Touch by Michelle Sagara

out.”
    “Out?”
    “Of my life. Of danger. I can’t blame him. But if she’s not going to leave me—and
     she won’t—then I have to be able to do something if it happens again.”
    “You mean you have to learn how to kill.”
    She felt the shock of his words as they settled around her. She wanted to deny it,
     but she couldn’t. She had no idea how far she’d be willing to go to save the life
     of someone she loved. She could imagine herself killing someone. But even thinking
     it, she could hear the sound of a knife hitting flesh and bone, and she almost stopped
     breathing.
    He watched her, his eyes that noncolor of dead eyes, his expression painfully familiar.
     After a long moment, he breathed in, like the inverse of a sigh, and the line of his
     shoulders softened. This time, when he reached for her, he didn’t hesitate, didn’t
     pull back; he caught both of her hands in his.
    He was
so
cold.
    And then, for a moment, she was warm.
    She wanted to cry, to tell him she didn’t want or need this, not from him. But the
     truth was, at this very moment, she felt she
did
. She wasn’t a child anymore, and she’d been nothing but a child the last time he’d
     hugged her when she was—as he put it—down. She let him fold her in his arms while
     she drained something from the touch that went both ways.
    “Remember,” he said, into her hair. “Remember, Emma. What Eric or his friends ask
     of you, what they think they want—it’s not the only way. It’s their way, but you’re
     not them.”
    “I don’t understand,” she said, into his chest. “I don’t understand what the Necromancers
     get out of this. I don’t understand why they do what they do.”
    “No. But you will.” His voice was softer.
    * * *
    In the morning, Jon’s car was not in the drive. Emma knew; it was the first thing
     she checked when she crawled out of bed. She was grateful for small mercies. Large
     ones seemed to be beyond her, at the moment.
    Her mother’s door was closed, but that wasn’t a big surprise; her mother and mornings
     weren’t the best of friends. She wondered if her mother would drag herself out of
     bed if Jon had stayed, and the thought soured the optimism that lack of his car had
     produced. She climbed into the shower, hoping to wash the uglier bits of her mood
     down the drain.
    Getting dressed, making breakfast, and feeding the animal that was dogging her heels,
     helped. Making coffee for her mother helped as well, because it was normal.
    Her mother came down the stairs straightening her blouse and holding a pair of nylons
     in one hand. She looked as bleary-eyed as she normally did, but there was a thinness
     to her lips that was new. Or rarer, at any rate.
    “Emma,” she said, as she entered the kitchen.
    “Coffee,” her daughter replied, handing her mother a large mug with a chipped handle.
     “Blueberries are on the table with the granola. There’s milk as well, but we need
     more.”
    “I’ll get it on the way home from work. Emma—”
    The doorbell rang. Emma had timed breakfast and coffee with a merciless eye toward
     the very accurate clock because she knew Michael would show up at her door, the way
     he did every day on the way to school. It was precisely 8:10 in the morning. Emma
     kissed her mother on the cheek and said, “I’ve got to run, sorry breakfast was late.”
    “Emma—”
    She answered the door; Michael was mobbed by Petal—if one dog didn’t normally constitute
     a mob, Petal tried really hard to make up for it—and Emma grabbed her hat, her scarf,
     her gloves.
    Mercy knew better than to start an argument—or a discussion—when Michael was on the
     clock, as it were. “Will you be in tonight?”
    “Tonight? Did you forget I’m going to Ally’s for dinner?”
    Mercy grimaced. “Clearly.”
    “I won’t be home too late after that. Have a great day at work,” she added, shrugging
     her shoulders into her coat and heading out the door.
    * * *
    Allison’s