Page 46 of Tethered Souls
There’s a moment of silence as I head up the stairs to my study, my paranoia dwindling, the hairs on the back of my neck settling. But as soon as I reach the top, Ezriel shouts, “You KSing piece of shit!”
Enoch laughs, but it quickly dies under, “Hey! We agreed no telekinesis! Give me back my mouse, you fuckwipe!”
“You want it? Go ahead, take it back. Oh, you can’t, can you, you weak ass telekinetic.”
Stepping into my office, I close the door, automatically activating the silence rune Khalid drew on the wall. In an instant, their bickering is cut off and they won’t be able to hear a thing I do up here either. Walking over to my desk, I toss the bag of stuff I bought onto the gray fabric couch on the way. It’s pushed up against the wall on my right, lined by a filled bookcase and a wooden filing cabinet.
My desk is a large slab of oak that’s hundreds of years old. A piece of brown vinyl is inlaid into it at the front – an addition my father added to make it easier to clean when severed heads were delivered to him.
My gaze settles on the pile of paperwork in front of my black leather chair. Rudy has left landscaping blueprints – drawn up drafts for our clientele that have been printed out and then marked with a red pen with notes on either what to change or what to do. Pinpricks dance across my skin as my vision narrows on them. Will I end up on one of those sheets? A carefully coded message about where my body is hidden written in red ink? Because that is what these papers really are – maps to all the corpses we have buried under flower beds and pools and paving stones.
Rolling my shoulders, I force a bit of the tightness out of my skin. Behind my desk is an abstract painting of colorful blocks, and behind that is a high security safe, secured with both human electronics and a hidden spell that will trigger an explosion should anyone other than me or the reaper try to access it. There are fake bomb components inside to fool any human police should we fuck up badly enough to get searched.
Opening the middle drawer of my desk, I pull out a box holding a single needle spelled to stay sterile and sharp. I take it out, having done this a thousand times before, but just as I place the needle against the pad of my forefinger, a sudden thought slams into me. Leno knows where I keep this. He could coat it in a slow acting poison. I could prick myself, put the needle back, and go about my day before randomly collapsing. No one would suspect I was poisoned hours ago or days or weeks. It would be the perfect crime.
Pinpricks dancing across my fingers, I force myself to breathe. Leno doesn’t want to be Boss. He’s too worried it’ll put a target on his dog’s back.
And it would. Because the easiest way to destroy Leno is by killing Krypto. The easiest way to blackmail my brother is to kidnap his dog. Krypto isn’t just Leno’s eyes. There’s a bond between them that runs deeper even than the blood we share.
So I force the needle into my skin. My pulse increases at the sight of blood, but there’s no turning back now. I either die or I don’t. No point fucking worrying about it.
After placing the needle back in the box and in the desk’s drawer, I grab the painting off the wall with my other hand. A black metal safe about the size of a microwave sits nestled in the wall. I squeeze out a drop of blood onto the top of the safe’s keypad.
The air shimmers like a summer haze, the drop of blood disappears, and I quickly put in the access code. Sucking on my finger to stop the bleeding, I open the door with my left hand and grab the black leather-bound ledger inside.
As I settle into my chair, I pull the landscaping blueprints towards me. The first on the pile has seven notes written on it. The highest one says:
Plant mullein one foot apart.
Mullein is associated with the planet Saturn, which is the sixth body in our solar system. Therefore, the body is hidden under the sixth note. But they aren’t counted left to right or top to bottom or even the reverse of that. They’re counted in the order of the blood code inMortal Kombat.A is up. B is right. C is down. And double B is left. If you can’t go any further, you loop it around the page, so sometimes a B is so far right it’s left, and an A is so far up it’s down.
Putting the blueprint to one side, I start to make two piles: one with the highest note on it containing anything about the sun (ex:“No sunflowers. Allergies.”) and the other with everything else (ex:“Plant mullein one foot apart.”). In the end, I have five for the sun and two referencing planets in one way or another. The addresses in the sun pile get added to the ledger, along with yesterday’s date (when the bodies went in), and whose bodies are hidden there – their names swapped out for Disney characters. Then I put the ledger away, rehang the abstract painting, and study the two remaining blueprints.
After committing their information to memory, I shuffle all seven pieces together. Opening the second drawer of the wooden filing cabinet, I stack them inside, then head out. As soon as I open the door, the commotion from downstairs thunders up.
“They’re backdooring!” Ezriel shouts as I cross the hall, my nape hairs rising despite his voice coming from the floor below. As a telekinetic, neither of them needs to be up here to kill me.
“Don’t stop pushing. We’ve got this!”
“But –”
Entering my studio, I shut the door. Lock thoughts of them out. It’s a small room with various paintings leaning against the three walls to dry. The fourth wall, opposite the door, is filled by a large window and shelves on each side of it, housing supplies and empty canvases. In the middle of the studio is an easel with a half-finished painting on it – abstract, similar to the one in my study.
After turning on the radio to classical rock, I settle on my stool, roll up my sleeves, and begin to paint the information I have memorized. Coded sins fill every line, every shape, every color. The precise movements of my paintbrush reflect back truths only I can decipher.
For this is the true ledger, the sun related notes meaning nothing, the book in my study a fake. Left there to be found by any thieves or police or even a traitorous brother, to make a fool of them when they think they’ve cracked the code. When someone thinks they’ve outplayedme.
But someonehasoutplayed me…
Someone I love has made me believe that they love me back. When all they want is to see me dead.
Dying.
Broken.
My brush quickens across the canvas. My emotions rage inside of me. Do they hate me because I’m an abomination? Because I made Father leave? Or because of one of the sins painted onto this canvas and the one in my office?
My fingers tighten on the brush. My pulse jumps hard, then starts to gallop. Or do they hate me because of Father’s death? Have they found out why he killed himself cursing Mother? That just as I split them apart when I was young, I also triggered that? Caused it in some way or another? Is my lack of magic –
