Page 3 of Awry
Unlike the necklace, the bracelet isn’t a newly acquired inheritance.It passed to me from my mother moments before her death.Again, literally.I was nine years old.My mother was far too young to have her thread snipped.For one of us — the awry — at least.
The server snags the to-go containers and stuffs them both in a brown paper bag, along with some napkins and a paper-wrapped straw.
The threads woven around the purple-eyed teenager pretending to eat her fries condense under my regard.She’s surrounded by a multitude of spirals and offshoots leading in all directions.She won’t be embracing the After anytime soon.No, the bikers have different plans for her.Long-term plans.
I try to not shiver at the thought.
Unsuccessfully.
The biker shifter on the girl’s right glances up from his phone, looking around with a scowl.He can feel me or scent me and the power that stirs through my steady focus on the teenager.
What do I smell like underneath the vanilla and cocoa-butter elixirs I slather myself in daily?Still the wild mint that grows along the beachfront of my aunt’s West Coast property?Or has my inheritance sharpened my scent into something more robust?
And … it’s not my aunt’s property anymore …
The shifter biker glances at the door but doesn’t turn around.Doesn’t look my way.He’s never come across the likes of me, never scented the level of essence I wield.
Because I exist only in theNow.
If the mythos threaded through our family history can be trusted, there is another of me — similar but not the same — in theBefore, and yet another in the moment of the transition to theAfter.Beyond that?That’s for mages with an affinity for the dead to glimpse.Though not, as far as I know, to understand.
The server drops the takeout bag on my table, barely pausing as she crosses by me.I’m up on my feet, the rolled paper at the top of the bag crumpled in my left hand as I shove my own bag behind me, so it hangs against the small of my back.The strap is tight enough across my chest that it stays in place, as I’d intended.Bumping into anything in the next couple of minutes could disrupt the flow.
How do Iknow?
I just do.
I ghost the server’s footsteps past the next table, then the next, practically breathing down her neck — and momentarily cloaking my scent in the sweet lemon hand soap and barely discernible kitchen grease clinging to her.This close, I can also pick up a hint of musk that tells me she too is a shifter of some sort.A quiet undertone.So she transforms into a prey animal, unlike the heavily scented predators situated on either side of the teenager with violet-tinged eyes.
The server senses me in her next step.And in the following breath, the thread I’ve been waiting for, that I’ve been coaxing forward with pure intent, manifests between the teenager and me.
I step around the server and deliberately make eye contact with the nearest shifter biker right before I slip on my sunglasses.
Both bikers swivel in their seats to watch me pass.
Yeah, my eyes are pretty striking.
The name patch on the leather vest on the larger of the two, skin tanned and dark beard clipped along the edge of his jaw, reads ‘Breaker.’‘Chains’ is the other biker.Pale skinned with dirty-blond hair in a messy bun and a scraggly beard, he appears just slightly shorter than his biker brother, though nowhere near as burly.I don’t have the time to study the emblem emblazoned on their club patch, or the context with which to decode it.I assume they’re locals, but I really have no idea.
I flash a toothy, welcoming smile at both bikers, then completely and utterly dismiss them a moment later.Turning my back and deliberately triggering their prey drive as I step toward the door.
My hand presses against the crossbar handle, and the door swings outward to my touch.The bikers’ regard feels hot, verging on stifling, against my back.I don’t try to entice them further.I need them distracted, not charging after me.I’ve gotten out of worse situations, but that was before my power was such an obvious snare.
I step over the threshold, and the already tenuously thin connection I’ve made with the purple-eyed teenager grows taut.Before it frays, Ipressan intent —bathroom— along that thread.
I feel the girl shift on her stool behind me.And for a moment, I worry that she is too powerful for me topush, that I’ll need more time, more focus, to even get the attention of the thickest, clearest of the threads within the tangle of destiny that surrounds her.
Breaker stands, his phone held loose in his hand.His essence is sharply tainted — contaminated somehow?— to my senses.Almost nauseatingly so.He swivels in place, canting toward me.Still unpracticed at focusing with quite so much power to anchor me — aka the amulet that’s currently dangling between my breasts — I’m inadvertently towing him in my wake.
I might like to pretend I’m clever, but subtlety has never been my strong suit.
The door begins to swing shut behind me.
Mypushhasn’t worked.
It was stupid and rushed, and now I’m going to have to shake off the —
“Bathroom,” the teen says.“I need to pee.”Her accent is Southern as well.But pure and sweet, though her tone is meek, scared.
