Chương 12: “Bodie”

Monday. June came home with mud on her school uniform and her left sleeve torn at the elbow and said she tripped. She did trip. Vorrath, who was in the pencil case and heard everything, knew what came before the tripping. She ate dinner quietly. Did her homework. Said, to nobody in particular, before turning her light off: "It's fine. It doesn't matter." Vorrath could not leave the binding radius. Bodie lived four streets away. This was frustrating.

If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it. What was not out of reach was the shadow under the feet of Bodie's older brother, who walked past the house every morning. Vorrath left something there, but not a creature or some kind of a threat. Just a feeling. By Wednesday, Bodie was walking a different route to school. By Friday, June came home with her lunch eaten and her uniform intact. She picked Vorrath up from the windowsill and looked at him very carefully.

"Did you do something?" He did not glow. She looked at him a moment longer.

"Thank you," she said quietly, to the window, not quite at him. He didn't answer. He was already thinking about the door.