Didn’t she deserve some? Maybe not, since she ruined everything she came near.
Down Severson Hill, a left onto Colsonal Avenue. The estates were no more; instead it was narrow middle-class homes with fenced backyards, some with charm-burning globes over narrow, cracking driveways that had been laid in the big boom of the seventies. A decent neighborhood, a nice one, away from the core.
What if Dad had been something other than a lawyer, and Mom something other than a high-powered textile charmer? The kids around here would go to Hollow Hills, not as highcrust as Juno but certainly not public. The public schools were for kids who were both poor and didn’t have enough Potential to snuff a candle.
Would things have been better, maybe, if she’d been at Hollow Hills? No Ruby, of course, no Cami. No Avery throwing sand at her or being so . . . whatever he was.
Maybe no Laurissa, either. Did it balance out?
The houses got larger and larger. These weren’t the charm-clan estates, but they began to have walls in unconscious (or very conscious) imitation. Right after the Reeve, any place that could afford a wall built one, and now it was tradition. If you suddenly gained the money, you went for walls. Nouveau riche, Mom had said once, her mouth twitching, and her father had frowned a little. Nouveau murs, he had replied, and they had laughed together, and oh how she missed that sound. She had laughed as well, too young to understand the joke but loving the sound their voices made together.
The walls rose, and Ellie began to shiver. A sullen flash of lightning, probably over the bay; she held her breath and counted.
Before she finished counting, though, the limousine slowed to a crawl. How was it possible? She hadn’t even noticed the four turns and the long stretch through Heathline to get to Perrault.
Nothing’s moving like it should.
The thought sent ice cubes trailing down her back. When the rat-driver brought the car to a soundless stop in front of the iron gates with the Sigil of high-heel shoes warped and glowing dull red, she wasn’t even surprised when a patch of darkness on his neck took on a sheen like fur. He lifted one wrist and tapped it with a point-nailed finger.
Close to midnight? It can’t be. But then, dusk is late in summer.
“I know,” she murmured, and slid toward the door. He didn’t move to open it for her, and she wasn’t really surprised either when she shut it behind her—quiet, or as quietly as she could—and the car roused itself, creeping away down the street. Maybe he’d wait under a tree, but she doubted it.
THIRTY
THE BACKYARD WAS A JUNGLE NOW, AND LAURISSA HAD evidently fired the landscapers for the front too. There was a breath of something rotting, foul and rank and wet, probably the pool behind the tangle of black-spotted rosebushes, their leaves dropping early. Withered but strangely juicy, their long thorny arms stretched and shivered as she glanced nervously at them.
The kitchen door was locked, but she stretched to reach overhead, standing on tiptoes, wishing the beads on the dress didn’t clash and shiver. The key was there, another of her little secrets, and she had a moment’s brief burst of hope before the knob squeaked.
She stepped back, almost catching her heel on the edge of the stair, and the door ghosted itself open. A pallid, haggard face under a mop of dirty hair stared out, and for one heartstopping second Ellie teetered on the precipice, because it was Laurissa’s face, the dull rage-hot gaze and the sharp nose, the high cheekbones and the long elegant fingers as she reached out.
Intuition coalesced, and she finally understood what she had always seen in Laurissa’s “sister.” Oh, wow.
Rita’s hand closed around Ellie’s upper arm. “What are you doing here?” the girl whisper-hissed, and Ellie’s heart attack turned into an acid burp.
Well, isn’t that embarrassing. “Rita?” A croak, she tasted the bile in the back of her throat.
“If she wakes up she’ll kill you.” The other girl’s fingers dug in. “Leave her alone. She’s been doing poppy to keep charming, and I dosed her double tonight so she’d stay away from the Ball.”
Poppy? It’ll eat her up. “Mithrus Christ.” Ellie blinked. Another flash of lightning, somewhere overhead. “You look old.” A torpid mutter as the sky overhead twitched its cloudy skin again.
“You look like a skank, so we’re even,” Rita whispered fiercely in reply. “You have got to get out of here. If she wakes up—”
“I came to get you.” Her lips were numb. “Look, Rita . . . I’ve found a place. A safe place. You and me, we can—”
“Dressed like that?” A low, contemptuous laugh. “Did they throw you out of the Ball? They would, you know. They’re all like that. Charmers.”
What do you have against them? Then again, the Strep was plenty to have against anyone. You could hold her against the whole human species. Ellie tried again. “I came to get you, Rita. She . . . you don’t have to stay here. You don’t have to . . . to get hurt.”
“What do you know?” Another bitter little laugh, and another flash of lightning showed the kitchen behind Rita’s slim shoulders. She was just as thin as Ellie now, but still wearing that goddamn peach sweater. It hung on her now like—
. . . a scarecrow . . .
—like a stretched, borrowed skin. Was she molting? Turning into a smaller version of Laurissa, talons, scrawny angry neck, and all? Was it even worth trying to save someone like that?
It has to be.
“I know she’s not your sister.” Quietly, but that numbness in her mouth was an enemy. She had to fight it, probably like Cami fought her stutter. “She’s a black charmer, she’s been one for years, and she’s been hiding it. She used up all your charm too, didn’t she? She took your Potential.”
The blackest charming of all, one the hedge of restrictions and protections around Juno was built to avoid. Before Potential settled, you could do a lot of things—like take it, especially from a blood relation.
Rita’s head snapped aside, teeth bared, as if she’d been slapped. She let go of Ellie’s arm, and it was Ellie’s turn to lean forward, grabbing blindly. She got a handful of the peach sweater, and found the material was surprisingly soft. It crumpled in her fist, and Rita’s immediate flinch was terrifying.
Because Ellie didn’t mind if the girl cowered, as long as she listened, and who did that remind her of? Did it soothe some broken thing inside the Strep when she made someone smaller cringe? Maybe.
Now all the charmweed benders made sense, and all her boyfriends sent home drained. Feeding off other people’s Potential to stave off Twisting for a while, scrabbling to get as much money as she could—another intuition blurred under Ellie’s skin.
Hadn’t Ellie herself been looking for credits any way possible, too? Was there something the Strep had wanted to escape . . . and had Dad been her way out, just like Avery might have been Ellie’s?
What did that make Ellie, then? Not a physical copy the way Rita was, but similar all the same. Her skin crawled, and the itchy nasty sensation was all over her.
I’m not like her. I’m not. But the sneaking suspicion just wouldn’t go away.
“Listen.” She forgot to whisper. “There’s a safe place, where she can’t find us. I’ll take you, and however much you hate me is fine, I don’t care. If she’s on poppy it’s not going to end well, and you’ll catch the worst of it. Let’s just go. You can escape her. You really can.” She groped for words, found them. “You don’t have to put up with this. And . . . I owe you.”
Even if you are a bitch. Was Rita really that bad? Hadn’t Ellie been secretly relieved someone else would get the short end of the stick? Relieved that Rita was getting the random slaps and hissed insults—after all, there was plenty to go around, wasn’t there.
She realized, miserably, that she could scrub and scrub, but she was never going to feel clean again.
“You? Owe me?” Rita slapped at her hand. “Get off. You don’t owe me anything. Leave me alone.”
“I’m trying to help you, you idiot—”
Rita shrank back, her dark eyes suddenly swimming. She cocked her head, and Ellie froze. She heard nothing but the rumble of thunder. Even the faint tinge of color drained from Rita’s gaunt face, leaving her chalk-cheesy in the dimness. A hot breeze touched Ellie’s bare calves, and there was a tinkle as some silver bugle-beads, shaken free, hit the back step.
“Sssssweethearrt?” A long, low, slurred word, breathed from the kitchen behind Rita. “What’s haaaaappening out heeere?”
It was the Strep, but the shape was . . .
Mithrus. What’s happened to her?
Hunching, its belly thickly distended, and Potential rising in corkscrew-invisible scarves of charmlight, subtly wrong. Ellie blinked, inhaling sharply, and the fear was a sharp silver icicle nailed all the way through her, crown to soles.
She looks like a—
Fabric tore. Rita shoved her, hard, and Ellie’s left shoe flew off as she pinwheeled her arms, trying to keep her balance. The door slammed and she hit the pavers, a starry jolt of pain as she lost consciousness for a bare second. Beads scattered, rolling, and when she surfaced again she had scrambled to her feet and was limp-running, halting only to peel off her right shoe and hold it like a weapon as she fled.
The windows were suddenly full of golden electric light, and the entire stone pile of the house resonated like a plucked string. The kitchen door was wrenched open again, and there was a long, cheated howl.
The beads dropped, one after another, like the warm rain splattering dry gardens and dusty pavements in half-credit-coin drops. Thunder wallowed, splashing in the sky again, and New Haven took a breath before it plunged into the storm. Through that endless inhale ran a shivering girl, her dress steam-melting like soaked tissue paper. Her hair fell in wet strings, and behind her the thump-dragging footsteps of a nightmare beast with heavy shoulders and a terribly swollen belly grew louder and louder.
There was the limousine, its paint pitted and scarred by the rain, its taillights a dull glare. Ellie fumbled at the back door, managed to tear it open though the hinges gave a scream of protest, and threw herself inside.
The engine knocked, and the pale car leapt forward as if it never intended to stay still. Lurching and squealing, the driver’s thin shoulders under a motheaten jacket and his hands shrinking and turning clawlike at the wheel, the limousine ran as limpingly as she had. The rain drummed the roof, and soon it would eat its way through.
Oh Mithrus. Mithrus Christ, please. Great shudders gripped Ellie’s body in waves. She stared at the car’s roof, wondering if the entire thing was going to melt around her like Harvest Festival cotton candy. She lay curled on the floor, and the pumpkin-colored leather spread with rotten mildewed staining. The patches were growing, slowly but surely, and the seat sagged.
Charmwork, it’s all charm. Fey, maybe. The trembling wouldn’t let her think straight. Worn down, hollowed out, emptied by terror, she lay and felt the beads trickle slowly away, her rain-damp warmth eating at the fabric.
At least it was pretty when it mattered. Her throat stung, and her heart hurt, pounding in her head. She couldn’t get her lungs to fill up, and her mother’s ring was dead and dark, weighing down her entire leaden arm.
Her heart labored, and she had a sudden image of her veins as a roadmap, a collection of dusty highways winding through a desert, heading nowhere. Just a thin trickle of red dust where once there had been precious liquid. The Waste around New Haven was deep forest, but there were old dry glass negatives of desert-Waste to the west, sand and cactuses torqued into weird shapes, their begging fingers reaching to snare the unwary and herds of minotaur-shaped cattle roaming. Out west the cities had permeable borders, and curfews, and the Night Watch rode the streets between dusk and dawn to hunt down anything that straggled in from the dangerous wilderness outside.
Maybe Ellie could even run that far, one day.
But everything inside her was dry as dust. Her throat was slick sunbaked glass, and the shuddering jolting of the limousine drew away, as if down a long tunnel. Diamond lightning flashed, and her eyelids fluttered.
Laurissa’s on the poppy. I wonder if she’s firing it with charged sylph-ether.
It didn’t matter.
Cold little kisses all over her body. Ellie stirred, flinched as a dead-white glaring flash speared her brain. The grass underneath her was slick and crushed, and there was a familiar trellis overhead. Frilled roses closed themselves tightly against the lashing rain, and Ellie blinked as she realized she was almost naked, icy beads melting from her clinging dress. Her feet were bare, and there was moss wrapped around her right hand, where she had been clutching a shoe.
Thunder roared, and she sat bolt upright. It took two tries for her to get to her feet, and as she edged under the trellis and onto the crushed-shell path she had to move gingerly. Not only were the shells sharp and her soles tender, but the rose vines stretched too, their thorns long and wicked. One striped across her upper arm, and Ellie cried out thinly, icy water threading down her back.
Vapor lifted from her skin in tiny traceries, fueled by her shivering warmth, and she sucked in sharp breaths as she tried to step lightly. After a little while she could move aside onto the lawn instead, but she still had to pick her way carefully.
Another shutterflash lit the garden, and the rain intensified into a silver curtain. She raised her head, blinking, and for a moment it looked like Auntie’s trim house was steaming and melting too, bricks scorched and pitted, the quartzlike front step runneling, its chimney sagging.
Was something happening to Auntie?
No! Please, no! She picked up the pace, and the steps were sticky. Her feet stung, leaving dark prints on the softening mass.
The warped, rotting door swung wide. “Auntie?” Her voice sounded very small. “Auntie, please be okay . . .”
If she’s not okay, it’s your fault. You shouldn’t have left. You messed everything up. Of course you did. Ellie Sinder, the charity case. Poison. Eating everything up, just like Laurissa.
She heard Mother Heloise’s voice from a long time ago, on some other interminable chapel morning. For Mithrus said, lo, thou becometh what is despised. Cami’s welcome warmth next to her, and choco-beechgum scent from Ruby on her other side.
All that was gone. She had probably fucked them up royally too. Just like everything else.
The walls sagged, and from the kitchen came a rustling, dry cornhusks and straw. Ellie grabbed at the wall, her heart suddenly a dry throbbing chunk of gristle in her throat. “Auntie?” The cherry parlor was a dark cave full of skewed shapes. The whisper made the entire hall ripple, as if her very presence was disturbing the knotted, snarled tangle of energy that lay below everyday reality.
It probably is. God knows you’re a disruption everywhere else, Ell.
The rustling filled her head with the image of cornfields, and a blue velvet jacket. She almost saw the scarecrow jerking and twisting, something inside its stuffed-heavy body flopping and twisting desperately.
“Little Columba.”
The world thudded back into place, and Ellie let out a half-sob. The last beads spilled away; the dress was a cobweb, clinging to steaming, living skin.
Auntie stood on the stairs, a smear of gray and black. Thunder rattled again, shaking the roof, and Ellie let go of the wall. The cottage looked just as it had for the past months, solid and real, the stairs straight and square, the walls creamy white, a gleam from the cinnamon kitchen down the hall. The cherry parlor exhaled a breath of sweetness, its fussy overstuffed furniture grinning. The rustling faded, like a train whistle vanishing into the Waste.
She’s fine. Everything’s going to be okay.
“Auntie!” She tacked away from the wall, grabbed the licorice banister. It was warm and comforting under her palm; it had helped her up the stairs so many times before. “I’m sorry, the dress—Auntie, I thought you were . . .”
The old woman smiled. Her hair was a river of ink; her white, white teeth gleamed. “Litt
le singed dove, come back to the nest with her fiery self.” Little speckles of foxfire revolved around her head. “A good apprentice for Auntie.”
Wait. She’s beautiful. Ellie blinked several times, squeezing hot water out of her eyes. “I had to. Auntie, she’s . . . everything’s wrong, everything’s messed up—”
“Shhhhh.” She beckoned, and her eyes were black from lid to lid. There on the stairs, she was suddenly taller. Instead of a violently colored housedress, soft black motheaten velvet fell in heavy folds. Tiny holes pricked in the folds of night showed white skin, and Ellie’s heart gave another galvanic leap.
She’s younger. She was old before, now she’s not.
“Come to Auntie, sweetheart.” She held out her arms, and the pain was a river. It shook Ellie from top to toe and filled up her nose with snot, slicked her cheeks with wet heat and pulled every tight-strung nerve in her tired, drained body.
It shouldn’t hurt this much to live. But really, what did she have to live for?
Thunder again, shaking the cottage. For a bare moment, Auntie recoiled, her teeth showing. Long, curved needle-teeth flashed like the lightning, so, so white. Then she recovered and held out her long arms again, not bony anymore but smoothly muscled and young. “Come,” she whispered, and her face ran like clay under moving water.
The sobs came continuously now, shaking Ellie back and forth like a small animal in a terrier’s teeth.
Because the face that surfaced from that running-clay formlessness was terribly, softly familiar. The ring on Ellie’s right hand woke with a cascade of blue sparks.
“Sweetheart, little girl.” Her mother smiled with razor teeth, standing on the stairs. “Come upstairs. Let me hold you. Nothing will ever trouble my little dove again, no. Come. There is a room prepared, with a door to lock. It is soft and pleasant here, is it not?”
More thunder, and a sound Ellie couldn’t identify. She stared, her neck cramping as she moved forward, dreamlike, the bruise high up on the left side of her chest flowering with sweet insistent pain. A rhythmic thudding, interspersed with crackles.