Three weeks earlier
A lot of people will tell you being in a relationship is a lesson in compromise. For me it was a hard dunk of reality that said real life wasn’t like a romance novel. No one sailed away into the sunset forever happy or was cured by the ultimate kiss and profession of love. Commitment was a lot like I imagined being a prison might be—the bars emotional instead of physical—but maybe that was more because I was now earth Pillar rather than just Gabe’s lover. Every time I fucked up, I hurt him, and stupid, small things that never used to bother me drove me nuts.
Like Gabe’s insistence that someone go with me anytime I left the apartment. Kelly followed me at school, Jamie at work or to the store, and Gabe wherever I went when it was dark. The constant attention was seriously getting on my nerves. Didn’t they all know I was an introvert at heart and needed my alone time? My wild oats had been sown long ago and now I just needed to hide from the world.
Three weeks had passed since I’d killed Brock. The memory of his attack still brought a cold sweat and nightmares. My heart often pounded so hard I thought it would break free of my chest. They kept plying me with medication, and like everything before, it went through my system without being processed. Food and tea became my only line to calm. I’d cook pastries or sip flower-flavored water until the shaking went away.
Gabe had learned quickly not to point it out. His expression was often guarded or neutral, his smile not so easy anymore. Three weeks after telling him I loved him for the first time and I’d already become a burden.
The ache in my spine lessened, and walking became easier. But Gabe didn’t hide his worry as well as he thought. I heard more than a handful of secret calls. The Tri-Mega had let him off temporarily, but he was not in the clear any more than I was with the Dominion for Brock’s death. I kept waiting for the axe to drop. The Dominion would sweep in and say oh we let you live, just kidding, and strap me to a pyre. My actual punishment so far was twofold—training and therapy.
I saw a Dominion-provided psychiatrist twice a week. She stared at me and asked questions I found hard to answer. Things about my childhood and about my relationship with Gabe. She obviously had no idea how messed-up I was.
Jamie dropped me off for the latest session, quiet and reserved as always, and as always waited until I was inside to drive away. He looked at me in question, a lot like he expected me to just break down or to open up and spill all the horrible things of my life to him. Sure he was my brother, but that was new to me. Keeping things to myself was a familiar old blanket I liked to wrap myself up in. Even Gabe couldn’t take that away, though sometimes he did curl up under it with me.
I groaned at the brick office building, opened the door, and entered. Did anyone want this? Was talking out your feelings normal for people? Did anyone really get anything out of this except a wasted hour of their life? Could they tell how much I hated coming here? The receptionist smiled a fake welcoming smile. “Mr. Rou. Welcome. I’ll tell Dr. Tynsen you’re here. Have a seat.”
I went to the far corner, away from the handful of other waiting patients, and plunked down into a chair, hoping to hide from the stares. I held up my book reader as a veil. No more than a minute passed before the whispering began. Often I wondered it was all in my head only to discover people really were talking about me. Everyone wanted to control me, and since they couldn’t, they wanted me dead.
A glance up through my heavy lashes and could see some of the other patients staring at me. They probably recognized me from some news program detailing all the gruesome details of Brock’s death. A woman gripped her daughter’s hand like a vise. A man ogled me like I was some stripper on display, though I’d dressed in normal jeans and one of Jamie’s sweaters, which was so large on me it could have doubled as a dress. My hair was down because it was cold, but a stocking cap kept it in place.
“Seiran?” a female voice called.
Dr. Tynsen stood in the doorway, a tight smile etched on her face. Did she find these sessions as torturous as I did? She had mastered the neutral, empty smile, which is what I saw more than anything else. Sometimes I said shocking things just to see if she’d change expressions, but she rarely did.
She was probably in her late thirties and had nondescript brown hair, hazel eyes. Her face was soft enough, though the stain of wrinkles had begun close to her eyes and on her forehead. Too much frowning, my mom would say.
I packed my things and rose to my feet, feeling a bit like a zombie, then followed her down the stark white hall into her small office. The window behind her desk gleamed brightly with the sun glistening off fresh snow. Winter had begun. The light snow covering, salted white streets, and naked trees made the city look barren. The gloom was a mirror of my mood.
She motioned me to the large leather recliner. I vaguely wondered how many had used that seat before me. Would she be offended if I took out my little stack of wet wipes and wiped it down? Probably. At least my clothes would separate me from the worst of the germs.
I sat down and gripped my bag in my lap. She shut the door firmly and leaned against the desk instead of sitting behind it. “What do you want to talk about today, Seiran?”
“Nothing.” I told her the truth. I wasn’t a talk-out-my-feelings kind of guy.
My surly responses never seemed to bother her. Why she still asked my opinion was a mystery to me. If I had a choice of talk or don’t talk, it would always be not to speak. She still gave me that neutral smile that said everything and nothing.
“Tell me how you first felt when you discovered Jamie Browan was your brother.”
We’d done this one before. I knew the drill. “Afraid that he was seeing me as something I’m not.”
“What did you think he saw you as?”
“The perfect little brother. But he has to know the truth by now.”
“About what you are?”
“Yes.”
“What do you think you are?”
That was an easy one. “A needy, messed-up person who can’t get a handle on who he is.” A burden. “If he didn’t have me, he’d probably be a super-rich doctor or model or have a bazillion kids. I’m just in the way of his greatness.”
“Really?”
“Sometimes.” The rest of the time I just didn’t know what to make of Jamie. Was there a manual on how to go from an only child to having a half-brother?
She smiled like I’d made progress. “Tell me about something from your past. Something with your mother, perhaps.”
These requests were the worst. She’d pushed my memory into overdrive to get some of this stuff, most of it nightmarish. “I’d rather not.”
“A few times you’ve mentioned a pet. But you’ve never told me the story.” She moved to sit in a chair diagonal to me. “Tell me about your pet.”
I snorted. “I had a dog for a day. A golden retriever puppy. My mother threw it in the river.” The memory of the puppy frantically trying to paddle out of the current still stuck with me. He’d bobbed a few times before going under and not coming back up. My mother had held me the entire time, arms locked to my sides, her leg wrapped around me like a vise. I know I’d been screaming since the sound hurt my own ears, but it faded away to sobs as the dog vanished. Tears had streamed down my face. It still made my heart hurt to remember. I’d never an animal since. Never dared to hope for a pet, even in all the years on my own. It worried me a lot that I was going to be a father in a few months when I had never been able to keep a pet alive.
“How old were you?”
“Seven, maybe eight.
“How did you get the puppy?”
Now that I couldn’t recall. Its death was etched in my brain, but not the moments leading up to it, how it got there. Hell, how I got there was a mystery to me. I’d never asked my mother about the incident. Maybe someday I would, but probably not.
I just shrugged.
Dr. Tynsen must have known from the look on my face because she nodded, like she understood.
“Did you want a dog?”
“I don’t know.”
“But when this one died, you grieved.”
“I cried, yes. I was seven. I am still very sensitive to seeing anything die. Animals, people, even plants.” Even Brock, whose death replayed in my head about forty times a day. How did anyone find a new normal after taking someone’s life? Military and police did it all the time, right? How did they fix themselves afterward? Or was I just an oddity of guilt? “Isn’t that normal?”
She didn’t answer. “Your mother put you in military school shortly after that. An all-boys school.”
“Yes. A few years later.”
“You lived on campus, correct?”
“Yes.”
“How often did you see your mother?”
“We were sent home every weekend.”
“Did the two of you talk about anything when you came home? School? Friends?”
“My mother and I didn’t talk. Don’t talk. We aren’t the sort of family you see on a TV drama.” I shook my head and closed my eyes, trying not to think of my mom in those days. Not that the memory was vivid. Most everything before I was eleven was just a fuzzy patch of scattered images. Like the dog.
“Seiran, what do you hope to get out of our meetings?”
I opened my eyes. She was close again. She had the habit of invading my personal space, which bothered me a lot. But Gabe and Jamie said I had a bigger bubble than most and got overly sensitive when it was breached. “I’m completing the counseling requirement for the Dominion.”
“So you’re only here because you were ordered to be here?”
“I’ve been messed-up my whole life, Doc. I don’t see how talking about a few things is going to fix anything. The past is over and done with. Brock is dead, and I can’t bring him back. I am Pillar, and I can’t undo that.”
“So you feel that the only true way to make amends would be if Brock was still alive and you weren’t the Pillar of earth.” She glanced at the clock, probably eager to get rid of me. I couldn’t wait to get the hell out of there either.
“If I could go back and change the past, my life would be different. Everything would be different. But everyone says that, I bet. I didn’t want to kill Brock. I never planned to become Pillar, but I’ve done both and I need to deal with it. That’s what you’re here for, right?”
She sighed. “I want you to reflect on your past until our next meeting. Write down ten things you would change if you could, and how your life would be different now if you changed those things. Really think on how you believe your life would be different if those things had never happened. I don’t think your life would be as different as you believe it would be. But you need to begin to take your life back. Think about what you want to gain from our time together.” She got up from the chair and opened the door. “Whether it’s just to quiet the voices in your head or ease the guilt, having a focus is a good thing.”
I swallowed back a snort. There were no voices in my head, and the guilt had always been there, ingrained in me as a child. I’d been born the wrong sex. No one was ever pleased about my existence. For a while I’d learned to cope. I needed to find myself again.
We’d only taken a half an hour. I was happy to get out early, but only if she logged it as the full time since I was required two hours a week of counseling. “Do I need to come in before Thursday?”
She shook her head. “No, but I do want you to e-mail me your ten changes before Thursday. So spend some time on it.” She paused. “How are the meds working?”
“Fine,” I said. Same as always, they didn’t work at all. She’d already given me a half dozen to try at the Dominion’s behest. Most of them made me sick. I was really tired of being a guinea pig. Nothing they’d given me to quickly end a panic attack had helped at all.
“Okay. I will see you Thursday.”
I left the office without a backward glance. Always they seemed to stare—the staff, the clients, whoever was around. Jamie wouldn’t be back to pick me up for another half an hour. At least at home I didn’t stand out so much, not next to Jamie, the ex-model, and Gabe, the super vampire. Being the first male Pillar was hardly a novelty among that bunch.
I exited the building and headed to the corner to cross the street. The Caribou Coffee at the edge of the mall had a Caramel High Rise that called my name in cold weather like this. Maybe it would soothe my nerves too.
After getting my drink and sitting beside the fire inside the shop with my reader, I texted Jamie where I was. His text back was an angry retort of Don’t do that again without me. Do what? Get coffee? Technically there was no coffee in my drink—it was hot apple cider.
The heat of the juice seemed to warm me from the core outward. In the little shop I could pretend no one saw me. I could hide around the huge center fireplace with a half-dozen other people all trying to cohabitate alone and jot things down in an empty notebook. Ten things I would change. And how would my life change if those things had been different?
1. What if I had a mother who’d loved me?
I kind of wondered if my life would be more like TV or books if she’d cared at all. Maybe she would have celebrated my birthday or given me Solstice gifts. She certainly wouldn’t have strapped me to a table in her little white room until I’d agreed to go to school and then to have a baby. Maybe if she’d loved me, I would have done those things without her forcing my hand.
2. Or if I’d had Jamie around as a kid to help me with the hard stuff?
Big brothers were there to explain stuff. Would he have helped me throw Matthew out of my life sooner? Or maybe even kept me from getting involved with him at all? He’d probably have kept a lot of the bullies from beating the shit out of me in my early college years.
3. What if I’d never met Matthew at military school?
This one was huge. So many of my neurotic tendencies came from my school years. Matthew had instilled in me a lot of fear, like my need for cleanliness and the need to hide what I was. Being the only male from a high level witch family attending the school had made me the brunt of hundreds of pranks. Most of them were minor so long as Matthew hadn’t been involved. I guess every kid went through that sort of thing. Then there were the bigger things I really didn’t want to think about.
4. Or if Brock hadn’t raped and tried to kill me?
What if I’d just pushed him away like I had tried to when he first started coming around. Kelly would probably be dead. Maybe lots of other witches too.
Jamie dropped down beside me with his overstuffed lunch bag and made me nearly jump out of my skin. He smiled lightly, patted my back, and pulled a ton of food out of his bag. He always made so much and grouched if I couldn’t finish it all. I don’t think he got that I was not a big guy and there was only so much I could eat.
“Please don’t do that again,” he said.
“Get coffee? It was just across the street. I waited for the walk sign, looked both ways, and everything.” Besides, Brock was dead. It wasn’t like there was a line of people out there waiting to kill me. Granted there were a lot of people unhappy with me being Pillar. They could protest all they wanted, but they wouldn’t act on it since I was Pillar and hurting me could cause a natural disaster that might kill thousands. Brock had been lucky when he had killed Rose Pewette—the former earth Pillar. There hadn’t been more than a few tremors throughout the world. Minor damage compared to what could have happened if the Earth had actually accepted her.
“People could be out to hurt you.”
“I know. I just think whatever they do will be emotional, not physical. They are more likely to shout curses at me than throw a knife or a bomb.”
Jamie and Gabe tried to keep me shielded from the news. But I had the Internet on my phone. I read the papers. Watched the broadcasts about the upset it caused. The Ascendance was making a stand, demanding that the Dominion hand over some of its power and create an equalized governing body of magic. Many naysayers on both sides preached of corruption and how I was the embodiment of evil.
Kelly rejoined the Ascendance to try to keep tabs on them. Though the Dominion supported his effort at spying, Gabe and Jamie didn’t like it at all. I just worried. Kelly was a nice guy, and I’d learned quickly over the past few years how the world liked to eat up nice guys.
My phone buzzed with a new text. I tilted it enough so Jamie couldn’t see.
You’re scum and have no right to be Pillar! from anonymous. If I dialed the number back, it wouldn’t trace—I’d tried that a few times. Once or twice I’d been rewarded with cursing. It wasn’t worth the effort.
I deleted the text, stuffed the phone back in my bag, and tried to keep the fear and hurt off my face. There’d been dozens of angry texts and e-mails since becoming Pillar. Each one added to the growing anxiety that sat chewing away at my gut. Was it too late to escape into the lynx? Gabe might like having a house cat. He was sort of a book nerd who spent a lot of time alone when he wasn’t working. A cat would be perfect for him. Maybe I’d try to convince him how great a pet I could be.
The phone buzzed again. I turned it off. I don’t know how they got my information, but telling Jamie and Gabe would make things worse. They already half treated me like a prisoner. It really was time to take my life back or I’d have no other choice but to retreat into the Earth’s embrace. I wondered if other Pillars had been lost that way before. It wasn’t in the history books, but everyone knew the people in charge wrote those to say what they wanted people to remember.
“Can you take me over to Furness Street?” I asked Jamie while choosing what I was going to eat. Half a sandwich and a handful of trail mix was enough for me.
“Why?”
“I have an appointment at three to look at an apartment.”
He was already shaking his head. “What’s wrong with staying with Gabe? If you need a break from him, you can stay with me.”
I needed a break from them all. Until these past few weeks, I’d never realized just how much of a loner I was. Sure, I could flirt and party with the best of them, but I needed time in just my head. “I’ll call a cab if you don’t take me. It’s just a tour. Not a commitment. I just need some sense of normality. I’m sorry if you don’t approve. If Brock hadn’t murdered someone in my apartment, I wouldn’t have moved in with Gabe yet. It’s too soon.”
Jamie reacted as if I’d hit him. He let out a heavy sigh and started packing up all the food. “Fine. Whatever.”
He’d almost taken away what I’d picked to eat, but I snatched it back in time and followed him as he stomped to his car.
Days like this really made me feel like no one wanted me around. The angry reaction I’d expected. In fact, it had taken awhile, but I knew it would come. Unrealistic expectations and all. I guessed he was finally starting to see that I wasn’t the brother he wanted. But he drove me to the apartment building.
The tour went well. It was a ground-level one-bedroom. The sound of a television playing in a neighboring apartment meant the building was old and walls not very thick. But it was spacious and looked out into a nice wooded area. Not someplace I could run since it was in the middle of the city, but I could afford it and there was plenty of room for all my books, though the kitchen was small. I’d miss the granite countertops and double mounted ovens at Gabe’s place. He’d designed his kitchen with me in mind, and that was okay. He was a vampire. He couldn’t eat and I liked to cook. But the moving in together thing was a little weird for me. Too soon—like showing Gabe all the worst parts of me that he hadn’t yet learned to accept. I wasn’t ready for that.
All I was sure of was that I was always tired. Not physically, but emotionally. Something in me had been torn out with Brock’s death. The pills were supposed to help with the depression. So far they just made me more depressed—and anxious. Always anxious. Was Jamie going to start a fight in the car? Would he yell? Tell me he hated me or thought I was stupid? Sometimes words were far kinder than silence. Silence left me too long to contemplate possibilities, but too much noise wore me out. I was stuck, forever trapped in the cycle I feared had taken over my life.
By the time we returned to Gabe’s, he was awake and at the computer, working on some spreadsheets. He smiled at me, that glittering flash of teeth that had hooked me so many years ago. Even now my heart sped up in my chest, and I longed to jump in his lap and kiss him silly. Every time he looked at me it was so real and genuine. I still loved him even if I didn’t like to be around him all the time. That was normal too, right?
Jamie stormed past us into the kitchen where he began yanking everything out of the lunch bag and putting things away. He hadn’t said anything the entire tour or drive home. His attitude brought me spinning back down.
Gabe raised a golden brow in my direction. I shrugged and headed to the shower. Not that I really needed one, though I’d been outside and felt gross just from breathing the city air. Dr. Tynsen told me to acknowledge when I knew my OCD was pushing me to do something like change the sheets, clean the kitchen, or shower excessively. Not that it made me any less likely to do those things.
I stripped out of everything and was lathering up my hair when Gabe came in. His expression was neutral, as always. He took off his clothes and stepped in beside me, taking over the shampooing. His hands massaged my scalp like a pro hairstylist. He pressed himself against me, cock hard and ready against my hip proving he was happy to be there. But I was somewhat tired of the babying. Sometimes I wanted him to just get mad at me. At least that was honest. I was mad at me. He should be mad at me too, right?
“Do you want to talk about it?” he asked.
“Isn’t that what you pay the doctors for?” I snapped.
“Hmm.” He pushed me under the spray. Soap poured over my face. I had to keep my mouth shut until it had passed. By the time I was wiping the sting out of my eyes, he was on his knees, kissing my stomach. “Do you want to fight? Or have sex?”
The thought of sex made my stomach clench, and not in a good way. “You should be mad at me like Jamie is,” I told him, winding my hands through his golden curls. He was classically handsome. Like Michelangelo’s David, with more muscle definition and fangs. Being a vampire gave him plenty of time to build his physique. Thankfully, he was nowhere near as big as Jamie was. I wasn’t into the bodybuilder thing. But every line of his body was lean masculinity I could never hope to replicate but loved to trace with my fingers.
“Because you want your own place? No, I expected that. You, more than anyone I know, need your space. Though I wish you’d wait until some of the press dies down.” He dipped his tongue into my belly button, then left a trail of kisses down my stomach to my groin. He nipped at my balls, and the stubble on his face made me painfully ready as he chuckled, pressing his face to my cock. “I love how responsive you are.”
With the pleasure came fear.
We hadn’t had intercourse since Brock’s attack. That was the main reason I was seeing a shrink. Dominion be damned. Gabe and I could suck each other off or masturbate together, but the minute he got near my ass, I froze up, often lost my erection, and had flashbacks of being raped on that damned metal table. It was stupid. It wasn’t the first time I’d been raped in my life. Why it bothered me so much now made no sense. I couldn’t even talk about it. Voicing the words made it another part of my paranoia, and we’d all had more than enough of that.
I pulled him up. Gabe leaned over, bending his knees enough to keep me from standing on my tiptoes to reach those beautiful lips of his. He wrapped one of his hands in my long hair and kissed me so hard I had to fight for breath. One of his fangs nicked my tongue, and we both tasted blood. He fed at my mouth and wrapped his other hand around both of our cocks at once.
Quick, long strokes had us writhing against each other. His strong grip ran around the both of us in pulsing circles. His heat pressed to mine. He felt like a candle burning against me. His thumb—a magic touch that teased over my cock head, using the leaking precome from us both to create more sliding friction.
The water beat on our backs from the multiple showerheads, but nothing could have gotten between us in that moment. For all the trouble I caused him, he still held me like I was his very last breath. I gripped him around the waist, pressing into him as though I could be him.
I thrust my hips hard against his. He had to release my hair and wrap his arm around my back to keep me up. He kissed me over and over, tasting and nipping at my lips while his hand worked and our cocks ground together in a crazy fury.
“Close,” I whispered between kisses, loving the feel of him around me.
“Together,” he replied.
I surrendered to his hands. My balls drew up and I prayed his did too. Another strong pull and we spurted out heat that we let wash away under the heavy spray of the shower.
I panted in his arms. My back ached a little from standing too long and arching against him to get more friction. Another reminder of Brock, the bruising to my spinal cord was still fading.
Gabe scrubbed my back and held me tight while I cried. We both pretended the tears were just the water pouring down on us. It was a reoccurring event. Same show, different day. We’d have sort of sex and I’d cry. Why did he stay? The question made me cry harder.
After the shower we lay in bed together, me in one of his T-shirts and my sleep pants, and him in just boxers and socks. I should have gotten up, gone to work, done something. But even after a day of dreaming of alone time, I couldn’t pry myself out of his arms. Gabe called Mike to cover the bar. Jamie had left, mumbling something to us about going out.
I would have been lying if I said Jamie’s growing distance didn’t hurt.
My shrink notebook sat beside me. I’d put down only those few things to change. Gabe had already read them. Six more to go. He’d been texting back and forth for a while, not letting me see his phone. I knew it wasn’t work, but feared asking more questions. I dozed for a few minutes, then jolted awake when the bed moved. Finally he rose, kissed me on the forehead, and stepped up to the closet to dig out some clothes.
“Are you leaving?” I asked.
“Just for a while. Doing some vampire stuff.”
“The Tri-Mega?” Did my voice sound a little higher pitched than usual?
He let out a heavy sigh. “Eventually it will be over, and they will leave us alone. Anyway, I told Jamie to take the night off. So you have some time to yourself. Call me if you need me, please. Read one of your books. Take some time to recharge.” He kissed me lightly on the lips. “You look so tired. Maybe you should just get some sleep.”
“Okay.” I watched him button up a green Gucci shirt that matched his eyes. “I don’t deserve you.”
Gabe laughed, turning back to me. His amazing smile made his face glow with joy. “I’ve been telling myself the same thing about you for years. I feel like I’ve caught a unicorn and should share it with the rest of the world. Only I don’t want to.”
A jackass more like it. “Heh.” I didn’t want to sleep. Sleep brought nightmares. “I think I’ll cook something.”
He leaned down to give me a quick peck on the cheek. “Make something sweet. I’ll share a drink with you later and taste the dessert on your lips. ’Kay?”
“Okay.”
He left, and I lay in bed for a while, thinking about my list. I wrote down:
5. If I’d known my dad, I might not be so afraid to feel things.
Since my mom had never been all that great at parenting, and I never had any extended family like grandparents who shared her burden, I often wondered what it would have been like to have a dad. Would he have taught me how to use magic? Or ride a bike? Or even played soldiers with me?
The thought of not knowing him had never bothered me before. I assumed my mother had taken whatever liberties were due her as a leader in the Dominion and forced my father to give her a child. Now the idea that he was such a mystery sort of drove me nuts. Sure, I could call Jamie and he’d probably tell me, but he was mad at me. No need to give him another reason to feel he had to take care of me. A lot of people didn’t have dads. Some had neither parent. I liked to think I turned out okay anyway. I wasn’t a bank robber or a child molester. Murderer and Pillar, though…
At almost twenty-three, I was more than capable of survival, even when faced with some of the worst situations, something that I’d proven only a few weeks ago. I didn’t need anyone’s reluctant babying. Jamie could be as mad as he wanted, I decided. Gabe was okay with me needing space, and his opinion was the important one. He was the one I was in a relationship with, not Jamie.
I got up and padded to the living room, trying to decide if I was going to cook or let my brain keep muddling away at my lack of knowledge about my father. Gabe’s computer sat on the desk. The screen circled with swirls as his screensaver. At least he hadn’t put a picture of me on there. That would be too weird. I sat down and began searching the Internet for my father, but pulled up very little information. Dorien Merth had died while I was still in my mother’s womb. Everything else was classified in password-protected Dominion files. That didn’t bode well.
My phone rang. The number came up with a bunch of zeros, I flipped it open. “Hello?”
“You should die, you abnormal faggot freak. You’ve got no right to be Pillar.” The phone clicked off before I could reply. I tried to dial back, angry enough to rage at this asshole, but the number was blocked.
It rang again within seconds, and I glared at it until Kelly’s number popped up. I flipped it open, almost dreading what I’d hear. “Hello?”
“Hey, Sei. You busy? I’m headed to the Dominion Library at the U to look up some water stuff. Want to keep me company? All the girls can stare at both of us and gossip.”
I suspected Kelly experienced a lot of what I did and wondered if he was getting hate e-mails and calls. At five seven, Kelly only had three inches on me and probably thirty pounds, since he was very athletic. But his blond, shaggy, surfer-cut hair made folks think of him as not all that bright. However, he was the top of his class. Graduated valedictorian of his high school and had a full scholarship to the U of M. He was also a very powerful water witch and one of only a handful to be accepted into the magic studies program I’d been coerced into attending by my mother years ago. He was a bit of a kindred spirit, and easygoing enough not to mind me hanging around.
“Sure. Can you pick me up?” My night vision wasn’t great since becoming Pillar. The power of the Earth pulsed in waves that could make me swerve or stop for fear of crashing. It was like being hit with bouts of nausea and an aura headache all at once, only it didn’t really hurt, but it wasn’t really safe either. My mother claimed the side effect would fade over time.
“Yep. Be there soon.” We hung up the phone, and I waited for it to ring again, but it didn’t. I drank another cup of tea just to settle my nerves.
Once the teacup was in the dishwasher and the counter clean again, I pulled on a pair of sweats and a hoodie. I lifted my hair back into a ponytail before stepping into my boots and swinging on my coat. The Dominion Library was probably a good place to look for stuff about my dad. That was focus, right?