Ani clutches her purse tighter. “I won’t let you do it. I’ll find another job, enough to take care of us. The local clinic —”
“Enough,” her grandfather says. “Zaya is eager to get moving.”
I smile at them both. “The car isn’t quite an even trade though. Do you have a phone I could borrow?”
Ani blinks at me. “What?”
I hold out my free hand. “And remind me of the name of the head of the Healers Institute?”
“The … the …” Ani stutters. “Of the California branch?”
“No, that will take too long.”
“Let us heal you first, child,” Isaiah says. “Your wound aches through these old bones. Ani?”
Looking a little lost, Ani lays her hand on Isaiah’s forearm. She drops her gaze, staring at the table. Essence shifts where they’re touching skin-to-skin, then pools in the palm of Isaiah’s hand.
He meets my gaze steadily. “When I was just a boy, a purple-eyed seer passed through with a carnival that came around yearly. I didn’t have the money for one of her readings, but two of my brothers and I snuck into her tent one night … just for a look, you know?”
His hand warms under mine, essence tickling against my skin. “Completely understandable.”
Isaiah chuckles quietly. “She caught us, of course. Though we’d watched her leave before risking the intrusion. She made a great fuss and shooed us out, but caught me by the shoulder and held me back. She set those purple eyes on me, many shades darker than your own, and told me that many, many years from then, I would come across another like her, but nothing at all like her. That I would be given a choice by the universe itself, to give myself over to fear or to embrace my power and use it without doubt. I have waited nearly eighty years to make that choice, Conduit.”
Ani is crying, her gaze fixed to her grandfather’s face. I’m having trouble not doing the same myself. Our paths were destined to intersect for decades before I was born, and even though I’ve lost so much since then. Even if that path has been altered again and again. Isaiah knew who I was. He knew and still slid into the booth with me.
“You never told me,” Ani whispers, wiping her free hand over her face.
He clucks his tongue. “Now why would I? I couldn’t have you impatiently waiting with me.”
She laughs wetly.
“Give me everything you’ve got, granddaughter of mine,” Isaiah says. “We’ll need every last drop for Zaya. Divinity can’t be left to wander the world wounded. Imagine the ramifications.” He shudders playfully.
But I realize he’s not wrong — on so many levels. My aunt wandered wounded, her rejected soul-bound mates wandered wounded …
More energy pours from Ani, twining through Isaiah’s essence, then slowly filtering through to me — up my arm, over my shoulder. It knits and weaves more than just the obvious wound, as if I have internal tears and breaks as well.
Ani opens my glasses case and plucks my sunglasses out of it with one hand, awkwardly sliding them over my ears. “Your eyes,” she murmurs. “They’re glowing.”
I smile at her, straightening the glasses with my free hand. “No one is watching us.”
She glances around to confirm that not a single person is looking our way. We’re in one of those protected pockets that I either subconsciously generate, or that the universe randomly drops me within.
More essence pours into me. Ani starts to sway in her seat, but she keeps her attention on her grandfather as he gives me every last drop he has without faltering.
The wound on my shoulder hurts as it knits together, then smooths out. I can feel my skin shifting, blood infusing the dead tissue.
Ani tightens her grip on Isaiah’s forearm, looking pale.
The essence under my palm, in Isaiah’s palm, sputters. His fingers twitch, then go limp. But before he can pull away, before he can sever the connection between us — a connection I cannot forge on my own — I latch my fingers around his wrist.
I give him back everything he gave me and just a touch more.
Ani gasps. But before she can react more strongly, I press my other hand over hers where it still rests on Isaiah’s forearm.
We hover like that, in that moment, leaning toward each other over the table — completely connected on an essence level.
When my own energy starts echoing back to me, I slowly slide my hands away from them. Isaiah looks tired but at peace. Ani flexes her fingers, looking at her hand in wonder.
