Lili Crow - Wayfarer

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.

IT WAS RIDICULOUSLY EASY. SHE JUST PLUNGED RIGHT through the front gates, where cars and buses were locked to a standstill by the appearance of a fragile fleshly body in their midst. Someone screamed, one of the small cushioned buses laid on the horn, but she was out the gates in a flash, taking a sharp right and pounding along the cracked heaving sidewalk under the whispering elms shading this part of Juno’s northern wall.

They had black bark and violently green leaves, those trees, and Juno’s defenses resonated through living wood, Potential turning them into towering giants with fringe-fingered arms. Their shadows clutched, but she tore through them, a bright scarf of Potential-sparks tingling in her wake before winking out, one by one.

Ellie ran. And ran, blindly, until there was a snap , more felt than heard, and the buckle on her much-abused left maryjane broke. She went down in a heap, spilling onto a grassy verge in front of a small brownstone house, its white window casements secretive raised eyebrows. Its picket fence looked like tiny teeth, painted sticky sugar-white, and stood ruler-straight, barely holding back candybright red roses with queer frilled petals. It was too early for those roses, but the shimmer around them told her they were charmed, and the thought of charming made her sick.

Hands and knees, her entire worn-down body rebelling, she retched pointlessly and shivered, great gripping waves of shudders coursing through her.

A charmstitcher would be able to see what she’d been doing, maybe. Might be able to probe the vast empty space inside her head that opened up and let those wonderful pieces of work through. And they were wonderful; they sold as fast as Laurissa could show them. Her own blue bedroom was only hers now because she was making the Strep some money.