Bunching up her nightgown under the faucet, he got it sopping wet. He used the cloth to scrub off what was left of her skin and the pigment of her hair. Her skin was thin as crepe on her back. As he rubbed the cloth over the bump between her shoulders, the skin cracked.
A thin whitish fluid leaked out between her shoulder blades.
"Uuughh!" Corny moved back from her.
Kaye looked back at him, and her face said that she just couldn't take any more weirdness. Of course it was hard to know whether he was reading her strange eyes right.
"Its okay," he said in as soothing a voice as he could. Outside he heard a car pull into the gas station. He ignored it.
"What happened?" There was something moving under the surface of her back, something slick and iridescent.
"Hold on," he said. The thick fluid was wiping off, showing white-veined iridescence all the way down her back. Suddenly something flicked loose, rising so that it almost slapped Corny before it fell wetly against her back.
"Oh, God," Corny said. "You have wings."
The damp things moved feebly.
The sight of it sent a thrill through him, despite the fear. This was the real thing.
"C'mon," he said. "My house."
Chapter 6
"Down the hill I went, and then,
I forgot the ways of men
For night-scents, heady, and damp and cool
Wakened ecstasy in me."
—Sara Teasdale "August Moonrise," Flame and Shadow
Kaye sat down gingerly at the edge of the couch, so that her new wings hung off the edge and wouldn't get crushed if she moved suddenly or leaned back.
She was wearing a pair of Corny's jeans, belted and rolled at the cuffs, and a black, hooded sweatshirt. Corny had taken a pair of scissors and cut a large section out of the back of it so that they could feed her wings through. Her skin was so sensitive that she imagined she could feel particles as they drifted through the air.
Corny poured himself a glass of Mountain Dew. "Can you drink soda?"
"I think so," Kaye said. "I could before."
He poured some in a mug and handed it over to her. She didn't sip it—it was the same color as her skin.
She could smell the soda, smell the green dyes and the chemical carbonation. She could smell Corny, the acid of his excited sweating and sourness of his breath. The air she breathed tasted of cigarettes and cats and plastic and iron in a way she had never noticed before—it nearly made her gag with each breath.
"It's starting to sink in," Corny said. "I can almost look at you without wanting to bang my head against the wall."
"I'm not sure how to explain. It started a long time ago. I'm not sure I remember important things."
"Recently, then." Corny sat down on the couch. He was staring at her with what looked like a combination of fascination and repulsion.
"I rolled in some clover." She gave a short laugh at the absurdity of it.
"Why?" Corny didn't laugh at all. He was totally serious.
"Because the Thistlewitch told me that that was one of the ways I could see myself the way I really am. See—I told you that it gets ridiculous."
"This is the way you really are, then?"
Kaye nodded carefully. "I guess so."
"And this thimble witch? Who is she?"
"Thistlewitch," Kaye corrected. And she told him. Told him how she'd known faeries for as long as she could remember, how Spike would perch on the footboard of her bed when she was small and tell her stories about goblins and giants while Lutie darted around the room like a manic nightlight. She told him how Gristle taught her how to make a piercing whistle with a blade of grass and described the Thistlewitch divining with eggshells.
All the while, Corny stared with greedy eyes.
"Who knew about these friends?"
Kaye shrugged. "My mom, my grandmother—I guess I'm not really related to them at all…" She stopped suddenly. Her voice sounded unsteady, even to herself, and she took a deep breath. "Everyone in my first-grade class. You. Janet."
"Did any of these people see the faeries? Ever?"
Kaye shook her head.
Corny turned his gaze toward the wall, frowning in concentration. "And you can't call them?"
Kaye shook her head again. "They find me when they want to—that's the way it always was. Right now, that's the problem. I can't stay like this, and I don't know how to get reglamoured."