Wayfarer: A Tale of Beauty and Madness (Tales of Beauty and Madness) (21 page)

Wait. She’s beautiful
. Ellie blinked several times, squeezing hot water out of her eyes. “I had to. Auntie, she’s . . . everything’s
wrong
, everything’s messed up—”

“Shhhhh.” She beckoned, and her eyes were black from lid to lid. There on the stairs, she was suddenly taller. Instead of a violently colored housedress, soft black motheaten velvet fell in heavy folds. Tiny holes pricked in the folds of night showed white skin, and Ellie’s heart gave another galvanic leap.

She’s younger. She was old before, now she’s not.

“Come to Auntie, sweetheart.” She held out her arms, and the pain was a river. It shook Ellie from top to toe and filled up her nose with snot, slicked her cheeks with wet heat and pulled every tight-strung nerve in her tired, drained body.

It shouldn’t hurt this much to live
. But really, what did she have to live
for?

Thunder again, shaking the cottage. For a bare moment, Auntie recoiled, her teeth showing. Long, curved needle-teeth flashed like the lightning, so, so white. Then she recovered and held out her long arms again, not bony anymore but smoothly muscled and young. “Come,” she whispered, and her face ran like clay under moving water.

The sobs came continuously now, shaking Ellie back and forth like a small animal in a terrier’s teeth.

Because the face that surfaced from that running-clay formlessness was terribly, softly familiar. The ring on Ellie’s right hand woke with a cascade of blue sparks.

“Sweetheart, little girl.” Her mother smiled with razor teeth, standing on the stairs. “Come upstairs. Let me hold you. Nothing will ever trouble my little dove again, no. Come. There is a room prepared, with a door to lock. It is soft and pleasant here, is it not?”

More thunder, and a sound Ellie couldn’t identify. She stared, her neck cramping as she moved forward, dreamlike, the bruise high up on the left side of her chest flowering with sweet insistent pain. A rhythmic thudding, interspersed with crackles.

“Mommy?” It was a child’s voice, small and questioning. The ring seized her finger in an iron grip, but the thing that wore her mother’s face hissed, baleful sparks lighting in her black eyes, and the circle of charmed silver loosened, sliding free. Laurissa had eyed it hungrily, and now it fell from Ellie’s finger without struggle or qualm. It chimed as it hit the floor, and she put one bare, bleeding foot on the first stair.

“That’s right,” Auntie-no-more cooed softly. “Come to me, little Columba. Little apprentice. Come to me, let me take away the pain.”

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.

“Let me go,” Ellie moaned. “Please God, Mithrus Christ, just let me
goooooo . . .
”

It was Ruby who replied. “No, you stubborn bitch, I am
not
going to let you go, and neither is anyone else!” She sped up, and Cami slipped on Ellie’s other side, carried gamely on. “Not now, not
ever
!”

They lifted her bodily over the ruins of the trellis, and Ellie cried out miserably as something inside her snapped. It was the crunch of glass breaking under a thick silk blanket. She fled into merciful soupy unconsciousness for the second time that night as the elms towered above, their black bulk diverting some of the rain until wind tossed the heavy branches and pattering silver drops fell just like chiming, icy beads.

“T
HERE’S FEY BLOOD ON MY SIDE OF THE FAMILY.”
M
RS.
Fletcher pulled the counterpane up, tucking Ellie into the softness. Rain beat against the window, the summer storm wearing itself out. “It, ah, grants us certain . . . advantages.”

Ellie blinked. Of course it would. “Unregistered?” she croaked, and the pained look on Mrs. Fletcher’s face spoke for her.

The whole charm-clan could be legally dissolved if it could be proven in front of a magistrate that some of them had fey blood. Family or Woodsdowne—or fey—might be part-human, but the
other
attached to them disqualified them from incorporating. From other things, too. Like the Charmer’s Ball, and the social season, and a whole hedge of legal and business advantages.

A clan of medic charmers might not have any clients left, even for free, if
that
happened. Ellie’s throat worked dryly as she swallowed. “I won’t tell.”

“That’s up to you,” Mrs. Fletcher said quietly and laid the back of her hand against Ellie’s forehead. “Ave tells me it was an
arachna Portia
. They’re dangerous.” She hesitated. “You have a slight fever. If it gets worse, the clan doctor will come.”

“S-s-sor—” Her teeth chattered over the word.
Trouble. I’m just trouble to everyone.

“No, don’t.” She smiled, and it was a relief to see that she had blunt, pearly human teeth. “Something should have been done about your stepmother long before now, and no wonder the
arachna
snared you. You must have been very frightened, and very alone.” Her long dark hair was pulled back into two braids, and except for the shadow of knowledge in her gaze she looked very young. Her cheekbones and jawline were half-familiar; they echoed the face Auntie had worn, but which had been the real one? Had Auntie really been the old woman, or had she been the ink-haired goddess on the stairs . . . or was the last face, the twisted hungry thing with white fangs and a writhing shadow, the true one?

Avery looked like someone else, too, but just then Ellie couldn’t remember. She stirred restlessly. He had driven them to the Fletcher estate. The Midsummer Ball had been winding down, traditional sweetmeats showered on the charmers from the mezzanine while laughter and sharp cries of delight rang against the ballroom’s roof. Bursting into that whirl of color, Potential, and crowding, Ellie had roused enough to be ashamed of the thin, dripping fey-woven rag she wore.

Mom!
Avery had bellowed, and Mrs. Fletcher had appeared immediately. The confusion retreated before her bright gaze and imperious commands, and in short order Ellie was whisked upstairs, charm-cleaned, and tucked into this pale-blue spare bedroom, the dust scorched away from the pale birch vanity with a muttered snapcharm. The sheets were crisp and fresh, and the rain beating furiously on the diamond windowpanes couldn’t get in.

“Just rest,” Mrs. Fletcher said now, softly. “You’re safe here, Ellen. Nothing can hurt you.”

It was an empty promise—because there was plenty that could hurt anywhere you looked—but Ellie just nodded wearily. Her eyes half-lidded, but all her nerves were drawn tight. She could still hear the thing on the stairs.

Come to me . . . a locked room . . . it will all be made right . . .

Those other locked doors, what had lain behind them?

Ruby, her hair wrapped in a cerise towel, had a wrinkled, worried forehead. She stood by the window, watching anxiously. “Is she gonna be okay? Really okay?”

“Of course.” Mrs. Fletcher sounded very sure. “You should call your grandmother. And, Miss Vultusino, perhaps you could let Mr. Vultusino know she’s been found? I still don’t understand how she slipped away.”

“It was my fault.” Ruby, uncharacteristically penitent, scrubbed at her hair. The scratching of the towel against her sodden curls was loud in the room’s hush. “I didn’t think . . . I mean, God. And the Strep.”

“The what?”

“The Evil S-s-strepmother,” Cami supplied, from her place near the door. She looked the least draggled out of all of them, but her blue eyes were wide and wild, and she was even more pallid than usual. “That’s what we c-c-call
her
.”

Mrs. Fletcher’s unwilling laugh was bitten in half. “Laurissa? It fits.”

“She’s wasted on something, that’s for sure.” Ruby sighed, unwinding the towel. Her hair was springing back under the warm electric light. “She was out in the garden when we found Ellie’s shoe—”

“Ruby!” Cami whispered, making a shushing motion.

“Ah, so that’s where you went. And Avery?” She had the Mom Inquisition tone, but very gentle at the same time. You could imagine telling her
everything
.

“He wanted to find her. We found her shoe, and then he tracked her while I drove. I’m licensed!” Ruby added, hurriedly. “He’s a good guy. Ave, I mean. He’s not an asshole at all.”

“
Ruby!
”
Louder, Cami’s shocked protest made the other girl grin.

Mrs. Fletcher’s mouth twitched. “No doubt he’s making a full confession to his father at this very moment. But a drugged charmer is dangerous. Do you know what she was on?”

I do.
“Poppy,” Ellie croaked, surprising them all. “Mrs. . . .”

“It’s Livvie, Ellen. You might as well call me that.”

Ellie dragged in a deep breath. If she was going to tell, it had to be now. “Rita. She’s Laurissa’s daughter. Laurissa stole her Potential.” Her tongue stole out, a dry leaf trying to wet her cracked lips. There had been so much water, but she was parched.

“Black charming? That’s a very serious charge.” Mrs. Fletcher looked thoughtful, again. Her green gown sparkled, and Ellie shrank back into the bed. How was she going to escape from here?

Where did she have to go?

Still, she was compelled to speak. “She couldn’t take mine, there’s no blood between us.”
Or sex. God.
At least the boyfriends would recover, once they got away from her. Rita might, with intensive long-term therapy from a charmstitcher. Expensive, and who would pay for that? Ellie’s chest twinged, a sore, cracked egg. “But she made me charm, and charm, and charm. . . .”

“Rest.” Livvie Fletcher had turned grave, a spark lighting in her dark eyes, so like and unlike Avery’s.

“There’s something else,” Ellie whispered. “She gave Avery—”

“Dear God.” The woman’s hand leapt to her mouth like a white bird. “
That
horrible thing? We threw it out.”

“Good.”
So tired.
Ellie’s eyes drifted closed. “I took the charm off it . . . she had . . . she had . . .”

“She had
what
?”

Ellie whispered what the charm had been meant to do, and the three horrified gasps they made in unison might have been sort of funny, if she hadn’t fallen asleep.