Kin

by Lili St. Crow

  THIRTEEN

  ALWAYS, AFTER THE SINGING, CAME THE GATHERING. The Corris branch’s head house was a nice two-story brownstone, facing the Park, its large backyard now full of kin. The firepit was going, though it was still hot, and there was the smoky smell of meat being charred. Red paper lanterns hung in the trees and from the grape pergola, the Mackenroe twins had tubs of cool water to dip washcloths and rags in. A crackle of a coolcharm, and the icy rag could be patted against the neck or the forehead, providing a little relief.

  Under the pergola, the heat was just as intense as in the middle of the yard. At least the thought of dappled grape-leaf shade helped.

  Ruby hunched on a collapsible stool, bent over, her arms crossed tight over her midriff. Thorne laid the cold cloth against the back of her neck. “An axe,” he said, finally, under the crowd-sound around the fire pit. When dusk fell the Remembering would begin, stories told of Hunter’s life, because now he was safely with the Moon. If any piece of him had lingered, it had ridden their cries to the sky, past the sun’s veil to the round, pale Mother of All. “I heard Clanmother talking to my father about it.”

  Why your father? “An . . . an axe?” The nausea just wouldn’t quit. “Oh, Mithrus.”

  “Like Gaston Wolfhunter.” Maybe he just had to say it. “That’s why she was talking to Dad. He did his dissertation on those feytales.”

  “Feytales aren’t real.” Except Ruby had seen one, living and breathing, underneath New Haven last winter. That particular feytale had almost killed Cami. And the other thing, the fey-spider that had lured Ellie in and almost eaten her? Another feytale, maybe. Legends and myths peering through the bars of the Age of Iron, come back to terrible life.

  “Doesn’t mean someone crazy isn’t wanting to carve some kinflesh like old Gaston.” Thorne’s lips skinned back from his teeth, a humorless grin. “In the dark of the Moon, when the wind is high, and the wolf cry fills the night—”

  She shivered. “Will you stop? That’s just gruesome.”

  “Yeah, well.” He took the cloth away, refolded it. A coolcharm crackled, and he pushed her hair aside, laid damp coldness against her nape again. It felt wonderful. “You want something to drink? You look a little pale.”

  “I’m fine.” If she said it enough, maybe she’d believe it. “You go ahead if you need to, though.”

  “Rather stay with you.” His other hand brushed at her hair, as if there was something in it. “You guys were . . . close.”

  “So were you.” She licked her dry lips. “Thorne, do you think . . .” How can I ask him? Where do I start?

  “All the time.” Softly. “Can’t get away from it.”

  She almost winced. That was part of his problem: he just never stopped chewing at himself. If you got him occupied with something, he’d dig until he hit gold or blood. There was no stopping him once he got an idea. “What do you think he was doing in the Park?”

  The bubble of their silence grew. She half-twisted to look up at him, but he was staring in the direction of the firepit. Cicada buzz, high in the trees, rasped under the sounds of somber conversation and the crackle of the fire. Her stool wasn’t too steady, and the brick floor under the pergola was veined with moss. It would serve her right if she slipped, got dumped on her ass here.

  Conrad appeared at the back door. He moved aside, letting someone else pass, and surveyed the backyard. He looked straight at her, and his mouth turned down a little.

  Her heart squeezed in on itself, then thumped up into her throat. It was doing a lot of moving around these days.

  “Probably meeting someone,” Thorne said, finally.

  Probably. Was he waiting for me? Hoping? She dropped her head. Thorne’s even, careful stroking of her hair continued.

  “Here comes the Grimtree.” He didn’t sound happy about it.

  Ruby hunched her shoulders.

  “Ruby.” A wash of healthy boykin smell, and that tang of smoke underneath it. Maybe it was just the firepit. “I was looking for you.”

  “Well, now you’ve found her.” Thorne’s fingers tightened against the cool cloth. “Lucky you.”

  “I didn’t catch your name.” Conrad sounded interested and pleasant, but that edge to his scent intensified.

  “I didn’t give it.” Thorne’s smell grew stronger too, dominance rising, unwilling to back down.

  Conrad’s smile didn’t change. “Do you have a problem, Woodsdowne?”

  “Not yet.” Thorne patted the coolcloth, and Ruby put her hand up to hold it without thinking. “I’ll get you something to drink, Rube.” He brushed past Conrad, and Ruby looked up just in time to see the Grimtree boy shoulder him, a little roughly.

  God, would they ever stop the dom games? All the boykin were like that. Maybe it was hormonal. Testosterone poisoning.

  Thorne, however, just kept walking. Conrad stuffed his hands in his pockets, the clan cuff digging into his tanned flesh. He looked down at her, and heat suffused her cheeks.

  “I’m sorry,” she managed, peeling the cloth off her nape. “He and Hunter . . . they were best friends.”

  “Looks like he’s pretty friendly with you too.”

  She couldn’t tell what his tone was. It wasn’t quite angry, was it? “He’s clan.” Why did she feel like she was lying? “Are you . . .” Are you all right? It sounded ridiculous, so she didn’t finish. Why wouldn’t he be okay? It must be awkward for him, but that was about it.

  “I’m packing.”

  It refused to make sense. “What?”

  A shrug. His eyes had darkened a bit, and he wouldn’t quite look at her. “Well, you know. I’m not exactly welcome here.”

  “What?” I sound like a cuckoo bird. Or a complete idiot. Either was pretty likely. The dress clung to her; she couldn’t change until she went home. “I mean, what makes you think that?”

  “Well, you’ve got all these obligations. I’m just in the way.” Was that a nasty twist to his mouth? Or was he just grimacing with embarrassment?

  “Are you serious?” She twisted the rag in her hands. A thin thread of water slid out, touched her knee. It didn’t help. She was going to sweat right through the linen, and probably drip all over everything just like a kelpie fresh from its pond.

  “Well, it just looks . . .” A sudden stop, and when he went on his tone had turned into something softer. She couldn’t quite figure out how. “You’ve got a lot to deal with here, and the last thing you need is more pressure. You know?”

  Great. Now Gran was going to think she’d made him feel unwelcome. She would get that disappointed look, and . . .

  For once, Ruby’s imagination failed her. Her skirt was going to get soaked. She loosened up on the rag, took a deep breath. The fire pit smoke stung her eyes. “I’d like you to stay.” She couldn’t say it very loudly, but at least she’d put it out there. “Please.”

  A rustle went through the assembled kin. The sun was sinking, and soon it would be time to eat and tell stories. Except she didn’t think she could swallow a single bite.

  His shadow changed shape as he crouched. “Hey. Oh, Christ. You’re crying.”

  “S-sorry.” She bit her lip, hard, but the blurring wavering in her eyes refused to stop. “I d-don’t usually.” Was this what Cami felt like, when she stuttered? She knew what she wanted to say, but it got all racked up between brain and mouth.

  “Shhh.” He pulled her forward. Her knees hit the bricks with a grating jolt, but she didn’t care, because he put his arms around her and there was a dark space to hide in. For some reason, that was what did it, breaking the shell between her and a roaring sea.

  Ruby buried her face in the Grimtree’s shoulder and sobbed, as quietly as she could. He stroked her hair, clumsily, pulling at the curls a little. The rag fell on the mossy bricks, and she didn’t see Thorne’s return, or the way he stood at the edge of the pergola watching.<
br />
  She didn’t see Conrad’s expression while he stared at Thorne, either, or the narrowing of those sun-eyes. His hand caught in her hair, she gasped, and he immediately started murmuring soothing things—sorry, go ahead, cry it out.

  The Gathering went on until midnight, with stories and songs and feasting. Stories of Hunter’s pranks—the Mithrusmas he locked Thorne in a closet, the time he threw a popcharm in the fire during another clan gathering and scared everyone to death, his love of fizzy limon drink and his taste for coral candy. So many stories, falling into the black hole that was his absence.

  Conrad loaded up a plate and pressed her into eating. She kept looking around, seeing familiar faces, but not the one she wanted.

  Thorne had left.

  FOURTEEN

  THE FIRST WEEK OF SCHOOL WAS MUGGY AND GRAY as well. It was the only week last-years couldn’t drive in, and Gran was at the office all day. Conrad offered to drive her in the Semprena, but it was bad enough that Gran had decreed he was going to share her car.

  He is our guest, Ruby.

  Inside St. Juno’s, charm-cooled air moved sluggishly through the high-ceilinged halls. Lockers slammed, hushed giggles ran around like tiny mice, chalk scratched on the boards, and the chapel was full of an incense hum.

  It was like she’d never left.

  Except things had changed. Ellie’s Potential was settled, so she’d moved up into Advanced Charm instead of Basic. Wonder of wonders, Cami’s had too, between one day and the next. Sometimes it did that, and they were in Advanced Charm together.

  Which meant Ruby only saw them during chapel, French, and High Charm Calc. The rest of the time, she was on her own, and it was not only deadly boring, but it was also . . .

  Well, it was lonely.

  There were prepgirls fretting over their socialite status, and bobs—the new girls, still finding their way around. The ghoulgirls with their black hair dye and heavy eye makeup, but no lipstick, because that was too far outside the rules, playing at being black charmers. They sometimes gave Rube a shiver—she’d seen a black charmer, in summer, during the hearing that had banished Ell’s nasty-ass stepmother. It wasn’t something to play at, even if a radio show or two had reverse-heroic black charmer characters.

  Ruby slumped in the wooden seat, trying hard to concentrate on Sister Margaret Ever Loving’s drone. At least she wasn’t sharing a desk with anyone. Her reputation was good for something. Or maybe it was just Gran’s reputation, or Woodsdowne’s.

  “The forties were a decade of migration and war.” Sister Margaret, rail-thin inside her billowing black robes, leaned on the podium. Her right cheek was seamed by a long thick scar, and she sometimes wound her rosary up in her long bony fingers as if it were a throat that needed crushing. “The Deprescence was over, but its effects were long felt. Who can tell me what those effects were?”

  Migration, nationalism, economic patterns shifting. Ruby held still, and the Sister called on blonde Binksy Malone, who blinked and simpered her way through the answer. It was pretty impossible that she’d done some studying over the summer, heavy partier that she was. She kept glancing at the textbook the whole time, and Sister Margaret let her suffer.

  God, just move on. Ask another question. She scribbled on her notepaper, slowly drawing loops inside loops. It was no use.

  An axe, Thorne had said. She’d managed to piece together a little more at the Gathering, and afterward, when visitors kept coming by the cottage. They didn’t come right out and say it in front of her, but if Gran could hear every sneeze in the house, it was pretty stupid to think Ruby couldn’t hear the low voices in the kitchen or living room.

  Legs cut off. Marks in the flesh. Charring around the edges.

  They even whispered it, the name of the most awful thing in the world. Gaston Wolfhunter.

  Sometimes during history class she considered standing up and telling the Sister running it that there was another textbook, written in the bodies and voices of the kin. They remembered things. How it was to be hunted, or to burn at the stake during the Age of Iron. How it felt to huddle in your bed at night hearing the scrape of an axe haft on your window. Sure, when you looked it was just the tree’s branches.

  It was a kid’s story, all right. A feytale, like the Impossible Riddle or Crusoe, Man-Eater. Except there was history under the sheet of legend. There had been a Gaston. Several of them, in fact. Way back before the Reeve, in the very beginning of the Age of Iron, the Mithrus Catolicus had trained mere-humans to recognize kin and other things, like fey.

  Which would have been okay, except the recognizing was only so they could kill. A frightened mere-human is a dangerous one.

  “Miss de Varre?” said Sister Margaret’s dry, dusty voice.

  Ruby came back to herself with a jolt. “What?”

  Whisper-giggles.

  “In what year was the Compact of Provinces signed into law?”

  Oh, that’s easy. “Thirty-nine, Sister.”

  “What was the purpose of that compact?”

  “To facilitate trade as well as solve the problems inherent in governing multiple enclaves surrounded by the Waste. Communication and the normalizing of relations were critical if enclaves were going to survive.”

  The Sister nodded, and turned her entire body to look at the clock over the door, its heavy glass and wire covering buffered to prevent charm reaching through. It was a wonder she didn’t creak. Maybe she took oil baths, like grinmarches were supposed to.

  “I am relieved to find you paying attention, despite all appearances to the contrary.” She turned back, slow and ponderous despite her thinness. “Required reading tonight is textbook chapters three through five; your first essay of the year is due at the end of the week. It must include at least two of the following . . .”

  Ruby sighed, scribbling down the list of requirements. Of course they’d load you up the first few weeks. Revenge for summer freedom, maybe.

  At least she wouldn’t have to think. She could just do her homework without bothering Cami and Ellie over Babchat. It used to be the high point of her day, her fingers racing over the keyboard, the blue glow on her face, talking through cables to her best friends. On the Juno intranet, Cami didn’t stutter and Ruby didn’t have to slow down, plus you could access some of the library without having to stick your beechgum somewhere for safekeeping. It was a pretty perfect method of communication. There was talk about extending it through buried lines, maybe even getting different cities and towns to Babchat to each other, but nobody had figured out how to do that yet. Potential and electricity had weird effects on each other.

  The circles she’d been doodling nested together, and in their center two curves looked away from each other. Between them, a slender handle daggered for the bottom of the page.

  Labrys. An axe. Her stomach filled with acid, and she shut her eyes and tried to breathe, until the charmbell tinkled and they were free to go to their next little purgatory.

  • • •

  “Hey.” Ellie slid into the seat between her and Cami. “How are you?”

  “Peachy.” Ruby stared at the textbook. “I sense a quiz coming on.”

  “It’s only the first week.” Cami sighed.

  Why are you worried? French was one of Cami’s strong points, for all that her tongue used to trip over every syllable. Sister Mary Brefoil didn’t call on her, one of the few real instances of mercy Ruby had ever seen in a classroom. “This is just so useless. Why the hell is a past participle even necessary?”

  “Diplomacy.” Ellie brushed her pale hair back, glancing up at the overhead fixture. The hum of conversation surrounding them wasn’t quite mutinous, but it was close. “There’s practical applications too.”

  “It was a rhetorical question.” At least they were off the subject of how Ruby felt.

  Cami dropped her schoolbag and opened her notebook. “Want to
come over? Spend the night?”

  “Sure.” Ellie’s acceptance was casual, almost rehearsed. So they were planning a get-together.

  “Ruby?” Cami looked downright hopeful. She’d taken to pulling her hair back, and the architecture of her face, clearly revealed, was beautiful enough to send a pang through just about anyone.

  “Can’t.” Ruby hunched her shoulders. “Got a houseguest.”

  “You can’t even . . .” Cami hushed as Sister Mary sailed in through the door, round and bouncy, her apple cheeks flushed and her rosary swinging. “Can you come to dinner, then?”

  “Have to ask Gran.” Why bother, when she knew the answer? She was supposed to be keeping Conrad happy, and that meant staying home. He didn’t want to go anywhere unless it was just the two of them, and he wanted to drive. She wasn’t about to sit in her car and let someone else steer, so she found reasons not to.

  Ellie finally broke down and asked. “Any news?”

  Meaning, about Hunter?

  Ruby shook her head.

  “Bonjour, mademoiselles!” Sister Mary picked up the yardstick laid precisely across her ruthlessly organized desk. Last year someone had pranked her inkwell; now that had been an occasion.

  “Bonjour, Sœur Marie,” they dutifully chorused.

  The Sister beamed, always a bad sign. “Vous êtes très chanceux. Il s’agit d’un quiz aujourd’hui!”

  Ruby worked the words around in her head. Great. The suppressed groans going around the room were probably food for Sister Mary, who tapped her yardstick briskly against the desk and turned to the chalkboard.

  A piece of paper slid into Ruby’s peripheral vision. Ellie’s handwriting, fast and graceful like the rest of her.

  Would it help if we asked Gran for you?

  Ruby shook her head and concentrated on the Sister’s scratchy voice rising through a question. Chalk scratched against the board, her neck itched, and she had to blink several times before the welling in her eyes went away.

  She was going to bomb it anyway, so why even try? Still, it was better than seeing Ellie’s concerned expression. Cami kept peeking around Ellie, too, trying to see Ruby’s face.