Free Afterthought: A Sententia Short Story (The Sententia) by Cara Bertrand Page B

your name is Aurora!” I trailed my fingers out the window, letting the wind push them back and forth like waves. It was a little warm, but I liked the fresh air better than the frigid, recycled air from the vents. The ocean breeze would cool us down soon enough.
    Fenton Antiques was the second of my three part-time summer gigs, and it was a total coup: hands-on experience at what I hoped would be my future career as an antiques dealer and shop owner. I’d visited Fenton’s a few times last year and learned they were looking for help during the busy summer season. Even fewer people, teenagers or not, wanted to spend their summer indoors dusting antique furniture than wanted to get up early to work at the diner, but I loved both jobs. Obviously, I was, for a number of reasons, crazy. Mr. Fenton, the shop owner, was very knowledgeable as well as very busy. He liked me because I worked for cheap and knew a lot about antiques, especially furniture.
    Carter’s eyes slid over to me and back to the road. “Spinning wheels?”
    I nodded, even though he wasn’t looking at me anymore. “Apparently spinning your own yarn is a thing now. Er, again. The old ones are in high demand.”
    “I think you’d make a better Maleficent.”
    “Yeah, well, you’re no prince, so you’re probably right.” His answering smile was the whole reason I loved to tease him. And he was right. I’d never be the blond beauty, and couldn’t sing for crap, but I’d rock Maleficent. I started planning my costume for the Academy’s Halloween bazaar as soon as he suggested it. The real question was whether I could get him to dress in tights like whatever Sleeping Beauty’s prince was named. I was pretty sure my girl Mal tied him up in her basement for a while, too. Could be fun.
    I was thinking about that so I missed most of the first part of what he said next, but it ended with, “…kill anyone?”
    Thankfully, I knew what he meant, and it wasn’t about me. He was asking if I’d seen anything with my Grim Diviner senses. Being subject to visions of peoples’ deaths, past and sometimes future, wasn’t a lot of fun, but it was part of being me. Over the months since I’d learned about my abilities, I’d also learned to accept them. Sometimes even joke about them.
    I laughed. “Well, I didn’t check them all , but no, I don’t think so. I wouldn’t know if they put someone to sleep though.”
    “That’s probably all of them,” he said with a grimace. Carter didn’t much like sitting still unless there was a book or a video game involved. I ignored him.
    “There was one thing, though,” I said. He raised his eyebrows in question. “A pitchfork.”
    “Jesus! That’s awful.”
    “Yeah,” I said. “The man was trampled by his pigs while holding it.”
    “Jesus ! That’s worse than awful.”
    It really was. Speaking of classic movies, I couldn’t help but think of Dorothy falling into the sty. I’d always thought she just didn’t want to get muddy.
    My gift was depressing, so I turned the question around on him. “How about you? Anything this week?” When he wasn’t selling books, Carter spent good portions of his days scouring the news as an Historian for the Perceptum, looking for hints of Sententia using their gifts recklessly.
    “There’s a ‘miracle worker’ in India we’re starting to get worried about. Uncle Jeff may need to go soon.”
    “How soon?”
    “Next week.”
    I didn’t like it when Carter’s uncle traveled for the Perceptum. It was, sometimes, dangerous. He did good work he believed in, though, and I guessed I’d rather it was him than someone else. I knew Jeff Revell would do everything in his power to treat people fairly, whoever needed it. Sometimes it was the Sententia he sought out—and sometimes their victims.
    But India. That was a place I’d never been during all my travels, one that seemed so exotic and beautiful. “Under better circumstances, I’d love to go there.”
    “Someday,”