by Ellie Margot
The night was uneventful, and Riette found the bed at a time before she ever would have at home.
All that the next day offered them was work. Cleaning until her hands were sore and her arms burned with strain.
Riette considered her hands. She thought after a moment of looking at all of the lines that had gathered, all of the dryness that threatened to crack her skin, that there was a good chance that her hands would never be the same again.
“What I wouldn’t give for a manicure,” said Trinity. She hadn’t been in the room long, but she had come to check on them again while they were cleaning. That time, however, she didn’t bring Ella with her.
Riette couldn’t summon the energy to express her gratefulness on that point.
“A manicure?” asked Corin.
“Sorry. I forget. It’s where you pay someone else to massage your hands, clean your nails, paint them if you’d like.”
“So you outsource your basic grooming to someone else?” asked Mekhi.
“When you say it like that, it sounds crass,” said Trinity, and she laughed, waiting for the others to join in with her. She lifted her eyebrows when no one joined in.
“Guy is the first to tell us that we’re without the knowledge we need to function here,” said Riette. She looked at Corin before looking back at Trinity. “You don’t really have a chance in Demura of Mekhi understanding the benefit of it.” Riette looked at her hands again. “I wouldn’t be completely opposed.”
“I could do it for you,” said Trinity.
Riette shook her head before she even realized she was doing it. “If you got burned, I probably wouldn’t forgive myself.”
“Probably?” Trinity laughed.
“Well, I would definitely feel bad, but depending on other factors, I might be able to move on,” said Riette. There was a teasing lilt to her voice.
Trinity smirked. “I knew I liked you, but I couldn’t decide why.”
“Now, see? Other girls might get mad about you saying that.”
“Well, basic bitches need not apply for my friendship card.”
“There’s a friendship card?”
“No, but I’m not opposed, as you say, to starting one.” Trinity smoothed her hands down her clothes. “I need to get back.” She turned but then paused before taking more steps. “I’m really glad you all are here. I wanted you to know that.”
And with a slight nod of her head, she left before they could respond back to her.
Once she left the room, Mekhi broke the silence. “I can’t decide if she’s weird or wonderful.”
“Wonderful?” asked Corin.
“I mean she’s no you, but she seems interesting. And then a robot. And then entertaining, and then a Cassian fiend, which can’t speak well to her sensibilities and sanity levels.”
“Mekhi, what if she’s, like, lingering in the hallway and overhears you?” asked Riette. She went back to scrubbing the tile in the en suite bathroom, but she left the door open to still hear them.
“Then she’d hone in on the wonderful part and take the rest with a grain of sugar?”
“That’s not how we work,” said Corin. “I could say you were absolutely perfect minus the red hair, and you’d hate me for hating your red hair.”
“Yes, because that would mean that your tastes were shit and you couldn’t be trusted.”
“Most redheads—”
“Watch it, cousin,” said Mekhi.
“I can say it. I have the highlights.”
“No, you think you can say it because you have the flaming fingers and people are afraid of you, but I gave you wedgies when you were a little nothing with no burning anything, and I’ll do the same now.”
“Please,” said Riette.
“You heard her,” Mekhi told Corin as he swept the floor. “She asked for it.”
“When she burns you to bits, I don’t think I’ll be able to confirm anything for you,” said Corin.
They continued to clean for an hour more, and Riette called it done.
She needed to get upstairs to check on Barry and Bark and, frankly, to get away from the sugary sweetness that was Corin and Mekhi.
They let her go, but they hardly noticed her absence for getting an uninterrupted moment together.
Riette worked her way upstairs, and she saw the silver-haired Alex slip into one of the rooms. He nodded in her direction when he saw her but said nothing.
Riette considered his glowing eyes again, even after he had left, and was left again with the question of who he was and why he was there.
She found her room easily and slipped inside. But she wasn’t alone.
Cassian was sitting on his bed, looking at a small book in his hands. He looked up at her and shifted his position, but he didn’t speak, and his eyes didn’t linger.
Riette closed the door with a soft click behind her. She crossed the room and laid her bag on the bed. It moved when it settled, but a quick glance at Cassian showed he wasn’t watching her and didn’t notice.
“Have you been here long?” Riette asked. Even she could hear the stiffness in her own voice.
A moment passed, and she thought briefly that he wasn’t going to answer her, but then he cleared his throat.
“Not really. We were working the far-back edges of the yard. Guy’s still there, but he needed time alone.”
Riette sat on the bed next to the bag. “You left him out there?”
Cassian sat up and faced her from where he was perched on his bed. “I didn’t abandon him.”
“You said you left him.”
“And you assumed the worse,” he said. “About me. Which is becoming all the more commonplace.”
“And the ‘shit on Riette’ game isn’t your favorite?”
“I don’t shit on you.” Cassian’s voice was low and rough.
Riette rolled her eyes. “Whatever is happening, you’re not the same Cassian I’ve known my whole life.”
“And whoever you’re becoming isn’t the girl I knew.”
“I haven’t changed.”
“Or maybe you have, and it’s easier for you to project it on me.”
“I don’t need this,” said Riette, standing. She grabbed her bag and started to walk toward the door.
“I’m seeing more and more of your back as you run away lately.”
“And I’m seeing less of you altogether. These days by choice.” Riette’s tattoo burned on her shoulder, and with a parting glance at Cassian, she saw the tightness of his jaw and how he had moved to the very edge of the bed.
Nothing was said as Riette left, and she let her words linger in the quiet room behind her.
There was a clicking in her jaw and a burning on her shoulder. It was like the flames were licking the inner surfaces of her skin, pushing until they could find their way out of her.
Riette moved down the hall, and part of her almost lingered at the door where she had seen Alex. She didn’t know what she was going to say to him, but she knew that throwing another person at her problems didn’t make things better.
It wouldn’t fix whatever wrongness was brewing its way inside of her. It wouldn’t fix the rage in her heart. She walked down the main steps and through the backside of the house.
Riette hadn’t been asked to clean back here, and even with her slight snooping, she hadn’t seen half of what was tucked away in Leaf Landing, least of all her grandmother’s book.
She made her way down a narrow hall and passed a galley kitchen.
There was a woman in there. She was stirring something on the stove, and the pot was bigger than she was. She was older, with blonde wispy hairs that fell around her face, and she smiled when she saw Riette but didn’t speak and didn’t linger.
The woman turned her attention back to the pot, and Riette continued her journey that had no destination. It wasn’t until she found the door to the yard that she even knew that was what she was looking for.
The sun was already beginning to set when she made her way o
utside.
The yard was a garden. It was overgrown with flowers, as if the designer of the place hadn’t been able to choose amongst his favorites, so he chose them all and too many of each. Colors clashed against each other in a sea of shapes and textures.
In the center of the garden was a tree. It seemed tall enough to scratch the edges of the sky and was larger than any of the structures that surrounded it.
When Riette saw it, she moved closer as if pulled by strings that could not be seen.
She touched it and felt the power, the energy. It was a Vitan tree, and the vines that she missed like part of her own soul was missing hung down on all sides of the tree like a curtain of strength and magic personified.
There was a swing hanging off of one of its many branches, and Riette sat on the swing and set the bag beside her.
A vine reached out to her and wrapped itself around her wrist. All of the vines were so much smaller than the ones at home that they used for transport. Riette closed her eyes and smelled the earth around her as the vines continued to wrap around her wrist.
She saw her grandmother’s smile when she felt the vine against her skin.
And when Riette opened her eyes, the world was darker. Time had passed without her permission, and she knew she had slept but how long was unclear.
The vines had let go, and she undid the bag beside of her. Bark climbed out first, and his mouth opened in surprise at his surroundings. He mumbled in awe, and Riette laughed.
It was the first time in so many moons that she felt at home, and she didn’t want to destroy the peace she had been given.
Barry came out of the bag a moment later and leapt onto Riette’s shoulder.
A vine came down toward him, and he slapped at it, not unlike a cat with a ball of yarn.
“Hey, don’t hurt it,” said Riette, but then she saw the vine snap back at Barry, and the need to warn him quieted.
The tree looked after itself, she was sure, and if Barry kept pressing, she was also sure she would witness that protection in action.
Riette touched Bark and saw him stretch to his full height. Green growth and flowers were starting to sprout from his feet. Riette watched it happen in front of her.
And although it stopped a moment later, she knew what they were at the edges of.
Bark needed to be planted soon, but Riette knew she would never leave him at Leaf Landing.
He’d be eaten, abused, or turned into an attraction instead of being the powerful being he should be.
Riette touched his head and then heard a cracking noise in the distance. Barry jumped down from her shoulder, and Bark looked up at her. They had all heard it, but no other noise followed.
Riette’s peace was gone, and the tattoo burned with a brightness that could be seen in the dark.
Something had happened, but with nothing else in the wind to confirm it, Riette started to wonder if she had heard anything at all.
The night got darker and then darker still, and she gathered up Bark and Barry to head back inside.
She didn’t see another soul until she got back to the room and heard the quiet sounds of Mekhi and Cassian sleeping. She climbed into bed and tried to will the humming of her power away to find the sleep that so often eluded her.
Chapter 17
The smell woke her. It was the smell of burnt flesh and oil. Of soot and smoke. When Riette opened her eyes, she was staring down a cylinder.
Conversations, hearsay, and Dane had given her an understanding of what she was looking down, but seeing a gun that close to her face was something else entirely.
She blinked and saw Billy holding it. He nodded slowly as if he was pleased with what he saw, but there wasn’t any of sign on his face of happiness.
“You know what this is?” he asked quietly. There wasn’t a quiver in his voice or in his hands as he spoke to her.
“A gun,” she said, and her tattoo roared to life again, searing her shoulder with the force of energy.
“Yes and no. It’s a gun, but this here kind of gun is a magic gun. It’ll kill you like any other gun you’ve seen, but it also drains the energy out of you, rotting it from the inside so that on the slim, and I mean fucking minuscule, chance you survive, there won’t be anything of magic left inside.”
It was the most words she had ever heard Billy speak, and he said them with a measured stillness that she had to appreciate, even while she knew she should be begging for her life.
Riette didn’t beg though. And someone having a gun in her face was bullshit she wouldn’t tolerate.
“Back the fuck up,” said Riette, not moving or shifting.
Billy cocked the gun, the only sign that he heard her.
There was a noise in the room of someone sitting up quickly, but Billy didn’t turn his head. He didn’t blink. Riette, from where she was laying, couldn’t even see the rise and fall of his chest, just the blackness of the metal that hovered just above her skin.
She knew the noise was the others waking. From the very corner of her left eye, she saw Cassian move to stand quickly but stumble.
Riette knew there was only one reason he’d stumble, and that would be alcohol from the night before.
Cassian moved again, and then she couldn’t see anything.
“What is going on?” said Cassian.
She didn’t try to move to see them, but she heard them shuffle.
Billy moved his other hand quickly, and then another pistol was being pointed in the direction of Cassian and Guy. His head didn’t move, and if Riette had blinked, she would have missed the entire transaction.
“Tell your friends to stay where they are before they see your face from an entirely new angle.”
Riette bit her lip before speaking. “They can hear you fine, I’m sure.”
“What’s this about?” said Guy.
“There’s a mess of people downstairs after this one, and it’s my job to get her down there.”
“Who?” asked Riette. Her thoughts went to Frank and his veiled threat of Samantha, the warlock who felt that Riette had wronged her.
“You’re going to get up—”
“Sam is out of her mind, okay? This is a misunderstanding.”
“The only thing that’s not being understood is the amount of fucking danger you are in. I do not shit around, and I am not about to let them fuck up Leaf Landing to get to you.”
Riette opened her mouth to speak.
Billy silenced her by pressing the gun to her nose. “There’s no way I’ll miss being this close. I don’t want to have to repeat myself, and I don’t give two shits about what you did and who you did it to right now. This is going to end with you going downstairs, and we’ll figure the rest of this shit out down there.”
He eased the gun back one step. Riette shifted.
“Now sit up, right yourself, but pull one fucking thing, and I’ll do the same with my trigger finger. We clear?”
“Crystal,” said Riette.
She sat up and cast her eyes at the others.
Guy was holding Cassian back. She missed what caused the action, but there was a look on Cassian’s face that Riette hadn’t seen before.
“Maybe we can figure this out,” said Guy.
“She told me you could hear me,” said Billy. “And I’m of the mind that if you can hear me, you know better than to go against what I already fucking said.”
“I’m telling you the bounty isn’t worth shit,” said Riette. She placed her feet on the floor and fought the urge to roll her eyes.
Billy shook his head and spit something black on the floor beside him before wiping his lips with the back of his hand.
He turned toward Riette. “You’re not wanted for a bounty. You’re wanted for murder. Now get your ass downstairs.”
Chapter 18
When Riette stood, Billy took another step back. He glanced quickly at Guy and Cassian, and then after assessing them, he slipped the gun that wasn’t trained on Riette back into the holster on his hip.<
br />
Riette shifted and went to grab her bag from the bed beside her.
“Leave it.”
“I’m not going to leave it here,” said Riette, looking up at Billy.
“You don’t seem to understand who you’re fucking with.”
“Neither do you.”
Billy didn’t laugh, but he shook his head. “Give the bag to them, stand up, and start walking.”
Riette stood and tossed the bag to Guy. He caught it but barely. Then Billy gestured for them to start walking.
They made it to the door, and the door belonging to Mekhi and Corin opened.
“What’s going on?” asked Mekhi. He stood in front of Corin, and his eyes widened when they landed on Billy and the gun pointed at Riette’s back.
“She’s wanted for murder,” said Guy. He stood next to Cassian behind Riette, and Billy was taking up the back.
Mekhi and Corin joined their party, and they all started to walk toward the steps.
“Slowly,” said Billy.
Riette’s tattoo burned on her shoulder, brighter than she had ever felt it. Her fingers itched, and she fought the urge to look down. She didn’t want to confirm the flames that she might find her at her fingertips, let alone to alert Billy of their imminent arrival.
Guy moved next to her, and he shifted the bag on his shoulder. He bounced his weight from foot to foot as the group shuffled forward.
“You’re nervous,” said Riette, her voice soft.
“Calm as a cucumber.”
“I’m the one who had a gun in her face. Shouldn’t I be the one freaking out?”
“I’m not freaking out. If I’m nervous, that would make Billy nervous, and nervous people have trigger-happy fingers. So I can’t be nervous.”
“No, you are nervous and putting us all in danger,” said Mekhi from behind him. “Get your shit together.”
“What are we up against?” asked Cassian.
A quick glance behind her showed Riette that Billy was still there lingering, gun still in hand, but he didn’t bristle at them talking.
Maybe because he had the knowledge of what, or who, they were up against.