Page 12 of Snag (Conduit #2)

I gently set the photograph on the dark-wood windowsill, facing it into the room.

Then I circle to sit behind the desk centered within the space, flicking on the desk lamp as I do.

My aunt’s current notebook is still open on the forest-green blotter.

Her favorite platinum fountain pen rests next to it.

The photograph of Disa surrounded by three huge shifters, which I found interred with unknown ashes and a blood-crusted dagger in the family mausoleum, rests on top of the journal.

I remember claiming the photograph and placing the dagger in its box back in the niche alongside the urn that was there. But I don’t remember putting the photo on Disa’s desk.

I settle into the wooden chair, rolling forward to peer down at the photo.

I don’t think it’s one of Mack’s. It’s not shot in black and white, and it predates the other photos by almost two decades.

That reminds me that I’m not even certain when Mack came to be my aunt’s chosen.

Was he the estate groundskeeper first? A shifter originally aligned with the Outcast MC?

Oh, fuck. I still haven’t arranged transport for Mack’s and Ingrid’s bodies to a crematorium. Was that something the Outcast mage Harlee Larson was doing for me? Or Rath ?

Should I … start a to-do list? Or buy a planner?

How does the most powerful essence-wielder in the world stay organized? Yet another question I never asked my aunt. My aunt, who never seemed to have a schedule or even a phone. Why would I ask about those sorts of completely inane things? I had decades to figure out everything …

No. I should have had more time. I didn’t.

Seriously, my focus is all over the place. My mind is as disjointed as the power I’m still in the process of accepting, absorbing. And maybe for the same reason. Maybe I shouldn’t even be trying to function yet.

Still, I’m starting to annoy myself.

I pick up the photo. It’s faded, aged. But as before, I can’t sense if it holds any special protections or preservation spells. It must, though, or the box it was tucked within must have had some sort of protections on it, because it’s been interred for …

I flip the photo over and make note of the date and names on the back. Again.

Oso, Ward, Disa, and Ari. Summer 1989.

Somewhere around thirty-four years.

Even without knowing exactly when Mack became my aunt’s chosen, or why he was digging around the family plot when he died, I don’t think I’m incorrect about this not being one of his photographs.

I suspect it was the blade, not the photo, that Mack was after. A blade with dried blood still somehow etched across its edge. A blade that seethed with dire-wrought malignancy, buried next to an urn with this photo. All three items are clearly connected .

I could give the photo to Coda, along with the names printed across the back.

But despite my resolve to get the answers I need to move forward, it feels almost sacrilegious to dig into something that is really none of my business — something that firmly belongs to my aunt’s past, not mine.

Especially when my own present comes with more immediate problems.

I tuck the photo into my aunt’s half-filled journal. I’ve already scanned the most recent entries in it for clues as to my aunt’s disappearances and death, finding none. I’m not certain why I feel an instinctual need to hide the photo, or who I’m even hiding it from. Myself, I suspect.

Instead, I settle my gaze on the framed photograph I’ve brought upstairs with me, already knowing that I could stare at it for hours and still not absorb every detail. I’m actually slightly wary of how obsessed I might get about it.

The date — 2011 — printed alongside the caption ‘Zaya and her boys’ gives me a starting point to construct a timeline around the memories, people, and connections I’m missing.

I need, I ache, to gather as many answers as possible. For at least one of the mysteries threatening to overwhelm my present, my now. That painful desire threads through all the empty parts in me — the missing gaps in my soul?

And filling those gaps isn’t something Coda can do for me. Even Rought’s memories of that time might not be enough.

But that year, paired with Disa’s journals that likely only I can access? That’s something tangible.

I haven’t read the centuries of journals collected on these shelves.

Journals written by all the Conduits who came before me.

It was never the right time for such things, according to Disa.

Then I was banished, no matter that I didn’t know it.

Some of these journals even predate the Gage bloodline settling in North America as the self-appointed guardians of the intersection point.

My family history leans heavily on the core idea that it was the destiny for our bloodline to be the caretakers of the intersection point— rather than the literal colonization that claiming this site actually was.

What with the Conduit being a goddess and all, as my aunts and uncles would have the world believe.

Now that I’m holding the power of the Conduit and the intersection point, I’m slowly becoming concerned — aware? — that the family history isn’t as revisionary, or as self-aggrandizing, as I previously thought.

Speaking of gods, Muta stirs on my wrist. Transforming into his bushmaster aspect, he slides across the desk to curl around Disa’s journal.

It’s not the sweet gesture it appears to be on the surface.

Disa and Muta were not friendly. I’m almost certain that if my aunt could have countermanded whatever bond my mother invoked moments before her death — binding Muta to nine-year-old me — she would have.

Disa bought into the whole Gage god/goddess mythology, and she didn’t think the future Conduit should be walking around with an inherently nefarious, exceedingly diminished death god on her wrist.

Muta’s spiny tail whips across the desk, sending Disa’s fountain pen spinning to the floor.

“Someone could turn their ankle on that,” I say mildly.

He silently flicks his tongue at me, then curls into a tight coil. Deliberately turning away from me, facing the framed photograph.

“You could be down by the fire. No one is going to hurt me on the property.”

The sulky death god ignores me. Always knowing better. Or rather, always just doing his own thing.

I quickly check the dates on the dozens of matching notebooks filled with Disa’s handwriting on the nearest set of shelves. But after noting that the journals from halfway through 2003 into 2012 are missing and must be shelved elsewhere, I start exploring the desk.

The cabinets at the front of the desk yield a multitude of objects, most essence imbued and all randomly stuffed away, as if tucked somewhere for safekeeping but then forgotten.

I pull out spellbooks and grimoires that need to be shelved, guessing that Disa hadn’t gotten around to figuring out where they should go, stacking them on a corner of the desk.

Muta hisses when I block his view of the window, abandoning Disa’s journal to coil around the new stack of books — most of which quietly hum with varying levels of essence.

Likely not as good as lounging by the fireplace from the bushmaster’s perspective, but still good enough for a nap.

After half-heartedly sifting through its contents, I leave a wooden box filled with the greeting cards my aunt collected but never used where I found it.

Though I have to tamp down a sharp spike of grief upon discovering the collection, and to quash a completely uncharacteristic urge to paw through the massive pile, looking for the cards I know she bought on our trips together.

I don’t dwell in the past like that. I don’t look through photos and reminisce. I don’t actually have all that many photos at all.

I don’t have as many memories as I thought I did.

I also ignore the plethora of financial documents filed in the bottom cabinet, though I’ll need to double-check that I have digital copies of them all.

Especially because I know there are alliances to renegotiate now that I’m the Conduit, specifically with the Outcast Motorcycle Club, whose territory borders the estate.

I set two of the essence-imbued objects on the desk, mindful of not blocking Muta’s view.

Both are used to identify and hone essence-weaving affinities.

The first is set with various crystals and semiprecious stones, and the second with narrow bars of rare metals.

I’ll have Presh work with both as soon as she’s ready for more focused training.

The three slim drawers on the other side of the desk were locked to me the first time I tried them, but they yield to my touch today. Perhaps my connection to the intersection point, and therefore the protections threaded through the house, is strengthening.

The narrow top drawer is filled with writing implements, loose-leaf paper, and bottled inks.

An empty space to the side is presumably where Disa tucked away her current journal.

A pile of seemingly random antique keys fill the central drawer.

I note their location for when I have occasion to need one, notwithstanding that none of these will unlock the armoire taunting me from across the tower office unless a keyhole appears in its doors.

The bottom drawer is literally filled with gold, along with some platinum.

Mostly coins of various vintages and currencies, but mixed with numerous bars and a few heavy chain necklaces.

Though the Conduit rarely trades in worldly currency, sometimes paper money or credit cards aren’t what a situation calls for.