Chapter Seven

Clash of the case worker titans

The week after Grand-mère's departure saw the meeting of the two social workers assigned to my families. Mrs. Morley and Vanessa did not exactly hit it off, though Vanessa and my mother seemed to get along surprisingly well. Mom held onto Roslyn almost the entire meeting, as if assuring her self that Roslyn was still there. Mrs. Morley eyed me like I was some strange and not exactly wholesome creature. Vanessa gave that self-same look back to Mrs. Morley. The Burquets and I left without knowing whether we would see each other again before Roz's eighteenth birthday.

The next day Vanessa stopped by the house on a surprise visit. She informed us that she would allow unsupervised visits between Mom and Poppa and I, but that Mrs. Morley was "concerned" that my magic might hurt Roslyn or Bruce. She wanted any contact between my siblings and I to be supervised by a non-partisan state psychic, which effectively meant that if she had her way I wouldn't see my siblings for a good long while.

The Department of Preternatural Affairs (DPA) had only been around for about five years at that time. Before the DPA, Damien was paid as a contractor to the California Department of Corrections. He still is, but when the DPA was established he received a note in the mail advising that his retainer checks would bear their new seal. It took some fairly involved wrangling for the DPA to admit that they were not a law enforcement agency and that the laws on the books did not provide their staff with the authority to even detain sentient preternaturals, let alone carry out warrants of execution or extermination. That was only one of a series of set backs for the DPA that resulted in the department becoming more of a support service than a department with a fully autonomous sphere of influence.

However, the DPA learned from their set backs. All state employees paid to use psychic abilities for the state can only be employed by the DPA. They have departmental liaisons in just about every state department, including the Department of Justice through which the Child Protective Programs are organized. However, the state psychics were – and are – in greater demand than the DPA could recruit to supply. That deficit is only exacerbated by the two year probationary period that every state psychic has to complete before being authorized to use their abilities on state business.

That's not a criticism – it's a statement of fact. As a preeter with similar abilities to those sought by the DPA, I fully concur with their proving standards. The ability to screw up with the best of intentions is too great to sacrifice the training meant to avoid such screw ups.

Be that as it may, the nature of Damien's job kept him in contact with most of the state psychics who were already certified through the DPA and the DOJ to provide supervision for CPS related visits. That meant that all of the state psychics Damien worked with were ethically required by the DPA to advise CPS of partisan tendencies.

After Vanessa left that afternoon, I sat down and started to write Rozzie a letter. I wanted to tell her how much I loved her and how I always thought of her. I wanted her to know that I was keeping my promise not to forget her and that, if it did take us a while to see each other again, that I would keep on keeping my promise. I wanted her to know how very much I missed her. I thought about asking for a disposable camera so I could snap pictures of my new home and share them with her – something so she could see her pictures on my vanity mirror and in photo frames with Mom and Poppa and Bruce.

I put pen to paper and I began to write, but I never finished that letter. Tears got in the way. They blotted out all the words I tried to put on the paper. By the fifth re-start I grew so frustrated that I threw the pen down, grabbed up my quilt and buried my sobs in its folds. How could anyone think I'd ever let harm come to my sister? That I would ever cause her harm? It wasn't fair and it wasn't right! She was my baby sister and I was supposed to be there, to advise her and watch over her and help her with her homework. We were supposed to swap clothes and share secrets and giggle at our brothers and hang out together.

Damien came in while I was sobbing on the bed. He sat down beside me and stroked my hair and my back and held me when I turned to bury my sobs in his shoulder. He crooned meaningless noises while I cried over the unfairness of it all. When the tears died down, he got up and came back with his camera and we took the pictures I wanted to share with Rozzie. Afterwards, Damien left me to stare back down at a clean sheet of paper, trying to find a way to say everything I wanted to say without bringing back the tears.

I gave up and wondered toward the kitchen. I paused in the hallway, hearing Damien on the phone.

"Ms. Ramirez, you and I both know that Claudia Morley is a preeter-hater! She has no business taking her prejudice out on my daughter! … She radiates fear every time she looks at us! … Rhiannon, my mother and myself … Listen, Ms. Ramirez, if it was about protecting Roslyn I could understand it, but it's not. When you're talking about mages versus psychics, you're talking apples to applesauce – a psychic won't be able to prevent or to stop or to be anything but a battery pack when it's a mage they're supposed to be on guard against … If you already knew it – … Oh. I see … Well, consider this a heads up. I've instructed my lawyer to start the proceedings to challenge Mrs. Morley's conditions. You should be hearing from her shortly. Her name is Agatha Bremmer … Yeah … I appreciate it … It about broke her heart … I assure you, Ms. Ramirez, if I had any concern, even a twinge, that Rhiannon might hurt her sister, I wouldn't be fighting for them to be able to see each other right now. Rhiannon loves Roslyn far too much to be able to take the thought of hurting her. I won't subject her to that possibility … I see … Thank you again."

He set down the receiver and said, "You can come on in, Rhi."

I walked into the room. Damien turned around to face me and he took a few steps towards me. "You heard most of the conversation," he stated.

I nodded. We held each other's gaze for an infinite moment before Damien continued.

"I mean every word, Rhi."

"Will I get to see Rozzie, then?" I asked, afraid to hope.

Damien took a deep breath and said, "At the worst, you'll both be adults when next you meet. At best, we'll clear this up right shortly. I'm thinking that it'll take a bit longer than the best we can hope for."

"But we can fight Mrs. Morley. That's good. That's real good to know. She's not being fair and that's just plain wrong."

"I said it before, I'll say it again. CPS doesn't care about fair, Rhiannon. They care about the kids they're watching out for. If it weren't for the fear Mrs. Morley practically spits around us, I wouldn't be so 'wicked pissed' about the whole thing."

"I don't think she's afraid of us, Damien. I think she's being cautious. None of us really know what my magic's gonna do next, even though I feel a lot … a lot safer now that Grandmamma and Grand-mère helped me tie down a lot of the, the impulsive magic in me. Maybe … maybe it's best to give me some time so we know that I'm safe to be around. You're right; I couldn't stand to be the person who hurt Rozzie. It sucks having to wait, but I'd rather wait and know she's safe than rush in and hurt her."

Damien just stared at me for a moment before tears started sliding down his face. He closed the distance between us, picked me up and gave me a huge, long hug. "I am so proud of you, Rhiannon!" he whispered in my ear.

And the healing continues

The next morning when Grandmamma arrived to begin the day, I asked her to teach me how to not hurt my sister. She said that meditation was the beginning and explained about the Dream Lands. With the thought of feeling safe to see my sister spurring me on, reaching the Dream Lands became a driving goal. Within a week, I could step in to the Astral with Grandmamma. From the Astral, she guided me into Tolhabith.

The first few times we Spirit Walked in Tolhabith together were very short, just enough to get an impression of an explosion of colors before I was overwhelmed, which would knock me out of the trance state. Gradually, I began to comprehend more, to hear and feel, and then to scent and taste the emotions whirling through me. Because Tolhabith is such a very emotionally focused environment you either learn to control your emotions quickly or you learn how to ride them. There is no hiding from what you feel there. Within a month, I could "sit" in the middle of my emotions and experience them to my heart's content, as long as no one disturbed my body. I loved it. The colors, sounds, scents, and textures, even the sorrows, were beautiful to me.

At that point, Grandmamma let me lead the way into Tolhabith and, once we entered, she started to teach me how to see other people's emotions. At the time, I thought her lessons were solely to help me make sense of the auras I saw, but when she was confident that I understood the process, she reached into me and drew out the memories of Curtis.

I hated it. From the first, I had looked forward to those sessions, to being the center of Grandmamma's attention in such a serene, relatively undemanding setting. The peace of our meditations soothed the magic inside me and gave it a focus that I hadn't even realized it needed. The edgy need in me to be out and moving eased, but as soon as Curtis intruded upon the sessions, even through memory, the peace was shattered.

That first session with the Curtis memories, I ran. He seemed, in my memory, to be twice as big as I knew he was, and twice as vicious. I knew Grandmamma was there, and my mind knew he couldn't hurt me, but my emotions didn't. My gut knotted, cramped and shrank up against my spine, bowing me over. I dropped out of the trance and bolted, hunched over, out the door, out into the sunlight where Curtis couldn't touch me.

In exploring the property, I found a small copse of trees that made a great fortress, perfect for climbing. About halfway up the tree closest to the middle, maybe fifteen feet up from the ground, was a juncture of branches that made an awesome little nest, nearly invisible from the ground. I could curl up in that juncture and fall asleep, secure in the tree's branches so long as I didn't mind the occasional bug crawling over me. After I learned how to set wards it was perfect.

I ran to my hidden spot and I stayed there for a good long while before I could think past the fear. The fear was almost more welcome than the shame that came down hard on its heels. I had run, and not just run, but I ran from a memory and not even some "real" danger. I felt like I couldn't face Grandmamma again, especially after my brave words to her when we met.

"There're two things you can do with fear. You can accept it and move on, do what needs doing, or you can hide in the corner and pray the bad things leave you alone and move on themselves. I know the bad things like the corner-huggers better, like they're tastier food. I ain't food for the fear-eaters."

I wallowed in self-pity for about half an hour before I let myself get pissed with me. Yes, I let terror overcome me, but hiding in the trees after that initial terror was pure cowardice and I was not going to go down without swinging. A few minutes of ranting at my self pushed the fear back away from my spine and I climbed down.

Grandmamma was sitting in the middle of my copse, a bottle of water beside her and a peacefully blank expression on her face. That face was her "working" face, the peace she offered with that calmness a part of her healing. Without a word she handed me the water bottle and then took it back after I took a swig. I shifted from foot to foot for a moment more before I sat down and looked her in the eye.

"Why did Curtis show up there? I thought he was gone, out of my life!" I could feel the pleading in my eyes seeking reassurance that my monster couldn't hurt me again. It pushed up against the anger I felt towards myself for running from my memory-ghost.

She studied me for a while before she said, "Curtis played a large role in your life. Your past doesn't let you go no matter how hard you try to pry yourself away from it. At some point, you have to deal with him. Would you rather do it alone, with no one to help you, or with people who love you supporting you?"

"Is he always going to be that much bigger?"

"Fear will add to his stature until you don't fear him anymore."

I rolled my eyes around, looking around the copse, but seeing my thoughts. I reached into that pissy, roiling anger and found the strength within that frustrated anger to face the truth. I let the truth settle into me, replacing the anger as my source of strength, letting it fill me with the resolve that I could already feel I would need. When I was satisfied that I was as firm in my determination as I could be, I met Grandmamma's eyes once more. "I can't live like that. I won't live my life scared he'll come around and destroy everything I try to make of it, so how do I stop being scared?"

"Get back on the horse. 'Once more into the fray' and all that. This time, though, you may want to try to see what Curtis was feeling before you take off."

And back into the fray I went.

It took me two more months – into the middle of March – before I could stand in Tolhabith and stare down at the memory of Curtis. Looking at his aura there did nothing to help or hinder the fear, but it did give me something to think about. For some – probably insane – reason, his aura read, "I'm protecting you" when he beat me. When I saw that, I felt the mental equivalent of my eyes crossing from sheer, blank bewilderment. I have yet to comprehend where that sentiment attached itself to his violence upon me.

Magic, magic everywhere …

While we focused on overcoming my fear of Curtis, Grandmamma taught me the basics of grounding and centering. As soon as she was convinced that my fear was gone, she moved on to the next step in my magical training: advanced centering and shielding.

For those of you who managed to avoid the "You Too Can Be MAGIC!" blather, grounding is the process of connecting to the world energies surrounding ourselves with the same intent as grounding a live electrical wire – keeping yourself from being fried by too much current. It is not a magic-dependent process. In fact, grounding is often identified as a form of meditation. At its most basic, to ground you just form the image in your mind of yourself and the world connected with the world absorbing all the excess in your life.

Centering is a short hand for "finding the center of who you are" – again, no magic necessary, just the ability to find your emotional center. Centering is most commonly accomplished during mediation. You don't even have to be aware of all the hoopla going on within your emotional center, though that really helps and is necessary when you start working on spiritual centering.

Basic shielding is a way to reinforce your mental and emotional boundaries – again through a meditative process and still being something that any and every mundane has the ability to do. All together, a disciplined mundane has the ability through grounding, centering, and shielding to create a psychic defense against all but the most powerful of empathic psychics. It won't necessarily help that much against a clairvoyant, but ce la vie.

Magic gets involved here with the setting of wards, which are a form of shield. Every ward is comprised of a ward space, a catalyst, and an affect. A ward space is the area a ward affects or reacts to. The catalyst is the trigger for the ward and the affect is the reaction to the catalyst. Wards come in two flavors: active and reactive, the difference lying in the affect. Active wards either contain or keep out the catalyst. Reactive wards tend to be much more subtle, which makes them somewhat safer to practice on though more difficult to master.

The first ward I learned was a Tell Me ward. One of the fundamentals of magic is that "All is One" (with the never-to-be-over-repeated corollary that "One is Not All"). The idea is that everything is connected, much like the various organ systems which make up the human body. This means that every affect you create in one area has a reactive affect in another area, often seemingly without reason – like butterflies creating tsunamis by flapping their wings (thanks to this and other bits of applied arcana mages have been quite influential in the development of Chaos Theory). A Tell Me ward relies on that fundamental to warn when specific changes occur within the ward space. The basic Tell Me ward reacts to matter entering or exiting the ward space. The affect can be as subtle as an awareness of the intrusion blinging into the mage's consciousness or it can be as raucous as filling the air with the harsh, abrasive barking of wild dogs. I have always gotten a kick from setting off the magical equivalent of a stink bomb, probably because I grew into my magic around shifters. Of all the things you can do to incapacitate a typical shifter, overloading their sense of smell is the most immediately effective.

Three things are necessary to use magic: a channel to draw upon the Quickening, the essence - emotional or spiritual - to fuel it, and the thought to invoke it. The channel is innate: you either have it or you don't. If you don't, someone capable of magic-casting can force it on you, but you cannot force it upon yourself because the channel starts in the Quickening, not in the caster. The essence used depends on the desired effect and those affected by the magic. The more powerful the spell is the greater the essence needs to be. The most powerful of mages don't necessarily have the strongest channels, but rather the most potent essences, which tends to make them come across as terrifyingly disciplined and passionate people. The thought is where training comes into play.

Mage and mundane alike, we all have strong desires and hidden urges. The difference lies in that magi have the ability to Will their desires into being. Depending on the strength of the channel and the potency of the essence brought forth from the caster, the effort of Will involved can range from a battle of titanic proportions to random thoughts flittering in and out of consciousness. I wasn't quite a thought flitterer – thank the Gods Above – but it didn't take much concentrated effort for me to manifest the magic. The training I went through revolved more around learning to be aware of when my thoughts reached for the Quickening and then learning how to make that reaching a conscious choice instead of a reflex action.

Because we were trying to move the magic from a subconscious to a conscious level, Grandmamma emphasized the importance of ritual. While technically ritual is not necessary, it can be a great focus. Learning to infuse my magic into glyphs and symbols with chants, songs, and imagination appealed to the child I was and even now the familiar practice often emerges when I feel the need to be soothed.

I wasn't the only one learning to control my magic, though Damien took his lessons with Paul. No one came out and said anything at the time, but the hints dropped here and there indicated that awakening the Draken Pater in Damien also awoke a magic similar to an Ascended shifter in my father. Also, I got the impression that there was a rather distinct difference between the way male and female Red mages reached for Quickening which made Grandmamma unsuited to teaching her son. It was all very confusing, but Grandmamma assured me that it wasn't anything I needed to know to master my magic and I reluctantly let the mystery slide to the back of my mind.

Tygone came over quite a bit, in part because of Paul working with Damien on the magic and in part because we were one of the few places where he could be himself without fear of censure or revilement. He was allowed to watch my magic lessons since, as a shifter, he was less likely to be affected if I screwed up and Paul had asked, "to further his education". The men-folk exchanged meaning-heavy glances and that was that. I didn't really mind. Despite our age difference, Tygone was almost always nice to me and treated me like an equal. He would laugh that it was nice to have someone who wasn't part of the Adult Conspiracy who could keep up with him.

Tygone was the only friend I had that year. Grandmamma and I spent so much time on getting the magic under control that there wasn't much left over to explore and, I have to admit, I was somewhat scared to meet new people, especially kids my own age. At first, I used the excuse of my instability and not wanting to hurt anyone, but as my training progressed I had to admit that I was afraid that the person I was becoming would be rejected again, like the Burlingame church-goers had.

Grandmamma, Damien, and I talked about my fears. With their support, I came to understand that there was only one person whose respect and admiration I actually needed and that one person was me. That didn't quite finish gelling until I got to college, but those early talks helped me form the mask of self-confidence that time and experience filled.