Chapter Seventeen – Tammy

My stomach lurched and the strand of mana dipping into the pool broke off into monochrome shards of power. The grey-tinted patch of magic I’d been trying to corral dispersed, blue leaching its way back in. I flopped back on the edge of the pool, breathing hard, and stared up at the skylight that definitely wasn’t showing the sun above town. My phone’s gps kept glitching out when I stopped to check it, but there was no way it had started setting at three pm.

The slanted rays painting a mosaic of shadows behind the climbing vines on the far wall begged to differ with that fact of physics.

“Better! You had it there for a bit. I know I keep saying it, but that’s impressive.”

I laughed. I couldn’t keep it in – the headache, the lurking nausea, and the inadequate feeling just kept getting worse. Yet Alyssa, the ever-effervescent sphinx, was so unwaveringly positive about things. Did she just not know how badly I’d fucked up? Did she think it wasn’t entirely my fault? Fuck – even if I’d had these lessons, I’d still have screwed up this badly.

“Oi! I know that look! I’m being serious – girl, you don’t have a drop of Water in your alignments. Sure, there’s a little bit of Bone worked in there since its coming from coral, but most of that is literally an antithetical mana type. You managed to figure out enough to learn magic from an archmage’s personal library – the kind of stuff he didn’t even have in the Archive – without dying. You don’t get to be down on yourself!”

“Big talk coming from a fucking heiress.”

I never could keep my mouth shut.

She laughed, but the tone felt fragile. Friable. “Tammy. I’ve been taught since before I could read. Obviously I’m better, for now. If you wanna talk about heritage…”

I didn’t look up, but I could imagine her waving her arms and wings out. Or pointing at me.

“I’m an Aufrey. Yep. Heard it a dozen times today.”

“Yes. Yeah. Yup. That puts you leaps and bounds above me, the broken daughter of a radical reformist sphinx. You’re one of the two living descendants of a man that stood face to face with the Wild Hunt and made them back down. I know it seems impossible – but people said that about everything he did. People said that about my mom having me. You’ve got help – me, my mom, the entire Alexandrian Initiative – all of us are at your fingertips. There’s months to fix this – the Fae don’t lie. There’s no way you can’t do it. I promise, I’ll be there every step of the way.”

My answer was more of a mumble, right into the sand as I rolled over with no sense of decorum and not a care for how sweat-soaked and sand-caked my pants were at this point. “’m not. Can’t even get tutored without being sick. Teresa would’ve lived up to this legacy you keep harping on. I’m just a failure that can’t even keep her fucking mouth shut.”

Something smacked into the back of my head as I clenched my fists, nails digging in again on the scabs from the council meeting. Wet heat welled up.

“Ok, shit, girl. I know blood when I smell it – we’re done for today. You need to get out of your head for a bit. Of fucking course you aren’t living up to the Flowering Death. He was one of the greatest mages to ever live and had literal fucking gods over to dinner on a regular basis. You’re a teenager tearing herself up over a mistake that you’re still trying to fix. That makes you a good person, and I’m not gonna let you destroy yourself over this.”

Part of me knew she was right. The rest wanted to wallow, especially as my stomach lurched again. I hadn’t even moved that time – it wasn’t fair!

“So! Mom might get mad, but since Euanthe was up and about there’s no way I’m gonna risk things here with you. She said I should stick to the lessons, but I’m not gonna let this,” her tirade came closer, and then I felt the little magical tickle of the glamoured thing moving. There was a click and then a muffled hiss when she touched it. “Ow ow ow fuck.”

I rolled over and sat up, swaying as my head throbbed. Part of the fur on her hand was covered in ash and one of her talons was chipped. “Are you ok?”

She twitched. Her pupils widened, visible even from here, before she took a deep breath and relaxed, totally ignoring what I realized in retrospect was a question.

“Remind me to tell Mom that whatever that thing is, nobody else should touch it. Fae stuff is ridiculous, but on top of being a glamour that thing is trying to screw with you. I saw you give it a bit of mana earlier – whatever it’s trying to do, just pushing it down isn’t enough. You need to block it off, when you can, since like this it’s gaining ground. Given how you got it, I wouldn’t trust it further than you can throw it. Since I’m betting its cursed enough to come back…”

The ‘don’t fucking trust it’ went unsaid.

“You’re planning something.”

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“Duh! I’m planning a lot of things – like when we can teach you a proper fireball. Right now though, it’s how to eventually get Mom to help or find someone to fix that magic fuckery. Since that’s not urgent, I’m gonna drown it out in ice cream instead. Then I’ll fill ya up with some of the juicy stuff you missed out on growing up. Assuming, of course, that you want to hear.”

She stood and rocked forward, offering a hand. Her fur was soft and the talons barely pressed into my skin as she pulled me upright. She was…she was right about me being too nihilistic, and I’d already noticed the bracelet fucking with my head. I just wish I could focus better, this headache was starting to be a problem.

“You said you didn’t want to hang around here though.”

“Yep! That’s why Mom’s gonna be mad – we’re gonna go out. Uh, if you can drive us.” She flickered, a breeze picking up and throwing the sand away. Her skin twisted, and then she looked like a normal college girl with long, dark-painted nails. She had a sheepish grin on her face. “I kinda don’t have a license or know the way.”

I steadied myself, using her hand for balance when I stumbled. We’d been sitting for awhile, I just needed to let the blood get back to my head. The nausea wasn’t as bad by the time we left the grotto. Outside of that unnatural canyon, there were voices burbling under the sound of falling water.

“That depends on where we’re going. I only sort of grew up here.”

“The Inside Scoop. It’s on Campus Corner – you can’t miss it once we drive by. There’s a big gimmicky billboard on the roof.”

She let go of my hand and stepped forward, turning a bit to gesture. It was kind of unintelligible – my best guess was a hat? Maybe a camera.

She’d said a lot of things while we trained, and I didn’t have context for most of them. Stuff about the Archive and the Alexandrian Initiative – I remembered Scully’s spiel about it. Fat lot of good that did me when asking her for something might mean I just died. Sure, she said there were things that people would kill to have in there. But what did that matter if I couldn’t use them?

From how the fallen-angel-looking woman behaved, I didn’t think it would be as easy as taking something and trading it to the Fae to get Teresa back. Mostly because she might kill me if I did that.

My eyes were bound to settle on something as we walked and I was distracted. That something ended up being Alyssa’s back half. It was distracting – the illusion was hiding her wings and tail perfectly. Too perfectly, almost – the fabric where they should’ve been was flat against her skin where there should’ve been space. The only places it was stretched out…

A cough. My eyes went up to her face and she winked over her shoulder at me.

“Let me know if something looks off back there! I’m great and all, but seeing my own back is frustrating as fuck, especially for getting the movements right. I can wrap the tail around something, but wings are a problem. Mom just wears extra to cover things up when she needs to, but I don’t like that. A fresh pair of eyes, or a new model, are always helpful!”

I uh, didn’t have a response for that. I stared off to the side, the intermittent throbs in my head doing more than enough to keep the blood from rushing to my cheeks. Getting embarrassed when a dozen people in the pool were watching me seemed worse than getting caught staring at someone’s ass.

“I hope this place has more than just ice cream.”

“Yep! It’s a diner basically – they’re just ice-cream themed. Rita runs it – you might’ve met her at the council. We’ll get something in ya so you stop feeling so empty, then let you soak stuff up to get that backlash done with. Your baseline’s…not as deep as I expected. I guess you were out of town more often than you were in that house though, growing up.”

“We were only here for summers and a few holidays.”

Alyssa nodded, not looking back once after I pointed to remind her which car was mine. My finger was shaking a lot more than it should’ve been – that didn’t seem right.

“Still, you’re way above the human average. I’ll show you some exercises tomorrow that should help. It’s my job! Being nice, though, is me buying you whatever you want once we get there!” She turned to the pool. When I looked that way, I saw the small sphinx from earlier there in the water. Euanthe.

Huh. So that’s how a centaur would wear a one-piece. Where did they even buy that?

The girl was still staring, wide-eyed. Her head swiveled as we moved, slowly, and one of the topless older women in the pool had a hand on her shoulder, right above the hot-pink floaties. She was still watching when I half collapsed onto the door of my car as my foot missed the drop down from the curb.

Alyssa was looking at me from the other side of the car, frowning.

“Just – just give me a second.” My stomach lurched and I forced it down as I popped the lock. I’d driven worse than this before. The low burn creeping back into my arm, the chills and hot flashes, the headache – combined they sucked, but I could make it so long as my breakfast stayed down.

Alyssa was still talking from across the car, but it was just noise about apologizing for something. There was empty, blurry space between where her back was drawn and the car started. The illusion didn’t break, but it still drew the eyes as something fundamentally weird. She cut off with a groan when she noticed me looking.

“See, that’s what I mean. Wings suck. Can’t wear a backpack since they don’t fold up that well. Can’t wear a purse without it getting hung up. Can’t find clothes with pockets because women’s fashion is fucked up. So I’ve gotta either do it like this with my shirt even, or…” She flickered, her torso widening from the slim actual proportions to something beefier. “Or do this and leave a bunch of empty space under what looks like my shirt to hide the hunchback look. It throws my entire setup off and means I have to fake everything instead of just hide the surface layers – it gets really damn unbearable if I wear a dress. Mom’s insane for doing it daily.”

She paused. I finally dropped down into my seat before I realized she was asking for an opinion.

“Uh. The first one looks fine to me. It sounds easier and watching where you stand’s probably better than hiding in an oversized copy of yourself. If I understood that right.” I shivered as the chills switched over to hotflashes the second the door closed and trapped me in the sun-warmed heat. “Sorry the seat’s a mess. Just throw it in the back.”

Papers rustled, and a stressball bounced off the windshield.

“It’s fine! Sorry I’ve been rambling, by the way. I don’t get to talk to people often, especially ones who aren’t family. Everyone just thinks I’m weird, then they get irritated when I keep going. Mirin’s bunch cares, but aren’t exactly…”

She trailed off. It took way too long for me to realize she was done talking.

“You aren’t weird. I’m just…”

She sighed.

“Yeah, I get it. This is really hitting you hard – but I’m here to help! We’ve got this!”