Matchbox Girls (26 page)

AT said, “Well, I’m strong, and Corbin’s a man... I don’t know what we’ll do for big, though.”

“Where the hell
is
Corbin, anyhow?” But Marley thought of Zachariah, and his broad shoulders. Then she looked over at the children, and thought,
But before I learned about princes, it was my mother who fixed things. Is this what happens to moms?

“Um, yeah, about that. I sent Nod to go look for him. Through the Backworld, you know? That's how I usually get around. Nod hasn’t come back. He’s not hurt—I’d know if he was hurt again—but something’s wrong. I can feel it.”

“Like he’s been caught and held?”

AT shrugged. “I don’t know how that could be, but I guess so.”

Marley chewed on her lip. “What would you do if I weren’t here?”

“I’d go after him. Both of them. Corbin’s smart, but without tons of preparation, he isn’t nearly as powerful as I am.” AT looked embarrassed as she said this.

Marley raised her eyebrows. “Oh yeah? What makes you so powerful?” And she wondered what “powerful” meant, in this context. Was there a measurement, like with light bulbs? Corbin was only 25 watts and AT was 100? What, she wondered, was she? Or the twins? Zachariah? The angel?

AT hesitated and then matter-of-factly said, “My father is a kaiju. Corbin is third-generation nephilim. That matters, at least for demiurgy and sorcery.” She saw the look of incomprehension on Marley's face and added, “Those are the kinds of magic derived from being celestial.”

Two different kinds? Whoo-ee!
“Would you fight? Do you know how to fight?”

AT’s smile was wry and sad. “Oh yes. I mean, I can’t take out a celestial myself, but anybody else, hurting a friend of mine? I’d at least try. Probably get my butt kicked, but...” She shrugged. “It’s all I can do. I'm not good for much else.”

Marley sighed, remember her lesson with Corbin the night before. “I wish we could get our hands on one of these Machine weapons. There
must
be another way to hurt a celestial.”

“Senyaza,” AT said, instantly. “They use spirit tethers, which I don't know how to create. But it's one reason why the angels hate us so much.” Then she sighed. “It isn’t a useful answer right now. They’ve got this major event going down in Europe right now and the local monster hunters are all laid up.”

Take chances.
Marley closed her eyes, felt the pressure of the angel’s curse building around her. “Tia basically told me I can’t protect people who don’t want to be protected. But AT, you don’t have any aversion to being protected by me, do you?”

Confused, AT said, “I’m supposed to be protecting
you
, I think.” She added, in a low voice, “I haven’t done a very good job.”

“Protect me. But let me protect you, too. Maybe that way we can go get Corbin out of whatever trouble he’s in.” Marley opened her eyes and reached out to AT, pulling her close, wrapping her arms around her in a hug. After a startled moment, AT hugged her back. The teenager seemed so fragile in her arms. She thought she could fight? She wasn’t even fully grown. Marley
could
protect her. There was no resistance. Marley felt her power settle over AT like a cloak.

And when Marley stepped away, she knew AT was safe. As long as they stayed close, what could hurt her? And she knew more, too: the dogs were part of AT, somehow, just as the twins were part of each other. She thought she could look deeper, but she didn’t want to. The peace that swept over Marley was intoxicating. To know, really
know
, that everybody around her was safe was astonishing. Would the peace last when she took them someplace truly dangerous?

Giddiness swept over her. She remembered good times with Branwyn and Penny, back when she’d been a teenager herself. Action Girl, Smile Girl, and Research Girl, out to cause trouble and save the day. “AT,” she said, “Let’s go save the boy.”

-twenty-eight-

“
I
t’s so white,” Marley said. They walked down a matte hallway, all holding hands. “Like a really boring, endless office building. But where are the doors?”

“There are other areas of the Backworld that are much more interesting,” said AT. “But they’re much more dangerous, too. The folk who live in those places are masters of glamour and you can’t trust that anything is real. If you spend long enough there, you stop being able to tell whether you’re in the Backworld or not.”

If Marley hadn’t been holding a child’s hand in each of her own, she would have rubbed fingers across her forehead. There were mild tingles in all of the chakra locations Corbin had pointed out, but her forehead actually itched. “Glamour. Fairies?” She had a moment of déjà vu, and tried to remember wisps of dream.

“Yes. But not like the toys... not little pixies. The fae were angels once, too, you know.”

Marley shivered. “Bound now, though?”

“Bound first, before any of the others, because they were scary-dangerous. The angels tried to cut them off from the Sea of Dreams, so they developed new magic, based on the nature of Creation itself. Nobody liked that.”

Marley shook her head. Neath, peeking out of her bag, reached up and snagged her wrist with a claw. “Ow! Why are you so aggressive lately, kitten?” She glanced down and stumbled. “AT, hold on. Look at their feet.”

The white tile they walked on clouded faintly, like marble. But where the twins had walked, the tile gradually darkened, until the center of each little shoeprint was dull black, threaded with red veins. “Uh,” said AT. “That’s new.”

Kari lifted up her feet to look at the bottom of her shoes. “They’re clean,” she reported. There was a little popping sound, and Lissa shifted her weight uneasily. AT crouched down, still holding Kari’s hand, and ran her free hand over the mark she left behind.

“It’s rough. I think it’s... eroding.” AT stood up and wiped her hand on her jeans.

“Why?” Marley demanded.

AT’s brow furrowed, her eyes dark as she glanced at Marley. “I don’t know. But let’s keep going.”

“Yeah. Yeah. So... where
are
the doors?”

“Here and there. I don’t use them, though. I’ve never needed to. I’ll open a window when we get to where we’re going, just like I did to get us in.” The two dogs, Heart and Grim, trotted ahead of them, noses to the ground.

“Will you know what’s out there before we go through?”

AT didn’t answer at first, and Marley glanced down at the footprints again. Maybe she should be carrying the kids. One on her back, one in her arms; it wouldn’t be too bad, and more comfortable than the sack-of-potatoes carry. She remembered the vision from the angel again, the children playing alone in the broken landscape. It
couldn’t
be true. So they were powerful, even special. They were sweet kids, too, as innocent as the current situation could allow them to be. But they were a lot more innocent before Zachariah had been stolen from them...

How much more could they take?

“Probably. I have a sense for where we are in Creation as we move through the Backworld, anyhow,” AT finally said.

“AT...” Marley paused, trying to sort out what she wanted to ask. It was awkward. But AT shot her a knowing look and it untied her tongue. “You said your father was a kaiju. Do you know him?”

“Yes,” said AT quietly. “He was an…involved…father. He’d still be involved now if I let him. He had big plans for me.”

That was enough. Nobody said anything else until AT announced, “We’re here.”

It was an expanse of white hall, exactly the same as the hall they’d been walking down for the last ten minutes. Marley had no idea how AT and the dogs could tell that this location was significant. Heart was sitting alert, nose to the wall, while Grim scratched around the floor as if he wanted to start digging. AT placed her two index fingers together in the center of the wall and drew them apart in a diagonal line. A square of light expanded under her fingers. When it was a couple of feet wide, she stopped and placed her palm in the center. The glowing square chimed.

“It’s an apartment building. There’s a terrace about halfway up. Corbin and Nod are on the terrace. They aren’t alone. I can’t see through Nod’s eyes. What the hell? It’s like he’s blindfolded.”

“Once we’re out, can we leave the window open so that we can get back in again?” The one they'd used to enter the Backworld corridor had closed immediately.

“Maybe. It depends on how long we're out. If there’s a convention of celestials out there and we have to run, we can get back in here. Doesn’t mean they can’t chase us, though.”

The giddiness was gone. Marley wasn’t entirely sure that everybody under her protection was safe, now. She hoped it was just the white corridor messing with her senses. But what else could she do? She could feel the pressure from the curse rising. It warped her senses, too. It made everything feel wrong. What would happen if it discharged in here? She glanced down at the dark footprints again. AT had said this place was a passage through the girders of the world.

“Wait a moment before opening the window. I want to get Tia's blessing together. Once I’m ready, we’ll go through. I’ll find Corbin and see if I can get him away from whatever’s got him, while you and the dogs go after... everything else. Distract them. We’ll move fast and bring Corbin back here. Once we’re in here, we can regroup and figure out what to do next. Since not everybody can access this place like you can, we’ll probably have at least a little bit of time.”

AT nodded, her eyes distant.

Kari said, “What do we do?”

“Watch the show. I’m going to keep you safe, so you shouldn’t have to do anything.” Marley made herself smile, and then added, despite herself, “Be careful anyhow. Stay close to me.”

Kari didn’t protest or make the face Marley expected. She just nodded, looking pale.

Marley took a deep breath and thought of Tia’s fingers pressing against her wrist. Her breath caught as the gentle wrongness of the curse faded, and caught again as she felt the magic draw on her. She inhaled again. It felt like the blessing stole a tiny bit of each breath; she was more breathless than she had been after her race to rescue Kari. But it wasn't air itself she lacked, but the energy the air brought. No, she didn’t want to maintain this any longer than necessary. Hopefully she’d find a useful way to discharge the curse on the other side of the shining window. “All right,” she said.

AT nodded and made the shining square larger, until it stretched to the floor. Then she pushed her hand into the center and twisted. The surface rippled. She took a step forward, passing through, towing them behind her.

Marley blinked; the late morning sunlight was much brighter than the directionless light of the Backworld corridor. Squinting, she took in their location. They were on a terrace that stretched across a corner of the building, partway up. It was actually divided into two levels, with a metal staircase against the same wall that contained a door into the building. The terrace itself was littered with lounge chairs, many of which had been overturned. Here and there were carefully maintained containers of shrubs and small trees. Along with the ever-present smell of smoke, there was a hint of jasmine in the air. The air on the terrace seemed clean and clear, but around the edges of the terrace, there was a thick yellow haze.

Corbin stood in the center of a circle of tumbled planters, his back to them. Just outside the circle were a handful of other figures. Marley recognized the bulky shape of Absolven right away. The others were blurred and indistinct, as if her eyes wouldn't focus on them. One of them held a long silver leash looped around a black dog’s neck; the dog lay with his head flat on the ground. It was a still tableau, although judging from the devastation, it hadn't been moments before.

Corbin spoke to Absolven. “Agreed. If you win, will you carry a message for me? A last request?”

Marley heard AT’s sharply indrawn breath. She released Kari's hand and darted forward. “Nod!” she shouted.

The black dog surged to his feet, yanking himself forward. The chain shattered, fragments of silver flashing through the air. Orange clouds detached themselves from the indistinct figures and drifted forward.

Corbin half-turned, and shouted, “No! I didn’t—”

An acrid smell of tarmac and carcinogens and exhaust overwhelmed both the wildfire smoke and the jasmine as a wisp of orange blew toward them. It turned, moving less like the wind and more like a ghost. Tendrils reached for the girls, seeming more curious than threatening.

AT whistled, and all three dogs vanished into thin air. Then they burst out of the slivers of shadows along the wall and under the deck chairs. Nod snapped at the inquisitive orange cloud right in front of them.

The orange wisps closest to Corbin’s circle moved faster, until they were sharp and jagged with speed, like a cloud of rusty razor blades. The red dog, Heart, leapt to intercept and sailed through one cloud. Bits of fur drifted to the ground behind her as one of the orange elementals shifted direction. Heart shook her head and sneezed. Her fur bristled along her back with effort. Then, starting from the tip of her nose, her body faded, until she, too, was cloudlike. Her teeth glinted and she leapt again.

Nod barked, startling Marley. He danced on his hind legs in front of her and she realized that AT was already halfway across the rooftop garden, heading to Corbin and his captors. Everybody was moving, Corbin and Absolven both bolting forward as the indistinct figures—still indistinct, despite the loss of their cloud elementals—scattered.

Nod snapped his teeth like she was an errant lamb and then whirled away to harry another of the elementals, keeping it away from her. Each of the dogs occupied an elemental, but the fights didn’t seem to be as one-sided as Marley had hoped they would be. The smell burned her nose.

Marley moved forward, pulling the children away from the elemental, and then letting them go.
Theyweresafe theyweresafe theyweresafe
and she almost trusted the sense of her power.

“Corbin?” called AT. He was standing inches from Absolven; the big man had his hand up, pressing it against thin air, while Corbin’s fingers twitched and moved.