Page 54 of Awry
I’ve been able to do a bit of weaving, both luck and curse, and a bit of mental manipulation for most of my life.But with the amulet now slung around my neck, I’m something much, much more terrifying.More so because I haven’t been wholly trained to wield what I now hold.
I just am.
A conduit for all life.The measuring stick of fate, some would say.
But Grinder knew my aunt, so his willingness to touch me isn’t born out of ignorance or arrogance.
I survey the diner as we cross by the front windows.The signage etched into the glass door and emblazoned across the striped awning declares the place to be ‘The Tasty Tart.’So of course, I instantly fall in love.The interior decor is mid-last-century-modern inspired, with royal-blue vinyl booths and stools, silver-speckled white laminate tables and counters, all edged in shiny aluminum.It’s currently full of late-lunching customers, and obviously a spot the locals enjoy even when dining by the beach isn’t in season.
“How many times did you bring my aunt to this diner?”I ask, narrowing my eyes, playfully distrustful.
“More than a few.”
“You aren’t going to fall in love with me too, are you?”
He barks out a laugh, hard enough to shake his shoulders and rumble through his chest.“Besides the fact that you’re young enough to be my granddaughter?!Pinky would have my balls!”
Granddaughter, not just daughter.
Grinder is decades older than he looks.
He pushes through the glass door, drawing the attention of every patron and all the waitstaff in the seating area.They look at us for a brief moment, then return to their conversations and duties.It helps, I’m sure, that I’m still wearing my sunglasses and Grinder isn’t in his cut.Though my senses are obviously misfiring a bit, most of the customers appear to be nulls.Not essence-wielders.
Still guided by Grinder’s broad, warm hand on my back, I slide into the only empty booth with relief, sitting partway along the window and facing away from the door.
Grinder leans over to murmur in my ear, “Just a moment.”Then he steps away and around the counter, pushing halfway into the kitchen through a set of swing doors.He keeps his gaze on me, the window, and the front door as he speaks to someone inside the kitchen.
A woman in her midforties, with deeply tanned skin and dark-auburn hair pinned against her head in tight coils, sets two glasses of water on the table, along with paper-napkin-wrapped utensils.She’s wearing denim dungarees with a name — Tasmin — embroidered over top of the diner logo on the pocket of the bib.Despite the smile she offers, she looks like she could snap me in two with her bare hands.Another predator shifter.Not a wolf at best guess, but maybe some other kind of canine?
I could look closer andknowfor certain, but I’m seriously exhausted already.And deliberate use of my sight — for lack of a more specific way to qualify it — expends too much energy when I’m this close to the other side of a traumatic death.
Tasmin leans over as if to straighten the utensil rolls she’s already placed on the table before me.“Are you okay?”she asks in a whisper.
I gaze up at her, oddly warmed by her obvious concern.Then, because I can’t reward such selfless generosity with a half-truth— not to mention the implication that if I wasn’t okay being escorted in here by Grinder, she would try to help me— I slowly remove my sunglasses.
Tasmin inhales sharply at the sight of my eyes, but doesn’t otherwise react.She nods once, stiffly — acknowledging that I’m more than capable of helping myself if I’m not ‘okay.’But then she says pointedly, “That don’t make no difference to me, girl.”
I haven’t been a girl in way over a decade, but I find myself grinning at her.
She blinks again.Her brow furrows.Then she exclaims, “You’re Disa’s child!Zaya.”
The name is like a knife through my heart.A shocking, visceral, and completely unanticipated reaction.Bedisa, aka Disa, who I only ever really called my aunt.
Bedisa Gage.The Conduit.The former Conduit.My mentor, my occasional caregiver … my … never a friend, never really a mother figure, but …
Tasmin’s nostrils flare wide, scenting me, no doubt sensing my sudden emotional reaction even through my scent-masking vanilla creams and salves.Then, inexplicably, she reaches over and pats my shoulder.“That old bruiser is ordering all wrong for you.Let me take care of it.”
She hustles off, interjecting herself into the conversation Grinder is having with someone in the kitchen.The cook, presumably.
I’m shaky, hollowed out.Again.It’s been hitting me in waves since I woke from the heart attack that had come with my becoming the Conduit, feeling the weight of the massive pink diamond hanging suddenly around my neck.
The manipulation of the divine always comes with ramifications.
I wasn’t Disa’s child.I wasn’t even technically her niece, not first generation at least.
And I hadn’t been this far down the coast since my midteens.I had vague memories of road trips with my mother before I was nine.Then after her death, year after year, with one or more of my so-called uncles.I remember staying on my aunt’s estate.I remember training, honing the awry tricks that were unique to me, to my particular capabilities, or my capacity to manipulate the threads.Logically, I knew I’d spent months on my aunt’s estate, through the summers and into the fall from ages nine to seventeen.
And then, seemingly abruptly, my aunt decided to start coming to me instead.Sometimes we trained together in Vancouver, where I was homeschooled and overseen by an always rotating number of distant blood relatives.But more often, we traveled from country to country.
