A Crack in Everything: Welcome to the other side

Chapter One

Stepping Sideways

Izzy had only just pushed down the lever on the toaster when it exploded with an audible pop. Sparks flared up like fireworks and pungent black smoke filled the kitchen.

Dad cursed loudly – words he seriously wasn’t meant to say in front of her – and jumped up from the kitchen table.

‘Stand back from the bloody thing,’ he said and ripped the plug from the wall. ‘Are you okay, Izzy?’

She nodded, trying not to inhale the acrid fumes. ‘Fine, Dad. I’m fine.’ He looked comical standing there with the cord swinging from his hand like a pendulum, glaring at the toaster as if he had a lifelong grudge against it.

It wasn’t like this was the first time. She knew the drill. She punched the switch on the extractor fan and opened the windows while Dad prodded the toaster suspiciously, waiting for it to attack again.

A deathly silence settled over the kitchen until Mum rustled the paper. ‘The technological curse is definitely hereditary then, is it?’

Izzy grinned, aware from her mother’s voice that she was stifling laughter. She couldn’t help herself. It was funny.

Dad gave an affronted huff. ‘Your daughter wasn’t hurt, since you’re so concerned.’

‘Oh, good. That’s a relief, as always. What item is going to suffer the wrath of the two of you next?’

She folded up the paper, poured herself the last cup of coffee and winked at Izzy, who leaned on the counter and suppressed a giggle. Dad picked up the toaster, crossed to the back door and tossed it onto the patio. It clattered onto the stones and he slammed the door after it.

‘There, all gone. And good riddance. Better use the grill, Izzy.’

‘You aren’t leaving that out there,’ Mum protested. ‘It’s a garden, not a dump!’

‘The toaster’s dead, love. Let it rest in peace. I’ll take it to the recycling centre later.’ He put the jug under the coffee machine and hit the red button. It gurgled away happily.

‘Careful!’ said Mum. Of all the machines in the house, Izzy thought, they couldn’t afford to lose that one. Neither of her parents would be able to function. She went to the fridge and got a yogurt instead. Far safer. She and Dad had an uncanny way with electrical items. Mainly with destroying them.

‘I won’t break it,’ Dad argued. ‘I’ve never broken the coffee machine! The coffee machine loves me.’

God, they were embarrassing.

‘Just stay away from my laptop, David,’ Mum warned him. ‘I’m not sure I could take another I’ve-never-seen-that-before helpline conversation.’ That made Dad grimace dramatically. Izzy rolled her eyes to heaven, because next thing she knew they were kissing in a way that ought to be strictly forbidden to anyone over twenty-one.

But at least they were happy together. Not coldly ignoring each other or getting divorced like the parents of half her classmates. They were happy, and she was happy for them.

Even if they were mortifying.

‘Better get dressed,’ Dad said. ‘Izzy, do you want a lift? I’m heading out by the Temple of Mammon.’

She winced. The enormous shopping centre in Dundrum didn’t call itself a ‘shopping centre’, but rather a ‘Town Centre’. And Dad didn’t even call it that. He had opinions about shopping centres. Opinions with capital letters, quotes, underlines and italics. Probably why he barely had enough business to get by these days. You’d think in a recession, an architect would be a bit more circumspect about whose buildings he was criticising. But that was Dad, through and through.

Problem was, she agreed with him. She was the only teenage girl she knew who hated the place.

‘No, thanks. I thought I’d head into town later on. Dylan’s band have a gig this afternoon.’

Town wasn’t something man-made, or designed. Town was the centre of Dublin, an unwritten but perfectly understood area that had created itself, grown organically, carelessly – a grubby, worn-at-the-seams paradise divided by a river. A place of narrow lanes left over from the Viking settlement and the stately Georgian avenues of the Wide Street Commissioners.

Izzy loved Dublin, loved just mooching about, down laneways or around the iron-railed squares, listening to buskers, looking at street art and window shopping. It was a place to just generally hang out, sometimes meeting friends, sometimes on her own. Summer was heaven for that.

She should have known the city centre like the back of her hand at this stage, and yet she always found something new in it. That was its magic, the maze that was Town, a hodge-podge of public and secret places from countless eras, squished together over the course of a thousand years, always new, always old.

‘Oh, where are they playing?’ asked Mum eagerly. Too eagerly.

Izzy was still living down the last time they turned up to one of Dylan’s gigs. Marianne loved bringing that one up. Izzy had known Dylan so long her parents seemed to think of him as their own kid rather than Izzy’s friend.

‘Just a promo thing. No biggie. Anyway, you’re at work. It’s in the afternoon.’ The words came out in a quick rush and she took the opportunity to escape before they could ask any more details like exactly when and where.

The DART rattled along the tracks, green and ugly. The train was a lifeline for anyone living on the outskirts of the city, a way to get out of the suburban seaside and swing around the sweep of the bay right into the heart of town. Izzy gazed out the window instead of listening to music or playing with her phone like her fellow passengers. The treacherous sand flats of Sandymount Strand, beloved of Joyce, stretched out beyond the wall, the sea rushing in on them with white horses in the waves, breaking off the submerged sandbars. The wind was getting up, but the sky was still clear and blue. Summer wasn’t always so beautiful. Usually it was notable for the extra rain, but not this year. This year it was golden and beautiful, like a childhood memory of summers past. It transformed the whole place.

Izzy pushed her way off the train at Pearse Station and joined the crowds streaming down the steep slope to street level. She wandered around the edge of Trinity College, dodging tourists clustered around their coaches and beggars holding paper coffee cups.

‘Spare change, bud?’ someone mumbled from the level of her knees and she saw a flash of yellow teeth in a grimy face. Gimlet eyes met hers, stopping her in her tracks. Breath caught in her throat, but she couldn’t move, not right away. It felt like someone was holding the back of her neck in an iron grip. ‘Spare change, love?’ he said again, his grin even wider now.

Someone pushed between them, breaking the contact, and Izzy could move again. She jerked away, crossing the road and trying not to look as if she was running. There was nothing to run from. Just an old guy looking for money. But her heart hammered against the inside of her ribs.

It didn’t calm until she’d reached Grafton Street, where she paused outside the bank among the shoppers and foreign language students watching a fairly crusty busker playing the guitar like a Spanish master. And here she was, getting freaked out. Stupid, really. She knew better than to let her imagination run away with her. Dad always told her that things were what they were. No one needed to imagine anything worse. Just an old beggar and her overactive imagination.

Izzy let herself breathe more calmly and the noise and conversation, the laughter and shouts, swept over her. The street was full of colour everywhere, and sound like a physical force. She lingered at the shop windows without going inside. It wasn’t a day for shopping, even if she had any money to spare. This was just a day for herself. The school holidays weren’t the same when you got older. She worked every hour she could get in the coffee shop down the road from her house, while most of her friends were content to waste the summer away. Well, maybe that wasn’t fair. Part-time jobs and summer work were tough to come by these days.

Still, Marianne, Dylan’s sister and Izzy’s classmate and co-worker, could be less of a prima donna about it all.

She was looking in the window of the camera shop, lusting after an SLR she couldn’t ever hope to afford, when in the reflection she caught a glimpse of the beggar again, on the far side of the road, sitting in a doorway surrounded by cardboard and a ratty-looking blanket. The same man. She was sure of it. Her spine stiffened in alarm. He didn’t move, still as one of those fake statue people further down the road, just staring at her with eyes that caught the light in a weirdly metallic way. He wasn’t painted gold or silver though. If he had a colour it would be ‘grime’.

He was the one she’d seen earlier on Nassau Street. He grinned the same way, held her gaze as if to hypnotise her and hold her there. Like a cobra with its prey.

The street cleaning truck rumbled by, breaking the spell. Izzy shuddered and turned with a start, able to move again in an instant. He was gone. As if he’d never been there. No sign of him at all. Just an empty doorway, a tangle of blanket and some ragged ends of cardboard. No one was there at all.

Izzy shook her head. She’d imagined it, seen some sort of trick of the light in the reflection. There was nothing there.

But at the top of the street, she thought she saw him again, lurking by the vast grey arch of the gates to St Stephen’s Green. Izzy turned away, wincing and wishing there was a cop around. The creep was shadowing her.

She jumped as her phone rang in her pocket. As she fished it out, her hands were shaking so hard she almost dropped it. She glanced over her shoulder. He was gone again and a loud group of tourists stood there instead, comparing brightly coloured maps.

‘Let me guess.’ Dylan’s voice sounded deep with amusement. ‘You’re sightseeing.’

Seeing something. Not sights. Not good ones.

She looked around, half expecting the beggar to be back, half dreading catching sight of him again.

Her voice shook. ‘How can I sightsee here? I’ve seen it.’

Dylan didn’t notice her tone. He laughed. ‘Yeah, sure. You can sightsee anywhere, Izzy. Especially here. I know you. Okay, you’re wandering around town looking at the buildings and pretending you’re window shopping?’

Busted.

Or at least that was what she had been doing, before she’d acquired a potential stalker.

‘You in town?’ she asked, deliberately not answering his question. That amused him even more. She could hear it in his voice.

‘Just got in. So are you coming?’

‘Now?’ She couldn’t check the time and talk at the same time. She tried to balance the phone against her shoulder and twist her wrist around to look at the watch. After two. Shit, how had that happened?

Mari’s voice sounded in the background, saying something about Izzy always being late – which was a lie if she was talking about work – and then she laughed. Izzy knew that laugh. It was the flirty, I’m-so-gorgeous-aren’t-you-just-sick laugh she reserved for those guys she fancied beyond reason. Like the bass player in Dylan’s band.

‘Soon,’ said Dylan. ‘You’ll come though, won’t you?’ He broke off before she could answer, said something she couldn’t quite make out to the others and then he was back. ‘I’ve got to go. Soundcheck’s starting. Look, this thing won’t even take the whole afternoon. We’re going to grab a bite to eat and maybe go clubbing later?’

Izzy frowned. Like she could afford that. She’d love to, though. It had been so long since she’d been out with Dylan. With the guys from the band they’d get in wherever. That was probably what Mari was counting on. Dylan was two years older than both his sister and Izzy, finished school and starting university. Hanging around with him – embarrassing nerd-muso brother or not – opened up a world of possibilities for Mari.

‘I’ve kind of got to go home,’ she muttered, wishing she could just blithely say ‘yes’ and not think about the consequences. ‘I’ve work in the morning and I promised Mum and Dad. But I’m on my way now. Be there soon.’

It wasn’t far to Exchequer Street. She could make it with plenty of time. All she had to do was cut down by the side of the shopping centre, past the theatre and head down South William Street. Ten minutes max.

She was only halfway there when the phone rang again.

She tried to juggle fishing her ringing phone out of her pocket and avoiding the crowds of afternoon shoppers who would probably just trample her to the ground and keep going if she stopped. Stumbling out of the way of three suits on lunch break and some tourists who were clearly lost and flapping brightly coloured maps around like sails, she hopped up onto the steps leading to a design shop.

‘Where are you?’ Marianne barked, before even a hello or anything.

‘I’m on the way.’

‘I’m standing here on my own. They’re all up there fiddling with the sound system and making a racket. Hurry up!’

Chills ran spiny fingers down her back again, like a trickle of sweat, bringing with it once more the feeling that she was being watched. She glanced around, but couldn’t see anyone. No sign of creepy guy. Where was he now?

‘I’ll be there in a minute or two.’ Surely Mari could stand to be on her own and not the centre of attention for five minutes. Or maybe not. That was Mari all over.

‘Come on, Izzy. I don’t know anyone else. Hurry up. Oh, they’re getting ready to start.’

The line went dead and Izzy rolled her eyes.

I promised Dylan I’d be there.

At the best of times Marianne could be a bit of a bitch. She couldn’t help it, she always said. It was just the way she was. A handy excuse, but at the same time, Izzy couldn’t recall a time when she didn’t know Mari and Dylan, or when Mari hadn’t been the centre of all attention. Though they were in the same class in school, they only associated because they’d known each other forever. They just didn’t have a lot else in common. Mari was boy-mad these days and Izzy never found anything so very amazing about the boys Mari obsessed over. If the truth was told, Izzy was far closer to Dylan than Mari. And sister or not, often enough even Dylan pretended he didn’t know Mari. Most of the time Izzy could follow suit. Mari certainly didn’t want to know her at school. Mari was … well, Mari.

Izzy slid her phone into her pocket and looked up to find a gap in the sea of people into which she could slot. Her eyes fell on the graffiti on the alleyway wall.

It was right next to her, cut off by railings from this side and a massive bin from the other. About ten feet high, starkly drawn in black and white. An angel. The figure crouched there, her hands clasped nervously before her, balancing on the tips of her toes with her wings outspread behind her, as if at any moment she might take off. She looked over her shoulder, right at Izzy. The eyes ate into her soul.

When Izzy looked closer, the face was smudged, a smear of morning-after mascara, half on the pillows and half on the cheeks. She looked as if she’d been crying. Worse, she looked afraid.

Captivated by the image, Izzy stepped down and dodged through the other pedestrians until she could slip into the alley itself. She squeezed past the bin, trying neither to inhale nor imagine what she might be getting on her clothes. Even Mum and Dad might ask some questions when she’d only had this jacket a couple of weeks.

Her boot scuffed on something as she stepped closer to the wall, a mound of ash, as if a pile of newspapers had been allowed to burn right down there. Izzy bent closer and touched it. A shiver ran up her fingers, along her arm. The angel gazed down, with a Mona Lisa air. She did the eyes thing, her gaze following Izzy wherever she stood.

Izzy stepped away, alarm snaking around her spine, all the way down, crashing against the wheeled bin and sending it skittering out onto the path.

Someone yelled at her, cursed and kicked it back in before they carried on their way. She dug out her phone and switched it to camera. It made that overly loud, false camera shutter noise as she took the picture.

Something hard slammed into the small of her back, pitching her forward, off balance and flailing. She crashed face first against the wall, the black and white graffiti blurring before her eyes. The same something snatched her phone right out of her hand. Pain lanced down her arm, like wires beneath her skin. Without thinking, she launched herself up and after the shambling figure retreating down the alleyway.

The creep.

She couldn’t lose the phone. She just couldn’t. The stupid thing cost too much.

He turned back towards her, giving the impression of a dirt-lined face like crumpled newspaper. The same guy she had seen earlier, the old beggar who’d been following her, waiting for a moment like this.

He stopped dead in his tracks and turned side on, still looking at her. And grinned again. A horrible yellow-toothed grin, far too big for his face.

His image flickered like ancient film, newsreel from a bygone age. Vanishing. Izzy blinked, her mouth dropping open as he started to fade from his head down.

Vanishing, right there, in front of her eyes.

No way!

Izzy dived towards him, grabbing at the place he had been and her fingers closed on the tattered edges of a filthy wool overcoat just before the shimmer of invisibility claimed it too. She felt herself yanked forwards, her feet jerking out from beneath her and she tumbled after him into the alley.

Chapter Two

Jinx

Ablast of hot air struck Izzy’s whole body, coming out of nowhere, as if she’d just walked under a shop-door fan. But this air stank of burnt paper and ashes. It sucked the breath from her lungs. Her vision flared, inverting the colours around her and pounding distorted images into her brain like a migraine.

She slammed onto cobbles. The alley, which had looked like no more than a dead end, opened out ahead of her, lit only in patches by a flickering light, the walls and stones slick with a substance that gave them a rainbow sheen. It twisted in and out of sight and it was all wrong …

Her bag spilled from her shoulder, half her things skittering over the alley floor. The old man spoke in a lyric tongue she didn’t understand, trying to yank his coat free of her hand. By his tone and the look on his face, he had to be cursing.

Rage returned Izzy’s voice to her, forced her into action again.

‘Give it back!’ she yelled.

He aimed a kick at her face, but it never connected. He jerked back suddenly, as if something in the darkness grabbed him by the back of the neck and shook him hard. It was dark here, the place thick with shadows that shouldn’t exist on a summer’s afternoon. Izzy’s vision swam and a high-pitched whine cut through her head. Through it she could hear words.

‘What in all the seven hells’ names do you think you’re doing, Mistle? Did you bring her through?’

‘I didn’t mean any harm, Jinx. She came after me.’

A low growl rippled through the air. It shivered against Izzy’s skin, made her stomach dip inside her and then leap up. She let go of the coat, pulled herself up onto her knees. Her brain reeled around inside her skull, lurching sickeningly as she moved.

Concussion? It could be. She’d hit the wall hard enough.

Not to mention seeing him vanish. Had to be a concussion. Her stomach twisted and sweetness filled her mouth. She was going to throw up.

Dear God, she couldn’t. Bile burned the back of her throat, but she forced it down and pulled herself up to stand.

‘Get out of here, you fool,’ said the voice called Jinx.

Was he behind her? How had he got behind her? Was he calling her a fool? No, he was talking to the old man. ‘Don’t prey around here. You’ve been warned enough times. You—’

‘My phone,’ Izzy said, before it was too late. ‘He took my phone.’

There was a pause. She tried to focus on Jinx, but he stood in shadows – and here, in the narrow alley she’d never known existed, the shadows were very dark indeed. They were wrapped around him, hiding him from view. ‘Give it back.’

‘But it’s mine. I did what I had to. It’s pretty. It’s mine.’

‘Give it back,’ Jinx’s voice rippled with menace, like the growl of a tiger on the edge of a nightmare. Even Izzy took a step back.

With an inarticulate roar belying the fawning behaviour of a second earlier, Mistle flung the phone at her. It crashed onto the cobbles, shattering into too many pieces to count.

Mistle didn’t give her a second glance. He just ran, darting through the shadows and down the twisting alleyway, out of sight. His footsteps fell away. In the distance a car horn blared.

Then everything else fell away to silence.

And the sound of the gentle rise and fall of someone else’s breath.

‘You shouldn’t be here either,’ said the voice called Jinx. Strangely melodic a voice. So deep it resonated through her. But not kind. In no way could anyone call it kind.

Izzy’s temper bristled. No, ‘are you okay?’ No, ‘did he hurt you?’ She scowled, searching for him in the shadows. Her vision drifted back towards normality. She could see again, almost. Blinking hard, she tried to focus on him.

‘I’m just fine, thanks,’ she snapped. ‘No harm done.’

Liar. She hurt all over. Not to mention the wound to her pride. What had she been thinking? Everyone knew not to chase thieves down alleys. Instinct was one thing, but what if he’d had a knife? What if he’d had friends?

A vague outline that had to be Jinx loomed over her. Big, broad. And scary, her instincts told her, a little too late to be of any use. This was so not the place to be.

Dropping to her knees she made an attempt to gather her belongings. There was some sort of sludge covering her notebook. She tried to wipe it off, but it clung on stubbornly. Scraping it didn’t work, neither did the crumpled tissue that she found with it.

The sob that tore its way out of her came as a complete surprise. Fat drops of water fell from her eyes and splashed amid the rubbish. Her things tumbled from her shaking hands, even as she tried to scoop them into her bag.

‘Here,’ Jinx said quietly, surprisingly gentle. She looked up to see a pair of long-fingered hands cupped in front of her. Masculine hands, but elegant, like an artist’s. They cradled the broken remains of her mobile phone. ‘It’s banjaxed.’

The apologetic tone made her look up sharply and the first things she saw were his eyes. Sharp as nails, one might say, and the same colour. Bright, shining steel piercing through the darkness. And not quite … normal …

His head tilted to one side, he was studying her as closely as she was studying him. She blinked and the world seemed to contract abruptly around her. The illusion shifted, like the shimmer of a heat haze in high summer and suddenly his eyes were grey instead of steel. His pale skin was framed by strands of long black hair, silken and glossy. Her fingers itched to brush against his face.

His eyes tilted slightly, cat-like, smudges of guyliner giving their grey that curious metallic illusion. No, not a liner. Shadows around his eyes, cast by thick black lashes. Tattoos covered the right side of his neck, kissed the underside of his jaw and vanished beneath the tight black t-shirt he wore. They emerged again, trailing down his arms and she wondered where else they went. The thought of what lay beneath his clothes made her blush furiously. A nose stud winked at her, a silver ring pinched around one high and elegant eyebrow and a line of earrings ran right up the side of one pointed ear.

Not human, not real, she thought once more, like one of those crazy alien things in the films Dylan watched, or something inspired by her manga collection, like a stylised sketch, and the image shifted, normalising again.

Shock was making her see things. That was all. Or that concussion she probably had.

Or maybe just the potentially fatal attack of stupid that seemed to be overwhelming her all of a sudden.

Still pierced, still tattooed, still unbearably handsome, but less … alien? She shook her head, desperate to clear it. Taking a deep breath didn’t help. She closed her eyes, tried again and found her heart pounding in her chest. She breathed past it, felt it calm and looked back at him. Normal. Everything was normal. Or as normal as it got when you were kneeling in a piss-stinking alley with a tattooed stranger.

All the same she didn’t take the pieces of the phone. If shock was making her see things, that was bad enough, but she was still on her knees with a guy who would give her mother apoplexy.

‘Take it,’ he said. His voice carried a sort of lilt she knew she should recognise. It was an old accent, one she couldn’t place. Not local. And yet … not from far away either. She should know it. ‘Maybe you can get it fixed?’

Fixed. Yeah, right. Had he actually looked at it? She tried to shrug. ‘It’s just a phone. I … I can get another.’ There didn’t look to be enough of it left worth fixing, to be honest. ‘Banjaxed’ was an understatement. Thanks to the effect she and her dad had on electronics, she’d seen enough to recognise when something was totally borked. All the same, she held out her bag and he dropped the pieces inside.

Jinx got to his feet, towering over her. Broad-shouldered, slim-hipped, perfectly proportioned.

‘I’m Izzy,’ she said, and immediately regretted it.

He gave her a baffled look, staring at her for a long moment as if he could see inside her. ‘Jinx,’ he said at last. ‘Are you okay?’

That was when Izzy realised she was still crouching on the ground at his feet. Something jerked inside her and she leaped up so quickly part of her was surprised she didn’t hear a string snap. Her head swam and that same peculiar glow she had felt touching the angel surged within her.

‘Yes, I’m … I’m fine …’

The world blurred. Her skin stretched too tight over her bones and her chest caught in a vice. She felt the ground tip and then a hand caught her arm. Strong, but gentle. Careful, but reluctant.

‘Steady. You got up too fast.’

Izzy could only stare at him as if she was an idiot. Any words she might want to say died in her throat. Normally she could come up with a line in a second,