Page 52 of Avelina

I gazed into his eyes and inhaled his amazing scent, which now, after his bath, was a mix of clean soap and a tangy musk. I pulled him into the deeper Connection link so he could hear Spirit. “Any news?” I asked her, not looking away from his eyes.

“Seleca went to the last place she knew Aaron’s family to be,” Spirit said, “which was an apartment in Seattle, but there was no one there.”

Aaron winced at hearing Spirit’s voice through Connection. He forced himself to relax then said, “And now there’s no one here either.”

I sat up straight, my libido momentarily forgotten. “Oh shit. What if your mother knew where Seleca would be ahead of time and evacuated people?”

“Then Seleca might be coming here next,” he said, finishing my thought.

“But why would your mother write us a note encouraging us to come here if she knew Seleca might show up?”

He shook his head. “Maybe the two aren’t related, or maybe we misread. How would my mother even get here?”

“And wouldn’t she have wanted to see you if she had been here?” I asked. One would hope.

We stared at each other for a second, then Aaron jumped up to peer through the viewing panels again. “Spirit, can you check again if anyone else is in or around the house?”

She disappeared. When she reappeared a second later, she stood on the other side of the room. “There’s no one within ten miles in any direction,” she said. Her instantaneous movement across the room was creepy, and I had to look away.

“You were just with Seleca, right?” I asked. “Did you get an idea of what her next move would be?”

“She stole my Precognition reservoir when she murdered me,” she said. “I believe she’s planning to try to use it, but she’ll need to come back to Monash to do that. Earth is blocking her. Even when she gets here, it’s going to be harder than she thinks.”

I relayed what Spirit said to Aaron. “She’ll probably go back to the palace so she can practice in peace,” he said.

“Palace? That sounds nice,” I said.

“It is,” Aaron said. “Eve controls all of the guilds and has hundreds of years’ worth of forced labor and theft stored in that palace, including my grandfather’s staff.”

“Staff?”

“Yes, my mother said it’s some kind of focus staff that gives you greater control over a fragment, but she never saw him use it. Now I’ll probably never get to see what it does.”

“How did Eve and Anick gain so much power?” I asked.

“Projection, seduction, and murder. They’ve been stealing reservoirs since before my grandfather’s time. The history is handwritten in one of those books. It goes all the way back to the pre-Anick era.” He pointed to the bookshelf. I looked over, thinking I knew exactly what I would be doing for the next few days.

“Even so,” he continued, “some reservoirs are so rare that it took until now for them to be found. The story passed down in our family is that Anick originally had Absorption and Projection. Projection lets you force your own thoughts or perceptions onto others, so he simply convinced people to let him absorb their reservoirs without resisting.”

“You can resist?”

“To a degree. You can build a resistance over time and make it harder, but you can’t stop it altogether without Protection. Projection can even be used to place a person in a trance, making them act like a puppet with no will of their own. They’ll just sit down and starve to death unless they’re told to eat. Seleca likes to do that for fun, but I think she finds it easier to just kill people outright, especially if she wants to absorb their reservoir.”

Spirit stared at the ground, nodding, her face neutral rather than filled with regret as I would have been. I remembered how nice it had felt when I’d drifted out of my body. I’d always thought death would be a burden, but it’s just the opposite. All burdens are lifted in death.

“Spirit, would you please follow her again and let us know if she’s coming this way?”

“Sure,” she said, her eyes bouncing between me and Aaron, then she disappeared again.

I hoped that if I lay down to sleep that I wouldn’t drift out of my body again. I wasn’t exactly sure how it worked, but at least I wasn’t high as a kite like last time. I was so exhausted now that the risk was worth it. In any case, what was I going to do? Never sleep again?

I leaned over my bag and dug out my toothbrush and water bottle while Aaron finished looking through the panels. After scrubbing my teeth, I finished off the water and pulled out Violet’s book, reading the poem again. “I think we’re supposed to wait here,” I said.

Aaron glanced over at me from the viewing panel. “Do you think that’s what the poem means?” he asked.

“That’s my guess about this one stanza,” I said. “It helps you face your enemy and searches out what seems empty, but if you wait and don’t misread, you may avoid a slaughter.” I paused to think about the “key” in the poem. “What if Linorra isn’t supposed to be me?”

“How could that be?” he asked. “The character’s name is too close to yours to be a fluke, and the plot matches. She travels to another world and finds a dragon.” He gestured to himself.

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