Bound Powers

by Saruuh Kelsey

  Maisie nodded, tearing her gaze from the street to nudge Joy’s leg with her head.

  “I’m fine.” But even Joy wasn’t convinced by herself. “Just wish I knew what I was.” She looked at her hands, gloved as always lately in a pair of thin leather gloves.

  “You know what you need to do?” Peregrine asked from the sofa. Joy turned to give him a questioning look, trying to pry her snow-damp hat from her head without upsetting the two buns of hair inside it. “Try using it again.”

  “No,” Joy said instantly. “I’m not hurting anyone else.”

  “Not even if Gabi finds this killer?”

  “No.”

  Peregrine frowned, frustration written on his face. “They’re a killer—they should be punished.”

  “I’m not a God,” Joy whispered. Instead of feeling angry, instead of matching his frustration, she just felt drained. “I’m not doing that again.”

  “If you don’t, you’ll never understand how it works.” He got to his feet, approaching her slowly, and Joy finally saw past the irritation on his face to his concern. Her shoulders slumped. “You need to understand how to use this power, Joy. You know that, too—you wouldn’t have spent hours at the library if you didn’t.”

  Joy jumped as Maisie hopped off the windowsill and brushed her ankles, trying to comfort her.

  “If you don’t figure out how to control your power,” Peregrine said, “you’ll always be scared of it.”

  “I’ll be scared of it anyway,” Joy replied quietly. She caught movement in the doorway and then her heart sank as Gabi leaned against the door frame, her sad eyes on Joy. Joy had told her everything that happened in town hall, and what Kordell had told her about Ignatia, but she’d downplayed how badly it made her feel. She cut her eyes to Peregrine instead of speaking to Gabi and said, “I don’t want to use it.”

  There was only sympathy in Peregrine’s look now. “Alright. You don’t have to.”

  Joy didn’t want to talk about this anymore. She did want to know what her power was, and how to never use it again, but this was too much. Peregrine’s frustration and worry, Gabi’s sad eyes, Maisie’s gentle comfort—it all made Joy want to burst into tears. “I brought the rest of the books from my house,” she said quickly. “I’ll have a look through them later.”

  “Joy,” Gabi said quietly.

  “Is there some of that apple pie left? I’m gonna go get some.” She tried to brush past Gabi out the door but Gabi caught her around the waist. “I’m going downstairs, Gabi. Let me go downstairs.”

  But Gabi only tightened her hold. Joy eyes burned, her throat swelled. “Shhh,” Gabi whispered, her hand running down Joy’s back, and whatever had been holding back the flood of emotion in Joy started to crumble. Gabi was the only thing holding Joy up for a long moment as her legs weakened and her chest shook, sobs about to burst out of her. “Come on,” Gabi said, leading her to the door to her room. When it was shut behind her, the part of Joy that had been conscious of Peregrine and Maisie, and Gus hovering behind Gabi on the stairs, gave up holding Joy together, gave up fighting back the crush of hurt and feeling.

  Gabi scattered kisses on Joy’s head, her face, as Joy trembled and cried and clung to her.

  “She was—” Joy gasped through her aching throat. It had taken all this time, for the hurt inside Joy to form into words. “She was killed. Someone killed my mum.”

  Gabi said nothing, just held Joy close. There were no words for this. Someone had murdered Joy’s mum and she couldn’t keep holding back the agony and torment of knowing it. She’d kept that brutal truth at bay for days but it wouldn’t be pushed away any longer. Grief rose and devoured her.

  Pride

  “Peregrine’s right,” Gabi said gently, tracing her hand down Joy’s spine. “You’ll be safer if you can control your power. If you can’t control it, it’ll control you, Joy.”

  Joy just hung her head, her face splotchy and red from crying.

  “I’ll help you,” she said. “You don’t have to do anything alone.”

  Joy’s head snapped up at that. “No. I don’t want you anywhere near me when I’m … whatever I am. You didn’t see what I did to Perchta. That wasn’t natural. It was wrong.” Joy’s voice quietened to a wisp. “I don’t want to hurt you Gabi, and I won’t risk it.”

  Gabi took Joy’s hand, rubbed her thumb over a gloved knuckle. Even with that barrier, Joy tensed. “What if there’s no risk?” Joy’s weary eyes met Gabi’s. “You tried to use raw witchcraft—without any potions or powders or crystals. What if you tried it again, only with a harmless spell? If your hands turn blue, you don’t have to touch anyone. It’ll be safe.”

  Joy shook her head.

  “Joy.” Gabi struggled for the right words. “You don’t want to risk me, but I don’t want to risk this power doing something to you. You need to understand how it works, even if you don’t want to use it. If you don’t know how its triggered, it could happen at any moment, but if we know for sure your hands only turn blue and affect someone else’s witchcraft when you use raw witchcraft…”

  “I know.” Joy’s voice was flat. “I know, Gabi. I’m sorry.”

  “You don’t have to be sorry. Just … be safe. Okay?”

  Joy raised her eyes to Gabi’s finally, and Gabi saw all the way through to her pained soul. “Maybe if I tried a colour changing spell? It was one of the first I learned.”

  “I remember.” Gabi smiled. “You changed your pencil case to bright yellow.”

  Joy nodded, inhaled a slow breath. “I could try that. I can’t think of a way it could hurt anyone, as long as I keep my hands far away.”

  Gabi stroked Joy’s back. “You don’t have to, if you really don’t want to.” Not knowing anything about this blue power of Joy’s scared Gabi, but Joy feeling forced into doing something against her will scared her more. “No one can make you.”

  Instead of replying Joy leant over and kissed Gabi’s cheek. Out of all their kisses this one arrowed right to Gabi’s heart. She felt … cherished.

  “What was that for?” she asked.

  “Being you.” Joy smiled, bright and sunny and so rare lately compared to the weak, forced smile she wore often since Perchta. Joy got to her feet, her shoulders high and face set in stubborn determination. “Stay there. Don’t get up.”

  “Okay,” Gabi agreed, frowning until she understood. Joy backed up against the furthest wall, Gabi’s bookcase of non-fiction books against her back. Gabi wanted to go to Joy and hold her hand but she made herself sit still and watch as Joy took a breath, her hand already clenched around her wand—it was rarely out of her hand now. She closed her eyes and focussed on a spell.

  Nothing happened for long seconds until the posters on the walls—diagrams of planets and infographics on animals Gabi had picked up in Liverpool and taken a liking to—began to shift from dark greys and neutral beiges to a vivid purple. Jupiter became bright pink, Mars turned orange with teal polka dots, and a sketch of an elephant became jade green. Gabi watched it all in wonder, as her curtains became rainbow coloured, her ceiling like an open window to a cloudless sky, and the carpet under her feet so many shades of green it was a perfect glade of grass. Only Gabi and Joy remained untouched, unchanged.

  “You did it,” Gabi said with a smile, her eyes returning to Joy. Her mouth fell open at the sight of her—flushed and smiling with wide eyes until her gaze dropped to her hands, pale and ordinary except for the tips which were a flat, glacial blue like the sky-ceiling above. Before the colour faded, and before Joy could panic and release the power, Gabi wrenched a rope of magic from the core inside her, battling to get it to behave, and sent it out to sweep the room, curious at Joy’s power.

  That awareness inside Gabi where her self met her magic shivered, alert, and without knowing how she knew it—only that her power was intuitive, and she could understand it even when it was a pain in the ass—she knew the power that had changed the room was magic, not witchcraft. And her own magic didn’
t hum in recognition the way it did with Peregrine and her dad, which meant one thing—this was fae magic. But Gabi had never heard of a fae magic that transformed skin to a different colour. Gabi’s magic trembled as it reached Joy on its sweep of the room and Gabi stood quickly, not understanding what her power had found.

  “Joy…” Gabi frowned as Joy met her eyes. “You’re using fae magic.”

  Joy inhaled a shuddery breath and Gabi’s room snapped back to its original colours. The tips of Joy’s fingers hesitated a second before they lightened and settled as her ordinary skin tone. “What?” she breathed.

  Gabi stayed across the room, still conscious of her promise to stay away even as she wanted to grab Joy’s hand. Even as she wanted to look closely into Joy’s eyes, hold her close, and figure out how she could use those powers. “Joy, you were using fae magic and witchcraft. Simultaneously.”

  Joy just looked confused. “How do you know that?”

  Gabi called back the rope of elven magic, felt relief as she stopped wrestling with her stubborn power. “Environmental magic, remember? You’re in my environment—so was your power. I could feel it, read it I guess you could say. I felt witchcraft coming from inside you, but fae magic changed the colour of my room.”

  Joy shook her head, a crease between her eyes. “How did—is that even possible?”

  Gabi shrugged. “It is now.”

  Joy

  Joy stared out the car window the next day, watching the winter sun reflect off shop fronts on the high street and the larger houses they passed as they neared the beach. She tried hard not to think of what had happened yesterday, of Gabi telling her the blue power was witchcraft and fae magic—it was bad enough to know it was fae magic, but it had found a way to corrupt Joy’s witchcraft and that was the worst thing Joy could think of. She didn’t think of all the terrifying and terrible things she’d imagined would happen when she brought that blue power back to her hands, and how none of them had actually happened—which meant it wasn’t the power that had stolen Perchta’s witchcraft, but Joy herself, some wicked choice she’d made.

  “You don’t have to come in with me,” Gabi said, her hand tight on the steering wheel. “I’ll be alright by myself, and I’ll try not to move anything.” What she meant was she’d put everything back when she’d rifled through them, but that wasn’t the same as not moving them.

  “Okay,” Joy said because she didn’t really want to talk.

  Gabi’s hand rested briefly on Joy’s arm.

  Driving up Joy’s driveway was too much like four years ago, when every time Joy approached her house she saw the emptiness of the house, the absence of her mum, and nothing else. It had been like a nightmare or an omen, forcing herself up the slant of the drive to the door and inside where it was silent and cold. She felt that hollowness now, the urge to run away and never go inside. When Gabi opened her car door, Joy made no move to follow.

  She was stuck in a loop of memories. She saw her mum’s freckled, grinning face as she, Joy, and her dad made biscuits for the Children In Need bake sale at school. She saw her mum red-faced and wind-blown as she held Joy’s hand, helping her across the blustery beach towards the cave where Joy would hammer at the walls until she found a crystal that spoke to her, for her wand. She remembered her mum teaching her about her fae nature, even if she carefully never told her anything about the fae themselves.

  She heard her softly say, “It’s alright, Joy, it’ll pass. Kids are horrible but they forget, they move on,” when Virginia Jones outed Joy in the school newspaper, to the whole town. After Joy had told her so in confidence to shut her up, when she’d spread the sharp-tongued rumour that Joy was sleeping with Wayne, the biggest, dimmest rugby player. In school, Joy thought she was gay, her sexuality still hazy and unknowable. Now she knew she was pansexual but then? She’d barely grasped that bisexuality or pansexuality was an option; it had always seemed like she had to choose one or the other, guys or girls. Joy’s mum had let her figure it out, given her space and love to be herself until she found a label that fit.

  “Joy?”

  “I’m alright,” she replied in a thick voice. “I’ll be fine.”

  Gabi just watched her.

  “I’ll wait here,” Joy added. For a moment she just wanted to be alone with her memories of her mum.

  “Okay,” Gabi said gently, and shut the door after her. Joy had already given her the keys, so she watched, aching, as Gabi let herself in. Maybe it was worse to sit out here imagining Gabi’s hands unsettling all her mum’s things, looking for some hint or reason the killer had targeted her, for some suggestion that she’d had any suspicion that she might die. Joy folded her legs up on the seat and pressed her face to her knees. She’d gone into her mum’s room once in the last two years, to get a mirror for a spell that had backfired miserably. She wasn’t brave enough to go in today.

  Pride

  The minute Gabi pushed open the white wood door and stepped into Charity’s witch haven of a bedroom—tarot and runes and bottles of infused water everywhere amongst the velvet and voile—her magic flared with awareness of something not right. Her stomach cramped rapidly until she was close to being sick but the roiling, twisting of her magic was the worst. She shoved a hand against her gut, willing it calm, and fought to clear her head. She was here for a reason, and that reason wasn’t to vomit on the dusty carpet. Or hover on the threshold.

  She wrestled with a speck of her resistant power—it wanted to be nowhere near this room—and sent it in a loop, probing for the source of that wrongness. But as she gently lifted books and trinkets and perfume bottles from Mrs. Mackenzie’s dresser, holding her breath even though it did nothing to help, the wrongness was everywhere. It was in the floor, the wooden boards told her, in the walls, the sturdy brick and plaster warned. It was in the roots of the room themselves, like rot. Her hands shook.

  She lifted a purple diary from the dressing table and slipped it into her bag. Joy would forgive her for taking it if it brought justice for her mum. She looked through drawers and shelves and pretty storage boxes but found nothing else that might hold some hint or clue of what killed her. Or who killed her.

  The room examined completely, Gabi dragged herself, aching and ... bleeding into the hallway away from that oozing black thing—but she knew she had to come back. There was something wrong in that room, in the very foundation of it, and her magic couldn’t figure out what it was. Even with the headache, the nausea, the hairs standing on end and blood dripping from her nose ... her environmental magic failing at determining the rotting thing in Gabi’s environment was what shook her. This thing had to be some dark power.

  She jogged down the steps and out the door into the shivering bright cold, taking a moment to collect herself as she got into the car and let her eyes settle on Joy. She’d been careful to wipe away every trace of blood. “There’s something in your mum’s room, magic or witchcraft, some kind of power. Can you call everyone? Ask them to come here when they’ve finished work and school?”

  Joy nodded. Her eyes were red from crying. Gabi wanted to pull Joy into her arms but she didn’t want Joy to sense how unsettled and sick her mum’s room had made her. She could change her voice to sound normal but she couldn’t ask her body to untense.

  “Is it—” Joy began, her voice thick with tears. “Is it the killer? Is that what you can feel?”

  Gabi reached for her hand—she couldn’t stop herself when Joy sounded this hurt. She answered honestly. “I don’t know.”

  Joy

  Joy and Gabi sat in the car for two hours, the silence between them tense and afraid. Or maybe that was all Joy. Gabi looked the same as ever, her long black hair neat, her face stark and serious, her thick eyebrows low over brown eyes. Joy spent most of the time looking at Gabi, peeling away her mask and shield like she was erasing make-up to see the girl underneath. Gabi was rattled; Joy felt it in the tight grip she had on Joy’s hand. She was distracted too, her mind moving a million miles per hour; Joy
felt that in the absent sweep of Gabi’s thumb over her knuckles, saw it in the empty gaze Gabi aimed out the windshield, only interrupted by a brief spark of clarity and fear.

  Gabi was scared. That frightened Joy more than anything—more than her own magic and witchcraft, more than a killer being out there, more than her mum being one of their victims. If Gabi, who was always steady and calm and unaffected, was afraid, Joy ought to be petrified.

  Victoriya’s mum’s Clio swerved onto the pavement behind them and Joy jumped at the sudden movement. Gabi’s hand tightened on hers before she pulled away to open the door. Joy followed her out, wrapping her arms and coat around herself, pulling the fabric tight. Gus, Maisie, Eilidh and Victoriya spilled out of the blue car—clean and polished, as opposed to Gabi’s which was stained with months-old mud and sand—and onto the path to Joy’s house.

  “What’s going on?” Gus asked, scratching the back of his head. He’d looked normal until he caught sight of Joy’s face, then he’d paled.

  “I sensed something in Joy’s mum’s room,” Gabi explained, placing a steadying hand on the small of Joy’s back. Joy somehow felt weaker for the touch, like her legs would give out and she’d collapse to the floor, but she didn’t step away. “I want you to come with me and tell me what you feel.” Gabi turned to Joy, cradling her face and using the hand on her back to pull Joy closer. “Will you be okay staying in the car again?”

  Joy’s eyes slid past Gabi and landed on her friends, her coven. It wasn’t bravery that made her say, “I’m—I’m coming too.” It was fear—fear of what really was up there, what Gabi had felt, what vicious thing had taken Joy’s mum. She knew she would fall apart, but she was already cracking so it would make no difference if she went into that room. Gabi didn’t argue or question her; she’d read the resignation on Joy’s face.