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Seth
Seth didn’t mind when she let the moments slip into silence. For one, it wasn’t uncomfortable being around her, which was remarkable in and of itself for many reasons. Her silence gave him the time to think through some of the whys. Putting some lo-fi, video game soundtrack remixes on the car speakers, he relaxed into driving to process the very strange day while his passenger sniffled and tried to make sense of her own unusual circumstances.
And she doesn’t even know who you are yet... a little voice in the back of his mind reminded him.
He swallowed hard because his mouth had gone dry. Reaching for another water bottle from his stash in the door compartment, he swirled off the lid and took a gulp before changing lanes, then easing comfortably into his seat.
Flannery Fletch, an extraordinarily powerful witch, happened to be the best friend of his mother. The two crones apparently decided long ago that their children would one day become married and thus their families would combine. What they didn’t take into consideration was the disinterest of said children in randomly marrying someone for no reason other than their mothers were friends.
He’d met Flemming once—when she was maybe nine or ten years old? He couldn’t remember her exact age, but he’d been fifteen years old when his mother shoved him at some little kid and proclaimed her to be his future wife. Sure, his mother could see the future, so if she was down with Flannery’s plan, it implied a certain possibility of her foretelling the event rather than matchmaking—but it didn’t matter. Not to fifteen-year-old him, who was faced with a little kid and told it was their someday wife. Did they think he was some kind of sicko? He did not find a little kid attractive in the least.
And, from then on, whenever they’d tried to bring the two of them together, he’d ensured that mental picture of Flemming stayed first and foremost in his mind at all times. A little kid with light brown, slightly wavy hair with only a little bit of sugary something caught in some of the strands. Her eyes had seemed too big for her petite face, and they were a pale, clear blue that seemed too wise for her tiny features.
He had a few moments to take her in while she looked him over. Finally, she broke the silence between them.
“Hey,” she’d said, waving a single hand. “I don’t want to marry you.”
By fifteen, his mother had already explained a few things to him very clearly. “Consent is important, so I promise to never ask you to,” he vowed.
Her lips curled into a smile, and she’d said, “Cool.”
He turned and walked away and proceeded to avoid her, per their discussion, for many, many, many years. Any time his mother brought her up, or mentioned him settling down “for real this time”, or however else she decided to try to manipulate him—he reminded himself of the big-eyed kid, her clear boundary, and told his mother no.
Until this year.
He’d been on his own and running his own business for years, and he thought he knew what he was doing. He loved the work, he loved driving, it made him happy. So far as working went, he figured he couldn’t ask for more than that. He carried commercial insurance, followed all the state and local laws...
And a wildfire took out his truck. No worries—after all, that’s why he’d paid for insurance for so many years, right?
He learned a lot about umbrella insurance and other terms he didn’t really care for in a very short period of time, leaving him a one-man moving company without a truck.
It humbled him to go to his mother for help, since he thought he’d gotten to a point in his life where he wouldn’t ever need a helping hand again. His mother laughed at him, when he’d told her exactly that. “I’m a lot older than you, and sometimes I ask for help with things. I hate to be the one to tell you this, son, but we never outgrow needing help.”
He smiled at her, like a dumbass, and even gave her a hug. “I’m so lucky to have a mother who is so understanding,” he said.
Her lips curled. “I am understanding. I’m also a savvy enough businesswoman to realize when we’re at a point where negotiations are in my favor.”
“You wouldn’t negotiate with your favorite son when he comes to you for help, would you?” he asked, knowing she could and would, but hoping the levity would change her mind.
“The timing is convenient for me, as I see the perfect opening that will get us both what we want. You get a new truck; I get to ensure my stubborn son meets his fate face to face.”
The image of Flemming-the-child flashed through Seth’s mind and his lip curled in derision. “Ew, no. We’ve been over this.”
“She’s five years younger than you,” his mother pointed out as her smile faded. She rolled her eyes and put her hands on her hips. “How old are you again?”
He faked an appalled expression. “A lady never tells,” he purred in his best attempt at a soprano.
His attempt at humor to distract her landed like a brick in sand. “I said meet your fate. What you do after you meet her? That’s not up to me. Just meet her face to face, now that you’re both grown. If you don’t click, who does it hurt?”
“You,” he pointed out, staring his mother down. He hadn’t put it to words before, but maybe it was time. “You’ve had it in your head that she was the key to my happiness, and you’ve ignored the fact that I am already happy. If we don’t work out the way you imagine, how long will you worry about me, completely disregarding the fact I’m actually fine?”
His mother scowled at him. “I knew I shouldn’t have let you go to school for counseling. You analyze the shit out of everything.”
He grinned at her. “A good healer doesn’t just heal the body; he heals the soul.”
She rolled her eyes again, pouting a bit. “You know I would’ve helped with the truck either way.”
He sighed. She’d heard him out and accepted his words, but had he really listened to hers? She wasn’t demanding he go and propose to the daughter of her best friend, despite her long history of implying she’d like nothing more than that. She only asked that he meet the woman, so what could it hurt?
A glance at his passenger showed how much it could hurt. He cringed, shifting a bit in his seat before passing a slower moving vehicle and returning to the slow lane in front of it. Keeping the image of Flemming the child in his mind would be a lot harder, moving forward. Luckily for them both, remembering consent wasn’t problematic for him, especially since his new worst mental image of her involved the foolish witch getting hit by his truck.
He couldn’t have glanced down at his phone for more than a couple of seconds to hit “start” on the navigation. When he glanced back up, he got a flash of hot pink and then heard the crunch.
His stomach turned remembering the sound.
When he’d leapt out of his truck to find her on the ground with a bubble around the kitten in her hand—why hadn’t she bubbled herself and the kitten?—he didn’t think about anything beyond healing her as fast as possible.
No problem. He healed people all the time.
Except, the moment he touched her midsection to begin pouring healing power into his patient, a swirl of energy swizzled up from her and into him. It swept through his system with as much furious wrath as the wildfire that ate his truck a few months back. He knew her, but not in any logical way. He knew her like she was some random missing piece of a puzzle, and he’d finally stumbled upon exactly what he needed when he wasn’t looking for it.
It threw him off for a couple of seconds, precious seconds, when he could’ve been healing her rather than gasping from the shock to his system. Once he focused again, he flooded her with his gift, with his healing.
His hands dropped palms up to his knees as he collapsed away from his patient.
“Give this to her,” his client said. Seth hadn’t even seen the man leave his house or approach them, so he glanced up in surprise.
“Why?” Seth asked. “What?”
“I saw you hit her with the truck, and I called for emergency services,” the man continued. “I need to call them back. I hired you to haul her stuff, so take her, too, if you want.”
The sheer malice pouring off the man surprised Seth into focus. His mother implied Flemming would be moving back to West Virginia from the Seattle area, so her request involved him taking a very specific job, which would lead to him meeting Flemming under the pretext of work.
He’d been impressed at his mother’s willingness to let fate work out how it would, but he’d never expected to be picking his supposed fated bride up from a bad breakup. What kind of man—didn’t he say they were engaged?—proposed to a woman then discarded her with such callous disregard as to offer the woman up like an unwanted couch to a stranger?
He wasn’t one for hexes, not in the greater grand scheme of things, but he did shoot his mother a text while he waited for Flemming to regain consciousness. “If you know so much about the future, you’ll make sure this guy gets what’s coming to him.”
His mother texted back so quickly, he wondered if she’d expected his message. “On it,” was all she said.
Satisfied he’d resolved at least one of Flemming Fletch’s problems, he waited for her to rouse while her fiancé—ex fiancé—returned to their home, presumably to get his phone.
Flemming’s eyes blinked open, and for a moment, he could see the girl she’d been in the eyes of the woman she’d become. A clear and almost icy blue, they still looked too old and wise for her face, despite her baffled expression. Her dark hair had been replaced by cotton candy striped with darker pink, though her dark brows, when they crumpled upon waking, still retained their natural color. Her first concern was the kitten, which both amused and horrified Seth. On one hand, it spoke of an innate kindness in the woman in front of him. On the other, it proved she didn’t roll well for self-preservation when she built her character for life.
It was a good thing he didn’t intend to make his mother’s dreams of happy ever after come true—whoever loved Flemming would likely spend the rest of his days worrying she’d tumble off a cliff trying to rescue a turtle.
When she’d started to crumple on the lawn in grief, he’d done the only thing he could think to do under the circumstances, and he thumped her on the back as if he wanted to burp a baby.
He stared at his own hand, horrified, for a couple of long seconds before meeting her startled expression. Focusing on the problem at hand over his embarrassment, he quickly explained that she should hold in her breakdown until she was away from her abuser, though not in those words, and shuffled her into his truck.
In retrospect, he didn’t really have her consent to be in the truck in the first place. Heat flooded his cheeks as panic viced his chest. Everything he’d read said that a mind under trauma wasn’t in a position to grant consent to anything, and she’d been hit by a truck and dumped in a matter of seconds. Does this count as...kidnapping?
He shot a terrified glance at his passenger, who met his gaze with sad eyes that quickly shifted to confused. “Dude, you look like you’re freaking out. You okay?”
“I am not kidnapping you,” he blurted, needing to verbalize it in case she wasn’t sure.
She reached into her purse, pulled out a wand, and waved it so it sparkled. “No shit.”
He understood the unspoken threat of her magic and nodded.
“I mean, this goes against my personal rules for myself,” he explained, knuckles white on the steering wheel. “You’re under duress, so we should go somewhere. You should have time to think or—”
Her hand touched his arm. This time, when the pulse of energy jangled through his system, he saw her eyes dilate as it hit hers, too. He forced his gaze back to the road with determination and gritted his teeth through the sensation. “Maybe a fast food place?” he suggested. “So you have time to think things through and decide if you want the ride back to your parents’ house?”
“I consent,” she said, looking down at her hand as if to figure out what caused the unusual sensation. Shaking her head as if to rid it of cobwebs, she spoke with more confidence when she elaborated, “I’m under duress, agreed, but you healed me from the truck, and the kitten is fine. I’m not okay with the breakup—”
Her voice broke on the edge of a sob, and she mopped her face with a shop towel. After a couple of seconds, she calmed her breathing and said, “But, I promise you, I don’t feel in danger from you, and I consent to getting a ride to my parents’ house. I thank you, in fact, for the kindness.”
“There’s more I have to tell you,” he explained, sucking in a breath for calmness. “I have to make a confession.”
The strangled little noise that came out of her might have been a sob, so he glanced her direction. When the sound continued and became a barking noise like a seal screaming on a beach, he realized she was laughing.
The loud and somewhat strange sound proved infectious; he found himself blinking back tears so he could see the road past his own roiling laughter.
Once they both calmed, she explained, “Dude, I have no idea what you think you have to tell me that can top the day I’ve had, but go ahead. Hit me.”
“I’m Seth Taradiddle,” he began.
“I changed my mind. Let me out,” Flemming said calmly, the coldness in her tone both final and certain.