Chapter 4 #3
I probably should have been more excited about the fact that I’d managed to accomplish my goal—to pull more from the memories anchored to the worry stone Cass had given me.
But that also meant that I’d had to feel more—the fear Cass had for herself and, worse, for her sister.
The memories and feelings tied to their illness.
The details that had swum beneath the surface and which had given color and life to the fleeting impressions I’d had before.
Except I wasn’t entirely certain that I wanted the emotional fallout that came with it.
Because now I was terrified at what would happen if I touched the necklace again—the one that had been held by a woman about to be murdered.
Cass was alive and healthy. She didn’t have deep-seated trauma from her transformation—both she and her sister had come through it, although I hadn’t held on long enough to find out whether or not her sister had also ended up with some sort of Arcana-triggered ability or transformation.
What would a necklace made by a murderer and given to a murder victim tell me if I touched it now, with my guard down?
I shuddered, leaning over the bathroom sink, refusing to look myself in the face any longer. I didn’t want to see the haunted look in my own unnaturally dark eyes, the slight sheen of sweat on my skin, or the flushed pallor of my face.
I didn’t want to be this. Didn’t want to feel like I had some sort of obligation to the dead that would force me to take up someone else’s memories.
I wanted…
But that was the problem.
I didn’t know what I wanted. From myself, out of life, anything. Half the time I didn’t even know what I wanted for dinner, much less what goals or aspirations I had for my life.
I suppose that shouldn’t have been surprising, given the fact that I’d spent fourteen years in an asylum that didn’t even bother to pretend to be trying to do anything for me other than strip away my deemed-inferior magic and keep me locked up so that my parents didn’t have to deal with me.
No education, no magical training, nothing except locked rooms, enough food and water to keep us technically alive, and sessions that stripped our magic from us.
I’d been one of the lucky ones.
I was still alive and I could string together a mostly-coherent sentence. So what if I barely grasped the basics of algebra and had almost no understanding of most of world history? Mason was working on gradually teaching me the latter, but nobody really seemed concerned about my arithmetic skills.
Lightheaded, I sank down onto the seat of the toilet, careful not to break the lid or let it slide too far to the side. The last thing I needed was to fall into my toilet or, even better, fall off it and crack my head on the floor or the side of the bathtub.
At least I could use a spreadsheet like a pro, and my basic math abilities seemed to be capable of getting me everything I needed, since spreadsheets would do the math bit for you if you knew how to type in the right commands.
Don’t get me wrong—the first couple years out of Tranquil Brook were rough.
But when you have a professor willing to help tutor you through the worst of it, you can learn surprisingly quickly, although Mason professed not to be that good at math or science.
Ward was definitely better at math, and as they helped Jackson with his homework, I’d learn social studies and science and whatever else the public schools dictated that Jackson had to learn.
I knew I was still missing a lot, but most days I had enough to get by.
But the GED curriculum didn’t teach you how to deal with being a contact psychic.
At least I could pick up the death witch stuff with Jackson, although he was a lot more willing to experiment than I was.
I knew that I had the ability to cause serious damage—and I didn’t have the sense of invincibility that only a child can have.
Not to say that Jackson Turner-Manning was reckless—far from it.
Especially for a twelve-year-old. But observation of normal and mostly-normal kids told me that they weren’t really aware of their own mortality the way that adults were or I’d had to be when I was his age.
I wasn’t going to be the one to burst his bubble, either.
But I wished I could see the world through his comparatively innocent eyes. That I could unsee all the death and pain and terror of the asylum—to quote Hart, Tranquil fucking Brook, my ass—and just have had something even remotely resembling a normal childhood.
But I hadn’t. And I had no idea what it would be like to be a child, even one with the capabilities of a death witch.
I had no idea what it was like to be loved.
Even as a kid, I’d understood that I was owned.
That I had a duty to be what my parents wanted me to be.
That I was, in some sense, a trophy for them to show off their own power and virility.
My parents hadn’t had any more children after my sister. Violette. A sister I’d never met. A sister I was unlikely to ever meet.
I’d asked Ward about it once, and he’d shown me the articles that Mason had found about my family. I knew, staring down at the printouts, faded and a little wrinkled and smudged, that I was supposed to feel something. But I didn’t.
It was better, I suppose, than melting down into an incoherent mess, but I couldn’t help but think that my lack of feeling was some sort of sign that I was broken. Flawed. Irredeemable.
Not that I had any idea what I could do about any of it.
That wasn’t entirely true. There wasn’t really anything I could do about the feelings I did or didn’t have, but I could put some effort into actually improving and—more importantly—controlling my psychic abilities.
If I were feeling particularly ambitious, I could also learn to control—not just suppress—my death magic, but I wasn’t sure I was up to that task. At least not this year.
Maybe I’d come back to it once I’d mastered being a psychic. In another decade. Or two.
I pushed myself to standing, my hands on my thighs. A wave of dizziness hit, and I put my palms on the counter to steady myself.
A small child, about two or so, was banging a toy boat against the edge of the bathtub. “Don’t break it,” she warned softly. She was exhausted, but just looking at the child caused a surge of love in her chest.
Gasping, I sat back down abruptly on the toilet seat, my heart pounding.
I did not want to be feeling my counter.
Part of the reason I’d gotten this apartment was because when I’d tentatively touched the counters and walls and other fixtures, I hadn’t felt anything.
Well, I’d felt what amounted to a faint psychic buzzing, but nothing strong enough to push through and actually cause a vision.
Episode. Whatever you wanted to call it.
I’d been in the apartment for more than three years and hadn’t had a single one.
And now I had.
As Ward would say, fucking hell.