Fiction River: Hex in the City (16 page)

The station was grimed and oily, the tiled walls smeared with handprints, the concrete saturated with acres of ground-in dirt. Bright fluorescent lights cast jagged shadows over the station sign; WEST AVENUE printed in stark black letters.

A hollow wind whooshed from the train tunnel, stirring the discarded gum wrappers and paper cups that had collected in Jeremy’s corner. At least nobody had taken the spot. He scooted the trash out of the way with the side of his shoe, then set up his folding stool and unpacked his cello. The battered fedora on his head had a five-dollar bill glued inside. He’d almost ripped it out to buy that pastrami sandwich, but seed-money was crucial—a cue that people should throw real money into his hat, not just dimes and pennies.

He tethered the fedora to his shoelace with a strand of fishing line. When he’d first started busking, he’d learned the hard way how impossible it was to chase a thief down while carrying a naked cello. He’d lost nearly thirty bucks that day. Even worse, he’d put a long, painful scrape down his cello’s side.

The rumble of the approaching train set his strings to vibrating.

Jeremy took a deep breath and tuned up. Nothing happened, and the tight knot under his ribs eased. Maybe Gran’s funeral service had been a fluke. Maybe he was still safe. He lifted one hand to his chest and pressed the charm through the cloth of his t-shirt; the stained linen still strung on a tarnished
D
around his neck.

With a screech, the train pulled to a stop and the doors hissed open. He pulled his bow across the strings, letting the sweet precision of a Bach sonata soar into the echoing space before it filled up with the clack of shoes, the blur of conversation.

The crowd thickened, streaming past. He’d set up in time for the commuter hour, the best time to busk. Jeremy didn’t openly look at his hat. Another lesson learned. Even though money was the whole point, it was bad form for the performer to pay attention to his take, at least where people could see. They preferred the illusion that musicians played only for love.

Still, watching from the corner of his eye, it looked like
nothing
was going into his hat. No bright flash of coins, no flutter of bills. He switched to a faster movement of the Bach.

When the last passengers trailed past, Jeremy pulled the hat over. It held the three quarters and five-spot he’d salted the hat with—and nothing else. Not even a dime.

“Oh, come on,” he said to the empty station.

He’d always gotten
something
when he played—a few bucks at least, some pennies. This wasn’t just unfair, it was wrong in a way that set his teeth on edge.

For the next wave of commuters, he switched to Brahms, then Saint-Saens. Nothing.

Anger warmed him through.

“I know what you’re doing,” he said to the shadows lurking at the edge of the tunnel.

He almost, almost, packed up his cello. But he couldn’t leave the station with pockets as empty as he’d come in.

The train whooshed up, disgorging people. Jeremy played Bartok, Bloch, the most modern pieces he knew. His hat stayed empty. Rush hour was almost over, and his chance of making any worthwhile money slipping away.

Damn them.

He was finally there, playing, and it wasn’t enough.

Fingers tight around his bow, Jeremy waited until the crowd was upon him. Then he launched into Gran’s favorite jig;
The Lark in the Morning
.

Beyond the emptying platform, the shadows crept closer on spindle-shanks and goblin feet. He swallowed, hard, and kept playing. Eyes watched him from the edges. Things moved where they shouldn’t.

But his hat filled with uncanny speed.

As the station emptied, Jeremy stilled his cello strings. He pulled his hat over, and caught his breath. Money filled the battered fedora. Carefully smoothing each bill, he counted his take. Forty-two dollars and seventy-three cents.

So, that’s how it was going to be. Play the old tunes, or end up homeless on the bitter winter streets.

“Fine,” he said, though it was so far from fine he wanted to weep.

One more wave of commuters left. If he were going to do this, he’d do it all the way. Just once.

This time he played from his heart, the way he hadn’t let himself before. The sweet notes unfurled from beneath his fingers, the body of his cello resonating against his chest as he played one of his best tunes;
Farewell to Ireland
. The crowd flowed past, fingers drumming in time against legs, against briefcases. One lady held her phone out toward him for a moment before moving on. Though nobody lingered—they almost never did—it took longer than usual for the station to clear.

When the last set of heels disappeared up the stairs, Jeremy looked in his hat. Blinked, heartbeat pounding in his throat. The fedora was overflowing with bills, and not just singles.

“Damn,” he breathed.

He counted the money out into a neat stack. One-hundred-sixty-five dollars and twenty-two cents. Unbelievable.

An unearthly giggle from the far platform, the glitter of a fey eye—it was past time for him to leave. Shivering, Jeremy shoved the money in his pocket and jammed his fedora on his head.

He closed his cello case, snicking the latches shut. The sound echoed, louder than it should, and a chill clutched the back of his neck. Something was watching from deep in the subway tunnel. A murmur built, like the sound of the sea. Keeping his gaze averted, Jeremy shouldered his cello and dashed up the stairs into the neon-broken night above.

But the next afternoon he reluctantly hauled his cello back to the grubby corner of the West Avenue Station. He was still short on the rent, though another few hours’ playing should do it. Then he could stop; for good.

What if he didn’t stop?

He tried to push the thought to the back of his mind, but it kept surfacing. The possibilities froze him with terror, burned him with hope.

If he played another day or two, gritted his teeth and tried not to see the creatures the music brought, he could make enough to help with Dad’s next treatment. The fair folk already haunted his nightmares, after all. He could bear it a little longer.

Maybe.

Jeremy rosined his bow, the faint scent of old sap tickling his nose as he pulled the horsehair back and forth across the dark rectangle of rosin. Even before he started playing, he glimpsed them lurking in the shadows—misshapen bodies and legs that bent the wrong way, the starlit sheen of wings.

“I don’t believe in you,” he told them. The lie grated in his throat.

He waited to play until the trains disgorged their passengers, and stopped his music the instant the last person passed. Then began again at the next wave of commuters. Jaw tight, he played the hardest tunes he knew: complex five part slip-jigs, rambunctious reels pulsing in duple-beat rhythms, polkas that ratcheted his bow from string to string.

The fair folk watched. And listened. And came closer, their numbers growing.

Tens, twenties poured into his hat. Even a fifty, from a man who wore a suit worth ten times that amount. Jeremy didn’t feel too guilty. People only put in what they could spare. A single bill, multiplied by a few hundred, added up.

He went home with over a thousand dollars, aching shoulders—and an unearthly escort. A chime of fey laughter in a dark alleyway, something flitting between parked cars, a black dog trotting down the sidewalk half a block behind, tongue lolling.

Jeremy whirled. “Leave me alone!”

Just another crazy yelling on the Manhattan streets. Nobody even looked his way.

Bitter knowledge sifted through his body, speeding his heart, drying his mouth. In all the old stories Gran had told him, there was no escape from the fair folk.

Not when they wanted you.

***

The next day, Jeremy paused at the top of the West Avenue Station stairs. Cello case straps digging into his shoulders, he tilted his face up to the wan winter sun, trying to memorize the feeling of sunlight against his skin.

Chill fingers combed through his hair, icy wind-borne maidens invisible to the passers-by on the street. Creatures leaned out from the bare-twigged bushes to clutch at his jeans with long, crooked nails.

Jemmy Cahill
. The syllables of his name in the squeal of brakes, the cries of children, the sudden thrum of pigeon wings as a flock arose from the stained sidewalk.

Whether he returned to the light of the human world, or disappeared forever into the shadows, this had to end.

With a deep breath, Jeremy headed down into the closed-in dimness of the station. The air changed as he descended. The haze of oil and exhaust stayed up on the streets, but a different smell wound up from the platform below—something wild, tinged with the salt of the sea.

He didn’t look at the metal rails of the tracks, tried not to think about the darkness they disappeared into.

That morning, he’d woken up knowing what he had to play. The oldest tunes, the eerie modal ones that wept and sang through his cello. The ones that spoke of loss and heartbreak and magics disappearing forever from the world.

He walked past his corner and went right up to the edge of the platform. Quickly, he unfolded his stool, unpacked his cello, and began. An ancient, nameless air to start, the notes vibrating low, soaring up into the high part like a woman weeping. When that tune ended, he moved into a dark, twisty jig called
The Orphan
.

The air in the station stilled. The light shifted, shading to amber. Jeremy looked up at the station sign and his fingers trembled, nearly dropping his bow. Instead of WEST AVENUE the sign now read WIDDERSHINS.

He ended the tune, the last note fading away into a world that was no longer his own.

Gran would tell him to have courage. Jeremy stood, his cello balanced beside him on the slender silver endpin, the embodiment of all his hopes. All his fears. He didn’t want to be sitting down when he faced whatever was coming.

A sound issued from the dark tunnel, a high keening that had nothing to do with machinery. Jeremy’s pulse throbbed queasily at the back of his throat. Whispering a desperate, useless Hail Mary, he squeezed his eyes closed.

When he opened them again, a train sat at the platform. He hadn’t heard it arrive. It resembled the usual A-line cars—white and red, and filled with passengers—but the differences were enough to make his breath tighten in narrowing circles of fear.

He clutched the neck of his cello as if it was the only solid thing in the universe. Oh, he’d set things in motion he had no idea how to end. All he knew was that the fair folk must be faced, or they would drive him to madness.

The train doors silently opened, and the riders stepped out.

Pale maidens with moth-tangled hair, gowned in cobwebs. Twig-jointed creatures with staring eyes. Goblins wearing caps of blood. Sharp-fanged, sinuous hounds. The hollow-eyed banshee. The shambling bog horse.

All the lovely, horrible creatures he had tried not to see his whole life.

And behind them…

Behind them strode a figure clad in midnight. A band of silver encircled his moon-pale hair, and his face was sharp-planed and merciless. Nothing human shone in those starlit eyes.

A shudder crimped Jeremy’s spine, and he looked away, wishing he’d brought something—an iron cross, even a handful of salt—to defend himself.

Gran had whispered stories to him once, of the Sidhe lords and ladies gone far to the west, taking their magic with them. The knowledge of what he now faced lodged deep in Jeremy’s lungs. He breathed through the stabbing truth of it.

“Jemmy Cahill,” the elf-lord said, his voice like frost and famine. “Do you think you can deny us the taste of your music for seven long years without paying a price?”

Swallowing back the sharp tang of fear, Jeremy dug in his pocket and brought out the roll of bills he’d earned busking in the station.

“Here.”

The lord laughed, a sound like metal scraping bone. “What use have I for such? You must offer better coin than that.”

What else did he have to give? Fingers cold with fear, Jeremy reached beneath his shirt and pulled out Gran’s charm. He tugged it from his neck and held it out.

One of the twiggy creatures crept over and snatched it from his hand, and Jeremy flinched back. The watching fair folk laughed, their voices chiming and barking, a cacophony echoed back from the curved ceiling overhead.

The creature delivered the charm to his liege, and the elf-lord held it up, a pathetic scrap of soiled linen and tarnished string.

“A spent ward?” The lord’s voice was hollow with fey mirth. “This counts for less than nothing.”

He tossed it into the air. A bright flash, the afterimage seared on the inside of Jeremy’s eyelids, and Gran’s charm was gone.

“Hey! That wasn’t fair.” Anger made Jeremy straighten, though he couldn’t quite look upon the beautiful, terrible face of the elf-lord.

“Do not speak to us of fairness. Is it fair to deny the Sight that runs through your blood? Is it fair to bind your music so tightly it withers to nothing, when we starve to hear it?” At his words, the watching fair folk nodded and murmured. “Your time has run, mortal child. Choose your path.”