Page 43 of Twisted Fates
Cary laughed out loud, and honestly, it was probably because I didn’t know what the hell I was talking about, but at least he was amused by me.
Chapter thirty-one
Damian
“Molly, for real, callme back. Are you mad at me or something?” I hung up, frustrated. Molly would sometimes get pissed about something or another, but she never totally ghosted me. Of course, she’d been working hard, so I was probably just overthinking.
I was so exhausted with all the training I was doing. Elias might be on the other side of the veil, but that didn’t mean the man wasn’t working me to death. Of course, most of the time, my powers were intuitive, and that was helpful, but I still screwed things up, like I had with inviting Cary over and pissing off my ghostly companions.
We were practicing discernment, as Elias called it. “You need to be able to recognize the energy around you.” I’d already visited a place known to be frequented by the dark, so I could feel what it was like to be around them.
Elias had also given me directions to a part of my neighborhood where a horrible murder had taken place, wherethe energy was still maleficent. He’d also sent me to find the light energies, places where I could recharge if I needed to.
“Not all entities of the dark or light know who they are. Like your Owen. He is a light energy, but he’s only aware of that because you and his employers told him so.”
That made sense. When I figured out how to discern energy, I began calling Molly, hoping to figure out what powers or energies were surrounding her. My memories told me she was neutral. Humans with no power, and most animals, tended to be. The exception being cats, of course, as you would expect, they were seldom neutral. Foxes were another animal that, according to Elias, tended to be either light or dark energies.
I didn’t want to think Molly was behind the attack on Owen. Everything in me told me she hadn’t been, at least not intentionally, but she’d been in the home several times now and had access to Owen’s living space.
Although that wasn’t technically true either, unless Owen had told her, she’d never been in his little hidey-hole behind the shelves in the library. Who had? No one, not even the group who’d come with Molly that first time for the seance had gone to the room behind the shelves. Yet someone had to have gotten in.
Elias had assured me he never allowed entities into his home. The ghosts were the only spiritual beings who’d ever come in. They were not friends of the dark, nor of any witches or power wielders, so that wasn’t the problem. No, it’donly been since I’d been in the position of wizard that someone had breached the wards.
Elias had instructed me how to rebuild the wards, and mixed with my intuition, I knew nothing would be coming for Owen again. I wouldn’t allow another entity into the home again until I understood who and what they were.
Those were the consequences of being new at something and not knowing what I was doing. Of course, Elias had repeatedly told me that when he’d started, he’d made many more mistakes, even with the wisdom of the scroll and his predecessor to help.
Apparently, the scroll was all the help he’d had. He’d had to live on the streets during America’s Great Depression, barely scraping by. No money, no direction, no place to live. All while he fought the powers who wished to disrupt the balance between darkness and light.
“Of course, you should know that you will need allies in the darkness as well,” Elias told me during one of our training sessions. “Don’t become conceited enough to think that all dark wants to do is disrupt the balance of light and dark. Most wish to maintain what we have. It’s only the rare few that would actively disrupt the flow.”
Of course, that conversation had confused me. It’s easy to think in absolutes, although intuitively, I knew what he was saying was true. Science had taught us all that darkness ruled the universe. It was only in small pockets where it didn’t reign supreme. In the whole scheme of things, the sun, in all its glory,was also just temporary. Eventually, darkness would reclaim even this tiny speck of light.
I didn’t know how black holes came into play, just that they did. The ultimate darkness was at the center of all things light. It didn’t make sense that dark would care since, ultimately and quite naturally, it would always reclaim space.
I shook off my philosophical thoughts. Elias was no help with those questions and confirmed he’d had the same ones when he’d been alive.
With my instructions in hand, I walked around the city, identifying energies as I went. Most were benign. Some surprisingly bright, some definitely dark. Thanks to Elias’s advice, I began to distinguish between those dark energies which were fine, such as a bar located just the other side of Pike’s Place. I even went in, ordered a drink and sat there, assessing the atmosphere. Nothing was dangerous despite the very dark elements of the place.
I was just about to leave when a man caught my eye. We assessed each other briefly before he smiled and bowed his head toward me. My intuition indicated he was a changeling of some sort, not of this world, but not a danger either. My intuition also told me one day I might need to rely on this creature for help.
I found a similar place, a florist this time, with high light energy. I walked in and was immediately uncomfortable. Arrogance and superiority flowed around me. The proprietor,a man who appeared to be in his late sixties seemed to be pushing people away. I left without spending any money.
Okay, so I was beginning to get it. The dark wasn’t always bad, and the light was certainly not always good. That probably went doubly true for the witches. I stepped inside Owen’s place of business and was immediately accosted by the energies that flowed there.
Not all were light. “Witches are a diverse mix of the light and dark,” Elias had instructed me when I’d asked whether Cary might be up to no good. “However, when they use dark energy, or dark magic as some call it, you can sense it immediately.”
I lingered outside the door before going in. Although I knew the witches could detect my presence, I wanted to gather and discern the energy for myself. No one with the intuition I had would call the energy here benign. Neither the bar nor the florist was as intense as this was.
However, there were no indications that the powers that flowed here were any threat to me, Owen, or the balance I’d been entrusted to keep. I stepped into the office and was met by Cary, the two partners of the firm, and even an older female witch I hadn’t met before.
“Mr. Richards, to what do we owe the honor?” Mr. Stages asked.
“I’m just getting to know my community, but thought I’d stop by to see if Owen would like to go with me to lunch.”
Owen came around the corner then, and after looking at his bosses and the others, he turned a concerned expression toward me.
“Oh, well, that makes sense. Owen, are you free for lunch?” the older partner asked.
