You couldn’t charm unbalanced. Well, you could, but it wouldn’t take as well.
Sister Mary’s desk was a towering achievement of organization. She had a cubby or a clip for everything, and the stacked papers were rigidly arranged according to a rule almost as iron as the Mithraic Order’s hedge of restrictions around its members.
Like every regimentation, it had its weak spots.
Ellie’s fingertips tingled, and the world went away. A thread of Potential slid ribbonlike through the maze of suppressive charms meant to keep Juno schoolgirls from pranking, and sweat prickled on Ellie’s upper lip, at the curve of her lower back, under her arms.
Don’t get caught.
The glass ink bottle in its scrolled silver stand had been recently refilled. Red-black liquid inside trembled. Grading ink, charmed so it wouldn’t come out and couldn’t be altered. That particular charm was so specific it was pretty impossible to subvert—but that specificity made it volatile when you knew your Sigmundson’s Charms and Tables of Correspondence backward, forward, and sideways.
Like Ellie did. At least she was sure the ring didn’t have much to do with that; she honestly couldn’t tell why some charmers had trouble memorizing them. They were so simple, a language of Potential and description that, unlike French, was instantly recognizable.
Cami shifted next to her, but Ellie’s concentration had narrowed to a white-hot point. She had long ago perfected the schoolroom art of sitting still and apparently paying attention while doing something else, and a fierce spiked rose of joy bloomed deep in her chest as her charm, subtle and completely opposed to the one shivering in the ink’s uneasy fluid embrace, slid home with another satisfying click. The two reacted with equally satisfying violence.
CRACK.
Broken glass whickered through the air. Two ghoulgirls—Amy McKenna and Capriana Clare, both with black-varnished nails and jet-bead rosaries, playing at being black charmers—let out a shriek. Steam rose from a spray of boiling ink, and Sister Mary Brefoil, spattered and shocked, let loose a torrent of words in French and English that she would no doubt have to say a great many Magdalas on her own polished wooden rosary for.
Ellie exhaled softly, a shocked and amazed expression sliding over her face like the mask it was. Cami’s fingers had clenched, and her pencil was in splinters. Ruby was totally awake now, dark eyes wide and her wide grin of delight a beauty to behold.
There. My work for the day, done.
Finally, for the first time since yesterday afternoon, she’d done something right. She finally felt . . . well, human again.
At least, she would until she got home.
FIVE
A FEW HOURS LATER, THE BLACK SEMPRENA SKIDDED. Ellie sank her fingers into the dashboard and cursed; Ruby’s disbelieving laugh pierced Tommy Triton’s wailing. There was no sound from the tiny shelf of a backseat—Cami pretty much always had her eyes shut and her lips moving in silent prayer while Ruby drove.
It was, Ellie often thought, the only way to handle Ruby at all.
“What the hell?” Rube yelled, and the brakes grabbed hard. Smoke rose, the smell of burning rubber thick and cloying as Tommy Triton wailed about being born bad-charmed, baby, and wasn’t that always the way?
Ellie tried to shriek, but her mouth wouldn’t work. Instead, her jaw hung loosely, her heart triphammering inside her ribs as if Tommy Triton’s drummer was thocking around in there, high on charmweed and feeling invincible.
The long straight shot of Kelleston Avenue wasn’t the most efficient way to get to Perrault Street, but traffic had been terrible and Ruby had decided to swing out and take it. Now they’d found out why traffic was so snarled.
The Semprena rocked to a stop. Stood shivering like a nervous horse, its engine uneasy as its cargo’s thump-knocking hearts. Inside the thin screen of metal and glass and moving machinery, Ellie’s skin came alive, scraped ever so lightly by a charmsilver wire-brush.
“Holy Mithrus, do you see that?” Rube stared, her dark eyes huge and her knuckles white on the steering wheel.
Ellie sucked in a deep, endless breath.
This ribbon of two-lane pavement snaked down toward the industrial district, and the small shops on either side were closed up tight. Which they shouldn’t have been, since right after school’s-out was prime shopping time.
Kelleston also ran up the slope of one of the smaller hills New Haven was built on, and the shadow hulking in the middle of the road was proof positive that it wasn’t exactly a safe street.
If there was such a thing as a safe street. Lately Ellie had been suspecting that a whole lot less of the world was “safe” in any sense. If Dad could die and there could be tunnels under the city that would swallow your friends whole, what else could happen?
Her hand flashed out; she almost broke the volume knob on the stereo with a savage twist, and the sudden silence was almost as stunning as the thing in the road.
“Oh, God,” Cami moaned in the backseat, very loud in the stillness. “I’m afraid to l-l-look. Did she h-h-hit someone?”
Oh, God. Don’t look at this. “No,” Ellie whispered. “Cami, don’t you dare open your eyes. Ruby, turn the car around.”
Kelleston ran parallel to zigzagging Southking Street for a while. And both of them passed dangerously near the core—the diseased heart of the city, where the Potential tangled and curdled, where anyone too poor or desperate to live anywhere else was trapped. Twist and jack gangs fought for territory inside the blight of the urban core—almost like a piece of the Waste except this was the Potential of too many people living all knotted together. Most cities had a kernel of disfigurement at their centers, left over from the gigantic convulsion of the Reeve after the Great War and just driven in deeper by the crowding of the poor.
Any place old enough to remember the Reeve still held the scars. That was why most cities had New somewhere in their names.
The thing lay slumped in the middle of the road, and no wonder the shops were bolted and barred. Thin Marus sunshine ran down the street like liquid, the inside of the car warming dangerously. Little prickles ran over Ellie, Potential flooding her nerve-rivers.
“Is it dead?” Ruby whispered.
“Oh M-M-M-Mithr-r-r-rus what . . .” Cami’s teeth were chattering.
“It’s not dead.” Ellie’s throat had closed to a pinhole, she had to struggle to produce a croak. The inside of her mouth was dry and slick as dusty glass. “They don’t die.” Not until every bit of wild magic has run itself off. And if they get out to the Waste they may not ever die; who knows?
There was a sharp sound from the back. Cami had looked.
Ellie made a shapeless noise, too, and her mother’s ring crackled out a single blue-white spark. The old, shared urge to protect Cami must have spurred Ruby into action. The Semprena’s engine revved.
The minotaur raised its heavy, graceless head, a blurring storm of Twisting charm-Potential swirling around it in a perpetual tornado of dust and waving fronds of wild magic. It must have been running for a while, because its flanks heaved as it poured up from its crouch, and you could barely tell it had once been human. A charmer, most likely, wandered too close to the urban core or full of hate or rage.
Strong, bad emotions could Twist a charmer up. But it took the febrile petri-dish of the core or the Waste to birth a minotaur. The head dropped and bone sprouted, ivory-glowing horns spreading wide and wicked, dripping with a dark red ectoplasmic fluid that came from nowhere, the body contorted and swelled until the arms thickened and the shoulders bunched with muscle. It grew as long as there was ambient Potential to feed it.
If you got too close, it could kill you. Or worse, Twist you too.
The swirling intensified. Electric chill prickled along Ellie’s skin. The higher your Potential, the more you had to fear from Twisting. Your bones could sprout through your skin, charm unraveling, each erg of your Potential scraping the inside of your flesh like jeweled bees, limbs corkscrewing and the rest of your shor
t violent life spent creeping in the shadows, contaminating others if their Potential was high enough or they got too close, or even if you were both just unlucky.
Ruby’s hands were shaking, gripping the steering wheel with preternatural strength. The twisted hemp bracelets on her wrists were alive with uneasy charmlight.
So there is something she’s afraid of. Who knew? The minotaur’s bulk bunched up on itself, gleaming with a horrible, dusty, wet iridescence, like oily grit on a puddle’s filthy surface. The two mad gleams that were its low-burning eyes, nearly lost in massive folds and rivers of Twisting, bone-calcifying flesh, fastened on the little black car.
Do they smell Potential? Ellie’s heart thundered in her chest, tripping along so fast she could feel the vibration all through her. “Ruby.” I sound calm. “If you do not get us out of here, I will haunt you.”
Rube’s reply was unrepeatable. She spun the wheel and smashed the gas. The car slewed wildly, Ellie’s body loose with terror inside the cage of seat and seat belt, and Cami let out another strangled noise.
“It’s f-f-f-following—” Cami choked back another scream and Ellie felt a queer loose draining sensation, as if the strings of Potential married to her nerves had all twitched at once. The gravitational pull of wild, Twisting magic, maybe, and darkness crawled around the corners of Ellie’s vision. The car bucked, its tires squealing in protest, and Ellie heard herself praying in a soft wondrous tone. Holy Queen Magdala, spouse of Mithrus Christ, watch over us—
The world righted itself with a jolt, Ruby cursing cheerfully as she held the wheel steady and feathered the brake, then jammed the accelerator to the floor. “Can’t catch me!” she yelled, the words muffled under the cotton-fuzz of shock filling Ellie’s ears. “I’m the goddamn gingerbread wolf!”
That’s not the way the rhyme goes. The world came in bright shutterclicks, because her eyelids were fluttering. Every inch of charm and nerve inside her body lit up like a Mithrusmas tree, but by the time she drew in another long endless whooping breath the danger was past.
Of course Ruby didn’t slow down. The Semprena wove through traffic like thread through several needle-eyes, metal and rubber both making high stressed sounds as Ruby crowed again and again, wild long trilling whistles and snaptooth obscenities.
Afterward, Ellie was never quite sure of the route, because the city’s geography whirled and spun inside her head, refusing to make any sense. All she knew was that the car jolted to a stop near the Sandeckers’ place on Perrault, safely far enough away that the Strep wouldn’t see them, and it took Ruby a while to quit her snarl-cursing. Spring sunshine beat down, heat collecting under the windshield and sweat raised in great pearly drops all over Ellie’s body. Her hands jittered like windblown leaves.
“Mithrus,” Cami whispered. “Oh, M-Mithrus. It was one of them.”
“’Twas.” Ruby let out a long shaky sigh. “Wow. We’ve seen one up close now. Everyone check for Twisting.”
“Ruby!” The muffled, hysterical giggle from the backseat said that Cami was covering her mouth with one pale, narrow hand. She was safe, Ruby was safe, it should have all been okay.
Ellie’s lips were so dry they cracked when she could finally make her mouth work. “You could have killed us.”
“No way.” Rube shook her long fingers, flashing a dazzling, unsettled grin through the windshield. She patted the dash, a proprietary little smoothing of the charm-shaped fiberglass curve over the speedometer and charmflux meter. “The old girl has some moves. Don’t you, baby?”
“That. Was. A minotaur.” Ellie’s hands moved of their own accord, hitting the seat belt’s catch. A spark popped—bright blue, the ring’s stone speaking its opinion loud and clear. “You. Irresponsible. Bitch.” The lock button popped up, and Ellie had the dubious satisfaction of seeing Ruby’s jaw drop before she was out of the car, taking a deep breath of fresh sun-washed air and hitching up her bag onto her shoulder. The Semprena’s horn blatted, but Ellie ducked aside into the walk-through running between the Sandeckers’ and the old Claridge estate’s wall, laurel hedges growing wild up against the stone on the Sandecker side and brick, veined with red ivy, on the Claridge’s. She walked quickly, her head down, and heard the engine rev. The dusty little path, worn by who knew what since not a lot of people around here walked, was dark even under the sunshine, but the boundary and defensive charms laid into the walls on either side were comforting watchful pressures.
Her breath came in little hitching gasps. She held her hands out as she walked quickly, laurel branches fingering and scraping her hair, examining for signs of Twisting. If it happened to her, she’d lose every chance of ever escaping the Strep.
Her legs seemed fine, and she felt at her forehead. No tender spots except the ones from Laurissa’s bouncing her around, no thickening bone.
Maybe I’m safe.
She still didn’t believe it, not even when she ducked out of the walk-through, rounded the corner, and saw her own gate.
SIX
IT HAD ALL BEEN USELESS, ANYWAY. THE STREP HADN’T even noticed that Ruby hadn’t dropped her off. Dad would have been furious. What I pay them had better keep my baby girl safe, he would say. Mom would have gotten That Look, the one that promised she would politely but firmly take someone to task. The Strep would have just given some saccharine platitude, and then moved on to making it about her in some way.
Still, as soon as Ellie stepped through the heavy ironbound door, she knew something was afoot. She leaned against the door’s cold solidity, heart racing and legs limp as overcooked cabbage. Her skirt, its blue and green plaid wearing through near the hem, shivered along with her.
For a moment she closed her eyes and tried to pretend she was just coming home from a normal day, that she would hear Antonia’s cheerful hello there, stranger! when she walked into the kitchen and the phone would ring—Dad, checking to see she was inside safe. And there would be her mother’s footsteps, light and quick, almost dancing, or the thump-whir of a loom as she wove.
Instead, she smelled charmscorch. Disturbed dust. Laurissa was working again today, and exhaustion threatened to drag Ellie right down into a puddle on the black and white squares of the foyer.
God. Not today. Please, not today.
The entire house was buzzing, too. A crackling in the air with the charmscorch and the smoky scent of Laurissa’s anger, the scraping and scurrying of motion behind all the silent walls.
There was a slight susurrus, and Ellie opened her eyes to find the new girl, in that same sloppy peach sweater, perched on the staircase like a plump little bird. Rita crouched, and peered through the lace-iron balustrade. Little gleams of eyes, and that lank hair. Scabs on her knees to match Ellie’s, and her skirt rucked up almost indecently.
“She’s in a mood,” Rita whispered, a breath of sound. “Be careful.”
Great. “I can tell,” Ellie whispered back. Poor kid, stuck with her all day. Is she gonna send you to school? Where, public? Mithrus. Public schools in New Haven were not fun. At least nobody got knifed in the hallways at Juno.
No, we just get driven home by Ruby and almost get eaten by minotaurs.
Rube was going to want some groveling before she forgave Ellie for losing her temper. Another wave of weariness swamped her. Why was she the one always apologizing?
Because you’re a useless charity case. It’s your role in life, Ellen. Get used to it.
Rita vanished up the stairs, a swift shadowy scuttle. “Thanks,” Ellie whispered in her wake. The girl might even have heard.
Maybe Rita could be . . . an ally, sort of. Couldn’t she? If she was smart, she’d see that banding together might afford both of them some cover. Laurissa was impatient with the new girl, but not angry. Not like she was with Ellie, who for the life of her could not figure out what the hell she’d ever done to make the woman so furious. At first she’d tried harder to maybe make Laurissa like her, but that never seemed to work with any predictability.
Did Rita have
some trick to it, one Ellie could learn?
What would it be like to grow up with the Strep? At least Ellie could remember something different. Something better, no matter how far away.
A short, high cry came from the depths of the house. She flinched.
It was the sound of a charmer’s rage, and even more dust blew itself through the halls in swirls and eddies. The hurrying sounds became cleaning staff, probably hired for the day, and an involuntary half-laugh escaped Ellie as she realized two things.
One, the Strep was charming in her workroom, and as usual lately, things weren’t going well. Which meant Ellie would be called in to help.
Two, it looked like Laurissa was throwing another party. A real one, not just a charmweed bender for one of her boyfriends. Instead of getting some room to breathe while Laurissa and her toy of the moment smoked and laughed and made animal noises behind closed doors, there would be a whole houseful of people the hostess had to impress.
It would be the first party since Dad’s . . . accident. Derailing.
Death.
Laurissa would be sugar with the guests, but if anything went wrong—and Mithrus knew something would—guess who would feel it most?
Great.
• • •
A stone rectangle cut into the heart of the house, nothing to soften the bare walls, full of the smell of dampness, heated dust, and the faint odor of live charming changing from day to day, a Twist of its own. Today it was the sharp yellow of vinegar desperation. Yesterday it had been strawberries, sweet just before rotting. They weren’t precisely smells, sometimes, but that was how the brain translated them. At least, that was the theory nowadays.
Laurissa stood in front of a stone plinth, her spray-stiff, mussed hair all but crackling with frustration. Her hands were fists, and Ellie saw with some small traitorous satisfaction that a vein at her temple was pulsing. The back of her suit jacket held a large, visible crease, and her pink stiletto-heeled Pak Chin shoes had been kicked into a corner. Barefoot on cold stone, the Sigiled charmer snarled silently and watched thin threads of steam-Potential unravel themselves from a pair of narrow, knee-high leather boots propped on the plinth. A pricey custom job, it looked like, probably already late to the client since Laurissa had overbooked again. Ellie’s gaze swiftly unraveled the failing charm, tracing it back to its source.