Faerie Winter - Janni Lee Simner [16]
“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