by Eric Nylund
Between the mirrors hung red curtains and velvet wallpaper. There were racks of clothes as far back as Fiona could see. Everything emitted a faint flowery perfume.
A model runway ran down the length of the store. Floor lights flickered on, and an old woman hobbled down the raised platform. She was impeccably dressed in black slacks and shirt and high heels that barely brought her up to Fiona’s chin.
“We’re closed,” she croaked in a thickly accented voice and shooed them away. “Forever closed! Go away.”
Her scowl dropped as she saw Aunt Dallas. “Oh, it’s you, Lady. A thousand apologies. Come in, come in.” She smiled and bowed. “Can I have coffee or tea or perhaps some Kirschwasser brought out for you?”
“Nothing for me, Madame Cobweb. We are working on my niece tonight.” She nodded at Fiona. “And her charming friend, Miss Lane.”
The old woman’s eyes grew wide. “The Fiona Post? Yes. . I see the resemblance. To the mother as well. Stunning. Grace and beauty just now budding.” She fumbled the glasses on a silver chain about her neck and donned them, taking a more careful, much longer look.
Fiona felt like she’d been set under a microscope and every pimple and too-large pore exposed.
“Yeeees. Exquisite material. Both of them. But Paxington girls? Those uniforms-something must be done.” Madame Cobweb said Paxington like it was a rare tropical disease. Like she and Amanda needed to be quarantined.
“Maybe this wasn’t a great idea,” Amanda whispered, and took a step back. “I’ll just wait in the car. . ”
“We shall hear none of that,” the old woman said. “Beautiful girls must wear beautiful things. Come, I measure you.”
Dallas wrapped her arms around Amanda and Fiona and drew them along to Madame Cobweb. “It won’t hurt,” she said. “Much. Probably.”
Madame Cobweb took out a tape measure and zipped it across Fiona’s shoulders and down her back, making tut-tut noises. “They should not have been let out in these rags.” She turned her about and measured her chest-first above, then directly over, and then she measured under as well. “Needs lifting and definition,” she said.
Fiona’s face burned, but she endured the handling rather than letting any of them see how self-conscious she was.
“You know how that horrid Miss Westin is with her tweed and slavish devotion to Victorian styles,” Dallas said, rolling her eyes. “We’re lucky they’re not in whalebone corsets.”
Madame Cobweb measured Amanda, who let her move and pose her like a doll.
She then examined the numbers on her notepad. “I have many things in their sizes. My latest creations.”
“Very well,” Dallas said, and tiny frown appeared on her lips. “But you will make a few things, just for them, no?”
“But of course, M’lady. Originals. Only the best.” Madame Cobweb moved to the back of the shop. “One moment, please.”
Fiona turned. “Aunt Dallas, this is great. Really. But we’re wearing uniforms all day. When are we going to need anything else?” She made a little frustrated motion with her hands.
“And their wretched uniforms!” Dallas shouted back to the old woman. “They will need three new ones that actually fit.”
“Oui, mademoiselle,” Madame Cobweb called back.
Dallas turned her attention back to Fiona. “There are always occasions to dress up, darling. Dances and parties. I’ll see to that.”
“Maybe we should just try on a few things,” Amanda whispered. “It could be fun.” She brushed her hair to one side.
Dallas stepped closer. “Let me, please.” She grabbed a clip off a nearby rack of rhinestone encrusted hairpins and tucked Amanda’s hair back and fussed over it. She did the other side of her head then and turned her back to face Fiona. Amanda’s hair was finally out of her face, artfully swept up, and highlighted with tiny sparks.
“Why, Miss Lane,” Dallas said. “You are lovely. The world can be such a dreary place; you should help light it.”
Amanda blushed so hard, Fiona felt the heat on her skin three paces away.
Before Fiona could figure out how that was possible, there was a great crash outside.
She went to the window and glanced between the boards.
That gang of boys threw rocks at a tiny car that sputtered by on the street. They shouted after it, and then all laughed and took swigs from bottles wrapped in paper bags. What a bunch of creeps!
Amanda, however, was too busy admiring her new hair to even notice.
Madame Cobweb returned then, wheeling a rack loaded with dresses and slacks, gossamer blouses, and carrying a separate tray of necklaces, bracelets, and earrings.
“Pour les belles jeunes dames. Miss Post”-she gestured to the right side of the rack-“and Miss Lane”-she waved to the left side. “Please, help yourselves. The dressing rooms are this way.”
Fiona and Amanda exchanged a look and then shrugged, grabbed an armload of clothes each, and stepped into the dressing rooms.
If Fiona tried on a few things to appease Dallas, then maybe they could find a moment to have a serious talk with her aunt about the League and what it meant to be a goddess. . surely more than fancy clothes.
She got out of her uniform and wriggled into a gown of gray silk that flared about her ankles.
A perfect fit.
Fiona had never had clothes like this-no puckering, not too long or too short, no binding in all the wrong places. It felt better than her own skin.
She added a string of jade beads and turned to the full-length mirror. Her breath hiccupped in her throat. She looked great. Like a model.
Sure, she was still stuck with her unmanageable hair and her face. . but that almost didn’t matter with this dress. The silver made her skin look luminous.
She wanted it. And she wanted to wear clothes like this all the time.
She twirled, and smiled, and then stopped.
So why did it also feel so weird? So wasteful?
“This is great,” Amanda whispered from the adjacent changing room.
“Let me see.”
They both stepped out. Fiona was dumbstruck.
Amanda wore spike red heels and a red skirt that fell to her knees and clung about her slender waist, a white silk blouse, raw rubies that flashed against her skin, and a smart little jacket to match. She had auburn highlights in her hair that Fiona had never noticed before. When she smiled, she looked like a princess or a model on the cover of a magazine. She wasn’t exactly beautiful, but she had something that had eluded Fiona.
“Wonderful!” Dallas clapped her hands. She hugged them both. “Try something else.”
There was a scratch at Fiona’s wrist: the price tag.
She looked and gasped. Dollar or euros, it wouldn’t matter, this one dress cost more than she made working all last summer at Ringo’s Pizza Palace.
She had the credit card Audrey had given her. That was supposed to be for school supplies and emergencies. Did this qualify as school supplies? Hadn’t Aunt Dallas said there might be school dances? Maybe her clothes were a justifiable fashion emergency?
No. It’d be breaking a rule.
“I’ll just change back,” she murmured, so softly that she thought only she heard.
“Oh no no no,” Dallas said. “Don’t worry about price.” She waved her hand toward Madame Cobweb. “Put it on my account.”
“Oui, mademoiselle. Very generous.”
Amanda trembled with joy and took Dallas’s hands. She looked like she was going to cry.
“Thanks, Aunt Dallas,” Fiona replied. “I don’t know what to say. . ”
She really didn’t know what to say. She was grateful, more than she could express, and she did want the clothes-all of them-but wanting them felt a little like those truffles that she had gotten this summer-delicious and sweet. . and poisoned. It was too much, too perfect.
Audrey’s often-repeated mantra came to her: Too-generous presents come with strings.
Outside the store came muted sh
outs.
Fiona moved to the window as Dallas and Amanda fell on the rack of clothes, riffling for a new selection.
Those boys again-only this time, their attentions were focused on an old woman carrying two bags of groceries.
They pushed her down. One boy grabbed her bag and scattered vegetables across the sidewalk, stomping on tomatoes, laughing.
Fiona was horrified.
Dallas came to Fiona’s side.
“We have to do something,” Fiona told her.
“Why?” Dallas said. “I told you those boys wouldn’t bother us.”
“But that old woman. .”
“She will be fine,” Dallas reassured her, and gently tugged on her arm. “It’s just a few tomatoes.”
Fiona pulled away.
Her anger kindled. It had been banked and ready to be blown into a full raging inferno. . and this time Fiona welcomed it.
She was mad.
She’d been mad for a while, and it was time she admitted it. She was mad that Team Scarab had lost their first match. Mad at her brother for always getting into trouble. Mad at Amanda for being sad, pathetic, and looking better than her in her dress. And most of all mad at Aunt Dallas for wasting her time and not doing anything to help that old woman.
“Is this what the League does?” Fiona whispered. “Let people get hurt. . while they shop?”
Dallas gave her a look as if to say she should grow up. “My sweet, the ‘people’ always get hurt, and they never appreciate help. There is nothing that can be done for them.”
“Yes, there is.”
Fiona stalked out of the shop.
Only distantly did she realize she must look ridiculous in this wispy little dress and in her bare feet. The cool night air whipped about her. She crunched over broken glass, and it didn’t hurt.
The boys hadn’t seen her-they still taunted the old woman while she wept on the ground.
“Hey!” Fiona yelled.
Fiona shoved the limo out of her way. It had to weigh two tons, but it felt like cardboard.
The boys turned, shocked to see her push aside a car, more shocked to see the look of pure hatred in her eyes.
“You want to fight a woman? Try me.”
In her hand, she clutched the slightly rusted chain Louis had given her. One moment, it had been on her wrist, an ordinary bracelet; the next, a real chain-six feet long and heavy. It scraped and sparked along the ground, every link twisted to lie flat, angled to a fine sharpened edge-the entire length feeling like an extension of her arm.
She hadn’t recalled unclasping the thing, but there it was. It felt like it had always been there, too: a part of her.
Fiona whipped the chain around her once-and then lashed it toward the lamppost.
It wrapped around the sculpted wrought iron.
She glared at the boys, who, astonished and openmouthed and frozen, could only stare back.
She imagined her chain wrapped about their necks-and then yanked.
The metal cleanly severed.
The light went dark. The lamppost twisted and fell into the street with a deafening wrench.
The gang of boys stood for a heartbeat. . then ran-almost knocking each other over to get away from her.
Fiona smiled. That had felt good. Not just saving the old woman from further indignity, but the primeval urge to cut something, too. To tear and rip and rend; she felt it surge and sing through her blood. She wanted more.
The old woman got shakily to her feet. Her eyes were wide and dark, like some deer about to be eaten, as she stared at Fiona. . like she was looking into the face of Death.
She backed away, then turned and ran, crossing herself, whimpering. . leaving her groceries scattered on the street.
Aunt Dallas, Madame Cobweb, and Amanda stood behind Fiona in the doorway of the shop.
“That was the most amazingly cool thing I’ve ever seen!” Amanda cried, clapping her hands.
“That’s what you could have done,” Fiona told Dallas.
Dallas sighed and shook her head, but nonetheless looked the tiniest bit impressed. “Just like your mother,” she whispered.
Fiona stood taller. Dallas’s words-obviously not a compliment-for some reason made Fiona feel better than any new clothes ever could.
SECTION III. ADVERSARIES
24. FIRST STEP ON A CROOKED PATH
Eliot walked alone to school on Halloween morning. Most houses in Pacific Heights had carved pumpkins on their doorsteps, leering at him as he passed.
He was sure no one was going to let him dress up in costume and go out this evening. It was a school night and candy wasn’t allowed in the house. There wasn’t a rule about candy, per se, but Cecilia claimed her peanut brittle was better than anything you could buy. . and if you liked eating reinforced concrete, she was right.
Eliot tromped along, doing his best to ignore the festive decorations. He was by himself because Fiona was still taking her time trying on all her new clothes-not just the new dresses Aunt Dallas had bought her, but her new custom-tailored Paxington uniforms.
He tugged on his own Paxington jacket. Still too big.
But it was starting to fit better.
For two weeks he’d gone to Robert’s after school. Eliot was on a new physical regime of tai chi, calisthenics, and free weights. Robert had also taught him the basics of fighting. Every muscle ached, and the ribs on Eliot’s left side hurt where Robert had left a tattooing of bruises.
Eliot curled his hands into fist and flexed his forearms. It’d been worth it, though. He felt stronger.
Near school, Eliot saw more students. Some walked alone like he did, although most collected in groups of three or four, chatting along the way. Others sputtered by on motor scooters.
Funny how on that first day he’d seen only one or two other students-now he saw them everywhere. Had they all been here and he’d never noticed? Was it something about the uniform that made them blend in?
He spotted the Paxington entrance half a block away and went to it. He touched the rough granite blocks. . and hesitated.
He should go inside. He’d heard there might be a field trip today. He also had to cram for a rumored pop quiz in Miss Westin’s class. But it didn’t feel right entering without Fiona.
Then there was the matter of Jezebel, which remained completely unresolved. The revelation that she had been Julie Marks, and was now an Infernal. . he hadn’t told anyone.
The problem was he still didn’t know much about Infernals. Their studies in Miss Westin’s class hadn’t covered them in detail.
And Eliot hadn’t had a chance to talk again with Jezebel. She disappeared after class. And in gym-they’d been so busy drilling for the handful of remaining all-important matches, there’d never been a chance to get her alone.
If this was some Infernal game of chess with Jezebel as a living pawn. . he had to make sure he made the right move.
Telling Fiona would be a move; it would set her in motion, possibly provoking a confrontation between the two girls.
He wasn’t ready for that.
And telling Robert? He’d wanted to at first. But now it felt like a family matter. . dangerous. . and private.
He sighed, feeling completely alone-and walked through the there-but-not entrance to school.
Off the main street there, Paxington students browsed store windows, ogling the jewelry, watches, and latest computers. There were fashion boutiques with gaudy dresses and flashy tuxedos and the zombie, vampire, and robot costumes for Halloween. Café Eridanus was packed.
A man sat at one of the café’s outdoor tables. He waved Eliot closer.
Eliot’s spirits soared as he recognized him.
“Louis!”
He was the one person he could talk to about this stuff.
Eliot tried to sit next to his father, but as he pulled out a chair, he saw a black cat curled upon it. Amber eyes blinked at him. It didn’t move, and returned to its nap.
Eliot thought about petting i
t or lifting it over to the next chair.
“Ignore that wretched animal.” Louis gestured to the seat on his left.
Eliot sat there. “I’m glad to see you.”
Louis smiled warmly, but that happiness faded as he gazed at Eliot. “What has happened?”
“There’s so much,” Eliot replied. “But I don’t want to be late for class.”
He took out his phone and set it on the table where he could watch the time. “You’re just not late for Miss Westin’s class more than once.”
“A new phone? A gift from your mother? Or, perhaps the League?” Louis reached for it. “Do you mind?
“Sure,” Eliot said, pushed it closer. “It does everything.”
Eliot regretted letting the phone out of his grasp the second Louis touched it. If anything happened to it, Audrey would kill him.
Louis poked and turned it this way and that. For an instant the phone seemed to vanish-but that was just a trick of the light, because then Louis immediately set it back on the table.
“I must upgrade mine one of these days. Now, explain what weighs so heavy upon your heart.”
Eliot told Louis about Jezebel-that she was an Infernal like him-then backtracked to when she’d been mortal Julie Marks at Ringo’s Pizza Parlor, and how she’d been nice to him, and how they’d been at the Pink Rabbit and he’d serenaded her.
“I have heard that melody,” Louis said, wistful. “A lovely thing. Ripe with hope. So tragic.”
“Yeah,” Eliot whispered.
Thinking about her song made him sad. Like there was no longer any hope for the Julie Marks he’d known. . and there was even less hope for them now that she was the Infernal Jezebel.
Louis made an encouraging gesture, indicating that he go on.
Eliot then told how Jezebel had arrived at Paxington, her titles, how she looked so much like Julie, and so much not like her, how she fought and saved him in gym class. . and then how he had confronted her about the truth, and how she had revealed everything.
“She lied to you?” Louis asked, bemused. “And you told her as much? You know, there is no greater offense for an Infernal to be caught in a lie.” He smiled, but there was a hint of malice to it.