Page 82 of Awry
Coda snorts.“I mean, I’m all over it.Why the fuck shouldn’t you construct your harem on the base of the three prettiest half-brothers I’ve ever had the pleasure of cyberstalking?”
“Three?”I’m not completely following the conversation.Which isn’t unusual with Coda and is why I keep most of our contact on a text message level.Their texts are a little clearer, more streamlined.
“Rought, Rath, and Reck,” Coda purrs, then cackles.With enough edge that it practically radiates through the phone, causing me to actually flinch.
“I’d drop by for a visit, except Gigi is practically drooling over all that Adonis dick you’re collecting, and I don’t think I can keep her focused if she has an opportunity to sample it in the flesh.”
Gigi pipes up from somewhere deep in the background, “Fuck off, you fucking asshole.”
Coda cackles again, except neither Gigi nor the hacker sound at all amused.And I don’t think it’s himbos or beguiling dicks that has them on edge.
It’s me.
It’s who I am among the awry.Well, among anyone with even a hint of an understanding of the function I perform for the universe.
I don’t realize I’ve gone silent, then have let that silence stretch as I watch the countdown on the quietly churning ice cream maker, until Coda pipes up again.
“So … it’s not the dick you want me to look into?”
“I’m thinking of taking on an apprentice.”
Coda clicks a few buttons, presumably calling something up on one of their screens.“You know who her old man is, right?”
I don’t answer right away because I’m thinking through why Coda would bother asking me — asking me if I’m aware of the danger of taking on Precious Guerra — when I’ve just told them that I’m an immortal who is also considered a divinity, or an aspect of the divine, by many factions.
I mean, I am.There really is no point in couching it, not even in my own head, any longer.I’m just not sure I’ve absorbed it.
When my aunt was the Conduit, she was also just my mentor.A person who laughed at the strangest things and collected pretty cards that she never actually used, and lost her cool when even a hint of spice made it onto her plate.Our three months of training and being tugged around by one knowing after another in India were torture for her stomach.For her … the divine …
A terrible sob tears free from my chest, from my throat.Hot tears spike at the edges of my eyes.Grief … pure, unfettered grief pouring from me, as some rational part of my mind informs me.I press my hand over my mouth as if I can hold it back.Except I can’t.
I can’t.
I can’t stop sobbing, so hard that I’m practically shouting, screaming.I can barely gasp for air through the onslaught, and my sight hazes at the edges.I brace myself on the counter, vaguely aware that Coda is actually panicking on the other end of the line.
Then Gigi’s voice filters through to me.Far sweeter and softer than I’ve ever heard her.“Breathe, Zaya.It’s okay to cry.It’s just, you have to breathe as well.Long inhale … one … two … three … four …”
I held myself together enough to get from Vancouver down to the property.I distracted myself with rescuing Presh — being utterly reckless when there were so many other things I could have done in that moment … things that would have extracted the girl without fucking traumatizing her further.
“Exhale.Four … three … two … one …”
My aunt is dead.At least a century before her time.Making me the Conduit with minimal training and only an inkling of what it all means … and I can’t do anything about it.I can’t even … I don’t even have a support system.I should have had decades to build up my own family, whether blood related or not … more siblings, partners, even children …
I honestly hadn’t even thought about it.
I had just been drifting through life, playing at being a fucking fixer when it suited me, when the universe shoved what needed fixing in my face.
The next time Gigi does her inhale count, I manage to follow along.Three more sequences of deep breathing and I’ve managed to calm the sobbing, and to stumble, phone in hand, to the powder room off the main hall to blow my nose and splash water on my face.
I don’t turn on the light.I just perch sideways like a gargoyle on the toilet seat with my back pressed against the velvet-embossed wallpaper, pulling tissue after tissue out of the ornate silver tissue-box holder.
“Tell me what you need,” Coda croaks through the speakers.If I didn’t know any better, I might think the hacker was trying to not cry along with me.
I breathe through another well of painful emotion, my face heating with it and eyes filling as I struggle to suppress it.I dash a few tears from my cheeks.But before I can articulate even a smidgen of what I intended to request from the hacker, Gigi interrupts.
“Us, you neanderthal,” she spits.“She needs us.Zaya, it’s going to take us at least thirty-six hours —”
“That’s okay,” I protest weakly.“I’m not —”
