Bound Powers

by Saruuh Kelsey

  Now, with the pale sun of just after dawn staining her eyelids, Joy felt safer than she could remember. Stranger and rarer, she was happy. Not happiness with a twist of unease, not optimism threaded with nerves. Pure, untouchable happiness. She knew she wanted to be with Gabi again, had known it for a while now, but the force of her joy slammed into her so fast and hard that she was surprised. She hadn’t just wanted to be with Gabi. She’d wanted her desperately.

  For a second, she contemplated telling Gabi what Mrs. Nazari had said, about him, but she didn’t want to ruin this.

  Joy reached for her phone to check the time—four minutes away from her alarm, damn it—and Gabi’s arm clutched her tighter reflexively as she stirred. Joy’s gleaming happiness softened at the quiet sound Gabi made, at the splaying of her fingers across Joy’s stomach.

  Joy remembered a time when Gabi touching her stomach would have made her seize with insecurity, but in the years that had passed she’d not just come to terms with her wobbly belly and her fat thighs, she’d somehow and miraculously began to love them. It had either happened over the course of several, long years or overnight. All Joy remembered was looking in the mirror one day and noticing the absence of her cringe, how the urge to shy away from the body reflected at her never came. She’d been able to look objectively at the rolls of her stomach, the press of her thighs and the slump of her heavy breasts. Joy had never been more glad to love herself than this morning—she didn’t want a single worry or uncertainty to touch her delight.

  “This isn’t real,” Gabi murmured, nuzzling closer until she was pressed entirely to Joy’s back. She sounded so sleepy and adorable that Joy’s whole body melted with adoration. “I’m never waking up again.”

  “Not even for breakfast and coffee at Fae’s Bakes?” Joy shifted onto her back to look at her … girlfriend. She decided on the word there and then. She wasn’t going to dance around terms and names anymore. Gabi was her girlfriend. She was Gabi’s girlfriend.

  “You can’t be real,” Gabi breathed, tracing Joy’s smile with eyes slitted barely open. “No one is this beautiful.”

  Joy knew a flush had covered her face but she felt no embarrassment. She only felt awed and so lucky as she watched the sleep gradually clear from Gabi’s eyes, as Gabi’s fingers kept brushing her cheek, her chin, the dip under her mouth.

  The electronic blare of Joy’s alarm startled them both into full wakefulness and Joy rolled over to silence it.

  Gabi laughed deep in her throat, her hand wandering over Joy’s side. “I’ve never heard you swear so creatively.”

  “I’m a girl of many talents.”

  Gabi’s mouth was hot on Joy’s shoulder, where her top had rode down as she slept. “I bet you are.”

  Joy’s smile turned a shade of wicked to match Gabi’s tone. “I’ll show you sometime.”

  “I’ll hold you to it.”

  Joy really really hated to have to say it, but there was no getting around it. She’d timed her morning routine to the minute and had no more seconds to spare if she didn’t want to be late. “I have to get out of bed. Shower. Work. That kind of thing.”

  Gabi kissed Joy’s shoulder again and rolled out of bed. “I don’t remember the last time I saw six a.m. At least not after a full night’s sleep.”

  Joy laughed, crawling out from the warm covers, bracing for the slap of the cold. She shuffled to the bathroom before she could convince herself otherwise.

  “Are we still having breakfast?” Gabi asked, leaning against the door frame as Joy pulled off her pyjamas. She felt a bit scandalous for undressing in front of Gabi and loved it.

  “Definitely,” she replied. “If I had to do breakfast myself, it’d be burned toast.”

  “No,” Gabi said, drawing out the word. “Are you telling me there’s a chink in your perfection? You have a flaw? Wow.”

  “Shut up,” Joy laughed, climbing into the shower. She didn’t miss the glaze of desire in Gabi’s eyes and felt a little cruel for showing her what she didn’t have time to give her. Last night all they’d done was cuddle and sleep, and it had been everything Joy had wanted for so long. But now she was definitely interested in other things they could do in her bed.

  But she shouldn’t be thinking of this now when she only had nine minutes to shower and her hair was horribly tangled, adding another obstacle to her morning routine. As the water poured over her, she heard Gabi groan, a low sound that lasted a full fifteen seconds before her voice got farther away. Joy would put money on her going to the kitchen for a pre-coffee coffee. That girl had a serious caffeine addiction. Joy wondered if there was a Gilmore in her lineage.

  Joy tried to shake away thoughts of Gabi while she showered and scrubbed shampoo through her hair. She had a schedule, and she’d only been late to work twice since she’d started working there. She wasn’t about to make today a third.

  Joy rushed down the beach to the nature reserve, her hair a mess from having Gabi’s hands running through it and her lips clinging to the memory of Gabi’s kisses. She had a feeling she’d scandalised a few early risers in the bakery, but she didn’t have a care as Gabi kissed her over coffee and cinnamon rolls.

  She swung the sanctuary door open and swore at the clock’s smug face. Three minutes late.

  To herself she muttered, “Damn you, Gabriella Pride.” But she sighed and leant back against the door, grinning like a fool and ridiculously in love.

  Pride

  Gabi returned home near eight o’clock that morning feeling very pleased with herself and trying to suppress a giddy grin. She was the Pride of the town—she couldn’t be seen walking home like a lovesick teenager. Even if it was how she felt.

  Maisie was sat in the window near the door, the net curtain ruched around her furry body. She darted off as soon as she saw Gabi, and when Gabi let herself in the front door, she had a welcoming party of two.

  “Look who’s back,” Gus said to his sister. “The dirty stop-out.”

  “Shut up,” Gabi muttered, shutting the door.

  “About time Joy got some,” remarked an unexpected voice—a discourteous drawl. “She’s been frigid for way too long. It’ll do her good to get some V.”

  Gabi blinked at Victoriya, and then blinked at Gus. “You appear to have let a wild animal inside.”

  Gus held up his hands. “I couldn’t shut the door on her. I might have been bitten.”

  Victoriya grinned a sharp grin, delighted.

  “And several more,” Gabi sighed as a trio of dogs poured out of her kitchen, pressing close to Victoriya. Familiars. “Wonderful.”

  “You’d think she’d be in a better mood,” Victoriya remarked to Gus as if Gabi wasn’t stood across the hall from them. “Considering the sex.”

  Gabi’s eyes went half-lidded with exasperation and annoyance. She brushed past Victoriya and her dogs, leaning down to pat the largest, scariest-looking one—Tiny—on the head. A sweetheart, he tilted his head, urging her to scratch his ears; Gabi obliged before she went on to the kitchen. She still felt awkward around Victoriya. On one hand she was rude and gnarly and brought out a unique frustration in Gabi. On the other hand, Gabi had saved her life by going into the town hall with the others.

  “Shouldn’t you be working?” Gabi asked as everyone followed her into the kitchen, crowding around the table and eyeing Gabi hopefully as she opened the cupboard and got out a cup for herself. She sighed and added two more.

  “I work evenings,” Victoriya said with a shrug. “Also I looked at your laptop and read your emails. What are you thinking about these marks? Gus wouldn’t say anything no matter how much Sweetheart growled. Does this have anything to do with that bitch Perchta?”

  “No,” Gabi answered, sitting down. Gus’s mouth fell open in protest to see her abandon the drinks but Gabi shot him a look. “I’m tired of being your mother. You make the drinks today.”

  Gus looked vaguely affronted but did make the tea.

  “It’s nothing to do with Perchta,” Ga
bi assured Victoriya, her voice softening without prior approval. But sometimes she wondered what it must have been like for Victoriya, to be alone with Perchta for so long before Gabi and the others had got to her.

  “Right.” Something tightened in Victoriya’s face. She flicked the long rope of her ponytail over her shoulder. “Well I want to know anyway. This town is boring as shit and this looks exciting.”

  “A bunch of dead people is not exciting, Victoriya,” Gus chided, sitting across from Gabi. The shit had only made himself a drink; his eyes sparkled as he gulped it down.

  Victoriya looked at him like he’d said grass was fuchsia. “Beg to differ.”

  Gabi sighed. “What do you know?”

  “That you found some women with rashes or bruising on their necks, and this guy who emailed you found something similar. Not a murder, just a normal death. But he said it’s similar. Oh, and Gus found a fuck tonne more while you were gone.”

  Gabi’s eyes shot to him.

  “Yep, we’re up to fifteen. I gently persuaded a few obituary databases to let me see their records.”

  “Hacked,” Victoriya corrected unnecessarily.

  “I have not slept,” Gus added while Gabi worked to process this, her mouth hanging open.

  “Okay,” she said finally. “Fifteen.” The control freak in her would soon be checking his findings to confirm they were actually the same cause of death as the others. For now, she took out her phone to fully read the email Victoriya had snooped on.

  Santiago Atteberry, of the Glasgow police department, had been sent to the house of a woman called Edith Merrow when her neighbour hadn’t seen her for three days. Inside, he’d found the woman dead in her armchair, all the signs of natural causes. As he looked her over to make sure, he noticed a mark on her neck, circular, about the size of a twenty pence piece, but thought nothing of it until he saw Gabi’s message on the boards asking for deaths similar to her own: not necessarily murder, appears to be natural causes, all women, with a circular rash or bruising on their neck.

  Gabi sent him a quick email back—checking Victoriya hadn’t already replied—asking if he’d send her any notes or photos he might have taken, knowing it was a long shot. That done, she narrowed her eyes on Victoriya, “My laptop is password protected.”

  Victoriya just grinned slyly.

  “Passwords don’t really work on her,” Gus explained. “I don’t know how she does it, but she can get into any computer. Email too, and phones, tablets, any online account. I used to think she was a technopath, but now I think she’s just a good guess.”

  Gabi’s mouth twisted into a smile. “No, she’s a psychometrist.” Her eyes settled on Victoriya. “You can know any password by touching the device?”

  Victoriya shrugged. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

  “That’s a yes,” Gus clarified. “She says that when she’s caught out but still trying to be mysterious.”

  Gabi matched Victoriya’s knife-like grin.

  Something occurred to her and she thumbed through the email again, her mind making connections fast. Santiago Atteberry had found the woman three days ago. Assuming she was a victim of the same person or thing that had killed all Gabi’s victims, that meant there was a five-month gap between the last death—lady on the news—and this. Was that just a fluke, a random fact unconnected, or did that put the deaths at a timeline of five months apart?

  Gabi pushed her chair back and ran for the archive room where she’d left her case file for safe keeping. If the timeline did match up with the previous deaths, it meant one thing for sure: it wasn’t an illness killing them. Sickness wasn’t precise.

  Gabi set the files on the floor around her, cross-legged, and let her rapid mind do the calculations. There were many missing, if there was a death every five months, but all of them fit into the pattern. Gabi didn’t have to struggle to think of the date of Mrs. Mackenzie’s death—Gabi’s and Joy’s breakup and the tragedy of her mum’s death was seared into her memory, an easy recall. The date fit.

  Gabi sat back, her mind still wrapping around it.

  A killer. She exhaled and put her head in her hands. Sometimes she hated her hunches being right.

  Joy

  Joy had had another bad morning, full of thoughts of blue hands and vanished witchcraft and a shadowy man controlling it all, and it followed her all the way through her morning. She didn’t have work today, so she’d gone down to the sea for water to purify for Mor Margaret, to keep her apothecary stocked up and ensure Joy’s discount continued for her next few shops. Looking into the sea, she’d seen her own reflection, cold and shivering and pale, and imagined her whole body had turned that cool sky blue. Shaken, she’d darted away from the water and run up the beach.

  It wasn’t natural for a fae—even a half-fae like her—to feel fear in water, only peace and a sense of home, belonging, but nothing about Joy was natural.

  Even now, walking down the high street, Joy’s reflection was ghostly in the shop windows, a glass spectre, fragile and mysterious. Dangerous, her mind whispered. She was a danger. She curled her hands into fists inside her gloves—ordinary and woolly but still a layer of protection, for everyone, from her. Joy didn’t want to find out if they were enough of a barrier between her cruel hands and the people she loved.

  She wished she had one of Salma’s speciality mood-bolstering teas, with winter berries and rich, warming spice. Cinnamon for fire, love, and luck. Cardamom to relax the body. Ginger just because. Joy desperately needed a cup today.

  “’Scuse me, love,” a soft voice intruded on Joy’s thoughts.

  Joy smiled, as she always smiled, the way she’d learned to after her mum died and it was the only way to stop people looking too closely and seeing her pain. Mrs. Windebury hovered in front of her, her faux-leather shopping bag in both hands as always, her cornflower blue coat a bright spot in the grey-beige town square. She had a look on her face that Joy knew meant she wanted to talk, or complain, so Joy stopped and said, “Hello, Mrs. Windebury.”

  “The sea’s at it again,” the woman said with a nod at the ocean, barely a glint at the end of the road. Mrs. Windebury was very old but she had an almost youthful face; Joy guessed she was about eighty but there was no telling for sure.

  “The sea?” Joy asked, hiking her bag strap higher on her shoulder. The two litres of pure water would leave a strain across her shoulders.

  “It’s acting stormy without a storm,” she clarified. “It’s them.” She jabbed a finger at the grass-strewn cliff that rose above the rest of the town. “They’re messing about with it.”

  “Right.” Joy swallowed. Them. They. The fae—her mum’s people. She couldn’t think of them as her people because all she’d known of them were passing glances, the presence of secrets, and the dark feeling of expectant fear that had chased her mum from the fae community for loving a witch. She’d never been shown a welcome, never received a letter from them or seen interest in the eyes of fae she passed in the town centre.

  Joy’s fae nature was a huge part of her—it called her to water, to the sea when her emotions were jagged, to a long bath when she needed to feel safe; it made potions second nature because of their water base, made any teas, ointments, and infusions stronger and faster acting, meant crystals from the sea were so much more powerful than those from land—but that didn’t mean her fae nature meant anything to the fae community.

  Her mum had called them elite, snobbish scumbags but Joy knew that was barely the tip of that particular iceberg. Judgemental. Harsh. Noble. Joy was not proud to be fae, but that didn’t come near to how they felt about her, a child of a witch and fae. Mixed species kids were invisible, ignored. Elves and witches pretended they didn’t exist but fae ... Joy had heard some families drowned those children. People like her.

  That was why her mum had run, or at least why she’d tried to. Joy remembered sometimes catching her mum crying, shivering, and she had known intuitively that it had been because of what she’d gone
through with her family. Joy didn’t know fully what they’d done to her, only that they’d locked her up so she couldn’t run, and it had taken years of her dad’s care to bring her mum back to the caring, outgoing person she’d been. Joy didn’t like thinking about the father that had abandoned her, that pain that had soured into resentment, but she was glad he’d saved her mum. Not just that day he broke her out of the fae fortress on a Scottish island, but for every day after that.

  So no, the fae were not her people. But Mrs. Windebury clearly thought they were, enough to pull Joy aside and look at her expectantly.

  “There’s not,” she tried, losing her smile. “There’s not a lot I can do about that.”

  “I thought your wife might be able to.”

  Joy blinked, fighting very hard not to burst into incredulous laughter. “My wife?”

  Mrs. Windebury sighed, casting a dark look at a woman in a dusky pink coat—long and boxy with embroidered edges, a direct copy of Mrs. Windebury’s—across the road. “I knew that minx was lying. Jessa said she’d seen you walking together, and then Alison heard you were dating from Pride’s Aunt at the Tipsy Witch, and then I heard from Old Joshua that Pride had proposed to you, serenading you on the beach, and then Edgar from the cobblers said he’d seen you going off in a car together last week, and that devil across the road told me she’d seen a wedding band on Pride’s ring finger.” She sent another dagger across the road at her friend who smiled innocently back, offering a little wave. “Judging by your shell-shocked face, all of them were lies.”

  “Yep. Sorry, Mrs. Windebury.” Why was Joy apologising? It was her love life the whole town was discussing—they should apologise to her. But she didn’t feel disgruntled or irritated about it. She just felt a warm reminder that Gabi was hers. Having the whole village know—or think they know—made it that more real. Her next smile was genuine as she leaned closer to the woman, smelling musky perfume and soap. “The truth is she’s my girlfriend. Not fiancée or wife, just girlfriend. But you heard that from me, so you can tell everyone you know the truth from the primary source.”