbow-colored opal the size of a robin’s egg, surrounded by dozens of tiny diamonds.

The photograph hadn’t done the real thing justice. It didn’t even come close.

Beneath that smooth surface danced specks of fiery crimson, gold, azure, green, and colors I did not even have words to describe. A sleepy blue transparent light spread like a mist across the milk-colored base. This light seemed to spin around it, like it had wrapped itself in the flickering lights of the aurora.

The glimmer of the chandelier above paled in the face of this radiance. Nothing in this world could compete with the power and shine of a real dragon’s egg.

How had I not noticed it the moment I’d stepped inside? No, before I’d stepped through the door? That leather bag must have had a very powerful magic dampener cast upon it.

My heart raced, my breathing was shallow. My body felt hot. My cheeks burned. I’d never seen a real dragon egg before and probably never would again. I couldn’t help but be drawn to a powerful magic crystallization like this. Faeries like us were drawn to sources of magic like sleigh beggy, but while those sources were often as ephemeral as mead, dragon eggs were solid objects several thousand times more concentrated, purified by time eternal and bloodlines of yore.

Something like this really couldn’t be let loose in human society.

“W-with this, we don’t need to worry about money,” Jeffrey said, stroking Laura’s hand. “If we just sell one of these diamonds, we’ll have enough money to run away together. Look at the size of this gem! If we sell that, we’d have enough to eat for a lifetime. Run to Guatemala or wherever, buy a big yacht and a house with a pool, and live together, just the two of us. We can buy a whole theater, just for you. I won’t ever lock you away.”

“That’s a dream,” Laura said, sobbing. “The boss would never let me go. He comes to see me every night. I don’t know why, but he’s got his hands on me and he won’t let go. He stares at me, makes me sing and dance, and then just goes home all quiet. All those scary men with him, a whole row of them, at his beck and call… If I try to fight even a little, they might just kill me.”

“I’ll protect you. I will!” he said.

Laura was full on crying now. Jeffrey patted her back, desperate.

“I can do it when I put my mind to it. I won’t mess up again. I won’t mess up when it comes to you. I should have taken you away when that awful old man first set eyes on you. But you said there was a chance he’d make you into a star, so I thought if that’s what you wanted… But seeing you treated like this, I can’t just do nothing!”

“But, Jeffrey, it’s too dangerous…”

“I’m a man, ain’t I?”

Jeffrey thumped his chest, the mustard and ketchup stains on his punk band shirt somewhat undermining the gesture. His voice shook. His hands shook, too.

“What kinda man can’t protect a girl? I can do this. It’ll be fine. Just leave everything to me. I’ve got a boss of my own now. We can take care of some fat old man. Two or three or four of them!”

Jack!

Larry’s shout snapped me out of it. I’d been staring at the dragon egg, transfixed, and forgotten to watch my surroundings.

They’re coming! Lots of them, armed! 14…15…16…augh! What the hell is that? It’s like a supernova!

I swore at myself. Pricking up my ears, I could easily sense people coming, their rough footsteps stomping towards us from all directions. How had I not noticed sooner? There was no way magic this powerful wouldn’t get noticed the second it was exposed. Even someone with no power of their own would have to be really oblivious not to pick up on it.

I thought fast. The man outside had reacted instantly to the word opal. The sunglasses brigade’s boss had nabbed the egg at one point. Then it had been stolen, I assumed. By Jeffrey? No, I’d worry about that later. Based on that magic dampening bag, there was definitely an alchemist involved, but Jeffrey didn’t seem like an alchemist. I sensed no power from him. In Baron’s photo, Jeffrey had been holding a velvet box with the necklace in it, so at some point that had been switched out for the magic dampening bag—and where had he gotten that? His boss. Who was his boss?

Laura clapped her hands to her mouth and screamed.

Shouting angrily, the men broke down the door and poured in. Jeffrey just stood there with the jewel—the dragon egg—in his hand. He gaped, as if he couldn’t comprehend that he had guns pointed at him.

“Larry!” I shouted.

There was a furious growl, and several of the men jumped and swung around. A moment later, a massive gray wolf leapt on top of them, knocking them to the ground.

Screams sounded, along with several gunshots, but Larry was faster than any gun. He tackled one man after another, mowing them down before letting out a howl that shook the earth itself.

Still with one foot in the faerie world, I reached out and grabbed Jeffrey’s arm.

“Put the jewel away, you fool!” I said.

Jeffrey jumped like I’d slapped him and looked around.

“Wh-who… Is someone here?”

“Just put the damn necklace away! We need to get the hell out of here, fast!”

“B-but, Laura and I…”

“No time for that! Try again later! We’re going!”

I dragged Jeffrey bodily over to this side of the veil.

“He disappeared!” one of the men roared.

Larry spun around, became a boy again, and ran over to my side. His clothes had gotten ripped when he transformed, so he was naked. He was still half-covered in wolf fur, though, and the hat had survived.

“I liked that jacket!” he said, glaring at me. “You’d better buy me a new one!”

“I’ll expense it,” I said.

“The wolf’s gone, too!” one of the men cried.

“What’s going on?”

They were starting to panic.

“Jeffrey!” Laura shrieked, hysterical. “Oh, Jeffrey! Jeffrey!”

“Get the girl! If she escapes, we’re all dead!” one of them yelled.

“Call the boss!” another shouted.

“BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!”

Laura fainted as a giant skeleton appeared in the center of the room, teeth chattering. Blue fires burned in its empty eye sockets, and its bony hands waved as if trying to grab everyone.

The gangsters let out a series of shrill screams. Several collapsed to the ground, frozen in fear.

“Thanks, Roderick.” I shot him a wink as I pulled Jeffrey out of the room. “Can I leave the actress in your hands for now? I’m gonna go fetch a garter and a dagger.”

“Anytime, Lady Agent,” Roderick said.

The ghost turned those fiery eyes towards me and returned the wink. The dragon egg pulsed in my hand, so I slipped it back into its bag and shoved it in my pocket. I dragged Jeffrey out onto the street. I could still feel the egg, like embers from a late night fire.

To Be Continued