by Kade Cook
“Now that is service.” Rachael grins from ear to ear at her unexpected greeting. The sight of her best friend standing before her, holding two clear bottles of beer topped with lime, throws her into a great mood.
“Nothing but the best for you.” Gabrian stretches out her arms to enhance the show of comradery and the offering therein.
Rachael shakes her head, her red tassels bouncing carelessly around her face, and reaches out, unburdening Gabrian’s hand from her frosty load. Then without a chance to retreat, she drops the cooler lodged within her grasp and leans forward, thrusting her free arm quickly around her friend, and pulls her in close—homesick for the bond that has been faded with the realities of life. She tucks her head into the crook of Gabrian’s neck and sighs. “I miss you so much,” Rachael whimpers, her voice trembling into a whisper.
“I miss you too.” Gabrian snuffs as her emotions get the better of her. She pulls away from Rachael’s momentary capture and wipes away the moisture welling up in her eyes then clears her throat. “So hurry up, get in here, and drink your drink before it gets warm.”
They both chuckle in the heartfelt moment of comic relief and let go of each other—and the tension walled up between them—to begin their trek through the kitchen, down into the living area, and straight through the French doors that lead out onto the sun-filled deck awaiting them.
Setting her cooler down beside her, Rachael stands frozen. Her eyes drift outward over the small white peaks that dance across the water in the distance before her. She gets lost watching the waves sway and shift from invisible currents pushing and pulling at it from beneath its surface, while the warm sun casts diamonds to appear periodically within the folds of its ripples.
Rachael extends out her arms in a long, exaggerated stretch, letting the sun kiss her flesh from every angle, soaking in its bountiful rays, then lowers herself onto the chair behind her and leans back onto the oversized deck pillows, absorbing the warmth of the sun tucked within it folds. She reaches down, wraps her slender, pale fingers around the neck of the cool bottle and tips back her beverage, happy to be where she is and with present company.
Smiling with genuine pleasure, Gabrian sidles up on the chair beside her and does the same. “So, what is new in the land of Rachael?”
Rachael sits up a bit and pushes her sunglasses up the bridge of her nose. “Hey! Why don’t I get us set up for some lunch?” she says, jumping up from her chaise, and reaches for her cooler. She bounds to her feet then marches across the smooth, wooden deck toward the patio table and starts pulling things out of her cooler.
Gabrian shrugs at her reaction to what she thought was a pretty basic question, then climbs out of her perch and joins her at the table to help her set up. She watches as Rachael, who is draped in her long red curly tresses, continues to pull things out from the belly of the cooler, stuffing pieces of rogue veggies into her mouth that had escaped their confinements on their voyage here. Not able to contain her amusement of her friend’s peculiar eating frenzy, she bites her lip and snorts.
“You didn’t have to bring your own food, you know. I actually remembered to go to the market this time.” Gabrian winks at her and jogs across the deck, in through the French doors, and disappears into the house. Within moments, she quickly returns with an armload of pre-packed containers filled with a rainbow of salads—everything from lettuce to pasta. There is even one with some kind of mixture of fruit in it for dessert if they so choose to indulge. “See,” she says with a toothy grin, proud of her stash even though she herself will barely pick at it. Gabrian’s finicky appetite for mostly fleshy foods is what drives her cravings for sustenance, that and life energy, but she is not going to think about that today. Today is about mending fences and fun.
Rachael halts her assault on the vegetation and laughs, her mouth half-filled with evidence of the onslaught. “Well, look at you go. Were you planning on feeding an army? Holy cow, Gabe, that is one major pile of food.”
“What?” Gabrian marches proudly toward her friend and lowers everything onto the table. “Too much?” She had been in such a state of worry when she was at the market about hanging out, she couldn’t think straight about what exactly Rachael might like to snack on, so in her dismay she just picked up one of pretty much everything that looked like a deer or rabbit would eat.
“Maybe just a smidge,” Rachael teases, raising her hand, and pinches her thumb and index finger together with pursed lips.
“Oh well.” Gabrian shrugs, continuing to straighten out the containers in an orderly fashion around the eating surface. “Then there will be plenty of leftovers for you to take home with you.”
Rachael twists her face up at Gabrian through her hair.
“What? Someone has to eat it and it is highly unlikely it will be me.”
Remembering that Gabrian’s tastes have altered in the past six months due to her lifestyle change, she shrugs back and nods concurring. “You could always feed that mountain of a guardian you have, he looks like he could put a few tons of food away in a setting, or maybe your Uncle Tynan.”
Gabrian’s face loses its sheen for a moment as she contemplates the logic but pushes it away and tucks her loose mahogany locks behind her left ear and sighs. “Nah, Shane is into growing his own rabbit food, and Uncle Ty is never around.” She peeks over to the small guest house perched quaintly amongst a shelter of lilac trees about fifty feet to the right side of her parent’s house. “It would just go to waste. So, guess what? It’s all yours.” Gabrian forces a chuckle and glances up briefly at her friend.
Seeing the loneliness surfacing in her eyes, Rachael raises her beer to make a toast and hopefully shake the sadness out of her friend. “To a wonderful afternoon filled with sun, snacks, and silliness.”
“Cheers to that,” Gabrian hoots, raising her drink, and clinks it against Rachael’s in hopes that it will be exactly that.
They spend the next couple of hours picking away at the assorted spread of salads. Gabrian slaps a couple of steaks on the large metallic beast of a barbeque that sat lurking under the extended roof in the corner—sizzling them only long enough to hear the count of five then flips them over in order to repeat the count down again. Then she rips them from the grill and onto a white paper plate to become fair game for devouring by anyone who so chooses to rise to the challenge.
Rachael looks away and focuses on the blow boats that had made their way into the harbour earlier to stomach her own meal not dripping of blood.
They chat about work and how different it is working in a small town compared to the busy, never-sleeping city of Manhattan. Gabrian inquires more about Rachael’s gifts as a Reincarnate since the awakening—they have always focused on her dilemmas and traumas due to the fact she had never been told nor was prepared for what lies in store for her. Rachael recalls many recycles that included being a child of a band of Gypsies, to that of an elderly seamstress for royalty, but she also reveals that she always feels there is more to her story—a part of her life span that seems to be missing—but she can never figure it out or remember anything about it, not even a small detail that may help her sooth her wandering mind.
The retelling tires Rachael and begins to drain the buoyancy of her happy bubble she normally dwells in. Seeing her mood darken and lull into a sullen state, Gabrian decides to distract her and revisit her previous and seemingly harmless question. Rachael’s odd reaction to it has her curious as to what is truly whirling around in her friend’s head.
“So, since you dodged it the first time, I will ask you again. What is new?”
Racheal stops chewing on her greens for a moment, grabs the neck of her nearing warm drink and washes down her feed. Her eyes cloud over and wander out across the water, surfing the waves with her thoughts.
“Rachael.”
Rachael swallows down the warm liquid and sighs at her friend persistence. “I’m fine, nothing new to tell.” She pulls her fingers through her wild curls and flops them over to the side of
her head then re-lodges them deeply within the crimson locks—leaning her head onto them and sighs again. “That’s the problem.”
Gabrian stares at the quiver building within her friend’s bottom lip and feels ashamed for not noticing Rachael’s gloomy state sooner. She is so caught up in her own misery that when she finally does notice, she still made it all about her—how selfish she has been. She gets up, jogs across the deck, and returns with her prize. Stretching out her slender, sun-kissed arms and swiping at all the uneaten food dishes on the table, she pushes them to side—clearing a direct path between them. Setting down a tall slender bottle of golden liquid in front of Rachael, Gabrian returns to her perch—straightening her spine and arching her left eyebrow as she stares directly into her eyes.
“The doctor is in the house.” Gabrian scouts her head around, taking in her surroundings. “Or in this case, is on the deck, but whatever. It is irrelevant, let’s see what the good old doc can unravel today.” Gabrian winks at her friend and wrings her hands together as if she has some sinister plan in store.
Rachael rolls her eyes, trying not to grin, but her attention darts back out across the water, sinking in her misery. “It’s stupid,” she says, sitting back and curling her knees up against her chest. “Forget it.”
“If something is making you this upset. Which it is, obviously, then it is not stupid—far from it.”
Rachael wraps her fingers tightly around the neck of her bottle and draws it to her pressed lips. She tips it up and lets the remnants of her beer drain into her mouth, pushing against the bridge of her sunglasses, and readjusts them to cover her teary eyes. “It’s Orroryn.”
“Orroryn? You mean our Orroryn, Mr. Redmond from Manhattan, Orroryn?”
“Yes, that is the one.”
Gabrian struggles to find the connection between the elder of the Schaeduwe Fellowship, who is always well-mannered and considerate to most everyone around him, and Rachael’s aggravated mood. Her mind sifts over any interaction she can remember where Rachael had been involved with him but realizes she probably has only seen the tip of that iceberg in their encounters. She recalls one instance where Rachael’s demeanor toward him was different and a remark made by her just before Gabrian’s whole world got flipped upside down.
“It’s too bad that we don’t date our clients, because he is hot.”
And the lights come on. “Ah, Orroryn.”
“He drives me crazy,” Rachael mumbles over her beer.
Gabrian’s brow furrows, maybe she is misunderstanding again. Did she hate this man or was she in love with him? Gabrian is not sure but she is betting on l’amour.
“He looks at me like I am a child. Even though he treats me with the utmost respect, I know he can’t see me as anything other than a youngling.”
“Well, in his defence, from what I gather, he is a considerable amount of years older than you.”
“I know but only in continuous years dwelling in the same body. I think if I put all my lives together, it would be a pretty close score and that should be taken into account.”
“Oh, of course.”
“Damn right, it should.,” Rachael growls, reaching her arm out to set the bottle down in defiance. “I also know that being a Schaeduwe, they only love once and that he has already spent his heart on a human many years ago.”
“Yes, that is the story that Shane shared with me too.”
“Exactly, I know all of this. I do.” Rachael’s glasses slide down the bridge of her nose as she sits up a bit, her hands flailing about her, cutting through the glittery sparkle of her aura as she speaks. “So, why is it that I can’t stop thinking about him? About how he smells like summer rain, about what kind of tea he prefers to drink, about how I am aware of how his body shifts with every move he makes, and how my pulse races through my body like wildfire every time the man enters the same room I am in?”
Gabrian chuckles at her friend’s tormented plea for answers as she plays through all her own emotions she felt for Shane in the beginning and how her skin still tingles whenever he is near.
“Yeah, they do have that way about them, don’t they?”
“No, I mean yeah, I mean no it’s not like that. It’s different. It’s much more than that.”
As Rachael rattles on and on about all the strange familiarities and the idiosyncrasies that she has incurred with Orroryn, Gabrian tips her beer up to wet her mouth in the hot, dry summer air, taking a sip, and realizes her beverage has grown unpleasantly warm in the sun. Her light grey aura expands around her and sways playfully as she smiles and nods while Rachael continues her tirade, trying to figure out what she is going to do about her unfixable predicament, but all Gabrian can think of is how she wants her beer to be cold, how she wishes she could put it into a bucket of ice to cool it again and make it taste better—warm beer is not exactly super yummy. But she remains still, unmoving other than the gentle sway of her essence. She does not want to be rude and interrupt her friend’s needful rant to go find one. So, she sits patiently listening, dreaming of cool, fragmented ice crystals she used to watch grow across her bedroom window in the winter as a child and how it covered the pane of glass with an exquisite chaotic display of flawless art.
“Gabrian,” a voice calls out, muffled in the distance, “Gabrian!”
Gabrian jumps, snapping out of her daydream, and forces her eyes to focus at the sudden loud roar of her name.
“What the hell, Gabrian?”
Gabrian’s eyes widen in confusion. Seeing Rachael’s face contort into a horrified open-lipped expression, she wonders if the fury on her face is because she was caught off in la-la-land somewhere, not listening while her friend poured her heart out in front of her.
But her guess changes—quickly. Dropping her eyes to follow the path to where Rachael’s unblinking stare is cemented, she soon discovers the reason for Rachael’s abrupt outburst. Where her warm and unpleasant tasting beer once sat, brewing within her hand into a new level of grossness from the sun’s almighty rays, now stands absolute with a modest layer of ice encasing it. Not only had it wrapped flawlessly around the bottle but managed to encroach its way down beneath her fingers to the glass surface below—reaching halfway across the table— to glisten like diamonds as it melts in the heat.
Gabrian stares blankly at the anomaly that has manifested before her. Quiet, barely breathing, and becoming unhinged with every second that passes, she wiggles her fingers, removing them without effort away from the bottle now filled with ice cold beer. Her head lifts and her pupils dilate until the blue that normally encompasses them is nearly impossible to see.
With her aura flaring wildly in all directions at once, Gabrian manages to surface from her swirling vortex of overload and her eyes seek out Rachael as she exhales a ragged breath. “We need to call Ethan.”
23
EXPLODING HEADS
AFTER RECEIVING A VERY odd and unusual telephone call from Rachael, Ethan pulls on his favourite Yankee’s ball cap and heads for the Shadwell’s main house. Not yet understanding what the statement ‘new development’ actually entails, he is not sure what to expect when he gets there.
Pulling up into the crushed stone driveway, he passes the garden gate and the usual cold rush of silent warning rakes across his soul—like he had crossed through an invisible barrier. Ethan has a feeling that this was the ward that Cera had placed upon her home so many years ago to protect the child she would never know. Feeling a twinge of sadness begin to plague his heart, he hurries his trek and throws his truck into park at the edge of the stone steps that lead to Gabrian’s front door.
Rapping lightly against the wooden grains of the entry, he is met with an overly-excited crimson-haired Rachael. Not even barely getting the door open, she thrusts out her tiny hand and grabs on to the front of Ethan’s East Coast grey T-shirt, hauling him into the entry with conviction.
“You are not going to believe this,” she says, continuing to drag him by the arm across the house, and almost
face-planting him into the closed French doors leading onto the patio.
“What is going on, Rachael?” Ethan twists his head away from the small pane of glass that he’s being pushed into and crosses his arms across his chest. Then with a lifted eyebrow, he focuses on the short fireball bouncing at his heels, waiting for him to explain what is going on.
“Look.” She tugs at his arm to refocus his attention on what is happening on the deck and points her finger to where Gabrian sits.
“What exactly am I supposed to be looking at?” Ethan sighs and does as he is told. He sets his sights to his young Borrower friend and colleague to find out what all the huff is about. But he doesn’t notice anything unusual other than the way she stares at her beer.
“I don’t understand the problem here, Rachael. All I see is someone sitting in the sun on a beautiful wooden deck, overlooking the harbour and enjoying a beer.” Ethan unfolds his arm and rubs his chin with a freed hand, then squints his eyes at the tiny titan beside him and chuckles. “If this is what you consider an emergency then I think I need a few issues myself.”
Rachael growls at his lack of observational skills and snarls at him. “Look...harder. Don’t you see anything that seems a little peculiar about the table in front of her?”
Ethan halts his playful banter and revisits his survey of the crime scene. There is nothing too unusual about it—except for maybe the dark patch on the decking just below the table. His eyes climb upward for the culprit of the mess. He spots a glimmer as the reflection of sunlight sparkles on the surface surrounding Gabrian’s beer—littering halfway across the table.
He presses closer to the glass, getting a clearer view, and notices the strange glimmer seems to climb oddly up the side of the bottle onto its neck, except for an outline that resembles the imprint of where fingers might fit. He studies it, lost in the moment, trying to conclude what it is that he is actually seeing. This oddity is not glass or plastic of some sort, this is ice.