Storm’s past, she thought, but she knew it wasn’t true. Something was wrong, and it had to do with . . .
No, please. I’m tired.
She couldn’t shake away the urgent feeling. So she took stock.
Her chest felt savagely bruised, so did her arms. She was dizzy, and weak. The ringing emptiness in her head wasn’t the aftereffect of charming. Her feet throbbed, crisscrossed with harsh slashes.
This isn’t going to be fun. Compelled, she slid her feet out from under the covers.
It wasn’t the blue bedroom on Perrault Street. It wasn’t her safe little hidey-hole either, though it hadn’t been so safe, had it? Neither was it the tiny gray nest with its water-clear mirror, but that was funny—her memory of the room warped at the edges, fraying as if she couldn’t . . . quite . . . grasp it.
Arachna Portia, Avery’s mother had called it. Relief as she finally figured out where she was: inside the Fletcher charm-clan’s main house, safe and sound.
No place is safe. You know that. You have to go, now.
Why? What was going to happen?
You have to go. Now. Right now. An image rose inside her head, a gray pile of stone with its gate warping, glowing dull red as something nasty bit and ate into the metal. The weed-choked pool in back, its surface green with fast-growing algae. The thought of the pool filled Ellie with unsteady dread.
She hobbled to the small door she’d glimpsed white ceramic through, and was rewarded with a stinging-clean bathroom, every inch charm-cleaned and rippling with the hurried focusing of Potential used to scour and scrape.
A hollow-cheeked, pale-haired girl greeted her from the mirror over the lily-shaped sink on its graceful stem. The bathtub was a cast-iron claw-foot, and the towels were sky blue and obviously little-used. There was no shower curtain, but the thought of more water made her flinch anyway.
The girl in the mirror had been bleached. Her hair was platinum, and slightly wavy instead of sleek. It was longer, too. Her cheekbones stood out, startlingly, and her eyes had been drained of color. They were ice- instead of storm-gray now, as if a puddle of ash had frozen.
I look like Mom. For the first time, the thought didn’t warm her. Her arms ran with fresh bruises, and she carefully pulled aside the ragged gray threadbare silk, all that remained of a beautiful fey-woven dress hung with glittering beads.
Why did Auntie let me go at all? Just to show me I ruin everything I touch? Ellie shook her head. It didn’t matter. Her fingers trembled.
There, right over her heart, was the deepest bruise of all. At its middle, two holes, their edges white and ragged.
Fangmarks.
It came back to her in a crashing wave—the gray head clasped to her chest, the draining sensation, the thing’s ancient face . . . and the sucking sounds.
Ellie found herself on her knees, clutching the toilet as she heaved. There was nothing in her stomach to come up, but she still retched at the memory. Finally, weak and fever-cheeked, she made her hands into fists. Rocking slightly back and forth, she reached for strength, found nothing, dug deeper.
Something’s going to happen. Something I have to stop.
She had nothing. Her hand was naked, only an empty indent in the flesh where her mother’s ring had nestled. Her schoolbag and uniform were at Auntie’s, probably upstairs where the . . . the thing, the arachna, had retreated.
She forced her bare legs to straighten. She had nothing but this rag that showed almost everything she’d been born with, and she had to get out of here. She had to make it to Perrault Street, again, because something bad was going to happen.
No, not just bad. Something terrible.
It’s probably Laurissa. Why should I care? Now that someone on the Council knew about Rita, they’d intervene, right? The grown-ups should handle this. Finally, someone else could do it.
They’ll be too late. Her own sudden certainty was chilling. She shivered and looked consideringly at the towels. Not big enough. She rinsed her mouth with mineral-tasting water, shuddering as it went down the drain with a gurgling, sucking sound, and paused in the door, staring over the room.
Nothing. The curtains were too heavy, the bed . . .
Huh. It was an interesting question—would she look more ridiculous wandering around half-naked, or wrapped in a pale-blue sheet? Like an old Greek ghost, a revenant dragged up and wandering the streets of New Haven. Hilarious, as Ruby would say.
She winced at the thought of her friends. They’d rescued her, right? Except maybe they just should have left her alone. At least Auntie would have made sure there was no pain.
Or would she? What was behind those three locked doors upstairs? Rotting rooms festooned with thin strands of gossamer foulness, each with a narrow bed holding a cocoon of . . .
Don’t think about that. You have other problems.
Rube and Cami would be home now, safe and warm. It would take too long to call them out again tonight. Something horrifying was going to happen soon, and the thrumming urgency underneath her laboring heartbeat just would not quit.
Ellie heaved a deep sigh and set to work.
• • •
The hall outside was dark and quiet; the toga-sheet wrapped around her brushed the soft carpet. It was way too big, and there was nothing she could do about her feet. Ellie crept in the direction she guessed a flight of stairs was most likely to be in—she barely even remembered being hauled up here. Getting outside would be a chore and a half, and sidewalks and roads were going to be a bitch, as well as filthy against her wounded feet—
A warm, strong hand closed gently but irresistibly around her left arm, and Ellie swallowed a scream.
“What are you doing?” At least he kept his voice down.
Her heart tried to hammer its way out through her ribs, and Avery pulled her forward. He wasn’t in the battered tux anymore; instead, he wore a deep-green jumper and worn jeans, and a pair of battered trainers she would have been jealous of if she hadn’t been choking with panic.
“Shhh,” he murmured into her hair. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you. Shhh, it’s okay. Really, Ell, it’s okay.”
She balled up a fist, but she couldn’t hit him because his arms were too tight. “Let go!” she managed to whisper, but he didn’t.
“What are you going to do? And be quiet. Mithrus, if my mother finds me up here she’ll tear my ears off.”
“I have to . . .” Her pounding heart wouldn’t let her breathe. “Avery . . . I have to . . . there’s something I have to do.”
“You should be in bed.” He didn’t move. “Are you, um, are you wearing a sheet?”
“Stop it.” She tried to twist free, but he didn’t let go. “Please. I have to go. Something’s going to—”
“We can go to my dad and—whoa, okay, no, I get it. Calm down.” He loosened up a little when she stopped struggling. “Okay. Come with me, all right? We’ll do whatever you need.”
Now she made herself heavy, resisting. “You’re just going to take me to your parents,” she accused. “You always tell. Let go.”
“Look, I was worried about you, okay? You don’t know what it was like, looking for you and not being able—”
“Why do you even care?”
“Shh, keep it down. This way.” He could pick her up and carry her with not a lot of trouble, but he didn’t, and her worn-out heart was full of something weird and warm.
Still, she had to get him to let go. “I don’t have time for this.”
“Just tell me what we need to do, Ell. Don’t make me pick you up and carry you over my shoulder.”
Irritation gave her fresh strength. “You wouldn’t—”
“Try me. I just got read the Jack Act of ’39 for taking on an arachna, even if it did save your life. I think I’m going to have nightmares about that thing, and what it was going to do to you. And you were living with it, right in its lair while it softened you up. I should never have left you there. If I’d just figured it out sooner—”
&n
bsp; Ellie suppressed the urge to scream and punch him at the same time. At least the irritation kept her going. She didn’t feel like collapsing now. “Listen to me.”
“I’m listening. Come on.” He loosened up even more on her and kept it slow, leading her the opposite direction down the hall. “Mithrus, what happened to your feet?”
“It’s not important,” she whispered. “I have to go to Perrault Street. Something’s going to happen.”
“We should so get my mom,” he muttered darkly and hauled on her arm when she tried to jerk away. “Settle down. I’m just saying. Why do you need to go back there?”
“I don’t know!” The heat in her throat felt like tears. “I just know something really fucking awful is going to happen, Avery, goddammit, can’t you just help me?”
“I am helping you, shush up!” He sounded just as exasperated as she felt. It was a wonderfully comforting thought. “We’ll get you something to wear, okay? And then we’ll drive out to Perrault so you can see there’s nothing you can do there. You have to promise to not get out of the car without me, okay? Seriously, you do realize my parents are going to kill us both if they find out?”
What, and they don’t mind about you going down to Southking at night? “As long as I stop whatever’s going to happen, I don’t care.”
“We.”
She halted, blinking at him. “What?”
“We, Ell. You and me. We’re going to stop whatever it is. If it even happens.” He commenced with dragging her on, but gently, and she didn’t resist.
“Avery?”
“Mithrus, what?” He sounded, she decided, downright aggrieved.
I don’t blame him. Everything she wanted to say to him balled up inside her again, so she settled for the bare minimum that might, possibly, conceivably cover a fraction of it. “Thank you.”
In the dimness, his smile was a balm. “Anytime, babe. Come on.”
THIRTY-THREE
NOW SHE WAS THE SCARECROW, SHIVERING IN CLOTHES far too big for her. A pair of Avery’s sweatpants, a T-shirt that hung comically loose and low, and the best they had been able to do for shoes was a pair of his mother’s old slippers. They had diamanté flowers, and looking at the sparkles made Ellie a little queasy. So she didn’t, just curled her toes inside the two pairs of socks Avery had insisted she put on as well. You’d better not have any foot disease, she’d said, and he had given her the sort of look usually reserved for people who pissed in your cereal bowl.
Which cheered her up immensely.
He cut the engine and the Del Toro coasted to a stop. He’d cut the lights too, and the stone wall rearing on Ellie’s side of the car was more sensed than seen.
The sky would start lightening in the east very soon, but now it was the long dark time of early morning, when the last partygoers have staggered home and the streets are hushed and secretive. The core never birthed minotaurs during the darkest hours; even Twists would be wherever passed for home, in whatever passed for their beds. The streetlamps buzzed or flickered, weak against the darkness, and even the glow from the core was just orange-ish gauze stretched over a bleak hush.
“It’s so quiet.” She licked her dry lips, nervously. Her stomach cramped, and she realized she was hollow-hungry.
“Always is, this time of night.” He glanced at her, set the parking brake. “Are you sure about this, Ell? I mean, we could just hit a drivethrough for a couple burgers and go home.”
“I don’t have a home.” She studied the dull-red, venomous tinge to the Sigil on the gate. The high-heeled shoes were melting, their heels corkscrewed and Laurissa’s trademark flourishes turned into jagged edges. The charmlight was wrong somehow, and she shuddered. “Why is it doing that?”
“If she’s on poppy . . .” He didn’t need to finish the sentence. “If I ask you how bad it was, are you going to get out of the car and vanish again?”
It was a valid question, given the circumstances. She looked down at her naked hands, and the bruises on her arms throbbed. “It was . . . pretty bad.”
“My mother’s furious, you know. She’s going to bring charges. Laurissa’ll get off lucky being sent to a kolkhoz. Black charming like that is a capital offense.”
Good luck proving anything. “You’re a lawyer now? I don’t care what happens to her as long as she leaves me alone.” It wasn’t quite true. Testifying against Laurissa was an intriguing possibility, but not very plausible.
The Strep always got her way. She hadn’t survived as a black charmer for so long by being easy to mess with.
Still, the hunched, thick-bellied shape Ellie had glimpsed . . . how would it look in daylight, in a courtroom? And Rita, what would Rita do?
Maybe she’ll tell the truth, if she doesn’t have to be afraid of the Strep. Maybe. It was a long shot. But more importantly—
“So why are we here, again?”
I wish I knew. Somewhere inside, she probably did know, but the knowledge wouldn’t surface. She was so tired. “Something’s going to happen. I—we have to stop it.”
“No clue what this something is?”
“None.” Even as she said it, closing her eyes and knotting her aching hands into fists again, the image of the algae-coated swimming pool rose inside her head. It was a still, awful mirror, and a fat yellow moon above was reflected, a skull’s grin on the choked surface. “It’s in the back.”
“What is?”
“The swimming pool.” Don’t ask me how I know.
“You’re pretty weird, Sinder.” He was already unclipping his seat belt. “Let’s go.”
“Wait.” She grabbed at his arm. “It may not . . . look, it might not be safe.”
“So we go together.”
I have to know. “Avery . . . where did you get my hat?” No, I don’t want to know.
I just want to hear him say it.
“I saw you on Southking, during the day. I was pretty sure it was you. I tried to get your attention, but you ran away.” His eyes gleamed, and the tousled mass of his hair fell over them, a defiant wave she almost wanted to touch.
“Did you tell anyone I was charming unlicensed?” Like you told about Laurissa?
“Of course not. You know the kind of trouble you can get in, if anyone knew? Seriously, we can totally go find a drivethrough and go home. You’re worried about being safe, well, that’s safe. I’m a good driver. Not like your friend de Varre.”
Yeah, Ruby’s fast and reckless. But she got us away from a minotaur once. I never even thanked her. Now there was a squirm of guilt behind her breastbone.
They hadn’t even considered letting go of her. Not now, not ever, Ruby had said. Cami didn’t have to say it, it just was.
I’ve been really lucky. Shame woke up, hot and rank inside her ribs.
“Okay.” She reached for the door handle, and he grabbed her wrist. She was so thin now his fingers overlapped, and he didn’t squeeze, but she flinched slightly as if he had.
“Look, you’re . . . look, just stay with me, okay? My mother will kill me if anything happens to you. She’s got her grandchildren’s names all picked out and everything.”
“What?”
He was already gone, and he shut the car door so softly she guessed he was pretty used to sneaking out at night. He came around to her side, and she had to press twice to get her own seat belt undone.
“Your mother what?” she whispered.
“Shh.” He was actually grinning, but the tension in his broad shoulders warned her. “She really likes you, Sinder.”
Great. I’d feel really good about that, but something terrible is going on, and we have to go. The sense of urgency mounted, pushing behind her sternum, thudding behind her heart, mixing uneasily with all the other feelings crowding through her. She had a sudden mental image of her own bleeding cardiac muscle, its walls thin as paper and the red fluid just a pale-pink, watered-down trickle. “Whatever. Come on.”
• • •
The gate was open. Just a little, just enough
to squeeze through. The throbbing bruise of the Sigil brightened perceptibly as Ellie drew near, and the metal hissed to itself. She brushed past, careful not to touch it, and Avery had to turn sideways and squeeze through, his breath hissing between his teeth a little as it crackled. The boundary charms still recognized Ellie, which was all to the good. But they were fading and sparking in weird ways, struggling against heavy invisible resistance.
The circular driveway was overgrown, and the gardens on either side were tangled and ragged. Had Laurissa let all the staff go? Poppy was an expensive habit, but still . . . she should have had plenty.
“Mithrus,” she breathed, looking at the house.
“What do you see?” he whispered back.
“It’s . . .” It didn’t look like this before. Did it? She hadn’t been looking, she’d been so focused on getting in to see Rita.
The massive stone pile slumped oddly, vibrating with distress. Two of the lower windows were broken and boarded, looking like pulled teeth. The paving was cracked, and the giant front door hung dispirited on its hinges, thin threads of smoke rising from heavy blackened wood. Am I too late?
She broke into a shambling run for the corner of the house; it seemed a million miles away. Weeds had forced themselves up through the gravel; her borrowed shoes slipped and scraped.
Then the screams began.
THIRTY-FOUR
AFTERWARD SHE WAS NEVER QUITE SURE HOW FAST she’d moved. Avery didn’t know the grounds like she did, and it was dark. She was alone when she thrashed through the fringes of the overgrown rose garden, tearing long stripes in her borrowed scarecrow-suit, just as the kitchen door broke outward, shattering under the force of a black charmer’s hateful curlew-cry.
An indistinct shape fell out, a smear of paleness striped with black fluid. She wasn’t screaming, she was panting furiously, and her eyes were wide and white, rolling like a terrified horse’s.