Chương 296: Still Waiting

"I feel like I was here just yesterday, if yesterday was a hundred years ago," Belisa said as I walked her to her room. It was weird, I was aware of her words but not of her; even when I matched pace with her she would vanish for me. We're moving at the same relative speed, but as long as she's in motion she's undetectable.

"Familiar and yet not?" I asked.

"That too. But also, like, distant. There's space between me and the past, I can feel that missing year, but there's nothing in that space. It's not like a dreamy confusion, rather the opposite. It feels like I missed a year and then it caught up to me too quickly." I was somewhat aware that even in this semi-crowded hall, nobody was passing me to the right. They avoided walking into Belisa even if they could not observe her.

I think it's because running into her would force them to become aware of her, and the spells are layered so that not only can we not notice her, we cannot take the steps to make ourselves notice her. The closest I could get was observing other people reacting to the presence that I was intellectually aware was there. But if I thought about raising my right arm and reaching towards her it just didn't happen.

"It's all right if you don't have the right way to describe it yet," I said.

"You've got a lot of things to get used to. And the experience you've gone through really is nearly unique. Hardly anyone would be able to relate to it. You don't need to describe it in terms that other people can empathize with. This is something I've come to understand. Nobody else around me has my experiences, after all. Not everything needs to be explained to everybody." What's even stranger though is that nobody looks at me strangely as if I'm speaking out loud to myself, either.

The degree to which I am interacting with her is also hidden by the perception filter. They can't notice her, but they also can't notice that I'm speaking to her, but they can notice me and my presence. The spells that control this phenomenon are very finely sliced. She stopped in front of her door and just appeared. If I'm watching for it carefully, it's like she stepped out from around a corner I didn't notice, like 'oh I didn't see you there!'

, but on the other hand if I'm watching for it and I know what it is, she is very clearly appearing from thin air. But for anyone who is not looking for it to happen, she's just going about her business. None of the other girls in this hallway, moving from room to room with notebooks, homework assignments, shower caddies, borrowed clothes, guilty looks or last-minute messages, have even reacted to her. Her way is eased, so that her own spells don't cause any negative reactions.

Meadwhite does do some very thoughtful work. Belisa had raised her hand to knock but I stopped her.

"It's your room, and you've been here every day for over a year," I reminded her carefully.

"You don't knock at your own door."

"Right," she said, bracing herself. She tucked her chin and opened the door, walking in like almost nothing was wrong. Her roommate glanced up from the writing desk.

"Oh, hi. And, uh, hello Princess Harigold." She started to rise.

"No no," I said, waving her back down.

"I'm just here to check that her packages all arrived in order."

"Oh yeah that," said the roommate, a lean-faced girl with a beauty mark under her right eye.

"Did you just get bored and decide to replace all your stuff? The porters brought up everything, left it on your side." She gestured at the other half of the room, which had very clearly not been used for a while. There was baggage there, uniforms and underthings and toothbrushes and everything else, all stacked up on a bare mattress. The dust on the bedframe was thick, approximately one year thick. And her roommate had no idea. She could not see the dust because the dust would prove that Belisa had not been here.

I discreetly harnessed wind to whip all the dust up and away, opening the window just a crack to fling it all outdoors.

"Well, let me help a bit," I said, smoothly enough. With more gestures I started her clothes flying to the wardrobe, her shoes lining up beneath, her toiletries to the bathroom, her school supplies to her desk, and finally the linens spread over the mattress, tucked and smoothed and arranged and fluffed. It took about ten seconds, and Belisa's eyes popped wide as she saw the fairy-godmother act for the first time.

She and her roommate both turned to me with surprise and awe, and for a second it made me a little self-conscious.

"What?" I defended myself.

"I like using magic to do helpful stuff!" And I still think it's strange that most people never even fathom using magic to make their lives easier. A part of the culture that I just never picked up, I guess. I took a sheet of paper with her class schedule written on it, with room numbers just in case, and set it on her desk. I gave her a smile, and a curtsy, and then I got out of there. I feel like I was starting to look kind of clingy.

It's a difficult tightrope to balance on: I don't want her to feel like I am casting her loose, and I don't want her to feel like I'm smothering her, but I'm the only person who knows what she's been through and is in a position to ease her back into her normal life. She's made it clear that she doesn't want to make a big deal of this and she doesn't want to be "the girl that was captured by a lich". That kind of thing could start rumors.

And rumors that carried a breath of necromancy had ruined plenty of lives before. Hurrying down the hall to the stairs, I could only wish her the best. She's a smart girl, and resilient. She'll be fine without me double-checking the details. After all, even when she was Nathan's [Tragic Damsel], her troubles were always caused by external sources, and were far too big for anyone to consider dealing with alone. She was never portrayed as being incompetent, dependent or ineffectual by nature.

She was a good and honest girl who was beset by problems far out of her league. And with my interference, those problems got a lot worse and a lot more immediate. I had accidentally escalated her blackmailing into kidnapping, brainwashing and a close brush with necromantic possession. I winced with guilt, hurrying up the stairs, my hand on the banister rail. One recurring trope in this genre is girls getting pushed down stairs, and I swore it's not gonna be me.

Belisa is a lot more competent now than she ever was in Nathan's run, now that she's super-strong, stab-resistant, and invisible. As long as I can keep her out of trouble with rumor mills and school administration, she should be able to adapt just fine. I've just gotten used to seeing her shambling, dull-eyed, and soulless. I've gotten used to her not having anyone to help her, at all, except for me. And while I've gotten used to that, she's basically missed all that time, and is meeting me from scratch.

I am trying to reconcile this mismatch without making it her problem... and without leaving her to flounder in a world that has shifted significantly since she was last aware. I opened the bedroom door and hurried in, locking it behind.

"You're really not going to tell me what this girl's deal is?" Elica drawled dryly. My hair unbraided itself and I sighed as I felt my headache ease off some.

"Not this time. This isn't my secret to share."

"Those are the best kind," she pointed out, hopefully. She was at her writing desk with a stack of cardstock envelopes, managing her invitations. She tapped her foot against the chair leg, her eyes bright.

"Really. Sorry," I said. Elica is normally really good about sorting which secrets should be kept from which ones to circulate as rumors just to drum up some drama. But what's been going on with Belisa is too extreme. The combination of ' necromancy', 'betrayed by her own family' and ' right under all of our noses for the past year' might be too much for her to resist.

"Nothing?" she said, pouting.

"I'm sure it'll come out eventually, probably not all at once," I said, trying to reassure her. I fluffed my hair and felt my scalp relaxing. Heaven. I called forth my nightgown and headed to the bathroom to change.

"Right now it's just... I'm trying to get things normal before we go into that," I said, pausing at the door before I shut it. I washed up, started my shower. Heaven twice. What a hell of a day. I put my fist through a lich's torso, got rid of one of my most vicious and wily enemies, saved an innocent girl from a fate roughly analogous to death, and took three unexcused absences from classes. I wonder what my demerit count is at right now, I'll need to clear that up.

Strangely, it's only been two days since I killed Yheta and I'm already fully over it. Like in my head, he's been a dead man for months, living on borrowed time. If I get used to the idea of killing someone, it really takes the sting out of it. First the princess, now him. I shampooed my hair from the scalp to the ends, rinsed out, then added conditioner from the ends to the scalp. And yet, killing that other guy... the one with the difficult name. Lyndel?

Whoever, the guy who ran all around the city talking about hiring hit men to kill me. That one bothers me even less. Does this mean that I'm fully desensitized? That I can murder in cold blood or hot, that I can go after strangers or someone I've known for a dozen years- and it's all the same to me? Or is it just that I've been true to my scruples and I've only ever killed people who genuinely deserve it? Yheta's no Meadwhite, neither is Lynpel. Wait. Lydpel! That's it. That guy.

But then, Kudder and his crew of toecutters were no Meadwhite either. I don't think any of the other liches I've ever killed have had the sort of relentless malice that Meadwhite had. Even the Cachexia, really. I shut off the water and dried myself with a flick of magic, and pulled my nightgown on. I guess I just feel like the worst person I've ever killed should feel different.

It seems obvious that there should be a continuum- the worst person I've ever killed should cause me the least guilt, and the best person I've ever killed should bring the most guilt, and everyone else should be arrayed in between, proportionately. And yet, with the exception of Lachel Freckentop they really are just all the same to me. When the door opened and I stepped back out onto the rug, Elica was laying in wait, eyes bright. She's changed for bed but her smile looks a little wired.

She's had time to think things over, apparently.

"So, I was thinking," she said, smiling a 'gotcha' smile.

"This girl has been so quiet all this time. There was that one moment right after the Byeview Boys, you approached her when she was with your brother. But then after that I never heard a thing about her. And I hear something about everyone." Shit. This is really going someplace. I breezed past her and called out my silver hairbrush to start working on the back.

"And it's very strange for anyone to go so silent so fast," Elica said, "And then suddenly become so prominent again. Especially someone who is even tangentially involved in either you or your brother." She was enjoying this.

"And today, you were keeping your secrets, and Larianne was being all quiet-""Larianne's always quiet."

"True, but you kept looking at her like you thought she might say something," Elica said.

"And I remembered that you and Larianne have been particularly close lately, all kinds of secret conferences and private conversations-" I was sweating a little bit now. But she wasn't going to make the next leap, at least.

"- and it all started when you mentioned totally innocuously that there was a girl in your geography class with no soul who's been kept prisoner for most of a year," Elica said, relishing this moment.

"No," I said, dumbfounded.

"How? You were totally ignoring me when I said that. How is that detail the thing that stuck with you?"

"You interrupted my story about how annoying my teachers were being," Elica snipped back, eyes narrowed.

"I may have forgiven, but I had not yet forgotten." I could only stare.

"Elica? Sometimes I really do forget how boundlessly strange you are." I shook myself out of it.

"Well, shit, I had really thought I was doing a better job of keeping my secrets. Maybe I still have a lot to learn."

"You don't need to be that concerned," she said, and stood to walk over towards her bed.

"I do spend more time with you than anyone. Most of this did happen right under my nose. I do know more of your affairs than almost anyone else. And I play a lot of poker against you." She favored me a magnanimous smile.

"Few people if any would have figured you out as I did."

"Gee thanks," I grumbled, dismissing the brush and calling out my silk sleep-scarf.

"Please do keep it under your hat for now, though, yes? She's a nice girl and I don't want all of this to blow back on her before she can try to have a normal time at school."

"I can keep this a secret," she said, primly.

"It is a very big secret, and you will owe me."

"Yes, Elica," I sighed, slipping into bed. She stood, hands on her hips, glaring.

"Yes, Elica?" I said. The bells began tolling.

"I'm still waiting, you know."

"I'm sorry that I interrupted your story, Elica."

"That's better. Good night princess."