They stopped the bike suddenly and jumped off, the obliteration-exhilaration turning into spidery twitches down their muscles and tendons. Eli followed more slowly, carefully, as if she might break.
Girls made of glass can break, thought Tav, frowning. Maybe we should have waited.
But the next moment Eli was flipping a dagger in the air, catching it, and drawing it across the back of her hand.
“Taste?” Her eyes were jet black, shimmering with the fluorescent light cast by a streetlamp.
“No, thanks.”
Eli shrugged. “Suit yourself.” She smeared the blood on the lamppost. The light immediately went dark. Eli sighed, “Much better.”
“Should you be wasting blood like that?”
“It’s mine to waste.”
Cam pulled up behind them in his car. The absence of his usual jazz playlist was conspicuous, but Tav was too nervous to comment on it. “Took you long enough,” they said.
“Not all of us feel comfortable driving on sidewalks,” he said. “Humans have eyes, you know.”
“Not tonight, they don’t. I have it covered.”
His one eyebrow arched elegantly. “You do, do you?”
Eli was licking her wound.
“Focus,” snapped Tav. Eli’s head shot up like a startled animal’s, and her eyes flickered between yellow and back before settling on one crocodile eye and one pure-black eye.
“A little tense, are we?” Cam turned from Tav and toward Eli. He reached out a hand. “Blade me.”
Her mouth twisted in a snarl.
“Sorry?” He stepped back. “I thought —”
She shook her head, the anger passing quickly. “It’s nothing. It’s fine.” She handed him the stone blade.
Tav noticed that it looked more at home in his stone-mottled hand than in hers. Tav could see the contradictory emotions flickering in Eli, as different magics competed for control.
They stood awkwardly for a moment, like a couple of teens with a can of stolen beer.
And then black like ink bled over Eli’s yellow eye. The temperature dropped, an unnatural stillness settling over their bodies. Tav’s arm hairs rose, goosebumps freckling their skin. Tav was sure that even Cam could sense the power that was coming.
Eli was summoning the Vortex. Tav watched as the tension in her muscles was mirrored by a bursting of light and colour, her magic components straining for the home of their birth.
Eli screamed.
They knew better, but Tav automatically reached for her. Cam caught their arm and pulled them back.
“Didn’t you say it’s rude to interrupt someone when they’re tearing a hole in the universe?” His tone was light, but his eyes bored into theirs. “And dangerous.”
Tav ripped their arm out of his grasp, heart racing. “Like you would know.”
His face closed like a curtain.
The magic inside Eli had turned a sickly greygreen, and was spreading like an infection. Her torso, and then neck, arms, and legs were slowly covered by this new kind of magic. The smell of decomposing gardenias filled the air and Tav found themselves retching.
“What’s wrong?”
“Don’t you smell that?” Their eyes were running with the heavy perfume that mixed with mould and dust and the faint chemical sweetness of icing sugar.
“Smell what?”
The greygreen was twisting now, turning into ribbons of light and dark, as if filtered underwater, glowing through skin and bone and granite and hawthorn. The Heart.
The made-girl’s body glowed with this new, unearthly light — the Heart waking up, reaching for its home planet.
Tav frowned. It wasn’t the Heart that would activate the Vortex, it was the fragile shell that was wrapped around it. With the brightness and energy of a small sun, the Heart could burn skin from body as easily as paper. If they reached out now, would Eli unravel onto the pavement into a collection of teeth and petals? They stepped forward again, gripping the obsidian blade.
“What are you doing?” Cam reached for them again, but they dodged his arm.
“Can’t you see it?” Tav turned to him, wide-eyed. “She’s dying.”
“I don’t see anything. But I think you should trust her.”
Tav hesitated. Ground their teeth together. Took a deep breath and tried not to gag. Kept their eyes on Eli.
“I’m not waiting much longer,” they said through gritted teeth. “This could tear her apart.”
“It could tear all of us apart. You told me that, Tav. We all know the risks.”
The scream ended abruptly, like someone slamming a door. An unnatural silence drifted in the corners and edges between their bodies, thick as fog. The ribbons of light and dark and girl and Heart were wriggling now, a mass of worms writhing with hunger.
The blades started to sing. It was a keening, wailing kind of song; it sent waves of homesickness and loneliness through Tav, who suddenly couldn’t breathe. They dropped to one knee. Cam placed a hand on their shoulder. His stones were singing, too. His eyes turned upward to the sky and for a moment Tav could see his eyes turn to two pieces of slate; but then they were human again. They wondered if they had imagined it.
The song ended, and the Vortex opened.
It was colder than Tav remembered. Before, it had felt like nothingness, like the empty space between teeth, or reaching for a hand and finding only shadow. But this time it was cold, and they could see their breath hanging, frosty and glittering with lifeforce.
Sheet lightning flashed in the distance. This was wrong.
The blackness
cracked.
They were back on the street, face down, gravel embedded in their knees, a scrape on their shin oozing plasma and platelets onto the cement. The roar of thunder and hail drowned out the harmonies of the city, the sound of their own heartbeat, everything.
Tav rolled over onto their back and stared up at the sky.
It was torn open.
Through the ragged edges of the universe they could see the angry fires of
