Page 1 of Prayers for the Prickly

Chapter 1

Gregor

Inhaling, I let my eyes close as I breathed in the cool sea breeze flowing through the open windows of my workshop. No candle, room spray, or air freshener, hell, nothing humans had ever designed smelled as good as wood shavings and the rolling ocean outside.

If this was what people meant when they talked about easing into the day, it was definitely something I could get behind. A soft word to the smart speaker soon got my list of old school grunge and alternative started, low enough that I could still hear the waves crash against the shore.

Driftwood of varying shapes and sizes rested on the workbench that lined the far wall, each destined to be something, once it gave up its secrets. I’d never considered myself to be a craftsman, that implied creating something out of nothing. No, what I did was coax the spirit of the wood to burst forth from beneath weathered layers, once I’d harvested it from its sandy grave on the beach.

Rubbing calloused fingers in lazy circles over the smooth surface, I caressed it to the beat of the song as I waited for the piece to tell me what it wanted to be. Nothing could happen until it did.

Over the years, I’d tried yoga, I’d tried meditation, I’d even tried goat yoga and discovered I was allergic to the adorably bleating things, a fact that hadn’t helped control my legendary temper. It always seemed to work out that way for me. Even when I discovered something that I enjoyed immensely, something always came along and ruined it.

At my most reflective, I could admit to expecting the worst right from the very beginning, and when I really did a bit of soul searching, I recognized that there were times when I self-sabotaged, too, wanting to get the inevitable over with. My old man had laughed when I’d first opened the shop and point blank asked if I was dreaming up new ways of racking up charges. It had rankled, but I’d choked down the urge to remind my pops of the empty garage that now housed odds and ends that were destined for the local thrift shop, once he grew board of listening to his wife and mother-in-law harp about him forgetting to take them.

“Seriously, Pops, Mom’s threatening to put radishes in everything from the pancakes to the chocolate cake until you load up the truck and haul everything away.”

“Are you forgetting that I happen to love radishes?”

“No one likes radishes in their pancakes.”

“It’s palatable.”

“Seriously? What’s the real reason you won’t clear the mess out of there and go donate it?”

“Because I know your mother,” his old man replied. “The moment that garage is empty, she’s going to get after me to turn it into a pantry and a pottery workshop and then where the hell am I supposed to go to tinker the next time I get it in my head to restore some old beauty I come across?”

“Let’s be realistic, Pops. It would get more use as a pottery studio. Mom always has plastic and clay covering the kitchen table these days and half of the dining room table is littered with the pieces she’s been painting. In all the years that you’ve lived there, you’ve brought exactly one car home, and it literally took from the time I was seven until I turned sixteen for you to get it fixed and out of the garage.”

“Doesn’t mean I’m done restoring things. I’m just pacing myself.”

“Well Mom’s pace is faster, by a lot,” I pointed out. “And didn’t you just finish overhauling Pacey and Paul’s room to turn it into the den you’ve always wanted? Mom said the flatscreen takes up an entire wall and that you put in a bar with a hibachi and mini fridge so you didn’t have to come out to eat if you didn’t want to.”

“Which also means that she doesn’t have to cook if she doesn’t want to.”

“So not the point.”

“Look, kid, when you find a mate and you live with them for twenty-five years, then you can tell me what the best course of action is when it comes to how to run your household, because mine has been rolling along just fine for decades.”

“If you say so, Pops. Gotta run.”

“You just remember what I said, when you get arrested in your own shop for threatening to tie an anchor to a customer’s leg and drop them off the jetty.”

“I’m not worried about it.”

“You should be.”

“Already been taken care of.”

“How, you stash away another bail fund I’m gonna need a treasure map to locate?”

“Nope. I hired Olly to deal with the customers for me.”

Now here we were, seven months later, with the latch on the front door snapping open right on schedule. Olly was never late, and he never hurried customers out at the end of the day. From eleven until six, he kept the showroom open and dusted while the customers chatted and sipped homemade lemonade from the cart he kept beside the counter. Somehow, he kept my creations flowing out the door and the money flowing in, to the point where we’d started turning a profit after the second month.

I was in my element here, finally having found the one thing that kept me from snarling and snapping my way through every day, pissed the sun was shining and even more pissed when the moon came out to announce that the day was through.

Turning the wood, I studied it from every angle before standing it on one end. The three clawlike limbs protruding from it made an awesome base. Now that I had claws on the brain, I couldn’t unthink it. The more I studied the driftwood I’d harvested earlier that morning, the more I could picture the tips of those three limbs sharpened to points, each wrapping around a polished stone. The shape of the wood, and the way it was subtly twisted, formed the perfect base for an eagle’s leg.

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