Free Deceived by Stephanie Nelson

ghosts. Part of me was meant to do this. Still, the other part of me, the witch, was at war with the spirit walker. I wondered if I could ever find a balance between the two. To me it seemed I could be one or the other. I would either choose to be a spirit walker and embrace the darkness, or abandon the unique gift and live my life as a normal witch and store owner.
    “That’s why you have me to teach you.” Dorian placed the blood into my palm and curled my fingers around the cylinder. I opened my fingers and stared at the red liquid, wondering who it belonged to. It didn’t matter, they had all killed innocents and it was my job to raise their victims for vengeance and torment.
    “What do I do?”
    “Uncap it and smell the blood,” Dorian instructed. I frowned but did what he said. Pulling the stopper out of the vial, I held it to my nose. I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to detect, it smelt like normal blood to me. “Now what?”
    “Do you smell the death within it?”
    “No, it smells like ordinary blood to me.”
    Dorian grinned. “You haven’t been taught anything about who you are, have you?” His words embarrassed me. His statement had made me feel like a juvenile amateur.
    “Who was supposed to teach me? It’s not like there’s a helpline for this sort of thing.” I always knew it wasn’t normal that I could read the memories of the dead, but denial was an easier road to take rather than dealing with my rarity.
    “Actually, there is. If you would have acknowledged your gift and sought out the right people to teach you about it, you’d know that.” Dorian sounded aggravated which only caused my humiliation to grow. I didn’t like being scolded like a child.
    “Maybe I didn’t want to. Maybe, just maybe, I don’t want to be a spirit walker. Is that so hard of a concept for people to understand?” I snapped back. I had no problem helping solve cases for the FPD (Flora Police Department.), but did I want to make it my whole life?
    “Gwen, it’s who you are. Whether you want to be a spirit walker or not doesn’t matter, you are one. It’s not something you can change. If you trust me, I can teach you it’s not something to fe ar.” Dorian’s voice had lost its edge .
    I looked at him through my lashes and felt connected with him in that moment. He was the only person I’d ever met who could understand what I was. While Kye had tried to teach me the lessons he’d learned from studying his sister, Dorian knew firsthand. He was the Angel of Death, his lessons came straight from the horse’s mouth, so-to-speak. 
    “All right.” Dorian was right, I couldn’t change who I was. There was no point in complaining about it when I could just grit my teeth and learn to use the power.
    “Okay,” he breathed . “I think we should take a break and then return to sending ghost to haunt the vampires later. What do you say?”
    It sounded so ridiculous all I could do was laugh. “Let’s go.”
     
     
    *****
     
    I climbed off of Dorian’s motorcycle with shaky limbs. He drove so fast that my hands hurt from gripping him. “You do realize it’s November right? It’s too cold to be riding a motorcycle.” I rubbed my hands together, hoping the friction would cause warmth to return to my numb fingers. Everyone we’d passed had given us strange looks, but Dorian had been adamant about taking his bike.
    “I apologize. I don’t feel the elements like you do.” He pulled the bike helmet off his head and hung it on the handlebars. I pursed my lips in thought. Although Dorian was the only person who could relate to me, he was the furthest from being human. He could change his appearance and the weather didn’t affect him. It was all very strange to take in and easy to forget just how different he was. “A penny for your thoughts?”
    Heat warmed my cheeks when he caught me staring at him. His tongue darted out and licked his upper lip, and the heat surged to the rest of my body. I adverted