“I’m glad your engram isn’t blocking me anymore,” Marthera said, gesturing for Phoebe - or rather, Euffie - to enter the room ahead of her. “I don’t know any scriptomancers I trust to get it off.”

  Euffie took in the almost empty room. She cradled her battered arm, which she was pretty sure was broken. It wasn’t bending in a way it wasn’t supposed to, but she certainly wasn’t about to test it. There was a bed that looked like someone Marthera’s size had been sleeping in it for years, a few boxes, and a counter. This room had a window facing the street, where Fred’s trail of blood could still be clearly seen in the afternoon light on the sandstone cobbles.

  The orphanage was more of a carcass than a building. It had grown sick, gradually losing all life within it to parasites like slavers. Finally, when it was too weak to protect itself, predators like the city council caught and killed it, urged by slavers irritated by its sheltering of prime workers. The orphanage lay low in the forest of buildings, its corpse eaten from the inside as furniture, decorations, supplies, and most of all children were hauled off until there was nothing left but a quiet, haunting place full of empty bedrooms and dust.

  Euffie’s engram hated the place, and it made this painfully clear as it crumbled under the weight of external stimuli. So much was coming back at once. She could hear the walls talking, replaying bits of conversations she had here. She could smell, beneath the dust, the alcohol mixture Marthera swore by as a cleaning agent.

  “Your arm looks terrible,” Marthera said with typical concern. “Can I have a look at it now that we’re inside?”

  Euffie looked at her old caretaker. Marthera’s face was still wrong. Her eyes were red with yellow sclera, and her nails were still blood-stained claws that made Euffie flinch whenever she moved her hands, matching her canine teeth. Blood covered her undamaged throat. But it was her, all right.

  One thing Oppzis was very good at was comforting. Without words to get in the way, Oppzis was the best company a terrified or grief-stricken person could ask for. There was no room for insensitivity in the literal projection of the feeling, "it will be all right." He was thousands and thousands of miles away in the sky, and that was just when she could see him, yet he did a better job at calming Euffie down than anyone she had ever met.

  “What - “ she said, then tried again. “I’m sorry, I don’t know how else to say this, but what are you, Mother Marthera?”

  Marthera smiled, realized her mistake, and hid her teeth. “I am a vampire, Euffie. I always was. Lucky for you, too, or else I wouldn’t have found you in time, and I certainly wouldn’t have been much help against Fred and his thin friend. Speaking of, what were you thinking? I know this is the orphanage, but certainly you must have noticed how empty the streets are in this part of town!”

  She kept talking, but Euffie wasn't listening. Images and feelings coursed through her like rain water pouring into cracks between bricks. This was Marthera. The woman who raised Euffie as far back as she could remember, if you could call it remembering. There were memories as old as seven years ago, and it felt incredible to have them. When a slave engram has gripped its victim for long enough, the brain becomes unaccustomed to going back that far. It felt so good to stretch between her ears like that, like a leg waking up after the pins and needles sensations fade away.

  " – teach you nothing?" Marthera was saying. "You should know better. You ought to be ashamed, even."

  Euffie couldn't help but smile. Good old Mother Marthera's familiar brusqueness was more than welcome in the memory space she was reclaiming. It helped lessen the strangeness of her vampirism, though Euffie would probably take a while to truly adjust to that.

  Who am I to talk? She wondered, looking down at her right hand that still smarted from punching that man. I have some new stuff to explain too.

  Marthera’s lectures and discipline were endearing compared to whatever my mothers got up to.

  The thought was unbidden. Euffie squashed it; Marthera was looking expectant.

  "I'm sorry, Mother Marthera," Euffie recited, comfortable on familiar ground. "I won't do it again."

  Marthera smiled again. By now Euffie wasn’t too unnerved by her teeth, but it certainly made the smaller part of her squirm. "And you even have a new sarcastic tone. I missed you, Euffie.”

  The name still made her shudder when she heard it. Euffie. It felt so right, and yet, it made her feel so anxious. Just like the voice in her head from inside the engram. She hadn’t told Marthera about Derek’s name for her, and she didn’t really want to.

  “I learned from the best,” Euffie winked. Marthera raised her eyebrows, but said nothing as she crossed and sat on the bed. She patted the space beside her.

  “I’ve heard of vampires,” Euffie said, not moving. “You don’t seem like them. Could you tell me more?”

  Go and sit! Insisted the dread voice. Do it now, before she gets angry. Do it! Please!

  Marthera nodded understandingly. “At last, some wisdom. Most of what you hear about vampires is true, except for the part where we supposedly lose our minds and become like animals craving blood. You saw most of what I can do just now.”

  The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  “Most?”

  “Yeah,” Marthera nodded. “Healing, my sharp bits coming out, strength. But that’s all in bursts, you understand. Most of the time I look normal, unless I call on my strength and sharp parts, and after it’s worn off, I’m stuck looking like this for hours, sometimes days, and I can’t activate it again until I go back to normal.”

  Euffie frowned. “So you’re vulnerable now?”

  Marthera nodded. “My sharp bits are stuck where they are too, unfortunately, but I’ve gotten good at being careful with them. Come on, let me look at your arm.”

  Propelled partly by the dread voice, Euffie approached and sat beside her caretaker, offering her left arm gingerly.

  “A shame I didn’t get to this in time,” Marthera muttered, gently examining the battered limb. “If I’d bit you here, you’d probably be in better shape.”

  “What? Why?”

  “How do you think we vampires get away with biting people so often? Our saliva accelerates regeneration so that by morning, the victim’s neck or arm or whatever has healed itself. No suspicious bite marks. It also numbs the pain so we don’t wake them up.”

  Euffie realized she was leaning away slightly, and corrected it. Marthera already noticed, though. Gently, she put down Euffie’s arm.

  “I know what you’re wondering, and I’ll just come out and say it,” she sighed. “I …fed on you and the other children in my care. Only once or twice, when you were injured or in pain. Vampire bites dull pain, you see, and we couldn’t always bring in a doctor while your young body fixed itself. It also let me track you around the city so I always knew where you were. Once I’ve had someone’s blood, I can smell them for miles, in the middle of a stinking crowd.”

  “Was ... was I awake for that? Did I say yes?” Euffie asked hesitantly.

  “No, you were asleep,” Marthera sighed. “Some of the older children would let me drink their blood more often, but I only ever fed on the little ones once or twice each so I could track them or to heal a break or a cut. I hope this doesn’t make you scared of me, but I understand if it does.”

  Euffie shook her head. Her good hand was caressing her neck without her telling it to.

  “I’m sure you also understand why I never told you,” Marthera added apologetically.

  Say yes! The dread voice rushed.

  I’m on it, shut up, Euffie told herself.

  “I understand, Mother Marthera,” she said. Marthera’s smile returned. She seemed relieved.

  “I’m glad. By the way, you don’t have to call me Mother Marthera if you don’t want to. Aren’t you an adult now?”

  Fortunately, simple information like a number was easy for Oppzis to retrieve, and he’d fetched that a while ago.

  “I’m nineteen,” Euffie said.

  “Good for you. You look gorgeous, yoof.”

  Euffie beamed as the memories associated with the nickname loosened. Even the dread voice seemed to calm down somewhat.

  Marthera laid a hand on her shoulder. Her eyes weren’t quite as disturbing as before, but Euffie still looked forward to when they went back to normal. Her memories of her said they were green.

  “I’m sure you have a long story to tell me,” the older woman said gently. “But we can’t stay here. I’ve just made some dangerous enemies. Let’s get that arm of yours in a sling. I’ll gather what we can carry, and then we need to go.”

  Euffie remembered with a start that she was probably being pursued too. It was only a matter of time until Derek showed up in Aleb looking for her. Maybe he gave up when she ran into the desert, but she highly doubted it. Now that her engram was frayed, she remembered almost killing him several times. He’d still never gotten rid of her. Euffie wasn’t about to count on obsession like that being stopped by the Thirsting Wastes. Especially not with the dread voice in her head, bizarrely berating herself for angering him.

  “You mean leave the city, right?” Euffie asked. Marthera frowned.

  “You sound hopeful. Didn’t you just get here? Oh wait,” she flinched. “Your master is still after you, aren’t they?”

  Euffie nodded. Marthera patted her knees and rose to her feet.

  “Well, I’m going to pack now. Rest there and tell Mother Marthera what has happened since I last saw you. What you can remember, anyway. I wanna know how your engram wore off and didn’t get fixed in time.”

  She sighed. “I wish I could have stopped all of you from getting those burned on in the first place.”

  Euffie gathered her thoughts as Marthera opened a cupboard beneath the countertop. She must have been living here as a squatter after the place closed down; Euffie doubted she could afford to pay rent on it or that anyone would bother renting it in the first place.

  Euffie consulted with Oppzis for a moment. Then, she took a deep breath. “Well, uhm, Mother Marthera?”

  “Yes?”

  “Do you know what a lunomancer is? Or a moon-witch, I guess?”

  Marthera glanced at her. “Of course I do. Or do you not remember Griinel?”

  Euffie shook her head. “Only vaguely. She was a moon-witch too, right?”

  Marthera nodded, smiling fondly in a way that did not pair well with the dust-dilluted light from the window. “She was. And a very brave young girl, too. She was always so kind to the other children. She was like a big sister to you in particular.”

  To her surprise, Euffie felt her throat constricting slightly. Why couldn’t she remember? “She was?”

  Oppzis reminded her that she’d asked him to go back on the memories she didn’t strictly need to get around the city.

  “Yes,” Marthera said, reaching back into the cupboard until she found a pair of shoulder-sling bags. “A moon selected her to be its new witch while she was in my care. I thought that would protect her when she became one of the first wards to be sold out of the city. Instead, she tried to run away, and had an ... accident.”

  Marthera didn’t continue the story. She didn’t really need to; Euffie wasn’t looking forward to that memory getting unlocked.

  “Don’t tell me,” Marthera continued after a small pause. “That same moon selected you too? I knew that silver magic was familiar.”

  Euffie laughed nervously. “Well, yeah, actually. I - agh!”

  “What is it?” Marthera rose to her feet, dropping the bag she’d been stuffing and kneeling down beside Euffie. Euffie pressed her hand against her engram; part of it was starting to flicker.

  It was the tether. Somehow, even without a trail to follow in the Thirsting Wastes, Derek was right behind her.