“Call the bank she used to work for, they should be able to help you,” I encourage.
“How do you know this?” he asks as he wipes again at his cheeks, his eyes looking less desolate and more stunned.
“The bones,” I tell him, gesturing down at them.
Moisture fills his eyes again, and he silently nods his head. “Every morning when I’d leave for work, she’d always call out that she was sending her guardian angels with me. She’d say she didn’t need ’em and she’d rather I have the extra protection.” His blue eyes settle on mine, and his gaze grows intense. “It’s like she’s still looking out for me,” he tells me, his voice cracking as more tears spill down his cheeks.
“She always will be, Paul. I know it’s not the same, but she will always watch over you and Jackson, never doubt that.”
“Thank you,” Paul chokes out, and then he scoots to the end of the booth. I pluck his wedding ring, Phoebe’s wedding ring, and the penny from the bones and hand them to him. He slips his ring back on his finger, loops the chain back through her wedding set and places it around his neck, and the penny goes back in his pocket.
He reaches out a hand, and I place mine in his. He holds it for a moment, overcome with a wave of new emotion. “I owe you,” he tells me as he shakes my hand.
“No, you don’t, now go home to Jackson, wake him up and hold him, and then start living the legacy that Phoebe deserves to have,” I order.
He nods, wiping fresh tears from his cheeks, and then he gets up and walks out of the bar.
I don’t tell him about the bones his penny landed on, about the woman he’ll meet that will help him find love again. About the way she’ll care for him and his son, or about the daughter she’ll give him. I don’t explain how his new wife will ask to call their little girl Phoebe, and how they’ll all live beautiful lives honoring all the incredible things that made his late wife the best of souls.
I can feel that he’s not ready for that, so I keep it to myself as I bless the bones with my gratitude and, one by one, place them back in the pouch. I used to only see the bad parts of Grammy Ruby being pulled away all the time. I thought being summoned here and there could only ever be something inconvenient, but as I put the bones away and hear a truck firing up in the parking lot, I know I’ll never see things the same. This...this is beautiful, and for the first time, I can’t wait to see what’s next.
12
“That was pretty incredible, what you did back there,” Rogan tells me, his compliment breaking the silence we’ve been driving in for the last thirty minutes.
I look over at him, the shadows in the car caressing his face and darkening his features. “I don’t know what future readings will be like, but for a first one, that was a game changer,” I admit. “Do Hemamancers do readings?” I ask, curious. “I know your magic works differently, but I don’t know how it all works.”
“Blood Witches don’t have any relics like your bones, it’s just the blood itself for us. We do have a kind of reading that we perform, but the information we get from the blood is very different from how your bones work.”
“How so?” I query.
“Well, for starters, it’s a lot less detailed. I can tell from someone’s blood that they’re depressed or that they’re suffering from other physical ailments from exhaustion to disease, but the why isn’t prevalent in the blood itself. If I had read that man, I would have sensed the depression and known it was at an alarming level, but I wouldn’t have been able to discern the cause without him telling me,” he explains.
“Does your brother get summoned a lot? Do you go with him when he does?” I ask, wondering what the other Bone Witch’s life is like. I suspect it would be fun to have a partner in crime, so to speak. To have someone who knows what you’re dealing with when it comes to magic and being a witch. My grandfather knew what Grammy Ruby was, but it never sounded like he fully got what it meant or how it felt.
“It happens now and again, but not often. I’ve never seen him do a reading; he doesn’t talk about them much.”
“Wait,” I exclaim, turning in my seat so I can get a good look at Rogan. “You’ve never seen your brother do a reading? Like, ever?” I clarify.
“No,” he responds with a dismissive shrug.
“But I thought you said that the two of you worked with the same clients. He doesn’t do readings for them?”
“He does, sometimes, but I’m never in the room for that. We make potions together, and things like that work for some of the same clients in different capacities, but, yeah, no readings.”
“Hasn’t he ever done a reading for you?” I ask, completely astonished by this news.
My grandmother did a reading for everyone in the family when they turned sixteen. After that, she’d do them if we asked or if she sensed we were really struggling with something. It seems weird to me that two brothers would keep their abilities so separate.
“We tried to read each other when we were younger, but it never worked. We asked our uncle about it, and he said it didn’t always work for people close to you.”
“Huh,” I mumble, making a note to read Tad when I get back so I can test that theory. “Did your uncle ever read for you?” I ask, assuming that his uncle was the former Osteomancer in the family.
“No, he always said it would be a waste of his magic. He knew where Elon and I would end up, just like him and his brother.”
“Well, it sounds like he was the life of the party,” I snark.
Rogan gives an amused snort. “That would be a massive understatement.”
There it is, I think to myself as I catch the slightest tightening around his eyes when he mentions his family. It doesn’t take the bones to tell me that there is something there, something massive and painful. The car grows quiet again, and I find myself studying Rogan’s face. I’m sure he can feel that I’m just sitting here staring at him, but he lets me do it without saying a word.
He’s hurting. I picked up on that almost as soon as I met him, but I figured it had to do with his brother. But there’s more there.
“Would you like me to read you?” I ask randomly as I study the angles of his face. I blink and then try to shake some sense into me when I realize I’m perving out a little too much.
Rogan’s brow dips, but in the dark, I can’t quite make out if it’s confusion or concern that’s etched into his features.
“Um, sure, I guess, but it’ll have to be some other time, because we’re here,” he declares, and I pivot to face forward as we pull through the trees into a clearing that displays a large well-lit house. I lean forward so I can take it all in. His house is modern, the structure more windows than anything else. There’s a dark gray paneling on the parts that aren’t glass, and beautiful cedar accents frame the doors and line the underside of the roof.
Soft golden spotlights light up the property from the outside, and there’s a similar-colored glow coming from rooms inside that give the appearance that someone is home. It dawns on me then that I have no idea if Rogan is married or lives with a girlfriend or boyfriend. He made it seem like it was just him and his brother, but I never really asked.