Page 39

When we emerged from Kevin’s shadows, zodiacal light had begun to soften the night’s blackness, staining Hellebore’s horizon with a dim whiteness. A lone figure waited for us in the jasmine-scented dark, illuminated despite the hulking corpse of the burnt-down building behind her: Portia.

The darkness suited her. In its tepid glow of the predawn, there really wasn’t any color save for the deep carmine of her hair, like she was hiding a head wound.

I was coherent enough to be surprised by the sight of her.

Then surprise became suspicion. Portia likely had the ear of the faculty, and if she had their ear, it made sense they would have their hand on the collar around her neck.

She glanced disinterestedly at us as we appeared. Her expression, illegible at first, became one of faint disappointment. But then a small smile creased her face, her attention swimming through the dark to rest on me. She smiled and my breath snagged in my throat at the sight.

“You shouldn’t be with these people. It’s not safe,” she chided, slinking up to loop her arm through mine. “You should know better. Especially after—”

“Her jailbreak?” chirped Rowan, taking hold of my other arm. “Yes, that was definitely something. We should probably get Alessa home.”

All the warmth oozed out of Portia’s voice. “What were you doing out here, anyway?”

“Enjoying the fresh air.”

“You know better.”

“I can neither confirm nor deny that remark.”

“We should probably get going…” Kevin announced but Gracelynn dug their feet in, mouthing at me, Do you need help?

The two descended into an argument conducted half in shorthand and half in choppy gestures.

Johanna sauntered up to Portia, as if she were a long-lost friend and this a pre-arranged meeting.

“We were just telling Alessa how she needs to be more careful on these grounds!” She drove a shoulder into Rowan’s ribs, sweetly smiling throughout, charm laid on so thick, I could have scraped it off with a knife.

“Hellebore will eat you alive if you’re not careful,” chattered Johanna, writhing between Portia and me, something she accomplished only because Portia, I think, wasn’t expecting such an affront and because I wanted to escape this tug-of-war that Rowan and she had instigated.

“Leave me alone,” I hissed at Rowan, who now clutched at me with both gloved hands, his smile glassy and manic.

“Come on,” he said. “Johanna’s clearly freaking out.”

Had he said anything else, I might have gladly taken the excuse as an exit. Something about how Rowan spoke her name felt intolerably abrasive at that moment.

“I’m sure you can comfort her,” I said, shrugging loose of his grip.

I stuffed my hands into my pockets and withdrew several steps backward.

I didn’t like being touched even on the best of days and this certainly wasn’t one of them; it didn’t help that I was marinating in what felt treasonously like jealousy.

“—going to bite someone. I’m worried, ” said Gracelynn from somewhere nearby.

“—still not our place to stop that?”

“—is too?!”

“Free will is a thing, Gracelynn.”

“I think Alessa and I might need some girl time, ” said Portia, the light catching strangely in her eyes, splintering into eighths for a second, except that wasn’t possible, at least I didn’t think so then.

I laughed at her use of the words girl time, the phrase so out of place it seemed code for something else, and even as that thought surfaced, a pang of warmth filled me. I swallowed.

“Is that you want?” Rowan asked me, something wary in his eyes.

“Yes.”

“Well,” said Rowan after a moment, nothing like dejection in his face, mouth fluttering into a smile. You’d think we had choreographed this from his nonchalant tone, the absolute complicity in his voice. “Let us know when you’re done with your midnight rendezvous, huh?”

I didn’t answer as he slouched away, arms flung out to drape over Kevin and Gracelynn’s shoulders, who were caught out mid-argument and now were obligated to endure the rank overfamiliarity because politeness had been beaten into their very genetics.

“Are you sure you don’t want to come with us?” asked Johanna, faintly strangled, a last-ditch effort in extending a lifeline.

“Incredibly,” I said.

“Who wants to get some booze? Trick question. Everyone wants booze. Especially you,” said Rowan, hip-checking Kevin so hard they stumbled.

Like some mutant border collie, Rowan began herding them away, sparing one last look before rounding the corner, worry in his eyes and something else, something like injury.

Portia and I said nothing to each other until the sounds of the four arguing trickled away, and the world was silent save for insect night-song and the waking verses of the first stirring birds.

A little too late, I thought about calling out to them and as if she knew, Portia set a cold white hand on my wrist. I heard a creak of wood.

I looked up then at the windows above us, and though perhaps it should have, it did not surprise me to see a light begin to grow there, begin to move; the glow the sickly yellow of old lymph.

“What you did was stupid,” she said without preamble.

I shrugged.

“I know you think that the best way of getting out of this place is to run, but you’re going to get yourself killed,” said Portia. “There’s only one way out.”

“Guess I’m going to see if you’re wrong,” I said, withdrawing my hand, repelled by the clamminess of her skin. “Or die trying.”

“There’s another option.”

Dawn had begun to pink the sky along the mountain line, a curiously fleshlike color.

She spoke the possibility very mildly, but there was a portentousness to it that belied the blasé delivery.

Every time I saw her, she seemed more tired, more distant, and if I was going to be honest with myself, less human, though in ways I couldn’t easily index.

“I said no already.” A filler statement. I was trying to buy time although I didn’t know yet what for. Though I knew the air should be frigid, I was sweating profusely. The light now hung just outside Portia’s right shoulder.

“The Raw Grail,” said Portia like I hadn’t spoken and maybe, she wasn’t speaking to me but to whatever was the reason for that sudden luminescence. “You could join us.”

Her smile was as gorgeous as it was empty, like glass, like some perfect sculpture: wholly, utterly without true emotion.

Portia regarded me with a lidded gaze and what I could see of her irises was a surprising mauve, almost luminescent, the purple fractured somehow, like light shone through a cracked mirror

“Still as unappealing an idea as it was the first time.”

“You know, I was in your position once,” she said. “She saved me.”

My mouth was suddenly entirely arid. “Weird that you did not mention this even once before. I thought you were here because you wanted to be here. Not because you needed saving.”

Portia licked bloodless lips and it might have been a trick of the meager light, but her tongue looked black in the instant it flicked into view.

“I thought that when I was done, they’d let me go.

But they didn’t. They put me away. I was completely alone.

I thought I’d have to die to ever get out.

But she and I had a conversation. And she gave me a choice.

She came to me and said there was another way, that it didn’t have to end there in that room. ”

“What. Fucking. Room?” I said distantly.

Those freckled cheeks of hers grew dusted with rose.

She was shy, I realized. Like a debutante being plied with attention for the first time, Portia could barely get her next words out, oblivious to my own horror.

“All I had to do was let her change me. Just a little. Enough that she too wouldn’t feel alone.

Which seemed fair to me. Still does. She’s been here for a long, long time.

Always alone. Always left behind. So many girls made her promises.

But they always went away in the end. I couldn’t leave her like that.

Now she’s in me, and in me she will remain. ”

“I don’t like what’s being implied.” Weird how obvious that metamorphosis was now that she’d confessed to it. I saw it in the way the light broke in her eyes, in the black of her tongue, the new brilliance of her skin, like a bright membrane silvering the tributaries of her veins.

“To be loved is to be changed.”

“I’ve heard that saying. I don’t think they meant it in a nonconsensual way.” I sank my nails into my palm. The light had begun to move again, bored perhaps with my obstinance. “I don’t want to be someone else’s stuffed animal.”

“She’s not like that,” said Portia in sad, sweet tones. Somewhere in the foliage, an animal screamed. “It’s different when they love you. It hurts less. It means more.”

Her voice softened.

“The Raw Mother doesn’t hurt anyone on purpose.

She knows what it’s like to be trapped. All she wants is for us to be free,” Portia said like she was a lamb brought up to a sacrificial altar, blinking prettily as she waited for the knife.

I swallowed hard, trying not to picture that sad history: that sullen, dark-eyed girl on her knees before something older than our species itself, begging for a way out. “She’ll keep you safe.”

“Once again, thanks, but no,” I said, wishing I had something more clever to riposte with.

Later, I would tell myself it had been expedience, common sense that had me turning tail and running instead of coming up with a better repartee.

But right then, I could admit that more than anything else, I was afraid.