It was strange to hear her own twisting doubts echoed in Marian's words. How that worry had preyed on her this past fortnight, with one boy dead and mutilated on her embalming table and another fleeing certain doom, both victims of godly violence, both beyond her capacity to help. (But not always so. Those months ago, when Hecate had first told her about Kaden— when the danger circling him had been yet a murmur and not a deafening crescendo— if she had been bolder, been stronger, been cleverer—)
"Being housebound is hard," Qebhet agreed; she knew it well from experience. She had been useless, those first weeks after she had dragged her body from the Mississippi River, a body new-made yet still blighted by the scars of fire and death. Closed doors had frightened her; open spaces, even more so. She had been small and fearful and yet, paradoxically, too large and ungainly to burrow and hide as her serpent's heart longed to do.
The listlessness had followed later, with the creeping return of quiet routine and the moulting of scarred skin (not an erasure – it would take two further moults to cleanse the stain of violence from her body; far longer to cleanse her soul). Idleness had stretched out into purposelessness, and though her hand had hovered over the door knob, it had shaken too badly to turn it. She couldn't serve the dead and bereaved if she couldn't set foot outside her home.
But, she'd discovered, she could do other things. Amulets, herbal preparations and remedies. Small magicks, small sciences. Not being able to shop or forage for ingredients herself had been an obstacle, but she'd made do. And the heavy veils and concealing clothes she'd worn to hide her scars had lent her an unintended air of credibility with clients expectant of an air of otherworldly mystery.
"Is there perhaps..." She chewed her lip thoughtfully. "You must be skilled with computers, to be able to steal from companies under their noses. Could you use that skill in other ways, from home? Maybe you could... find out who needs help, or who is causing the harm? Everything starts with information."