Caitlin Kittredge - The Mirrored Shard

“Oh?” Madame paused, taking her hat back off. “I was going to go meet with the leader of our tong to negotiate a price for the three of you, but now I’m interested. You’re actually going to attempt the doctor’s journey?”

“I have to go to the Deadlands,” I muttered, squinting against the glare of the lights. They seemed to grow brighter with each passing second. “I have to get Dean.” The filter that kept me from blurting things out and that connected sentences was broken, that was for sure.

“And who is Dean?” Madame said, sitting back down. Even Fang seemed interested.

“I love him,” I said. “It’s my fault he’s dead.”

Madame patted me. “I’m sure that’s not true, dear. You’re far too young to be causing misery.”

“I’m the destroyer,” I told her earnestly. I couldn’t shut myself up. Damn these drugs. “I’m Aoife Grayson. I blew up the Engine and I made the world end.”

“Goodness,” said Madame. “I thought that selling you to the tongs would be a great fall, but you’re already as low as you can go.”

She said something to Fang, and he shrugged.

“Old Ones return,” she sighed. “I might be getting soft in my old age, but I’ll take you to the doctor, if you promise me one thing in exchange.” Her playful smile was nowhere in evidence.

“Sure,” I said, feeling incredibly expansive. Why didn’t I do more favors for people I barely knew? I had no idea. The laudanum certainly didn’t.

“If this actually works,” Madame said, “you find my brother and you give him a message for me.” She looked away. “He died on the crossing from Hong Kong. Jammed in steerage. He was always a delicate one.”

“What should I tell him?”

“Tell him I’m sorry,” Madame said. “But it was him or me.”

She snapped her fingers at Fang. “Get them something to wake them up,” she said, “and then bring the car around.” She looked back at me, and I was aware enough now to feel a chill at her perfect but perfectly blank smile.

“Our young lady here has an appointment with the Death Doctor.”

MADAME XIANG’S JITNEY was a long Packard that belched steam from under the hood like a dragon as Fang maneuvered it through the crowded streets.

“Do you do this a lot?” I asked Madame. Cal, Conrad and I were crammed in the back while she sat up front. “Drug and rob people?”

“Only the gullible ones,” she said. “I am quite an accomplished medium. My husband and I help the tong often.” She gestured as people leaped out of our way. “I think my abilities scare them quite a lot.”

We rode another few feet in silence, and then Madame turned to me. “And what about you?” she said. “I hear the destroyer has some fearsome abilities of her own.”

“That’s just a story,” I said curtly. I wasn’t about to get into it with a robber medium who worked with a criminal gang. I didn’t want this woman to know I had the ability to push aside the very fabric of space and time. I was sure the leader of her tong would love the chance to travel via Gate between the worlds.

As the Packard made its way inch by inch through the crowds, the streets went from rutted to mud to barely there, and the character of the Boneyard changed. Where before the streets had been crowded and smelly but vibrant, now people hunched under overhangs, or peered through windows, faces half-obscured by the night.

A rain started, battering the Packard’s roof, and the tidal stench from the mud in the streets smothered all of my senses. Cal coughed and I felt bad for him. It had to be ten times as bad with a ghoul nose.

The houses got worse, too—broken windows, boarded-over doors, women in scant clothing beckoning from upstairs balconies while sharp-faced men guarded the doors and watched the Packard pass, licking their lips with a sort of hunger that made me nervous

At last, we came to a stop, in front of a narrow Victorian row house with a sign across the front announcing it was the Fu Long Junk Shop.

“This is it,” Madame said. She lit a cigarette in a long jade holder and waited for Fang to get out and open an umbrella. “Stay close to me,” she said. “This is the part of Chinatown the gwai lo don’t come to. Nobody likes you here.”

“Well, I’m not too fond of the smell, so I suppose we’re even,” Conrad muttered.

Madame regarded him with a raised eyebrow. “You’ve got a sharp tongue, boyo,” she said. “It’d be a shame if someone were to slice it out.”

In spite of the nerves I felt prickling all over my skin, into my mind, down to the deepest spots where my Weird lived, I smiled a little. I couldn’t help but like Madame. She might have been a charlatan and a gangster, but she clearly didn’t give a whit what anyone thought. I’d always wished I could be that straightforward, and let go of the residual fear of saying the wrong thing and inviting scrutiny from teachers or Proctors or whoever was listening.

I climbed out of the car after her and we crossed the street, mud squelching in my boots, and mounted the steps of the shop. Madame rang the bell, jabbing at the enamel button with one of her perfect nails.

After what seemed like hours, as the people in the shadows stared holes in our backs and I waited for one of them to try and follow it up with a knife, I heard clockwork grinding. The door opened, just a crack.

Madame stepped aside and gestured. “I don’t go any farther. A sign of respect—we don’t cross each other’s territories.”

She looked up and down the street, and back to where Fang stood glaring beside the Packard. “In my part of town, the tongs keep order, but around here it’s lawless. Triad country, bad men from Hong Kong and other places. And Doctor Death is the worst of them.” She regarded me, smoke catching raindrops and turning them silver around her head. “You sure you still want this, dear?”

I nodded, looking at the storefront as Conrad and Cal joined me. Cal gave my shoulder a squeeze. “I’m sure,” I said.

“Whoever this Dean is, I hope he’s worth it,” Madame said, and tripped back to the dry, warm cover of the Packard.

“He is,” I said, as I stepped over the threshold. I didn’t know much for sure, but I knew that.

Inside the shop, junk was piled to the ceiling, and shadows seemed to move and curl on their own.

I thought of Fae creatures like the strix owl that could shadow a person in darkness, appearing and disappearing at will. I thought of the clockwork ravens employed by the Proctors, with their glowing eyes that saw and transmitted everything they flew over back to their masters.

Neither thought helped me take a step forward.

Cal came to my shoulder and inhaled deeply. “Nobody in here,” he said.

I cast around, and saw a green light emanating from the back room. “This way,” I whispered. I didn’t know why I was being so quiet, but it seemed appropriate.

The shadows followed us, and I did my best to tell myself they weren’t really moving, weren’t really alive. Still, my heart skittered in my chest.

The green light was spilling out around the edges of a crooked door and its wavy glass window.

I raised a hand and knocked softly. “Hello?”

“Go away.” The voice that came from within, rather than a baritone or a spectral growl, didn’t sound all that much different from my brother’s.

“Excuse me,” I said, “but we need to speak with you, Doctor.”

I heard a sigh from inside, a long inhale and exhale. An odd, sweet smell tickled my nostrils. It was cloying, almost sticky, and Cal coughed again.

“I said go away,” the voice said again. “The doctor is out. He can’t help you.”