Page 105 of The Witch They Fear

Across the field Kage steps in to correct a second-year's grip on a staff. My sternum follows him.

The blood. I make my brain say it. It's the blood.

Calypso.

I go very still.

The voice arrives in the warm low place behind my sternum where it always arrives, unhurried and entirely uninvited, and my breath catches before my brain catches up. It's been—how long? Two weeks? Long enough that I had moved into the calm grief of accepting it might never come back. Long enough that the sound of it now lands with all the weight of an absence ending.

Are you well?

I don't answer.

I can't tell if I'm furious or relieved.

Both.

Both at once. The way a kid is when a parent walks back in after disappearing for a weekend.

Calypso.

Where have you been?

I make my brain say it as flatly as I can.

Away.

That's it?

Yes.

I stare at the dirt between my feet. Midus is shouting somebody's name. Somewhere on the field a vampire is laughing at something. The not-thereness of this conversation makes me dizzy.

You don't get to come and go.

That's also true.

The dryness of it's so familiar my chest does something complicated. That's also true. That's the same voice that told me trust is expensive. The same voice that told me I am strong. The same voice that went territorial when Kage's blood was in my mouth. Stay away from him.

Are you well, Calypso?

My shoulder hurts.

I know.

You know?

A pause.

I've heard.

I don't know what to do with that information. Whoever is attached to the voice heard about what happened to me. Or maybe they’ve been paying attention.

I haven’t spoken to Emric in a while, but I guess my accident wasn’t exactly a secret. But Emric isn’t here and today the Voice definitely doesn’t sound like him.

Heard from who?

Does it matter, Calypso?