Wayfarer: A Tale of Beauty and Madness (Tales of Beauty and Madness) (4 page)

F
RENCH CLASS WILL BE THE DEATH OF ME.
A
ND NOT
from a braincramp either. Just from sheer fucking boredom.

Even the dust hung motionless in the air, shafts of liquid gold sunshine braving Juno’s charm-latticed windows to fall in orderly diamonds on the mellow-glowing wooden floor scuffed by who knew how many feet. Sister Mary Brefoil droned on about participles and turned the mellifluousness of French into murdered poetry, robbed of all its breath and fire by her flat delivery.

Ruby was openly nodding, keeping conscious in fits and starts. Cami kept giving Ellie little sideways looks, maybe because Ell had been quieter than usual.

Quiet as Cami herself used to be before the stutter broke. At least Ellie had been
useful
during that little escapade, using a High Adelton location-charm to track Cami into the darkness under New Haven.

Afterward, Nico Vultusino had put the fear of Mithrus into the Strep for a little while. It faded, of course, and then there was double hell to pay. Still, that little bit of breathing room had been just fine by Ell.

She’d
earned
it, too. The High Adelton was almost a fey charm, and it was
also
one you weren’t supposed to attempt until years after your Potential settled. The risk of Twisting was there, of course, but the bigger risk was your ability to charm getting eaten by uncontrolled loops in the charm’s structure, especially if the thing or person you wanted to find was hedged around with safeguards.

It was powerful, though, and it was one of the few that worked through stone, water,
and
air. The risk, to Ellie, had been ultimately acceptable.

Nobody knew what charm she’d used, but Nico had given her one of his long considering looks, moss-green eyes narrowed. Not much got past him, even if he was brain-soft when Cami was around. It was a good thing he had one little weak point, actually, because otherwise he’d be scarier than even Family had any right to be.

The memory sent an internal shiver through her.
You sure you can find her, Sinder?
As if she was one of his Family boys, fanged and bright-eyed, with their uncanny stillness and their taste for blood.

I can
, she’d said, firmly enough that nobody had argued. It hadn’t even been difficult.

That was scary in its own way, wasn’t it? How easy some things were. Just like slipping underwater.

Now Cami scrawled on a piece of notebook paper, slid it over to her with a practiced motion when Sister Mary turned to the board. Chalk squeaked, and Ellie looked down.

You haven’t been sleeping.

Ellie tried not to wince. Trust Cami to notice. Ruby would keep going on blithely assuming everything was grand until disaster loomed, but Cami actually
thought
about things. That was good, because otherwise Ruby would have been even more of a holy terror. Cami probably didn’t know how much she moderated their shared redhead.

Ellie waited until Sister Mary took a breath and launched into another droning spiel, then drew a smiley face with two decided slashes for eyes and a shaky arc for a mouth.
Copacetic
, she scrawled, and next to Cami’s careful almost-calligraphic letters her own looked shabby.

Run-down. Second-hand. Rubbed through. Just like everything else about her these days. Except the ring, but at Juno its stone was merely blue, pretty and quiescent. If it had charm on it, the school’s defenses would have reacted, right? She shouldn’t be worrying about whether or not it was helping her keep up with Laurissa’s demands.

Of course, every well-done charm was met with a scream and a
Stupid little whore!
As well as a slap or a vicious pinch. It never ended.
Stand up, don’t slouch. Look at you, can’t you even clean a floor right? You’re so useless. Never worked a day in your miserable little life . . .

Thinking about the constant venom made her dizzy, and she gripped the edge of their shared desk. Cami’s fingers drummed once, silently, on the scarred wooden surface.
Fine
, that little movement said,
but I’m still worried
.

There were things Ellie could have written, but none of them could possibly be construed as helpful. Instead, she took a deep breath and settled inside her skin, the subconscious
thump
as centering clicked into place familiar and comforting.

You couldn’t charm unbalanced. Well, you
could
, but it wouldn’t take as well.

Sister Mary’s desk was a towering achievement of organization. She had a cubby or a clip for everything, and the stacked papers were rigidly arranged according to a rule almost as iron as the Mithraic Order’s hedge of restrictions around its members.

Like every regimentation, it had its weak spots.

Ellie’s fingertips tingled, and the world went away. A thread of Potential slid ribbonlike through the maze of suppressive charms meant to keep Juno schoolgirls from pranking, and sweat prickled on Ellie’s upper lip, at the curve of her lower back, under her arms.

Don’t get caught.

The glass ink bottle in its scrolled silver stand had been recently refilled. Red-black liquid inside trembled. Grading ink, charmed so it wouldn’t come out and couldn’t be altered. That
particular
charm was so specific it was pretty impossible to subvert—but that specificity made it volatile when you knew your
Sigmundson’s Charms
and Tables of Correspondence
backward, forward, and sideways.

Like Ellie did. At least she was sure the ring didn’t have much to do with that; she honestly couldn’t tell why some charmers had trouble memorizing them. They were so
simple
, a language of Potential and description that, unlike French, was instantly recognizable.

Cami shifted next to her, but Ellie’s concentration had narrowed to a white-hot point. She had long ago perfected the schoolroom art of sitting still and apparently paying attention while doing something else, and a fierce spiked rose of joy bloomed deep in her chest as her charm, subtle and completely opposed to the one shivering in the ink’s uneasy fluid embrace, slid home with another satisfying
click
. The two reacted with equally satisfying violence.

CRACK.

Broken glass whickered through the air. Two ghoulgirls—Amy McKenna and Capriana Clare, both with black-varnished nails and jet-bead rosaries, playing at being black charmers—let out a shriek. Steam rose from a spray of boiling ink, and Sister Mary Brefoil, spattered and shocked, let loose a torrent of words in French
and
English that she would no doubt have to say a great many Magdalas on her own polished wooden rosary for.

Ellie exhaled softly, a shocked and amazed expression sliding over her face like the mask it was. Cami’s fingers had clenched, and her pencil was in splinters. Ruby was totally awake now, dark eyes wide and her wide grin of delight a beauty to behold.

There. My work for the day, done.

Finally, for the first time since yesterday afternoon, she’d done something right. She finally felt . . . well,
human
again.

At least, she would until she got home.

A
FEW HOURS LATER, THE BLACK
S
EMPRENA SKIDDED.
Ellie sank her fingers into the dashboard and cursed; Ruby’s disbelieving laugh pierced Tommy Triton’s wailing. There was no sound from the tiny shelf of a backseat—Cami pretty much always had her eyes shut and her lips moving in silent prayer while Ruby drove.

It was, Ellie often thought, the only way to handle Ruby
at all
.

“What the
hell
?” Rube yelled, and the brakes grabbed
hard
. Smoke rose, the smell of burning rubber thick and cloying as Tommy Triton wailed about being
born bad-charmed, baby, and wasn’t that always the way?

Ellie tried to shriek, but her mouth wouldn’t work. Instead, her jaw hung loosely, her heart triphammering inside her ribs as if Tommy Triton’s drummer was thocking around in there, high on charmweed and feeling invincible.

The long straight shot of Kelleston Avenue wasn’t the most efficient way to get to Perrault Street, but traffic had been terrible and Ruby had decided to swing out and take it. Now they’d found out
why
traffic was so snarled.

The Semprena rocked to a stop. Stood shivering like a nervous horse, its engine uneasy as its cargo’s thump-knocking hearts. Inside the thin screen of metal and glass and moving machinery, Ellie’s skin came alive, scraped ever so lightly by a charmsilver wire-brush.

“Holy
Mithrus
, do you
see
that?” Rube stared, her dark eyes huge and her knuckles white on the steering wheel.

Ellie sucked in a deep, endless breath.

This ribbon of two-lane pavement snaked down toward the industrial district, and the small shops on either side were closed up tight. Which they shouldn’t have been, since right after school’s-out was prime shopping time.

Kelleston also ran up the slope of one of the smaller hills New Haven was built on, and the shadow hulking in the middle of the road was proof positive that it wasn’t exactly a
safe
street.

If there was such a thing as a safe street. Lately Ellie had been suspecting that a whole lot less of the world was “safe” in any sense. If Dad could die and there could be tunnels under the city that would swallow your friends whole, what
else
could happen?

Her hand flashed out; she almost broke the volume knob on the stereo with a savage twist, and the sudden silence was almost as stunning as the thing in the road.

“Oh, God,” Cami moaned in the backseat, very loud in the stillness. “I’m afraid to l-l-look. Did she h-h-hit someone?”

Oh, God. Don’t look at this.
“No,” Ellie whispered. “Cami, don’t you dare open your eyes. Ruby, turn the car around.”

Kelleston ran parallel to zigzagging Southking Street for a while. And both of them passed dangerously near the core—the diseased heart of the city, where the Potential tangled and curdled, where anyone too poor or desperate to live anywhere else was trapped. Twist and jack gangs fought for territory inside the blight of the urban core—almost like a piece of the Waste except this was the Potential of too many people living all knotted together. Most cities had a kernel of disfigurement at their centers, left over from the gigantic convulsion of the Reeve after the Great War and just driven in deeper by the crowding of the poor.

Any place old enough to remember the Reeve still held the scars. That was why most cities had
New
somewhere in their names.

The thing lay slumped in the middle of the road, and no wonder the shops were bolted and barred. Thin Marus sunshine ran down the street like liquid, the inside of the car warming dangerously. Little prickles ran over Ellie, Potential flooding her nerve-rivers.

“Is it dead?” Ruby whispered.

“Oh M-M-M-Mithr-r-r-rus
what
 . . .” Cami’s teeth were chattering.

“It’s not dead.” Ellie’s throat had closed to a pinhole, she had to struggle to produce a croak. The inside of her mouth was dry and slick as dusty glass. “They don’t die.”
Not until every bit of wild magic has run itself off. And if they get out to the Waste they may not ever die; who knows?

There was a sharp sound from the back. Cami had looked.

Ellie made a shapeless noise, too, and her mother’s ring crackled out a single blue-white spark. The old, shared urge to protect Cami must have spurred Ruby into action. The Semprena’s engine revved.

The minotaur raised its heavy, graceless head, a blurring storm of Twisting charm-Potential swirling around it in a perpetual tornado of dust and waving fronds of wild magic. It must have been running for a while, because its flanks heaved as it poured up from its crouch, and you could barely tell it had once been human. A charmer, most likely, wandered too close to the urban core or full of hate or rage.

Strong, bad emotions could Twist a charmer up. But it took the febrile petri-dish of the core or the Waste to birth a minotaur. The head dropped and bone sprouted, ivory-glowing horns spreading wide and wicked, dripping with a dark red ectoplasmic fluid that came from nowhere, the body contorted and swelled until the arms thickened and the shoulders bunched with muscle. It
grew
as long as there was ambient Potential to feed it.

If you got too close, it could kill you. Or worse,
Twist
you too.

The swirling intensified. Electric chill prickled along Ellie’s skin. The higher your Potential, the more you had to fear from Twisting. Your bones could sprout through your skin, charm unraveling, each erg of your Potential scraping the inside of your flesh like jeweled bees, limbs corkscrewing and the rest of your short violent life spent creeping in the shadows, contaminating others if their Potential was high enough or they got too close, or even if you were both just unlucky.

Ruby’s hands were shaking, gripping the steering wheel with preternatural strength. The twisted hemp bracelets on her wrists were alive with uneasy charmlight.

So there is something she’s afraid of. Who knew?
The minotaur’s bulk bunched up on itself, gleaming with a horrible, dusty, wet iridescence, like oily grit on a puddle’s filthy surface. The two mad gleams that were its low-burning eyes, nearly lost in massive folds and rivers of Twisting, bone-calcifying flesh, fastened on the little black car.

Do they smell Potential?
Ellie’s heart thundered in her chest, tripping along so fast she could feel the vibration all through her. “Ruby.”
I sound calm.
“If you do not get us out of here, I will
haunt
you.”

Rube’s reply was unrepeatable. She spun the wheel and smashed the gas. The car slewed wildly, Ellie’s body loose with terror inside the cage of seat and seat belt, and Cami let out another strangled noise.

“
It’s f-f-f-following—
” Cami choked back another scream and Ellie felt a queer loose draining sensation, as if the strings of Potential married to her nerves had all twitched at once. The gravitational pull of wild, Twisting magic, maybe, and darkness crawled around the corners of Ellie’s vision. The car bucked, its tires squealing in protest, and Ellie heard herself praying in a soft wondrous tone.
Holy Queen Magdala, spouse of Mithrus Christ, watch over us—

The world righted itself with a jolt, Ruby cursing cheerfully as she held the wheel steady and feathered the brake, then jammed the accelerator to the floor. “Can’t catch me!” she yelled, the words muffled under the cotton-fuzz of shock filling Ellie’s ears. “
I’m the goddamn gingerbread wolf!
”

That’s not the way the rhyme goes.
The world came in bright shutterclicks, because her eyelids were fluttering. Every inch of charm and nerve inside her body lit up like a Mithrusmas tree, but by the time she drew in another long endless whooping breath the danger was past.

Of course Ruby didn’t slow down. The Semprena wove through traffic like thread through several needle-eyes, metal and rubber both making high stressed sounds as Ruby crowed again and again, wild long trilling whistles and snaptooth obscenities.

Afterward, Ellie was never quite sure of the route, because the city’s geography whirled and spun inside her head, refusing to make any sense. All she knew was that the car jolted to a stop near the Sandeckers’ place on Perrault, safely far enough away that the Strep wouldn’t see them, and it took Ruby a while to quit her snarl-cursing. Spring sunshine beat down, heat collecting under the windshield and sweat raised in great pearly drops all over Ellie’s body. Her hands jittered like windblown leaves.

“Mithrus,” Cami whispered. “Oh, M-Mithrus. It was one of
them
.”

“’Twas.” Ruby let out a long shaky sigh. “Wow. We’ve seen one up close now. Everyone check for Twisting.”

“
Ruby!
” The muffled, hysterical giggle from the backseat said that Cami was covering her mouth with one pale, narrow hand. She was safe, Ruby was safe, it should have all been okay.

Ellie’s lips were so dry they cracked when she could finally make her mouth work. “You could have killed us.”

“No way.” Rube shook her long fingers, flashing a dazzling, unsettled grin through the windshield. She patted the dash, a proprietary little smoothing of the charm-shaped fiberglass curve over the speedometer and charmflux meter. “The old girl has some moves. Don’t you, baby?”

“That. Was. A
minotaur
.” Ellie’s hands moved of their own accord, hitting the seat belt’s catch. A spark popped—bright blue, the ring’s stone speaking its opinion loud and clear. “You. Irresponsible.
Bitch
.” The lock button popped up, and Ellie had the dubious satisfaction of seeing Ruby’s jaw drop before she was out of the car, taking a deep breath of fresh sun-washed air and hitching up her bag onto her shoulder. The Semprena’s horn blatted, but Ellie ducked aside into the walk-through running between the Sandeckers’ and the old Claridge estate’s wall, laurel hedges growing wild up against the stone on the Sandecker side and brick, veined with red ivy, on the Claridge’s. She walked quickly, her head down, and heard the engine rev. The dusty little path, worn by who knew what since not a lot of people around here walked, was dark even under the sunshine, but the boundary and defensive charms laid into the walls on either side were comforting watchful pressures.

Her breath came in little hitching gasps. She held her hands out as she walked quickly, laurel branches fingering and scraping her hair, examining for signs of Twisting. If it happened to her, she’d lose
every
chance of ever escaping the Strep.

Her legs seemed fine, and she felt at her forehead. No tender spots except the ones from Laurissa’s bouncing her around, no thickening bone.

Maybe I’m safe.

She still didn’t believe it, not even when she ducked out of the walk-through, rounded the corner, and saw her own gate.