Page 76 of Lost and Stolen Gods
I wasn’tsure how I got out of the room, but one minute I was staring at a talking rat, and the next I was standing in the corridor with everyone staring at me. No, not at me. At my shoulder, where Blue balanced like an acrobat.
“A rat?” Eve snorted. “You got a rat?”
Her ferret hissed and bared its teeth at Blue.
Blue leapt onto the ground, coming up to stand on his hind legs, hands on hips. “Oi! Put ya teeth back in ya gob before I twat you one.”
A collective gasp filled the corridor as the ferret leaped at Blue.
My heart shot into my throat. “No!”
But in the next moment, the ferret was flying back because Blue had made good on his threat and punched it in the face.
“Drake!” Eve rushed to gather him up, and Blue cocked his arms in a body builder pose.
“Anyone else wanna go?” he asked.
“He speaks…” Umbra said. “Out loud.” She looked up at me in surprise.
“I guess he does.” I held my hand out on instinct, and Blue leapt on, scampering up my arm and onto my shoulder.
“This is the first anchor that speaks out loud,” Umbra said.
“It’s fucking brilliant, that’s what it is,” Remi said.
“Lola wants you to teach her how to do that,” Joe said. His cat purred in agreement.
“Sure thing,” Blue said. “I got skills.”
“You’re a rat!” Eve said. “A dirty, filthy rat.”
“And you’re a slightly overweight mortal with more whiskers on her chin than me,” Blue snapped back. “We all have our crosses to bear.”
“Oh my god,” Dharma said. “I think I love you, Blue.”
Blue sniffed. “Course you do. I’m awesome.”
“This is you?” Priti said with a smile. “This is a part of you.”
I looked across at Blue, into his black beady eyes filled with confidence, and smiled. “Yeah…yeah, I guess it is.”
Umbra gathered our anchors to take them to the nest, an area in the west wing of the complex which would be their home. They would be permitted to be with us at all other times except at night, and as it was late, we wouldn’t see them till the morning.
The rest of us made our way back to barracks.
“Do you feel like you lost a bit of your soul?” Remi asked me.
“I’m not sure what I feel, but…I don’t like that Blue can’t be with me, and I only just met him so…that’s something.”
Priti walked ahead of us on the trail with Dharma.
“I wonder why some of us didn’t get an anchor,” Remi asked.
I’d been wondering the same, in between trying to remember what had happened in the room with the Shakti and marveling at how cute Blue was. “I don’t know. It’s weird. We all have souls, so it should work for us all.”
It was something to add to my list to ask Bhoomika when I next saw her, which reminded me, I should probably read the books she’d given me.
Tomorrow. After training.
