Chapter: 2
"She's on fire!" the redhead shouted, and not one head on the platform turned. A man stepped around Sienna's legs without looking down. A woman with a stroller drifted past with her eyes on her phone. "What the hell is wrong with these people?" the redhead said, to nobody in particular. When it was clear no one else was going to move, she moved herself.
"Let me help. I can put that out." She raised a hand and a large orb of cool water gathered above her palm, wobbling in the flicker of the station lights.
"No," Sienna said it fast, and from the floor.
"Why not? Doesn't it hurt?"
"It hurts." Sienna looked up at her. Blood ran slowly down her chin, and her green eyes looked dulled, as though they'd been tired for years. "But it isn't burning my skin. Water would only feed it."
"Then what do I do?"
"I can do it," Mary said. She had dropped to the tiles beside Sienna with a smile fixed on her face, the kind people wear when they're trying to hide how much something costs. It didn't hold. She pressed her hands over the flame, and her expression kept sliding into a grimace she kept pulling back, and it was plain to anyone watching that the fire hurt her far more than it hurt Sienna. "Please," Sienna said quietly. A few seconds later, the flame went out.
Sienna slumped against the wall with her sleeve still smoldering, a last ember of Mary's immortal flame clinging to the cloth. She smiled across at the redhead as if nothing had happened, as if her nose weren't bleeding and her fingers weren't working at her neck and forearm until the skin turned raw.
"Then you didn't need help," the redhead said slowly. "But why didn't anyone react? You were clearly on fire. You collapsed. They all just walked by."
Behind her, the tall man in the Lustbrand shirt had been looking around instead of at them. Something about the platform was off. The sound was too flat, and there was a boundary between them and the crowd that he couldn't see but could feel, like the edge of a pane of glass. Without thinking about it, he pushed his sleeves up to his elbows.
Sienna's body twitched with small spasms. She scratched her neck again, harder, as if the pain would keep her in place. "They can't see it," she said. "It's an illusion barrier, a gift that runs in my family. What you saw isn't what they saw. From the outside, it looks like three women having an ordinary conversation."
"So I'm the only one who can see what's going on in here?"
"Yes."
"Is it a soul crucible?" the redhead asked. On the pillar behind her, between a dozen faded missing-person fliers, a small sign read NO SOUL CRUCIBLE ZONE.
"No," Sienna said it too quickly, then forced her voice softer. "It doesn't touch your soul or your will. It only drains me, because the dome is dense." She left out how close its origins were to a crucible. She left out that it could bleed through, and she left out the people who had died inside its radius.
"Is that why your nose is bleeding?" the redhead asked, and Sienna remembered the blood and wiped it on her sleeve. "You should let it go before it—"
"You won't tell anyone about this," Sienna said. It wasn't a question.
"I won't. You obviously don't want attention drawn to your friend or to yourself." The redhead hesitated. "And frankly, you look a little unhinged."
Sienna watched her for a long moment. "Good," she said. "Then nothing needs to be misunderstood."
She hadn't noticed that the redhead wasn't the only one inside the barrier. The tall man had been standing there the whole time, and by the time she realized it she'd already said too much. She raised one hand. The illusion cracked like glass breaking in reverse, shards drawing inward and vanishing with a sigh of spiritual static, and the noise of the station rushed back in.
Mary stood behind her with her eyes on the floor, and her fists clenched, ashamed of what she'd done. Sienna glanced back over her shoulder. "Mary," she said gently. "It's all right." Mary flinched and said nothing. "If we stand around here, we'll miss our train," Sienna added brightly, and hurried toward the platform.
"R-right." Mary went after her.
As she went, Sienna's eyes found the redhead's one more time and held them, so the redhead would know Sienna would remember her face. In her head, she was thinking something cold. I suppose Mary Vale will just have to live in the shadow of another man who abandoned her.