by Cate Tiernan
“I’m sitting right here,” I said.
With no warning, River put out her hand, touching her fingers to my temple. What was she doing? And then I felt—her.
I felt River’s mind. For a moment I sat there marveling at the sensation, then I realized everything it could mean, and I slammed my own mind shut, dropping every wall that I had into place. She was right, I was untrained, I didn’t know how to do anything, but I still sent screaming signals of Protect through my brain.
Her eyes widened slightly, and she took her hand away.
I tried to act as if nothing had happened. “Do I have a fever?” I managed to ask.
She shook her head.
That night, all four teachers put sigils of protection on me, actually tracing them onto my forehead, my arms, my back, over my heart. Solis and Anne walked with me back to my room, and they drew more spells onto my doorframe, my door, the inside of my door, over my bed.
“How about the bathroom?” I asked cheekily. “I could fall off the john, break my neck.”
They did not think that was amusing.
“Do you know how to do a lock-door spell?” Anne asked me.
I stared at her. “Those exist?? Jesus Christ! You could have told me a month ago!”
Anne and Solis cracked up. Then she taught me an elementary spell that wouldn’t stop a buffalo, say, but would stop anyone who tried to come in without my permission. It was a simple spell, and I recognized the basic structure from the spellcrafting-for-dummies class that Asher taught. But even a simple spell has to be limited to time, place, person, effect.… It was those kinds of details that made me want to scream, that I had no patience for.
Still, I’d hated not having a lock on my door. If this would keep people out, then I would learn it. Anne went over it twice with me, and I finally nodded. Then she left my room and waited in the hall. Very slowly and painstakingly, feeling like a dropout from Stupid School, I made the spell, including words, hand gestures, the whole shebang.
“Okay,” I finally called, feeling like I had run across the Brooklyn Bridge.
Anne tried to come in. I saw the doorknob turn.
“I can’t,” she said, sounding satisfied. “The harder I try, the less I can. Good job!”
I was amazingly pleased with myself, until I remembered that I was only doing this because someone here, someone close to me, hated my guts.
That sucked some of the thrill out of it.
CHAPTER 23
That day seemed to mark a new chapter in my career at River’s Edge. Because of the teachers’ reactions and concern, it made me slow down and do everything with more awareness, trying to pay attention to any malevolent feelings around me.
I watched both Nell and Reyn at mealtimes or when we were working near each other. Reyn was literally trying not to look at me and acted as if I were invisible. He no longer gave me rides to town, and we were never assigned to work together. Nell seemed to have gotten a grip on her hostility and had resumed being pleasant and friendly in a fake, vacuous way.
I picked up on nothing, and no one found any evidence of more dark spells anywhere else. We were all on guard, but it started to seem as if it could have been a one-time thing—like a warning shot across a bow, without much intent to follow through.
That’s what I was telling myself, anyway.
A couple of days later, Old Mac told me that the store would be closed for five days. Apparently, once or twice a year he went off with his man friends and fished. I pictured a bunch of grumpy old men, griping at each other, standing glumly in icy water, flicking their rods. But maybe for him it was therapy, a reprieve.
It sure was for me. At first I was thrilled—five days off!—and then panic set in: What would I do with myself? Right now, every moment of every day was occupied, and even when it was a two-hour stretch of something heinous and soul-crushing, I was still focused on trying to be aware of who and what was around me.
With five days off, I pictured myself getting bored and thinking of dumb-ass things to do to entertain myself. Like messing with the locals, showing up in a flashy car, taking up smoking, leaving.
Was this when I would start to go downhill, when any gains I’d made would be stripped away from me in a couple of singularly bad choices? I knew it was coming. I always, always ruined a good thing.
As it turned out, this time, at least, my fears were ungrounded. I should have known the power-hungry slave drivers at River’s Edge would see my five days of freedom only as a challenge to be filled.
“Yule is coming,” River told me cheerfully, piling my arms high with quilts and other bedding. “It’s a wonderful time to clean house. Then, on the solstice, when the longest night of the year finally cedes to the shortest day, and we know every day after will be a little longer, a little brighter—well, it’s a wonderful feeling to have everything scrubbed clean and fresh.”
I looked at her over the tops of the linens. “You have got to be kidding.”
“Nope.” She gave that irresistible, timeless grin that made her face light up. “Off to the washhouse with you now. And be happy it’s winter and you can use the dryer. In the summer we’ll do it all again, but with clotheslines.” She made shooing motions with her hands, and I stumbled outside into the cold, hardly able to see where I was going. At least I wasn’t going to be boiling these suckers in huge cauldrons outside, I thought grimly. The washhouse was really just a big laundry room in one corner of the school building, where a row of seven industrial washers and as many big dryers waited for me.
Inside, I dropped the quilts, swearing, and started to separate colors.
Once, I’d had pneumonia really bad. My lungs were full of fluid, I was burning up with fever, and I was practically delirious. Any ordinary person would have died—many did, that winter. My friends had been on their way to Switzerland to celebrate the holidays, and I was too sick to go, so they dropped me off at a convent in Germany. They left the mother superior a sackful of money and said that would be enough to either keep me until I got well or bury me if I didn’t make it. I can still remember their knowing laughter.
Anyway. I was there for two long months, and believe me, you don’t know what a nun is until you’ve seen a late nineteenth-century German nun. Those women were scrubbers, and no nonsense, but, like, to an incomprehensible degree. If those nuns had been running things, Germany would have won World War II. Very serious nuns.
And that convent didn’t have anything on River’s house during the pre-Yule scrub-fest. That’s how bad it was. Windows were washed, inside and out, walls wiped down, rooms vacuumed and swept and mopped. Every closet and cupboard was gone through, aired out, cleaned, and tidied. A growing pile of stuff was earmarked for a tag sale, once the weather warmed up. It was unbe-freaking-lievable. Nothing else had happened to me of late—Reyn stayed out of my way, though every once in a while I caught him looking at me. Nell flitted through everything with a sugary smile, and I saw her and Reyn working together several times. She looked happy as a clam. I’d had no more bad dreams, visions, or wormhole-type revelations. Life was feeling somewhat normal, or as normal as it could, considering that it had changed a hundred and eighty degrees from three months ago.
One night during the cleaning frenzy, I was literally on my hands and knees on the kitchen floor, scrubbing the flagstones. I mean, flagstones are rocks. Rocks are inherently dirty. That is their freaking nature. I was going against their nature in trying to make them be clean.
No one had bought that reasoning. So here I was.
A really gifted scrubber with years of experience in flagstone care might have finished the gargantuan kitchen’s floor in about two hours. I was rolling into hour three, and had started swearing forty minutes ago. I’m still pretty fluent in about five languages, though every once in a while I use an old-fashioned grammar construction or idiom, and I can swear expressively in about three others.
And I was.
I was trying hard not to enjoy the lifting of mo
nths of grime, seeing the subtle colors of each individual stone reappear as I sopped up the dirty water with a rag.
“Stupid fricking hard fricking stupid stone,” I hissed quietly. “Would linoleum have killed them? No. Damp fricking mop. But nooo. Have to scrub with a goddamn actual fricking scrub brush.” I was going along in this intellectual vein when I heard the back door open and shut. I was more wary nowadays, and I sat back on my heels and listened. There was a long mudroom between the back door and the kitchen, lined with closets and cubbies and storage for extra kitchen stuff that wasn’t used too often. I heard feet stamping off snow, heard the rustle of coats.
And voices. A male and a female. Who?
Slowly and silently I stood up and took one of the long kitchen knives off the magnetic strip on the wall. It was a carver, a good twelve inches long and wicked sharp. It wouldn’t help if someone used magick on me, but it made me feel better. I crouched down again, slipped the knife under the lower shelf of the kitchen island, and listened.
I closed my eyes and let out my breath very slowly. My breath became slower and shallower. My hearing seemed to expand to fill the space.
“You can!” I heard a woman say. Her voice was full of emotion.
“No,” said the man.
“You can!” the woman said again. It came to me then, the knowledge, as if it were a scent carried on the air. It was Nell. And Reyn. She wanted something from him, wanted him to do something; he was saying no with stolid coldness. But he was torn, he was unsure. She could sense that, was pressing home her advantage.
I listened, head cocked like in movies. They were wrapped up in each other. This was about the two of them, not about any third party, such as yours grimly. As far as I could tell, she wasn’t begging him to kill me.
Their voices hushed, but I could feel her longing, her pleading that was trying not to be pleading. She was close to the breaking point.
I am nothing if not sensitive. And who among us has not had a tortured, whispered conversation with an unrequited love that they didn’t want someone to overhear?
I opened my eyes, dipped my scrub brush in the bucket of soapy water, and tried to give a subtle, face-saving alert that someone was nearby.
“Swi-innng looow, sweeet chaaaar-i-ottttt,” I wailed, scrubbing my little black heart out. “Comin’ for to car-ry me hoooome…”
Silence.
“Swi-iiiing looow,” I began again, and then Nell appeared in the doorway. Her lovely English-lass face was flushed; two high spots of fury pinkened her cheeks. She stared at me, saw what I was doing. She was dressed, adorably, in high, fur-topped boots, tight jeans, a chunky ivory sweater, and the pièce de résistance, a velvet headband.
I was in dirty jeans, a filthy, sopping-wet T-shirt (due to a little bucket-filling mishap), no makeup, with raggedy light hair streaked with sweat and tucked behind my ears. (And here’s a big shout-out to River—you made me look this way!)
A mean, gratified smile twisted her face into a snarl, and I suddenly wondered again if she had been the one who’d spelled my room. I hadn’t thought so; hadn’t thought she was strong or knowledgeable enough. But she more than disliked me—that much now seemed obvious.
She saw the half of the floor I’d already done, and with a smirk strode quickly across it. Leaving a line of muddy, snowy boot prints across the pristine flagstones. She bashed her way through the swinging door and was gone in a cloud of some fresh, gardenlike perfume.
I sat back, looking at the stones in dismay, and then in anger. Goddamn it! I roared inside my mind. That bitch! First thing tomorrow, I was going to look up a spell to draw spiders to her room! Tons of ’em!
Reyn appeared in the doorway. I glared at him, jaws clenched, too angry to even think about feeling weird or wary.
“Go on,” I said tightly, gesturing at the ruined floor. “She’s already undone an hour’s work. Go ahead.”
“I’m sure she didn’t realize,” he said, with that faint crispness of consonants that said English wasn’t his first language. Those were the first words he’d spoken directly to me in more than a week.
“Oh, no, of course not,” I said, dripping with sarcasm. “I’m sure she didn’t equate half a clean floor with me, scrubbing my ass off, on the other half! And I’m sure you believe that because you’re a stupid, imbecilic moron!” My voice was rising, and I wanted to throw my brush at his head, because I couldn’t throw it at Nell. After avoiding him and being avoided by him, something had broken loose in me and the words tumbled out. “Just like you can pretend not to know that she’s eating her heart out over you! It must be hard to be God’s gift to women!” I went on, my mouth unfortunately working much faster than my brain. “So gorgeous, so everyone’s panting after you, longing for you, working things to be close to you—probably conjuring love spells!”
Reyn’s golden sherry eyes widened and he looked at me more intently. I saw him weigh more measured responses, and then, to my surprise, saw him throw them all into the wind. Maybe he, too, was furious at Nell, and taking it out on me.
“Yes, just as hard as it is for you to be every man’s fantasy!” he snapped back. “Hair like snow, eyes like night, all tough words and soft—” He stopped abruptly, looking horrified. It was more emotion, more expression than I’d seen out of him in the more than six weeks I’d been here. I’d have to think about it later. But for now, we were locked in battle.
“Oh, yes,” I snarled. I took my wet, soapy hands, with their grimy, broken nails, the skin red from hot water and soap, and dragged them through my unwashed hair. As Reyn stared, I pulled them down over my dirt-spattered, wet T-shirt, two sizes too big. “Who wouldn’t want to get with this? I’m just what every guy dreams about.” For a split second, I could swear that I saw a sudden feral light in Reyn’s eyes, saw actual hunger as he looked at me. I had a moment of uh-oh, then it was gone, and I wasn’t sure I had seen it. I hardened my eyes and my voice. “Oh, wait—no, I’m not. I’m difficult, demanding, unfaithful, prickly, and self-centered! So get out of here while you can, you idiot!” I was practically shouting now, and I hoped no one would come to investigate.
Reyn was breathing hard, and part of me wondered if he would start throwing things or come after me, but he controlled his temper. Face stiff, he walked carefully across the washed flagstones in his socks, one hand holding his boots, and pushed through the door without a word or a glance back.
I was practically shaking from adrenaline, completely unnerved. I had no idea what had just happened. I almost never got into screaming arguments with anyone—I didn’t care about anything so much that it was worth screaming about. But Reyn had really, really gotten to me. And maybe I had really, really gotten to him. There was something unnamed between us, probably something bad. But I couldn’t figure it out.
What I really, really wanted was a drink, a long draft of whiskey, maybe, over some cracked ice. I could practically taste it, could almost feel the fire as I swallowed it. That was what I did when I was upset. I got drunk, or whatever, went and found someone, distracted myself. So I wouldn’t have to feel anything.
There was no hard liquor here that I had found. The idea of running out alone in the darkness made me feel afraid. There was no one here to distract myself with—everyone was probably already asleep, and no one wanted to distract themselves with me, anyway.
I was stuck with myself. Me, myself, and I. We were all in pain, all feeling it keenly, like an open wound.
Try not to think about it, I told myself over and over, and picked up the scrub brush again with a shaking hand.
That night I got back to my room so late that my traditional bedtime tea was long cold, with a thin film on top. I didn’t drink it—just dropped my flannel shirt on the floor and fell into bed, too tired to even cry.
I had dreams that night, like I used to have. Bad dreams, dreams that were half memories. I also dreamed about things that weren’t memories, things that seemed like I was looking down on them from above, watching fr
om a distance.
I saw my crowd, Boz and Innocencio, Cicely and Katy. They were in a car, speeding down a dark, twisting highway. They were going way too fast—racing another car, one with regular people in it, teenagers, maybe. Boz was driving. Incy looked less crazy than he had, though he didn’t exactly look like his old self. It was late; there was barely any moon. Both cars were taking turns so fast that they skidded out on every switchback. Boz’s car was in the lead. Katy was in the front seat; Incy and Cicely were watching the other car through the back windshield. The four of them seemed grotesque to me—their so-familiar faces twisted with calculated daring. They seemed too loud, too wild, too reckless and irresponsible. Two months ago I had fit in perfectly.
This was going to end badly.
The driving was getting more and more reckless. Katy and Incy were yelling at the other car, taunting them, shooting the bird. There was a strange light in Incy’s eyes that I didn’t recognize. I saw the other driver’s face tighten, saw his white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel. The friend next to him had given up his righteous anger for sincere fear—he was gripping the door handle and squinching back in his seat as if stomping on an imaginary brake. He spoke to his friend, but his friend ignored him, furious about Boz.
I didn’t want to watch any more.
It happened toward the top of the road. Boz went screaming around a corner, skidding out so far that one of his wheels actually left the road, hanging over the cliff for a second. Incy and the girls shrieked with panicked excitement. Then Boz gunned the engine, and the front-wheel drive grabbed the road again and shot them forward.
The other car wasn’t so lucky. The driver was risking everything to catch up to Boz. He knew this road well, had clearly raced here before. But he hadn’t been racing it regularly in a hundred different cars over the last fifty years. He skidded out on the same turn, his back wheel left the road… and the car tipped backward, over the cliff. I saw their terrified eyes, their hands clenched like claws, their mouths open in screams. Then they tumbled end over end down the cliff, bouncing off a lower turn. On the next tumble, the engine hit a rock and the car exploded into flames, the ruptured gas tank spewing fiery fuel everywhere.