Editor’s Note: Writer Melissa Grey was born and raised in New York City. She wrote her first short story at the age of twelve and hasn't stopped writing since. After earning a degree in fine arts at Yale University, she traveled the world, then returned to New York City where she currently works as a freelance journalist. Her new book, The Girl at Midnight, is now available. Check out this excerpt from the novel.
The Ala had gone to the library in search of hope. She walked through the stacks, one hand tucked into the pocket of her trench coat, the other trailing over the cracked spines of well-loved books and through the dust collected on those lesser-loved ones. The last patron had departed hours earlier, yet the Ala kept her sunglasses on and her scarf wrapped tightly around her head and neck. The dimness of the library made her black skin appear almost human dark, but the feathers she had in place of hair and the unrelieved blackness of her eyes, as wide and glossy as a raven’s, were pure Avicen.
She was fond of books. They were an escape from responsibilities, from the other members of the Council of Elders, who looked to her – their only living Seer – for guidance, from the war that had raged for longer than most could remember. The last great battle had been fought more than a century ago, but the threat of violence lingered, each side waiting for the other to slip up, for that one tiny spark to ignite a blaze beyond anyone’s control. Her fingers stopped their slow dance as a title caught her eye. A Tale of Two Cities. It might be nice to read about someone else’s war. Perhaps it would make her forget her own. She was about to pull the book off the shelf when she felt a feather-light tug on her coat pocket.
The Ala’s hand shot out to grab the pickpocket’s wrist. A girl, skinny and pale, clutched the Ala’s coin purse in a tight, tiny fist. She stared at the Ala’s exposed wrist, brown eyes unblinking.
“You’ve got feathers,” said the girl.
The Ala couldn’t remember the last time a human had seen her plumage and been so calm about it. Dropping the girl’s wrist, the Ala pulled the sleeve down over her forearm, straightening her coat and scarf to hide the rest of her.
“May I have my wallet back?” It wasn’t a wallet, not really. In place of money, it held a fine black powder that hummed with energy in the Ala’s hand, but the girl didn’t need to know that.
The thief looked up at her. “Why do you have feathers?”
“My wallet, please.”
The girl did not budge. “Why are you wearing sunglasses inside?”
“Wallet. Now.”
The girl looked at the small purse in her hand, seemed to consider it for a moment, then looked back at the Ala. Still she didn’t relinquish the item in question. “Why are you wearing a scarf? It’s June.”
“You’re very curious for a little girl,” the Ala said. “And it’s midnight. You aren’t supposed to be here.”
Without a moment’s hesitation, the thief replied, “Neither are you.”
The Ala couldn’t not smile. “Touché. Where are your parents?”
The girl tensed, eyes darting around, scouting an escape. “None of your business.”
“How about this,” the Ala said, crouching down so she was level with the girl’s eyes. “You tell me how you came to be in this library all alone in the middle of the night and I’ll tell you why I have feathers.”
The girl studied her for a moment with a wariness at odds with her age. “I live here.”
Scuffing the toe of one dirty white sneaker against the linoleum floor, the girl peered at the Ala from under thick brown lashes and added, “Who are you?”
A multitude of questions wrapped in a neat little package. Who are you? What are you? Why are you? The Ala gave the only answer she could. “I am the Ala.”
“The Ala?” The girl rolled her eyes. “That doesn’t sound like a real name.”
“Your human tongue could never hope to pronounce mine,” the Ala said.
The girl’s eyes widened but she smiled, hesitantly, as though she wasn’t quite used to it. “So what should I call you?”
“You may call me the Ala. Or Ala, for short.”
The little thief scrunched her nose. “Isn’t that like calling a cat ‘cat’?”
“Perhaps,” the Ala said. “But there are many cats in the world, and only one Ala.”
The answer seemed to satisfy the girl. “Why are you here? I’ve never seen anybody else in the library at night before.”
“Sometimes,” the Ala said, “when I’m feeling sad, I like to be around all these books. They’re very good at making you forget your troubles. It’s like having a million friends, wrapped in paper and scrawled in ink.”
“Don’t you have any normal friends?” the thief asked.
“No. Not as such.” There was no melancholy to the Ala’s answer. It was merely truth, stripped of adornment.
“That’s sad.” The girl slipped her hand into the Ala’s, one small finger stroking the delicate feathers on her knuckles. “I don’t have anyone either.”
“And how is it that a child has escaped the notice of everyone who works here?”
A little shyly, the girl said, “I’m good at hiding. I had to do it a lot. Back home, I mean. Before I came here.” With a determined nod, she added, “It’s better here.”
For the first time in as long as the Ala could remember, tears stung at the corner of her eyes.
“Sorry about taking your wallet.” The girl held the coin purse up to the Ala. “I got hungry. If I’d known you were sad, I wouldn’t have.”
A tiny thief with a conscience. Would wonders never cease?
“What’s your name?” the Ala asked.
The girl looked down but kept her hold on the Ala’s hand. “I don’t like it.”
“Why not?”
Shrugging a single bony shoulder, the girl said, “I don’t like the people who gave it to me.”
The Ala’s heart threatened to crumble to ashes. “Then maybe you should choose your own.”
“I can do that?” the little thief asked, dubious.
“You can do anything you want,” the Ala replied. “But think carefully on it. Names are not a thing to be rushed. There’s power in names.”
The girl smiled, and the Ala knew she would not be returning to the Nest alone that night. She had gone to the library in search of hope, but what she’d found instead was a child. It would take her many years to realize that the two were not so different.
CHAPTER 1: 10 YEARS LATER
Echo lived her life according to two rules, the first of which was simple: don’t get caught.
She stepped gingerly into the antiques shop nestled deep in a back alley of Taipei’s Shilin Night Market. Magic shimmered around the entrance like waves of air rising from hot cement on a sizzling summer’s day. If Echo looked at it dead-on, she saw nothing but an unmarked metal door, but when she angled her head just right, she caught the faint gleam of protective wards, the kind that made the shop all but invisible, except to those who knew what they were looking for.
The neon light that filtered in from the market was the only illumination in the shop. Shelves lined the walls, packed with antiques in varied states of disrepair. A dismantled cuckoo clock lay on the table in the center of the room, its bird dangling from a sad, limp spring. The warlock that owned the shop specialized in enchanting mundane objects, some of which had more nefarious purposes than others. The darkest spells left behind a residue, though Echo had been around magic long enough to be able to sense it, like a chill up her spine. As long as she avoided those objects, she’d be fine.
Most of the items on the table were either too rusty or too broken to be an option. A silver hand mirror was marred by a crack that divided its face in two. A rusted clock ticked away the seconds in reverse. Two halves of a heart-shaped locket lay in pieces, as if someone had smashed it with a hammer. The only object that appeared to be in working order was a music box. Its enamel paint was chipped and worn, but the flock of birds that graced its lid was drawn in lovely, elegant lines. Echo flipped the top open and a familiar tune drifted from the box as a tiny black bird rotated on its stand.
The magpie’s lullaby, she thought, slipping her backpack off her shoulders. The Ala would love it, even if the concept of birthdays and the presents that accompanied them was all but lost on her.
Echo’s hand was inches from the music box when the lights flared on. She snapped her head around to find a warlock standing in the shop’s doorway. His chalky white eyes, the only thing that marked him as not quite human, zeroed in on Echo’s hand.
“Caught you.”
Crap. Some rules, it would seem, were meant to be broken.
“It’s not what it looks like,” Echo said. It wasn’t her finest explanation, but it would have to do.
The warlock lifted a single eyebrow. “Really? Because it looks like you were planning on stealing from me.”
“Okay, so I guess it’s exactly what it looks like.” Echo’s eyes darted to a point behind the warlock. “Holy— What is that?”
For just a second, the warlock glanced over his shoulder, but it was all Echo needed. She grabbed the music box and shoved it in her bag, slinging the pack over her shoulder as she rushed forward, slamming into the warlock. He crashed to the floor with a shout as Echo bolted into the market square.
Rule number two, Echo thought, snagging a pork bun from a food stall as she sailed past it. If you do get caught, run.
The pavement was slick with the day’s drizzle, and her boots skidded as she turned a corner. The market was teeming with shoppers packed in shoulder to shoulder, and the rich odors of street cuisine mixed in the balmy air. Echo bit into the bun, wincing at the steam that burned her tongue. Hot, but delicious. It was a universal truth that stolen food tasted better than food that wasn’t stolen. Echo hopped over a murky puddle, and nearly choked on a mouthful of sticky bread and roasted pork. Eating while running was harder than it looked.
She squeezed through the crowd, dodging rickety carts and gawking pedestrians. Sometimes being small paid off. The warlock on her tail was having a tougher time of it. Tourist-grade china clattered to the ground as he crashed into the pork bun stall and let loose a flurry of curses. Echo’s Mandarin was sparse, but she was pretty sure he’d just lobbed a barrage of colorful insults at her and her parentage. People got so touchy when their things were stolen. Especially warlocks.
Echo ducked beneath a low-hanging awning and glanced over her shoulder. The warlock had fallen behind, and there was a respectable amount of distance between them now. She took another bite of pork bun, crumbs flying. A magic-wielding psycho with a grudge might have been hot on her heels, but she hadn’t eaten since the slice of cold pizza she’d had for breakfast. Hunger waited for no woman. The warlock shouted for a pair of policemen to stop her as she blew past them. Fingers glanced against her sleeve, but she was gone before they found purchase.
Fan-flipping-tastic, Echo thought, fighting the ache building in her muscles. Almost there.
The brightly lit sign for the Jiantan metro station came into view, and she gasped with relief. Once she was in the station, all she had to do was find a door, any door, and she would be gone in a puff of smoke. Or rather, a puff of sooty black powder.
Echo dropped the remainder of the pork bun into a nearby bin and rummaged in her pocket for the small pouch she never left home without. She catapulted herself over the turnstile, tossing a cursory “Sorry!” at the flummoxed station attendant as the stampede of booted feet closed in.
There was a utility closet on the platform less than fifty yards ahead that Echo knew would do nicely. She dug her fingers into the pouch to capture a handful of powder. Shadow dust. It was a generous amount, but the leap from Taipei to Paris was hardly a modest one. Better to be safe than sorry, even if it meant running perilously low for the trip back to New York.
Echo smeared the dust against the doorjamb and hurtled through it. The warlock shouted at her, but his cry, along with the sound of trains pulling into the station and the buzz of conversation on the platform, died as soon as the door shut behind her. For a brief moment, all was darkness. It wasn’t nearly as disorienting as it had been the first time she’d traveled through the in-between places of the world, but it never stopped being strange. In the empty space between all the heres and all the theres, there was no up, down, left, or right. With every step, the ground shifted and warped beneath her feet. Echo swallowed the bile rising in her throat and thrust her hand out, deaf and blind in the vacuum of darkness. When her palm connected with the peeling paint of a door beneath the Arc de Triomphe, she sighed with relief.
The Arc was a popular way station for travelers of the in-between. With any luck, the warlock would have a hell of a time tracking her. Tracing a person’s progress through the in-between was difficult but not impossible, and the warlock’s dark magic would make it that much easier for him. As much as Echo loved Paris in the spring, she wouldn’t be able to stay for long. It was a shame, she thought. The parks were lovely this time of year.
She made her way to the opposite end of the Arc, scanning the crowd for the familiar sight of a cap pulled low to hide a shock of vibrant feathers coupled with a pair of aviators worth more than her entire wardrobe. Jasper was one of her more mercurial contacts, but he was usually true to his word. She was about to give up and pick a door to ferry her back to New York when she saw it: a flash of bronze skin and the glare of sunglasses. Jasper waved, and Echo broke into a grin before cutting through the crowd at a brisk clip.
Her voice was breathy with exertion when she reached him. “You got the stuff?” she asked.
Jasper slid a small turquoise box out of his messenger bag, and Echo noticed that the door beside him already had a smear of shadow dust on its frame. Jasper could be thoughtful when he tried, which wasn’t very often.
“Have I ever let you down?” he said.
Echo smiled. “Constantly.”
Jasper’s grin was equal parts dazzling and feral. He tossed the box to Echo with a wink strong enough to penetrate the reflective glass of his aviators. Echo popped up onto her toes to press a quick kiss to his cheek. She was through the door and into the in-between before he could summon a witty retort. She’d once told Jasper that he could have the last word when he pried it from her cold dead hands, and she meant it.
Crossing the threshold into the in-between was less jarring the second time around, but the contents of Echo’s stomach still gave a mighty heave. She groped through the black, grimacing when her hands made contact with something solid. The doors leading to Grand Central Station were always grimy, even on this side of the in-between.
New York, she thought. The city that never cleans.
Echo exited into one of the corridors branching out from the main concourse. She paced around the information booth at its center, weaving between gaggles of tourists taking pictures of the constellations on the ceiling and commuters awaiting their trains. Not one of them knew there was an entire world beneath their feet, invisible to human eyes. Well, to most human eyes. As in the warlock’s shop, one had to know what one was looking for. She’d give the warlock a handful of minutes to make an appearance. If he’d managed to follow her from the Arc, she wanted to make sure she didn’t lead him to her front door. Echo had no proof, but she was certain that warlocks made terrible houseguests.
Her stomach rumbled. A few bites of pork bun wasn’t going to cut it. She spared a thought for the hidden room in the New York Public Library that she called home, and the half-eaten burrito she’d left sitting on her desk. Earlier that day, she’d swiped it from an unsuspecting college student as he napped, head pillowed on a battered copy of Les Misérables. There had been poetry to that minor act of thievery. It was the only reason she’d done it. She didn’t need to steal food to survive, as she had when she was a child, but some opportunities were too good to pass up.
Echo rolled her neck, letting the tension that had built up in her muscles work its way down her arms and out her fingers. Inch by inch, she let herself relax, listening to the rumble of trains in and out of the station. It was as soothing as a lullaby. With a final glance around the concourse, she hefted her bag over her shoulder and headed toward the Vanderbilt Avenue exit. Home was a scant few blocks west of Grand Central, and there was a stolen burrito with her name on it.