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With a deep breath, I hold the marble between my thumb and index and place it between our faces. Tei’s eyes widen slowly, as if he’s fighting against the movement, but losing. His fingers move from my waist to reach for the marble, brushing against it with the gentlest of touches. “Where did you get this?”
“Remember the ghost I told you about? The one who mentioned the Guardians?”
Tei nods, but his eyes are trained on the marble, not me.
“That… wasn’t the whole story. I helped him get over his fear. I made him cross over. And when he passed the threshold —“
“He left the marble behind,” Tei finishes my sentence.
“You know what this is.” It’s a statement, not an inquiry, because the response is obvious. There’s a better question, one I don’t dare to ask but wait for him to volunteer the answer to: will he share it with me? Will he trust me enough to let me in?
The clock on his wall ticks the seconds away with a loud clacking as silence spreads between us. I count the beats past fifty, and despite how much I itch to pry, I keep quiet.
“You should eat it,” he finally says, and that catches me so off guard I laugh.
“What?”
“The marble. Eat it.”
My first reaction is that he’s pulling my leg, but his face is so completely somber, that deep frown line still very much in place, that he must be serious. I can’t help asking, “why?”
He grabs my chin in his hand, swiping his thumb across my cheek. “Trust me.”
Trust him. A request so simple, and yet so loaded. Last night, I told him I trusted him, but that was with my body. This feels so much deeper than that.
I look from him, to the marble, and back. Tei won’t hurt me — he can’t. He needs me too much to risk anything happening to me. Whether he’ll help me, though… that remains to be seen.
Well, here goes nothing.
The marble is surprisingly soft in my mouth, like a jelly more than a piece of stone. As I swallow it, it contracts, sliding down my throat with no issue at all. It’s the oddest sensation as it settles in my stomach, because I feel it there, its weight firm. The longer it sits, the warmer it gets, until there’s a fire in my belly. I reach a hand for it in panic and the heat seeps through my fingers. My wide eyes find Tei’s. “What is happening?”
“Give it a moment.”
I do. The fire only gets hotter, so bad I feel like puking, but I’m scared to retch coals. Then, quickly as it came, it disappears. The weight of the marble melts away, explodes in a million little pieces that settle somewhere deep inside me. Not my stomach — it’s a different place inside my core, the space I’ve tried to ignore my whole life.
Memories rush to me like a charging bull, but they’re not my own. I’m digging a grave. I’m kissing a woman. I’m plucking flowers from a garden. With the images come waves of emotions — pride, love, grief. The memories fade in little more than a heartbeat, but in their wake, they leave… electricity. It’s not quite that, but it’s the only way I can describe it. I bring my fingers in front of my face and rub them together, expecting sparks to ignite. They don’t, and yet I feel electric, buzzing with energy.
I turn my attention to Tei. “What was all that?”
“You absorbed his life essence.”
I cough my surprise. “I did what?”
Tei’s fingers slide from my cheek to my neck, my shoulder, down my arm. His touch has always been charged, but now it’s downright jolting, like my nerve endings have kicked into overdrive. He feels so deep under my skin, I’m not sure he’s not in my bones.
“Can you feel it? Thrumming in your veins, filling the space in your soul meant for power?”
I’d never have described that secret spot inside me like that, but once he says it, I can picture it expanding with energy, turning into a furnace. I crave that feeling more than food and water. “How can this be?”
“You did your duty to the Beyond. Ushered a soul. Where he’s headed, that ghost has no need for the force that tethered his soul to his body, so the Beyond gifts it to you. To feed your powers.”
Powers? Like… my abilities to see the dead?
“Is that something humans can do? Gain… power… from the Beyond?” It feels like an odd question to ask. Like some piece of the puzzle doesn’t quite fit.
Once again, Tei is quiet for a while. His fingers draw lazy circles on my naked skin, and it’s so electrifying it’s near torture, trying to pay attention to anything but his touch.
When he speaks again, it’s a whisper, like a part of him wants to hold onto the words. “Not humans, no.” Another pause. “Just witches.”
