Tessa froze in place the moment Patrick’s features abandoned misery for terror, her forward progress arrested and her body going suddenly still as stone, even before she registered what the change in expression meant. When she realized that it was fear she frowned, a line furrowing its way gently between her eyes as she cast a quick look around the roof for what she’d missed, the determination that had begun her forward momentum disappearing in complete bewilderment. Not a threat, he wouldn’t just stand there like that if it were something that could hurt us, and there are the wards so… she huffed out an exasperated sigh, honestly, Patrick, what? Do you have a snap pea phobia or something? Stop looking at me like someone’s snuffing out the sun behind my head, freak. You’re kind of ruining even the completely fucking pathetic semblance of a mood I’ve got to work with here . She’d opened her mouth to say as much, when realization broke over her like a wave, pushing the air out of her lungs and surging back in a riptide that threatened to pull her feet out from under her. It’s me. He’s scared of what I’m about to do.
Even though Patrick’s eyes were closed, making the gesture useless, she took a quick step backwards. Her mouth opened and then closed as, for once, she reached for the seemingly inexhaustible supply of chatter and quips and verbal fury that was always as easy to command as her own power, and found that it had completely dried up. Hurt widened her eyes and kept her lips slightly parted and, if Patrick had opened his eyes a moment earlier, he would have seen her frozen like that, the moment after a blow.
People had been afraid of Tessa from the time she was a toddler. One of her earliest memories was of holding her mother’s hand as they walked through the little park near their house towards the playground, trying to pull away to get to the monkey bars. It had been her fervent ambition, at four, to climb to the top of the monkey bars and then throw herself off of them. She’d been convinced that if she just flapped her arms hard enough, spoke some of the words she’d heard her father use, she could float, maybe even fly, like a bird. Darcy, sadly, had not shared this faith, had thought of the sight of her tiny daughter, strong, easily healed, but still so small, plummeting face-first towards the ground and had resolutely hauled her away towards the sandbox.
That day, when she’d been settled in the sand next to an older boy who was banging his shovel against the side of the sandbox, she’d leaned forward and poked him, whispered conspiratorially, “I’m going to bring the monkey bars here.” The boy, affronted at being addressed by a kid so much younger as if they were equals, had ignored her. This had only doubled her determination, and Tessa had pulled with all of her will and all of the bits of power and magic that she had been taught. The monkey bars had bent, ever so slightly, pulled towards her. The boy had stared at her for a moment, then screamed and bolted. “What’s wrong with him, Mommy?” Tessa had asked disdainfully, and Darcy, with unexpected delicacy, had managed to convey that the boy had been scared of what she’d done, that she shouldn’t do it again, but hadn’t left the impression that Tessa herself was wrong, was something to be feared. The incident had passed without any major emotional impact, but Tessa had filed away the look she’d seen in the boy’s eyes, pressed it into her memory.
She’d seen that look again when she started school, in the eyes of classmates and teachers who came up against her pranks or who had annoyed her in some way. When she’d gotten older, other girls had started to look at her with fear as a matter of course, and it had been mixed with judgment and anger. Most teenage girls, Tessa had discovered, did not much like it when one of their own wafted past the gauntlet of insecurities and hang-ups that they ran every day, simply bypassed the entire thing, refused to think less of herself, and did whatever she wanted. None of it had ever particularly bothered her, sometimes she’d even reveled in it, but she had never seen it, not even a trace, in Patrick. She hadn’t known that scaring someone could feel like a knife to the gut. Until now.