Marc Zicree - Angelfire

“Yeah. Like Tina.”

“Doc says she was a ballerina.”

Past tense. I winced. “Yes, she is. A very good one.” “Love ballet,” he said heavily. “Saw Bolshoi once. Magic Flute .”

“That’s one of Tina’s favorites.”

He slid the book carefully into the pack and clutched it to his narrow chest. “Music box,” he said softly.

“What?”

“Choir Girl had one in her room. I remember. Had a ballerina on it. Played, uh, ‘Over the Rainbow.’ Huh. Funny.”

I saw the jewelry box in my mind. Saw the ballerina: a delicate, blue-eyed blonde, graceful, precious.

Russo turned to look up at me, his eyes glistening. “She turned into something beautiful,” he said. “And I turned into this . Why?”

He might have meant Magritte or Tina. “I don’t know.”

He was silent for a moment, then grunted. “Huh. ’N’ you call yourself a lawyer.” He lifted the pack to one shoulder and pushed past me into the living room.

To my surprise, he waddled straight over to Goldie and Magritte and said, “Sorry.”

“Sorry?” Goldie echoed.

“Didn’t mean anything by it. Didn’t mean to hurt her.”

Goldie’s face went blank, his eyes concealing his thoughts, but Magritte floated down to the grunter’s eye level and said simply, “Thanks, Howard.”

Goldie gave her a sideways glance, then raked long fingers through his hair. “Shit,” he murmured. “Great, you’re sorry. Fine. You say anything like that again, I’ll-”

“Break my fuckin’ neck?” asked Russo ingenuously.

Goldie looked over his head at me, deadpan. “Roundly ignore you.”

The grunter was still peering up into Goldie’s face. He said, “Don’t let it own you.”

“What?”

“The Dark. Don’t let it own you. Bad Master.”

Goldie’s face was ashen. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Howard pointed. “It’s in your eyes.”

Goldie took a step back, shouldering his pack. “Can we get moving? I’m getting the yips.”

We took to the windy streets, Magritte physically tethered to Goldie with a thousand-pound-pull nylon horse lead, and Howard Russo sporting oversize sweats, the hood of the sweatshirt pulled low over his eyes. A pair of mirrored shades completed the ensemble. He looked like a mutant jawa.

I felt sorry for him. I hadn’t expected to. Of course, I hadn’t expected much of what had happened since the morning the world turned upside down. Since then it seemed to have turned upside down over and over again in myriad tiny ways.

We made our way up to Jackson and turned east. On either side of us buildings rose in an opaque maze. They seemed untenanted, as if we had entered some sort of no-man’s-land. Ahead of us were the Chicago River and the rippling wall of light. The Jackson Street Bridge disappeared into it at about mid-span.

We stopped in unison just short of the bridge. Wind ripped at our clothes and forced stray trash to dance madly around us. It moaned through the bridge’s substructure, hollow and mournful.

“Do we just… walk across?” asked Doc.

Russo, half crouched in front of me, looked back and nodded. “Yeah, yeah. Just walk.”

“I thought it kept people out,” Enid said.

“Does.” Howard turned and moved forward, out onto the span.

The rest of us followed, over the gray-brown rush of water, steel and asphalt vibrating beneath our feet as if alive.

When we reached the shining wall, Russo hesitated. Without even thinking, I stepped past him. I heard a startled hiss from the grunter and the translucent stuff in front of me became suddenly opaque. My hand grazed it in a sizzle of light and sound. I yelped and pulled back, scalded.

“Damn! That’s like liquid fire! How are we supposed to go through that?”

Russo shook his hooded head. “Told you ‘bout the checkpoint. Didn’t listen.” He turned to Magritte, pressed close to Goldie’s side. “You gotta do it, Maggie. Take them through.”

Magritte looked at him for a moment, then took Goldie’s hand. She led him toward the wall. It thinned to transparency before her and she floated in, pulling Goldie along with her. The rest of us followed.

“Man,” murmured Enid. “I do not like this one damn bit.”

The mist tingled and was bone-chillingly cold. I’d come to associate flare magic with warmth, but this billowing, ruby fog brushed us with icy fingertips.

The reddish haze thinned and faded as we crossed the bridge. The bluff, weather-stained walls of massive buildings rose steeply before us on each side of the avenue and curved away into the gloom along the river’s course. On the other side the street was deserted and littered and silent. It was nothing like the Chicago I remembered from my last visit.

When we set foot on terra firma again, we looked down an even deeper canyon than the one we’d just crossed-an avenue flanked on both sides by skyscrapers. Their upper floors were lost in the haze. Sears Tower was just down the street to our left; other giants competed with it to overwhelm us. Crimson light glittered on the windows high up, as if fires burned behind them. But there were no fires there. Those floors would be all but unreachable.

“No wind,” said Goldie. “It stopped when we crossed over.”

“So much for the Windy City,” Enid murmured, peering around. “D’you hear that?”

Goldie nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, I hear it.”

“Hear what?” Colleen demanded.

“The music,” whispered Magritte.

“Blues,” said Enid. “But twisted.”

“I don’t hear anything,” Colleen said, frowning.

“Me neither,” I said, trying very hard to detect anything through the gurgle of water behind us. “Can you tell where it’s coming from?”

Magritte pivoted slowly in the air, head cocked, listening. The rest of us watched her, expectant.

“Goldie,” she said, “go up there, to the corner. Matter of fact, go around the corner so I can’t even see you.”

Goldie stared up at her. “Maggie, no .”

“Do it. It’s all right.”

“No, it’s not all right.”

“I want to taste the power, but I can’t with you covering me. If this is firefly stuff, then the Storm still won’t be able to hear me. If this is the Storm, we’re shit out of luck, anyway.”

They locked gazes for a moment, then Goldie slipped the tether from his wrist and handed the loop of nylon to Enid. Clutching his machete, he turned and made his way up to the intersection with many backward glances. With one last look at Magritte, he disappeared around the corner.

I watched her face intently. We all watched her.

She seemed puzzled, uneasy, and fearful in turns. “This is weird. It’s not the Storm, but it’s like the Storm. No, no, that’s not right. It-it keeps changing. And it-” She froze, and the hunted look came to her eyes. The look I’d seen when the Source’s touch was on her. The look I’d seen in Tina’s eyes more than once. “I can’t,” she said. She shuddered and closed her eyes. “I don’t want to. Please don’t make me.”

“Maggie?” Enid took a tighter hold on her tether, tugging her to his side.

She opened her eyes then, catching me in a hot pewter gaze. “It’s trying to talk to me,” she whispered. “I can’t let it talk to me.”

Before I could ask her what “it” was, Goldie let out a wild yell. Thrown into fight or flight mode, we ran, weapons ready, Enid dragging Maggie in his wake. Goldie was standing on the far side of the intersection, back pressed to the wall of what had been a bank. He was looking away from us, farther down Jackson Street.

“What is it?” I shouted, dread making my voice sharp. “What’s wrong?”