Page 69 of Awry
A red-haired older woman is sprawled on the floor.Clearly dead, but not showing any signs of decay.She lies as though she’s fallen while crawling … toward the door or …
A puddle of dried liquid and broken glass spreads about a foot beyond her fingertips.
“Mage brew.”Rath steps up right behind me, easily looking over my head.
“She was carrying it.”I carefully step farther into the room.Giving the broken glass — some sort of carafe?— and the fallen mage a wide berth, I get a better look at the interior of the beach house.A scrying bowl has fallen to the side in the middle of the front room, as if it was hovering over the coffee table?No liquid remains on any of the furniture, but three weeks would have given any residual plenty of time to dry.
I cross through to the kitchen, not yet looking directly at the body.The kitchen is messy, strewn with pots and pans, dried herbs and other ingredients scattered everywhere.Including some slowly rotting animal remains that should stink but don’t.Yet.
It takes time for residual to wear off after the mage who cast that essence dies.Such as the stasis spells on the animal remains.I step to check the pots on the stove —
“No, Zaya!”Rath barks, still hovering in the doorway.
I chafe at the command, but he’s not wrong.Most essence-wrought spells can’t really touch me, affect me.But I’m not at full strength.Nowhere near full strength.
“We’re going to need a mage,” I say, in that mildly disembodied, disengaged way that I’m still navigating.“Do you have a … trustworthy contact?”
“And if I didn’t?”He sneers, challenging me.
Over what, I have no idea.“Then I’d make a call.”
“Of course you would.”
I raise my hands slightly to the sides, in a mild ‘what’s your issue?’gesture.
He grimaces and pulls out his phone, texting.
I move to examine the fallen mage, but not before I glance into the nearest bedroom.The open doorway is just up the hall from the kitchen.The bed is a mess.Both pillows are indented.Two people slept there, possibly regularly.It’s a complete contrast to my aunt’s tidy bedroom in the main house.
A room that maybe my aunt never actually slept in?
I crouch by the mage, not wanting to touch her but needing to brush her red hair from her face.I force myself to do so.I’m fairly certain that if the timeline in the back of my mind is correct, a regular human would be showing advanced signs of decay by now.But she is … was a powerful mage.
And more than just a mage, if I’m right about what has occurred here … what happened to the mage at the exact same time I also dropped dead three weeks ago.
I brush back her hair to expose her face.Even without touching her skin, she feels utterly inert to me.A disconcerting nothingness.I’ve been around the dead before, but usually before all the life force has completely drained from them.Honestly, I occasionally feel more energy from an inanimate essence-wrought object or artifact than this … nothingness.
A nothingness …
I glance up at Rath, thinking of the feeling on the path, that nothingness, that emptiness.Was it this … death?Was that what it feels like when a thread is snipped?Not a main one — not enough to kill, obviously.But …
No.Who would be able to do that?Trim or snip a single thread, a possible destiny, from an awry as powerful as I am?And even if it was possible, why would I have felt that between Rath and myself?
“You don’t recognize her?”Rath asks.
I’ve just been staring down at the mage, thinking, but Rath has misread me.And there’s something else layered in his question.
Has he noticed me not recognizing someone else?Maybe Cayley said something about the owner of the diner, Tasmin?
Wait … I’m not certain the kitsune shifter was around for that part of the —
“She was Disa’s witch, Ingrid,” Rath says.
“I know,” I say stiffly, shaking my head — at myself.Because I hadn’t actually recognized her before Rath named her.My mind really isn’t back online yet.“She was scrying and making some sort of brew to facilitate or access whatever she was looking for …”
“And then?Just dropped dead?”
“Apparently.”And with the circumstantial evidence piling up, I’m almost certain that her death occurred at the same time the amulet settled around my neck and I suffered my own heart attack.When my aunt died.
