Wayfarer: A Tale of Beauty and Madness (Tales of Beauty and Madness) by Lili St. Crow Read Free Book Online

mouth with one pale, narrow hand. She was safe, Ruby was safe, it should have all been okay.
    Ellie’s lips were so dry they cracked when she could finally make her mouth work. “You could have killed us.”
    “No way.” Rube shook her long fingers, flashing a dazzling, unsettled grin through the windshield. She patted the dash, a proprietary little smoothing of the charm-shaped fiberglass curve over the speedometer and charmflux meter. “The old girl has some moves. Don’t you, baby?”
    “That. Was. A
minotaur
.” Ellie’s hands moved of their own accord, hitting the seat belt’s catch. A spark popped—bright blue, the ring’s stone speaking its opinion loud and clear. “You. Irresponsible.
Bitch
.” The lock button popped up, and Ellie had the dubious satisfaction of seeing Ruby’s jaw drop before she was out of the car, taking a deep breath of fresh sun-washed air and hitching up her bag onto her shoulder. The Semprena’s horn blatted, but Ellie ducked aside into the walk-through running between the Sandeckers’ and the old Claridge estate’s wall, laurel hedges growing wild up against the stone on the Sandecker side and brick, veined with red ivy, on the Claridge’s. She walked quickly, her head down, and heard the engine rev. The dusty little path, worn by who knew what since not a lot of people around here walked, was dark even under the sunshine, but the boundary and defensive charms laid into the walls on either side were comforting watchful pressures.
    Her breath came in little hitching gasps. She held her hands out as she walked quickly, laurel branches fingering and scraping her hair, examining for signs of Twisting. If it happened to her, she’d lose
every
chance of ever escaping the Strep.
    Her legs seemed fine, and she felt at her forehead. No tender spots except the ones from Laurissa’s bouncing her around, no thickening bone.
    Maybe I’m safe.
    She still didn’t believe it, not even when she ducked out of the walk-through, rounded the corner, and saw her own gate.

SIX
    I T HAD ALL BEEN USELESS, ANYWAY. T HE S TREP HADN’T even noticed that Ruby hadn’t dropped her off. Dad would have been furious.
What I pay them had better keep my baby girl safe
, he would say. Mom would have gotten That Look, the one that promised she would politely but firmly take someone to task. The Strep would have just given some saccharine platitude, and then moved on to making it about
her
in some way.
    Still, as soon as Ellie stepped through the heavy ironbound door, she knew something was afoot. She leaned against the door’s cold solidity, heart racing and legs limp as overcooked cabbage. Her skirt, its blue and green plaid wearing through near the hem, shivered along with her.
    For a moment she closed her eyes and tried to pretend she was just coming home from a normal day, that she would hear Antonia’s cheerful
hello there, stranger!
when she walked into the kitchen and the phone would ring—Dad, checking to see she was inside safe. And there would be her mother’s footsteps, light and quick, almost dancing, or the thump-whir of a loom as she wove.
    Instead, she smelled charmscorch. Disturbed dust. Laurissa was working again today, and exhaustion threatened to drag Ellie right down into a puddle on the black and white squares of the foyer.
    God. Not today. Please, not today.
    The entire house was buzzing, too. A crackling in the air with the charmscorch and the smoky scent of Laurissa’s anger, the scraping and scurrying of motion behind all the silent walls.
    There was a slight susurrus, and Ellie opened her eyes to find the new girl, in that same sloppy peach sweater, perched on the staircase like a plump little bird. Rita crouched, and peered through the lace-iron balustrade. Little gleams of eyes, and that lank hair. Scabs on her knees to match Ellie’s, and her skirt rucked up almost indecently.
    “She’s in a mood,” Rita whispered, a breath of sound. “Be careful.”
    Great.
“I can