Lili Crow - Wayfarer

SOUTHKING STREET WAS A DIFFERENT BEAST AT NIGHT. Still crowded, but the regular shops were locked and barred, the daytime tents and stalls darkened. Caged foxfire charmlights hung in the traditional slotted-tin lanterns, showing where the nighttime trades were conducted.

Poisonseller, blackblade knifemartin instead of a dealer in clean honest steel, fortune-makers and charmthieves, the entire street a chamber in the beating heart of New Haven’s shadow economy. The Families, like Cami’s, took a cut from each transaction after dark too; the raw materials for some of the blackest work had to be imported and thus toll was paid to the de Varres as well—Ruby’s Gran, kind as she was to her granddaughter’s friends, did not keep her stranglehold on the import and export business with cupcakes and charity.

Charity case. Well, I’m bound for hell now.

Ellie leaned against the counter, taking deep breaths flavored with the steaming of smoke-hot peanut oil. The jack running the food stall was broad-shouldered, wearing a flannel shirt despite the heat from the grill, and the pattern of green scales on her cheeks flushed red every time she glanced at Ellie. Her hair was aggressively short, and Ell kept a careful eye on the jack’s expression.

She was probably driving away custom, leaning here in her school uniform and nursing a cold-sweating bottle of limon.

Why, of all places, had she come down here ? Southking was dangerous even during the day, and she had her blazer on, and . . .

Her brain froze. She shivered violently to get it working again.

Where do I go?

Going to Cami would mean getting mortgaged to the Family, and while Cami was a friend, there wasn’t anything good about the rest of them. Even non-charmers knew that . Family meant blood , and they kept what they took.

Ruby . . . well, her grandmother was kind, all right, but also scary as fuck with those white, white teeth and that unblinking gaze. You never wanted Edalie de Varre angry at you, that was for damn sure, and really, after Ellie had been all bitchy, Ruby might get in a snit and . . .

Well, that wasn’t really fair, was it. Ruby would go to the ends of the earth, for Cami. Last winter, both of them had. Ruby had even shown up outside the house on Perrault to pick Ellie up. Cami’s in trouble, it’s bad. And out the window of the blue bedroom Ellie had climbed, into the killing cold.

The bigger problem was what would happen if she ran to one of her friends and Laurissa came to fetch her. Laurissa had meant to do something final, something irrevocable, and neither Cami nor Ruby were capable of handling . . .

Her brain froze again. She couldn’t make a plan with all the noise in her head and the freezing between her synapses.

“How much longer you gonna stand around, girl?” The jack barely turned her head, addressing the words over her shoulder with edged disdain. “Scarin’ off my business.”

I doubt anyone finds me a threat. “Soon,” Ellie replied dully. “I’ll leave when I’ve finished.”

The fan of scales marching up the jack’s cheeks swelled a little more, each one rising individually and flushing, turning from gem-green to bright crimson. It was oddly fascinating, but staring wasn’t polite. Born Potential-mutated or developing latent feathers or fur when they hit puberty, jacks were always angry. A jack’s a powder keg , the saying went, and after seeing a few streetfights on Southking during the day between Cryboy’s crew and interlopers with other gang colors knotted at wrist or knee or forehead, she believed it.

“Mithrus Christ ,” the jack at the grill hissed. “Stop crying, charmer bitch. You shouldn’t even be here. Go home.”

I don’t have a home, thanks. She took the quarter-bottle of limon and stepped away from the counter, uncertainly.

The night sighed around her, New Haven taking a breath before another squeeze of its hidden hearts propelled Potential through its tissues. Even the trashulks, gray and squat on their squares of charmgrass, were dozing as they digested the day’s rubbish. She looked down at the pavement, starred with bits of quartz and lumps of dirty beechgum and other refuse pounded flat, and the vision of each bit of concrete as a ribbon artery feeding into the inner Waste of the core where the sirens howled and minotaurs lurked in a cloud of uneasy chaos-driven Potential threatened to explode her skull and leave her a witless wandering jobber.

She forced herself to think, or at least try to. If she went to Cami or Ruby, the Strep would certainly follow. Mithrus Christ alone knew what would happen then. She couldn’t bring the Strep down on them.

Where? Juno? I can’t live at school.

That was another thing. She’d miss homework, and there was school in the morning. Mithrus, who cared? There were bigger problems. Like where she was going to sleep tonight. Her stomach cramped a little, but she wasn’t hungry.

Not yet.

Her schoolbag bumped against her hip. She should have tucked her credits in there , and carried them with her. Stupid, stupid Ellie, and she thought she was so smart. Her hands and knees throbbed, scabbed over and swelling with each beat of her hummingbird pulse. She swung the bottle of limon once, twice, the sweet carbonated liquid fizzing and sloshing.

Why am I doing this? Like it’s a weapon.

Then, miserably, she knew. Her chin lifted, her gaze swinging across the street . . . and there, lounging in the shadow near a knifemartin’s tent, Cryboy turned his head. Negligently, slowly, and in a moment he was going to see her.

Ellie’s breath slammed out so hard soft black flowers bloomed at the edges of her vision. The weeping fluid slicking the jack’s cheeks under the bone spurs sliding along his cheeks glistened in the shifting dusklight, and for a moment she saw how it might have been if he hadn’t been born a jack. He might have been handsome, in a cruel sort of way, with the soft shelf of dark hair over his eyes and his full lips.

Her fingers tightened on the bottle. If he saw her—

A hand clamped onto her arm. “What the hell are you doing here ?”

She looked up, blinking away a strand of pale hair, and met Avery Fletcher’s green-gold gaze.

Oh, hell . And despite trying not to, Ellie Sinder burst into tears.

“I should have known.” A muscle in his cheek twitched. “All of a sudden I get this overpowering urge to wander after dark, it just won’t let me be, I go out for a drive and end up here. I should have known it was you.”

Do you think I charmed you or something? Ellie swiped at her wet cheeks with her free hand. Cryboy was still across the street, but maybe he hadn’t recognized her. Mithrus knew she’d never worn a Juno uniform here before. “G-g-g-go—” The words refused to come, as if she was Cami and her tongue kept tripping. Her heart was going to explode if this kept up.

“Stop telling me to fuck off, will you? It gets old.” He examined her from top to toe, as if he’d forgotten his hand was clamped around her aching arm. “Mithrus, did you even go home today? You’re a wild one.”

I went home. Almost got killed, too . The injustice of someone else’s assumptions, as usual, stuck in her throat, a dry rock stopping anything she might want to say. Instead, she glared at him through the scrim of tears and, amazingly, Avery Fletcher threw back his head and laughed.

It was a merry sound, and it caroled over the hushed bustle of Southking at night. Cryboy’s chin continued its circuit, and for a moment his gaze locked with Ellie’s. But he looked away a split second later, as if he didn’t recognize her—or didn’t care.