Page 111 of Found Objects

When I returned to the grove, I found Cole still staring at Teague and saw that Abel had passed out. He was lying face down in the grass.

“What happened?” I asked Cole.

“I don’t… Abel looked at Teague—that is Teague, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“Well, he glanced over there at him, and then down he went.”

“He must’ve scared him. That happens sometimes.”

“I suspect he did it on purpose for you.”

“For me?”

“Yeah. The way he watched you when you left, I think something occurred to him.”

I turned to Teague. “I need to change and burn him to ash in the cleansing flame.”

He shook his head, not wanting to be rude to Cole and speak into my mind as he normally did. For whatever reason, he’d allowed Cole to see him, so it was important to communicate with him.

“It has to be me. This is what I was made for, my true purpose,” I reasoned with my oldest friend. “And I can feel that I’m supposed to.”

Second shake of his head, and then his hand went sideways, making a cutting motion.

“I felt my power rise.”

“No,” came the word in my mind. Clearly, he was tired of playing charades with me for Cole’s benefit.

“I did,” I told him. “I felt my power rise, which I’m supposed to––”

“Hey.”

I turned to Cole.

“I think, however you give people to the land, that’s what should happen now.”

“But Cole, I’m a––”

“I know what you are, but maybe that’s not you anymore.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Well, you changed. You told me you did. And evidence of that change is me, right?”

“You?”

“Your goddess, she made you,” he stated. “Then later, she allowed you to be different than the others she created.”

“Yes.”

“And perhaps, as a result of that, you’ve been given the gift of friendship, community, family, and finally…love.”

My mind was reeling. It couldn’t be that simple. I was still a creature of vengeance and enmity and––

“No,” Cole said, shaking his head.

“It’s not that easy or––”