Chapter 8 #2
“It’s fine, thank you,” I told her, pleased that she’d made the offer, but not wanting to get too complicated.
Because I did take creamer, but then she’d have to carry that, too, and then I wouldn’t be able to touch it, because it had my name on it in the fridge, so nobody else would use it.
I remembered something Ward had said about politeness. “But thank you for the offer.”
She looked like she wanted to say something else, or touch me, but she wasn’t sure she should. She offered a smile, then disappeared back into the kitchen with the mug she had borrowed in one hand and another mug that I recognized as Ward’s in the other.
That was something I rarely did—take someone else’s coffee cup to the kitchen, either to wash or refill. Because if I touched it, then I’d probably end up dropping it.
I’d lost a lot of coffee mugs that way in the last handful of years, which was why I’d ended up giving up and making my own.
It had been part of a class in throwing pottery at the Visual Arts Center, and I’d enjoyed it just fine, but I’d really done it to get a few coffee cups and some bowls out of it that only I had ever touched, which I did.
It was nice to be able to have things that only I had touched from start to finish.
It was hard to explain exactly why—there were plenty of things you could buy without memories attached, either by shopping at psychic-specific shops and websites or by getting stuff that was mass-produced and pre-packaged so that only machines had ever handled it.
But objects that had been magically cleaned, carefully handled only with gloves, or machine-made all felt sterile.
Things that I had made or that someone had made for me with fairly pleasant thoughts—like the socks, sweaters, and scarves made by Pearl—felt like they had metaphysical weight to them.
That was also true of things that I’d owned for a while.
They felt like they had presence in the world.
Like they were more than just dead, empty things.
It was hard to explain, especially to other people.
I wasn’t very good at explaining much of anything to other people. I always seemed to be unable to find the right words, causing anger or confusion or offense.
Ward always told me that it was just a matter of time—that it wasn’t my fault that I’d missed out on fourteen years of socialization and living with people. I wasn’t entirely sure that’s all there was to it.
I still talked to some of the others from Tranquil Brook.
Melissa Unser, a medium and water witch, and Sam Eisner, whose family owned a local farm that made specialty sausages—pork, turkey, and beef, although they only raised the pigs and turkeys themselves.
They seemed to have found their way back into society just fine—or, in Sam’s case, as fine as any ghoul could.
His family sold their sausages at farmers’ markets, but I knew Sam didn’t go with them because people thought that ghouls were unsanitary.
They aren’t, for the record. They might look a little like zombies, but ghouls don’t lose bits and they aren’t rotting, even though their skin and muscle hang lax in places.
So nobody told the customers that Sam was the genius behind some of their most popular new sausages—a basil and oregano summer sausage, a smoked bratwurst, and a sausage they called the Stuffed Turkey that was basically a Thanksgiving dinner in sausage form—smoked turkey, sage, sweet potato, onion, garlic, and tiny slivers of dried cranberry.
They were really good.
Sam liked to cook for us when we got together—no matter whose place we went to. Melissa and I had never complained.
I reminded myself that I should text them about getting together again—it had been at least a month since the last time at Melissa’s.
You’d think going to other people’s apartments—or farm houses—would bother me more than it did, but as long as the people were reasonably content with their lives, it wasn’t too bad.
Or, at least, it hadn’t been. I got suddenly nervous about the idea.
I liked Melissa and Sam, and they liked me (I’d accidentally touched enough things here and there that had confirmed this over the past four years), so I was pretty comfortable with their possessions.
And they knew to try to minimize the amount of touching-of-things that I’d have to do.
But we’d done none of that without my carefully-built mental walls, and now I was afraid to find out what I hadn’t been getting from their tables and dishes and doorways. And I was worried they wouldn’t want me around if I decided to keep my new heightened sensitivity.
I was already becoming a problem at work, with people who knew me and had already gone out of their way to accommodate my issues, and now they were worse…
“Hey, Rayn.” Ward’s voice was gentle. He always was with me, even when I could tell he was annoyed.
“Yes?” I asked him, pulling myself out of my own head to look at him.
“You okay?”
I nodded.
His grey eyes narrowed. “Really?”
I shrugged. “Okay enough,” I answered. I wasn’t okay, not really, but I’d made the choices that had gotten me here, and I didn’t want to undo them, so I was just going to have to be okay with the consequences.
“You want more coffee?”
“I can get it.”
“You don’t want me to do it, is what you mean.”
I shrugged, then nodded. “Yes.”
Let him be, Nancy, Sylvia interjected. She’d been watching as breakfast unfolded, presumably occasionally talking to Ward or Beck.
She could make herself visible and audible if she wanted, although I knew it tired her after a while.
Ward and Mason had set up what Mason called a nexus to enable both Sylvia and Archie to make their own choice about when they wanted people other than me, Ward, and Beck to be able to see and hear them.
Ward threw up his hands. “Okay, fine,” he said, although his tone stayed mild. “Just take care of yourself, okay, Rayn?”
I nodded again. He was the second person to tell me that this morning. I wondered if I looked extra tired or something. I was extra tired—the kind that wasn’t so much about sleep as it was about bone-deep exhaustion.
I got up and took my mug to the kitchen just to escape the fact that everyone kept glancing my way. At least if I had a full cup of coffee, they’d stop asking if I wanted more.
As I passed the conference room, I could hear Elliot humming to himself as he unpacked his tools.
It was a pleasant sound, one that reminded me that not everyone’s life revolved around death or the dead.
Sure, the table was meant to help with summoning the dead, but Elliot himself wasn’t really connected to that part—he was a carpenter and wood-worker.
Someone who made his living with his hands.
There wasn’t really much to that, I supposed, but it was nice to think that not everyone or everything had to revolve around dead people.
I heard that, sunshine, Sylvia remarked.
I sighed as I slipped into the kitchen, then swore inwardly because I’d forgotten my gloves and I still had to handle the coffee pot, even if the mug was mine. I wondered if I could get away with it, then ripped off a piece of paper towel with a sigh.
It is getting worse, isn’t it? The Victorian woman asked me.
Yes, I replied. Well, stronger. I’m not sure if that’s worse or better, honestly.
You can be more useful to our brooding tiger-shifter and foul-mouthed elf, you mean, she said, and it wasn’t really a question.
Yes, I confirmed, anyway.
And you can’t turn it on and off, I take it?
No. I sighed as I pulled my creamer out of the fridge, using the towel, just in case. I’ve tried. I can make it a little less strong, but not like it used to be. I put a dollop of creamer in the bottom of my mug.
So you need to get better at doing that, she said.
I put the creamer back in the fridge, then grabbed the carafe from the warmer and poured coffee into my mug, holding the handle with the paper towel. I’m trying, I told her. But it seems like every time I do it, the wall just gets weaker.
Wall?
I put the carafe back, tossed the paper towel in the trash, then leaned against the counter, sipping the now-sweetened coffee.
When I first went to Cyprian’s, they taught me to help shield myself against psychic contact—low grade, anyway—by having me build a wall in my mind.
Mortaring in the bricks, and so on. I pulled it apart in order to get more access to people’s thoughts after you suggested trying to hear what wasn’t being said, but I can’t rebuild it quickly.
I grimaced. It took months to build it the first time.
So you’re… what? Just piling up bricks just because you don’t want to take the time to rebuild your wall?
I shrugged. I’m just going to pull it apart again, anyway, I pointed out. There doesn’t seem to be much point in putting in the effort if I’m just going to undo it again.
I would hazard a guess, sunshine, that it would go faster if you kept practicing at building it, she said. It wasn’t an unreasonable point, but…
I don’t really have months to rebuild it in between when Raj and Hart need it, I replied.
So get as far as you can, she replied, matter-of-fact as always. Sunshine, she said, then, and her voice had softened. You can tell them no, you know.
I know, I replied. But I do want to help.
Just be careful, she told me.
I sighed again. Why does everyone keep warning me to be careful or take care of myself? I demanded. It was easier—for me, anyway—to sound less petulant in my head than it was out loud, which was why I was asking Sylvia instead of Mason or Ward.
Because we like you, sunshine, she told me, her disembodied voice soft and almost tender. And we know how hard it is.
I scowled. Ward and Beck and Mason do hard things all the time, I protested.
And we all tell them to be careful, too, she replied. But—
She didn’t finish what she’d started saying, but I could do it for her. But I’m more fragile.