Chapter 12 #2
Namely, touching the damn bear.
I didn’t want to do it, but I couldn’t help but think there was something I was missing. Some trick or skill or piece of advice that they must have said, but that my memory was failing to recall.
And maybe there wasn’t, but I was getting desperate.
Pens that people had held for fewer than ten seconds were leaving traces I picked up weeks later. Paper bags touched only long enough to wrap a bagel or slice of pumpkin bread, then set in a cardboard carrying tray. Door handles. Things that had been safe for me to touch a month ago.
I knew that if I wanted to, I could just stop. I could use the same technique I’d used before, rebuild my walls brick by brick, careful mortar slathered between them. It would take time, but I’d be able to block out most things. Be able to go back to normal.
What I’d built as normal, anyway, that wasn’t any such thing, it was just… closer to normal than where I’d come from or where I was now.
I’d been working for the last four years to be as close to normal as I could get, which, admittedly, wasn’t all that close.
I’m a death witch, dreamwalker, and contact psychic who spent most of his life in an asylum.
There’s only so close to normal I’m ever going to get, even with a lot of counseling and work.
Except I was suddenly finding myself wondering whether or not I actually wanted normal.
And that was making me wonder why I’d wanted to be normal so badly for the last four years.
Because I wasn’t ever going to be. My opportunity to be normal had been stripped from me at the age of six—or maybe I’d taken it from myself by killing my uncle.
Or maybe I’d never have had the chance anyway, given the magic I’d been born with and the family who had given me nothing but their genetics and rejection.
I’d spent the last four years trying to make myself into someone who could exist in the world. Who could blend in with the rest of humanity. Who wouldn’t be a target.
Not that I wanted to be a target now, of course. But for the first time, I’d experienced what it was like to be different in a positive way—to have an ability that was useful and might make a difference in the world in a positive way.
I wanted to keep being able to do that.
But I also wanted to be able to function day to day.
And I was out of ideas that didn’t involve the bear.
She was nervous. No, scared. No, terrified.
She didn’t want to be here, in this room where everyone constantly stared at her and asked her to do things, try things, that left her exhausted and usually wet.
It was a hundred-thousand times better than Tranquil Brook.
St. Cyprian’s on its worst days was so much better than Tranquil Brook had ever been, even on its best days.
Group therapy days were its worst days, as far as she was concerned.
She didn’t mind the one-on-one sessions, but the group days made her feel self-conscious.
And terrified that she was going to cause harm to someone else in the room, even though the lead psychologist was also a witch and capable of helping them control their abilities.
She was glad that Sam and Rayn were there, too. And Hallie, and Georgie, and Marta, and Davison. She wasn’t glad there were other people there, but if there had to be, at least they were the others like her.
Witches. Arcanids. People with magic and no idea what to do with it, since they’d spent so many years of their lives having it ripped away from them rather than learning how to use or control it.
Her hand tightened around the paw of Rayn’s bear.
They each had a bear, but hers always got wet, and it took days for it to dry.
She held her black bear in her lap, its fur still slightly damp from the last time she’d accidentally soaked it with magic.
She leaned into Rayn, needing his stoic strength.
Of all of them, Rayn was doing the best. Or seemed to be, anyway.
She knew he found things hard or scary, too.
Knew that he felt like he was struggling to keep his psychic abilities under control.
But he was still calm. Collected. Even when touching things caused him to freeze while he experienced whatever he experienced in his own head.
She’d always been curious, but was afraid to ask, just in case some of the thoughts or feelings or whatever were hers. She didn’t want to know what Rayn had seen from her thoughts, even though she was really curious what sorts of thoughts people had.
As long as they weren’t about her. Those thoughts she didn’t want to know.
She was so glad she hadn’t become a contact psychic like Rayn. It was hard enough when she didn’t know what people thought about her. She’d hate actually knowing.
“Alright, friends!” called out Dr. Nayak. She was a kind Indian woman who always wore her dark hair pulled back in a bun at the nape of her neck, had impeccably done makeup, and heavy, chunky jewelry that always looked lovely with whatever outfit she’d chosen for the day.
She was a little jealous of how put-together the woman always seemed to be.
Marta and Hallie had been standing and chatting on the other side of the room with the half-dozen people in the group who hadn’t been at Tranquil Brook, and when Dr. Nayak spoke, they came over and joined the circle of chairs where the rest of them were already sitting.
“Let’s begin with some deep breathing,” Dr. Nayak said, her voice low and gentle. Deliberately monotone so that it would be soothing. She closed her eyes, one arm holding her damp black bear, the other gripping the white paw of Rayn’s.
Exhale.
Inhale.
“Imagine yourself in a safe place,” Dr. Nayak murmured. “A place where you feel secure. Protected. A place where you are in control of yourself and everything around you.”
She wasn’t sure that such a place existed.
Beside her, Rayn’s hand squeezed over hers on the bear. A reminder she wasn’t alone.
That she was safe here, at least.
But she definitely didn’t want to imagine this room, even if there were some people in it who did make her feel safe. Well, safe-er. Nowhere felt actually safe.
“Remember,” Dr. Nayak’s voice interrupted her worrying. “That your magic is yours, and no one else’s. That your feelings are yours, and no one else’s. Only you can let either magic or emotions get out of control.”
She suppressed a sigh. Dr. Nayak said that every time, and yet she lost control of her magic weekly. Maybe she just didn’t want to control it enough…
I pushed myself out of the memory, scrubbing at tears that had begun to track their way down my cheeks, my heart aching for Melissa. I wondered if she still felt that way—like it was her fault that her magic was sometimes erratic.
From what Mason had taught me, while it was true that emotions and magic were linked, when you were learning, it was very, very hard to control your magic, especially when your emotions were high.
I blinked.
For all that Mason had spent a lot of time talking about control to Jackson and me, he’d never once suggested that emotions needed to be controlled. Only that we should shift the spillover away from potentially destructive magic.
And then I frowned down at the bear.
I’d entered into Melissa’s memories of my own will.
And then I’d come back out when I got annoyed with the memory.
By myself.
No one had interrupted me. Nothing horrible in the memory had given me a jolt of adrenaline or disgust or fear—the things that usually pushed me back out of them.
I’d just… decided I’d seen enough.
Huh.
I reached out for the bear’s paw again.
“It’s best,” Dr. Nayak was saying. “To think of your magic and your Arcane abilities as something to compartmentalize. Something you can shut off or lock away so that you can function in the world.”
Just to see if I could, I pushed the thought away—and it went.
I frowned again.
I didn’t remember Dr. Nayak saying things that I disagreed with—and I did disagree with her.
Now, at least. Maybe that was four-years-later me, and at the time I’d just desperately wanted any sort of guidance, any sort of solution to the storm of thoughts and emotions that flooded me and threatened my precarious balance and control from moment to moment.
Because now I knew differently.
Ward didn’t shut off or lock away his abilities. He worked with them, navigating around them as he wanted or needed to. Mason was the same. Deliberate, controlled, but neither one of them shut their abilities off.
So maybe the problem was that I had shut mine off. Maybe instead of trying to push mine away, I needed to just let them happen.
To… be aware of them and somehow also be aware of what was around me in the world.
I had the feeling it wasn’t going to be an easy thing to do—that it was going to be messier before it got better.
But, for the first time in a very, very, very long time, I was actually looking forward to where this might eventually take me.
I had no idea how rocky the road there would be.