Crowds are strange. Giant syncytiums. Each individual person's actions impossible to foresee, but as a whole, moving in entirely predictable ways. It's an ordered disarray. So easy, if you look hard enough, to learn to flow with its ever changing current.
High school is not strange. She had simply never thought she'd do more than peer in from outside, forehead pressed against the figurative window. But her father's house disappeared from her rearview window years ago. Friends with open smiles, summers of bared skin; these, her mother had insisted, hands tight around the steering wheel, would be Sydney's world. She'd wanted freedom for her only child.
The world is wide, in ways she could not imagine before. Worth having, she thinks (sitting in the guidance councillor's office, flicking through scholarship offers) even if she wakes up breathless at night from dreams of bloody teeth.
In between laughter, she bites back words like dhampir and moroi until her lips bleed. It feels not entirely dissimilar from the empty apartment, hollowed out by newness.
Maybe everyone feels this way: close but distant. Too caught in their own canvases of pain listen to the painter beside her.
Freedom is not what she'd expected.
"Most family businesses," says Sydney, "aren't quite so bloody."
Carly's laughter has kinks in it, as though wrenched out unwillingly. Carly's laughter has been this way for months, and hearing it makes Sydney see red every single time.
"It's what we're here for, little sis," says Carly, so airy she almost sounds fine. "Keeping weak fragile humans safe from temptation."
She stats to slip a vial into her suitcase. Sydney lunges forward, catching her sister's wrist.
"Stop, stop!"
"What?"
"Keep it here, and it'll fizz the moment you open the case. Sunlight will hit it."
"Damn. Don't know what I'm going to do without you."
Unlike her laughter, Carly's smile has slowly learned to unfold again. Sydney sneaks trashy vampire fiction home (Carly has always defended the virtue in embracing desire, however idle) just to bring it out when she can.
"I'm not going with you," Sydney reminds her.
"Don't worry. St. Petersburg's got nothing on me," says Carly. "I'll survive. I'm a survivor."
She is. Keith's still a dead man walking.
"All those old buildings and centuries of history," sighs Sydney.
Carly bends to kiss Sydney on the cheek. "You're not going to miss out on anything, I promise."
Her morning routine has not changed for months. With all the preceding upheaval, Sydney is grateful.
She draws her sleeve up dutifully every day, barely blinks as the syringe needle slides in. Sometimes she even smiles at whoever's taking her blood for tests.
She smiles today. Marcus has been coming for weeks, and never misses a chance to converse. He asks her how she feels; what the Alchemists asked for the previous day; how her family's doing.
The other Alchemists are polite, aware she's not at fault for the magic clinging like slime beneath her skin, but Marcus talks to her like Sydney Sage, not just a vessel. She doesn't want him in trouble, so ignores questions like whether she'd like to see the sun again. Sydney doesn't point out she's here by choice.
She knows her duty. She's fine.
(Maybe the Alchemists will free her from the plague of magic, she dares to hope.)
Even if the Alchemists refuse to tell her the results of their tests. She will swallow that irritation. Learn to stomp down on that wave of anger.
Swallows, swallows, swallows, until she can't.
(Yes, she tells Marcus. She would like to see the sun again.)
Abe is inordinately pleased, Sydney thinks sourly, that she knows how to handle a gun.
"I really hope that doesn't mean what I think it means," Sydney mutters. "I never said I'd kill for you."
Abe shrugs, so casual you'd think he weren't a killer. "You could always go back to the Alchemists, Miss Sage."
Sydney's jaw clenches; she can't coax it to relax. Remembering the high-ranking Alchemists as they cast out their own tends to do that to her.
"I thought not," says Abe, voice like silk. "Besides, it's just for your protection. Same as your magic."
"Great. What do you want me to do?"
Abe grins. "Since you did so well finding her, I'm sure you'll be as efficient protecting her."
"Jill?" asks Sydney.
"And her entourage." Abe spreads four photos across the table top, and Sydney can't help it, her gaze pauses at one of them. He's pretty.
To her eternal mortification, Abe notices.
"That," says Abe, "is Adrian Ivashov. Moroi." He gestures at her ruined cheek. "I guess you're free to jump him now you're out from under the Alchemists' thumb."
Sydney's doesn't reply. She's frozen: Zoe's face stares out back her from photo number four.
It's over. Flames lick up the side of her teacher's house, baking her face to a crisp while her back freezes with the desert night's chill. She's safe now. Adrian too. She's ensured it.
"Come on, Sage," Adrian murmurs wearily, so wonderfully steady. "Let's get you cleaned up."
Sydney slides out from under his arm.
"Give me a moment. Just a moment, by myself," she adds, when he starts to protest.
Adrian sighs. He understands. "Go convince yourself that she's gone."
Once he vanishes from the circle of light, Sydney limps toward the house, wincing. She has to see. She wouldn't be responsible enough to handle magic, if she didn't check every time.
The fire's roaring drowns out the rest of the world. Its fluttering dance is eerily compelling.
Then the flames part and a figure strides out, fire and danger rolling off her like oil.
Sydney freezes. The witch is alive, already preparing to blast her off her feet.
Or maybe... Her hand tightens around her amulet. She lets Ms. Terwilliger's power hit, and wrenches that strength into herself. Ms. Terwilliger doesn't stand a chance.
Veronica was right. Power tastes intoxicating.
And it's in the right hands now: hers.