Chapter Thirteen - Tammy

The stone turned into a crystal. Bright, crimson red pulsed in time with my heartbeat, sending stark shadows dancing on the walls and plants behind us. Even the flows of magic started to tint red, the same shade as Alyssa’s fur.

That…that was…

Alara was silent as she picked it up. It sat gleaming in her palm as Alyssa and I fidgeted in the glow, watching her mother’s face go blank and her wings begin to droop. The light never wavered, not even as she curled her hand into a fist. It barely even dimmed, picking out veins in intricate detail and adding fleshy shadows to the backdrop, like the room and the windows were all deep, deep beneath a scarlet sea.

With a crunch that echoed through the room, it crumbled. Blood dripped out of her fist as she gingerly eased it out of sight, a sound that seemed so much more ominous than the water and the plants.

“You have a rare gift, Tamara Aufrey. Olaf’s legacy truly has passed to you, but the damned fool failed to prepare you. What we saw shall not leave this room – though that small leeway is all the charity I shall give. The eyes of many will be on you regardless, for such gifts of Blood mark you as a monster in need of culling. If they cannot leash you, they will lash you until you crumble.”

I shivered at the sound of nails peeling back wood.

“For your own sake – do not embrace it. Thrice-swear an oath before the Ivory Stag, prostrate yourself to the Drunken God, wield the weight of your obligations – do not, ever, turn to Blood. Whatever it takes, you must give and give until the hounds fall back, content to circle your heels. In time you will grow beyond their reach – yet Tamara, time is not on your side.”

I swallowed thickly and nodded. I didn’t trust myself to get a word out.

“All that I may teach you of Blood are control and restraint. The words, the oaths, the bindings – these I can offer. Any further and it would unmake me. As for the rest of what we discussed…”

A subtly shaking hand proffered a sheaf of papers from the side of the desk. A pen followed.

“I swear on my Self that nothing beyond the scope of our agreement lies within this contract. No changes have been made, nor will there be any based upon your discovered talents. To sign is to willingly bind ourselves to the terms, as witnessed by your Archivist.”

The air shuddered as she spoke. A weight settled around us as I read, quietly, and ignored the small, rippling mirror adrift with Scully’s mist. It wasn’t anything unexpected – I already knew that Alara had a link. It was just that something about this one looked…off.

The contract though seemed, well, normal. Technical terms and milestones about what I could expect to be taught and what aid I would receive. It was easier to focus on this in the awkward almost-silence, broken only by the shuffling of fur and flesh against seats, raspy breathing, and the slow drips of blood and water from all around.

I trusted her not to lie. I wasn’t sure about much else from last night, but I knew that. Everything – and I did mean everything – had agreed that a mage’s word was their craft. Even if my guts still twisted up when I thought about the questions and how intoxicating they’d felt, I knew this was right.

So, I signed. Right next to her name.

The weight bore down all the harder as my ink soaked in. Then it lifted while the older sphinx took the papers back. They went into a small tray beneath the mirror as a thin, glowing strand of colorless light picked itself out in the air between us. A hand reached out from the mists inside the mirrorr, toward the papers’ reflection. Suddenly, I had a headache.

It had to be Scully – that was her skin. Flat, grey, and textureless even as it shone. But where it overlapped the thread, something else flickered in. A festering, seeping black tint worse than what had been there before. Fraying leaves bound tight around flesh that was beginning to crawl over segmented, metallic fingers with tips like scythes.

I blinked, and the thread was gone. Scully’s hand silently pulled back, taking the contract with it. Everything was normal, except for the lingering churn in my stomach. The lights rose back above the plants’ glow at a wave of Alara’s hand. Her voice was strained and she didn’t look at either of us as the doors swung open.

“Alyssandra will assess your current state. Now – please leave.”

I didn’t think bones were supposed to bend the way they did as the younger sphinx pulled me out of the room. Her wings were wrapped around her, a coat of crimson feathers blocking out her torso and wrapped down over her shoulders. She didn’t let go of my arm until we were back in the elevator, and only then did she speak.

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“It’s not anything you did. We just hoped you wouldn’t have that gift. Mom’s still working through things older than both of us combined, but that’s not my story to tell. Soooooo…it’s probably best if you head home for today. Come back in the morning, pretty please. Eight-ish should work, I’ll set stuff up for us out in one of the grottos. Just make sure to get a good night’s rest. The first day’s always a doozy.”

I nodded. With a weak grin and a pat on the shoulder that left me stiff and shaking, she let me go. I could feel eyes following me the entire way back to the car, and I had a feeling they weren’t just hers. There were a lot of windows around here, and the pool was still crowded, so I expected that. A part of me liked it just a little too much – and with all the ups and downs of the last few days, that part was screaming at me to unwind. It had been months since the last time.

I pushed that part down, hard, as I went through the motions and ended up at the store shoving enough snacks and food to get me through a month into my cart. Getting this out of the way now would let me focus better even if Teresa would gag at how I was planning to eat for the next few months.

It wasn’t all junk food though. I kept a mental finger on the dial for the Sight, occasionally flicking it around. When I went too far all I could see were nauseatingly painful spreads of colors as lines began to criss-cross the store. They didn’t leave afterimages, but it still brought tears to my eyes when I fucked up. At a lower level though, one that just added a little bit more heft to the ghost of a headache lurking behind my eyes, things were mostly normal. All that changed was a little glow, for lack of a better term, around people and things.

I was still painfully bright to look at, and so was the yawning lady scooping half a shelf of wine into her cart that briefly met my eyes with a nod of acknowledgement. Everyone else was dull. Normal.

Almost half my cart was just, me dragging anything that looked brighter into it. Mostly, it was food. The way I was thinking – anything that looked more magical was probably better to eat. Even if I really, really hated broccoli. I had to pick through the piles – nothing was uniform. Still, it was sobering to see. Alara had said that magic was everywhere. The portal to the Roads had just been sitting there. Teresa and I had missed all of it even after we learned magic was real.

How did people go around without seeing this? The P.I.D. couldn’t be overbearing enough to cover things up every time. Not everything could be hidden like a disappearance. Normal people had to run into magic and get burned by it – maybe not as bad as we had, but maybe even worse. How many people fell into the Roads and never came out? How many were murdered by monsters? Scully and Mini were tame and didn’t seem particularly dangerous – to be anyway – but I’d read the books. If the rest of it was all real, they had to be.

If…

“Oh hey, Moth Girl!”

Oh. It was him. The guy from the line last night, walking by with a few bags looped over his arm just as I finished at the checkout.

For a second, my hand itched. I took a deep breath and pushed both it and the first inklings of heat down. I had to steady myself. The matriarch’s words echoed in my head – control, and restraint. People might think of me as a monster – I needed to prove them wrong.

“Is that a different thing this time? The moth is the same but I swear the rest isn’t.”

I looked down. It was still a bracelet – but yeah, the stones were arranged differently, with fewer dangling bits. I hadn’t even noticed it changing this time.

“Yeah. Look, about yesterday…”

“No no no, it was my fault. I saw the moth and I wasn’t thinking.” Weylan rubbed the back of his head. “It’s been so long that I wasn’t thinking about how that looked, y’know? I should’ve realized you weren’t having a great night sooner too.”

“I shouldn’t have taken it out on you. It’s just…”

“Just that I was there, I get it, yeah.” He held out a hand. Something clinked in his bag as we shook. “You are a student, right? There’s counselling at the health center if you ever need it. Trust me, it can help.”

I put on a fake smile. Something told me that any counselors wouldn’t believe me. Therapy helped down at boarding school when it was just depression. Now that my head was clearer, it was obvious that he meant well, and that he didn’t give me douchebag vibes.

“I’m Tammy. I uh – I’m probably not going to be able to start this semester.”

I could see the second the name clicked.

“Tammy? Like Tamara? Wait, I thought I recognized you. You’re an Aufrey! Holy shit your family endowed my scholarship! I heard you and your sister were…” My smile cracked, and he noticed. A horrified look went across his face as he realized why I might not be starting. “Oh fuck, umm…sorry?”

The hand itched again, but I forced it back down and started fiddling with the bracelet with my other hand. It got easier to control like that – something seeping from the jewelry and into the brand. Like they were talking to each other, and the one that had been forced on me backed down.

Him putting his foot in his mouth wasn’t a reason to get angry. I’d always had problems controlling that – and whatever the Faerie had stuck to me didn’t help. Even if nobody was watching, I owed it to myself, to Teresa, and to this dude.

Control.

Restraint.

It wasn’t a reason to break down, either. He didn’t even know what he was saying, but I was fighting back tears anyway and that was maybe a bit more obvious than I’d have preferred. Right now, the clearly-magical lady with all the booze was conspicuously loading up the back of her van a few spaces down and not looking this way at all.

Which made the way I could still somehow see her eyes tracking me both distracting and nauseating.

“It’s fine. I – I need to get going. Maybe I’ll see you around town?”

I didn’t relax until I was out past city limits on the way home. The tension drained, slowly, as I cried on the drive. At the end I felt stronger for it. Just a little bit – it didn’t change what Teresa was going through and what I’d done – but it was like I had a better handle on things.

I had a plan. I had a teacher. There was a path forward, and I was doing everything I could.

It would be enough. It had to be.