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

produced a symbol when her Potential settled,
and
could reliably produce that same symbol in all her work. A pair of spike-heeled shoes, Laurissa’s personal trademark, along with florid overdone curlicues, worked their way into every piece she charmed.
    Also, they could be added to every piece Ellie charmed
for
her, since Ell’s own Potential hadn’t settled yet.
    Not all high-powered charmers could Sigil. It took an Affinity for physical objects, a specialization inside the elemental Affinities—water, air, earth, fire, metal, wood, stone—and a healthy dose of luck. Clan sigils were different; as living symbols for a group of charmers tied together by blood, Affinity, or loyalty, they evolved and could die out.
    Sometimes a charmer only Sigiled once, when their Potential settled. Charmers who could reliably do it could charge a bundle, since Sigiled pieces didn’t unravel, ever. The charm was wedded permanently to the physical base, and the only way to undo it was to destroy the item itself. If anyone could figure out how to Sigil cars, they’d make a
bundle
.
    Maybe it was the pregnancy hormones affecting the Strep’s concentration. She hadn’t been charming right for months now. Usually getting knocked up made a settled charmer’s work more powerful in certain ways, but it varied according to age and Affinity.
    Too much to think about. Ellie just concentrated on watching.
    Laurissa let out another sharp sound of frustration. Shelves of dark wood bolted to the walls jittered a little—bottles and trays of dried or distilled herbs; pieces of feather, bone and fur; canisters of charmahol and colorless volatile sylph-ether spirit; metal or wooden discs in various sizes for temporarily attaching Potential to before it spooled off into complex patterns; all the various supplies a working charmer needed.
    You could work with just pure Potential, sure. But it was easier to anchor it to a physical base, and
way
easier to use sensitized materials that had been sitting in a workroom for a while. You did have to periodically clean things out, because otherwise they’d get . . . well, things would soak up a lot of Potential.
    They would start to act almost
alive
.
    Ellie had cleaned the workroom herself not three months ago, as winter crouched over New Haven. She’d even waxed the ancient shelves, but the white-glove treatment Laurissa subjected every corner to had found the faintest smudge of dust. The punishment for that had been awful.
    A shudder went down Ellie’s back. She ignored it, flattening herself against the wall by the locked door; the special oiled belt moved slightly from its hook, its buckle tapping once. It was supple and broad, that belt, and if you didn’t move fast enough, it would catch you where it didn’t show.
    Most of the time the Strep didn’t use the buckle. There was that to be grateful for, at least.
    On the other side of the door, colorless Rita was doing the same wallflower act, shivering at the stony chill. It was looking like she didn’t feel safe from the Strep, either.
    That would have been really interesting, but Ellie didn’t have any attention to spare.
    “Son of a
bitch
,” Laurissa breathed. “It’s going wrong. Why is it going
wrong
?”
    Ellie kept her breathing to short soft sips. The important thing right now was not to be noticed. Rita looked like she had it down to an art form, and Ellie’s chest hurt for a moment, a swift lancing pain.
    Screw it. I’ve got all I can handle over here
. Her heart pounded, paying no attention to the fact that she was going to pass out if it kept this up. Spilling to the carefully swept floor in a heap was only a temporary measure, though. It would set the Strep off like nothing else, and today that might even mean the buckle. She was just angry enough not to worry if it made a mark somewhere Ellie couldn’t hide.
    At least she’d been able to change out of her school uniform. Sprawling on the floor with a skirt was
indecorous
,