“Wow,” he said. And heard a soft contemplative cluck. And laughed at himself, which came out a rising, tossing crow.
Marion flinched and put a hand up on his wing. “Matthew, please. My ears.”
He ducked his head between his shoulders, abashed, and clucked sorry. Maybe she would understand.
His body stood stolidly, restrained, inside a wet circle of chalk and rum. The cockerel wearing it was quieted by the hood and the handcuffs, and Matthew turned his head right and left to center himself in his vision. He failed—he had the peripheral view, and only by turning to see it first with one eye and then the other could he reliably guess how far away it was. Almost no binocular vision, of course. But with a shock, he realized that he could see clearly around to the back of his head.
That was pretty tremendously weird. He’d have to practice that. And think about his small sharp body and its instincts, because the enemy could be along any moment.
Marion was pulling back, stepping into the shadows, an alcove near the gate concealing them. Matthew pressed against her warmth, feeling her heart beating faster. He clucked in her ear.
“Shh.”
He hoped the cockatrice would come quickly. This could be very, very awkward to explain if something happened to the glamours. Still, they had brought alcohol, talent, and innocence—symbolically speaking—and left them, special delivery, in the thing’s front yard. Wherever it was nesting, it should come to investigate before too long.
He was still thinking that when he heard the singing.
The three of them had been following for a long time, it seemed, when Doctor S. and the woman gave one another a conspiratorial glance and stepped through an archway, past a rusted gate. Gina drew up short, stepping out of the traffic flow into the shelter of a doorway. A moment later, Katie heard glass breaking and something kicked or thrown.
Katie ducked in behind Gina, rubbing her elbow nervously. This wasn’t the best neighborhood at all. “That’s a dead end, I bet,” Gina said, when Melissa came up beside them. “Either they’re going inside, or that’s where they’re going.”
“Here?”
Gina winked. “Want to sneak up and peek through the gate?”
Katie and Melissa exchanged a glance, and Melissa angled her head and said, “What the heck.” Side by side, the three stepped back out onto the sidewalk, picking their way over chewing gum spots and oily, indeterminate stains. Katie somehow found herself in the lead, as Gina and Melissa fell in single file behind her. She had to glance over her shoulder to make sure they were still with her.
She stopped two feet shy of the broken gate and tried to still her hammering heart. No luck, and so she clenched her hands at her sides and edged forward.
She could see through plainly if she kept her back to the wall and turned her head sideways. She saw Doctor S. and the cop sketch the diagram, saw them pull a black rooster from the box and do something to its head and feet. She flinched, expecting some bloody and melodramatic beheading, but instead Doctor S. went to the center of the star and began chaining himself up, which made her feel distinctly funny inside. And then he blindfolded himself with a hood, and the woman did some more sketching with the chalk and walked around the circle pouring something in between its lines from a flask.
A moment later, the rooster began to struggle, while Doctor S. stood perfectly still. The woman crouched down and unhooded it, and a moment later it flapped onto her shoulder and settled itself.
“This,” Melissa whispered, a warm pressure against Katie’s side, “is freaking weird.”
“Gosh,” Gina said, very loudly, “would you listen to that?”
Katie turned to shush her, and heard it herself. She took a deep breath, chest expanding against her shirt, as if she could inhale the music too. It seemed to swell in her lungs and belly, to buoy her. She felt Melissa cringe, and then fingers caught at her shoulder. “Fuck,” Melissa said. “What is that?”
“Beautiful.” Katie stepped forward, moving out of Melissa’s grasp. Into the courtyard, toward the woman and the chicken and the blindfolded English professor. Katie lifted her arms and twirled, her feet light as if she walked on flowers. She strode through a pile of garbage that the magicians had piled up when they cleared the center of the courtyard and her airy foot came down on glass.
A cracked bottle broke further under her foot, shattering and crunching. The soft sole of Katie’s tennis sneaker clung to broken glass; she picked it up again and stepped forward, to another crunch.
The noise was almost lost under the music. Rising chorales, crystalline voices.
“It sounds like a rat being shaken to death in a bag of hammers,” Melissa groaned, and then sucked in a squeak. “Oh, fuck, Katie, your foot . . . ”
There was something slick between her sole and the bottom of the shoe. She must have stepped in a mud puddle. She looked down. Or a puddle of blood.
Well, her foot was already wet. And the singers were over there somewhere. She took one more step, Melissa’s fingers brushing her wrist as her friend missed her grab. Behind her, Melissa made funny sobbing noises, as if she’d been running and couldn’t get a breath.
Somehow, Gina had gotten ahead of her, and was walking too, kicking rubbish out of the way with her sandaled feet, crunching through more glass, leaving red footsteps. The courtyard was filthy, the buildings moldy-looking, scrofulous: brick black with soot and flaking mortar.
Something moved against the wall. A gleam of brightness, like sun through torn cloth. And then—so beautiful, so bright, oh—a spill of jadevioletandazure, a trailing cloak of feathers, a sort of peacock or bird of paradise emerging like an image reflected in a suddenly lit mirror. Its crested head was thrown back, its long neck swollen with song. Its wings mantled and rays of light cracked from between its feathers.
Gina was still ahead of her, between her and the bird. Katie reached out to push her, but then suddenly she was gone, fallen down, and Katie stepped over her. It was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen. It was the most beautiful thing she’d ever heard.
And oh, it was blind, the poor thing was blind. Somebody had gouged out its eyes, she saw now. The old wounds were scarred gray, sightless.
And still it sang.
She reached out her hand to touch it, and couldn’t understand why Melissa was screaming.
Matthew saw both young women hurry across the glass and stones, faster than he could reach them—not that he could have stopped them. Even though he was airborne, and already on his way.
He saw his body react, too—it hurled itself at the edge of the pentagram, hurled and kept hurling, but the wards they’d so carefully constructed held him, and he bounced from them and slid down what looked like plain still air. So strange, watching himself from the outside. Marion and the red-haired girl both crumpled, Marion with her hands over her ears, belly-crawling determinedly toward the running children; Melissa Martinchek down in a fetal position, screaming.
And he saw the cockatrice.
The movement caught his eye first, a ripple of red like brick and gray like concrete, its hide patterned in staggered courses that blended precisely with the blackened wall behind it. It was bigger than a cock, but not by much, and his rooster’s heart churned with rage at its red upright comb and the plumed waterfall of its tail. His wings beat in midair; he exploded after it like a partridge from cover.