Nameless: A Tale of Beauty and Madness (TALES OF BEAUTY AND MADNESS)

by Lili St. Crow

  She could suddenly see it, in vivid color—the Strep tearing the new blazer away. You little slut, where did you get the credits for this? Ellie’s hands like little wounded white birds as they fluttered ineffectually, the Strep screaming as Potential flashed and the new blazer shredded to ribbons.

  Anger, hot and vicious, sank sharp claws into the back of Cami’s throat. The itching all over her threatened to pop out through her skin. She fidgeted, and Ellie’s head slowly, very slowly turned.

  The mirrored lenses of Ellie’s shades showed her reflection. Cami didn’t look like herself—her eyes too big, her face dead-white, the stray bits of hair pulled free from her braid lifting on a breeze from nowhere. The bone pin stuck out, its little colorless dangles gleaming, and its sharp tip jabbed at her nape again. There was a little raw spot where it kept rubbing.

  God damn it. She reached up, yanked the pin free, and laid it carefully in the pencil groove at the top of the ancient wooden desk. Ellie shifted, her blank lenses following the pin.

  Cami flipped to a fresh sheet of paper. You OK?

  Ellie fished a pencil and her history book out. Her notebook was battered too, but she opened it and made the date notation. She leaned over, and Cami’s anger evaporated like steam from one of Marya’s kettles.

  NO, Ellie scrawled on Cami’s paper. Later. Who gave you that?

  Cami shrugged. Now that the terrible fury had subsided she was queasy, her head aching and the discomfort all over her like crawling razor-legged insects. A guy, she wrote.

  Don’t take anything else. Ellie flipped her textbook open. Cami swallowed her retort—she could feel the stutter knotting just behind her lips, a brick wall between her and anything she might want to say. Ellie paused, then leaned over and wrote carefully: There might be charm on it.

  Ellie was just slopping over with Potential, wasn’t she. She’d be able to see charm Cami wouldn’t.

  But Tor wouldn’t charm her. He just didn’t have the Potential. Besides, he didn’t have to. She was halfway-charmed already; she liked him. Whatever he was after when he talked to her, at least she knew she didn’t goddamn well owe him anything.

  So now I’m stupid. Can’t do anything right. She hunched her shoulders, and the prickling all over her went away as she took a deep breath. Her fingers, tense around the creaking pencil, relaxed a little, then a little more.

  Ruby peered around her, a tendril of curling russet hair falling in her eyes. She blew it away irritably, and there were two bright fever-spots high on Rube’s cheeks.

  She was pissed.

  Sister Grace finally resurrected herself at quarter-till, announced a quiz for the next day, and smiled pacifically at the wave of groans. Her round, plump face, flour-pale, framed in black and white, was a serene moon. The Mithrus beads tied to her sash clicked as she passed to the board and wrote the night’s homework in her flowing copperplate script. Cami’s shoulders twitched and she inhaled deeply—chalk dust, a touch of sweat, the funky smell of a room used to corral kids for long periods of time, a breath of clove and invisible fuming from Ruby on her right. From Ellie, nothing but the faint aroma of harsh soap and the also-invisible smell of misery.

  The crystals on the bone pin glinted. She was going to have to ask Tor about—

  The pin twitched. Ellie tensed.

  It hopped out of the pencil groove. Cami let out a soft sound and grabbed for it, but Sister Grace was saying something, and the slight noise was lost. Also lost in Sister Grace’s droning reminder that chapel is after lunch, ladies, don’t be late, was the sound of the pin splintering as it hit the blue-flecked linoleum.

  What the— Cami sank back down in her seat. Broken in three pieces, the bone pin rolled away. She grabbed the edge of the desk to keep herself from diving for it, since Sister Grace had turned around and was scanning the classroom intently, looking fully awake for the first time in months.

  Ellie’s breathing had turned rapid, her fists clenched. A tear glittered on her bruised cheek, and Cami could see where the back of her earring had scraped on her neck, probably when whoever-it-was belted her.

  It was the Strep. Sudden knowledge rode a cresting tide of nausea. Sweat had gathered in Cami’s armpits, dewed her lower back and her forehead. Everything was too bright, and Sister Grace’s gaze passed over them all like the shadow of a giant drifting bird.

  “Ladies,” Sister Grace finally said, “you are excused.” The tinkling charmbell rang to signal the end of third session and the beginning of lunch, and Ruby sighed dramatically.

  “’Bout damn time,” she announced as a surfburst of chatter swallowed the room. “Who do I gotta kill, Ellie?”

  Cami wriggled out of her side of the desk. The shards of the bone pin were numb-cold, frost-burning her trembling fingers, and the crystal beads had disappeared, rolling away under desks and feet. Her stomach cramped, then eased all at once, and she couldn’t bring herself to throw the remains of the pin away. So she simply jammed the pieces in her bag while Ellie began explaining what had set the Evil Strepmother off this time. Ellie’s cheeks were wet, Ruby was furious, and Cami was secretly, shamefully glad that nobody was paying any attention to her.

  EIGHTEEN

  RUBY WAS A BALL OF SIMMERING RAGE FROM LUNCH onward, swearing to give the Strep a taste of her own medicine; Ellie admitted it was the new school blazer that had set the Strep off.

  The blazer Cami had brought in the money for, so it would arrive charm-boxed at her door the next morning. Which meant Cami was responsible. Though they both kindly refrained from pointing this out, the knowledge churned at her the whole time, hot and sour.

  And then there was the pin. Tor’s gift, broken. He’d just given it to her, and he wasn’t asking anything in return, right? Nothing except being her friend.

  You need a friend that listens.

  She hadn’t stuttered so much when the pin was in her hair, had she? She’d been feeling fine for the entire two days. Better than fine, even. Secretly pleased.

  And he wasn’t a charmer—his Potential would be low. He was only a garden boy, after all.

  The last bell rang and she dawdled, Ruby and Ellie at their side-by-side lockers. They didn’t stop to preen today—with Ellie’s face the way it was, of course they wouldn’t. So Cami just waited until both of them had their heads deep in their lockers and let the crowd of girls whisk her away, around the corner from the main stairwell.

  Today of all days, she couldn’t stand the thought of getting into the Semprena and listening to Ruby fume.

  You weren’t supposed to go off Juno’s grounds by foot, but there were ways. She took the back stairs to the gym, slid out past a chattering gaggle of cheersport girls—bright-eyed, smooth-haired, and chirping like Twisted cockatiels. The fire door was supposed to be locked and alarmed, but Ruby had shown her how to slip a bit of charmed tinfoil—one of those things a girl should never be without if she intends to be up to no good, Rube always said—over the connector and slip out while it was resetting itself.

  The sudden cold was a blow. The sky was a featureless iron blanket, and the metallic smell of a hard freeze filled her nose. She shivered, but it was too late now—the door thudded closed, and she was faced with a narrow strip of pavement between two frowning brick walls. At the far end, a dustbin crouched, and past it there would be a way down the hill, screened from the lacrosse and football fields by thick spiny heartsthorn, naked without its glossy summer green and bright red berries. The bushes were defense-charmed too, so she had to be careful not to brush against them.

  She edged along, carefully, past the dustbin breathing out a reek of garbage even through the killing cold. The heartsthorn rustled a bit as she passed, not-quite-sensing her. Juno’s thick stone wall lifted on her right, veined with long fingers of red ivy. Cami tightened her scarf, her knees already chilled and her coat flapping as she hurried.

  But careful, cautious, just like a little mouse.

  There was the gate—tiny, wooden, overgrown with heartsth
orn. To the side, there was a gap between the post and the wall. It wasn’t used too often—just enough to keep it clear. If it started getting worn through, the Sisters would find out and patch it, and everyone would have to find a new way.

  Cami wriggled through, holding her breath.

  Outside was a narrow alley, frost-slick cobblestones that probably dated from the post-Reeve rebuilding of New Haven. The windowless back of a warehouse loomed, unmarked except for the occasional schoolgirl graffiti traced down low where Juno girls could reach. Sheela sucks something-scratched-out, and Kill Juno, in black, with arrows pointing to it to show agreement. Something about a Sister Mary Clarice, though there wasn’t a Sister of that name at the school now. Other scrawls and symbols, none of them alive with charm but managing to glow with feeling just the same.

  Her feet crunched and slid, and by the time she reached the end of the alley and peeked out into a weedy, snowbound vacant lot, she was shivering from fear and cold.

  This is pretty anticlimactic. What did I expect, monsters to eat me the moment I stepped off school grounds?

  Well, yes. Wasn’t that what was supposed to happen?

  Did Tor feel this cold and alone when he walked? Was he used to it? She could ask him, she supposed. If her stupid tongue would let her.

  The wind picked up, and she heard dogs barking.

  No, not barking. Baying. Hate that sound. It reminded her of snow, of headlights, of a rat’s plated tail and bright red eyes. She pushed the memory aside, but it didn’t want to go.

  That was one thing about school and Ruby and Ellie. They kept her head so busy the nightmares couldn’t creep up through waking consciousness and poke at her.

  Another galvanic shudder worked its way down her spine. She pulled her mittens on and set off around the edge of the field. Her maryjanes slipped and slid, and at least her knee socks were wool, but this was looking to be a very long and uncomfortable walk home. New Haven wheeled around her, cold blighted core radiating bright charmed streets, and she put her head down. Her braid lay heavy against her back, as if the pin was still thrust through it.

  He walks all the time. It can’t be that hard. She settled her schoolbag higher on her shoulder. Besides, I’ve come this far. I might as well keep going.

  PART II: Waking Up

  THE IRON IN THE SKY HAD BLACKENED. NIGHT CAME early in winter, and it was so close to dusk the streetlights were beginning to flicker into grudging life.

  Legs on fire, feet raw, her back aching, she rounded the corner and sighed. The Hill had been a bitch—it seemed so simple in a car. Someone else would just press the accelerator, the engine responded with a throb, and up went all the metal and charmfiber and glass, and the people inside it too. Her right heel slipped a little bit inside her shoe—it was numb; she didn’t know why it was sliding around so loosely. Her shoe didn’t seem to be broken.

  The dogs kept barking. Maybe she was the only one that could hear them, full-throated howling or pathetic whimpering. There were a lot of them, and sometimes they were nearer, sometimes further away. If she rounded the wrong corner she might see them, and that had made her run before she figured out running just tired her out more.

  Almost there. The gate was three blocks away, scrolled iron dripping with icicles. It had never looked so wonderful. Her schoolbag weighed a ton, and homework tonight was going to be a—

  “What are you doing?” He appeared out of nowhere, and Cami shrieked, backpedaling despite her exhaustion. He grabbed her arm, and she found herself faced with a tall, trembling Torin Beale, who was dead pale and breathing as hard as she was. “Mithrus Christ, do you know what time it is? The whole house is—” He broke off, and for a second Cami thought he might shake her.

  “I d-decided to w-walk home.” Her heart thudded, and her head felt clearer than it had all day. “The p-pin. T-t-t-tor, I’m suh-suh-sorry. The p-pin b-b-broke.”

  “The pin.” He addressed the air over her head. “She’s worried about the pin. They called the Vultusino. Whole house is like an anthill. Miz Marya’s roaming around looking for you, checking the study every five minutes and wringing her hands. The security guys are … ” He made a quick movement with his head, tilting it.

  She heard it too. Dogs barking, hysterical yaps and yowling. She didn’t know if any of the neighbors had security hounds. It wasn’t out of the question, they were popular even if they could be charmed.

  But she had never noticed them before.

  “D-d-dogs,” she whispered. “A-all afternoon.”

  He stared at her like she’d just grown another head. “All afternoon?”

  She nodded. Wiped at her nose with a mitten, not caring if it was gross. She was cold, and tired, and apparently they had noticed she hadn’t come back.

  Well, you kind of thought they would. Was that the point?

  Tor let go of her arm, as if it was Twisted, or red-hot metal. “You … ”

  Telling him about Ruby and Ellie was out of the question. But at least she could tell him how she’d scraped together enough guts to do this. “I’m s-s-sorry. I w-wanted to s-s-see what it w-w-was l-like to w-walk home.” Even her teeth were numb. “L-like you.” She pointed at his chest, hoping he would understand. We’re more alike than you think. “S-scars,” she managed. “Th-th-they hurt. I-i-i-ins-side.”

  “You … ” He kept looking at her like she’d Twisted, or something. He finally shook his head, his leather jacket creaking. Snow caked his jeans all the way up to his knees, and there was a scratch on his cheek.

  Maybe from thorns.

  Cami swayed. “I h-have t-to g-g-g-go.”

  That snapped him back into himself. “I’ll say you do. Come on.”

  NINETEEN

  THE SECURITY TEAMS MARKED THEM AS SOON AS THEY were through the gate, but it was Trig who appeared at the bottom of the front steps, lanky and older than ever, deep lines graven on his lean face. His sportscoat was the baggy yellow, orange, and brown one with shiny patches at the elbows he wore sometimes to shoot skeet, and his knife-sharp cheekbones were blushed with cold.

  He didn’t say a word until they were inside. “You found her.” Flatly, brushing snow from his shoulders. His hiking boots were clotted with mud and snow, and he took in Cami with one passionless, sweeping glance. “Thank Mithrus. Miss Camille, honey, what the hell happened?”

  I don’t know. She shrugged, miserably. The foyer was warm, and her fingers and toes were tingling with pain. Her socks were probably ruined. I couldn’t explain it even if I tried.

  “Mr. Nico’s on his way home. You … ” Trig visibly groped for Tor’s name. The butt of a Stryker showed briefly under his coat as he ran a hand back through his thinning hair. “Beale, right? You found her?”

  Oh, no. If they’d called Nico from Hannibal, they must’ve thought something bad was happening to her.

  Maybe even a kidnapping.

  She should have thought of that. Miserably, Cami sighed. He was going to be unmanageable when he got here.

  “Down the street, sir.” Tor’s sullen politeness was at once normal and terribly embarrassing. “My shift was over, I was walking home. Since the road’s cleared.”

  A relieved smile, and the tall man clapped the garden boy on the shoulder, gingerly. “Well, head to the kitchen. Marya will be overjoyed. Get something to eat, huh?” With that, Trig seemed to forget Tor’s existence, and he offered Cami his arm. She took it, grateful for the support.

  The high narrow foyer was all at once terribly alien and familiar as well. The parquet floor was alive with crackling charm, and the whole house was seething. Little whispers ran between the walls, and the sense of hidden motion and hurrying swamped her.

  Tor didn’t take himself off to the kitchen just yet, though. He paused, his fingers on her elbow, digging in through the black cashmere and the navy Juno wool underneath. Not brutally, just to get her attention. “You gonna be okay?”

  Braced between them, she tried not to sag with relief. “Y-yes.” Now that I
’m here. “T-t-tor. Th-thank y-y-you.”

  “Anytime.” He let go, took a step back, two, staring at her face. “I mean it. Anytime.”

  Thankfully, her flush could just be a reaction to the sudden warmth. Her fingers were cramping, her toes felt wet. Trig had gone very still next to her, but she didn’t care. “T-t-tomorrow. After sk-k-k-school. Okay?”

  “You got it.” He made a curious little movement with his right hand, stopped himself, and turned on his heel. This time he didn’t vanish, he just took the hall that would lead him back to the kitchen.

  “Well.” Trig sounded thoughtful. He stared after Tor for a long moment or two, and his face was set. “You walked? From St. Juno’s?”

  Cami nodded. Now she was shivering, great waves of shudders gripping her. Her skirt and shoes were dripping with melted snow, and her hair was a heavy frozen weight. “I w-w-w-wanted t-t-to—” Her tongue just would not work. Even if it did, how could she explain to Trig? It wasn’t the sort of thing he’d understand. “S-sorry,” she finished, lamely. “I’m s-s-s-s—”

  The old man took an experimental step, bracing her as she hobbled. “No need. Just glad you’re safe. Let’s get you upstairs.”

  Her socks were ruined. The blisters had broken and bled, and the blood had greased the inside of her shoes. That was why they were so slippery. Marya, her white-streaked dandelion hair standing up and writhing, black shawl-fringes moving on an angry breeze, made little spitting sounds as she bandaged Cami’s feet. “Walking. All the way from school. What were you thinking? Silly, naughty little thing.” The cameo at her throat shivered uneasily, its carved surface changing.

  “S-sorry.” Cami sucked in a breath as the antiseptic stung. For all her scolding, Marya’s hands were exquisitely gentle.

  “So worried!” Marya’s long fingers flicked, and the gauze crackled with charm. “Late little girl, and your redheaded friend came. She told the long one you had disappeared. The Gaunt was beside himself. Whole house upside down. Looking and looking for our naughty little sidhe.” Wrapped with deft quick movements, Cami’s feet began to resemble mummies. “The long one” was Trig, and “the Gaunt” was Stevens. Most fey were bad with names. Cami could look forward to being “naughty little thing” for a while now.