Maybe for as long as I’ve been held by the Cataclysm. But once more, I let the opportunity to gain clarity on how long that is pass me by. I think doing so might be necessary for my mental health at this point.
The kids range in age from a tiny toddler to about eight or nine. All of them are quiet and seemingly obedient, though the furtive glances from them to the still-hovering Ricky, the nameless berserker, and me are telling. The woman in her forties is Jewels’s mother, though she’s shorter and lighter skinned. The other woman, a shifter in her late twenties, is clearly the mother of the youngest.
I don’t ask where the other mothers are. I already know and don’t need any of that voiced out loud around the kids.
Names aren’t shared with me, seemingly deliberately. The women’s understanding of my power and the power of awry in general is obviously … ill-informed. Purple-eyed essence-wielders don’t need names to wreak havoc.
Cal is perched next to me on the lowered tailgate of the truck we arrived in, swinging his legs and humming quietly to himself. I don’t pick up the tune, but I suspect it’s something he’s made up himself because a shiver of energy underlies the vocalization.
Lou and Jewels are locked into some whispered fight in the front hall of the house. It’s their third confrontation since we all met up. I didn’t bother listening in before, nor do I do so now. It has nothing — and also everything, I suppose — to do with me.
I don’t set the house on fire. But I really want to. I’m slightly worried about traumatizing the kids, though, even more so than this entire experience must already be disturbing.
Ricky tries to pull Jewels aside as she spins away from a red-faced Lou. She strides past him, brushing him off. Every time.
She might have seemed meek around the Cataclysm, but Jewels is forthright and focused when on mission. She made the decision to use me to rescue the kids, including the baby in her belly, and she’s clearly not going to allow anything to distract her.
Jewels’s mother helps get the toddler strapped into a car seat as she quietly tasks the second-eldest child as the toddler’s guardian for the rest of the day. Then she hustles over to me, eyes not quite lifting to meet my own. She’s a mage. Curvy, with fine wrinkles at the corners of her eyes, but not a hint of gray in her dark-blond hair. Essence swirls around the rings on her fingers as she clasps her hands before her, almost in prayer, then deliberately drops them to her sides.
“I’m Pinky’s friend,” she says quietly. “Her ex-sister-in-law. She says that she … owed you a favor …”
I snort quietly. “A favor she foisted upon me.”
A smile flits across her face — a quiet joy at remembering her friend, perhaps. With her mother a mage, Jewels’s father must have been a bear shifter and tied to the Cataclysm MC. “Yes, it was a quick conversation …” She clears her throat. “Even a fireside chat might be monitored in the Federation if it happens more than once.”
“I understand.”
“I’m … I’m … goodness, I’m so nervous.”
I just let her work through it. Cal’s seemingly unconscious humming cut out the moment she approached. His gaze is on the two of us now, soaking up every word.
“I’m … I understand what you are … am I to ask you for —”
“No.” I quickly cut her off, speaking pointedly for the benefit of the universe, not her. “None of you will carry the burden of being indebted to me. You are just … along for the ride as I make my own way home.”
She nods a little doubtfully.
I try on a smile, though my headache is seriously killing me. I still haven’t found any sunglasses.
She swallows, dropping my gaze. So my smile really doesn’t convey much sweet softness. She taps her chest with three fingers from her left hand, clearly waiting. To be dismissed?
“What is your name?” I ask, trying to not be pissy about the near-worship shit going on. Again.
She nods her head a little frenetically. “Angie. Agnes May Joh —”
“Thank you, Angie,” I say before she can give me her full name. Not that it makes a difference — for me — but just so the universe doesn’t get other ideas and mistake the offering of it as a favor to be collected.
“Jewels is my entire world,” Angie murmurs, turning her head just enough to watch her daughter arguing with Ricky by the front bumper of the second truck. “I’d do anything, owe anything, to get her safe.”
I wince, but thankfully no essence shifts between us at that open-ended invitation.
“I should have gotten her out when her father … died. But she’d already caught his eye.”
The Cataclysm, she means.
Jewels emphatically pokes Ricky in the chest to emphasize whatever point she’s making for the fourth or fifth time. The berserker hovers nearby, flexing his hands as if he knows he’s supposed to be stopping us even as he holds himself back.
Energy shivers down my spine. A warning. Or perhaps just a reminder. “We need to move,” I say, sliding off the tailgate while trying to not touch the hot metal with any of my exposed skin. So, more tilting to the side and mostly falling off, really.
