Poison Kiss

by Ana Mardoll

  I stare at him for a moment and then give him a wicked grin. "Yes. Yes, we will take all of it," I announce with mock haughtiness, gathering up the bags of leftovers and leading the way to my car. Athena will complain later but, after her tricks with the sound system, some turnabout is fair play.

  He's quieter when we get to the car, sitting in the passenger seat and holding the food in his lap with care, occasionally snaking his hand in the bag to pick out a donut hole to munch. He watches with interested eyes as I coax the engine to turn over; a lengthy process of patience and quiet swearing on my part. I must remember to mention to Elric that my car isn't long for this world so that he can keep his eyes peeled for a replacement.

  When the car finally roars to life I pull us carefully out of the parking lot and onto the streets. Clarent watches everything with wide eyes. "So," he hazards shyly, watching through the window as the world flies by, "did Lavender— do her lips—?"

  I shake my head at this, smiling a little so he'll see I'm not upset. "No. Lavs isn't a Nightshade like me; she's a Fragrant."

  Clarent tilts his head at the nickname. "Lavs?"

  "That's what I call her," I explain, feeling the blush return to my cheeks. "It was my first week of working at the bookstore, and I was tired when I came home. I sort of thoughtlessly called her 'Lavs' because, after arguing all day with Athena, the extra two syllables were more than I had energy for. I thought for a minute she was going to pitch a fit, but she just laughed and said it was fine as long as she could call me 'Ravs'."

  He chuckles at this. "That seems only fair," he concedes solemnly. "What is a Fragrant?"

  I bite my lip. "Her job was to make the estate smell nice and fresh. She was—" I pause, looking for the right words. "I guess you'd say half maid and half air freshener to the faeries. Her aroma varies according to her body chemistry and how she's feeling."

  He nods slowly. "I noticed the smells. They're very distracting."

  "Yeah, her scents can mess with your emotions if you're not careful," I warn. "Athena calls it aromatherapy, only stronger. It's not mind-control," I hasten to add, defensive on Lavender's behalf. "If you know it's happening, you can push back against it."

  He considers this. "That makes sense," he says, his voice thoughtful and slow. "And I guess it would be nice to know what she's thinking, if she's your friend. I'd want to know what my friends were feeling, so that I could feel it with them." We're at a red light and I take the opportunity to stare at him for a moment, rendered unexpectedly speechless. He notices me looking at him. "Is that wrong?" he asks, looking a little shy.

  "No, no," I say quickly, turning back to the road. "I think it's a really beautiful way of looking at it. But, uh, some of the community members were uncomfortable being around her, because they didn't like the idea of emotion-magic messing with their feelings; too much like what some of the faeries do."

  Clarent is quiet for a moment. "Well, I can understand that. I just feel differently," he concludes. "Is it a big community?" He looks at me again, his silver eyes wide with curiosity. "Are there many of us?"

  I smile at his eagerness. "Maybe about two hundred in the metroplex?" I estimate. "Not very many. I'm not sure anyone has an exact headcount, because people move away or disappear, or worse. Celia says it's a lot of altereds in one place, but compared to the human population it's nothing at all."

  Clarent runs a hand over the armrest between us, anchoring himself. "Two hundred," he breathes. "And I've met five! Have you met them all? Do you know their names?"

  "Oh, no," I say, shaking my head. "Celia holds scheduled meetings once every month—sometimes oftener if there's someone new to introduce—but not everyone attends. Some people are scared of each other, some of them just want to forget the otherworld as best they can, and some of them have formed human families which they can't get away from without a lot of excuses and lies." I smile wistfully. "But the community is helpful for those of us who can't make human connections."

  He looks up at me when I say this, his gaze suddenly softer. "That sounds nice," is all he says, but his honeyed voice is gentler.

  My cheeks are burning; I hadn't meant to make him feel sorry for me. "It is! It's useful." I nod my head. "Celia does a lot of the organizing, keeping people in the loop. Worth is our doctor; I haven't been to ner as a patient yet, but I met ner once and we got along well. Athena helps people to understand the otherworld and what they were used for, and since she wanted to be surrounded by books Celia got her the shop."

  I chuckle and add, "Jing and I help her out, because otherwise she'd drive all the customers away. You'll like Jing; she's quiet at first, but not once you get to know her. She's translucent—if she holds still, you almost can't see her." I flash him a grin, wanting him to know that he's not the only one with unusual skin. "We all end up helping each other out. I make my living with Celia's help, and what little profit we make from the bookstore goes towards helping new escapees get set up with food and clothes and a living space. It isn't a lot and we're not rich, but everyone helps out where they can."

  He nods at this. I realize he's committing the names to memory and storing up questions for later. "And the person we're going to see now, Elric?"

  "Elric, yeah." I bite the inside of my cheek as we take a hard left, looking for the right words. "Do you remember what a vampire is?"

  He blinks at me and disappears into his own thoughts for a moment. I recognize the distance in his eyes, the look we get when dredging minds that don't consciously remember. The flotsam and jetsam of shared culture is in there, like the lingering muscle memory of opening a soda can. It's easier to feel on this side, without the magic of the otherworld clogging our minds, surrounded by the sights and sounds and smells of things we must have known before we were taken; but the memories are still difficult to consciously recapture.

  "Y-yes," he says doubtfully. "Why?"

  "Okay." I give him a sympathetic smile. "Elric is going to tell you he's a vampire. You really shouldn't argue with him, because no one ever gets anywhere and it just upsets him."

  "Why would I argue with him?" he asks, looking more curious than alarmed at this news.

  "Well, because he's the most tanned sun-valley surfer stereotype you'll ever meet. He's not allergic to sunlight or UV; he's got standing weekly appointments at three different tanning salons. He doesn't have pointy teeth, or at least no more so than regular folks. Pretty girls—and sometimes pretty boys, so fair warning he might take a shine to you—hang around him and when one of them manifests a bite mark, it's not that kind of bite."

  I wave my hand in an exasperated gesture. "He's a total pill, but he forges decent legal documents and gets us expensive tech stuff like cars and phones, so it's best not to argue. Just agree with everything he says, and try not to let him seduce you because he's a heartbreaker." I give Clarent a sidelong glance, feeling a blush creep up my cheeks. "I mean, unless you want that. I'm not trying to tell you what to do."

  Clarent eyes me with a mischievous look. "You think I'm pretty?" he asks, raising his eyebrows at me with a mock-innocent expression.

  I blink at him, saved from the impossibility of answering by fortunate timing: Elric's apartment complex is just on our right, and I cut the wheel sharply, grateful for the distraction. I pull into an empty space not far from his duplex door and press the horn to elicit a quick, sharp bark from the car.

  "Um. I wouldn't normally honk the horn," I explain, partly to keep Clarent from picking up bad visiting habits, but also to fill the space so that I don't have to answer his question. "But it's late in the morning and most people are already awake." I duck my head, still avoiding his teasing eyes. "We try not to run into Elric's bedmates if we can help it. He sleeps with a lot of humans and sometimes they ask difficult questions, so it's easier to bring him out here to meet with us rather than go in and be subjected to a lot of unnecessary scrutiny."

  "Is that usual?" he asks. "Avoiding humans?"

  Clarent's soft question tr
ails after me as I hop out of the car. "Well, there's a lot of lying invol—" Brushing my skirt down, I straighten up, breaking off mid-sentence in a gasp as I look up.

  Thick mist is gathering in the far corner of Elric's parking lot, the air around us crackling dangerously with the second sudden influx of magic electricity to surround us this morning.

  Chapter 12

  I can hear the blood pounding in my ears as I survey the parking lot around us. Not more than a hundred feet away a boiling wall of mist is rising quickly, bubbling like a witch's cauldron. Thick tendrils shoot out on both sides, spreading fast around us and engulfing a section of the nearby street. I twist my head to watch as the last of the cars drive through the mist without seeming to notice it, and then we are alone; no new cars join us in the shadowy silence.

  Already the white mist has closed over our heads, blocking out the sun. The fog is so thick that everything on the other side of the dome is completely cloaked from view—assuming that there is anything on the other side. I still don't know how the portals work, and all the practice I'm getting today is far from welcome. Can this really be a coincidence, two portals in one day, or is this second one an attempt to recapture Clarent?

  Another possibility strikes me, one I don't like at all: am I causing these somehow?

  "Rose?" Clarent's soft, cautious voice cuts through my panicked thoughts. I look over the roof of the car to where he stands, close to the passenger door, frozen in place. He's the picture of calm, prepared for action with tense alertness etched into the set of his shoulders. "Should I get back in the car and wait, or do you want my help with any escapees who come out?"

  He thinks this is normal, I realize. Biting my lip, I watch as more mist boils out from the dome wall to fill the air around us, the swirling fog pooling and spreading in every direction. "I don't know that there will be any," I admit carefully, pitching my voice low to match his murmur. "Clarent, I've never heard of two portals opening in one day. Escapees are usually separated by weeks, if not months."

  He frowns, trying to piece together this new information. "Why else would a portal be here, if not because someone's escaping?"

  I hesitate, unsure whether to share my fear that something far more dangerous could emerge. My eyes sweep over the empty street, seeking an escape. If we drive through that wall of fog, where would we find ourselves—earthside again, or lost in the otherworld?

  "Clarent, they might be trying to recapture you," I say gently. I don't want to frighten him, but he needs to be prepared to run or fight. "Athena said you were important, remember? Maybe your faery is upset and looking for you. We need to be ready for that."

  His quiet, calm acceptance of potential recapture is the last response I'd have expected; he merely nods solemnly. "Can I bargain for your safety, Rose?" he asks thoughtfully. "Or do you think it would be better for me to distract them while you get away? I don't know if we can trust the High King to keep his word."

  "What?" My voice is too loud; it carries over the parking lot. I duck my head with a wince, eyes straining to discern movement: a color, a shape, anything that might indicate the direction of a threat. "Clarent, no! I— we don't— I'm not— no! I just mean to be ready; we might need to run or drive."

  My hand tightens on the roof of the car; we could get in now, start the engine, drive into the wall of mist and hope for the best. But Elric lives so close; I can see his front door from here. If the portal isn't here for me or Clarent, might it be here for him? It would be an amazing coincidence, but I don't want to abandon him to be recaptured. We have to try to collect him first, and then get away—or hide.

  I turn to face Clarent, the words colliding in my head. I need to explain to him that we don't abandon each other to the faeries, that I can't leave Elric behind and I certainly can't leave Clarent. Leaving him to his fate would be like committing murder again, and if it comes to someone serving as a decoy, it should be me; of the three of us I've caused the most harm, and I can do the least good for our community. But before I can get the words out, Clarent's head whips round to look at something I can't quite see, a blur of black in my peripheral vision.

  "What's that?" he hisses softly.

  I twist my own head to look, whirling in an attempt to locate the half-glimpsed streak of motion, but it has disappeared again into a world of disorienting swirling whiteness. I notice as I peer around us that the wall of fog is no longer boiling fresh mist; the portal seems to be complete, the edges sealed and no longer expanding.

  Tiny flecks of dim white light filter through the dome above us, but otherwise we are in shadow. Rivulets of thin mist bleed from the dome walls into the parking lot, obscuring our vision further and causing my skin to prickle with the electric sensation of magic. I narrow my eyes, my gaze tracking slowly, and then I see it again: a flash of dark gray against the bright white.

  Now that I know where to look, I can see a focal point in the fog, a darkness that I had at first taken to be shadow. As I watch, black smoke seeps slowly from that point, seeming almost to infect the tendrils of white mist that swirl around it. The darkness spreads like an oily stain in the air, and I realize with alarm that it is approaching us at a steady pace.

  "Rose, do you see that?" Clarent whispers, and I nod, distrusting the look of the dark vapor. I don't think it's an altered. It's some kind of smoke-themed faery, maybe; a demon or a djinni.

  Either way, I decide we're not going to wait here to find out. The approaching black cloud makes it significantly easier to decide whether to stay or go: it's moving towards us, not in the direction of Elric's door; which means we're going to get out of the area now and worry about Elric later.

  "Clarent," I order, my voice softer now. "Get in the car, we're leav—"

  My voice dies in my throat as the smoke before us parts, just enough for me to see the creature at the center of the black cloud. It's not a faery at all but a little girl. She's gaunt and exhausted, with the bent shoulders and broken eyes of a fellow altered.

  "Rose?" Clarent asks softly, the question audible in his voice.

  "I see her," I say quietly, my own voice trembling. "She's an escapee like us."

  She walks towards us slowly, her eyes wide and confused, as we stand rooted to the spot, watching her. I study her anxiously, my gaze taking in every clue that she's been neglected for a very long time. She's young, barely a preteen, with dusky skin and wide black eyes, wrapped in a dirty black robe that covers her from head to foot. She's small and her face and arms are thin, with the gnawing look of hunger so keen and so long present that the sufferer is no longer consciously aware of it.

  My first impulse is to leap forward and catch her up, bustle her into the car as I'd done with Clarent a few hours before. I want to drive her far away from the portal to the safest place I know. But she's a small starving child and I don't want to scare her with quick movements. I haven't known many child-servants, but the May Queen kept a small number in her gardens; they were almost invariably the most damaged among us and easily frightened.

  "Hey, sweetheart," I say gently, pitching my voice to carry. I approach her slowly with my hand outstretched, trying to demonstrate with my body language that I'm not carrying a weapon and don't intend to harm her. "Can you come here? My name is Rose. I'm not going to hurt you."

  She looks at me with dull eyes; not frightened, but neither does she seem pleased to see me. I can't blame her for her apathy; as I approach, I realize that I'm treating her like an animal. She's not a feral dog, she's a person and deserves to be treated as such. But I'm rushing because the portal is still open and I'm afraid that something else might come through after her. I promise myself that once she's in the car with us I'll apologize profusely, as soon as I'm driving her and Clarent away from this place.

  She stands quite still, refusing to move any closer now that she can see me. I take another tentative step towards her, praying that she won't turn on her heel and run. "Honey, are you hungry?" I ask quietly, wishing that Clarent and I h
ad known to save some food. She looks up at this, but I'm not sure if she understands the question. There's something familiar in the numbness of her blank expression and the resigned set of her shoulders.

  She doesn't answer me. "Are you escaping?" Clarent asks, very gently, his low sweet voice carrying softly from where he stands by the car. She looks at him with the same blank expression.

  I have the sudden strong impression that she's not an escapee, at least not in the way that most of us were. When Lavender and I crashed through our portal with Celia's help, we had been running for our lives—our hair matted with icy water, dresses torn from the thorns of the hedge-maze, lungs bursting for breath. But this little girl doesn't seem to have been running, nor is she in a panic. She doesn't look dizzy or tired or out of breath. Her robe is dirty and threadbare, but the sweep of fabric that covers her head and hair isn't disarrayed from hurried movement.

  Physical hunger is written on her skinny body, so she might have been hiding on her faery's lands before she could reach a portal boundary. Maybe she's just too tired or weak to run at this stage in her escape. Yet the hunger she carries seems older than that, not something new and recent. The details of how she got here don't really matter, of course; she's a child, one of us and we have to help her. But if she's not being actively pursued, that means we have time to help her understand. It means I don't need to entertain thoughts of grabbing her and shoving her into the car against her will. She needs food and water and shelter, but maybe I can give her those things without further traumatizing her.

  "Sweetheart, can you understand me?" I've taken another step towards the silent girl when I feel a nasty scratching at the back of my throat. I cough twice, trying to clear the sensation, but rather than bring relief the spasms cause my throat to burn more fiercely. I cough again, almost choking with the need to clear the pain away. Every wracking breath seems to tear the soft tissue of my throat. My fingers itch to claw at my burning lungs, to rip the pain away if only I could reach.