Flicker (18 page)

Someone tapped Lee’s shoulder, and she nearly screamed.

But it was just a girl. She was tall and pretty, with thick, dark hair
and
luminous golden eyes, which had thin vertical pupils. The girl’s mouth quirked into a small, amused smile
.
“Did I scare you?”

“J
ust startled me a little
,” Lee said meekly.

The girl snorted. “
Do I know you from somewhere?”

“Pardon?”

“You look familiar. Have we met?”

“I do
n’t think so,” Lee said slowly.

“Are you sure?” the girl asked. “Those eyes of yours
…
I’
ve seen you somewhere
. I never forget a face.”

“I’m sorry,” Lee said, turning away. Where was Filo? “I don’t know you.”

“Wait!” the girl cried. She clapped her hands together. “I know where
I saw you! At the Summer Court r
evel, last month!”

“Summer
Court r
evel?” Lee felt faintly dizzy.

“Yeah. I watched you paint some of the knights. You were pretty good. You made Carrick look almost as pretty on canvas as he looks in real life.” She grinned with sharp little teeth. “Say, do you do commissions?”

Lee shook her hea
d
. “No,” she managed
finally, taking a step back
. “Sorry. I should go.”

The girl shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

Lee turned away, taking
several deep breaths. She spotted Filo standing near the entrance to the kitchen, speaking
to a woman with milk-white skin
and the neck and head of a swan.

“W
ell, w
hy didn
’t you say so
?” Filo asked the woman. He had to tilt his head back to look her in the face. “If I’d known they were in Otherworld, I wouldn’t have come down today.”

The woman made several bird noises, her swan head swaying back and forth on her long, elegant neck.

“I’ll just leave it with you, then. You can give it to Brass and Spoons when they’re back in town,” Filo said. He pulle
d a wrapped object from his bag
and held it out. The woman shook her head and clucked. Filo blinked. “What do you mean, you can’t accept it? Who’s in charge while they’re away?”

More bird noises. Filo sighed and rolled his eyes.

“Then you’re the one who has to take it,” he told the woman firmly, pressing the package into her hands. “Don’t argue. Just take it. If this doesn’t get to Brass and Spoons, you and I will have a serious talk.”

The woman snapped her bill at Filo, bu
t
she
accepted the package and
stalke
d into the kitchen, the double-doors swinging behind her. Sighing,
Filo turned around. When
he saw Lee, he beckoned
with a small wave.

“What was that all about?” she asked, once she’d joined him.

“Nothing. Brass and Spoons—the owners here—are in Otherworld, and their hiring standards have gone way down.” He shook his head despairingly.

“Did you actually understand what she was saying?”

“Sure. I understand everybody.”

“How?”

“I have the gift of tongues,” he told her easily,
like it was nothing special. “I
understand anything that has language. That includes written languages. I don’t know
how
I do it. I just do.”

“
That would’ve come in handy back when I took Spanish.”

He shr
ugged. “Hey, are you hungry?”

“Well
, I haven’t eaten all day
.
”
Her stomach growled mightily at the tho
ught of food.

He crossed to an empty table near the back
and hung his coat on a chair
. “Brass and Spoons don’t charge me af
ter a job, so we might
as well eat
. Also,” he added, “I
told Nasser I’d look after you
, and I’m pretty sure that entails feeding you from time to time.”

“You know,” Lee said dryly, pulling up a chair, “it’s every little girl’s dream to find a boy who will treat her like a pet.”

“If I thought o
f you as a pet, I’d
spend a lot more time swatting you with a rolled-up newspaper.”

Lee snorted
. “What’s good here?”

In response, Filo
flagged down a blonde woman dresse
d in black slacks
and a black apron. If it weren’t for the leathery wings
sprouting from
her back, Lee would have thought she was an ordinary human waitress.

The waitress
sauntered
over to their table and produced a pad of paper from nowhere, but no pen. She said something in a
strange, musical
la
nguage that made Lee’s ears hum
.

Filo answered her in the same language
, all rolling liquid sounds
.
Something in the cadence of the language sounded familiar to Lee.
The waitress
jotted down their order
with her finger; Lee saw smears of black ink appear on the page of her notepad. She thought of the blue man and his plate
of raw fish, and hoped
Filo hadn’t ordered anything too strange.

“That language,” she said, when the waitress had gone. “What is it?”

“Old Faerie.
The faerie language.”

“Where’d you learn it?”

He shrugged one shoulder.
“
Neman
and
Morgan
taught me
.
I learned Old Faerie almost before
I learned English.
”

“Really?” she blinked.
“How long have you lived with them?”

“Always.” His voice wa
s clipped
.

“And they’re faeries, right?”

He rolled his ey
es. “Yes. But
you really shouldn’t throw the f-word around so much.”

“What—faeries?”

“There you go again!” He grimaced. “Look, it’s like this. Faeries are drawn by the sound of their name. In a place like Ladders, or back at Flicker, it’s okay to use the word, since faeries
are already here undisguised,
and they don’t much care if you’re talking about
them. But out on the street, where any faeries you spot are probably masquerading as humans, avoid it.
You’ll just draw attention to yourself, and you
don’t
want that.”

“Then what should I call them?”

“The Good Neighbors,” Filo suggested.
“
The People of Peace. The Strangers. The People of That Town.
The Fair Folk.
There’s a million euphemisms
.
The idea is that, if you call them ‘good neighbors,’ or ‘peaceful,’ or ‘strangers,’ then that’s what they’ll be.”

“Okay.” She paused. “How’d you end
up with a couple of
Good Neighbors or
whatever they’re called, anyway?
What about your
family? Your
parents?”

“I don’t have parents,” he said, a little sharply.

“So you’re an orphan?”

“I didn’t say
that.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Of course you don’t. You’re a
normal
.” Filo glanced around, as if to make sure no one was listening
in
.
Then, leaning forward, he intimated,
“
Flicker is my home.
Neman
and
Morgan
are my masters.
I’m
their apprentice.
It’s been that way for as long as I can remember. That’s all you need to know.”

She bit her lip
. “Do all Seers spea
k Old Faerie?”

“Most do. It’s something you have to learn if you want to be successful. How can you do the work if you can’t communicate with the fey in their language?”

“I’m a Seer,” said a
low, familiar
voice, “a
nd I don’t speak a word of Old Faerie. What does that say about me?”

Lee turned around in her
seat. Nasser stood behind her chair. He
smiled at her—the same warm, honest smile he’d offered her in the apartment—and her whole chest tingled.
She smiled ba
ck automatically.

“What are
you
doing here?” Filo frowned.

“I could ask you the same question.”

“We just got back from Bluewood,” Lee said,
so she could
feel the words in her mouth, to taste the reality of them.

His smile drained
away
. “Oh. Was it—?”

She shook her head, feeling the
warmth in her chest shrink to a speck inside her ribcage.
“I understand now,” she told him. “I know
the truth
.
What about you?”

“I dropped by to
see if Brass and Spoons were in,”
Nasser
said, pulling up a chair to join them.
“They said they might have
work for Jason and me when they got back from Otherworld.”

“You mean he turned up?”

“I bumped into him on the street. Lucky, I guess.”

“
Where was he
?”
Lee asked.

“I don’t know
, and I don’t really think I
want
to know
.”

Lee
looked to the front of the restaurant. The wi
ndows
were much larger
on this side
, hung with wine-colored drapes
. “Why does this place look so different from the outside?”

“There’s glamour on the building,” Nasser expl
ained. “A magical illusion
. Normals can’t see through the glamour, and they fe
el compelled to stay out
. But inside,
there are no glamours to make someone invisible, or look human to fit in. No one has to hide in Ladders.”

“Hide.” L
ee snorted. “It must be pretty
stressf
ul, being a monster
.”

“Not all the people who come to Ladders are monsters, Lee.”

“Could’ve fooled me.”

“I’d keep my voice down, if I were you,” Filo cautioned her. He nodded toward a trio of casually-dressed men sitting at a
nearby table. “Werewolves are
very tou
chy
. If one of them overhears you
talking like that
, you’re on your own.”

“Werewolves?” She
squinted
at the three men, trying to discern anything lupine about them. “How can you tell?”

“I just can. And don’t stare at them all slack-jawed like that,” he added impatiently. “You look like an idiot—or, worse, you look like a normal.”

Face flushed with embarrassment, Lee snapped her mouth shut
.

T
he waitress arrived with their food: two hamburgers with sides of fries, and two glasses of
ice
water. She set them on the table and asked Filo something in Old Faerie, probably if they needed anything else. Filo answered in the same tongue, and shooed her from the table.

Lee
bit into her hamburger
. It was delicious, though she supposed that could have been her hunger talking. After a
moment
, she swallowed and turned to
Nasser. “Are there
a lot of
magical hangouts around this city
?”

“If you know where to look,” he said.
“
The vampires hav
e
lofts and clubs—vampire-exclusive, of cours
e
. The werecre
atures have a few bars
around town. Sometimes the fey
hold revels in the park. Then there’s Chimeric, of course, where everyone mingles together. They’ll let anybody in, so long as they’re in the know. It’s the same here at Ladders.”

“Don’t forget Hennessy’s,” Filo said, around a mouthful of foo
d.
“It’s a bookstore
—s
pell books, potion recipes, magical theory. Stuff like that.”

“Oh.” Lee tried to suppress her disappointment.
At the word
bookstore,
she’d imagined her mom’s old store: endless rows of
beautiful
mismatched spines, the comforting scent of books.
“And regular people never see these places?”