Lili Crow - Wayfarer

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.