Page 44 of Whiskey, Thieves, and Bastards
“The man in the corner doesn’t like how his girlfriend smiled at the bartender. He’s planning on hitting her when they leave. There’s a man with a hat on sitting at the bar who is hoping to spike someone’s drink. He’s just waiting for the opportunity. The group of girls over there is getting annoyed with one of their friends. One of them is going to suggest leaving her here because she wants her to get attacked and leave school. That’s going to happen by the guy playing pool. He’s here with bad intentions.”
They all beamed at me. Persephone held up her neon-pink drink so we could toast my success. We clanked glasses, but I wasn’t done here. I still had tostopall that. I got why the furies lived in the Underworld now. How was I supposed to functionin public? It was like I traded worrying about my glasses to worrying about stopping bad things from happening.
Because I knew myself. I’d always want to stop it.
“So, what do I do from here?”
“So, you could do a lot of things. You could send the girlfriend a sense of foreboding that something bad will happen if she goes home with that guy. It’s up to her to act on it or you could terrorize the boyfriend. You’ve got choices. You can warn the people they are about to hurt so they can’t hurt them or you can punish the bad people.”
“If I warn the victims and they get away, doesn’t that just leave them open to taking new victims?”
“Yes. It’s complicated, no? This is where being a fury is both hard and an art form. It’s not either or. It’s pretty easy to do both. You also have to consider if someone is acting on an emotion that’s fleeting and they are about to do something they can’t take back and they are going to regret their actions for the rest of their life.Everyonehas bad moments and does something without thinking. That something could have really bad consequences.”
“You mean like a substitute teacher yelling at what she thinks is a nonverbal human boy who is in the foster system, but it turns out he’s a siren that doesn’t know it and fell through the cracks at getting him with supernatural foster parents?” Jezebel said.
“That’s oddly specific,” I said.
“Blame your boyfriends. While we were out here doing mean things to stupid boys so you could fury up, they decided to get pie and address Benji’s fanbase. The girl at the diner is related to the owner, and it’s her sister’s foster child. She wants to adopt him because he’s an amazing kid. They want me to do siren 101 with the kid and educate the sister on raising supernaturals if Aidan wants to stay with her.
“I actuallyadorekids and want to do it, but she got him riled up, and he sirened her when he told her to shut up. She can’t talk again until another siren tells her she can speak again, or it wears off. Since Aidan didn’t even know he was a siren and has no training, there’s no telling how hard he hit her or when it’s going to wear off. They wantmeto let her speak again because apparently, she was going through shit and bullying kids isn’t like her.”
Alecto shrugged.
“She could have been. I was an empath witch before I became a fury. We all were. When people hated us because they thought the gods cursed us, we couldtasteit because we’re empaths. It took averylong time to learn to use those abilities instead of hating them. Like, that girl over there that wants to leave her friend behind and hopes something bad happens to her so she drops out of school?
“She doesn’t mean it. They aren’t really annoyed with her. They are jealous. I’m not sure why, but I think she won something they all wanted. They all love her. I can feel that. They don’t want her hurt, but if she left school, they’d have a better chance of winning the things she always does.
“They don’tactuallywant her gone and would feel terrible if anything happened to her. But at this moment, they are all feeling jealous enough to put her in a situation where she could get attacked. This substitute could be the same.”
Which made figuring out how to use my fury magic a little easier. I could send images to those girls to make them rethink leaving their friend behind. I didn’t know how to handle the girl who was going to get abused by her boyfriend, the guy with date rape drugs in his pocket, or the man hoping to get a girl alone.
This was complicated.
“So, I’m not an empath. I can sense they intend violencetonightbut I don’t know if this is their first time. That doesn’tchange anything, but I’m thinking of how I’m going to handle the girlfriend. I don’t know if he’s never abused her before but she’s noticed red flags or this is a regular thing. I don’t want to traumatize her any further than she has been, but I also know she needs to make the decision to walk away on her own.”
“That’s why you rely on your sisters. She doesn’t feel afraid of him. She feels a little annoyed, so I think she’s been noticing the red flags. A little subtle nudge should get her away from him. But him? He radiates malice. He might not have hurt her yet, but he’s hurt other women.”
“So, we get her away and punish the other three. How do we do that so they don’t do this again?”
“Baby steps. We weren’t exactly subtle when we were brand new. We’re trying to avoid all that with you. We’ve also been doing this a lot longer. Sometimes, we have a knee-jerk reaction with people, but most of the time we come up with a plan and majority rules. We’ve been gifted an enormous responsibility,” Tisiphone said.
“How do you want to play this, baby girl?” Alecto asked.
“Can I play, too?” Persephone purred.
“Well, I don’t want them to do this again. Jail isn’t a deterrent. I just need?—”
Before I could say another word, the girlfriend abuser went to the bar to get a drink and crashed into the guy with date rape drugs.Heslammed into the guy waiting to get a girl alone. They all started punching.
The girlfriend just rolled her eyes, grabbed her purse, and walked out. Something just exploded out of me. All three men fell to the floor shrieking and holding their faces.
“Shit, was that me?”
“Oops,Imade them crash into each other. I felt like you needed a little imp push,” Calamity said.
Alecto just shrugged.
“You kind of sharted fury all over them. This is setting ten, not one. You can leave them or cure them. I’m betting they learned something from this.”
