CHAPTER TWO
AKA The Growing Pains of Estella Faye
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Ella leaves the only city she's ever known on the same day that she starts her new life as a supernatural something. A part of her will probably always pine for the city, a place where she bled and grew and beat the odds stacked up against her, but another part of her is quietly exhilarated. Ella is good with change; she thrives with challenge; and some piece of her just knows, the second she spies the city sign through the rain-speckled windshield, that she won't be contained anymore.
Ella sees the sign, a weathered wood-and-stone Welcome to Charmstone, and starts to taste freedom. Glenn has told her all that knows about the town, which is actually more than a lot. Charmstone is a hamlet of a college town in upstate New York, surrounded entirely by a deep thicket of virginal forest and populated almost entirely by other supernatuals, apparently hidden from the human world by some serious magic. Her first glimpse of the town as they drive through brings to mind the picturesque colonial towns from postcards and television shows. Charmstone is the kind of place that runs on small businesses and community commerce; there is a single big-chain grocery store on the edge of town, which is also where the lone gas station is. The town is small enough that a ten minute walk is more than enough to get around the town proper – where there is an actual town square, complete with gazebo and benches. As Glenn steers the car into one of the neighborhoods branching from the central town, Ella peers out the window, taking in the humble, perfectly normal vision of totally ordinary people.
Except that most – or maybe none – of these people are totally ordinary at all. Point of fact: Ella definitely just saw someone with gray skin closer to stone than flesh, which really isn't very human at all.
The one time Ella asks what, exactly, a supernatural is, Glenn only gifts her with a wry look and declares that the creatures of legend are far more real than any human would dare assume. A very all the legends are true moment. It's a somewhat chilling – and thrilling – declaration, especially considering she's a something, too. The question of what exactly Ella is happens to be something of a head-scratcher, actually. She's magical, sure, but there are apparently several different kinds of magical she can be and Glenn is determined to identify which before she is unleashed on the unsuspecting world at large.
Probably for the best. Now that Ella knows all of the strange things around her aren't coincidence, she's been busting lightbulbs and levitating things left and right. It's like knowing that everything is real has made her pay more attention to the thing that's been slowly unlocking itself for years. And it's getting more out of control by the day – something about a magical maturity, or something.
Mostly, Ella just thinks it's unbelievably cruel that she's going through a second puberty when she's barely even finished with the first.
But more to the point, Ella is going to very firmly be in homeschooled territory until she can get her shit under control. She isn't much bothered by the prospect, really. She's always loathed going to school and, considering how long all the fostering paperwork took, Ella is only three months away from graduating high school. Bless being born in the summer. It won't be the end of the world if she doesn't interact with people her own age for a few months.
Ella doesn't even like people or crowds or any of the noise that has punctuated every moment of her life. She'll enjoy the damn peace and quiet. She's even getting her own room in this house that Glenn went and bought when it became apparent that his cramped apartment in Brooklyn wasn't going to comfortably accommodate both of them for very long. No more kipping on the couch or listening to alley cats fighting in the dead of night.
Charmstone is all picture-perfect, a new spring in bloom with all these flowers she can't name planted alongside the sidewalk and new-green leaves on the trees with absolutely none of it tarnished by smog. This town is dauntingly new and calm, but she could get used to this. Hope is a strange, foreign thing. Maybe she'll get used to that, too.
"Well, here it is."
Ella drags her gaze away from the lush scenery, craning her head as she squints through the windshield at the extraordinarily blue house where Glenn has parked. The structure is simple and square, the weatherboarding painted a rich blueberry with pristine white window shutters and an oak front door, bracketed on either side by brass porch lights. The garage attached to the two-story house is already opened and piled high with cardboard boxes full of all their stuff – mostly Glenn's stuff, considering all of Ella's worldly possessions can still fit in a single used Army duffle bag she got from a second-hand store when she was playing at being a street urchin. Ella studies the house for a minute and promptly decides that this is what a home should look like.
This is what her home looks like now.
Ella climbs out of the little Volkswagen, trailing behind Glenn with bemusement when he starts clucking about the state of the garden beds beneath the windows. She had no idea he was a gardener; but then again, Glenn is still mostly a stranger to her, albeit a stranger who is her legal guardian and has declared custodianship over teaching her the ways of the magical world. But Ella, who would generally rather eat nails than have any kind of companionship, considers Glenn Casey a friend, if anything.
Trust is a thing that comes slow, or not at all.
"Absolutely no room for foxglove," Glenn frets, pushing his glasses back up his nose.
Ella shrugs, hands tucked into the pockets of her leather jacket. "So make a bigger garden."
Based on the expression on Glenn's face, it's obvious the thought hadn't yet occurred to him. "A bigger garden…yes, of course. Brilliant idea, that is."
She doesn't acknowledge the praise, instead tilting her chin at the front door. "Are we going to be standing outside all day or what?"
"Ah, yes. Quite right." Glenn hastens to unlock the door, ushering them both inside as he flicks on the hallway lights.
Ella takes in the layout; the open floor between the living room and the kitchen, which is just as blue as the outside of the house; the warm oak floors, white baseboards, and buttery, soft yellow paint on the walls; the stairs leading up to the next floor, where she can only assume the bedrooms are located. It's a small house, just two bedrooms and two bathrooms, but it's nicer than any house Ella has been in before by a longshot. So she lifts a shoulder casually and says, "Nice."
Glenn bestows an absent-minded smile. "Your room is upstairs on the left. I'll start sorting the boxes, as I'm sure the movers have made a mess of everything…"
Ella watches Glenn wander off to the kitchen, where there is a little door that probably connects to the garage, and then she draws her shoulders straight and marches up the stairs. The narrow hallway after the landing has three doors – a far right for a bedroom, the middle for the bathroom, and the left for her room – with crystal doorknobs and brass fixtures that seem oddly incongruent with the rest of the house. Ella's palm slides against the crystal and a fissure of something races along her skin, not painful but not exactly pleasant either. She places it as magic immediately, and then frowns – but then she notices that there isn't a lock on the door and it all clicks together in her mind. Magical doorknob, probably keyed to whoever the room belongs to, which is way better than any common lock.
Magic, she thinks, will never stop being surprising.
Ella enters the room, taking in the fresh scent of paint and the faint, barely-noticeable squares of plaster in the largest wall. It's only because she's been exposed to enough crappy rooms with holes in the drywall that she recognizes the fact that parts of the wall in her room has been replaced recently. Interesting, but not really a concern of hers. The rest of the room is fairly standard, with built-in shelves in the wall, a feature of the house that is echoed in the living room downstairs, and a wide, west-facing window overlooking a sprawl of dense forest. The movers had been paid to set up the larger pieces of furniture, so her bed is already set up in the middle of the room. She kind of likes it there, away from all the walls, and it isn't like she has a headboard since the mattress is on a platform. Maybe she'll keep the bed there.
This is her room, after all. She can do whatever she wants with it.
How…normal. Finally.
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Settling into the blueberry house is done in short order. They unpack and try to hang curtains and find a phonebook to order pizza. They moved on a Friday and by the time Sunday rolls around, the only thing left to unpack are Glenn's frankly absurd amount of books, which he does with all the care of a mother with a newborn.
Glenn Casey is a shockingly decent man who drinks Earl Grey tea, no sugar and a dash of milk, and a high school guidance counselor by day. His new gig at Charmstone High doesn't start until fall, though. Tutoring Ella so she can graduate on time and getting her up to speed with the building blocks of magic will be his priority until then, which he is qualified to do because he's something called a druid.
"Teachers. Keepers of magical knowledge," he pontificates one evening as he scuttles books around the living room. "By no means powerful – not wrought with magic like you or your lot, of course – but a necessary cog in the wheel. Druids rely on components of magic rather than on magic itself, you see, and are keener to cauldron arts, potions and elixirs and the like. Although, many druids are capable of minor transfigurations, charms, and runework."
Ella, leaning against the wall well out of the way of all the leather-bound tomes precariously finding their homes on the shelves, wrinkles her nose. "Transfiguration?"
"Water to wine, for example," Glenn answers distractedly.
Ella thinks of that cold night they met, where the snow had abruptly become warm water, and makes a sound of recognition. Transfiguration. Turning something into something else, or like, different states of the same thing. Sounds easy enough, although Ella certainly hasn't spontaneously transfigured anything. Yet. Unless she has done and simply has no memory of it. Also possible.
"You're going to teach me how to turn water into alcohol?"
Glenn looks positively scandalized. "Ella! Of course not, that would be tremendously irresponsible of me!"
"You're the one who brought it up."
"It was a bad example. Forget I said anything about it!"
She shrugs at Glenn's blustering, completely unmoved by it. Rather, her brow furrows minutely as she gestures to the untidy tower of books threatening to collapse in the middle of the room. If she didn't know any better, she would assume that the spillover is because the books are breeding, or something. Like rabbits. Every time she looks, it seems like there's more esoteric books on magic taking up precious space in the living room. "You need to buy more bookshelves."
"I'm afraid that would ruin my organizational system, it would."
"You consider this organized?" she mutters scornfully, not quite under her breath.
Glenn scowls, abandons the task of stuffing more books onto the groaning shelf, and bustles off to make tea, which is generally his habitual response to just about everything. Ella follows Glenn into the kitchen, but comes to a stop at the kitchen counter, tilting her head in confusion. Where she had fully expected to see fragrant tea steeping in a porcelain cup, instead she sees a series of very odd objects splayed across white marble. Most of the items legitimately look like they belong at a Comic Con.
She must make some muted noise of bewilderment, because Glenn looks up and says, "Oh good, you're here. I think it's high time we start on your training. You need something to occupy your time."
He says it like Ella needs a hobby, or something. Maybe she does. But she doesn't think that learning magic is exactly a hobby and she doesn't see how any of these movie props are going to help her. "What is all of this?"
"These are foci," Glenn explains, a discernible tinge of excitement bending the tone of his voice. "Objects to channel magical energy. It's important we make up for lost time in training your involuntary magic. Ordinarily, we would already know what kind of magic you have, as that tends to be passed down through bloodlines. But aside from it being quite remarkable that you can do so much without any formal training, the only thing that is certain is that you have quite a bit of magic. Which, by all means, should indicate that you will require a foci to properly learn control and to perform more complex spells. Many powerful witches use foci, you know."
Ella eyes the various thin wooden sticks, a twisting wooden staff with a glass orb at the top, a few pieces of jewelry, and what appears to be a crystal ball with no small amount of skepticism. "Let me get this straight – in order for me to be magically trained the way I should have been when I was a kid, you want me to use a wand. Like, an actual wand?"
"Right in one." Glenn smiles. "Of course, if the wand doesn't resonate with you, we will have to try the other objects-"
"I'm not using a wand," Ella says flatly. She's not an extra in Harry Potter.
"There is always the staff, or this crystal here-"
"Glenn. No."
"Ella, it's rather a necessary component when magic is as potent as yours, otherwise you might inadvertently harm yourself," Glenn insists.
Ella crosses her arms and sighs and mutters under her breath, but not five minutes later, Glenn has her waving wands in the air and cradling that stupid crystal in her hand, trying to follow oblique instructions to feel her magic and search for resonance. She doesn't lay claim to a wand of her own and when she tries the staff, a distinct scent of ozone fills the air that causes Glenn to pale and demand she put the staff back down. Some of the jewelry is too frail, quartz and rare minerals crumbling to ash in response to her magic, much to Glenn's dismay. But all these failures only serve to make Glenn more interested because apparently as Ella destroys the foci, she also rules out the class of magical being she is; witches and druids use these common foci for focusing their magic or casting strong spells, and for them not to work for her says something significant.
And then, after a long hour and scarcely escaping the complete destruction of the blue kitchen, Ella picks up the ring. Forged with a hundred tiny strands of different metals – she identifies dusky pewter and livewire copper and rough iron and smooth gold – the ring sits prettily on the middle finger of her dominant hand. A flat, colorless gemstone, probably a pure quartz and really old considering the rough-hewn edges, adorns the ring with little artifice. Ella fits the ring onto her finger and abruptly, the roiling of something – magic – that is constantly thrumming like angry bees inside her veins quiets. Calms down. Gentles. Not completely, but enough that she can tell the difference between the chaotic swarm before the ring and the white noise buzz afterward.
Ella stares at the ring, so heavy and solid, in bemusement. "Ollivander was right, I guess. The wand chooses the witch – er, the ring, I guess. This is the one, right? Nothing has caught fire or exploded yet, so."
Glenn doesn't answer, because Glenn is busy staring at the ring with this complicated expression on his face that she can't even begin to understand. Astonishment is clearly evident in his tone when he swallows and says, "You're a magician."
"Okay."
Glenn pauses. "You're a magician," he repeats.
Obviously, Ella is missing something, because she doesn't really get the significance. "Elaborate," she says.
Glenn frowns and rubs his forehead as if Ella is being deliberately difficult. "Magicians are…rare. Very rare. The stone on that ring? It's called a magician's glass. It's a stroke of dumb luck that I even had one, it is. As you can see, I tend to be a bit of a collector – that particular ring was uncovered in an antique store in Dublin. Poor bloke didn't even know what he had. I got it at quite a bargain, actually…"
"Glenn. I don't really care about your haggling skills."
"Right, right! Ah, as I was saying, magicians are seldom seen these days."
"So, this means something. This is, like, a thing." Ella glances at the ring, at the highly polished face, and feels a sense of displacement. "What does this mean?"
"It means that training you has just become our top priority."
How foreboding.
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At first, Ella doesn't quite get the whole deal of being a magician. How is it any different from a witch or a warlock or a druid? Magic is magic, regardless of how much magic a person has. Right?
Wrong.
There are two major things about being a magician, though. Things that are more than a little important to Ella in particular. The first is this entire distinction that magicians don't simply have magic – they are magic. Ella is a living wellspring of magic, able to tap into the magic of the world around her as well as being able to use the spark of magic she possesses. Ella is no ordinary wielder; she is magic itself. Which explains all of the accidental magic that's been leaking out over the years. There is a catch, though. It's cool to be the embodiment of magical energy and all, but just like Newton said, there's an equal and opposite reaction to everything in the universe. Basic physics. And the price for being a magician is actually kind of steep. Like, the whole bit about magicians being rare? That's because magicians are beacons to supernaturals and not in a good way.
Glenn is so cagey about this that Ella feels compelled to press him on what he knows. And Glenn, of course, knows quite a bit, which is how Ella learns the second important bit of being a magician – that magicians exclusively pass magic along bloodlines. There is never any question that a magician's offspring will also be a magician. This isn't necessarily the case for other supernaturals; in fact, there's very few creatures that have any guarantee of heritage descending to the next generation and of magicals, only magicians are able to do this with any degree of certainty. Which means that one of Ella's parent's was also a magician. Which definitely means that Ella shouldn't have ended up in the system, since she should have had a family of magicians looking for her.
The knowledge that Ella's entire life has defied this supposed certainties sits like lead in her stomach, even as Glenn promises to talk to people he knows – people who still work for The Coterie, which is like the supernatural version of the FBI, where he used to work in his early twenties - to try and track down what exactly happened to her family.
That doesn't stop Ella from bleakly acknowledging the reality that has tumbled onto her lap: Ella is an endangered species.
Very much not cool.
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Learning magic is both extremely easy and despairingly difficult.
Glenn is supportive, obviously, and weirdly patient about the steep learning curve Ella is working with. It's always try again or be careful or have you finished that annoying long book written in Latin that translation spells are horrendously slow about translating? All the gentle encouragement is weird for Ella, who simply isn't used to male authority figures not being complete asshats. Glenn is so patient as he teaches her the building blocks of magic that it makes it incredibly challenging to snap at him when she inevitably gets frustrated at her own slow progress.
"Runes are somewhat like a magical alphabet," he says at one point during the spring. "Runes are very simple with each symbol representing a single word – put enough runes together, which is a runic sequence, and you have a magical sequence that can perform more complex spells. A sigil, on the other hand, is vastly more complex, even being composed of runes...More of an entire paragraph, rather than a sentence, if you will."
Memorizing the meaning of runes and learning how to draw them just so is a pain in the ass, but it gives Ella a certain focus and she finds it much easier than struggling through American History and Biology during homeschooled lessons. Ella finds runes so basic that she gets a bit over confident.
So, when it happens that the rune she carved into one of the many trees in the backyard is massively overpowered, ultimately resulting in a white-flash-bang, a felled tree singed by lightning, and a decidedly large lump on the back of her head, she is fully prepared for punishment. She'd been cocky. Ella cringes under Glenn's stare, just waiting for the abuse to begin – but instead, Glenn hugs her, checks that the tree isn't going to continue combusting, and makes her drink a blend of tea teeming with daffodil and honey.
It's the first time it occurs to Ella that Glenn's continued interest in her well-being isn't because he's just that much of a decent man or because he sees it as his duty as a druid to look after the next generation. Those reasons aren't good enough explanations anymore. Nobody is that kind or generous or morally righteous. Ella has been waiting for the other shoe to drop and now – now she's so certain that she's finally pushed Glenn past him limit, that she's finally been too much trouble – and she's wrong. When he was frantically checking her over, there was no hiding the abject worry on his face or the softening of his eyes when she turns out to be mostly unharmed.
Glenn Casey loves her – like family does, a father to a daughter, a sister to a brother, an uncle to a niece – and it makes a wretched thing in her chest catch. Nobody has ever loved her before. Nobody has ever bothered to try.
That night, she hugs Glenn of her own volition and calls him by the name that he's earned, mumbling it into the scratchy wool of his sweater vest so she can hide her face and not have to look him in the eye when she says it. "Thanks, Dad."
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Glenn is on the phone. And Ella is totally eavesdropping. She shouldn't be listening and ordinarily she wouldn't bother – because what does she care about Glenn's phone calls – but she is. Because he's talking about her.
"I have to tell her. She has to know what happened…" Glenn pauses, and she imagines that he's nodding along silently to whatever the person on the other end of the line is saying. Classic Glenn.
Ella eases down another step on the stairs, cautious as she strains her hearing. She knows what this is about; Glenn is keeping his promise to look into how she ended up in the system. It would probably be more polite to wait until he comes to talk to her, but the fact that he's even attempting to have this hush-hush conversation in the kitchen makes her hackles rise. So seriously suspicious for a person who seldom behaves suspiciously. Obviously Ella is going to be curious.
From downstairs, she hears Glenn sigh heavily. "Well, how would you break it to an emotionally damaged teenager that you were the one to find her deceased mother all those years ago in a crime scene that is still considered a cold case? Or that all the Coterie investigators were ignorant that there was a helpless infant involved until, in an unbelievable bloody coincidence, you managed to find that baby sixteen ruddy years later? Everything that ever happened to her –"
The words register slowly, their meaning eking between her ears at a snail-like pace. And then the jumble abruptly makes sense and Ella gasps sharply, a shock of pain and anger and confusion lancing through her body. All of the light bulbs in the house burst, glass clinking to the floor, a whiff of lightning-crackle ozone seeping through the air. Ella trips down the stairs in a bout of rare clumsiness, coming to stand ashen-faced in the archway between the foyer and the kitchen, one hand bracing her balance on the wall.
Of all the things she ever imagined…
No, Ella had never been naïve enough to believe that either of her parents are still alive; one doesn't exactly end up in the foster system when they have living relatives. She always had the faint notion that they must have passed in a car crash, or something normal. But to learn that her mother is the victim of a cold-case crime not even supernatural investigators can solve? No, she never imagined something like that.
Glenn drops the phone, spinning to face her. He blanches. "Ella-"
"Is that true? Is all of that true?"
His face twists into a complicated expression before he seems to dredge up a whispered answer. "If we had known – if The Coterie – had known that there was a baby, that you were…If we had known, you never would have grown up around such –"
"I don't care about that," Ella snaps and a flurry of energy rattles through her chest. Her hands feel hot. The walls are trembling. "Is it true that my mother was murdered?"
Glenn falls silent, but the pity on his face is answer enough. Glenn doesn't lie and even if he wanted to, Ella would know. Her magic is strangely attuned to that sort of thing, so even the slightest bend of truth is like a flashing neon sign to her. So she knows even without verifying that what she overheard is the frank reality of the situation.
God.
She can't – she can't deal with this.
The backdoor slams behind her as she flees into the forest beyond the backyard.
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It's something she's always wondered about, something most foster kids wonder at some point. Who can she thank for the blood running in her veins? What culture does she belong to? What ethnic group? Religions? Traditions? What is she missing out on as an orphan, as a ward of the state, as one of the other many unwanted children in the world? There has never been an answer outside of her imagination, and even then, Ella has long-since outgrown the childish need to belong somewhere or to someone.
She's better being alone. She knows that.
The anger is always there, though, simmering in the back of her mind every time the question is posed. "What are you?" is always met with hostility and a sharp retort. She doesn't know what she is, because the fact is that Ella doesn't have a real birth certificate or birthday; instead, she has something produced by the state and the day when she was entered into the system. There's no certainty in that.
And the objective truth is that Ella looks like she can fit in with most cultures. There has always been something exotic about her bronzed complexion and wavy, oil-spill dark hair and the upward tilt of her eyes, which catch the light like frosty seaglass – but her bone structure, the sharpness in her petite frame, speaks strongly of European descent. She's mixed, probably. Like a mutt at the pound.
It's not unlike picking at a scab if she wonders where she came from, and it's worse now that there is finally some sort of answer. An answer she isn't sure she wants, now.
Ella is crying and doesn't even realize it, not until she's bracing herself against rough tree bark, scraping her bare shoulder as her knees give out beneath her. "Who was she?" The sob breaks free from her throat harshly, the mourning for the woman she never knew but to whom she owes her life. And the fact that she is even crying only stokes the flames of indigence burning her up from the inside.
Behind her, a twig snaps and Ella abruptly realizes she is not alone, the realization akin to ice sliding down her spine. Her magic flares as she turns, glancing wildly about, only to spot a wolf treading – almost hesitantly – toward her. It's a beautiful beast with a coat of copper-tinged grey, the muzzle and collar edged in stark white, and vivid amber eyes edged in verdant, one scar neatly bisecting its brow. A timber wolf, maybe, if not for the fact that this is Charmstone, a supernatural town.
The wolf – werewolf – comes to sit before her calmly, a low whine in its throat, ears pushing backward as it stares at her.
Ella mimics the tone as she says, "This is so fucked up."
The wolf licks her cheek, chasing away the salt drying on her skin, the woods silent around her and her silent companion. Maybe she should be wigged out that a werewolf, fully capable of understanding human concepts like privacy and personal space, has just licked her cheek, but she senses something kismet in the wolf. It understands her.
The sun sets eventually, because even if it's completely screwed up the world does keep turning, and the wolf wanders off into the forest. Ella decides she should, too. Navigating half-blind in the thicket of trees is a pain, but she's familiar enough with Glenn that she can sort of follow his magical energy back to the blueberry house. She is, however, less familiar with Glenn's guilt-stricken expression when she finds him on the back porch, wringing his hands and standing immediately once she emerges from the forest.
Ella stops, watching him wearily beneath furrowed brows, grief buried deep beneath the ice surrounding her heart. "You're going to tell me everything you know."
He does and it's just as bad as it could possibly be, because The Coterie apparently concluded that the John Doe found in Paris on the same night was probably connected to the Jane Doe that has turned out to be her mother. Which means that both of Ella's parents are long dead for reasons that not even the supernatural world's law enforcement can piece together. Ella is the child of unsolved murders.
At least she wasn't needlessly abandoned.
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Later, wolf howls in the dead of night – a long, drawn-out lament rising to the moonless sky to wake Ella from the depths of sleep.
It sounds forlorn. Lost.
"Yeah." She sighs, pressing her face into her pillow. "Me too."
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A/N: Some necessary world building and character development just to get the ball rolling. It's always necessary to establish some rules so that we can all ooh-and-ahh when Ella breaks them into smithereens. And isn't that a funny word? Smithereens. Smithereeeeens. It's just fun to say.
As an aside, I am trying to cultivate this for publishing, so anyone willing to point out typos (goats and coats, y'all) is greatly appreciated and I'll do my best to fix them as we go!
As always, be brutally honest. I can take it.
~Rae