Lili Crow - Wayfarer

THE GIRL IN THE WATER.

If she isn’t dead, she soon will be. Limp and boneless, she makes herself as heavy as possible. Blue ice and green slime closing overhead, crackling and creaking as it shudders and grinds. Fickle and loyal at once, the ice numbs her while it obeys her enemy’s raging shrieks.

She always knew she’d drown. The dream comes back several nights in a row, then hides for a while. Just when she starts to relax, it jumps her again. The ice stinging every inch of flesh, her shoes too heavy, sodden clothes dragging her away from hurtful air and into grateful numbness.

A splash, a scream, and frozen water shatters above her. She is sinking fast; the oddest part is how it doesn’t hurt. Her lungs burn, but it is a faraway sensation, disconnected. All she has to do is choke, and it will be over. The water will rush in, suffocation will start. Already blackness is creeping around the corners of her vision. This far down the water is darker, full night instead of dusk, and there is a shadow over her.

Fingers wrap in her hair, and now is the time to struggle. Because if the monster pulls her out of the water she’ll have to go on living in hell, and that she will not endure. There’s a single route of escape. All she has to do is blow the air out, watch the silver bubbles cascade up. Icy water will flood past the stone in her throat, fill lungs and heart and every empty part of her, and there will be darkness.

In that darkness, peace.

The hand in her hair gives a terrific yank, a spike of scalped pain spearing her skull, dragging her toward the surface of hell once more . . .

. . . then, she wakes up.

ELLEN SINDER SLID DOWN FURTHER IN HER SEAT, MOTHER Superior Heloise Endless Grace’s office suddenly, painfully bright. Her eyelids wanted to fall down to protect the vulnerable bits behind them. Her arms crossed tight over her midsection, holding everything in. Her bare knees were bruised and scabbed, and the tinkling silver luckcharms tied to the straps of her battered but polished maryjanes—Cami said she had extra, as usual, and so onto the straps they went—hushed themselves. They wouldn’t work inside the school, but they were still nice to have. Sort of comforting.

Mithrus knew she could use all the comfort she could get. This was going to end badly, she could just feel it. Anytime her stepmother showed up, inside or outside the house, it ended badly for Ellie nowadays.

“I am afraid the decision isn’t yours to make.” Golden electric light made the Strepmother’s frosted blonde mane a sterile sunburst, and today she was wearing the van Clifs, their spike heels laced with surestep and glittercharms. She’d chosen the eggplant-colored Auberme suit with its forgiving cut since her middle had started to thicken, charmfiber woven into the fabric twinkling a little as she moved. The Strep continued, pitilessly, in that honeyed voice she used to get her way with other adults. “I am her legal guardian, and as such—”

“Ah, yes.” Mother Heloise’s broad pale moonface, framed by her black and white habit, was, as usual, slightly damp. She really looked like a peeled, oiled, hard-boiled egg. Pale and shiny. “Guardianship. It appears Mr. Sinder—Mithrus bless and watch over him—was very clear.” A bovine nod, her jaw working slightly. “The conditions of your guardianship are stringent, madam. And one of them is little Ellen’s continuation at and graduation from both this school and Ebermerle Charmcollege.” A beatific, moronic grin spread the Mithrus nun’s ruddy lips, and if you were an idiot you might miss the sharp intelligence in her small, dark eyes. “We have a copy of the will on file, and Mr. Sinder’s wishes are quite, quite plain. Yes. Quite plain.”

I didn’t know about that . It was just like Dad to have things set up, but he’d always underestimated his second wife. Once Laurissa Choquefort-Sinder got her head together with another lawyer, the trust Ellie’s father had left would either be drained or so tangled up in the legal system it wouldn’t help Ell at all.

Still, it was nice to know he’d thought about it. Ebermerle was the college for charmers; if you didn’t apprentice with a clan or a powerful charmer you had to have a degree to get licensed.

Good luck getting apprenticed with the Strep feuding with half the charmers in town. Charmers were a picky, jealous bunch anyway, and the Strep was an outsider in more ways than one. She’d been tolerated because she was powerful enough to produce a trademark Sigil, that fiery symbol of two high-heeled shoes Ellie sometimes saw in her nightmares.

Well, and also because Dad had been an inter-province lawyer, and you didn’t want one of those mad at you. He’d loved Laurissa, at least at first.

If Ell’s stepmother took her out of St. Juno’s Academy, it would be time to put the Plan into action. Hanging around the stone house on Perrault Street all day with the Strep screaming at the slightest thing was not, as Ruby would say, even close to copacetic. Neither was charming bolts and bolts of cloth into high-priced couture, or pairs and pairs of footwear that would bear Laurissa’s trademark, added after Ell did the charming—which she never saw a penny of, really, but at least right now she could escape to Juno.

Both Rube and Cami would be wondering what was going on. She’d been called out of High Charm Calculus, which was normally a blessing, but as soon as she’d entered the office of Juno’s Mother Superior and smelled the Strep’s burnt-cedar anger, her stomach had rolled over and given that same sick thump.

“There are much better —and more appropriate —schools.” The Strep was trying, Ellie had to give her that. She didn’t give up easy, especially when it came to something that would likely give Ell a lot of pain.

It didn’t use to be like that. For a while after Dad had brought Laurissa home, she’d been the picture of patience and girl talk. Ellie still squirmed inside, thinking of how pathetically grateful she’d been for all that attention.

“Oh, certainly. No doubt.” The Mother nodded. If she was insulted, she gave no indication; St. Juno’s was the high-finish school for New Haven’s ruling or charm-blessed families. At least the mere-human ones. “But we must obey Mr. Sinder’s final wishes, Mithrus bless and keep him.”

The Strepmother tried gamely once more. “The question of payment—”

“—was addressed by the estate.” Mother Heloise nodded again, a slow, ruminating nod. “The will is quite clear.” Now her head came up, and her small, close-set eyes too. There was a gleam in her gaze, but her plump hands had not moved from their quiescence, folded under where her breasts would be—if she had any under the black and white habit. You could tell everything about Magdala nuns, but not Mithraic Sisters. Sexless and billowy was the ticket for them.

Maybe that was why they were teachers.

“Quite, quite clear.” Mother Heloise smiled broadly, blandly, and the exotic sight of the Strep struck speechless would have warmed Ellie all the way through if she didn’t know who would end up catching hell for this embarrassment.

And how much it was likely to hurt.

Her stepmother rose, the spike heels grinding into tired linoleum and their sparkcharms crackling. “Ellen. We are leaving .”

Mother Heloise had different ideas. “Little Ellen needs to run along back to class.” She beamed at said little Ellen, beatifically. “Such a lovely child she is, and so talented. But she is accident-prone, isn’t she? All those bruises and scrapes.”