Wayfarer: A Tale of Beauty and Madness (Tales of Beauty and Madness) (5 page)

I
T HAD ALL BEEN USELESS, ANYWAY.
T
HE
S
TREP HADN’T
even noticed that Ruby hadn’t dropped her off. Dad would have been furious.
What I pay them had better keep my baby girl safe
, he would say. Mom would have gotten That Look, the one that promised she would politely but firmly take someone to task. The Strep would have just given some saccharine platitude, and then moved on to making it about
her
in some way.

Still, as soon as Ellie stepped through the heavy ironbound door, she knew something was afoot. She leaned against the door’s cold solidity, heart racing and legs limp as overcooked cabbage. Her skirt, its blue and green plaid wearing through near the hem, shivered along with her.

For a moment she closed her eyes and tried to pretend she was just coming home from a normal day, that she would hear Antonia’s cheerful
hello there, stranger!
when she walked into the kitchen and the phone would ring—Dad, checking to see she was inside safe. And there would be her mother’s footsteps, light and quick, almost dancing, or the thump-whir of a loom as she wove.

Instead, she smelled charmscorch. Disturbed dust. Laurissa was working again today, and exhaustion threatened to drag Ellie right down into a puddle on the black and white squares of the foyer.

God. Not today. Please, not today.

The entire house was buzzing, too. A crackling in the air with the charmscorch and the smoky scent of Laurissa’s anger, the scraping and scurrying of motion behind all the silent walls.

There was a slight susurrus, and Ellie opened her eyes to find the new girl, in that same sloppy peach sweater, perched on the staircase like a plump little bird. Rita crouched, and peered through the lace-iron balustrade. Little gleams of eyes, and that lank hair. Scabs on her knees to match Ellie’s, and her skirt rucked up almost indecently.

“She’s in a mood,” Rita whispered, a breath of sound. “Be careful.”

Great.
“I can tell,” Ellie whispered back.
Poor kid, stuck with her all day. Is she gonna send you to school? Where, public? Mithrus.
Public schools in New Haven were
not
fun. At least nobody got knifed in the hallways at Juno.

No, we just get driven home by Ruby and almost get eaten by minotaurs.

Rube was going to want some groveling before she forgave Ellie for losing
her
temper. Another wave of weariness swamped her. Why was she the one always apologizing?

Because you’re a useless charity case. It’s your role in life, Ellen. Get used to it.

Rita vanished up the stairs, a swift shadowy scuttle. “Thanks,” Ellie whispered in her wake. The girl might even have heard.

Maybe Rita could be . . . an ally, sort of. Couldn’t she? If she was smart, she’d see that banding together might afford both of them some cover. Laurissa was impatient with the new girl, but not
angry
. Not like she was with Ellie, who for the life of her could not figure out what the hell she’d ever done to make the woman so furious. At first she’d tried harder to maybe make Laurissa like her, but that never seemed to work with any predictability.

Did Rita have some trick to it, one Ellie could learn?

What would it be like to grow up with the Strep? At least Ellie could remember something different. Something better, no matter how far away.

A short, high cry came from the depths of the house. She flinched.

It was the sound of a charmer’s rage, and even more dust blew itself through the halls in swirls and eddies. The hurrying sounds became cleaning staff, probably hired for the day, and an involuntary half-laugh escaped Ellie as she realized two things.

One, the Strep was charming in her workroom, and as usual lately, things weren’t going well. Which meant Ellie would be called in to help.

Two, it looked like Laurissa was throwing another party. A real one, not just a charmweed bender for one of her boyfriends. Instead of getting some room to breathe while Laurissa and her toy of the moment smoked and laughed and made animal noises behind closed doors, there would be a whole houseful of people the hostess had to impress.

It would be the first party since Dad’s . . . accident. Derailing.

Death.

Laurissa would be sugar with the guests, but if anything went wrong—and Mithrus knew
something
would—guess who would feel it most?

Great.

• • •

A stone rectangle cut into the heart of the house, nothing to soften the bare walls, full of the smell of dampness, heated dust, and the faint odor of live charming changing from day to day, a Twist of its own. Today it was the sharp yellow of vinegar desperation. Yesterday it had been strawberries, sweet just before rotting. They weren’t precisely smells, sometimes, but that was how the brain translated them. At least, that was the theory nowadays.

Laurissa stood in front of a stone plinth, her spray-stiff, mussed hair all but crackling with frustration. Her hands were fists, and Ellie saw with some small traitorous satisfaction that a vein at her temple was pulsing. The back of her suit jacket held a large, visible crease, and her pink stiletto-heeled Pak Chin shoes had been kicked into a corner. Barefoot on cold stone, the Sigiled charmer snarled silently and watched thin threads of steam-Potential unravel themselves from a pair of narrow, knee-high leather boots propped on the plinth. A pricey custom job, it looked like, probably already late to the client since Laurissa had overbooked again. Ellie’s gaze swiftly unraveled the failing charm, tracing it back to its source.

Wow. She’s really slipping if that’s not working right
. The repair would be easy, just a tweak of a few threads of throbbing Potential to get them to settle into the leather right.

There was no reason the charm should have been misbehaving at all. It was a ridiculously simple set: surefoot, lookgrabbing, rain proofing. A Sigiled charmer should have been able to do that in her sleep, especially if she produced a symbol when her Potential settled,
and
could reliably produce that same symbol in all her work. A pair of spike-heeled shoes, Laurissa’s personal trademark, along with florid overdone curlicues, worked their way into every piece she charmed.

Also, they could be added to every piece Ellie charmed
for
her, since Ell’s own Potential hadn’t settled yet.

Not all high-powered charmers could Sigil. It took an Affinity for physical objects, a specialization inside the elemental Affinities—water, air, earth, fire, metal, wood, stone—and a healthy dose of luck. Clan sigils were different; as living symbols for a group of charmers tied together by blood, Affinity, or loyalty, they evolved and could die out.

Sometimes a charmer only Sigiled once, when their Potential settled. Charmers who could reliably do it could charge a bundle, since Sigiled pieces didn’t unravel, ever. The charm was wedded permanently to the physical base, and the only way to undo it was to destroy the item itself. If anyone could figure out how to Sigil cars, they’d make a
bundle
.

Maybe it was the pregnancy hormones affecting the Strep’s concentration. She hadn’t been charming right for months now. Usually getting knocked up made a settled charmer’s work more powerful in certain ways, but it varied according to age and Affinity.

Too much to think about. Ellie just concentrated on watching.

Laurissa let out another sharp sound of frustration. Shelves of dark wood bolted to the walls jittered a little—bottles and trays of dried or distilled herbs; pieces of feather, bone and fur; canisters of charmahol and colorless volatile sylph-ether spirit; metal or wooden discs in various sizes for temporarily attaching Potential to before it spooled off into complex patterns; all the various supplies a working charmer needed.

You could work with just pure Potential, sure. But it was easier to anchor it to a physical base, and
way
easier to use sensitized materials that had been sitting in a workroom for a while. You did have to periodically clean things out, because otherwise they’d get . . . well, things would soak up a lot of Potential.

They would start to act almost
alive
.

Ellie had cleaned the workroom herself not three months ago, as winter crouched over New Haven. She’d even waxed the ancient shelves, but the white-glove treatment Laurissa subjected every corner to had found the faintest smudge of dust. The punishment for that had been awful.

A shudder went down Ellie’s back. She ignored it, flattening herself against the wall by the locked door; the special oiled belt moved slightly from its hook, its buckle tapping once. It was supple and broad, that belt, and if you didn’t move fast enough, it would catch you where it didn’t show.

Most of the time the Strep didn’t use the buckle. There was that to be grateful for, at least.

On the other side of the door, colorless Rita was doing the same wallflower act, shivering at the stony chill. It was looking like she didn’t feel safe from the Strep, either.

That would have been really interesting, but Ellie didn’t have any attention to spare.

“Son of a
bitch
,” Laurissa breathed. “It’s going wrong. Why is it going
wrong
?”

Ellie kept her breathing to short soft sips. The important thing right now was not to be noticed. Rita looked like she had it down to an art form, and Ellie’s chest hurt for a moment, a swift lancing pain.

Screw it. I’ve got all I can handle over here
. Her heart pounded, paying no attention to the fact that she was going to pass out if it kept this up. Spilling to the carefully swept floor in a heap was only a temporary measure, though. It would set the Strep off like nothing else, and today that might even mean the buckle. She was just angry enough not to worry if it made a mark somewhere Ellie couldn’t hide.

At least she’d been able to change out of her school uniform. Sprawling on the floor with a skirt was
indecorous
, as Ruby would say, rolling her eyes and twisting her glossed lips in imitation of her redoubtable Gran.

She is going to be sooo pissed at me for calling her a bitch.

Laurissa’s shoulders sagged. For a few moments she seemed to shrink inside her clothes, and Ellie’s throat was desert-dry again. The posture reminded her of the minotaur’s slumping shamble and its fuming blur as drops of angry maroon ectoplasmic fluid rose in shuddering scarves.

The jolt of copper terror kept her upright, and she blinked as Laurissa snapped her fingers, a vicious dry click. “Ellen, sweetheart? Come and take a look at this.” Dulcet false honey, one of the worst tones she could use. The
soon I’m going to hurt someone
voice that other adults would always mistake for kindness. “It’s a little thing, but difficult. Good practice for you.”

I’ll just bet.
Ellie edged forward. Her old trainers were a little too small, pinching her toes, but there was no way of getting new ones. Her jeans were also a little too short, but she’d stolen them a bit oversized and could just undo the hem with a threadcharm. “Yes ma’am. What should I do?”
As if I don’t know. At least if I was charm-whoring down on Southking I’d get a credit or two for this.

“Oh, maybe you can see what needs to be done.” She waved her long fingers, the Chinin Red lacquer flashing dangerously under ceiling-moored, insulated electric bulbs. The light in here wasn’t the usual gold of incandescents; it was a pale drench passing through buffers wedded to glass so a stray bit of Potential wouldn’t explode things and rain danger on anyone below.

For a second Ellie had a mad thought of shattering the bulbs while the Strep was working. It might even be worth it, if she could find a chink in the buffers.

“I don’t know.” Hedging was probably safest. “It looks pretty complex to me. . . .”

“Oh, come now.” Impatient, a toe tapping. “Top of your class, aren’t you? My little Margie could learn
plenty
from you. Couldn’t you, darling? Don’t slouch. Come here and let Ellie show you how to
charm
.” The vengeful glee under the words was vicious even for Laurissa, but she probably had all sorts of ways to make her sister feel insignificant.

It was one of her talents.

Margie
. What a hideous nickname. It was old and dowdy, and it probably stung Rita like hell. So much for her knowing some way to defuse the Strep.

The girl crept up, mouselike, hanging back almost as much as Ellie did.

Ell let herself take another long look at the boots, even though the charmset Laurissa was attempting was stupid-simple. There was, as Mom always said, no reason not to do even the smallest things
right
.

It was a pinch in a numb place she couldn’t afford, thinking of Mom.

The leather was already sensitized by Laurissa’s attempts. The charm
wanted
to go on right, there was already a space for it behind Ellie’s eyes, in that funny place where she could almost-not-quite physically
see
the pattern Potential wanted to take. It was pretty absurd—Potential ached to obey, longed to be used. Why other people didn’t just let it coalesce was beyond her. She would have thought the ring made it easier, except she’d always been able to sort-of-see that unspace. Maybe it was what they called charmsight, though it couldn’t be so straightforward.

Could it?

Her fingers tingled, bitten-down nails fluorescing with golden threads. The threads flowed together in complex knots that were also symbols, leaping off her flesh as Ellie smoothed down the air a half-inch away from the leather—quick graceful movements. She had to stand on her toes to go around the plinth, moving lightly as if she was back at the Vole Academy. Cami had attended in the evenings, but Ellie and Ruby had been in class together during long, syrup-slow afterschool afternoons.

For such an athletic girl, Ruby was astonishingly klutzy at the ballet barre. Just one of those things.

Charming really was like dancing. You found the rhythm, the place where the music wanted you to go, and you went with it. One-two-three, one-two-three, this one was just like a waltz.