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.”
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.
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.
But I wanted answers too badly. I said nothing. When Mom spoke again, her voice was strained. “I once watched a faerie lord command a human girl to throw herself into a river—and she did it, her eyes on him all the while, laughing right up until the rushing water clogged her throat.”
“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.”
The fire could have killed her. Did she expect me to just let her die next time? The stone’s purple light was dimming. I took it in my hands. “If you don’t trust me with my magic, how can you trust any promises I make?”
“It’s a funny thing about the faerie folk.” Mom shut the drawer. “They cannot say things they do not mean, and once they give their word, they cannot easily break it.”
“But I’m human.” I knew well enough that humans could lie.
Mom laughed uneasily. “I’ve noticed that once the children in this town come into their magic, they develop an odd unwillingness to lie. This has presented challenges in keeping their magic hidden.”
No magic controlled my words. I opened my mouth, meaning to tell Mom I wouldn’t use my magic to save her life, just to prove I could make false promises as well as anyone.
No words came out. I tried again. My chest tightened, and my breathing went shallow. I couldn’t seem to get enough air.
I stopped attempting to speak. Air rushed into my lungs. I gasped, stumbled, and caught myself. I couldn’t do it. I really couldn’t. I’d always hated to say things that weren’t true, but I’d thought it a choice.
“So you can see,” Mom said quietly, “why your refusal to give your word makes me uneasy. I’ll meet you at Kate’s.” She turned and left the room.
In my hands the light went out, leaving me in the dark.
