Page 63 of Midnight Auto Parts

“There are no graves here.” I carried the bag to a concrete bench. “I don’t sense any energy either.”

Look at me, using my demi senses like I knew what I was doing.

“We require space without competing energies for what we’re about to do,” he explained. “As it is, we can only activate one bone at a time, or we risk changing their resonance.”

“Okay.” I pretended to understand. “That sounds bad.”

A faint smile crinkled the corners of his eyes, but he wasn’t fooled. “Each bone carries a memory of itself as a whole. The hymn I’m going to teach you would isolate the strongest memory and latch onto it. That would be fine, but it then erases the others’ echoes, scrubs them clean. It renders them useless.”

“We could always go back for another bone, right?”

“How would you know which skeleton it belonged to if the bone lost its connection to the whole?”

Understanding sank in that it wouldn’t be as simple as asking a skull for help again, which, honestly, still blew my mind a little. “Oh.”

“I learned it the hard way.” His smile stretched across his face. “Dis Pater was furious.”

“Hetaught you?” I pictured the smug god typing away in his office. “That’s hard to believe.”

“He was different then.” Kierce glanced away. “He was a young god and cared more for his things.”

“You’re not athing.” I reined in my temper. “You don’t belong to him.”

“Come on.” He lifted the supply kit. “We need to get started.”

Unhappy to be shut down, I grasped there was much I didn’t understand about their dynamic. But he shied away from sharing details he feared might stoke my fury higher where hisgod was concerned. The only way I would get him to open up was if I learned to shut my mouth and listen without judgment.

Okay, fine, thewithout judgmentpart was never going to happen.

I was already judging Dis Pater plenty, and I didn’t know half the story.

Kierce selected a lush patch of grass and sat with his legs folded lotus style then rooted through the bag. I joined him, positioned across from him, and marveled at the ease with which he handled the supplies. I must have been wearing a dopey grin again, because he paused with an abalone shell on his palm.

“I’m not as cool as you seem to believe.”

“I didn’t say a word.” I mimed zipping my lips. “I don’t want to weird you out.”

“How are you talking if your lips are zipped?”

“Ha.” I grinned at him. “Your sense of humor is on the rebound, I see.”

“How could it not be, living with your family? You all laugh and joke so often.”

“I’m not sure if it’s good you’re picking up things from us. The world can’t handle another Talbot.”

A spark of energy broke across my senses as he removed a bone from his pocket.

“Why did it do that?” I reached out and touched it, but the static shock didn’t repeat. “Did you feel it?”

“No.” He examined the bone. “Perhaps removing it from the insulating pouch is what you sensed?”

“The pouch.” I palmed my forehead. “I should have put two and two together.”

“No.” He placed the shell on the grass. “I should have explained it to you.”

“You’re fine.” I watched him set his first bone into the shell. “You’re learning as I’m learning.”

Not everyone was a born teacher. I discovered that firsthand after I failed to teach the Buckley Boys how to read. Kierce was still remembering how to human. Expecting him to teach too? A learning curve was always going to be part of the process. For both of us.

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