He jerked to a stop, just as I’d commanded. I felt the cold thread of my magic stretching between us.
Fear crept into his eyes. “You did that before, too, didn’t you? Just like she did.”
“Like who did?” I walked past Ethan, putting myself between him and the stairs. Matthew followed with the water basin.
“Let me go.” Smoke rose from Ethan’s bandages. “Let me go or I’ll kill you, I swear it.”
“Liza.” There was a warning in Matthew’s voice.
I ignored it, keeping my gaze and my magic focused on Ethan. “Like you killed Ben?”
Flames burst through Ethan’s bandages. The magic binding him to me burned away as charred linen drifted to the floor. The boy drew his hands together, cupping a ball of fire within.
Matthew flung the water at him. The fire hissed but didn’t go out. The scent of damp coals filled the air.
Matthew held the basin in front of us like a shield. “Easy, Ethan. We won’t hurt you.”
“You won’t, maybe.” Ethan’s dark eyes reflected the fire he held. I felt its heat against my skin. Flames cast light onto the basin Matthew held. Brightness filled my sight—No. Not now. This was no time for visions. I tried to turn away, but it was too late. I had no choice but to see—
Cloaked figures following a river toward a town. One of them—a girl my age in a cloak the bright green of mulberry leaves—hesitated a moment, drawing back her hood to reveal long clear hair and bright silver eyes. Faerie eyes, I thought, and then I saw—
Flames consuming the town’s houses. Snow sizzled as burning timbers crashed to the ground. Smoke billowed up and I saw—
Ethan watching the houses burn, the clear-haired girl’s hand on his arm. She smiled at him, and he smiled back. Neither of them moved to stop the flames. Neither did the younger children arrayed around them. Those flames burned brighter, and by their glow I saw—
Fire leaping from cupped hands to catch at a doorframe. Heat pulsed against my clothes and skin as wood burned—
Metal clattered as the basin hit the ground. Matthew grabbed my arm, and I realized these flames came from no vision. They were real, and they wreathed the doorway to Mom’s room.
Chapter 4
Ethan stood amid the flames, fire streaming from his hands to the doorway, from the doorway into the room behind him. The burned-plastic smell of melting nylon filled the air. Smoke billowed around us, clogging my throat as Matthew pulled me farther from the door.
Footsteps pounded up the stairs. Mom ran to us, her body hazy through the smoke. “Get out. Both of you.” She pushed past to grasp Ethan’s nightshirt. His collar burst into flame, and Mom staggered back.
I pulled free of Matthew and grabbed my mother, coughing all the while. Heat burned against my skin. “I’m not going anywhere without you.”
Mom fought me. “I won’t”—she was coughing, too—“lose another firestarter.”
Ethan’s sleeves ignited, and flames raced up his arms. He threw his head back and laughed. Mom struggled toward him, though Matthew, too, had hold of her now.
I wouldn’t lose her. “Mom. Tara. Come here.” Mom stiffened in my grasp. “Come with me, Mom.” I choked on the words, but I felt the power in them. I dragged her down stairs I could barely see through the smoke, and this time she didn’t fight me. She couldn’t fight, not while my magic held her. Matthew staggered after us as we ran through the living room and into the open air. Cold slammed into me as I stumbled outside and down a shorter set of stairs. I drew gasping breaths.
Mom fell, coughing, to her knees just a few feet from the house. I crouched beside her. Smoke billowed from our upper windows and drifted over pink clouds that streaked the twilight sky. Matthew and I helped Mom to her feet. She took a step toward the house, then stopped, trembling. My magic held her still. Her back went rigid. “Let me go.”
Through the smoke, the windows glowed with orange light. I wasn’t about to let Mom back in there. “Stay here, Mom.” I left her with Matthew and ran toward the open door.
“Ethan!” My throat was raw with smoke and calling. I wasn’t sure he would hear, but I felt a cold thread of power pulsing between us once more. “Ethan, come here!”
Ethan burst through the doorway and down the outside stairs, his nightshirt aflame. Matthew ran past me, threw him to the ground, and rolled him in the snow. Ethan wept as the flames went out, and the magic between us snapped so fast I stumbled.
Snow began to fall. Ethan gasped and staggered to his feet, his charred nightshirt falling away from his unburned skin. His gaze focused on the orange glow in the windows. “Not again,” he whispered, and he raised his blistered, bleeding hands to the sky.
Fire burst through the windows. It flowed, like a molten waterfall, toward Ethan’s palms, and it sank through his skin the way water soaked into dry earth. All at once, the fire went out. Ethan took a single step forward and fell, face-first, into the snow.
His back and arms, which had been unharmed moments before, were now a mess of red blisters and fire-blackened skin. Snowflakes sizzled as they hit his charred flesh. Matthew and I tried to sit him up. He groaned and curled away from us, pulling his bleeding hands over his head. Kate ran to us with a blanket.
I was suddenly aware of the townsfolk ringed around us. They carried water buckets and ladders, as if ready to try to put the fire out. A short distance away, Hope’s little sister stared at the house, hands outstretched. Hope tapped the younger girl’s shoulder, and she let her hands drop. The snow stopped. Hope’s sister was a waterworker. She’d been trying to put the fire out, too.
Only there was no fire, not anymore. Kate looked at Ethan, frowned, and drew the blanket away, spreading it on the ground in front of him. The boy’s chest was blackened as well, and the touch of wool on his burns would hurt him more than the cold. A burned-meat smell drifted through the air, strong as the smell of charred wood from my house.
“Let me go, Liza.” Mom’s voice came from behind me. I’d forgotten she stood there, my magic yet holding her. I turned. Her hands and face were blackened with soot, and her sweater was damp with melting snow.
“Let me go so I can see to him.” Mom’s voice shook.
She was all right. I let out a long breath and felt the magic between us fall away. Mom stumbled forward; I caught her. She flinched as if she were the one who’d been burned.
“Mom?”
She backed away, eyes wide and frightened. “Not you, Lizzy. Please not you.” Her shoulders trembled as she knelt by Ethan’s side, and I knew I’d get no thanks for saving her.
“You should have let the house burn,” she whispered to the boy. “You shouldn’t have taken the fire into yourself.”
Was that what Ethan had done? He moaned. Was that why the fire he’d called out of our house had burned him, while having his clothes aflame had not?
“So this is your stranger.” Brianna’s voice was harsh. I looked up and saw that Kyle’s mother stood with the rest of the Council, watching us.
Kate stood to face them. Mom kept whispering to Ethan. She wouldn’t meet my eyes. What was wrong with her?
From among the townsfolk, others moved to stand with us, dim figures in the fading light: Hope and her husband and her little sister. Seth and his younger sister. Charlotte, who was a year older than me. Other Afters a year or two younger—all but Kyle’s brother, Johnny.
Brianna looked at our house. “I assume this fire was caused by magic?”
Mom looked to Kate. Kate nodded, and Mom got to her feet. “It was,” Mom said.
Matthew and the other Afters formed a protective ring around Ethan. I crouched by the boy’s side, whether to guard him or because I wasn’t ready to stand with them, I wasn’t sure. It wasn’t safe to keep Ethan in our town, not now that we’d seen what his fire could do. Yet if I hadn’t used my magic on him, his magic might not have slipped beyond his control. This was my fault, too.
Hope’s mother, who’d joined the Council after Father had
left, looked from Brianna to the circle of Afters. “We can’t possibly let this child stay here.” Hope’s mother had forced Hope’s little sister out of the house when she’d learned of her waterworking; the girl lived with Hope and her husband now.
“Three days,” said Charlotte’s dad, who’d been on the Council since before I was born. He was our town’s carpenter, and he hadn’t kicked Charlotte out of the house when he’d learned of her woodworking magic; he’d declared her his apprentice instead. “We agreed to let the stranger stay three days.”
Brianna made a disbelieving sound. “That was before we saw the harm he could do.”
Matthew growled softly and clenched his fists. Wind swirled the snow at Hope’s feet.
“We’re not killers of children.” Kate spoke with the same quiet conviction I heard from Matthew sometimes. “Not anymore.”
“Looks like Jayce gets the deciding vote.” Charlotte’s dad chuckled softly. “As usual.”
Jayce ran a hand over his bald head and looked to Kate. “You’re willing to take responsibility for this boy?”
“Absolutely,” Kate said.
Jayce leaned on his cane. “Three days, then,” he said. Brianna gave him a withering look.
Ethan began shivering. We needed to get him out of the cold. “He won’t be ready to go anywhere in three days,” Kate said.
“That’s as close as we’re likely to get to a fair compromise. It will have to serve.” Jayce glanced at our burned house, then at Mom. “Let us know if there’s anything you need, Tara.” Mom nodded.
The last of the light had left the sky, and yellow moonlight shone through layers of cloud. The townsfolk began breaking up into smaller groups. Kate turned back to us. “Let’s get him inside.”
“No way in hell they’re sending him away,” Hope muttered.
“He’ll stay with Matthew and me for now.” Kate laid a hand on Mom’s shoulder. “You and Liza will stay with us, too. Your place isn’t in any shape to sleep in tonight.”
Mom sighed. “I’m honestly not sure it’s safe for Ethan to be in anyone’s home.”
Kate pressed her lips together. “Only until we can clear out the shed. I’m no fool, Tara.”
“I know.” Mom smiled wearily. “You’re the least foolish person I know. If you and the children can handle getting Ethan moved, I’d best see to the house. Come with me, Liza. We have to talk.”
“Yes. We do.” We had to talk about how Mom needed to stop putting her life at risk. I followed her to the house, while behind me, Kate asked Matthew to get a stretcher. The temperature was dropping, and cold bit my ears and bare fingers.
Mom disappeared inside, but I stopped when I heard Charlotte’s cane tapping the snow, with a lighter sound than Jayce’s cane made. She’d lost her leg below the knee the year our town had tried to grow tomatoes, back when we were toddlers. Charlotte had crafted her wooden replacement leg herself, using, I now knew, her magic. It fit so well that beneath her pants and boots, the two legs looked almost alike.
Charlotte gestured toward the house. “Dad and I will take a look in the morning, see if we can’t fix the damage.”
“Thank you,” I said.
Charlotte ducked shyly beneath her curtain of black hair. As children we’d been friends, but then she’d drawn away from me, afraid, she’d said later, that she wouldn’t be able to hide her magic from me otherwise. “Afters stick together,” she said, just as Seth had, only from Charlotte it sounded like an apology.
I didn’t know how to answer it. “I’d better help Mom,” I said, and went in.
The living room stank of smoke. Mom walked around it, untacking the nylon over the windows. In one hand, she held a glowing rock, no doubt lit by Seth’s sister, whose magic was for calling light to stone. The rock cast eerie purple light on the smoke that lingered in the air around us. Many of the townsfolk still hesitated to use stones such as this, fearing, as I’d once feared, to touch any stone that glowed.
The coals in the fireplace were dead, the house as cold inside as outside. I opened the kitchen shutters to let more smoke out. Mom finished in the living room, found her coat draped over the couch, and pulled it on. We didn’t speak as I followed her up the stairs. The railings were cool to the touch. Ethan had left no hint of heat behind when he took the fire into himself.
In the hallway the smell was worse, not only of wood smoke and burned wool but also the melted-plastic stench of burned nylon. There were scorch marks on the walls, and ash dusted the floor. The soot was thicker in Mom’s room, and the walls were streaked with black burn marks. I removed what remained of the melted window coverings, and smoke drifted out the windows.
Mom set the glowing stone down on the dresser, against the far wall, which hadn’t burned. She opened a drawer, lifted a nightgown, and sniffed it. “This will all need airing.” She sighed and opened another drawer, reaching beneath a pile of wool socks and long underwear to pull something out. A silver disk, laced with narrow veins—Caleb’s quia leaf. She clutched it and the chain it hung from in one hand, shutting her eyes as if the thing pained her.
“Liza.” Mom sat down on the edge of the bed. The purple light gave her eyes a sunken look. “I need your word you won’t use magic on me ever again.”
Wind gusted through the open windows, sending icy shivers down my neck. “You could have died here.”
Mom rocked back and forth, not looking at me. “If you cannot promise not to compel me with your magic, perhaps it’d be best if you leave and let Karinna teach you, because I’m not sure I can.”
“What?” My hand gripped the windowsill, and charcoal crumbled between my fingers. I released the wood and paced the room. “You’re not sending Ethan away. Why does everyone else always matter more than me?”
Mom choked on an indrawn breath. “Is that what you think? Oh, Lizzy …” She reached for me, but she still wouldn’t meet my eyes. I wanted to let her stroke my hair and whisper my problems away—but the problems had never gone away, no matter what she did.
“Nothing matters more to me than you, Lizzy.” Mom’s voice was hoarse.
I stopped pacing and stared at the purple stone on the dresser. My father’s knife lay beside it, unsheathed. “First you teach the others, but not me,” I said, my own voice near breaking. “Then you talk about sending me away. What else am I to think?”
“I’m sorry, Liza, but I won’t have my will subject to someone else’s magic. I can’t do this again, not after …” Her voice trailed off as I turned to her, and her fingers tightened around the leaf.
I return all your choices back to you, Caleb had said. He’d saved Mom’s life—but that had been later. In my vision, Mom had run from him. She’d been so afraid.
More oaths. More bindings. Beneath my coat, my sweater felt clammy against my skin. “What did Caleb do?”
Mom looked down, as if ashamed. “No more than all his people did, Before.” Smoke drifted through the room. “Glamour, they called it. All faerie folk have it, though none of our human children with magic seem to. The faerie folk used it on us without thought, as easily as breathing, more easily than the magics they had to be taught. I’d not understood how akin to glamour your own magic was until I stood outside my own home, powerless to take a single step to help the child burning within.” Mom swallowed. “Glamour’s in some of the old books from Before. I should have known better. But once I caught my first glimpse of Faerie, I couldn’t let it go. I wanted magic so badly. I’m lucky Kaylen found me. Some of the others weren’t as gentle with their human captives.”
“Captives?” My voice was too small to bridge the space between Mom and me. In my vision, Karin had called Mom a captive, too.
Mom’s laugh was bitter. “All of us who found our way through to Faerie became captives. My father tore the city apart looking for me, but he had no idea how far I’d gone, not until later, and then—” Mom’s shoulders slumped. I wanted to put my arms around her, to say she didn’t have to tell me any of this.
“Caleb wouldn’t—”
“No.” Mom shut her eyes, seeing things I couldn’t. “He watched, though, and made no move to stop it. So I had to watch with him. I think I laughed as well. Glamour is like that. It convinces you everything of theirs is so damned beautiful. There was a boy, the Lady herself turned him into a stag and hunted him like a wild thing. I remember the sound of the horns, the flash of his red flank through the green trees, the way the setting sun outlined his antlers—” Mom’s voice tightened around her words. “That was unusual. The Lady can change bodies as well as minds. It’s in the nature of her magic. At least with your magic, my mind—my thoughts—remained my own.”
Wind blew ash across the room. No one should die like that, with someone else moving their thoughts and limbs. I looked back toward the dresser and Father’s knife. I touched the blade. It was sharper than mine.
“At least I was the last,” Mom said. “Kaylen lifted his glamour from me in the end, and he gave his word he’d never use it again, on me or anyone else. If grief resulted from that decision in the end, that, at least, wasn’t his fault.”
“So you forgave him?” Mom hadn’t looked anywhere near to forgiving him in my vision.
“I’ve had time.” Mom moved to my side and set Caleb’s leaf back inside the drawer. “And I forgave him sooner than he forgave himself. I understand that now. But I would sooner die than have someone else control my thoughts and my actions once more. So I need your word. You must never use your magic on me again.”
It was too cold with the windows open. “So long as you’re not in any danger, you have my word.”
“That’s not enough. I know you mean well, Liza, but you truly don’t understand.”
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