by Mike Shevdon
The girl who looked back was a stranger. Alex almost looked around to see if she had caught the reflection from some other girl. Sure, she'd had a mirror in her room, and there were mirrors dotted around the courts, but this was full length widescreen. Alex blinked and her reflection blinked back.
She caught a smug look from the girl who'd been trying to squeeze into the bustier. Alex almost told her where she could get off, but then looked again at the girl in the mirror. The sparkly top was stretched tight across her bust — too tight. It bunched into lines and left a line of pale midriff where the over-tight skirt pinched in her waist, making her look like she had a roll of puppy fat.
Her face gave the lie to any weight gain. It was lean and angular. She brushed her cheek where the bones were outlined under the skin. Her unruly hair coiled around her fingers and she teased out the curl, wondering when this had happened to her. When did she become this bony angular waif?
She stepped sideways as one of the other girls edged in front of her for a better view of herself; giving her attitude, like Alex was hogging the mirror. Looking around the changing room, Alex was suddenly conscious that the other girls would see the strange girl, in clothes that were too small, in a bra that bulged in the wrong places.
Quickly, she stripped off the top, hearing the seams stretch and crackle as she pulled it over her head. She unzipped the skirt with relief and pulled on her jeans and shirt. There was no point in trying on the leggings and tee shirt — they were all too small. She tugged things back on hangers and headed out.
She passed the token back to the woman at the changing room entrance.
"Did you find anything you liked?" she asked.
"S'all too small," said Alex, handing back the clothes.
The woman took them from her and checked them before hanging them from a rail behind her.
She turned, assessing Alex and then checking the sizes on the clothes she'd just hung up. "These are eights and you're definitely going to need a ten," she said. "What size bra are you wearing?"
Alex told her, and the woman sighed. "It's very common with young women — you don't notice how your shape is changing. You're going to have to buy a new bra before you try anything else on," she said. "The one you're wearing is too small for you and nothing is going to fit right until you do. I'll ask one of the assistants to advise you, if you'd like?"
"No, really," said Alex, "I'm OK."
"Of course," she said. "You'll find lingerie in the far corner over there." She gestured towards the back corner of the store.
"Thanks," said Alex, drifting away.
Since she got back she'd been preoccupied, what with the birth of the baby and having lessons with Fionh. All the rules about what she could do and couldn't do — it was worse than Porton Down. Her appearance hadn't been an issue, though. Maybe it was the drugs she'd been given, but she didn't feel drugged, she just felt… different, as if she didn't quite fit in her own skin. She'd just thrown on the clothes she'd been given, only now she realised they were shapeless and baggy or just didn't fit.
She found herself in front of another full length mirror along one of the aisles. Her hair wound in dark curls around her face and her eyes looking hard and cold. She smoothed the sweatshirt down, trying to visualise the figure underneath. A girl with a dress walked around in front of her. She stood between Alex and the mirror and held the dress up against herself.
"Do you mind?" said Alex. "I was using that."
The girl glanced around at her, taking in the crumpled sweatshirt and the faded jeans. "Seriously?" she said. She turned and checked the dress again.
"Stuck up bitch," said Alex, but the girl had already moved away.
Alex stared at herself and realised that the girl had a point. She did look a bit of a state. The jeans hung from her hips and the formless top did nothing for her. Now that she was conscious of it, her bra was too tight in all the wrong places and she felt frumpy.
A couple of girls passed between her and the mirror, debating the merits of the skirt they had chosen for one or other of them. Alex had no one to debate with. Did anyone care how she looked? Did anyone even notice her? Standing in the middle of the shop, she felt the people moving around her. She felt each heartbeat swishing by, heard their chatter, was jostled and stepped around, but comprehensively ignored. She'd never felt so alone. Even at the worst of Porton Down, people knew you were there. They didn't just step around you.
It came to her that she could could stop it all. She could slow every heartbeat, cause the blood not to flow. She could make it thicken and slow and they would all die, all of them.
She twitched as she felt her hands wrap around the heavy blade, the handle slick with blood. She felt the weight of the blade in her hand as she lifted it, heard her exhalation as she swept the blade down, felt the shock travel up her arms as it bit into bone, biting into the severed head in front of her…
She shook herself, wiping her hands down her front, trying to push the memory that had risen, unbidden, back where it came from.
She shook her head, trying to clear it. "Stupid. Just stupid." Her hands were shaking. She interlaced her fingers to quiet the trembling.
"Are you all right?" A girl with a shopping bag slung over her shoulder appeared at her arm, face filled with concern. "You're very pale. Do you want to sit down?"
Alex shrugged her off. "I'm fine. Leave me alone."
"I was only asking," said the girl, but Alex was already moving away between the racks.
She had to pull herself together. It was no good being flaky when she was out on her own. It would only attract attention she didn't want or need. She needed to get a hold of herself. She was tougher than this. She had been through worse and survived hadn't she?
On impulse, she walked back down the racks. She checked the sizes as she collected a violet skimpy tee, a teal bolero cardigan and a blue and purple kilt that looked kinda funky. She added to this a handbag, a pair of silver high-heeled shoes and a bra with a bigger cup-size. Then she headed for the exit.
She didn't need to pay; she didn't have any money in any case. She was cloaked in glamour, no one would notice. No one would see. Even the CCTV wouldn't register her image. Unfortunately she'd forgotten about the security tags on the clothes and as soon as she passed the door the alarms went berserk.
"Shit!" she swore and ran.
She dodged around people walking slowly down the pavement, hearing the heavy thumping of the security guard's boots on her tail. She intensified her glamour and swerved into a doorway. People walked past ignoring her. A large white guy in a blue uniform stopped in front of the the doorway. Her heart beat in her chest.
Don't look around. Don't look around.
Another guy in uniform, a tall skinny black guy, stopped, failing to notice the girl with her arms full of clothes in the doorway, just behind his colleague.
"Where'd she go?" said the black guy.
"I had her, and then she vanished," wheezed the other one, bending forward and resting his hands on his knees. "I'm getting too old for this. Either that or they're running faster."
"Come on, old man," said the black guy, punching the white guy on the arm playfully. "Did you see what she looked like?"
"Nah, but we'll get her on the cameras." They walked back towards the store, leaving Alex in the doorway with her prizes.
"You stupid silly bitch," she said to herself. "What did you do that for?"
But she had her prizes.
EIGHT
Returning to the suite I shared with Blackbird, I found her folding nappies into a drawer. I collected my sword.
"Going out again?" she asked.
"Garvin wants me to round up the escapees. He's sending Amber with me. She's waiting down at the Way node. If I don't get a move on, she'll go alone."
"I see. Pushing you up to the sharp end again, is he?"
"If Alex comes back, could you ask her to wait," I asked her.
"I'm not your secretary, Niall."
"She's used to waiting."
"What does that mean?"
"Only that your daughter, like many other things, doesn't seem to take priority."
"She's not even here," I said. "I can't talk to her if she's not here, can I? What am I supposed to do? Sit around on the offchance that she appears?"
"I'm sure you could find something to do," she said quietly.
I sighed. "I have work to do, and I really don't have time for this now."
"Off you go then. Have a good day at the office, darling." She smiled but there was no joy in it.
"You're in a strange mood. Is something wrong?"
"No. I'm fine. Go and save the world, or whatever it is you have to do," she said, turning back to the laundry.
I shrugged and left, unable to untangle whatever it was that Blackbird was not telling me. It was as if she was sending me a message I couldn't decode. She'd always wanted a baby, that much was obvious, and now she had one. She'd got what she wanted, so what was the matter? Didn't she like being a mother?
Heading down to the room where the Waypoint was, I found Amber leaning against the wall, showing no sign of impatience, or indeed any emotion whatsoever. The contrast between them struck me. I couldn't imagine having the conversation I'd just had with Blackbird, with her. Amber watched everyone, but no one watched Amber.
I made a point of assessing her. She had one black leather boot forward, where she leaned against the wall, the other boot was back against the wall, ready to propel her into action. I noticed for the first time that her boots had heels, not high, but enough to give a small lift. Her favourite weapon, a straight blade with a cord-bound hilt long enough to be wielded two handed, was slung from her hip in a black lacquered scabbard, over dark grey trousers. She wore a grey top loose enough to allow movement, tight enough not to snag or catch.
"Like what you see?" she asked, candidly.
"You're not used to being noticed, are you Amber?" It was more a statement of fact than a criticism. I wondered if merging into the background was part of her glamour.
She watched me with dark eyes under the black tousled fringe while I took in her hard chin and sharp cheekbones; she was angular. Her shoulders were sharp and bony, she was lean without Fionh's curves or Blackbird's softness and that gave her a wiriness that none of the other Warders had. The only time I'd seen Amber show any emotion was at the memorial service held for Alex and the dead girls. After the speech, she had embraced me with tears in her eyes and told me to be strong. It was so uncharacteristic that it stuck in my memory like a thorn. There was no sign of that emotion here. It was another Amber, carved from something hard and uncompromising.
"I'm ready," I told her.
She smiled faintly, then stepped forward onto the Waypoint. There was a twisting vortex and she vanished. I stepped forward after her and felt beneath me for the rising wave of the Way. I could feel her track through the Way, not warm like Blackbird, but cold and precise.
I followed it.
Having nearly been caught stealing clothes, Alex was a lot more careful about what she took after that. She made sure that none of it had security tags, or if they did, it was a moment's thought to remove them. They were tamper proof, but that was against people, not fey. It was just an opening, after all, and with a little practice she could look at a security tag and it would fall off.
She was wearing the kilt and top. The high-heeled shoes she had stolen were ditched — they were party shoes; she could barely walk in the damned things, let alone run. It had taken more ingenuity to acquire the white calfskin baseball boots she now wore. She'd had to persuade the girl in the shop to let her try them on, then follow her quietly into the stockroom when she put them back. She had swapped the silly heels for the boots and walked out. When the next person wanted to try that size they would find the heels, but by that time she would be long forgotten.
She sat on the tube train in her new clothes looking at her distorted reflection in the curved window opposite. She had make-up in her new handbag, along with a comb and a rather nice purple silk hair clip. She'd tried the clip in three times before abandoning and stuffing it back into the bag. Her hair had a mind of its own, and rejected the clip no matter how firmly she pushed it in.
She'd stolen a sandwich too, and wolfed that down. She'd wanted a burger and fries but you had to order and pay for those, and she still didn't have any money. She'd considered stealing a purse, but taking from shops was one thing, stealing from people was another. Shop stuff didn't belong to anyone until it was bought, but people's stuff was personal. She wasn't a thief.
The train was emptying slowly as it got further out. Getting on board was child's play, and there were no ticket inspectors on the underground. All she had to do was wait and it would carry her home. She thought briefly about what her mum would say about her new clothes, but other than today, Mum hadn't seen her for weeks. With any luck her mum would assume Dad bought them, and vice versa. Besides, she couldn't wear clothes that didn't fit, could she? No amount of glamour would fix a zip that wouldn't close.
The woman opposite, three seats down kept glancing at her. Alex fussed with her hair, wondering if it was being unruly again. It had a habit of curling and uncurling on its own if she didn't pay attention. She met her gaze and the woman looked away. She had a nice tattoo on her arm, though. It was a butterfly with long tails on its wings.
Alex had wanted a tattoo for ages, but she knew her mum would go mental, and there was the added deterrent that girls like Tracy Welham had them. Of course, hers were gross and anyway, she was dead. Alex shifted uncomfortably on the seat.
She didn't care that the Welham girl was dead. She was evil. The reason Alex had the panic attacks was because of what they'd done to her — they'd made her lose control. She didn't feel guilty, no matter what the psychologists said. They should have left her alone. She'd told them, hadn't she? She'd warned them. Anyway, it was like Fionh said. They had challenged her, three against one, and they'd lost. Tough.
Her mind wandered back to the tattoo and she found herself staring at the woman. She was about thirty or something, what was she doing with a tattoo? She looked at her own arm. Slowly colours started to emerge, faintly at first, then stronger. The problem was that it looked more like one of the drawings on her school exercise book than the woman's tattoo. She scowled and it vanished. She couldn't turn up at Mum's with a tattoo anyway.
By the time the tube neared her station it was overground and she could look into the backs of people's gardens as she rolled past. They were little dramas, each of them, or little soap operas, except no one got murdered. She wondered if that was where the Welhams lived.
She hopped off the train at her stop and exited beneath the notice of the station attendant. No one challenged her, no one even noticed. She walked along the avenues, noting familiar landmarks, passing the shop where she'd bought sweets, the road which led to her school. On impulse she walked towards the school, wanting to see what had become of the chaos she had visited upon them. When she reached the gate to the school field it was locked. She left it open behind her. She walked across the open field cloaked in glamour, noting the new window-frames in the changing block and the emergency door newly set in the wall of the girl's changing rooms.
She laid her hand upon it and it clicked open for her. Inside was clean, silent and cool. There was no sign of the destruction she'd wrought. It smelled faintly of disinfectant, not the overpowering stench of raw sewage. The stalls were all new, some of the fittings still had tape on them to protect them. She walked around the changing rooms, trailing her finger across the surfaces, drawing an imaginary rising line along the walls. They had erased every mark of her. There was no memorial, no sign, no indication that four girls had died here. Well, one of them was very much alive.
She kicked out at the door to a stall. It banged loudly against the side of the stall. She kicked it again, and again, harder, until it broke off the hinges and collapsed into the stall. She turned to look at herself in the mirrors screwed to the wall. Her hair was a winding mass of tendrils, her eyes were filled with blue fire, her hands bunched into fists.
Her reflection admonished her but she was in no mood to be censured. The mirror was only liquid slowed down, and she was the queen of all things liquid. "Pah!" She spat an incoherent command, and the mirrors flew apart into a thousand fragments, an explosion in a glitter factory, surrounding her in a rain of tinkling, sparkling fragments.
"Who's there? What's going on?" It was a male voice coming from the gym, the caretaker. She looked down. Under the shower of glass she had coated herself in tiny glittering fragments, yet there was no scratch upon her. She stared at the particles and they dropped or dribbled, running together, merging with all the other particles until there was a single amoeba of flat green glass where the central drain had been. Across the floor, tiny fragments of foil from the mirror drifted like silver leaf litter. She left it that way, shutting the emergency door quietly behind her, and leaving them to figure it out. Now they would remember her.
She went back onto the field, leaving the gate wide open, taking the route home. She walked the familiar path feeling like a stranger. Even her footsteps sounded wrong to her. She marched around the avenues and cut through the short cuts. Finally she came to her road, her house. Barry's Toyota was there. He would be home. So would Mum. She caught site of herself in a neighbour's window. She didn't look like the girl that lived there. She looked wild.
It didn't matter. You could always go home.
She sneaked around the back by the garage, lifting the catch over the gate as she'd always done. She closed it quietly behind her. At the back door she hesitated, but then smiled to herself. It would be OK.