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“That’s not nice.” I pointed at Frederick. “That is manipulation.”
“I know.” He didn’t budge.
“Okay, fine, go get your friends and come inside. I’ll…leave you in the living room. You can stay until the weather passes.”
Oliver ran toward the front of the house, presumably to get the other two into the house. I picked up the pot filled with soap and water, intending to dump it away from the house. We had a designated spot, but Frederick stopped me.
“Hey, no,” he said and took the pot from me. “I can’t believe you just carry this around. Point me where you dump it and I’ll do it.”
The wind blew harder, kicking up my pulse as if the very air around me whispered, hurry. “Okay, fine. Come on.” I scurried ahead, and he followed, carrying the pot to the designated spot as if it weighed nothing. As he dumped the pot, I shifted impatiently from foot to foot, knowing we could’ve done it closer to the house, but a rule was a rule.
When we ran back to the backyard, Oliver had returned. He and Charles were taking down the still-wet clothes from the line. That’s smart. They might blow off the line in the storm.
Truett stared up at the sky, gone ominously dark and boiling. “I wouldn’t have seen it coming.”
“I’ve lived here my whole life, so I’m used to it. Come inside. I’ll put on a pot to keep the clothes wet, so I don’t have to redo the whole batch, hopefully.”
He blinked. “A pot?”
Charles laughed and patted Truett on the shoulder. “You’re a little in over your head, but the rest of us know she means to make the water boil. You do it over the campfire sometimes, when you don’t have servants around.”
They followed me inside, and I motioned to the living room. “Make yourselves comfortable.”
“Hold on.” Frederick sighed.
My arm still tingled where Oliver had touched me. I’d been too busy at the time to notice. It must be a matched thing, I thought, determined to ignore it until it stopped. I refused to rub it and risk him somehow knowing why.
Fredrick continued, “Let me finish what I was saying outside before you banish us to the living room and disappear into a hidey hole somewhere in the house where we can’t see you.”
Truett lifted his eyebrows. “Is that what she’s planning?”
“I’m hazarding a guess.” Frederick held my eye contact. “I understand why you think it makes sense for you to stay here and just live a separate life from us. To you, maybe that would make sense. You stay here, live your life. We ride off to wherever and we never have to see each other again, since we’ll be getting your visions anyway. But it doesn’t work like that. Your visions will get increasingly difficult for you to manage on your own. The longer we are connected, the more you will need to be near us to deflect the pain.”
I opened and closed my mouth, wanting to argue. Wanting to tell him he was so, so wrong, but…
It had been harder than ever before when the vision hit the other morning. Much harder. I lifted my chin, my stubbornness giving me bravado. “My pain is my problem, not yours.”
“Well, if you want to be technical…” Truett stepped toward us. “The harder it gets for you to have visions, the worse the quality of your visions will become, which helps no one. That’s why the woman with the gift travels with her Warrior husbands. They take care of her, and she takes care of them. The visions can get bad enough, and if one of us isn’t with you when it happens…you could die.”
I swallowed. When will the nightmare of my existence cease? Aloud, I asked, “Is that how your wife died?”
Charles answered after a brief silence. “Our first wife died because she couldn’t eat. It didn’t have anything to do with her visions. She wasn’t ever left alone, not without one of us in the nearby vicinity of her.”
Sadness filled his eyes, the kind of bleak grief that reached out and squeezed my own heart. For just a second, I found the ability to pity them for her loss. I couldn’t imagine what it must have felt like for them.
“I see. So, despite the fact you hate me—although I must admit the feeling is rapidly becoming mutual—we’re chained together, because my life is literally at stake?” I looked away, blowing out a ragged breath. “I see just one answer then.”
Truett crossed his arms over his chest. “What’s that?”
“You’ll have to stay here, because I’m never going anywhere with you. And what kind of monsters would you be, if you left me to my death?”
I didn’t give them a chance to process my words. Instead, I waved my hand. “Now, I’ll go skedaddle away to my hidey-hole, also known as the kitchen, to hide away from all of you and, oh, yes, make dinner.”
If I thought they would obey, I was wrong. All four of them followed me into the kitchen, a hulking string of shadows. Fine. If they want to hang out in the kitchen like little boys who hope Mama will let them lick a spatula, then who am I to stop them?
I could wait until Mama came home, as she would be happy to make dinner for everyone…but it was better for everyone’s stomachs if I cooked.
I planned to stuff some peppers—I picked them yesterday, so they were ready. First, I needed to cook up some meat, once I decided how I wanted to season my mixture.
