Page 59 of By the Moonbeam and the Mist
How are you—?
Apparently, the witch hazel healed my ability to use whatever Mind Manipulating power I have left… which is why I was able to go in and save you.
I felt every inch of me bristle at the implication that he’d heard my fears of being stranded in my own mind.
“Get out of my head,” I snapped out loud.
Steeler crossed his arms and smiled. “Make me.”
I resisted the urge to stomp a foot. “You are so…”
His eyes tracked the twitch in my leg, as if knowing exactly what I’d been itching to do. “I’m sowhat, Drey?”
Full of yourself. Infuriating. Annoyingly capable of getting under my skin.I couldn’t pick out of the tangled insults, so I just turned to Garvis instead.
“Can you teach me how to blockade? Right now?”
“Yeah, but…” Garvis glanced at Steeler over my head. “We were in your mind for two hours, Rayna. Are you sure you don’t want to rest a little bit first? Usually, inductees go to bed after their first—”
“Twohours?”
I gaped at the clock on the mantlepiece. Sure enough, those ticking hands were now indicating it was two in the morning. Five hours until my Spiders, Worms, & Insects class.
There was no way I was getting a wink of sleep tonight, but adrenaline had revamped the energy in my veins anyways.
“Yes, I’m sure. I need to be able to block out pesky voices—” I flung a glare at Steeler, which he returned with a smirk. “—by the time I get back.” A sudden question bubbled in my empty stomach. “Youwillbe taking me back, right?”
Steeler shrugged with way too much grace for that smug look crawling all over his face. “Unless you beg me to keep you. I don’t think I could say no a second time if you did.”
I rolled my eyes harder than I ever had in my life and turned back to Garvis. “I’m ready. If you’re not too tired,” I added awkwardly, suddenly realizing how smudged his kohl liner had become.
“Oh no, I’ll be fine. I’ve had later nights than these.” Garvis sighed at the ceiling for a second, then said to Steeler, “But I thinkyouneed to leave again, Coen. Whatever’s happening between you two is way too distracting for me to work with.”
Steeler and I, both on the verge of saying something, snapped our mouths shut in unison, looked at each other, and looked away again.
“Fine,” he finally said curtly. “I need to go hunt for some breakfast anyway. Felicity, you coming?”
The monkey bounded off the kitchen countertop, her tail flying behind her as she said to no one in particular, “Gladly.” Then her thoughts added:Coco and Raynie hiss and sneer at each other more than two baboons fighting over the same coconut.
As the cottage door swung shut behind them, I puffed out a sigh.
Apparently, I was Raynie now.
The next few hours passed in a sickening blur, but by the time the first blotches of dawn graced the horizon outside thelighthouse windows, I could do it: sink into my own mind, gather the ghostly essence of my internal wall, and push it out, out, out like icy vapor, until it wrapped around my entire body. It wouldn’t keep a Mind Manipulator out, necessarily, but it would keep all the unwanted voices from crashing into me. And it would keep my own thoughts from floating outward to anyone else.
Hiding individual memories was harder. Garvis and I spent our last bit of time packing snow into blocks of ice and building them up around the misty replays of the events this weekend, blocking off that part of the maze. That wayIwould know they were there,Icould access them, but as long as Lexington didn’t know to look past innocent-looking dead ends…
Hopefully, he would never find them.
“Eventually you’ll be able to Manipulate your own mind with more ease,” Garvis said at last, collapsing on one of the sofas as the first seagulls began cawing outside. “You won’t have to use your hands to build internal blockades or move memories around—you’ll just be able to do it with half a thought. Butthatrequires getting to know your subconscious better… which most Mind Manipulators don’t do until their second or third year.”
Yeah, a friendship with my eerie subconscious clone wasn’t happening anytime soon. I’d just have to be content with the archaic way of Mind Manipulating for now.
I collapsed in the armchair beside Garvis, daydreaming about a bath, just in time for the cottage door to fly open again.
My body jolted upright, but it was just Steeler stomping in with Felicity on his heels—not with a bucket of dead mollusks like I’d been expecting, but with a basket of fruits: papaya and mango and what looked like maracuya from the reddish coating of the smaller ones.
“What, did all the clams sleep in today?” I asked with a bit more attitude than I’d intended. My mouth had started wateringat the sweet and tangy smell of all the fruit after so many hours of Mind Manipulating on an empty stomach.
