Page 107 of Awry
Under the right circumstances?Even I’m not so strong that I couldn’t be caged.If only for a moment.
Rought has all the lights on in the garage and workshop areas of the barn.I’ve been feeling the shifter’s energy the entire time we’ve wandered the property, even while actively focusing on Presh.It should be easier to tune him out, though it’s already obvious that my tie to the intersection point comes with a heightened sense of its boundaries and inhabitants.
I choose to actively ignore that multiple essence-wielders were on the property for a large portion of yesterday, and I wasn’t as continually aware of them as I am of Rought.As achingly aware.
On the far side of the garage as we enter, Rought is working on the pristinely restored, high-gloss black 1956 Ford F-100 pickup.But his gaze is already trained on us as I step over the threshold.The garage section of the building is divided from the workshop by a set of now-open doors.The floor is well-worn shiplap in the workshop, but concrete in the garage.The trestle ceiling is far above us in the central section of the barn.
The workshop is tidier than I’ve ever seen it.Power tools are boxed and organized on shelving units, with hand tools hung along the wall that separates the workshop from Mack’s suite.The workbenches are all bare, scoured clean.
Harlee’s work maybe?The mage might have cleaned the space out of deference to the two bodies currently set in the cleared central area of the workshop.Mack and Ingrid are each intricately wrapped in plain off-white sheeting, and set side by side on two antique-looking wood-topped folding tables.They’re surrounded by fresh herbs and flowers, though whether Harlee found those in the greenhouse or went off the property for them, I don’t know.
Presh stumbles over the threshold after me, and I reach back to tuck my hand under her elbow.I catch Rought straightening from the engine of the truck in my peripheral vision.He tugs the rag he’s stuffed in his back pocket out and starts cleaning his hands.
“I’m fine,” Presh murmurs quietly, her gaze on the bodies.She glances toward her half-brother with a slight smile, reassuring him, though he hasn’t said anything.
I start to ask her if her brother’s essence feels as intense to her as it does to me.If she is as continually aware of him as I apparently am.Then I shut my mouth on the question, which feels both too personal— and too revealing on my part.
“I’ve seen bodies before,” Presh says, as if that should reassure her brother, reassure me.
It doesn’t.
“And they weren’t …” She approaches the smaller of the two, the dead mage.“They weren’t treated so well.”
Even though this is my skewed idea of a valuable primary lesson, I suddenly want to pull Presh away, bundle her back through the mist-drenched late afternoon into the house.I can ply her with ice cream, and we can watch a movie by the fireplace in the family room.But instead, I keep my distance, as does Rought, so that my energy doesn’t permeate the space and muddy the essence-sensing lesson.Well, not any more than it likely already does.
The idea of curling up next to a fire has never seemed so comforting to me before … before this moment.I don’t glance over at Rought, though I can feel his gaze every time it touches on me.
Presh hovers her hand over the wrapped forehead of the mage.“They were your aunt’s chosen mates?”she asks.
“I believe so,” I say.
“You couldn’t feel that connection?”
“Not after … not once they were dead.And I … I didn’t really know them … before …”
But I should have.I spent summers on the property for years.And rationally, I understand that my aunt had other companions.But I’m becoming more and more achingly aware that I’m missing something … something fundamental —
Rought steps closer.His gaze is on his sister, but he moves near enough that I swear I can now feel heat radiating off him.Either I’m colder than I thought from our walk through the drizzling rain, or it’s his essence that warms me.
Both possibilities are unsettling.
So I ignore them and stay focused on Presh.
She brushes her fingers across the flora tucked around Ingrid, murmuring, “Mage.”
“Are you sensing that from the preservation spell or the body?”I ask.
Presh shrugs, tired but offering me a slight smile.“The other person is a shifter.His size gives that away.”
She plucks up some thyme and tucks the woody stems under one of the folds across Ingrid’s chest.I don’t caution her, don’t tell her that she might be messing with Harlee’s casting, because I can already sense that she isn’t.Her quiet, barely-there essence doesn’t stir or interrupt what has already been laid across the bodies.
Instead, I eye the thyme she’s shifted and wonder at the connection.Why she felt the need to move it, the impulse to set it in a specific location.Over the mage’s heart.
The difficulty with trying to train another of the awry is that there are so few of us, we are all essentially unique.I can only guide Presh to find her own way, or until she manifests enough ability that I can find her a mentor better suited for her.
Of course, finding a mentor who I would trust with Presh’s life is a completely different issue.
She crosses toward the second body, hovering her hand over the wrapped forehead of the shifter as she did with the mage.
