Wayfarer: A Tale of Beauty and Madness (Tales of Beauty and Madness) (12 page)

Holding it while it squirmed and fought, keeping it closed tight to keep everyone happy. Or trying to, at least.

“Oh, come on.” Ruby twisted the wheel and they nosed into the line of cars heading for the exit. “If you get any thinner we’ll be able to see through you on a sunny day.
Hag
is not a good look on you, kiddo.”

“Seems to work for Laurissa,” Ellie cracked, and Ruby loosened up enough to snort a half-laugh.

Cami didn’t. Her worry was like static, a continual buzzing against the back of Ellie’s tender skull. “What is she d-doing t-to you, Ellie?”

The hint of stutter, returning like yesterday’s curse in the old feytales, rasped against Ellie’s nerves.
Fair
didn’t mean things were erased, or that the clock would be turned back and the people you needed would be alive again.

No wonder your parents left you for me to raise!

Even
fair
wasn’t fair. If either of them got in the Strep’s way, or drew her attention with a misjudged gesture—like, God forbid, saying something to Mother Heloise, or who knew—Laurissa would roll right over them.

Now that the Strep was playing with black charm—because the watch
had
been, there was no denying it—she was
incredibly
dangerous.

Too dangerous for her friends. There was another unwelcome thought: Had Laurissa become too dangerous for Dad, too?

Had the derailing out in the Waste saved her father from something
worse
? How long had Laurissa been playing with black charm? Nobody would believe Ellie if she told, and if she
did
go to a magistrate and make an accusation . . .

For once her imagination failed her completely. “Nothing I can’t handle. Can we please get off the subject? Mithrus
Christ
.”

As soon as she said it, the quiet inside the car changed as if a cloud had drifted over the strengthening spring sunshine. A breeze from nowhere riffled against every surface. Ruby’s eyes widened, and she jammed on the brakes; Cami’s shocked exhalation arrived a beat later.

“Sorry,” Ellie mumbled. Her head rang, and her fingers tingled. It was just a Potential-pop, like a weather front moving through, and she knew she shouldn’t have let it slip like that.

If anyone suspected how
easy
charming had become, how the equations were making sense, the whole thing might fall down around her ears. The thought of trying to pick up the wreckage again made her even more tired.

“I don’t like this.” Ruby eased the car forward again. “You used to tell us things, Ell. Now you’re just . . .”

“Quiet.” Cami’s hand was on her shoulder. “Please. Talk t-to us.”

What can I say?
“I don’t have anything to talk about.”

The rest of the ride passed in excruciating silence. Cami’s hand didn’t move, and she squeezed a couple times, gently but with the iron river of a Vultusino’s strength running in her bones. She wasn’t born into the Family and she didn’t talk about what had happened, but Nico had probably done something to make sure she wouldn’t leave him behind again.

Avery Fletcher hadn’t said anything to anyone about Ellie selling charm on Southking, because she hadn’t been hauled out of class to account for it.

There. She’d done it. She’d thought about him again.

Ellie sagged into the seat and closed her eyes. They let her pretend she was asleep until they reached Perrault Street, and she was through the high iron gates with the Strep’s Sigil worked into them before Cami could struggle out of the Semprena’s backseat. The door slammed, Ruby gunned it, and she’d switched the radio on, because the thudding of the bass suddenly thumped out from the little car as it arrowed down Perrault to turn on Woodvine and head for the Vultusino castle.

Ellie stood in the sunshine, little tremors like a bird’s heartbeat running through her bones, and felt cold all the way through.

S
PRING
B
REAK WAS TRADITIONALLY AROUND
F
ISH
D
AY,
and the Friday before it started was full of fertility-festival jokes. Women young and old were buying swellfree tea or anti-conceive charms; Ellie could have made a pretty penny down on Southking if she hadn’t been trapped in the stone workroom every moment she wasn’t at school or allowed to sleep.

The shoes were still selling. Beribboned red pumps with lightfoot charms, cushioned platform wedges with chips of glitter imbedded in the heels and weight-balance charms to keep the wearer upright, boots and more boots, brown and black and red and sky blue, some with heels, some without, all with tinkling music-step charms, a whole series of black patent-leather shoes with supple brass scales holding minor lift and attraction charms . . . It was endless. Homework blurred together inside her head, her tongue jumbled, and if Cami hadn’t covered for her in French the results would have been dire indeed.

As it was, there was hour upon hour of charming after said homework, because Laurissa would drift past the door of the blue bedroom every fifteen minutes or so.
How much longer, little Ellen? There’s work to be done . . .

The ledgers were still there behind the glass door. She tried to plan a way to get to them, maybe find out what the Strep was hiding, but every second she wasn’t working had to be used for sleeping, and it was never enough. Her brain would just shut down, the plan never quite taking form.

She regularly fell asleep in High Charm Calc now, but the equations had stopped being troublesome. Often she’d wake with a jolt to find her pencil scratching through a test or a pop quiz, writing equations and solutions in a cramped version of her usual slanting narrow handwriting. She got most of them right, too, only fudging the ones she was awake enough to unwork.

It figured.

“No plans for Break?” Ruby kept asking. She also didn’t poke the radio into full blare until after dropping Ellie off, probably so Ell could snatch a few minutes of rest. Cami gamely tried to keep up Ellie’s part of the conversation as well as her own, and her leftover stutter had largely vanished. Maybe the extra practice was greasing the words free or something.

Today, Ellie sighed, looking down at the linoleum as the flock of girls freed from Juno’s restrictions for a whole week spilled for the front door. “Another party,” she managed. Her tongue didn’t seem to want to work quite right. “I guess.”
She has Rita doing the cooking, and the maids were cleaning top to bottom again.

“Is the Strep still trying to catch that Fletcher kid?” Ruby kept asking about
him
, too.

The sharp jolt behind her breastbone woke her out of her daze, briefly.
Be cautious.
“Don’t know. Don’t care.”

Cami was silent, and Ellie didn’t realize trouble was coming until they hit the front door instead of the side doors. Later she thought maybe Cami had been steering them that direction, or maybe it was just habit. In any case, Ellie dug in her heels, but it was too late.

Because down at the bottom of Juno’s wide granite steps, oblivious to the girls milling around and whispering and some of them doing everything but pointing at him, was Avery Fletcher, the gold in his hair throwing back sunlight with a vengeance. He stood there like he had all the time in the world, and he was looking right at her.

Oh, Mithrus
. Ellie let herself be carried down the stairs. It was too much effort to protest. Maybe he’d just see she was tired and leave her alone?

No such luck, because he brightened visibly the closer she got. Then he looked puzzled, eyebrows coming together. By the time the trio hit the bottom of the steps, his expression had changed. The brightness rubbed away, and his jaw was close to dropping.

Ruby popped her gum, hopping off the last step. “Hey, Fletch. You’re persistent, I’ll give you that.”

“You look
awful
,” he returned, and for a lunatic instant she thought he was telling
Ruby
that. It would have been worth a chuckle or two, except he was staring at
her
, and all of a sudden every rubbed-bare, worn-through, shabby or broken spot on her started to throb painfully. “And . . . Christ, have you been on charmweed?”

Ellie found her tongue. “You’re an asshole.”

“Young love!” Ruby addressed the air over Avery’s head, obviously delighted with this turn of events. “It’s shameful how you two carry on—”

Cami stepped forward, grabbed Ruby’s arm. “Shhh.” And wonder of wonders, she actually
shut Ruby up
. “Maybe
you
can t-talk some s-sense into her. It’s her stepmother.”

“Choquefort?” His nose wrinkled. “Yeah, she’s a piece of work; Mom says she’s a barracuda. But . . .” He stopped, a curious look spreading over his face. Ellie swayed, wishing Cami was still holding her elbow. It was somehow easier to move with the two of them bracketing her—and when had she become the meat of the sandwich? That was always Cami’s job. “Huh.”

There, in front of the school and everyone, he stepped forward. Ellie almost flinched, but his fingers were on her cheek, warm and gentle. He stared into her eyes for what seemed an eternity, and she had time to see the threads of gold in the dark forest-green and brown of his irises, and the faint dusting of freckles across his tanned nose. Even his skin held some gold, and she felt a dozy sort of surprise.

“Mithrus,” he breathed. “I think I’d better take her to a stitcher.”

“Is it that b-bad?” The fear in Cami’s tone mixed with a tide of whispers and pointing.

Ellie didn’t care. Some strained muscle inside her had been tearing, and when it finally gave way she leaned forward with a sigh, and her forehead hit Avery’s shoulder. He was solid and comforting, and for a moment she wondered how the weedy little kid she’d known had turned into this wall.

There was a subtle
click
, as if the world had stopped, some linchpin dropping into place. Ellie exhaled, and maybe Fletcher was stiff with shock. He just stood there for a moment, and she heard Cami speaking. It wasn’t important. What was important was that the spinning had stopped, and for a moment she could really, truly rest. The inside of her skull wasn’t full of noise now. Instead, it felt like her head was full of brain again. A heaviness, meaty and comforting.

Just a little unwelcome, too, because it meant she had to use the heaviness to think, to plan. Something . . .

Something is very wrong with me.

“You can follow if you want.” Avery sounded amused, and very calm. “But I plan on driving pretty fast, de Varre.”

What am I doing?
Her entire body ached, and the little tingles all over her were a product of his nearness. Why did he do that? Was it just because he was a charmer from a pretty powerful clan, or was it something . . . personal . . . about him?

Did it matter? So far, the Strep hadn’t twigged to the fact that Ellie had tampered with the blacklove charm. If she did find out, or if she got any breath of Ellie hanging out with Avery Fletcher . . .

She jerked her head up and tore away. Fletcher made a short swift movement, as if to catch her, but she flinched quickly enough that his hand closed on empty air. “Leave
off
.” Her tongue felt funny, a little too big for her mouth. “What do you think you’re doing here, charmer boy? Run on home.”

He just regarded her levelly, his hand dropping back to his side. “You need a stitcher, Ell. You’re so drained you’re almost transparent. Where have you been working freelance?”

“Working?” Ruby cracked her mouthful of chocolate beechgum, a popcharm noise, as she stared at the circle of onlookers. Most of them dropped their gazes and edged away, and her white, white smile widened a trifle. “What?”

Cami was utterly still, her blue gaze locked to Ellie’s profile. And of course, she was the one smart enough to figure out what Fletcher was saying.

“At home.” There was no point in lying. “She’s a Sigiled charmer, Fletcher. I might apprentice.” The lie was immediate, and hot against Ellie’s teeth. “Drop it.”

“So
that’s
what’s been—”

Ellie had her wits about her again, thank Mithrus. “Look, I
told
you to leave me alone. What does it take, huh?” She pitched it loud enough to be heard by every blessed girl in front of the school, and had the small squirming satisfaction of seeing him flinch and blanch a little. She took in a deep endless breath, and the lightning-flash of intuition inside her head told her what would hurt most.

I can’t say that to him. I just can’t.

So she settled for the next best thing. She turned on her heel, her mouth stinging with the words she wanted to let loose, and stalked blindly away. Ruby hurried after her, and the smell of burning insulation on the breeze was crisp and nasty.

I’m doing that
, she realized as the stairs to her left shimmered, the defenses sensing hurtful, active Potential trembling on the edge of taking spike-edged charmform.
It’s me.
A bubble of silence formed around her, and she kept her head up and her movements brisk.
It’s anger. Like the Strep. Mithrus, please, Mithrus, God’s-son, please, don’t let it Twist me. Don’t make me a minotaur.

“Ell?” It was Cami, the luckcharms on her maryjanes jingling and tingling, silvery-sweet. “Ellie
please wait
, he just wants to talk, Ellie!”

“I don’t think she’s in the mood, honey.” Ruby had to actually hurry to keep up for once, and she sounded a bit breathless. “What was he talking about? Do we need to visit a stitcher? Gran can—”

Charity. Always with the fucking charity.
“No!” It burst out, high and hard, and Ellie fought back the charm wanting to take shape. Forced herself to think of High Charm Calc equations instead, the difficult knotty ones that returned a different answer each time before your Potential settled. It was work trying to get them to react as if her Potential was unsettled, they kept serving up a single unambiguous answer now. “I can’t. She’d
kill
me.”

“This might save her the trouble.” Cami glided along beside her, not put out by the speed of their passage at all. “What did he mean, huh? Freelance? Ell, come on. C-come on. P-please.”

“Leave him
out
of this!” It was almost a scream, and her throat was dry, aching with the effort to keep rage-hot Potential pushed down, put away. “Mithrus
Christ
, just leave me
alone
!”

Ruby’s fingers locked around her arm. She yanked Ellie to a stop, and their skirts both swung, flirting with a breeze that was part spring but mostly disturbed Potential, shimmering between them as the barriers of their personal spaces flexed and receded.

“No.” For once, Ruby de Varre sounded—and looked—completely serious. “I am
not
leaving you alone. Something’s going on, and I’m going to get to the bottom of—”

“Quit being a self-centered bitch, Ruby.” The words flew out before she could stop them, that hurtful little intuition telling her what would hurt Rube the most. “I realize it’s your default, but just
try
, okay?”

The other girl’s fingers bit in, and for once there wasn’t a fresh bruise hurting somewhere on Ellie’s body. The Strep hadn’t touched her for a while now, all that was left were yellow-green ghosts on her skin.

They didn’t know anything about how bad it could get, and Ellie had to keep it that way. It wasn’t fair, it wasn’t
right
, but that was the way it was.

She was trapped.

“I’m gonna overlook that,” Ruby said softly, “because I
am
a self-centered bitch. Fine and good. But
you need help
.”

“D-d-d-don’t fight.” Cami was breathless, and the edges of her straight black hair lifted on the uneasy breeze. “Please don’t f-f-f—”

“Too late,” Ellie informed her curtly. “Shut up.”

Cami’s hand flew to her mouth, caging broken words. Reddened lips, slim fingers, her skin glowing like an alabaster lamp, the Vultusino girl stared at Ellie with wide, tear-brimming blue eyes.

Ruby’s grip lessened. She stared at Ellie like some exotic new type of bug crawled wet and stinking from beneath a rock, waving its misshapen feelers as it clacked its mandibles.

The strained, stretched feeling inside her tightened painfully. Her skin was too taut, as if she was Twisting
inside
where nobody could see. Was that what it felt like when a minotaur began?

Boiling up inside her, black and viscous, the words crowding up behind her teeth tasted like burnt metal. Why stop at just one hurtful thing? She might as well go on.

Was this what Laurissa felt like, right before she started screaming?

The pavement around her rippled, as if she was throwing off sunheat. Ruby’s hair blew back, and Cami leaned forward a little, pushing against the resistance.

No. Don’t hurt them. You can’t hurt them.
Even though she just had. And it was so easy, so goddamn easy, to just open her mouth and let the rest of it fly.

So she did the only thing she could.

Ellie whirled, her sleek blonde hair ruffling out, and ran.