Kin

by Lili St. Crow

  A couple times she thought she was over it, but then the image would pop up again, just like a Fish Day paper puppet, and she would be off on another jagging run of hilarity. Still, it couldn’t last forever, and when the paroxysm retreated, she found herself striped with mud and drenched—again—cold, and having to pee something fierce.

  It was then she found out that no matter how badly she’d wanted to sneak out and prowl at night, all it took was not being able to go home for her to wish she was there, warm and safe with Gran sleeping in her bedroom and the rain beating on her window. The plane tree’s shadow would make familiar shapes on the sill, and she would fall asleep to recognizable, comforting sounds.

  Can’t go there. He’s there.

  Well, where else was there to go? Cami and Ellie didn’t need this. Conrad was kin, and he was likely to be unstoppable if someone got between him and Ruby. Nico might have a chance at taking him on . . . but her brain just gave up thinking about that, too.

  She wasn’t smart like Ellie or kind like Cami. She wasn’t strong like Gran. All she was . . .

  Selfish bitch. You probably made him awful, just like you made Thorne and Hunter turn on each other. You probably made Gran collapse, too.

  Any way you looked at it, she was poison. Trying to change into what Gran wanted at this late date was an abject failure. Now there were people dead because of her.

  That was another thing. The body in the Park. Who could she tell now?

  That detective. Haelan.

  Would he even believe her? He’d decided Thorne was guilty; would she just be making it worse? Either way a girl was dead, lying there in the rain, and Ruby was the only one who knew.

  Not the only one. Who killed her, Ruby?

  She didn’t want to think about that.

  You have to. Whoever killed her probably killed Hunter and that other girl. Put her backpack in Thorne’s room. Who would do something like that?

  Who would believe Ruby if she told? She was held to be Wild, and flighty, but not an outright liar. Still, she’d have to choose who to approach. If she could somehow manage to pour out her imaginings, if they would sit still and listen long enough . . .

  A purring broke the silence. She straightened, glancing around wildly, and the shift boiled underneath her skin again: fight or flight, fight or flight?

  The sound drew closer. A sword of blue-white sliced the darkness, stinging her night-adapted eyes. The wind rose, a fresh shower of cold water spattering across her.

  It was a car. Who would be up here? Teenagers looking for a makeout spot?

  It’s Wednesday. Nobody is going to come out here to snog at this hour, not with school tomorrow.

  She couldn’t make out the color of the car, but she was suddenly, deadly certain it was a black Semprena, its engine making a familiar sweet sound and a pair of grasping, pinching, pulling hands at the wheel, one of them wrapped with a fluid silver chain.

  Even if it wasn’t, this was not a place to be found after dark. Ruby showed her teeth, catlike, and fled.

  THIRTY-TWO

  THE REST OF THAT ACHING-COLD NIGHT PASSED IN a blur. There was the unfamiliar façade of Southking Street at night, hard-faced jacks and different tents than the regular daytime booths. Poisonseller, blackblade knifemartin, sellers of curse and hex, the gangs on every corner shooting warning glares and raucous laughter into the street when someone passed. The only areas brightly lit were the food trucks, most of them with a beefy jack or two running the night shift and deterring trouble just by their size alone.

  Ruby faded back into the shadows and cut over to Highclere, where she usually parked. Nothing for her there either; sleeping in someone else’s backyard wasn’t a good idea. She circled for a while, aimlessly, until a foggy idea crawled up out of the adrenaline-drained mush inside her skull.

  Now that she had a destination, she was aware of just how tired she was. It was a long way away, and no car to take her there. She also had to stay alert, sliding through shadows, her heart rabbiting inside her ribs every time she saw headlights or heard a noise.

  Hours later—she wasn’t sure how many, just that it was still dark and even the sound of traffic had faded to a faraway mumble—she turned a corner and saw the long shot of Kelleston Avenue, shuttered and sleepy even though the streetlights still buzzed and cast circles of glow around their feet.

  I drove here. With Cami and Ell. There had been a low hulking shape chasing them—a minotaur, a monster of rage and pain birthed from the core’s stagnant sickness.

  She’d always thought that’s where the monsters came from—somewhere else. Not her own house.

  Ruby shuddered. But if she was on Kelleston, it meant her goal was in range. There was something else, too.

  Halfway down the street was a callbox, the shiny phone sitting under a glare of buzzing fluorescents. It was a half-shell instead of an enclosed box, and that light meant anyone could see her a mile away, but she didn’t care. She walked, a little unsteadily, her trainers slightly squishy. Her hair was a wild rat’s nest, and she supposed she looked like a wandering jobber. If a police patrol saw her, maybe they’d take her in for vagrancy. At least until they found out she was under eighteen and dragged her downtown for breaking curfew.

  Then they’d take her back to the cottage, and that was where she absolutely, positively couldn’t go.

  She stopped, her head tilted, decided she hadn’t heard anything. The callbox glowed, and when she finally reached it, leaning against the scarred glass side of the cubicle, a wave of weariness so intense swamped her she seriously considered sinking down on the pavement and sleeping right there. The hazy idea that the light would keep her safe was so compelling she actually closed her eyes for a few moments.

  A contrary, nagging impulse wouldn’t go away. So she picked up the receiver. A dial tone greeted her, and the charming on the box sparked a little as she dug in her schoolbag. A single quart-pence, round and silver, slid into the phone’s innards, and she dialed.

  Crackle. Buzz. “733, what are you reporting?”

  It took two tries to make her voice work. “I have a message, for Detective Haelan.”

  “This isn’t an answering service—”

  “I know.” Wouldn’t anyone let her talk? “There’s another body in Woodsdowne Park. A girl. Public school. She . . . she has red hair.” Like me. Mithrus, did I . . . was it that I . . . ?

  A short silence. She could almost feel the woman willing her to say more. There was a ghost of other voices on the line, whirring and buzzing.

  “Okay. What’s your name?”

  “He didn’t do it. Danel didn’t do it. Tell Haelan that. I know who did, but you can’t catch him. He’s dangerous . . . and . . . and . . .” What was she trying to say? She lost the thread, staring down Kelleston. Why was her heart suddenly thundering? And her eyes watering.

  “Miss, are you still there? Miss? Tell me more. Where are you? Who is this?”

  Headlights. Creeping along, and the car eased out into a pool of streetlamp shine.

  It was black, and glossy, and low-slung.

  Ruby slammed the phone down and spun, her quart-pence discharged from its innards with a chiming click—of course, you didn’t need to pay to dial emergency, why was she suddenly so stupid—and ran for an alley that would cut through to Cleverjack Street. Behind her, the engine gunned, but she made it just in time and kept running. There was a screech of tires, a crashing noise, and she sprinted for all she was worth, bursting out onto Cleverjack with her schoolbag bumping her hip and her eyes white-ringed with terror. Houses flashed by, the occasional small café or storefront dead and dark just like Kelleston’s buttoned-up buildings, and if she could just get to 79th she could cut up and be in familiar territory, under whispering black-barked elms.

  Head down, fists pumping, the shift burning as she used every ounce of speed and agility it
could give her tired body, Ruby ran for the last place anyone would expect her to go.

  THIRTY-THREE

  ST. JUNO’S WAS DOWNRIGHT EERIE AT NIGHT. FOR one thing, it was dead quiet, and the bulk of the nunnery on the other side of the lacrosse field, where the Sisters went when they weren’t at the school, looked weirdly insubstantial. Maybe because the field itself was full of ground fog, rising in thick white billows that made her shiver. She’d often wondered whether you could catch the Sisters coming across the field if you got to school early enough, their black robes swinging and their head coverings magpie-colored in the predawn hush.

  She hunched her shoulders, digging in her schoolbag. There was a folded square of charmed tinfoil in one of the pockets—it was one of those things every self-respecting girl up to no good needed at all times. Tinfoil held minor charms like a dream, and it broke some lockcharms and certain alarm-chain charms without alerting anyone. A girl with any sort of charm ability and the patience to keep trying until she got it right could learn how to slip a square of folded tinfoil through a tiny aperture and work on the lockcharm from the inside, suppressing the alarm-chains with a sort of relaxed, focused attention. Ruby always kept a couple spares in her bag, folding and charging them when Gran wasn’t home, and she’d kept Ellie and Cami supplied with them all during middle school. Not that either of them used them when Ruby wasn’t around.

  You could never tell when you’d need to stage a break from education, and since neither Ellie nor Cami was brave enough to go on their own, it was up to her to drag them into having a good time and ensure they could leave school grounds.

  Only this time, she was trying to get in.

  Getting on school grounds had necessitated climbing a weirdly corkscrewed oak at the north end of the high stone wall closing Juno’s off from the rest of New Haven. Dropping down on the other side had rattled her teeth, and she supposed she should just be grateful the charm-laid defenses didn’t decide she was a danger at this hour.

  The rain had stopped. High scudding clouds filled the sky, and it was cold. Her fingers were numb, but her teeth had stopped chattering. She supposed she should be vaguely worried about that, but it didn’t seem important.

  What was important was this door, leading out from the main gym onto the lacrosse field. It had been loose the last time they’d had to go out for Phys Ed, sweating under the hot gray blanket-sky. Cami’s surprisingly hard toss of a dodgeball. Go get ’em, Cami! Ellie had yelled, a bright piercing happy noise over the chaos of other girls shrieking and slipping in wet grass.

  It was, thank Mithrus, still loose. She slipped the charmed tinfoil through gently, delicately, her other hand on the lever. The door buzzed, Potential uneasy, its net of charm and defense only half-mollified by the fact that she was a student, and hence, familiar.

  “Please,” she whispered through numb lips. “There’s no prohibition against me coming in, just leaving before lastbell. Please.”

  The tinfoil sparked, there was a slight stinging in her fingers, and the door opened with a slight begrudging groan. She nipped through, smart as you please, and was plunged into darkness when it closed behind her.

  A small sobbing sound finally escaped her. The gym echoed, enough faint glow filtering in through the high wire-shielded windows above the bleachers to let her see once she took a breath and really looked around.

  The wooden floor was just the same, its painted lines for ditchball and basquetoz glowing faintly with anti-cheating charms.

  Ruby sagged against the door. The defenses humming against her back, meant to keep all sorts of things away from vulnerable young Potential-carrying girls, were comforting but scratchy, like a wool blanket. Her nose filled with the tang of old sweat and greased wood, chalk and the familiar, indefinable odor of school.

  There was at least a dry pair of panties in her gym locker, maybe a shirt that didn’t reek too badly, and probably a snack too. She could find somewhere in this great big stone pile to sleep, and in the morning she could figure out what to do next.

  At least she’d told someone about the body in the Park. She shivered, and the temptation to just slide right down and pass out on the floor was amazingly strong. It was weird how just doing something simple, like calling Emergency and blurting out a secret, could make a huge weight shift from your shoulders.

  There was plenty else pressing down on her, though. Ruby forced herself to move away from the door. Her footsteps squished, trainers squeaking. Was she leaving footprints?

  I’ll worry about that later, she told herself, and headed for the locker room.

  • • •

  The school had been a Mithraic cathedral once, and there were all sorts of interesting, forgotten places curled up in its warren of passages. The choir loft, for example, behind a carved-stone frieze that was delicate enough to be charm-worked, but was a relic from the Age of Iron. There were a couple places in the library nobody ever went unless they were hiding, and there was a small rundown shed in a copse on the side of the lacrosse field—the side that wasn’t the gravel driveway, the ancient barn that was now storage, or the nunnery and its attendant gardens.

  None of those places were what Ruby wanted. She ghosted through the refectory, long narrow tables charmwaxed and gleaming, took a hard right through the double doors, passed banks of lockers and what the students called Death Alley—Sister Eunice Mithrus’s Blessing’s Science classroom on the right, Sister Margaret’s Ethics and Deportment on the left. Somehow, Sister Margaret always knew when you were trying to sneak down this hall, and Ruby held her breath and crossed her fingers as she slid past the frowning black oak door. Ethics and Deportment was Year Nine, but Mithrus Himself couldn’t help you if Sister Margaret saw you in the refectory with your knees crossed, or caught you bending over to pick something up in the hall instead of sinking down with your knees together and scooping it up without your skirt riding up to show what she called Your Treasures. Whether she meant your panties or what’s underneath yon panties, Ruby never figured out.

  She’d managed a frigid locker-room shower and was marginally cleaner, and at least the mud and branches were out of her hair. Down past more lockers, tucked behind an ancient age-blackened stairwell that led up to the Drama loft, where the club of wannabe actresses spent all their time (and smuggled in honeywine coolers whenever they could), yet further down. She ran her fingertips along the metal lockers, wincing a little as broken fingernails scraped on layers of chipped paint.

  One break in the lockers for a restroom, another break for a broom closet . . . and the third, she felt for the knob and breathed a little prayer.

  It was open.

  Another half sigh, half sob of relief, and Ruby slipped through. There were stairs going down, and it was perceptibly warmer. The ancient boiler was down this way, and these back hallways were crammed with useless junk and welcome warmth. Her fingers and nose tingled, and her teeth were chattering again. Which was odd, because it had finally warmed up.

  There were all sorts of nooks and crannies down here, and nobody would find her.

  Hot water splashed on her collarbones. She was leaking again. She passed a stack of old hymnals and turned right, away from the passage that led to the boiler itself. It took her an infinity before she finally reached what looked like a safe spot, a pile of what was probably old Mithraic habits—the cloth smelled of chalk and teacher-sweat, her nose giving her a jumble of impressions of round faces, bad food, and voices raised in a chorus of piercing sweetness.

  Ruby sank down, curled into a ball, hugged her schoolbag close, and finally, gratefully, passed out.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  RUNNING, WET BRANCHES SLAPPING HER FACE, A STITCH sinking its claws deep into her side. Behind her, the low whooshing as a sharp blade cleaved air. It was coming, its face a blankness, its shape hulking-wrong. The old nursery rhyme filled her skull—

  Gaston hunts with stave and an axe,
>
  watch out, watch out or he’ll claw your backs,

  olly-olly-oh, olly-olly-aye,

  one two three four! Time to die!

  Then the ring of chanting children would spin faster and faster until someone tumbled, and they would all fall down, shrieking with laughter.

  Kin didn’t play that game, though. She’d seen it at primary school and sung the rhyme at home for Gran, who had just looked sour for a moment before saying, gently but inflexibly, We don’t sing that here, Ruby.

  Slipping in mud, a grating shock against her knees as she fell, back up in a flash and running, but she was tired and he was so fast, so fast. Darkness everywhere, the only faint gleams from falling raindrops or her own white hands, fluttering like birds as she ran, ran, ran.

  A terrific, painless blow against her back. Warm dribbling down her chin.

  She was still trying to run when she hit the ground, face-first in the leaves and the mud, and the pain came, a great cresting wave of it, breaking over her in starlight-streaked foam, and the claws came next, ripping as he tore her sideways, flipping her face-up and the sky was black. Against that blackness there were two small golden lamps, bad-luck eyes that would have been beautiful if not for the emptiness behind them, an emptiness nothing would ever fill.

  The axeblade glinted as he lifted it high, and with a heaving snort, he chopped—

  • • •

  —down off the stack of black cloth, her breath hitching in to scream before she realized where she was and that she had to be quiet, for Mithrus’s sake. She caught herself on hands and knees, and was up in a flash, her heart thumping so quickly the individual beats blurred together, a song of hideous fear.

  Stacks of antique Mithrusmas decorations, masses of old textbooks, boxes with cryptic dates and abbreviations on the side under thick layers of dust and cobwebs. Her head rang, aching a little, and her nose was full. She sniffed several times, but all she got was dust. And her eyes were all crusty, eww. It was the kind of feeling you got after you’d cried yourself to sleep and then woke up late.