Wayfarer

TWENTY-TWO

IT WAS PRETTY MUCH HEAVEN.

Each morning began with strengthening sunshine spilling through the glazed windowpanes. There was no tapping of lacquered talons on the door or lunging into terrified wakefulness thinking she would be late for school. The bathroom was small, but she didn’t have to worry about the door creaking open or a false-honey voice bouncing off the tiles right before the madness started.

Instead there was the clink of thick glass milk bottles on the front step—Auntie was old-school, and had morning groceries delivered at dawn. She could probably afford it—she could charm rings around just about any teacher Ellie had ever had. Still, she never left the house, so maybe she was retired? She must have saved and invested a pretty penny to be so reclusive, but it was rude to pry. As early as Ellie tried to get up, she never caught the milkman.

Auntie always made a big breakfast, floating around the kitchen with her thistledown hair braided into a coronet. The scarecrow rustled each time Ellie sat down at the table, but when she glanced at it, it stilled. Maybe it was an experiment, maybe it was just sensitized material reacting to the fact that there were two active charmers in Auntie’s house now.

Because the old woman didn’t want her to leave. Stay, and learn. Auntie offers sanctuary, she does.

After so much bad, Ellie was finally getting a little luck. It was, as far as she was concerned, about damn time. If only she could stay here until she was eighteen . . . but that was Too Far Ahead. Maybe all that planning really didn’t do anything, since every single one she’d had turned into a worthless jumble.

After breakfast, Ellie washed the painted dishes and Auntie dried, moving in companionable silence except for the old woman muttering the name of a charm symbol and Ellie lifting a soapy, drenched hand to sketch it in trembling air.

She hadn’t missed one yet.

Auntie didn’t charm in a workroom. Or rather, the whole house was her workroom, and the garden too. She didn’t seem too concerned about stray Potential breaking things or mutating. “Must flow, yes yes,” she would mutter. “Like water, or oil. See, little dove?”

The empty space still opened inside Ellie’s head whenever she charmed, but it didn’t matter. Auntie taught her how to set her feet in the ground before it flowered, toes sinking in like roots, and it was amazing how such a simple thing made the emptiness friendly instead of scary. There was a fuzzy sense of what was occurring when she did it, a sleepwalker’s sensibility of the earth moving around her.

“Watch the rose, Columba,” Auntie whispered, and Ellie would sink down in front of a single flower, barely breathing as she studied it, until the world became bright frilled petals and a saffron heart, a slim green stem and whirling universes inside the unfolding of a blot of crimson. The old woman’s touch on her shoulder would wake her from a burning reverie, and the roses would explode with vigor, charmlight under the surface of the garden’s blossoming all but blinding her.

The days were long seashore-curves of charming, with plenty of food to fuel the Potential. Round loaves of sweet or rye bread, spiced honey, apples, eggs always spun on the counter before being cracked into a bowl, wild rice, seeds and nuts, cheese tangy-yellow or mellow white. Auntie didn’t eat meat, and Ellie didn’t miss it. For once there was nobody watching every bite as if it cost cash, nobody bringing extra and pretending it wasn’t charity.

Auntie herself only ate bread and honey. There were weirder diets, and Ellie had seen Laurissa on a lot of them. Besides, Auntie was old, let her eat what she wanted.

After lunch there was cleaning the cottage while Auntie bustled through the garden, charming and weeding and snap-pruning. The bees followed the old woman, circling her white head while their hives near the back fence murmured a song Ellie didn’t dare get close enough to decipher. She’d never been stung, and Auntie said the little buzz-cousins wouldn’t, but why take a chance?

Auntie never gave a room the white-glove treatment once Ellie was done with it. She merely glanced about and nodded, mumbling in that odd way, as if singing along to music nobody else could hear. Once in a while she would smile, pleased, and that white V-shaped smile did something funny to Ellie. It made her shoulders clench but her chest loosen, and she found herself standing straighter every time it showed up.

The old woman never yelled or threw things or told Ellie she was worthless. Instead, she was downright pleased. Sometimes she even said the magic word, and Ellie’s heart would get two sizes larger and several ounces lighter all at once.

Apprentice. There wasn’t any paperwork to make it official, but that could come later. For right now, this was enough.

Juno was walking distance away, but why risk the Strep finding her there? Or risk the Sisters insisting she go “home”? Her schoolbag, broken and reknotted strap looped back on itself, hung in the closet. No homework, no Babchat. She rose when she felt like it and went to sleep when she was exhausted and charm-drained. It was a good feeling, to work hard and fall into the soft gray bed. No bruises, no scrapes, no flinching at every shadow or sudden movement. Auntie was halfway to apprenticing her already, and that would be enough to get Ell a license. More importantly, even half-batty as she was, the old lady could charm. Apprenticing with her would be worth something; Ellie learned more in a week here than she had in a year of Juno’s careful, mind-numbingly safe classes, where you always had to wait for the slowest damn idiot in the room to catch on.

The early evenings were the best, because as Auntie made dinner Ellie practiced charm-symbols, looking through her battered thick paperback copy of Sigmundson’s. The blue-jacketed scarecrow rustled, but she was used to it by now. The entire house was friendly and familiar, no sharp edges or cold stone. No screaming, no slaps, no steady drip of venom.

Sometimes she still heard Laurissa, though. Worthless, lazy, stupid, slut, bitch, HATE YOU.

Thinking about it made her hands shake a little, but she took a deep breath and the trembling retreated. It was getting easier. “Auntie?”

“Mh. Barley tonight, the soup must be thick.”

Vegetables and barley. Toni would add meat. Had the cook found another job? There was no way of telling. Had Ellie been the problem all along, and Rita and the Strep now nice and cozy because she was gone? How was Rita dealing with the Strep’s attention all on her? Did she like it?

We all have to swim on our own. Tentatively, Ellie tried a question. “Have you ever been afraid of Twisting?”

The old woman waved a wooden spoon, absently. “Why does the dove ask, hmm? Does Auntie seem tumbled-about to young eyes?” A flash of white teeth, and a small branch fell from her tangled white head.

“I’ll comb your hair tonight.” Ellie pushed her chair back. “And no, I just wondered. I’ve always been afraid of Twisting.”

“Little Columba will not Twist.” Auntie nodded, sharply. “Comb Auntie’s hair with quick fingers, yes. Sarbirin.”

Ellie’s hand leapt up, the tiny stick in her fingers sketching a fluid charm-symbol with eldritch light. Pale in the lowering sunshine through the kitchen window, it still fluoresced just fine, and the smile that filled her cheeks didn’t feel like a mask anymore.

“Tripaltia.”

Another symbol.

“Kepris.”

It was so easy, like breathing. Potential shaped itself, and the symbols hung in the air, two stretching toward each other and the third—Tripaltia, repelling most of the Second List and all of the Third through Thirteenth except when used in subordinate position—kept them apart, straining, threads of Potential building a structure of reaction and chance around them.

You weren’t supposed to be able to hold them in open air for very long, but it was so easy. Or it had become that way, under the old woman’s careful tutelage.

The longer she stayed here, the more she’d learn, and the better equipped she’d be to make some sort of living. Maybe even save enough to go overWaste. She had hazy memories of the train ride, Dad catching up on his law-journal reading as the sealed carriage holding their sleeper compartment hurtled through the night. Ellie dosed with a sedative pill to make travel easier, both of them not speaking around a hurtful absence that was her mother’s shape and size—

She caught herself, swallowing hard, and willed the stinging in her eyes to go down.

Auntie’s wide white smile sharpened. “Good.” She nodded, and turned back to the bubbling pot on the sleek stove.

Ellie brought her hands together, the branch—sensitized now—trapped between them. The three symbols exploded in a cascade of harmless sparks, winking out before they hit the cinnamon floor. The sapphire glinted uneasily, swirling with charmlight, but Auntie didn’t even notice. She just stirred the soup and reached for an earthenware crock by her elbow, cast a handful of pearly barley into the simmering pot. She paused, added another.

Ellie sank back down at her place at the table. She sniffed once, hard, and the tears retreated. The scarecrow rustled again, and a flicker of motion made her head turn instinctively, her pale hair moving in a smooth shining wave, longer now.

How long have I been here?

It was a relief to find out it didn’t matter. If she kept moving steadily, working hard, being useful, Auntie would let her stay. After a while, the aching places inside her wouldn’t matter.

The scarecrow’s faded eyes were blue smears, its mouth a sad downturned line. Why Auntie had the thing stuffed into the chimney corner was beyond Ellie.

On impulse, she leaned over, tucking the scrap of wood under the scarecrow’s faded denim sleeve. The twig was sensitized by the passage of Potential, sure, and a single strand of thistledown hair was wrapped around its smooth bark. The scarecrow was looking a little thin. It could use all the stuffing she could find.

“Bowls!” Auntie crowed, and Ellie leapt to her feet again. Funny, but she didn’t mind serving dinner here. Especially since she seemed to get it right, the way she never had for the Strep.

The scarecrow rustled again, but there was the bread to slice and the bowls to fill, and Auntie’s silver spoon to ladle the hot soup to her watering, waiting mouth while Auntie dipped her own in thick amber honey.

Outside, twilight deepened into night, and once Ellie made up her mind to ignore it, the world beyond the garden’s fence didn’t matter at all.

TWENTY-THREE

A stone spat blue and the thing hissed, its hungry ancient face splitting in a wide V to show white, white teeth. The night around her was not dark but white, each edge laden with hurtful brilliance; creeping darkness threaded through with slim grasping fingers.

At first there was a sting at her breastbone, a pinching. Then a drowsy warmth all through her, a feathered nest, the safety of exhaustion.

The last time she’d felt protected had been with her head resting against his neck.

Avery? Slurred and heavy, a sleeptalker’s mumble. If this was a dream, it was a funny one. A queer draining sensation spread through her dream-body; a brushing over her dream-skin, as if she was back in Ruby’s car and the minotaur was chasing them. The streets warped like the minotaur’s Twisting, ribbons of diseased Potential rising and twining around its bone-heavy head, and as she looked down her own arms were wavering corkscrews, bones painlessly warping. Her head was heavy, drooping forward as her neck shortened and her shoulders rose, and she tried to wake up but there was no air, she could not breathe, fish-gasping, her jaws working . . .

The thing crept away, and for a long time she didn’t know if she was awake or asleep. Until finally her body became her own again and—

She jolted upright, clutching the sheet and coverlet to her chest, her entire body throbbing and the sapphire sending out tiny crackling sparks that painted the walls of the gray room, bleaching it to white with sharp-cut shadows. No moonlight braved the windowpanes.

Ellie fought for breath.

The cottage was still and silent, breathing to itself. Blinking turned the room into shutter clicks, an alien chiaroscuro. For a few seconds she couldn’t remember just where she was, and the only thing that kept her from screaming was the hazy thought that the Strep might hear.

She’s not here. You’re at Auntie’s.

Her heart quit trying to throw itself out through her ribcage. Sweat dewed her skin, but she was cold. Her teeth chattered, and for a second, there was the terrifying vertiginous feeling of being . . . invisible.

No, not invisible. Transparent. A clear pane of charmglass.

Why should that bother me? Her heart calmed down, and slowly, slowly, she warmed up. Her teeth stopped clicking together, the shudders coming in waves instead of constantly. The waves spread out, their peaks diminishing, and after a little while she could unlock her arms from around her knees and stretch, tentatively.

Her ribs ached. No, not ribs. A knot of pain high on the left side of her chest, and she rubbed gingerly at it. A bruise, maybe? What a weird place to be bruised. There wasn’t anything here that hurt; Auntie never even touched her unless it was a brief brush while passing a plate or a small thing to be charmed.

When she could, she slid her legs out of bed and stood, shakily. Faint cityglow showed through the diamond windowpanes, dappled by leaf and branch shadows—though there wasn’t a tree on this side of the cottage; it had to be a charm—and made blotches on her arms and legs. She tacked unsteadily for the door, opened it, and peered out into the hall.

I don’t feel right.

For a hazy moment she contemplated getting her schoolbag and her uniform—Auntie had produced crisp white button-downs and plaid skirts as well as kneesocks and panties, even a bra or two and several camisoles in Ellie’s size, brushing aside her stammered attempt at gratitude, as usual—and creeping out the front door, through the trellis arch and the frilled roses, and sneaking to a phone box.

Who would she call? Ruby, who would probably just yell at her for disappearing? Cami, who would be so worried, so helpful, so fragile? Neither of them needed Ellie dropping more problems in their lap, especially Laurissa-sized problems.

Avery? The thought died as soon as it began. Another person who didn’t need problems with the Strep-Monster, and who had probably forgotten all about Ellie and her annoying habit of not meeting him or calling when she said she would.

I’d forget me too. It would be a relief. Her shoulders sagged. Her panties were riding up, and she shut the door, standing and staring at the knob for a moment.

Wait. I locked this. Didn’t I?

Maybe not. She didn’t need to lock things here. Still, forgetting to do that was like forgetting to breathe.

A wave of exhaustion crashed over her, carried her across the floor, and deposited her into the soft gray bed again. She sank down, snuggling under the covers, and the leafshadows on the ceiling were skulls and bony hands until she blinked. Then they were normal, just branches dancing on the wind.

“I don’t ever want to leave.” Her furtive whisper took her by surprise, rippled the air like a pebble thrown into a still pond. “Not even if she throws me out.” I’m staying. I don’t care what happens. Ellie lay stiffly for a long while, watching the branches move as the hot tears trickled down her temples, vanishing into her hair.

I won’t ever go back to Laurissa. I’ll walk into the core first. The scary thing wasn’t thinking that. It was the quiet, sure knowledge that once she started moving that direction, she wouldn’t stop.

If the core didn’t kill her it would Twist her, because of the black scratching thing she had flung at the Strep. A curse, almost as black as Laurissa’s own work on a gaudy, loud-ticking watch. There was the wounded look on Cami’s face, too, and Ruby’s dismissal. Let her go.

Well, they had. Now it was her turn to let her fingers unclench a bit, and just let things go too.

When sleep finally came, there were no more dreams.

TWENTY-FOUR

“HOLD IT SO, LITTLE COLUMBA.” AUNTIE’S SPIDERY FINGERS curled around a dandelion’s stem. “Now, pouf!”

A symbol flashed blue-white and the plant shriveled, almost crying out as its leaves curled up and blackened. Under the flood of sunshine, Ellie shivered. “That looks unpleasant. Are you sure it won’t Twist you?”

“No fear. See?” The stem, turning papery black, curled in a corkscrew. “A mirror does not Twist. Impossible.”

Ellie’s eyebrows drew together. “But that . . .” She studied the ripples of Potential spreading from the charming. Is it really that simple? It can’t be, or someone would have figured it out by now. All it took was looking in the right place, and you could spin the effects of a nasty charm somewhere else. It would ripple through ambient Potential and the wave would die down, an ocean seamlessly repairing itself.

Is that even legal?

Who knew? A chill worked down Ellie’s back as the bees hummed their drowsy song. She rubbed at the sore spot on her chest—there was a bruise, a small dark one, maybe from a button digging in while she leaned over the rain barrel to scrub off algae. Or maybe from thrashing around during nightmares.

Even in the sun, the breeze was suddenly cold. She didn’t have a sweater, just her Juno blazer, which hung accusingly in the tiny closet. Right next to her dusty schoolbag.

I don’t care if I ever wear it again.

Auntie creaked to her feet, leaving the blackened dandelion to shred itself into ash and dirt, making the garden richer. “No sunwheels, Columba. Spin, or pull the weed.”

“Yes ma’am.” I don’t know if I can. She found another bright yellow flower, just sitting minding its own business in the middle of a riot of other things—tomato vines with hard green fruit swelling toward ripeness, leafy green potato plants, petunias, mandrake, and deadly nightshade crowding around each other with slightly embarrassing vitality.

Aren’t you afraid of poisoning yourself, Auntie?

Auntie is not stupid, the old lady had sniffed.

Ellie began weeding, whispering a loosening-charm to get the juicy pungent taproot out of the dark, damp soil. The old woman hummed as she went around the corner of the house, and Ellie hunched her shoulders. I saw how she did it.

So what’s stopping me?

The next dandelion was a tiny runt-like one, and she felt a little sorry for it. Well, honestly, either she was going to rip it up out of the ground where it was minding its own business, or she was going to charm it to death. It would die in slow agony, wilting in the compost heap, or it could be finished quickly.

Which was better?

Her fingers sketched the symbol. A bright blue-white spark, and she spun the twisting down the taproot, delicately.

The dandelion immediately shredded into a spiraling puff of ash. It was just so easy. The spreading ripples melted together, and Ellie examined her fingers.

Garden dirt under her bitten-short nails, a cupped palm, and long slim fingers. A blur of charmlight, because she was alive, emitting Potential like everything did. Even machines exuded something, any complex system threw off little bits of energy that melded into eddies and swirls that charmers tapped into. Maybe there was just a cosmic drain backed up somewhere, something falling in and plugging it around the time of the Great War, and the whole Reeve just the energetic version of a stuck toilet.

Which would make minotaurs . . . what? Torrents instead of swirls and eddies, or swimmers drowning in energy waste?

The problem with metaphors was that they broke down so damn easily. Ellie cursed under her breath. She pulled three dandelions for every one she charm-killed, and carried the wilting wounded to the compost pile at the back of Auntie’s garden, a simmering mess of vegetable stew inside a white-painted cage. The hives off to her left hummed sleepily, and she cast them a nervous glance.

There was an elm tree looming over the fence, black-barked and shifting in a cool breeze, and she tossed the dandelions in with what probably should have been a whispered charm.

Instead, what came out was a soft “I’m sorry.”

Apologizing to plants. I’m going to be as cracked as Auntie before long. That’d be just fine with me, too.

“She’s talking to weeds,” someone said, and Ellie almost leapt out of her skin. “Girl’s crazy for sure.” It came from above, and as she stared, the shifting branchlight hid him for a long moment.

“Mithrus Christ,” she breathed. “What are you doing up there?”

“Looking for you. This was as close as I could get.” Avery Fletcher crouched on a branch that looked too spindly to hold his weight, clutching grimly at another branch, this one dead.

“You’re going to break your neck,” she whisper-screamed. For some reason she couldn’t get in enough air to yell at him. “What is wrong with you?”

“I could ask you the same thing. You never called.”

You should be thanking me for not dragging you down with me. “Auntie doesn’t have a phone.”

“Auntie?”

“She lives here.”

His nose wrinkled like he smelled something bad. Maybe he did, he was right above the compost. “And you do too, now, I guess? Do you know how hard it is to find this place?”

Which meant he’d looked. A traitorous little weed of hopeful heat rose inside her chest; she quashed it as sternly as she could. “Some charmers don’t want to be found. Look, I thought of calling you, but—”

“But what? You decided I wasn’t worth the effort?” He had twigs stuck in his gleaming hair, and his eyes were more gold than green now. For a moment he looked fey, his coloring blending into wood and leaf. “Your friends are climbing the walls. You could have let someone know where you were.”

“Why, so Laurissa can drag me back and make a mint off . . .” She clapped her dirty hand over her mouth, trapping the secret behind her teeth.

He just nodded, not even looking surprised. “Yeah, I pretty much figured those weren’t her work. They sold fast, though. And they dried up when you disappeared. No more Choquefort-Sinder work on the market now.”

Yet another reason to stay as far away from Laurissa as possible. If Fletcher had found her, someone else could—and would Auntie still want her if there was trouble?

For a moment she thought of the Strep showing up here, and panic was a stone in her throat. What could she say? Don’t tell anyone? Should she beg? Offer him . . . what? She didn’t have anything.

Of course, he’d never know what she did to keep him safe. Nobody would believe her if she tried telling them Laurissa was a black charmer. She was respected, even if she wasn’t liked, and she was an adult. She’d put on her sweet voice, the one she used with the boyfriends, and it would be all over.

Her arms fell to her sides. “What do you want?”

“I wanted to make sure you were okay.” He had a deathgrip on that dead branch, tendons on the back of his broad capable hands standing out, and his charm-shined boots had black dirt and leaf mold clinging to them. “Also, to tell you something.”

What would that be? She just glared at him, and he actually laughed, tossing his head back a little. Not too much, it would throw his balance off.

When he leveled his gaze back down at her, she had her hands on her hips, not caring that she’d have to charm the dirt out of the white button-down. She was always untucked and disheveled around him, for God’s sake. It was like the entire world was conspiring to make her feel like an idiot whenever he was in sight.

“This year’s Midsummer Ball is set for fullmoon.” He shifted a little, very carefully, and there was a sharp groaning creak from the branch he perched on. “Three days from now, at the Fletcher estate. We won the bidding; my mother’s happy as hell and the phones are ringing nonstop. I would like to invite you, Ellen Sinder, to dance with me.”

That’s impossible. “It’s way too early in the season—” she began.

A flash of something like anger crossed his face. “It’s the end of Junius, Ellie. You’ve been here a while.”

Junius? But . . . oh, crap, I missed finals, and—had she really believed she was going back to Juno?

No. They couldn’t drag me back. That was the trouble about being a teenager, though. They could drag you back.

“Seriously?” She searched his expression, her neck aching as she stared up. “Avery . . .”

“If you don’t like me, Ellen, just tell me so and I’ll quit bugging you, okay? I had the hugest crush on you at Havenvale but you never gave me a chance. And the funniest goddamn thing happened to me when I came home and saw you on the platform. I started thinking about you again, couldn’t get you out of my head. I still can’t, but I’ll leave you alone if I’m not wanted here. Okay?”

Is he serious? What’s in it for him? Everything she had ever wanted to say to him rose up inside her, hit a rock, and boiled. Charmsparks popped around her, and the feeling of his attention, as if her skin was alive again, poured over her in a wave. “It’s not that,” she managed around the obstruction in her throat. Now she felt guilty for thinking he was like the Strep, always looking for an advantage. “Really, Ave, it’s not that. I like you. A lot.” You have no idea how much. “I just . . . I have problems.”

“So we solve them.”

We? You don’t know Laurissa. “That’s awful sweet of you, but—”

“Are you coming to the Ball, princess?”

Oh, for God’s sake. No. It’s not worth her finding me there, and what do you want from me anyway? Not a chance, dammit. “Okay. If you promise not to tell anyone where you found me.” Wait, what did I just say?

“Done, charmer’s word. I’ll be silent.” The branch creaked sharply and he scrambled back with monkeylike agility. “Three days, Sinder. Don’t forget!”

“Wait!” she called after him. “I don’t have anything to wear!” What are you doing here anyway? Why didn’t you just come to the front door?

He was already gone, and unless she climbed into the compost heap, she wouldn’t be able to yell after him.

Oh, Mithrus Christ. What now?

Now, she told herself, staring at the wilting, slaughtered dandelions, she should probably talk to Auntie.

TWENTY-FIVE

“. . . SO IT’S IN THREE DAYS. AND I SHOULD MAYBE GO.” She tried not to bite her lower lip.

Auntie had gone still, the pot on the stove bubbling. The old woman’s hair had grown thicker, longer, and more tangled, if that were possible, and the twigs and leaves caught in its wild mess struggled to poke free.

If I go, maybe he won’t tell. Or maybe . . . I don’t know. She did know, that was the trouble. She wanted to go, to see him. “I don’t have anything to wear, but I can fix that. I might go to Southking and get a bolt of something, make a dress. I can charm . . . Laurissa’s a couturière, so I know how to do cloth and shoes. What do you think?”

Her words petered out. A pounding in her chest echoed in her wrists and ankles, and why was she sweating? Auntie wasn’t like Laurissa.

“A fête?” The old woman sounded puzzled. “But Columba will return, yes?”

“Of course.” Like I have anywhere else to go. “I wouldn’t leave you, Auntie. I just don’t want to bring her here.”

“Wickedness will not follow Columba to Auntie’s door.” The old woman muttered, her head sinking forward as she stirred with a wooden spoon. Fragrant steam rose—it was spaghetti, though the tomatoes in the garden were all still green. “But a promise, a promise to return.”

The scarecrow made a sharp crackling noise, and Ellie almost flinched. It was just a pile of stuffing, though. Even if its painted mouth was a grimace, even if the smears of blue paint that were its eyes almost seemed to follow her as she pushed her chair back and moved restlessly into the kitchen.

“I promise I’ll come back. You need help in the garden.” She stared at the smaller cheese press on the counter, where a block of creamy, crumbly white was being pressed. The cinnamon kitchen was too bright; her eyes stung a little. “I can work, I want to stay and work with you. If you’ll have me.” Don’t get greedy, Ell. “Maybe I can do some marketing too, now that I’ve been here a while. Anything.”

The spoon splashed in rich red tomato sauce. “Oh, Auntie markets in her own fashion. I shall find you cloth, and conveyance, little Columba. And when the dancing is done, you shall return.”

“Well, yeah.” Her heart ceased its wild pounding. It was a good thing, or she might have been sick. Her fingers, digging into the countertop, relaxed little by little. “I’m scared. I really . . . really just . . .”

Before she could help herself, she’d taken the few steps to cover the space between them and thrown her arms around the old woman. Auntie stiffened—some charmers didn’t like to be touched—and as Ellie squeezed gently she got a sudden strong whiff of rotting copper. Sour sweat and dirt, and that nasty scabby breath.

Well, no old lady smelled sweet, right? She worked all day, just like Ellie did.

“You’re amazing,” Ellie finished. Because I know you don’t like to be thanked. “Really amazing. I wish I was your apprentice, you’re the best charmer I’ve ever known. You saved my life, and you’re just so . . . amazing.” Lame, Ell. Really lame.

“Auntie is merely Auntie,” was the grumbling reply, but the brown, creased face broke into its wide white V-shaped smile, and this close Ellie could see a fine sprinkling of iron-grey and black hairs among the white thistledown.

Maybe she wasn’t that old. Her skin was fine parchment, and this close it looked fresher, somehow. The wrinkles weren’t that deep.

“You look good.” Her grin didn’t feel like a mask, again. Maybe soon she’d be able to smile naturally. “Having some help around is really good for you.”

“Yes yes. An apprentice, a young apprentice for an old woman. Yes, little Columba, little apprentice.” A faint frown crinkled the old woman’s face.

Her heart almost stopped. “Do you mean—”

“Auntie needs apprentice, but only if Columba returns.” Auntie shooed her away and went back to stirring, and Ellie picked her jaw up off the floor, whirled, and ran down the hall past the three other doors that never opened. One of them had to be Auntie’s bedroom, but which?

It didn’t matter. The stairs were old friends now, she knew all their creaking voices, and the grey room welcomed her with soft light.

Her shabby schoolbag, thrown in a corner of the tiny closet, was actually dusty. End of Junius already; she’d been here a lot longer than she thought. Her High Charm Calc notebook was stuffed inside, and she tore out a few pages and grabbed a pen.

Her breathless arrival back in the tiny dining room almost made black spots dance in front of her eyes. “I’m going to design a dress,” she announced. “And shoes, I need to charm some shoes. I’ll have to have a couple charms ready for throwing and showing, and . . .” What if Laurissa’s there?

Well, what if she was? The thought was terrifying and intriguing in roughly equal measure.

Who am I kidding? Terrifying wins out. Still, she’d fought Laurissa to a draw, hadn’t she? And escaped. In front of the whole charming community, what could the Strep do? All her nastiness was done in secret, at home.

The strength ran out of her arms and legs, and she sat down hard. The chair groaned sharply, and the scarecrow rustled. Auntie peered at her, so Ellie essayed a weak smile. “I’m fine. I just thought of something, that’s all. What if she’s there?”

“Thinking too much. Little Columba is strong now.” The old woman made a sarcastic little noise. “Come, the long strings are ready.”

Which meant supper was right around the corner, and it was time to collect the hanging fingers of egg noodles from the drying racks. There really wasn’t much better than homemade pasta, especially with the pale unsalted butter left on the translucent stone front step every morning. Auntie now ate a lot of butter to go with her bread and honey, but you wouldn’t think it to look at her.

“I’m on it.” But it took Ellie two tries to stand up. “I’m going to have to go marketing.”

“Leave it to Auntie, little one.” She sounded odd, a little strained . . . but it could have been because she was lifting the heavy pot of simmering tomatoes. “Leave everything to Auntie. A dress will be had, and shoes, and pretty pretty things for Auntie’s apprentice. Who will return to old Auntie, yes.”

Her heart made that funny lifting thump again. It was as if leaving Perrault Street had been the last gauntlet to run through before things finally started to be good again. “I can make the shoes—”

Now the old woman’s face turned grave, but there was a twinkle in her dark eyes. “No, Columba. For the ball, Auntie will bring her apprentice shoes.”

The next morning dawned overcast and warm, and the cottage was empty. The kitchen was spotless but dark, and the scarecrow had fallen sideways out of its place. It took some doing to heft it back up—it was a lot heavier than it looked and weirdly warm too, as if full of heated sand. It crackled as she settled it back down, and she rearranged his hat, more gently than she probably had to. Nothing’s ever going to make you look better, friend. But at least you’re right-side-up now.

His grimace suggested he didn’t agree. This close she could see his hair was corn silk among the straw poking out from under the antique hat, dry and raveled but still golden.

Ellie yawned, scratching at her ribs. “Auntie?”

The antique icebox, under a heavy layer of seal-and-cool charming, hummed quietly to itself. The back door was slightly open, so Ellie stepped out barefoot, teetering on the threshold. “Auntie?” Her tentative call fell into a breathless hush. “Are you out here?”

The garden held itself still under a cloudy sky. There was a faint sweetish smell, like the breath of choco-beechgum that followed Ruby around. The weather had changed overnight, and maybe late-summer storms would start sweeping in from the bay. Salt breeze and thunder, and warm rain on the thirsty earth. Now that the rain barrel was clean, it would be a good thing. Auntie said bathing in rainwater would give a girl good skin, but Ellie shuddered at the notion. She’d scrubbed at least three inches of algae out of the oak cask, stinking green goop that Auntie wanted in charmed sacks. If you dried it out, maybe it was worth something, but still.

She rubbed at the tender spot on her chest. She hadn’t quite dreamed, precisely, but she’d woken up tired, as if she’d thrashed around a lot. Probably the change in the weather.

Ellie rocked back and forth on the threshold, uncertainly. It’s not like her to leave. A horrible thought took shape—what if she’d gone out into the garden last night and something had happened? She was an old lady, and . . .

It was enough to get her out the door and onto the back path, the paving stones warm, glossy licorice-black holding the sun’s veiled heat. She checked the herb beds and the vegetable garden, even venturing close to the domed, cheese-yellow beehives and their drowsy mumbling.

She circled the house, hopping over the crushed-shell walk—that sugar-white stuff was sharp—and found a broken-down place in the gleaming white fencing, but no vivid splash of Auntie’s housedress. Finally, wet to the ankles—the grass was long and dew-heavy—she came around the far edge of the house and made it to the back steps again, where she sank down and hugged her knees.

Well, I’ve been wandering around a charmer’s garden in my underwear. She shivered, picking little bits of grass from her tanned calves. No wonder we end up eccentric.

Auntie was really no weirder than Laurissa, or even the Fletchers—Avery’s mom had a bad allergy to seafood and avoided even fish-shaped Beltane candies, and it was common knowledge Mr. Fletcher hated rust because of his Affinity. The head of the Tharssman clan, old Benito himself, always whistled while charming, high piercing notes or nostalgic tunes popular on the kolkhoz he was rumored to have grown up on. The Hathaways had taboos against lemons and leeks, of all things.Scratch a charmer, find a weirdo. Potential gave you funny hypersensitivities, even if it didn’t turn you into a jack or Twist you.

She found herself rubbing at her chest again, high up on the left side, an inch or two down from her collarbone. There was a slick dampness, and she blinked at her fingers.

Bright red. “Oh, Mithrus Christ,” she said. Maybe something had gotten stuck in her camisole and poked, since she’d spent all that time in the bushes looking for Auntie. “Great.”

Inside, the cottage was just as neat, just as clean, just as dark and empty. And the stupid scarecrow had thumped down on the floor again, its limbs spilling anyhow. For a second, a trick of the dimness made it look like it was moving, but as soon as she snapped the switch and the overhead fixture flicked into life it was just an inanimate lump of stuffed denim and velvet again.

“Anyone else would keep a scarecrow out in the garden.” She hefted it back up, straining as its bulkiness slipped and slid, her bloody fingers wiped clean against the torn velvet jacket. “But oh no. Of cour—” The thing slipped again, for all the world as if fighting her, and she snapped a weightshift charm to help lift it. Sparks cracked blue-white, and it settled back in its place on a low chocolate-varnished wooden shelf, curiously carved and with rotting leather straps dangling from it. She’d never been close enough to see before.

Looks like something chewed its way loose there. She blew out between her teeth and had to sit down, glaring at the scarecrow. Its blue-painted eyes returned her stare, insouciant.

“Don’t look at me like that. What, you want to be on the floor all the time? Auntie would be mad.” It popped out before she thought about it, and that was curious too.

She had to take a deep breath and find a sticking-plaster for whatever she’d scraped herself with. Just because Auntie wasn’t here didn’t mean there wasn’t work to be done.

“Maybe she’s marketing? For stuff for the Ball, and she didn’t leave a note. Maybe she just didn’t think about it. She never writes notes.” Her whisper took her by surprise. “If she’s at market, she’ll be tired when she comes home. I should have lunch ready, and the rue’s ease weeded, and the hollyhocks trimmed and charmed.”

What if she doesn’t come back? The scarecrow’s piercing gaze was uncomfortable, to say the least.

“Then it’s just you and me, right?” It can’t be that hard to survive here. Auntie’s done it for a while now. Nobody even has to know.

How would she pay for the grocery deliveries? She didn’t know where Auntie kept her credits. Or maybe it was automatic, but that was no guarantee that it would continue. Still . . . it was a thought.

The old woman had said the magic word. Apprentice. This was also Auntie’s home, of course she’d come back. Home was the place where they had to take you in, but Auntie didn’t have to. Ellie was on sufferance here, just like everywhere else.

Still, this was a better sufferance than most.

The scarecrow sagged. She kept watching to make sure it didn’t fall again, and finally hauled herself shakily to her feet. “She’s coming back.” The words sounded flat and unconvinced. “She has to. I’m her apprentice.”

But the calm, iron voice that she used for planning was back, and it would not be silenced. If she doesn’t, I’ll figure something out.

TWENTY-SIX

BY THE TIME AUNTIE DID COME HOME THE NEXT AFTERNOON, Ell was pretty close to climbing the walls. She’d cleaned everything that could be cleaned, weeded everything that could be weeded, charmed until her head was empty and her stomach ached, and set out the morning milk bottles not just rinsed but sparkling. She’d even cleaned the old ash out of Auntie’s kitchen fireplace, and when the old woman waltzed in with an armful of packages wrapped in rough brown paper, Ellie was up to her elbows in soapsuds, having taken every painted dish and bright copper pan out of the cupboards. She was on her last load, Auntie’s mismatched silverware and some odds and ends, like the butter dish and the red-lacquered serving platter shaped like a leaf, a sort of cross between oak and maple.

She looked over her shoulder, blowing pale hair out of her face—it was longer now, and lighter with all the time she’d spent in the sun—and the relief blew her heart back up like a balloon. “You’re back!”

Auntie’s housedress was a vile fuchsia, her thistledown hair combed and pinned atop her head. The old woman looked thinner and oddly radiant. Maybe it was just that Ellie was seeing her afresh after an absence. Auntie’s face was smoother, and her smile did not make a mass of wrinkles on each cheek. Even her hands looked better. She was middle-aged instead of old, and the streaks of iron-gray in her hair had widened, each with a thread of pure black at its center, vital and growing.

“And you look good,” Ellie finished. “I missed you. Have you had lunch? I made bread, not as good as yours but it’s okay I guess. I’ve been weeding, and the hollyhocks are fine. You must have seen them, right?” She had to stop for breath. “I tried to do everything, I really did.”

“Good little apprentice.” Auntie’s white smile widened. “The house is happy. Auntie is happy. Come, see what she brings thee.”

The table was freshly wiped, so Auntie set her cargo down on it with a theatrical sigh. Ellie, drying her wrinkled hands with an embroidered dishtowel, edged into the teensy dining room. The scarecrow was no longer twitching, Auntie’s presence nailing everything in the cottage back into its normal dimensions and usual cheerful glow. The ghost-scent of the bread baked earlier strengthened, too.

Auntie made a quick movement, and a tide of moonlight spilled over the table.

“Oh . . .” Ellie’s breath rode out in a gush of wonder. “Is that . . . is that what I think it is?”

“Does Auntie’s dove like it?” Did she sound uncertain? Why?

The dress was silver, but not just silver. Glittering beads hung on strings, as if a post-Reeve flapper-girl had just stepped out of it. Spaghetti-strapped and low-waisted, a small tinsel flower at the left hip, it shimmered and shone. That flower was sharp-petaled, with that same strange grace the frilled roses planted along the garden’s borders showed. At its heart, trembling crystal raindrops shimmered with charmlight.

“It’s beautiful,” Ellie breathed. “It looks like fey work.”

“And here.” Work-gnarled fingers undid the string around another parcel. “Delicate hooves, yes.”

Low-heeled slippers, a net of silver suspended in their sheer crystal sides, with the same charmlight glow caught in the heels. They quivered, ready to dance, and Ellie saw how the charming had been applied, fluid beautiful work that held no hint of Sigil, or even a breath of the charmer’s personality.

Definitely fey work. “Wow.” She touched them with one trembling, raisin-wrinkled fingertip. “Oh, Auntie. They’re incredible. How did you—”

One finger wagging and a broad white smile. “No asking, no telling.” The third package was tiny, and it opened up, flower-like, to show a silver-beaded headband with a pale feather uncrumpling itself, growing like a fern under a plumping-charm. There was also a tiny silver key, hanging from a thread-fine chain. “Conveyance, for my scorched dove. Full moon, so very difficult. From moonrise to midnight, Columba has a fine silver carriage. Afterward, Auntie cannot promise.”

“That’s more than enough.” I just need to dance with Avery, that’s all. The thought that she didn’t precisely need to was shouted down by a hot flush staining her cheeks and making her palms sweat. And stay away from Laurissa if she’s there, she reminded herself sternly. Although that bit was likely to be the most difficult. “I can’t . . .” She doesn’t like those words. “Auntie, you’re amazing. You’re really, truly, incredibly amazing.”

“Little apprentice.” Auntie beamed. “Flattering poor old Auntie.”

“You aren’t so old. Sheesh.” Ellie held her breath as she picked up the dress, delicately, afraid that even breathing on the bead strings would break them. “Actual fey work. Wow.”

Maybe if Laurissa thought Ellie had connections with the Children of Danu, she’d leave her alone? Those sorts of connections never really worked out well for charmers; it was all over the old stories. Flighty, fickle, some fey were really nasty tempered, too. Maybe Auntie knew how to visit the goblin market—you couldn’t find it unless someone took you there the first time, but after that it was pretty easy. Or at least, that was the story. Maybe that was why she’d been gone so long?

Tomorrow night. Her heartbeat settled into a thin high gallop, and the scarecrow rustled. Ellie glanced up in time to see Auntie dart a venomed look into the corner, and her breath caught again.

For a flashing second, the old woman’s familiar dark eyes were black, from lid to lid. Just like the Vultusino house fey’s. Only Marya never looked this . . . dangerous, lips skinned back and that black gaze hot with rage.

Then Auntie’s face smoothed, her eyes were normal, and she blinked at Ellie. Strands of her fine thin hair were coming loose, and they floated into springy curls. Yes, there it was again. She did look younger, Ellie wasn’t imagining it.

Well, good. Maybe it helps having me here. The thought made Ellie’s heart blow up another size or two, and she actually hopped with delight, her hair bouncing and her skirt swinging. The beads made delightful silvery music as they slid against each other, and when she walked in this dress, it would be easy to throw soundcharms to impress an onlooker.

“Take them upstairs, little dove.” Auntie shook her housedress, pulling down the sleeves as if they had become ruffled. The blots of blue flowers on the fuchsia widened as she turned, trundling into the kitchen determinedly. “Auntie will make dinner, and butter to be churned, yes. Yes, yes.” She mumbled as usual, and snapped a drying-charm at the butter dish.

Even if she was fey, or part-fey, she wasn’t harmful. Maybe she was like Marya, housebound unless she had a stone in her pocket to anchor her. Or maybe she’d been fey-touched, or who knew? She’d been better to Ellie than anyone else, really.

Her conscience pinched. Better than Ruby? Or Cami?

Well, they’d probably found someone else to be their third wheel. Plenty of Juno girls would have been glad to fill that vacancy. Whoever they picked wouldn’t have gigantic black problems looming over them. It was for the best, really. She had no business talking to Avery, even. She was just going to contaminate him the way she did everything else.

You’re poison, Ell. Except maybe to Auntie.

That particular bit of knowledge burned inside her chest, but she said nothing. Maybe the Strep hadn’t been that bad, but something inside Ellie had turned her rotten; maybe she hadn’t really given the woman a chance. Laurissa was probably relieved she was gone, and Rita too. They could have each other, they didn’t need her.

Nobody did except one batty old charmer. What did it matter? She scooped up her prizes carefully, holding them away from her dishwater-sodden shirt, and left the embroidered towel crumpled on the table, retreating so, so cautiously, stepping gently and almost holding her breath so she didn’t inadvertently damage the beautiful, beautiful things. The oddest thought filled her up with sparkling charmlight, and managed to make her feel a little less toxic.

Wait until Avery sees this.

One dance, because she’d promised. Then she could come back, and work so hard Auntie would be proud to give her an apprenticeship.

TWENTY-SEVEN

THE NEXT DAY PASSED IN A FEVERISH BLUR. STILL OVERcast, with thunder rumbling in the distance and breathless heat, and Auntie’s fussing all day. There was butter and beeswax and rosewater, various potions and charms to make Ellie’s skin glow and her pale hair behave. There was clove-water for her feet and shaving-charms during a lukewarm shower to make her legs and underarms smooth. Non-charmers had to buy them wedded to razors, with all the attendant risks of nicks and rusting. Having Potential to burn was good for some things.

There was lemon juice to bleach some of her freckles, and crumbly kohl worked with beeswax to line her eyes. A berry-red tincture to blush her lips, deodorant charms, a pack of moss and hot clay for her much-longer hair now—it brushed her shoulders, and she would be glad of the headband, she supposed.

There were long shivering silver drops for her ears, and the thread-thin chain for the tiny key was pretty long. Auntie had thought of everything, including underthings fine as a sylphire whisper.

Getting ready for a Ball, Charmer’s or Midsummer, was always an all-day event. When her mother was alive, it had been full of giggling and warmth, and her father had despaired of ever arriving on time. You’re beautiful, he would tell them both, two beautiful girls, now let’s go! Later, Ruby and Cami had all crowded into Gran de Varre’s tiny cottage or Cami’s white bedroom in the Vultusino fortress, taking turns in the bathroom and elbowing each other in front of mirrors, sharing lip balm and powder and scented creams, fixing each other’s dresses and . . .

Ellie shook herself out of the memory. That was in the Past, and she was concerned with the right-fucking-now. She would have to be on her toes tonight. One dance, and she’d hurry out the door. It might be rude, but at least she could pay Avery back for being kind. Then they would be even, and she wouldn’t have to worry about him ever again.

Right? But nothing in her answered. She was too busy trying not to panic.

Auntie stepped back, sharp white teeth catching her upper lip gently as she surveyed her apprentice from top to toe.

Finally, Auntie nodded. “Yes,” she said softly. “Yes, Columba.”

She let out a long breath she hadn’t even been aware of holding. “I look okay?”

“More beautiful than the Moon, my dove.” Auntie’s smile held all the softness in the world. “See?”

She stepped aside, and the mirror in the corner of the small gray room shimmered. Waterlilies carved into its dark wooden frame bent toward a slim, long-legged shape sheathed in fluid silver, pale hair curling over her ears and the feather tickling one side of her soft flawless cheek. Wide catlike gray eyes ringed with kohl sparkled, and the girl’s berry-red lips stretched into a disbelieving smile.

The dress clung like solid water, and the charmed shoes twinkled as she took a step forward. Her knees peeped through the beaded fringe, shy satiny glances, and her smoothly muscled calves needed no stockings. Her bare arms almost crossed defensively, but then dropped and hung gracefully at her sides, her chewed-short fingernails blushing palest pink and smoothed to perfection.

That’s not me. The girl in the mirror moved as Ellie did. She even frowned as Ellie did, with a vertical line between her eyebrows, their thin curves much darker than her hair. There was the same line to her jaw, and Ellie’s high, wide-spaced cheekbones.

“Oh, Auntie. Wow.” The girl’s lips shaped Ellie’s words, and it was still her voice. “Wow.”

“Sun’s downing, soon,” Auntie replied, pushing back strands of fine, sweat-soaked iron-gray hair. There was almost no white left on her head, and her cheeks were even smoother, if that was possible. “Until midnight, yes, when the Moon is at Her highest.”

“I know. After that I’m on my own for travel.” You keep saying it, I’ve got it. Really. I’ll be back long before then. Back . . . home?

Did Auntie really, truly want her to stay? She seemed to.

“Look into the mirror, little apprentice. Promise Auntie.”

“I’ll come back, I promise.” Ellie stared at her own familiar-strange face in the mirror. The reflection rippled like clear water, Potential from Ellie’s skin filling the dress, the shoes, and the painstakingly applied layers of charm that would dazzle onlookers. “I prom—”

The girl in silver stood mannequin-still, her head tipped back. The mirror blurred, refusing to hold the shape crouched before her, the beads of the dress filling with indigo shadows as its head nuzzled at her chest.

A puncture, a glass needle driven into the heart, and the feather against her hair trembled, trembled. A draining, swimming sensation, not enough breath to fill slack lungs, a sapphire cracking violent lightning-sparks again and again as it struggled ineffectually. The thing’s ancient bony hand was around her wrist, holding the ring and its deadly light away; it suckled greedily, its iron-gray head moving. Its other spindly, too-strong arm nipped around her slim waist, holding her up, and the choking sound as the girl struggled to breathe was muffled by dead gray feathers, fallen plumage packed tight around a tiny ticking thing.

Ellie shook her head. There had been a curious skip, as if a phonograph needle had jumped from one groove to the next, and she swayed. Auntie held her wrist, solicitously, and the gray bedroom was full of a low rubescent glow.

Sunset already? She’d lost time. “What . . .” Slurred as if she was drunk, or just now sobering up. “Auntie?”

“Must hurry now, little one. Come.” Auntie stepped back, and her eyes were black from lid to lid. She blinked, gray eyelashes sweeping down, and they were human again, the whites as pearly as her teeth.

Ellie’s left hand ached, her throat was dry, and her chest throbbed. Her legs refused to hold her for a moment, knees buckling, but she righted herself with an effort. “I feel weird.” Why was her tongue suddenly so huge? Her throat was full of a metallic taste.

“She will recover, yes. Come, hurry. Sundown, little dove.”

The stairs unreeled underneath her, and Ellie floated into a dream. The front door opened like a flower, the good smells of Auntie’s house falling away and the heady spice of the garden a cool draft, taking away the metal tang choking her.

Under the rose-weighted trellis it was dark, but when she stepped outside Auntie’s garden for the first time in forever, there was a familiar elm-shaded street full of dusk’s whispering shadows. At the curb was a moonlight-colored limousine, its driver in a gray velvet suit, his pinched ratlike face sending a stab of fear through her before she thought, Well, Auntie must trust him. The car door slammed, enclosing her in a soft burnt-orange interior that smelled of spices.

I’m dreaming. This is a dream.

She settled back against the buttery leather upholstery and half-closed her eyes.

TWENTY-EIGHT

SHE’D ONLY BEEN TO THE FLETCHER CHARM-CLAN’S main house twice, and both times she’d avoided Avery like the plague. She had a hazy memory of him throwing dirt clods at her in one of the ornamental gardens, and of her throwing one in return, splatting against his tailored party garb. It had felt good to get a little revenge.

Now, though, the limousine halted and a valet stepped forward. He was in the Fletcher clan’s blue and gold, but he was party staff hired for the week—if it took a day for a girl to get ready for the Ball, it took a house a couple weeks, and the clan had to work on the whole thing for at least a month. Plus there were the bids, which meant the clan had to get a certain amount of support from all its subsidiaries and its allied clans, as well as outmaneuver rivals. No wonder they’d needed a whole bank of phones to keep up with arrangements.

The rat-faced driver said nothing the entire way, but his dark gaze had drifted over her more than once in the rearview mirror, the smoked-glass partition between the front and back of the limo lowered all the way. She didn’t even think of raising it, just stared back, willing the trembling all through her to die down.

By the time she stepped out, her numb fingers against the Fletcher valet’s crisp white glove, she was a little better. Her head still swam, and she had to take deep breaths. The valet, a weedy-looking kid with ghostly acne on his cheeks and slicked-down dark hair, gave her an encouraging smile, and Ellie smiled back. A blush rose up the boy’s throat, but she was already past him, climbing the granite stairs to the white colonnaded front of the Fletcher clan’s beating heart.

The Fletchers had been charmers since the beginning of the Reeve, and it showed. The house was a gracious, spacious white chateau, its lines beautifully restrained but the white dingy compared to the glow of Auntie’s fence. Everything about the outside world looked worn down and a little shabby now, and she supposed it was because she’d spent so long swimming in a sea of bright, active charming.

Shouldn’t it look the same here? She pushed the thought away and it went quietly. She was occupied in getting up the stairs anyway.

The doors were open, and she was fashionably late, perhaps, because the sky had darkened and there was no crowd waiting for entrance. She stepped into the front hall, and followed a pointing hand—was he a butler, this black-masked man in a black suit with strings of hair combed over his bald dome? Maybe. The Fletchers could certainly afford one.

The doors to the ballroom were flung open as well, and she floated toward them on a tide of silvery tinkling music. Her heels chimed, and the strings of silver beads on her dress each held a thread of indigo at their hearts. An active blanket of charming followed her, fluttering and swirling—she couldn’t remember half the ones Auntie had applied, and the rest were standard Ball fare. Light refraction, sweet smells, a subtle glow around her; the remaining radiance was the dress itself, perking up and singing louder, feeling the vibrant Potential rippling in the air.

She stepped through the doors and into a warm bath of Potential thrown off by a bunch of active charmers all in one place and in a heightened emotional state. The wall of dreamlike calm around her threatened to crack as a hush fell under the tinkling crystal chandeliers.

So bright. Laurissa would hate it. The smile on her face was a mask again, familiar and hateful. Is she here? Is she?

The crowd parted. They were staring. Charmers in fantastical dresses, like Amy Bolletta in a flaming-red handkerchief-hem skirt and a sweetheart bodice, Tintoretto shoes and a look of absolute thunderstruck awe on her nasty blonde face. The head of the Valseth charm-clan—they did protection work, mostly, and buffering for Babbage components—with her hennaed hair piled atop her head and a glittering-blue Auberme sheath that Laurissa would have killed to wear, stared as she clung to her husband’s arm. The men were all in black and white tails, since it was formal, so they had to charm more intensively to stand out amid bright female plumage.

The high-ceilinged ballroom, its wooden floor a mellow glow, was the throat of a whale. It was too bright, and the chandeliers tinkled madly. There would be no suppressors for this party—if you couldn’t handle charm being thrown, you shouldn’t be here, and the staff had all signed waivers and would be paid quadruple for the risk. You couldn’t stint when you threw a Midsummer Ball, that’s why it took a whole clan to do it.

Is he here? Is Laurissa? Ellie couldn’t look everywhere at once, and they were staring. All of them.

The terrible feeling that she might look ridiculous unhinged her stomach, and she suppressed a sour flood of bile at the back of her throat. I’m going to throw up. I’m going to—

“Ellie.” Very soft, at her elbow.

She turned, her entire body leaden with terror.

Avery’s smile was a warm bath dispelling the fear, sunshine through fog. His hair burned with golden highlights, and he seemed impossibly tall. He looked just as vivid as everything in Auntie’s house, and her sigh of relief made one of the sweet-smell charms fill everything around her with cinnamon.

“Hi,” she managed, weakly.

“You look . . .” His pause was the stuff of nightmares, but he was smiling. He wouldn’t look at her that way if she was hideous, right? His tux was impeccable, and he held out a hand—his skin was warm, and the instant his fingers closed around hers she felt like she could breathe again. “You look incredible, Sinder.”

What a relief. “Thanks. I was beginning to be afraid.”

“You? Never.”

Not now that you’re here, no. Just one dance and she would leave. But it was nice to feel . . . what? “They’re staring.”

“Because you’re beautiful.” His free hand flicked, and charmflitters sparked into being, like the fireflies that filled Auntie’s garden. “I mean, you’re always beautiful, but you’re . . . oh, hell.”

A laugh jolted out of her sideways, and the charmflitters flashed blue, blinking in almost random semaphore. Her skin was alive again, every inch of her sparking. “Are you kidding? Every time you show up I’m en déshabillée.”

“Speak some more French, and you’ll get there quicker, too.” He hadn’t let go of her hand. The flitters made thin crystalline singing noises. It was a nice trick. “You want a drink? Or . . . I mean, there’s food, or . . .”

“I promised you a dance.” I have to go back to Auntie. This isn’t what I wanted.

Wasn’t it? Why go to all this trouble, run the risk of the Strep seeing her, if she hadn’t wanted to be right here, looking up at Avery Fletcher and feeling every atom of her body completely awake, for once? Suddenly feeling a little less ugly and threadbare? “Is Laurissa here?”

“I haven’t seen her.” He looked uneasy now, a faint line between his eyebrows. “You’re pretty pale. Is it a charm?”

“Nope. Just me.” I’ve been working in the garden, I should be brown as Ruby in the summer. A pinch under her collarbone—when Dad was alive, she’d always brought Ruby and Cami to the Ball. The three of them would sneak honeywine coolers and find a corner, giggling and mocking the glittering whirl of fashion sotto voce.

Was there another girl taking her place in Juno’s halls? And Rita, had she been taking Ellie’s place on Perrault Street?

Well, that was what she wanted, wasn’t it? That was what everyone wanted once Dad was gone. Stick me in a corner, rub me out like a stain, make me behave. Or just make me vanish. Same thing. “I’ve just been . . . well, you know. Learning a lot. Working in the garden. It’s nice. You?”

“Job offers. Some good ones since I’m settled. Deciding what I want to do once I finish summer vacation. Mom’s still hoping I’ll Sigil.” A shrug, disturbing the line of his suit, and the buzz of conversation had started around them again. Maybe he had some sort of charm to make people stop looking at her so funny. “Hope springs eternal, you know. Are you going to go for your boards?”

“I can’t just yet.” Let’s just leave it at that. “You want to dance, or—”

“Actually . . . I want to apologize.”

“For what?” What could he have to apologize for?

He glanced up over her shoulder. “Well, I did want you here. That was the biggest thing.”

A soft hand touched her bare arm, fingernails scraping slightly. Ellie froze. But it was only Cami, the Vultusino girl’s ivory silk slip-dress fluttering a little around her knees. She wore a crown of silvery charmed tinsel-flowers, her hair was a blue-tinted waterfall of ink, and the transparent relief and naked hope on her pretty face was a knife to the heart.

“There you are.” Ruby was on Ellie’s other side, vivid as usual in a deep crimson del Paco dress, halter-backed and subtly sequined with tiny sparkling crystals. “Mithrus, we’ve been looking everywhere for you. What have you done to your hair? And my God, that dress is killer. You could have called, you know.”

Ellie stared. She could find nothing to say.

“I’m sorry.” Avery’s hand tightened on hers. Was she trying to pull away?

“Mother H-heloise is w-w-worried.” Cami’s blue eyes had filled with tears. The stutter had returned, just like a bad habit. “She called the p-police. The Strep s-said you’d r-run away. N-n-nico has a r-r-reward out f-for information about you. I th-thought—”

“Auntie doesn’t have a phone.” I sound dazed. “You invited me so everyone could see I was still alive, right?” He must have invited Ruby and Cami, because they couldn’t attend otherwise.

Not because he wanted to see her. The nausea was back, filling her throat with hot sourness.

Avery actually had the grace to look ashamed. “No. I mean, yes, but no. I wanted to—”

“Just what did you want?” The constriction in her throat didn’t let the shout out. Instead, she sounded like she’d been punched. If she talked any louder she was going to spray whatever she’d had to eat today—probably the morning’s bread and honey, since she’d been too nervous for lunch—all over his tux.

He wouldn’t let go of her hand, even though she tried to pull back. “Look, Ellie, I worry about you, okay? You just vanished, and when I found you—”

“Yeah, let’s talk about that.” Ruby, as usual, wasn’t going to sit around and let everyone be in suspense about how she felt. “You ran right off school grounds and disappeared. Mithrus, Ellie, why didn’t you at least call? I went to Gran and the cousins scraped the city; we couldn’t find you. Where have you been hiding? Are you okay? You look . . .”

Ridiculous? Stupid? Afraid? “What do I look like, huh? Tell me.” Her throat still wouldn’t work right. She tried to jerk her hand back out of Avery’s, but he wasn’t giving up.

“Ellie—” He almost pulled her off balance. “Please. Please just listen.”

“I think I’ve heard enough.” She tried to pull away again. “Stop it. Just stop.”

“You disappeared for m-months.” Cami didn’t let go of her arm, either, and the humming preternatural strength of Family just under that soft grasp made Ellie freeze. “He’s been trying locator charms. So have the p-p-police. The S-s-strep’s h-holed up in that h-house, and there’s been a m-magistrate inquiry—”

“An inquiry?” Because I was gone, but they didn’t have a body or any evidence. Oh, God. She’ll be furious. Especially if they searched the house. How did she cover up the black charming? Oh, you know she’s got her ways.

The dreamlike feeling was back. The beads on her dress shivered, chiming musically. Oh, God. I’ll never get a license. I can just stay with Auntie, though, right? She’ll teach me everything and then . . . and then . . .

Then what? Spend her entire life tending Auntie’s garden? It didn’t sound too bad, but still.

“There wasn’t enough proof—of anything—to indict.” Avery glanced over Ellie’s shoulder. “Oh, boy. Incoming.”

Oh, God, what now? She tried to take her hand away, but he wasn’t having any of it.

The crowd of brightly colored charmers parted, and a slim dark-eyed woman appeared. She had Avery’s cheekbones and a fantastic leaf-green Armaio gown, veined with glittering charmlight. Avery had obviously learned the charmflitter trick from her, because she was attended by a swarm of bright green dazzles moving around her head much as bees or fireflies did around Auntie’s. It was odd, but something else about the woman reminded her of Auntie, too—a tilt to her head, maybe? Or the shape of her jawline?

“The mystery girl!” she said brightly. “Ellen, right? Avery can’t say enough about you.”

“Mom.” He still wouldn’t let go of her hand. “This is Ellen Sinder. I told you about—”

“About that terrible woman passing off another charmer’s work as her own. Yes. Which reminds me, the Council has her under review. If you could charm a piece in front of us for comparison, Miss Sinder, it would be proof of a very grave offense indeed.” Avery’s mother paused, and it struck Ellie that she was moving cautiously forward, as if she thought Ell was going to bolt.

Which was a distinct possibility.

“There’s also the matter of your Sigil, clearly visible in the charmed pieces now that we know Ms. Choquefort-Sinder did not perform them.” Mrs. Fletcher folded her arms, sternly. “I can’t understand why Juno didn’t have you registered, really. And your work is so exquisite, well, we’d offer you a place in the clan. If you want it.”

“Mom!” Avery’s cheeks had reddened. Did he look . . . yes, he did. Sheepish. And embarrassed.

“What?” She almost rolled her eyes, a startlingly young movement in a parental adult. “She’s a better charmer than you, Ave, if those pieces are any indication. You’ll be lucky if she teaches you a few things.” Her smile stretched, and she actually looked mischievous. “He’s had the maddest crush on you for the longest time. You can’t imagine.”

“Mother!”

“This is really weird,” Ruby muttered. “Does anyone else see how weird this is?”

Ellie struggled to think. The world had taken a screeching left turn, and maybe it was being at Auntie’s that had robbed her of the ability to keep her balance.

Once you relaxed, the world just threw something else at you. There wasn’t any way to win, ever.

Laurissa. He told his mother Laurissa was passing off my work as hers. “You told her?” The nightmare just kept getting worse. “She’s going to kill me.”

“Ellen . . .” Mrs. Fletcher’s smile faltered. She glanced at her son, at Cami’s set, pained face, and at Ruby. “Tonight we’ll take you to the police station. There’s nothing to be afraid of. Your stepmother . . . well, let’s put it this way: Her business practices are not really what they should be.” She took another step closer, and Ellie twitched nervously. “There’s been disturbing rumors about her for quite some time. But your father . . . well, he had diplomatic immunity, so—”

“My father?” Oh, sure, let’s blame him. “What about him?”

“Olivia?” Avery’s father appeared from the side. Absolutely nobody was now paying any attention to Ellie, because a tinkling flood of music had begun to thread through the air. The best part of the Midsummer Ball was about to start. “You’re not going to believe this.” He leaned down, murmuring in her ear, and the sight of them together—a mother, a father, the way he stooped a little as if being close to her was the best and easiest thing in the world—spilled terrible heat into Ellie’s stomach.

She finally succeeded in getting her fingers free of Avery’s. Cami’s hand fell away from her arm as well. “S-s-see?” the Vultusino girl whispered. “His m-mother’s on the Council. You can show them the Strep’s been using your work. And we can go to the p-p-police, or to N-n-nico if you—”

Ellie darted a venomous glance at Avery. Was there anyone he hadn’t told about the Strep using her for a workhorse?

Next he’d say something about Auntie, and if there was trouble, there would go Ellie’s apprenticeship to the best charmer she’d ever known. The old woman hadn’t done anything other than help her, and Ellie, just by breathing, was going to drag her into Laurissa’s sights.

I’m poison. The sudden burst of knowledge was copper-edged, sickening. “Mithrus Christ,” she hissed, “stop it. Don’t you see?” Of course they don’t. Nobody does.

“You don’t have to be afraid.” Avery kept trying to grab her hand again. “Ell, my mom, she knows about Laurissa—”

“Nobody knows about Laurissa,” she snapped. “She’s gotten this far by making people do what she wants, she’s just going to run right over anyone who gets in her way. Even the Council, for God’s sake. Even an inquiry, since I’m obviously alive.” And now your mother is right in front of her, and so is Auntie. If something happens it will be my fault, as usual. “I am not a charity case. I do not need help.”

“Don’t be an idiot.” Ruby tossed her head. “Of course you need help. I mean, you’re practically homeless, and you’re not even in school. You missed finals, and Mother Hel gave Cami and me talking-tos for weeks as if we knew where you were. You ran off in front of everyone, Cami’s been crying her eyes out thinking you might be dead in a ditch somewhere—”

“I get it, Ruby. I’m a huge problem, and someone needs to solve me, right? And you—” She rounded on Avery. “You think you’re the charmer who’s going to break the Unspeakable Riddle, right? Just ride in with your mother and your nice little charm-clan and save me, right? The real world doesn’t work like that, Fletcher.”

There was a spark in his gold-green eyes now, and it flared. “Yeah, well, you’re a whole, what, sixteen? You don’t have that hot a grasp of the real world either. What are you going to do, go charm on Southking to make ends meet, and let Laurissa get away with all this?”

“Southking?” Cami was having a little trouble keeping up. It wouldn’t last. “Ellie—”

“Just stop!” she screamed, and the chandeliers swung, chiming. The sound was a nightmare echo. For a moment the lights dimmed, and she expected to see the stairs again, Laurissa’s body tumbling down—and that was really all the Strep had to do, right? Accuse Ellie of trying to kill her, and use Rita to back it up. That girl would swear to anything to get the Strep off her back or keep the peace, because she had to live in that stone-towered house on Perrault Street, too.

Goodbye Auntie, goodbye apprenticeship, goodbye to everything. She’d be lucky if she was sent out to a kolkhoz and worked to death if she was convicted of trying to kill another charmer. All because she’d stupidly, foolishly believed she had a chance.

The beads on Ellie’s dress clashed and slithered. She skipped back nervously, avoiding Avery’s hand. He was still trying to hold onto her, the idiot. “I don’t need charity,” she informed them all. “From anyone. Thanks, but no thanks. I was stupid to come here. You can all go to hell.”

She turned, staggering a little as the low heel caught a bit on uneven flooring. They could all dance right over it, but of course she would trip. It was the same old story. The music swelled again, and Avery’s father said something that rhymed with Ellie’s name, but she was already moving.

“Ellie . . .” Cami, as if she’d lost all her air.

“Let her go,” Ruby answered, pitilessly. “At least we know she’s alive. If she’s going to be a bitch about it, let her go.”

Exactly, Ellie thought. Thanks, Ruby. Thanks a bundle.

She walked quickly, with her head held high.

Nobody stopped her.

TWENTY-NINE

THE RAT-FACED DRIVER DIDN’T SAY A WORD, JUST closed her into the eggshell limousine and walked steadily around the front to the driver’s door. When he dropped down into his seat, his gray-gloved hands closing around the wheel, Ellie summoned up her courage.

“Perrault Street,” she said. “The 1800 block. Do you know where that is?”

A single nod. His hat brim had begun to droop a little, and there was a shadow on his cheeks. Stubble, maybe.

It didn’t matter. “Take me there. Please.”

Another single nod. Ellie sagged against the pumpkin-colored leather, and the shaking weakness was all through her. I should have known better. I know I should have known better.

Streets slipped away underneath the limo’s tires; the pale car threaded a needle’s eye between the charm-clan estates, their gates closed and secretive. New Haven twinkled with lights, the diseased glow of the core rising like a beacon and staining the cloud ceiling. The moon was hiding, and everything had turned sticky-sultry. Thunder muttered restlessly, a giant sleep-talking animal in the sky.

What are you going to do, Ellie? You need a plan.

The trouble was, her plans never worked out. She did better when she just ran blindly, didn’t she? Right now it was Rita she was thinking about. Pale, pudgy Rita. Who was just about Ellie’s age. Who threw her arms around the Strep and hugged her. Who slammed doors and crept around and sneaked and spied, but who also dropped a bottle of sylph-ether when she didn’t have to.

I know what you’re doing . . . acting friendly . . .

There was a black suspicion in the very back of Ellie’s head, not quite formed and, she supposed, more terrifying than it would be if she just let herself think it out. Instead, she tuned her brain to a blank, formless hum, and her mother’s ring glowed a little as she stared at it.

It was restful in here, the soft upholstery and the shushing tires and the world going past outside. It wasn’t as nice as driving with Avery—

Don’t think about that.

It was useless, because he was creeping in, filling up the formless buzz inside her head.

I hate him. He broke his word.

He’d kept reaching for her hand. With his mother standing right there, practically inviting Ellie into the clan. Wouldn’t that be something? With a charm-clan behind her, she could get a decent job; she would be assured of an apprenticeship and a license. . . .

But there was Laurissa. Spreading like a stain between Ellie and everything that might have given her a break. She could make Avery’s mother sorry, plenty sorry, and that would make Avery sorry too. Auntie was old, how much damage would the Strep do to her? Laurissa wasn’t in a buffered jail cell, so they hadn’t found any evidence of black charming at the house if they’d searched it. She was free to walk around and be just as soft and dulcet and treacherous as she could until she struck, and there would be no evidence afterward, either.

It was all so ridiculously clear now that she’d thought about it. The Strep could accuse Ell of attempted murder, Rita would back her up, and then what? A kolkhoz somewhere, if she survived transport through the Waste.

Would that be so bad? Yeah, there would be the Waste pressing against the sinkstone and electric-wire fences, and backbreaking work, and the weather, and probably jacks like Cryboy and his gang. They’d send her to a Twist-free kolkhoz, at least, and she’d die before she was forty, worn out by the work and the weather.

So why was she thinking about Rita, then? Was it just self-insurance? Did it matter if she got the girl away from the Strep?

Yeah, you’re going to ride in and save her, just like you helped save Cami. Remember how good that felt? Like you’d finally done something right. Something nobody could argue with, and you’d earned all that charity they’ve been handing out ever since the Strep got nasty.

A long frustrated sigh, and the feather scraped against the side of her face. She carefully worked the headband free, and her hair wasn’t drooping, at least. The dress was just as gorgeous, even if the beads were a little uncomfortable to sit on.

It’s not mine, though. Even Auntie’s charitable.

At Auntie’s, Ellie earned her keep, didn’t she? She weeded, she cleaned, she cooked, she learned everything the old charmer could teach her. Surely she wouldn’t have let Ellie stay so long otherwise? She was Auntie’s apprentice.

And what? You bring Rita there and all of a sudden there’s someone else to help Auntie.

Rita wasn’t a charmer. Even thinking about her in the tiny little charmer’s cottage, feeling the stab of worry and bleak black almost-jealousy, made Ellie’s stomach flip. It wasn’t right to feel that way about someone caught in the same trap you’d just escaped. She was going to save Rita and earn a little peace.

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. “Little 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.

“Mommy?” It was a child’s voice, small and questioning. The ring seized her finger in an iron grip, but the thing that wore her mother’s face hissed, baleful sparks lighting in her black eyes, and the circle of charmed silver loosened, sliding free. Laurissa had eyed it hungrily, and now it fell from Ellie’s finger without struggle or qualm. It chimed as it hit the floor, and she put one bare, bleeding foot on the first stair.

“That’s right,” Auntie-no-more cooed softly. “Come to me, little Columba. Little apprentice. Come to me, let me take away the pain.”

Charm it free, Ellie thought, deliriously. She wants me. At least someone does. Fever all through her, chattering her teeth, wringing sweat from her hot, living skin. So what if Auntie looked like her mother? It didn’t matter.

What mattered was the wanting. And the end to all the pain and thrashing and poison.

Give it up. It’s all you have left.

“Come,” Auntie whispered. Ellie halted, gripping the banister. It gave slightly under her fingers, spongy, resilient.

“Ellie!” Someone screaming her name, desperately. A familiar voice. Growling, thundering lightning flashed again. A high crystal note, like a wet wineglass stroked with a heavy finger, the ridges and whorls that made up identity dragging along a thin rim. “Ellie! Please!”

She took another step. Her mother smiled encouragingly. “Come up, my darling. Come.” Beckoning, telling her to hurry.

Her feet stung. Everything in her was lead, weighing her down, dragging on her. She stared at her mother’s black, black eyes, and the sparkles over her mother’s head were almost making a pattern. If she kept looking, she might find it, as long as she kept moving forward. That was the main thing.

Just keep moving. Another step. Her feet ached, but it was a faraway pain. The frantic hammering was also distant. Then, she had a curious thought.

There’s more than one way to drown. Ruby always told me I wouldn’t die while she found me amusing. Ruby . . . Cami . . .

“Ellie!” Creaking, crackling, a snarling sound.

She was almost close enough, reaching out with one damp, disbelieving hand. Her mother beckoned again, her wide eager smile mirroring Ellie’s own joy. It was all a terrible dream, and soon she would be in her mother’s arms where she belonged, and everything would be fine. She would rest, at last, behind a locked door upstairs in Auntie’s wonderful, snug little house. She would belong, and when she closed her eyes the twin needles would drive into her chest and there would be nothing to worry about ever again.

“Little dove,” her mother whispered.

The front door, riven, exploded into sugary fragments. They piled through, a flash of bright copper, a streak of gold, and long black hair. Cami’s teeth flashed as she grimaced, her sensitive nose wrinkling, and Ruby, strangely, crouched on the floor, her fingers spread against the melting linoleum as her red dress, stippled with rain, pooled in a sodden mass. The wildness in her flashed, a thrumming snarl under a girl’s skin.

Avery, in a sadly battered and drenched tuxedo, dropped the shoe he’d been holding, its flash of silver melting as it plummeted from his fingers and shattered on the floor. He bolted up the spongy, crumbling stairs and grabbed Ellie’s wrist, hauling her backward while the thing above her champed its fangs angrily. It had changed yet again, her mother’s face thin and graven, those black eyes huge under a snarled tangle of black, black hair. It crouched, and its shadow was full of writhing.

“Let me go!” Ellie shrieked. “I want to go! Let me go!”

The mad thing above them darted down a step, but Avery flung up his free hand. Blue-white Potential limned his fingers, and when he spoke even the sound of the storm drained away.

“I am of your blood, but iron is no bar to me.” He yanked back on Ellie’s wrist again, and she fell, barking her hip on a stair. Even then he didn’t let go, though she tried to scramble upward, toward the snaking, crouching shape.

“Coluuuuumba,” it keened. “Coluuuuumba . . .”

Avery shook his golden head. The crackling on his fingers arced, Tesla’s Folly on his fingertips as if he’d brought the lightning home. “No. Ellie. Ellie Sinder. Ellen Anna Seraphina Sinder. I know her name, spider, and you do not.” He yanked on her wrist again, and Ellie tumbled down the stairs, crying out as their sharp edges bit her. Cami was suddenly there, and Ruby, and the preternatural strength in their arms just barely managed to keep Ellie contained as she erupted into wild motion.

“Don’t hurt her! She’s my mother! Don’t hurt her!”

Avery stood, at once large and curiously small, before the hissing, thrashing shape on the stairs. The Potential sparking and crackling on his fingers intensified as he brought his other hand up. “How many have you lured here? I should burn your rotten web down.”

“Noooooo!” Ellie almost, almost struggled free. Her scream broke halfway through, rasping and cracking just like the walls. Slivers of water runneled through. The whole place was melting, and a soupy mess of something sticky-sweet washed down the floor.

Ruby yanked her back down. “Oh no you don’t,” she snarled. “No way, no day.”

It was Cami who wrapped her arms tightly around Ellie, stroking her hair and crooning a formless somehow-familiar song. It was Cami who quelled her last struggles and muffled her ears as the thing on the stairs came for Avery and screeched, Potential-lightning forcing it back.

“You do not know her name!” Avery yelled, and Ruby, as she held Ellie’s hand in a bruising-tight grip and stared upward, did not have the face of a girl at all. Mercifully, the moment passed, and Ellie sagged in the cage of Cami’s arms. The Vultusino girl’s hair smelled of spice and warmth, and Ellie’s bones, poking out through her thinness, sank into her friend’s supple strength.

“It’s all r-right,” Cami murmured, over and over again. “We’re h-h-here, Ellie. It’s okay. It’s all r-right.”

You shouldn’t be. And it’s not. This is nowhere near all right. The strength to fight had left her. She stared past the mingled strings of her hair and Cami’s, pale platinum and inky black mixing, as the thing with the writhing shadow retreated upstairs. Avery followed, step by slow step, his hands spitting sparks as he bore upward, his hair astonishingly full of gold even in the dimness.

Dreamy terror filled her. It’s not my mother. It just wore her face. It’s . . . what is it? “What is it?” she moaned, but the sound was swallowed by thunder. Rain sluiced instead of trickled down the walls now, they sagged like cardboard. The tiny sitting room was awash, and the sharpish stink of spoiled honey warred with rot and mildew.

The malformed, fanged thing on the stairs scuttled back into darkness. Avery halted, his head cocked, and agonizing fear filled Ellie like tea into a mug, hot and bitter and strong.

He retreated carefully, each foot feeling behind him in empty space. His gaze never strayed from the blackness overhead, where there was a sharp cracking as the roof sagged, and a cascade of rainwater poured down the stairs, foaming between the balusters as they were eaten away. Ellie gagged, and Cami did too, her blue eyes rolling as the smell grew worse.

“Whole damn place’s caving in!” Ruby yelled. “Come on!”

He backed up, and it took Cami two tries to surge to her feet, carrying a sobbing Ellie with her. Ruby’s strong warm hands were there too, and the two girls hefted Ellie between them like wet washing, her bare bleeding feet dragging as they hauled her for the yawing door. She tried to twist, to see Avery behind them or to struggle free, but they carried her outside, where a tangle of long grass and overgrown thorny vines whipped wildly under the storm.

Lightning flashed, and Ellie hitched in a breath to scream. Thunder swallowed the sound, and the trellis archway had been blasted by something, still smoking against the falling water. It was cold, Cami’s bare arms steamed and trails of vapor rose from Ruby’s vital, healthy skin.

“Let me go,” Ellie moaned. “Please God, Mithrus Christ, just let me goooooo . . .”

It was Ruby who replied. “No, you stubborn bitch, I am not going to let you go, and neither is anyone else!” She sped up, and Cami slipped on Ellie’s other side, carried gamely on. “Not now, not ever!”

They lifted her bodily over the ruins of the trellis, and Ellie cried out miserably as something inside her snapped. It was the crunch of glass breaking under a thick silk blanket. She fled into merciful soupy unconsciousness for the second time that night as the elms towered above, their black bulk diverting some of the rain until wind tossed the heavy branches and pattering silver drops fell just like chiming, icy beads.

THIRTY-ONE

“THERE’S FEY BLOOD ON MY SIDE OF THE FAMILY.” MRS. Fletcher pulled the counterpane up, tucking Ellie into the softness. Rain beat against the window, the summer storm wearing itself out. “It, ah, grants us certain . . . advantages.”

Ellie blinked. Of course it would. “Unregistered?” she croaked, and the pained look on Mrs. Fletcher’s face spoke for her.

The whole charm-clan could be legally dissolved if it could be proven in front of a magistrate that some of them had fey blood. Family or Woodsdowne—or fey—might be part-human, but the other attached to them disqualified them from incorporating. From other things, too. Like the Charmer’s Ball, and the social season, and a whole hedge of legal and business advantages.

A clan of medic charmers might not have any clients left, even for free, if that happened. Ellie’s throat worked dryly as she swallowed. “I won’t tell.”

“That’s up to you,” Mrs. Fletcher said quietly and laid the back of her hand against Ellie’s forehead. “Ave tells me it was an arachna Portia. They’re dangerous.” She hesitated. “You have a slight fever. If it gets worse, the clan doctor will come.”

“S-s-sor—” Her teeth chattered over the word. Trouble. I’m just trouble to everyone.

“No, don’t.” She smiled, and it was a relief to see that she had blunt, pearly human teeth. “Something should have been done about your stepmother long before now, and no wonder the arachna snared you. You must have been very frightened, and very alone.” Her long dark hair was pulled back into two braids, and except for the shadow of knowledge in her gaze she looked very young. Her cheekbones and jawline were half-familiar; they echoed the face Auntie had worn, but which had been the real one? Had Auntie really been the old woman, or had she been the ink-haired goddess on the stairs . . . or was the last face, the twisted hungry thing with white fangs and a writhing shadow, the true one?

Avery looked like someone else, too, but just then Ellie couldn’t remember. She stirred restlessly. He had driven them to the Fletcher estate. The Midsummer Ball had been winding down, traditional sweetmeats showered on the charmers from the mezzanine while laughter and sharp cries of delight rang against the ballroom’s roof. Bursting into that whirl of color, Potential, and crowding, Ellie had roused enough to be ashamed of the thin, dripping fey-woven rag she wore.

Mom! Avery had bellowed, and Mrs. Fletcher had appeared immediately. The confusion retreated before her bright gaze and imperious commands, and in short order Ellie was whisked upstairs, charm-cleaned, and tucked into this pale-blue spare bedroom, the dust scorched away from the pale birch vanity with a muttered snapcharm. The sheets were crisp and fresh, and the rain beating furiously on the diamond windowpanes couldn’t get in.

“Just rest,” Mrs. Fletcher said now, softly. “You’re safe here, Ellen. Nothing can hurt you.”

It was an empty promise—because there was plenty that could hurt anywhere you looked—but Ellie just nodded wearily. Her eyes half-lidded, but all her nerves were drawn tight. She could still hear the thing on the stairs.

Come to me . . . a locked room . . . it will all be made right . . .

Those other locked doors, what had lain behind them?

Ruby, her hair wrapped in a cerise towel, had a wrinkled, worried forehead. She stood by the window, watching anxiously. “Is she gonna be okay? Really okay?”

“Of course.” Mrs. Fletcher sounded very sure. “You should call your grandmother. And, Miss Vultusino, perhaps you could let Mr. Vultusino know she’s been found? I still don’t understand how she slipped away.”

“It was my fault.” Ruby, uncharacteristically penitent, scrubbed at her hair. The scratching of the towel against her sodden curls was loud in the room’s hush. “I didn’t think . . . I mean, God. And the Strep.”

“The what?”

“The Evil S-s-strepmother,” Cami supplied, from her place near the door. She looked the least draggled out of all of them, but her blue eyes were wide and wild, and she was even more pallid than usual. “That’s what we c-c-call her.”

Mrs. Fletcher’s unwilling laugh was bitten in half. “Laurissa? It fits.”

“She’s wasted on something, that’s for sure.” Ruby sighed, unwinding the towel. Her hair was springing back under the warm electric light. “She was out in the garden when we found Ellie’s shoe—”

“Ruby!” Cami whispered, making a shushing motion.

“Ah, so that’s where you went. And Avery?” She had the Mom Inquisition tone, but very gentle at the same time. You could imagine telling her everything.

“He wanted to find her. We found her shoe, and then he tracked her while I drove. I’m licensed!” Ruby added, hurriedly. “He’s a good guy. Ave, I mean. He’s not an asshole at all.”

“Ruby!” Louder, Cami’s shocked protest made the other girl grin.

Mrs. Fletcher’s mouth twitched. “No doubt he’s making a full confession to his father at this very moment. But a drugged charmer is dangerous. Do you know what she was on?”

I do. “Poppy,” Ellie croaked, surprising them all. “Mrs. . . .”

“It’s Livvie, Ellen. You might as well call me that.”

Ellie dragged in a deep breath. If she was going to tell, it had to be now. “Rita. She’s Laurissa’s daughter. Laurissa stole her Potential.” Her tongue stole out, a dry leaf trying to wet her cracked lips. There had been so much water, but she was parched.

“Black charming? That’s a very serious charge.” Mrs. Fletcher looked thoughtful, again. Her green gown sparkled, and Ellie shrank back into the bed. How was she going to escape from here?

Where did she have to go?

Still, she was compelled to speak. “She couldn’t take mine, there’s no blood between us.” Or sex. God. At least the boyfriends would recover, once they got away from her. Rita might, with intensive long-term therapy from a charmstitcher. Expensive, and who would pay for that? Ellie’s chest twinged, a sore, cracked egg. “But she made me charm, and charm, and charm. . . .”

“Rest.” Livvie Fletcher had turned grave, a spark lighting in her dark eyes, so like and unlike Avery’s.

“There’s something else,” Ellie whispered. “She gave Avery—”

“Dear God.” The woman’s hand leapt to her mouth like a white bird. “That horrible thing? We threw it out.”

“Good.” So tired. Ellie’s eyes drifted closed. “I took the charm off it . . . she had . . . she had . . .”

“She had what?”

Ellie whispered what the charm had been meant to do, and the three horrified gasps they made in unison might have been sort of funny, if she hadn’t fallen asleep.

THIRTY-TWO

The storm, its tattered wings flapping, sped away from New Haven, inland over the Waste. Restless, the girl tosses in a narrow bed, just like the cot at the orphanage. The bucket of steaming water, full of grit from the floor, and her mother’s face as she turns to leave. “Keep it for me,” the golden-haired woman says coldly, and she only knows her mother is leaving because the little girl has nothing more to give.

The water sloshes, back and forth. It becomes an algae-choked eye, and the girl . . .

The girl . . .

The girl in the water.

If she isn’t dead, she soon will be. Limp and boneless, she makes herself as heavy as possible. Blue ice and green slime closing overhead, crackling and creaking as it shudders and grinds. A false friend, the ice numbs her while it obeys her enemy’s raging shrieks.

The dream comes back for several nights in a row, then hides for a while. Just when she starts to relax, it jumps on her again. The ice stinging every inch of her, her shoes too heavy, sodden clothes dragging her down.

She had tried so hard, but Mommy had left her behind. Then the letter came, with money, and the train through the Waste rocking and rollicking. Another chance to try, but it was just a chance to drown.

Again.

A splash, a scream, and frozen water shatters above her. She is sinking fast; the oddest part is how it doesn’t hurt. Her lungs burn, but it is a faraway sensation, disconnected. All she has to do is choke, and it will be over. The water will rush in, suffocation will start. Already the blackness is creeping around the corners of her vision. This far down the water is darker, twilight instead of spring noon, and there is a shadow over her.

Fingers wrap in her hair, and now it is the time to struggle. Because if the murderer pulls her out of the water she’ll have to go on living with her, and that is one thing she is determined not to do. There’s a single route of escape, and all she has to do is blow the air out, watch the silver bubbles cascade up. Then icy water will flood in past the stone in her throat, fill her lungs and heart and every empty part of her, and there will be darkness.

In that darkness, peace.

The hand in her hair gives a terrific yank, a spike of scalped pain spearing her skull, dragging her toward the surface of hell once more . . .

Ellie sat up, gasping, one hand at her mouth to catch any betraying noise. For a long terrified moment she had no idea where or who or what she was, and she thrashed against sweat-soaked covers.

The pale blue shell of an unfamiliar room closed tightly around her. Her hair, damp-dried and curling with rainwater, whipped as she tried to look everywhere at once. Condensation frosted the diamond windowpanes, and faraway thunder was a mutter instead of a crashing overhead.

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—”

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.

“RITA!” Ellie yelled.

Then things got very confused.

The girl didn’t stop. The garden was full of graying predawn light, as if someone had flipped a switch, and now Ellie could see the blood striping that goddamn peach sweater, the rags of her skirt—it looked like one of Ell’s school skirts, and for a moment weary anger filled her. Why couldn’t the bitch wear her own clothes?

But then, did Ellie have anything that could be called her own? Did either of them?

“Sweeeeeetheart,” a familiar, nasty voice crooned. “Sweeeetheart come back here!”

And there was Laurissa, shambling down the garden path. A bright gleam in one misshapen, trembling hand was sharp metal, and bile-fear crawled up in Ellie’s throat again.

At least the monster that had been Auntie had been somehow natural, even its shadow full of writhing legs obeying the invisible laws of how the world should look.

This . . . Laurissa had . . .

The Strep’s belly swelled, pendulous, but the rest of her was bony except for her shoulders, which had thickened as her head dropped forward. Her right foot dragged, the ankle corkscrewed and the instep clubbed, and her blonde mane had turned dark at the roots. Her forehead was thickening, heavy bone swelling under peeling skin.

A colorless smoke rose off her, blooming like ragged, silken petals, and Ellie could almost taste the rage and sick need. The Strep’s anger wasn’t burnt cedar now. Instead, it was rotten wood, not burning, just smoldering and sending up nasty toxic bitter smoke.

Soon the horns would grow and her shoulders would hulk, and she would rage until she was spent. There wasn’t any of the perfect, lacquered shell she’d fooled the outside world with anymore.

What had turned her into this? Did it matter?

Ellie had reached the garden path. The Strep crooned something else, seeing her, but Ellie bolted in Rita’s wake. “Stop!” she yelled, her throat full of sludge-terror. “Don’t go down there!”

Rita’s sobs were harsh and clear between her hitching screams. She was getting tired. How long had she been evading Laurissa? That sharp metallic gleam in the Strep’s hand, that was troubling, because—

The other girl skidded to a stop, pinwheeling her arms. She’d reached the slick concrete edge of the pool, grown over with moss—no more blue sky-reflecting eye and scrubbed-clean pavement. The garden was heavy with storm-rain, still dripping and fresh but with that rotten green undertone, a nasty smell lurking under the goodness of grass and trees. The reek reached down into Ellie’s empty stomach, and bile whipped the back of her throat.

I am never going to eat again.

Ellie dug in her heels. The borrowed slippers squeaked through moss and dug against concrete, and she grabbed Rita’s arm. Threw herself backward and they both fell, Rita’s elbow whopping Ellie a good one between the eyes. A starburst of pain, but at least they fell on a soft squidgy carpet of moss.

Crashing in the bushes. Had the Strep blundered off the path? Where was Avery? If he got in her way . . .

If he’s part fey, will he Twist? Oh, God, don’t let anything happen to him—

Rita swore at her, and Ellie swore back, both using filthy anatomically impossible terms that would have been hilarious if it had been Ruby or Cami.

I never told them I was sorry. The thought was gone in a flash. “Get up,” she panted. “We can run. Come on.”

“She’s . . .” Rita gulped, lunging to hands and knees like a primary-school kid playing horse. Her hair fell in her face, and it wasn’t as thin and fine as it used to be. It was plastered down with the damp, and the mineral copper tang of blood filled Ellie’s nose. Wet slickness coated Rita’s upper lip. “She’ll kill me. Kill us both.” Hopeless, as if it was a done deal. “She’s always . . . she wants to, she always wanted to. Always.”

Don’t I know it. Ellie thrashed, trying to rise. Every inch of her was worn through, rubbed bare. Avery’s sweatshirt was covered in moss and guck, and a brief flare of regret went through her, as well as a burst of bright red relief.

They’d made it in time, right? Rita was still alive.

Amazingly, Rita hauled herself up and glanced at the path. “God,” she muttered. “God.” She leaned down, offering Ellie her hand. It was a quick, instinctive gesture, and Ellie grabbed before Rita could change her mind. “You’ve got to get out of here. If she—”

“I’m not leaving you,” Ellie informed her. “You’re a bitch, but I’m not leaving you.”

“Why?” Rita cast another quick glance at the path. “Look, just get out of here.”

Ellie clamped her fingers down, and the other girl flinched.

That’s why. It passed through her in a scalding flood, every single reason.

Because the other girl knew. She knew what it was like to live with Laurissa, and she had it even worse than Ellie had. Because Ellie had Cami and Ruby, and even Avery, even though she hadn’t known it. They were willing to come into a dangerous place for her, and even Rube hadn’t said a single angry word. They just treated it like it was no big deal.

Like she was worth it.

Who did Rita have?

Nobody except Ellie. Laurissa had made damn sure of that. Where had Rita been stashed in New Avalon? Imagine just being left somewhere like a broken toy, by your own mother, the same mother who had stolen your Potential, scraped out the very core of what made you a charmer. The Strep had sent for her, probably when Dad died . . . why? What had she been planning?

Who cares? She tightened her fingers again, her entire arm cramping. “We will. The pool—”

“There you are.” Heavy and misshapen, the words slurred, and Laurissa blundered through a screen of overgrown azaleas. The metal in her fist was a butcher knife, one of Antonia’s beautifully sharpened pieces of steel. “Naughty girls. Little sluts.” Her eyes had become bulbous smears, and shimmering ribbons of thick reddish ectoplasm were beginning to rise on a corkscrew-draft of Potential. The throbbing dual swelling on her forehead had sprouted into tiny cancer-black spikes, and they twitched, thickening with scary speed.

Rita’s mouth was loose and wet with terror. She yanked back, and her fingers slipped through Ellie’s.

No—

Ellie faced Laurissa squarely. “Back off!” she yelled. Where’s Avery, Mithrus Christ, did she get him, what am I DOING?

There was nowhere to go but into the swimming pool. Ellie’s fingers flicked and relaxed, and Potential flashed. Her head ached, and she doubted her ability to even throw a popcharm.

She wet her lips, or tried to. Her tongue was still dry, and her stomach was ragingly empty. “You wanted to steal my Potential too, didn’t you.” Her own voice surprised her, and the tone—soft but clear, almost adult—stopped the Strep in her tracks. “You couldn’t figure out a way. Did you ever have any charm of your own? You must have, because you Sigiled. But then you thought of an easier way. You’re a black charmer, and now everyone knows.”

Rita sucked in a deep hopeless breath, panting. To hear someone else tell a secret you’d been holding like a spike in your chest, was it a relief for her too? Did it lift the awful burden to know someone else knew?

Laurissa lifted the knife. “Little rich girl.” Her shoulders pulsed, swollen, and clear fluid dripped upward from her skin, riding the updraft of a minotaur’s rage. “What do you know? Rich girl with her rich daddy.”

You leave my dad out of this. “You’re Twisted.” The words stung her mouth. “You always were, but now everyone can see it.” Another deep breath, and a massive wrecked scream filled her throat. “You’re ugly!”

The Strep actually rocked back, on both her good foot and her clubbed one, and her mouth fell open, a grotesque caricature of surprise. Rita actually laughed, a high, shocked sound.

Gray dawn light strengthened. There was a plink, plink of water droplets falling, and later, Ellie could have sworn she heard a bird sing somewhere on Perrault Street.

The dark is broken, she thought, right before Laurissa, her distorted face suffusing with an angry brick-red, horns widening from her dropping, bone-thickening head, spat a curse that arrowed for them both.

THIRTY-FIVE

IT WAS A STREAK OF BLACKNESS, BOILING WITH RED AT the edges. This wasn’t just a nastiness to bring some bad luck or a prank-curse to sting your target. No, this was pure black charming, meant to do more than hurt.

Meant to kill. It corkscrew-hissed through the wet air. Rita let out a little cry and stumbled back. Ellie stepped forward, directly into its path, and she lifted her hands.

This is going to hurt. She didn’t care. Her head was full of sunlight and the buzzing of bees, and she heard Auntie’s voice. Not the hungry howling of the thing on the stairs, but the patient teacher.

A mirror does not Twist. Impossible.

The space inside her head opened, only now it wasn’t empty. Instead, it was brimful of liquid light, a humming, and her hands were loose and open. She caught the channeled Potential, her fingers tingle-stinging with pins and needles. It fought, heavy and slippery like an armored eel, and there was a horrific thick splash behind her.

Rita!

She couldn’t look back.

The moment stretched, impossibly long. Two thoughts, lengthening like taffy between a candy-charmer’s slipgreased hands, filling her, pulling her in opposite directions.

First: I could throw this back at her. I could loop it there, just a touch here, and it would kill her. She wouldn’t hurt me ever again.

Second: There’s no time.

If she spent even the scant moments to throw the charm back at Laurissa, striking in anger, Rita would hit the bottom of the pool. The other girl’s lungs would fill, the thing that used to be Laurissa would howl and stumble back, bleeding just like she’d made them bleed, and when the Strep died Rita would too.

The choice trembled inside her. Hot rage and cold knowledge, exact opposites, and Ellie was the rope between them. A thin, fraying, tired rope who had already been drained past her capacity to stretch.

If I throw this back at her, I’ll be just like her.

The curse spun, driving down into the ground before her, throwing up chunks of blackening moss and chipped paving stones, shrieking in rage as it burrowed.

Ellie, her arms opening wide, fell backward, borrowed slippers sliding again, for a long endless moment.

Smashing through the water, arrowing down, clothes full of viscous green. Tired, so tired, lungs burning, hand groping through the blackness. Eyes squeezed shut and fingers turned to claws, combing the jelly that passed for water here below the surface.

She sank forever, and finally, the thought came swimming up to meet her, a realization like dawn breaking.

I don’t want to die.

Her questing hand touched something. Living warmth, her grasp curling in sodden floating hair, and she hauled up. Dead weight, tired muscles straining, and suddenly she was full of a terrible lightness. It was the last scrap of oxygen being forced into her bloodstream, her aching arms giving up, the smothering black around them bearing down on two guttering sparks.

When a candle is snuffed, does it feel relieved at the end of burning?

No. A familiar voice, familiar warmth, and a cascade of blue sparks, crackling against inimical algae-laden water. My brave, strong girl. No.

But the ring was gone, wasn’t it?

It was never the ring, my darling. Her mother’s touch, light and warm and soft.

One of her hands was tangled in the other girl’s hair, the other reached up blindly, hopelessly searching for the surface. For light, for hope, for everything she found out she would miss if the dark succeeded in smashing them both.

It was never the ring, her mother repeated, and warm fingers—too impossibly big, as if her hand was a child’s and her mother’s so much larger, tapering fingers capable of soothing any ill, righting any wrong—threaded through hers. It was always you. My brave, bright girl.

Pulling, then. Lifted, her arms stretched and a jolt of pain cracking in her back, and they rose on an escalator of bubbles. The blue glow became a brilliant point of white, and her mouth opened, an explosion of silver bubbles, and she—

—broke the green mirror’s surface in a thrashing geyser, tasting mud and slime and rot, dragging at the hair in her fingers. Rita came up too, shooting out of the water like a dolphin, coughing and choking. They both struck out blindly, and there were hands and voices, lights and harsh sounds, and the choking screams as a Twisted creature rampaged away through blackening, curling azaleas, its body striped with slashes from dying roses.

THIRTY-SIX

LATER SHE FOUND OUT THAT AVERY HAD CLEARED THE side of the house in time to see the Strep, her shoulders thickening and her belly swelling obscenely as she dragged one clubbed foot behind her, scuttling off the kitchen step. He’d immediately recognized what was happening, decided that a minotaur was too much for three teenagers to handle, and darted in the kitchen to find the phone. Which was thankfully still active.

He’d punched 733 into the phone, and by the time the Strep had found them near the swimming pool the night was alive with sirens. At least Perrault Street was high enough on the list of priorities that when someone called, there was an answer.

Then he had called his parents. It was the adult thing to do, and she supposed she could be grateful. Especially once Mrs. Fletcher—Livvie—found Ellie huddled, wet and covered with green gunk, in the back of a high-crowned white ambulance and swept her up in a hug, after scolding Avery and kissing his cheeks and shaking him. Don’t you ever again, she had said, over and over again. What were you thinking? Don’t ever, ever, ever again . . .

It was a mother’s song, and Ellie recognized it. Every string in her tired body relaxed, and she had finally, finally burst into relieved tears. The sobs shook her, but she didn’t have to do anything about it. Someone else finally had the reins, was finally worrying about how to get things done, and the weight of responsibility had slipped from Ellie’s aching, too-thin shoulders.

There were bright lights and a long juddering ride in the screeching ambulance, Mrs. Fletcher crammed in the back with a sobbing Ellie and a dry-eyed, green-streaked, catatonic Rita, who was whisked away as soon as the bright glare of Trueheart Memorial Hospital swallowed them both.

The weeping wouldn’t stop, even while she was poked and prodded and had to answer all sorts of questions until Livvie Fletcher took over, her eyes gleaming under the fluorescents, and told them to leave the girl alone, yes, she’s part of my charm-clan, call Giles Holyrood—he’s a charmstitcher with the clan—and let’s not have any more nonsense.

Avery was there too, in a chair with his elbows resting on his knees, just watching. She tried to gulp back the sobs whenever she glanced at him, since he was ashen and his cheek had a smear of green algae, flaking and cracking as it dried.

The charmstitcher, a tall stoop-shouldered man with dark circles under his eyes and an amazing beak of a nose, eyed Ellie for a long time, standing next to the hospital bed. She felt his scrutiny and flinched under it, tiny diamond feet running over her skin.

An arachna, Livvie Fletcher murmured, her hands clasped like a little girl’s. And Laurissa Choquefort was forcing her to charm above her capacity.

I doubt she knew this girl’s true capacity, he’d replied solemnly, in a surprisingly reedy voice. She’ll Sigil, if she hasn’t already. Now, Ellen—it’s Ellen, right? Her own nod, the tears trickling down her chapped cheeks. Would she ever stop crying? Rita had been taken away in a wheelchair, her large dark eyes fearful and helpless, still silent—

Ellen, I’m going to charmstitch you, and you’ll sleep until you’re healed . . .

She had fallen into darkness, relieved that she didn’t have to run or fight or stay so constantly, painfully alert anymore. As far as she was concerned, she could sleep forever, though she knew she wouldn’t.

Yet in the dark, she heard two things. A distant seashell murmur—my brave girl, my brave darling, sleep until it’s time to wake up.

The other was a young man’s voice, low and hoarse. “Just be okay, Ell. Please, just be okay.”

THIRTY-SEVEN

“I AM NOT QUITE SURE I UNDERSTAND.” MOTHER HELOISE’S broad pale face looked, as usual, slightly damp. Her habit was just as starched-penguin as ever, her small avid eyes just as bright. The charmlight around her, if Ellen concentrated hard enough to glimpse it, was eye-wateringly bright.

No wonder Mother Hel hadn’t been afraid of the Strep.

“The clan will pay for her schooling,” Livvie Fletcher repeated, quietly. “She’s missed a great deal, but is willing to attend make-up classes.”

Ellie sank down further in the chair, her hands laced over her midriff. It felt weird to be sitting in here without a Juno blazer on, but the leather seat was reassuringly sticky against the backs of her knees. At least she had a skirt, Livvie had seen to that. Wearing a pair of jeans to St. Juno’s was just not done.

“Her stepmother . . .” Mother Heloise’s gaze bored into Ellie’s.

“Is responsible for that absence. She was forcing Ellen to charm and selling the resulting—”

“Yes, yes. Hm. Well. This is a very irregular situation.” Mother Heloise folded her hands under where her breasts should be, and the light overhead in its cage of suppressive charms ticked slightly as its heat expanded.

Idly, Ellie wondered if she should shatter the light bulb. It wouldn’t be any great trick. It might even add something to the festivities. Just a little pressure here, a little pressure there, slipping through the suppressors, and pow. Big fun.

Livvie continued, doggedly. “We’re willing to—”

“Little Ellen.” Mother Heloise still stared at her, as if she could see Mithrus Himself printed on Ellie’s face.

Maybe she could just see guilt. Plenty of that to rumble around inside Ellie Sinder, that was for sure.

“I’m sorry.” How many times had Ellie said that lately? If she was going to be a charity case, well, that was just the way things were. It will get better, Livvie told her, over and over. I promise it will get better.

Well, maybe Avery’s mom could be trusted. Avery himself had been raked up one side and down the other for driving Ellie out to Perrault Street, but he’d taken it all with a rueful grin, and they hadn’t hit him, either with charm or with fist. Mr. Fletcher had sounded like her own father, stern but fair, and Livvie, well, she was Livvie.

Right now she leaned forward a little, pale but composed, almost vibrating with tension in the chair where Laurissa had once sat. Ellie had that morning tentatively broached the idea of working to pay for her room and board, since the trust was tied up until she was eighteen. There was enough of it left to get her through college, though the Strep had burned a lot on poppy and God only knew what else.

Avery’s mother had looked horrified, and now here they were, sitting in Mother Hel’s office while Juno drowsed under a late-summer sky, its halls empty except for the sisters going about whatever they did when the girls had mid-July through mid-September off. It was too late in the day for even the summer school classes to be in session.

“Hmmm.” Mother Heloise nodded, her chin dipping. “Ruby de Varre and Camille Vultusino. Your friends.”

It was ridiculous, that she should feel caught out. Why would Mother Heloise know about that? “Yes ma’am. They’re my friends.”

Not an angry word from either of them. Cami simply hugged her and teared up a little, then brought out presents. Little things like hair ribbons—the thin headbands were out and ribbons were in now—and fresh luckcharm dangles, these ones not silvery as last year’s had been but bugle-shaped, like bells or beads, and their tinkling had made a cold finger trace down Ellie’s spine. Ruby brought a fresh paperback copy of Sigmundson’s Charms to replace Ellie’s lost one, and a couple gossip magazines, their covers garish-colored.

One of them had a grainy painting of a half-minotaur Twist criminal caged behind true-iron in an inquest dock, a swollen misshapen thing sentenced to a kolkhoz for the rest of its life. Laurissa’s pregnancy hadn’t been real, just the first symptom of a black charmer’s Twisting.

Now when Ellie heard a train coming in from the Waste she would think of the Strep, bone-shrouded head too heavy for her neck because the minotaur process had been halted midway by charmer cops throwing draincharms. She would think of the thing’s bleak furious gaze scraping the sides of a dark, sealed car, speeding through the poison-black forest. Maybe she’d Twist back fully into a minotaur out there and run through the sinkstone and wire out into the Waste, where she could savage and howl all she wanted.

Yes, Ellie would think about it. And each time, she would feel scalding, shameful relief.

I didn’t kill her. Instead, she had saved Rita. Who had disappeared from the hospital. Just like a cloud vanishing.

The police weren’t happy about that, but there was enough evidence to take the Strep away—as if more evidence than her Twisting half-minotaur was needed. Poppy, black charming—Ellie’s halting answers to their questions were accepted without question, even though she’d been terrified the Strep would appear at any moment and accuse her of lying.

Maybe she could have stopped all this earlier if she hadn’t been so afraid?

The Mithrus Mother Superior made a small hmmm noise. “Miss Vultusino missed school during the winter and is attending classes through summer holiday. So is Miss de Varre, who I gather was not skipping to go shopping, as is her wont, but to search for her missing friend.” Mother Heloise nodded. “Very irregular situation, indeed.”

“I’m sor—” Ellie began again.

“Miss Sinder, this unfortunate series of incidents is not your fault. Mithrus, in His wisdom, knows that. I, though my wisdom is much less, do as well. And . . . Fletcher? Mrs. Fletcher, is it?”

“Yes ma’am.” Livvie looked almost as uncomfortable as Ellie felt.

“Olivia. Née Starling, I seem to recall.” Mother Hel’s gaze grew a little sharper. “Top of your class, indeed. A mischievous little thing. Used to quite torment Sister All-Abiding Mercy.”

“I grew up, ma’am.” Slight hint of asperity, but Livvie’s cheeks were pink.

A bright, watchful spark had kindled in Mother Heloise’s tiny eyes. “You agree that little Ellen bears no fault for this . . . situation, do you not?”

“Completely, Mother Heloise.” And Livvie Fletcher did a strange thing.

She reached over and took Ellie’s hand, scooping it up from Ellie’s plaid-clad lap. She even squeezed, very gently, while staring Mother Heloise down.

Ellie’s jaw threatened to drop.

“Very well. Sister Amalia will give you her schedule, she starts classes on Wednesday. I believe Miss de Varre is her transport on file; otherwise, you will make arrangements?”

“Certainly. She needs a new—”

“Uniform, yes, Sister Amalia has a package for her.”

“I’ll pay for—” Ellie began, because the trust had provisions for her schooling, and she’d offered to pay the Fletchers even though they wouldn’t hear any of it. Was it just more charity?

Somehow, she didn’t mind so much. Not at the moment.

“You will not,” Livvie interrupted, firmly.

Mother Heloise went on, smooth as a ship sailing into harbor. “Miss Vultusino, I believe, signed the receipt. I am sure a thank-you note is in order. Manners are just one of the things a Juno girl must acquire.”

Cami. Thinking ahead. And Mother Hel knew I’d be back. The weight in Ellie’s chest lifted, and Livvie squeezed her hand again, gently, comfortingly.

“Your grades, Miss Sinder. Keep them up. Be a credit to us.” Mother Heloise nodded. “Yes, indeed. Mithrus bless and keep us all, in this world of struggle and striving.”

“Amen,” Livvie murmured, and Ellie too. The ritual response was comforting, as if they were sitting together in Morning Chapel, bored and warm and finally, blessedly . . . safe.

“Drive carefully,” Livvie said, giving Avery a glare. “Do you hear me, Ave?”

He rolled his eyes. “Yes, darling mother. I’m taking Ell for cheeseburgers.”

“Good.” Livvie kissed Ellie’s cheek, her soft perfume a cloak. “You didn’t know I was a Juno girl?”

“No ma’—I mean, no. I didn’t.” For a moment she felt cold, even in the sunshine, and heard a rustling. She restrained the urge to look over her shoulder—there would be nothing there but Juno’s empty visitor’s lot. Empty except for Avery’s primer-coated hulk and the Fletchers’ heavy SUV imported from overWaste, its windows tinted and its radio sleek and charm-buffered, its ride as smooth as a white limousine’s.

Avery was watching her, carefully. “Ell?”

“I’m all right. Just wondering about Rita. Marguerite.”

“No word yet. We’re looking. New Avalon’s making inquiries too.” Livvie tried a smile, but the worry underneath it made it crumble. “Who knows, she might be going to Juno too, if we can find her.”

Livvie’s dark eyes were troubled, and Ellie knew why. A teenage girl could go missing in New Haven and never be found.

For all sorts of reasons.

Ellie had nothing of Rita’s to practice a locator-charm on, and Livvie would probably give her a scolding if she tried. There were a few weeks left before the charmstitcher would clear Ellie for even regular classwork again.

Why on earth would she leave? Livvie had asked, and Ellie had shrugged. It was no use explaining how even help could be a trap to someone whose own mother didn’t want her. She’s not responsible for Laurissa, Livvie had said . . .

. . . but Ellie knew, deep down, that it didn’t matter. Rita would feel responsible. Just like Ellie did. Sisters in unwilling guilt, both of them, and Ellie couldn’t even begin explaining.

There weren’t words for it.

The big stone house on Perrault was being reclaimed and sold, the proceeds going into the trust for Ellie’s eighteenth. Still, it would sit on the market for a while, because nobody wanted to buy a place that had held a black charmer Twist until they were sure the echoes had died down.

Livvie grinned, and you could see the Juno girl she used to be, probably popping vanilla beechgum and full of fire, just like Ruby. “All right. Have a good time, you two, and be home before dark. Dinner is at seven.”

“Mrs. . . . I mean, Livvie?” Ellie reached out, tentatively. She touched the woman’s arm, fleetingly, just above the elbow. “Thanks. I mean . . . thank you.”

“You are very welcome, Ellie. You’re safe now.”

And the clan adoption paperwork on the kitchen counter. She could see it, black and white legalese, waiting for her signature so that the charm-clan could fold around her like a warm blanket. She’d looked at it for a long endless moment this morning, her heart in her throat.

You don’t have to sign it, Livvie had said, softly. Any clan would be glad to have you. You’ll finish school, we’ll see to it, and you can work anywhere you please. Even overWaste, if you . . .

No, Ellie had said, with more firmness than she felt. I belong here.

Such funny little words. Such a funny feeling, to belong anywhere. Was she ever going to get the hang of it again?

The SUV’s engine roused as Avery closed the passenger-side door of his own car. Ellie took a deep breath, and when he dropped down into the seat she scooted over and did the next awkward thing. Her lips met his cheek. As kisses went, it was just a shy peck, and she retreated to her side of the car with fire-hot cheeks and her heart beating thinly against her ribs.

She’d gained a little weight, but she still felt . . . well, oddly clear. As if sometimes the light would shine right through her. She couldn’t decide if it was comforting, or . . . not.

Avery sat very still for a moment, before jamming the key in the ignition. “Wow.” A goofy grin split his face, and his hair was a furnace of gold streaks. “What was that for?”

“For everything.” She settled back, and the flush died down. He wasn’t angry. It was a start.

“Any chance I can get a real kiss?” He darted her a shy glance, and Ellie ducked her head, her hair sweeping forward. It was still pale as Auntie’s had been, but the waves in it were new. It was growing out nicely, and Livvie often sighed and ruffled it, just as she easily ruffled Avery’s dark-gold head.

At least Ellie knew what to say to him. “Pushing your luck, Fletcher.”

“Wouldn’t be the first time. Ell?”

“Hmm?”

He twisted the key, and the Del Toro purred. The Marconi crackled into life, one of Hellward’s slower songs lifting gently from the speakers he’d installed by hand. That was why the car was a hulk, because he wanted to fix it himself. He would even teach Ellie how to do some of it—she had helped with the wiring, snatching her fingers back when suppressors sparked against her Potential.

“So, are we . . . you know, dating?”

Oh, Mithrus. How am I going to answer that? She decided to take another small risk, since it seemed to be a day for it. “Kind of.” Weighed it, found it wanting, so she added a little bit more. “I mean, if you want to.”

“Finally.” He rolled his eyes, dropped the Del Toro into reverse, and backed them carefully out of the parking space. It was agonizing to go so slowly, sometimes, and he was irritating as all hell.

But he was steady. He’d grown up.

Have I?

“I thought you’d never ask,” Avery continued, craning back over his shoulder as they reversed. He turned back to the front, and his hand not-quite-casually brushed her shoulder. “So I can call you my girl now?”

“I guess.” A warmth began inside her, the last of the cold leaching away.

“Hot damn. Well, where do you want to go?”

Ellie leaned back in the seat and shut her eyes. My baby has a witchy eye, Hellward sang, scratchy and rough, but with a lilt behind the words. She’s my baby, all right.

“Anywhere,” she said, quietly. “Anywhere, with you.”