Mercy

"Jake – Jacob, wait – Jacob – Jacob – Jacob! – Kowalski, shut your confriscating mouth an' lemme git a word in!"

"Just let me come to your place!" Jacob shouted into the mouthpiece, waving to the cabbie to give him more time. "I'll explain there!"

"Would you just shuddup and breathe, Kowalski!" Oppressed breathing hinted that Bill had a hand clapped over his face again. "Just…. Tell me you didn't leave the kid behind. So help me, Jacob, if you ran off an' left him floppin' I'll flag you down as a witness to the bank mob myself."

"He's the reason I'm calling, Bill!" Looking over his shoulder for black-robed wizards, Jacob switched the phone to his other ear. "We need a safe place. Someone's trying to hunt him down."

"Who would look for a forig-ner in your apartment?"

"Bill – "

"I mean, it's not like there's anythin' worthwhile 'bout your place, rum-down pile of trash like the rest of the neighborhood..."

"Gee, thanks, Bill," Jacob said tartly.

"Jist sayin' it's the last place anyone would look for a posh and pommeled Brit," Bill said frankly. "So who's the threat? Don' tell me they let Mary Lou tramp all over th'place."

"I… can't tell you now," Jacob said. "Bill, just let me bring him to your house. I promise I'll tell you everything as soon as we get there."

Bill released a gravely sigh. "An' you used t'be the predictable, monotonous sort'o bloke. You shouldn't of moved him, Jake. I don't know what I'll be stitching up now." A heavy pause was punctuated with the swish of coffee being poured. Finally Bill said, "I'll leave the door unlocked."

"Thank you," Jacob gasped. "I'll pay you back – whatever it takes."

"Stop dallying and bring the kid over," Bill carped. "Dash it, Jake, you couldn't have picked a worse time t'move him. Jist… jist…."

A solid click implied what Bill couldn't express in words alone. Heavy-hearted, Jacob hung up the phone.

"I know, Bill," he murmured, pocketing the change. "I'm sorry. I just…."

The silence twisted his gut until he wished he really was ill. Fever and chills would be easier than the guilt clamming up his hands. Seizing the case handle, Jacob marched back to the cab, closing the door behind him with a solid kathunk.

"Extra charge for the waiting," the bored cabbie told him.

Nodding curtly, Jacob leaned back and let his head jounce with the cab's swerves.

Losing Mildred had been hard. The factory's terse refusal to extend his leave, terminating his job, had left him floundering.

If he lost Bill on top of everything else….

He just hoped Claude wouldn't move on and forget him after all of this was over. It'd just be one more clout to trump the rest.

One more confirmation that his life meant nothing.

"Jake!" Bill seized his flagging shoulders as soon as he saw him. "Jake, y'didn't leave him!"

Shaking his head, Jacob held up the suitcase. "Course not, Bill. I got him. Safe an' snug."

Alarm slanted into disturbed suspicion, which froze into cold fear. "Jacob… come inside… now."

"I'm all right," Jacob said as Bill led him inside and shut the door. "I'm not crazy."

"No, you're only ravin' like a zaned loon," Bill said. He dragged Jacob over to a chair and pushed him down, striding out of the room and returning to thrust a mug of lukewarm coffee into his hands. "Drink, Jacob. Doctor's orders."

"I'm fine," Jacob said, clanking the mug on the book table. "You've got to see to Claude. I don't know what that wizard did to him."

"Wizard?" Bill's eyes narrowed. "Jake, have you gone blarmey?" His voice quavered as he bent over Jacob's chair. "Jake… Jake, where's the kid?" His eyes fell to the suitcase. "Don't tell me… not in pieces, you wouldn't…."

"No, it's not like that!" Jacob exclaimed, half-incented to laugh at the absurdity, and half dizzied at the horrific thought. "It's…." He trailed off, inadequate to explain. "Bill, you have to see this for yourself."

"I don't think I want to," Bill said in a shuddering whisper. He braced his left foot like someone preparing to flee the room.

Someone who would usher the uniforms inside and hand over his friend.

Jacob gathered his courage, his fortitude, and his last hope. "Please, Bill… trust me just this once."

He set the case down, ignoring the clenching of Bill's hands, and flicked the latches. Praying nothing would spring out unfettered, he crouched between the case and the doctor and guardedly raised the lid. Cold air blasted him from the passage below.

"Sainted fire and hail," Bill swore.

"You coming?" Jacob said dully. He stepped inside, anticipating that Bill would follow. For several crucial moments his footsteps were the only rattle of sound.

There was a quick breath, a vehement oath, and the clatter of someone in a hurry.

"Blasted mollycoddled sergeants!" Bill snarled from above. "Where'd I leave my bag?"

Seconds later, thin-leathered shoes thumped down the steps. Bill swung into the shack, breathing raggedly, and fumbled on his glasses. Grey eyes glazed over as he took in the ransacked shelves littered with bottles and fantastic illustrations, barrels of organisms for which science had no explanation, the dragon skull on the top shelf, the monkey beginning to materialize, and finally the mop-headed British wizard curled against the wall, buried to the nose in feathers and a blue coat.

"Jake, you weren't….." Bill jumped at a loud squawk, clutching his doctor's bag. "Am I messed up in th'head? This ain't real, issit?"

"You can call it a dream all you want," Jacob reassured him, leading him to the cot. "But you can still fix him up, can't you?"

Taking in the bruised features and casted limbs of a familiar patient, Bill flung his bag onto a chair and rolled up his sleeves. "Right-O. What attacked him this time?"

Bill took to the magical world like he did all alarming and unpleasant scenarios – he shoved it out of his mind and kept up a running dialogue with the nearest intelligible subject.

"No, I'm not givin' him that," he told the silver monkey as another vial was pushed insistently into his hands. "I'm a doctor, not an apothecary, and I say there ain't sich thing as witchcraft – an if there be, then I ain't havin' no part of it."

He didn't even mention the leg wound to Jacob. After studying it for a good three minutes, then muttering about a wicked scar that could've healed better if he'd had a say in it, he busied himself with re-splinting Claude's abused wrist.

Jacob wasn't surprised that the Brit woke this time, finally cured of the source of fever. Startling, Claude jolted away from Bill, reaching for his pocket and then freezing, slight tremors confirming what his eyes could not hide.

"Whoah, it's okay," Jacob said, quickly stepping up alongside the doctor. "This is my friend Bill. He's the reason you're alive. He's a friend, I promise. Bill, monkey, monkey, Bill," he introduced needlessly. "See, nobody here's afraid of him. You can trust the monkey, right?"

Claude's eyes blinked in a half-roll and he garbled something like "Meegize," and Bill took that as his cue to attack.

"All right, now seeing as you're conscious and aware, I'm going to – move, Kowalski. There ain't enough room here for you and the ape."

Backing out of the cramped space, Jacob waved over the back of Bill's head and hoped that Claude would believe him. Bill was a hard guy to be nervous around once he started talking.

"So you're the reason I'm half-mad," Bill told Claude. "No, don't answer me, I like patients better when they can't wisecrack. This is all Kowalski's delusions creepin' into my nightmares. I'll wake up from this an' be glad I've led an ordinary, unsocialized life, without a single dog or cat t'call my own. Now, about that name – what'chu call yourself? … Now see here, that's what we call salamanders round these parts. I meant your name. … Oh blarmey, Jake, they really did brain this poor wretch."

Jacob chuckled, only half-listening, and found a bucket of slabbed meat that was miraculously fresh despite the absence of an icebox. Mentally tallying off a list of animals that needed to be fed, he stepped out into sunshine the likes of which he never found in Central Park. The beasts trailed towards him, lowing in recognition, and he felt strangely content. Like he was doing something important after all.

Of course, life tended to shift priorities as soon as Jacob thought he was getting in on something. Soon as the porcupine-lion got a sniff of the shack – and more specifically who was inside – every critter in Claude's trunk skirted the feed bags and tried to squeeze inside. The congregation of braying mammals crowding into one doorway gave Jacob a greater sympathy for Noah when he tried to fit 'em all into one boat. (How'd he settle the growing snake problems, Jacob wondered? There had to be ancient notes somewhere on mastering mystical beasts. Maybe those were the dragons mentioned in –)

"Kowalski!" Bill's angry holler had been mastered amidst bomber planes and crumbling buildings. When he shouted, generals stood at attention. Jacob's knees might have quaked just a bit as the doctor bellowed, "Git your imaginary zoo outta my sickroom!"

"What am I supposed to do?" Jacob yelled over the back of a massive, ornery, conspicuously horned hippo.

"They're your – git off, you bloomin' gnat – they're your fantastic beasts! Git them out or I'll have you court-martialed next time some colonel starts screamin' in my bloody nightmares!"

"Okay, everybody move," Jacob said tentatively, reaching out three times before tentatively patting the hippo's flank. "Uh… Food? This way – you gotta get out of the shack before you get it. … Aw, come on!"

He skittered back as a large foot almost minced his shoe.

"Jacob, you useless polliwog!"

"I'm not a pied piper!" Jacob retorted.

"They're your delusions!"

"He brought them!"

"Kowalski! I need elbow space now!"

But it wasn't Jacob's coaxing that nudged aside the carnivores in the end, nor Bill's wrathful threats. Slowly, grudgingly, the beasts retreated from the door, voicing their protest in a crescendo of unhappy roars, yips, and slithers as the yellow-eyed monkey ushered them back. Jacob dropped the feed bucket and stared.

"Well, I'll be – "

"Finally! Kowalski, git in here an' lend me a hand! And you! Shoo, you thievin' lil' apparition! Monkey, impound your offspring afore I plaster its bloody beak shut!"

Jacob was waylaid at the door by a fuming doctor who had successfully threatened and endeared a pickpocketing mole. The beast lay on its back in the crook of Bill's arm, calm as a pampered kitten, batting at the stethoscope dangling from Bill's fingers. Glowering with the promise of animal homicide, Bill shoved both creature and toy into Jacob's hands.

"Remove it from the premises."

"Uh…. It lives here," Jacob mumbled as Bill reentered the hutch.

"I don't care if it lives in Antarctica, Kowalski! It does not enter the sickroom!"

Jacob shrugged at the mole. "Bill doesn't like it when people crowd him."

The duck-mole took one look at his face and stuffed the stethoscope into its pouch.

"Fine. But he gave it to you this time." Holding the mole securely in one hand, Jacob retrieved the bucket and set out to feed Claude's creatures.

He paused lastly outside the winter scene, wondering what to feed a patch of darkness. Once the duck-mole tried huddling into his sleeve, Jacob knew he'd edged far enough. He left the tarp flapping and returned to the shack. Claude would know what to feed it, and if he wasn't up to talking, the silver monkey obviously knew its job.

Jacob just wished he knew what to call these funny critters. He watched the tentacle-faced predators, wondering if Adam considered his job a privilege, or if he eventually ran out of names.

Well, Jacob didn't have the brains to label a suitcase full of animals, let alone an entire world, but he knew a few army pals who vaguely resembled some of Claude's monsters.

Not that he'd ever say it aloud.

"Guess we'll start with you," Jacob said to a disgruntled looking duck-mole. He twitched its hind leg, thinking cute, and sniggered when the creature slapped him with its forepaw.

"So I knew this guy – a real badger, all gruff and cranky, especially in the early morning – anyways, he owned a watch shop. Name was Nickolas Percy Cooper. Everybody just called him 'Lazy Cog', 'cause every morning he'd wind up this beat-up silver watch and heckle the bugler for shoving us out so early. Turned into quite a row between them, till one day he stole the guy's bugle….."

'Cog' was a peculiar name for a pet, but Jacob thought it was fitting for a scheming bandit whose innards were jammed with pieces of odd metal. Especially when said bandit snarled at him halfway through the story and scuttled into a den guarded by biscuit and sour milk, where the plinking of coins and clutter indicated that there was more tucked into that pouch than befit one tiny mammal.

"Fine." Jacob blew upwards, denouncing the furry termite. "Somebody doesn't like old war stories."

Once all the monsters were fed and settled in their respective habitats, he trudged back to the shack, where he hoped that Bill would be finishing his administrations, Claude might have a few legible words to offer, and a slightly-less uncomfortable chair would be serviceable for a late afternoon nap.

Jacob was starting to worry that the next time he closed his burning eyes, they'd be glued shut permanently.

"We're not discussing it."

"Bill, I had no choice – "

"You know how many parents flipped me tha' same excuse? There's always a choice, Jake."

"Would you just listen?" Jacob pleaded. "Please, you know I'm not crazy."

Bill paused, coat flung over his arm, one foot resting on the bottom stair. "I'm a mite bit afraid for myself," he admitted. He waved around, wordlessly summarizing the shack, the sunny terrain, the winged beasts, the silver monkey knitting beside Claude's bed. "Jake… tell me it ain't real. Tell me I'm delusionary. That I've finally gone mad and they'll be haulin' me off tomorrow."

Chuckling, Jacob touched the doctor's shoulder. "Bill, neither of us've got that kind of imagination." His tentative smile faded as Bill shrugged him away.

"I know that," Bill murmured. "S'just…. There's kids out there, Jake. Hundreds of'em starvin', one on my watch burnin' with pneumonia, and here there's a trove of magic what I know would perk 'em all up in a jiffy. And I wonder… why haven't we doctors er' been told?" Honest grey eyes searched Jacob. "Why would they keep this from us?"

"I guess…." Jacob tried to mimic Bill's compassion, but all he could see was a kid on the street getting beaten to death. "I guess people don't want any of this magic stuff. I mean, New York seems to think he's a pretty big threat." He scoffed, gripping his arm, wondering how anyone could see Claude as a menacing, evil wizard.

"You wonder why," Bill said pointedly. Jacob glanced up, surprised, and the doctor shook his head. "Don't mind me, Jake. But magic's never cured any'o my patients. Seems if the magickers wanna keep all this to themselves, then it's their own doing, all this mistrust. I'll take no side in it."

"But you'll still help him, won't you?" Jacob exclaimed, lunging up the steps as Bill opened the case. "Bill, you're a doctor! You've never turned down a – "

"I never said I wouldn't be here if'n you needed me," Bill stated, neither jesting nor cold in his response. "You're welcome here as long as you're on th'lam. He's got it handled, though. 'Nough potions in there t'cure any one of those beasties, I'll wager." Stepping out and waiting for Jacob to follow, Bill smiled, a cheerless tug at the mouth. "Jake. I'm a doctor, not a nursemaid. Lemme tend to my patients. He'll be fine."

"But…."

Without pausing for Jacob to defend his cause, Bill tugged on his coat and meandered to the door. "I'll be back late. Should be somethin' in the kitchen you can both eat. Leave the marmalade – might be rancid jelly, not quite sure. Don't touch the pickled eggs."

"Bill," Jacob called, a string of an apologies bursting in his chest.

The door clicked shut.

Jacob stood in the middle of Bill's living room, amidst the bare furniture and yellowing walls that had once been a charming mansion, before Bill's occupation took him overseas and then into the rot of New York's forgotten backstreets. Here was a man who had given up everything for people who could never repay him.

While the guy in the suitcase had the remedies that could have cured them all.

"Magic shouldn't be kept secret like that," Jacob mulled aloud, reliving the moment when Claude's infection had vanished by the other wizard simply touching it.

And yet there was a darker side to Claude's world: like the witches dancing around a ring of flames; like the unexplained earthquakes caving in parts of New York; like how easily the other wizard made Jacob think it was okay to leave the room when Claude was in danger.

Like the sorrowful shriek of magic pent inside a cold room – swirling, angry, black.

"I don't think New York is ready for that kind of magic," Jacob said to the closed door.

And he wasn't ready to scold a guileless kid whose first magic show had earned him a broken wrist and a snapped wand.

Clenching his fist, shaking with arguments left unsaid, Jacob turned on his heel and marched to Bill's spare room. He clumped down the suitcase steps, shaking loose a hail of drying herbs, and paused in the center of the shack.

He looked outside at the glinting sunlight, at the creatures trotting in their own habitats, untroubled and content, and he knew that this was one more bit of magic that New York would only snuff out. In his world there'd be scientists; zoo keepers; iron bars; senseless gawkers paying to see animals stand idly in containment.

This wizard – selfish "magicker" or not – he seemed to think they were important enough to keep happy. Jacob figured he felt the same way.

"Yeah, who needs magic in America, anyways?" Jacob whispered. He craned his neck and rolled his arms, clapping a fist into an open hand, and turned to face the Brit.

For the first time green eyes were wide-open and lucid. The carpet of bruises was painful-looking as ever, as much as could be seen spreading out from the robe and trousers that Bill had scrounged up, and Claude still hadn't lost the splints, but Jacob was willing to bet the family recipes that for once he would be able to understand what the Brit wanted him to hear.

And now, in the guy's respective habitat (and for a magical oddity with a heroic fondness for lethal animals, it could only be the closest thing he had to home), Jacob figured he'd already fulfilled half his duties. Bill was right – the Brit was gonna be okay.

He was finally where he belonged.