Playing Hearts by W.R. Gingell

right behind me.
    Through the glittering,
shifting crowd I could see Jack. He was standing beside the black-skinned, blue-sequined
man who was playing the piano, his eyes flickering around the room. I supposed
he was there to make sure everyone was looking at Cat Cheshire, though why
anyone would be looking away from him was the first thought that sprang to my
mind. Cat Cheshire, in addition to his blue-sequined suit, had a blue-sequined
hat and a pair of dark glasses. He also had a trick of twitching to the music
that was eye-catching. I hoped it meant that he wouldn’t see Sir Blanc and I,
and wished that he would start singing. Sir Blanc had a bad habit of clanging between blasts of the trumpets rather than while they were happening. But when the
singing started, it was Jack’s voice that I heard: deep, smooth, and effortlessly
breathtaking. More than that, it was mesmerising. I didn’t realise that I had
stopped to stare, my mouth open, until Jack’s eyes caught mine and he smirked
at me. Then I blinked a little, shut my mouth, and pressed onward to the heart door.
It seemed wrong that such a beautiful voice belonged to such an annoying boy.
    I didn’t quite let out my
breath until the red heart door closed silently behind us. The music softened,
much to my secret disappointment, but I could still faintly hear the thrum of
Jack’s voice and the purl of the trumpets. Around us was a red and white room
with soft edges: plush carpet, plump furniture, and curved wooden shelving. I
had the feeling that I could easily sink into it all if I wasn’t careful. Even
Sir Blanc’s clanking wasn’t as bad in here.
    “All right, Sir Blanc,” I
said to him. “Where are your wits?”
    Sir Blanc looked around
vaguely. “Assuredly, they’re in the room. I feel them. I am certain I shall
know them if once I have them in my hand.”
    I had to bite the inside
of my cheek before I could say with any patience at all: “Do you want to go
through all the shelves and pick up everything?”
    “An exceedingly good
proposal!” cried Sir Blanc.
    “We’ll start with the
ones in glass cases,” I told him, sighing. “Those will be the most valuable
ones. And we’ll only pick up the ones that are made up of more than one piece.”
    A smile overspread Sir
Blanc’s usually doleful face. “Forsooth! A clever ruse indeed; my wits
numbering more than one!”
    “That’s what I’m hoping,”
I said.
    There were so many
glass-fronted shelves. We began by the heart doors, grubbing up the
glass-fronted cabinets there with my fingerprints while I plucked every likely
curio from the shelves and plopped them into Sir Blanc’s waiting hands. He
giggled at some, cooed at others, and said “Forsooth!” every so often, but he
didn’t seem to recognise any of the items. When we got to the wall opposite the
doors there was a small gap between curio cases that featured a tiny, round
table with a frosted-glass cover over it and a small, decorative grating
peeking through its spindly legs. It was the opening we’d seen from the inside
of the ice-vents: a small, brick-sized grating that hid a small, brick-sized
opening back into the vent system. Cool air flowed from it, promising freedom
that was impossible to get to. The wall was simply too thick.
    “Pity we can’t shrink
ourselves,” I said regretfully, running my fingers over the glassy knob on top
of the glass cover. At least we had Jack on the outside to get us back out, but
I wasn’t looking forward to sneaking past that crowd again. Jack had stopped singing,
too, which was a pity. It wasn’t something I’d ever tell him, but his voice was
one of the most beautiful things I’d ever heard. You didn’t expect to hear a
smooth bass from such a narrow, sharp-faced boy. More to the point, while he
wasn’t singing, the crowd wasn’t distracted.
    “Eh?” said Sir Blanc. He
was hovering over a crystal carafe of something that was sitting invitingly on
a display table in the middle of the