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supernatural, she shouldn’t have been aging that fast.
    She’d aged, while I hadn’t.
    She stepped close and hugged me. I held her tight, more happy to see her than I wanted to let on. I’d missed her, and thought about her often over the term of my banishment.
    “Larkspur, it is lovely to see you, my friend.”
    I smiled, and looked at her more closely. She was in her forties at best while I crept over the sixty mark, though I still looked as I had when I first met her—barely thirty. Again, appearances could be deceiving.
    “You just happened to be out my way, looking to have tea?” I closed the door and went to the old fashioned stove. I blew on the small bed of coals inside, igniting them again.
    “Tea might make this conversation easier,” Giselle said, her voice and body slumping with what I assumed was fatigue.
    I motioned for her to sit and she took the only chair available, the only chair I had. I wasn’t big on company.
    Being who I was, I waited for her to spill her guts. Patience I had in spades and it had served me well over the years. Even if within my own circles I was still considered a child.
    She sat quietly while I prepared the tea. I remembered she liked the cream put in first, then a half teaspoon of honey, not sugar. I used my own blend of herbs for the tea, the smell of chamomile filling the small room in a matter of minutes.
    After pouring the brew into the only cup I had, a ridiculously delicate china cup with blackberry vines scrolled across it, I handed it to her.
    She took it, her fingers trembling. “Thank you.”
    I nodded, saying nothing. Though I had to admit my curiosity rose with each passing moment.
    Why did I get the feeling the requests of my two visitors would intersect?
    Giselle took a sip of tea, smiling sadly over the rim before speaking. “There is a missing child, one that I would ask you to save.”
    My eyebrows shot up. “I heard through the grapevine you were training a Tracker. First one in a lot of years, why not get him to find the kid?”
    Her brown eyes seemed to flicker, and I recognized hints of madness. The spirits and her natural talent were not kind to her, taking too much of who she was with each Reading of a person’s future. “The Tracker I am training, she is too young, too inexperienced to face the creatures that hold this child captive.”
    That did not sound good. “And you think I can get this kid out?”
    She took another sip of her tea, then put the cup down but didn’t let go. Just held onto it as if her hands were cold. “You must.”
    I burst out laughing. “I must do nothing I don’t want to, Giselle. You of all people should know that.”
    “He is a child, yet already he is a Writer, and the words he writes are ripples of prophecy.”
    I leaned my hip against the edge of the stove away from the hot kettle. “You don’t mean writer as in Stephen King, do you?”
    Giselle’s eyebrows rose and I kept her gaze, refusing to blush. What did she think, I was a complete illiterate? Gods, it was boring on your own for twenty years, reading was one of the few pleasures I had besides my metal work. She cleared her throat and dropped her eyes to her teacup.
    “No, I mean Writer as in the spirits speak through him, demanding he be their voice. It is far worse than being a Reader like myself. He is without training. I am shocked he has made it this far.”
    That much I already knew. Writers and Readers, they needed help navigating the early years as their talents rose up. Without help, the often lost their minds to the information coming through them. “How is it, then, that he’s still alive?”
    Her head snapped up and her brown eyes met mine. “What do you mean?”
    I blew out a slow breath. So much of the supernaturals history was embedded in me that it was hard to remember I wasn’t really supposed to tell all I knew. Then again, this was Giselle and I’d known her since she was a child. And she was one of the few people unable to