“Huh?” I ask, the single syllabic sound requesting him to repeat whatever it was that I missed.
“Have you sealed yourself to them yet?”
“The bones?”
“No, to Stephen James,” he snarks, pausing for dramatic emphasis. “Of course the bones!”
I reluctantly swat away visions of the tattooed model my cousin and I both spend many an hour on Insta drooling over, and focus on his point.
“No. I spotted the pouch, freaked out, watched my life crash and burn like a downed plane, and then called you.”
“Lennox, what the fuck?” he chastises. “Ma, don’t start with that shit,” he defends against my aunt’s squawking in the background. “Leni has unsealed bones sitting in her house,” he rats.
There’s a scuffle on the other end of the phone before my Aunt Hillen’s voice comes screeching through the line. “Lennox Marai Osseous, what in the name of goat balls do you think you’re doing?” she mom-yells at me.
I flinch. She pauses like she actually wants an explanation.
“Um, waiting to see if the bones will choose someone else?” I respond, only half joking.
Aunt Hillen gasps, and I cringe against the sound.
“Leni, it’s you. You’re the next Osteomancer. Stop messing around and take it seriously just like you’ve been taught your whole life to do.” With that, she hangs up on me.
I pull the phone away from my ear and stare at the lit up screen until it blinks black. I set the phone on the table and then stare at the velvet pouch, indecision warring with what I’ve been raised to do in the event that this ever happened. I take a deep fortifying breath and reach for the bag.
Fuck my life...here goes nothing.
2
Voices echo in my mind as I run through every lecture I’ve sat through my entire life about what to do if the bones were to ever choose me. First, immediately seal them to you or risk them falling into the wrong hands and damaging our line of magic to infinity and beyond. Second, bind a familiar to help protect and stabilize any and all abilities that will show up over time. Third...shit, what was the third thing?
I tick off the numbers on my hand over and over as I will my mind to deliver the information I know it has stored somewhere inside of its tangled recesses. Third...add a bone to the pouch that represents me and my reign.
Relief fills me as I remember that step, and then I cringe as understanding sinks in. Yikes, where am I supposed to find a bone to do that? Does it have to be a human bone, or can I hit up my local fried chicken joint, eat a drumstick and call it a day? My stomach rumbles hungrily at the thought, but I dismiss it and focus on the last major task I need to tackle.
Fourth, take over the shop and guide anyone the magic chooses. Sounds simple enough, but I have a sinking feeling it will be anything but. There’s more to it all: inheritances, abilities that will just show up like unwelcome relatives, dealing with the Order, but these first four tasks are the big ones.
I groan like a five-year-old on the verge of an epic whinefest. It takes all the maturity I’ve mustered in my thirty years of life to not stomp my foot and start making claims about how life isn’t fair. I grudgingly pull the velvet pouch toward me from the center of the table and take a deep empowering breath. I untie the black thread at the top of the bag that keeps it cinched shut. Amber, black currant and balsam rise up to greet me as I pull it open, and it feels like a balmy blanket of power was just thrown over my shoulders.
Small bones and bone chips from larger sources sit ominously at the base of the pouch, each one with a symbol or set of symbols carved into them. I don’t know what any of it means yet, but I will the moment I spill my blood on them and seal their magic, their history, to me. I reach out and trace a bone chip that has a diamond shape carved into it. There’s a slash through the rhombus and what looks to be bolts of lightning at each of the points.
I run my finger over every marking, hypnotized by the hum of power I feel in them already without any kind of forged connection. Goose bumps sprinkle up my arms, and a shiver crawls through my body. Shaking my head to clear my ominous thoughts, I bring the pouch of bones with me to the kitchen. I root through my utensil drawer until I wrap my palm around a steak knife.
I don’t waste any time pressing the blade to my hand and slicing a cut right along the heart line of my palm. I may not love that the bones chose me, but I’ve done enough fucking around. Tad and Aunt Hillen are right, it’s time to get down to business. Blood flows from the wound and pools in my palm. I position it over the opening of the deep purple velvet bag and slowly tilt my hand, my fairy pool of hemoglobin spilling over. I hold my breath as my essence drips down to coat the top of the bones, stamping them with all that I am and claiming them as mine—however reluctant that claim may be.
I watch, surprise striking through me, as the red spatters of my blood slowly disappear as though the bones are soaking it all up and claiming me right back. A thunderous crack rends the air. I’m yanked from where I’m standing in the kitchen, leaning against the counter, dripping ichor all over a bag of bones, and I’m slammed up against the ceiling by a powerful, unseen force.
It knocks the air out of me, and I gasp and struggle to fill my lungs as a soul-freezing cold crashes through my body. My skin pebbles and simultaneously burns from the frigid assault. Frostbite feels like it kisses my every cell, and my lungs are entirely too empty to support the scream that I feel in my soul from the pain.
Voices explode all around, thousands of whispers swirling and zooming past me, making me disoriented. I can’t seem to latch on to anything they’re saying through the arctic agony. Black spots sneak into my vision, and if I didn’t know better, I’d think I was about to die, suffocating on nothing, frozen from the inside out.
My vision clicks off, and the images of my kitchen are replaced by faces. They flash by so quickly it’s hard to focus on any individual one, but after a few seconds, I start to notice similarities. High cheekbones, similar jaw lines, uniquely colored eyes. They’re my family. The Osteomancers that came before me.
When finally my Grammy Ruby’s face flashes by, disappearing all too quickly, the images suddenly morph. Bones being shaken and splayed for reading after reading flicker in front of me. Everything else is dark except for the bones, their markings, and the talismans that help guide the readings. I feel as though knowledge and power are coaxed out of me with each flash of a reading. Suddenly I know what they mean. I know the right way to interpret each cast of the pouch’s contents. Abilities braid themselves into my soul, but the raw power of it all is so overwhelming that I can’t see clearly what the infusion of ability will allow me to do.
Gravity kicks in out of nowhere, and the next thing I know, I’m falling to the floor from the ceiling, a painful splat overtaking all of my senses. I lie there, stunned and silent until a desperate gasp rips through the quiet. I finally manage to pull a frigid breath into my chest, only to release a pain-filled groan as I exhale. My cheek is plastered to the laminate floor, and all I can think is that I need to sweep under my cupboards...oh, and what the fuck just happened to me?
I could be paranoid, but I’m pretty sure that my ancestors just bitch-slapped me for my ungrateful response to being selected.