Page 2 of Awry
The server sniffs offishly, then picks up the eighty dollars and tucks it into her bra in a practiced, minimal move.A tattoo rings her wrist.At first, it appears to be a string of daisies, similar to those necklaces that kids make in movies and storybooks.A purely intentional choice, given that her name tag also reads ‘Daisy.’But hovering at the beginning of what’s starting to feel like a majorknowing, even one deliberately triggered, my unintentional focus reveals a shimmer of numbers hidden underneath the flowers, etched into the delicate skin of the underside of her wrist.
The numbers are an illegal trafficking tattoo.The shimmer that only someone like me can detect is a nasty twist of fate manacled around her wrist.It’s old and stretched, though she’s in her early twenties at most, and she’ll wear it — her entire fate anchored in it — until she embraces the After.
I look away quickly before she notices and understands what I’ve seen of her.
I shouldn’t have stopped for lunch.I shouldn’t have pulled so far off the highway.I should have driven straight through from Seattle to Portland, then cut out to the coast.Not because I’m vulnerable or memorable — I am, and nothing I do can make me otherwise.But because I shouldn’t get involved.I’m a so-calledpowernow.The comings and goings of servers in diners and bikers in neutral territories should not be my focus.
From when I pulled up, I remember the name on the sign outside — Choices Cafe.Epically ironic.
Because I only have responsibilities.To the universe.Literally.Whether or not I’ve taken those responsibilities on by choice.For the record, I haven’t.None of it has ever been a choice.Not truly.
The server tucks her order pad in the pocket of her white apron, her gaze flicking to the window, to the parking lot.Two huge motorbikes — the massive noisemakers the bikers pulled up on — occupy the spots directly across from the front door.But the server instead curls her upper lip at the 1972 Silver BMW 3.0 CSi parked in the very last spot adjacent to the windows.Adjacent to the booth I’m currently occupying.
“Nice ride,” she sneers, either pissed or jealous.Hard to tell.
“My uncle’s,” I say, only partly lying.Because he’s dead, the car is part of the estate I inherited from him, and he was just a few more generations removed than ‘uncle’ implies.
She snorts, stepping away and crossing around the counter instead of in front of it — which would put her within arm’s reach of the bikers —to input my new order on the tablet next to the cash register.She makes an obvious effort to keep her gaze on the kitchen through the pass-through window instead of looking ahead while walking.Beyond simply ignoring the bikers and the girl, she’s actively trying to avoid drawing their attention.
I wonder how much market share the nearest biker club holds in the local, highly illegal human and shifter trafficking trade.I just as quickly shove the thought away.Not my business.Really, really not.
Then most contrarily, I set my gaze on the teenager with the violet-tinged blue eyes again, already knowing without actually formulating a plan that I’m about to do something really stupid.That I’m about to follow a prompt I’ve yanked forth from the universe, about to snag a thread of fate and twist it to achieve an outcome that isn’t technically mine to direct.Likely more than one thread.And in hindsight, I already swayed onto this path rather thoughtlessly, from the moment I pulled off the highway and took the detour that brought me here.
But at least I’ll have a milkshake and chicken strips, right?Yeah, I just went with the random requests that occasionally filtered through me from the universe.Or at least I did so most of the time.
I push the uneaten salad slightly across the table, lengthen the strap of my bag, secure the phone within its depths, then sling it across my body.
Then I wait.More often than not, the execution of a knowing — intentionally triggered or otherwise — is all about timing.Miss that timing, and the backlash isn’t … well, terribly nice.Most often for me.
While I wait, I pull the amulet out from the depths of my sweater.The gold-caged pink diamond is uncut but polished— and some 200 carats in size,so large that it fills my palm as I close my hand around it.The gemstone must be worth … well, millions on the open market.But in the world conducted and controlled through the harnessing and wielding of essence?It’s priceless.So it’s a good thing only I can wear and wield it.
I blink down at my hand.My nails are painted in a pastel rainbow, hugely contrasting my normal black-on-black-on-gray wardrobe.
Damn.
I had thought that choice of color my own, whimsical but as a response to the unrelenting gray rain of the late-winter season.Except my nail color matches the unwashed hair of the teenager with the purple-hued eyes.
Aknowingdoesn’t usually sneak up on me like that.Explode full force in the moment?Yes.Carefully, deliberately curated by myself to elicit the response I want?Yes.Sneaking through my subconscious days ahead?No.
Energy from the gold threads encasing the essence amulet thrums under my palm.My deliberate skin contact calls forth a welcoming pulse of power.Because it wants to be used, to be useful.And I’m the Conduit for that power.
Literally.
The Greeks would have called me one of the Moirai, the personifications of destiny.To Romans, I would have been one of the Parcae.For the Norse, the Norns, and to the Celts, the Matres.Except I have no sisters, I’m not actually a goddess wielding divine power, and I’m decades away from being able to control the power anchor and conductor currently hung around my neck.
My most recent inheritance, which includes the necklace, is only three weeks old, on paper and in my blood.
In this incarnation, I’m simply one of the awry — meaning I’m capable of harnessing and manipulating essence from any and all sources in a world where the awry are greatly outnumbered by the nulls, shifters, and mages.Any and all of whom occasionally hunt us en masse.Except in the pockets of the world in which our kind has claimed territory, we awry are mostly solitary, or part of small families whose living members span generations.If our essence is dim enough, we hide in plain sight because that’s easier than trying to function in any mage or shifter community, where pure power and bloodlines determine privilege.
The biker nearest to me stiffens, glancing around, then tilting his head and inhaling deeply to sample the air.
I’d known he was a shifter.But apparently, his senses are acute enough to pick up subtle shifts in essence resonance.
Iknowboth bikers the same way that I could know, would know, far too much about any of the people occupying the diner if I spent a few minutes studying each of them.Even though up to three weeks ago, that aspect of my abilities was little more than mental sleight of hand or a parlor trick.
The cook slides a white paper to-go container and a white plastic to-go cup through the pass-through window from the kitchen.The server is already waiting for them, fiddling with the coffee maker and keeping as far away from the bikers as she can.
I cinch my bag a bit tighter across my chest, then shove my sweater sleeve up my right arm, exposing a gold-scaled, dark-brown topaz bracelet that twines around my wrist and up my forearm.An almost imperceptible shiver runs through the flattened spiral of metal and carved gemstone — a reaction to the shift in temperature.
