Bloodless Mary

Mary was tired, defeated, foggy. She couldn't read the words in the grimoire in front of her. Two, sometimes, impossibly, three images of the text swam in front of her eyes. Was she running out of mana? Was she too old? No, her mother still transformed. Still drove off the shades and curses around the hospital.
Mary's arms strained, the fibers of her raiment peeling off them, the muscles that should be superhuman almost failing to support her own weight, as she pulled herself up the podium, so that she could fall back into her chair.
She sat there in sweat stained undershirt and panties, even the basic glamors that kept her looking human failing. The differences were subtle, but her changeling nature, the wet translucency of her skin, the way it reflected the natural sunlight and not the orange streetlights that normal people used.
And to think she had posted her face and name to the local jobs board. The moment they needed more than the most tedious of cantrips she would just pass out on them.
As she panted, the somewhat litteral cloak of normalcy she projected in her day to day life reformed around her, shielding the, sometimes harsh, light of her soul, wrapping her in a long skirt and conservative blouse. Of course it wasn't for her souls benefit she kept it hidden.  It was a lot of work to keep up the glamours humans depended on, but she genuinely didn't want to hurt people, and the glamours really did help people get along. Even if the constant overlapping magic from other people's unconscious castings made her itch.
She still remembered being a prodigy, there was even a time between when her childish refusal to glamour had driven off her peers, and her lack of vitae had angered her superiors. Even if she quickly realized that something was deeply wrong with her, that she just couldn't do the ritual magics. That in every group project she would always do the final casting, because she couldn't get any of the prepwork to function.
She would cut herself for the sacrifices, over, and over, and over again, and her blood just wouldn't be enough. Visibly torturing herself infront of her teachers was the only way to change their frustration into pity. It didn't work, half her summonings just failed completely, as if she hadn't even tried. And well she always got praised for the beauty and subtlety of her work when it did, half the time she would get to the end of the semester and all her art would just fall apart, and every single time her parents would be surprised.