Free Messenger (Guardian Trilogy Prequel 1) by Laury Falter

another guest followed in his footsteps.
    The guests came at a steady pace as I delivered messages back to those who had come a few days earlier to send them. Unfortunately, I never felt as if I gave these people their due attention because part of it was planted on the three grouped in the back corner who, for some reason, sparked the painful vibration on the back of my neck whenever one of them adjusted their stance or moved to speak to one another.
    I didn’t know them, and I would have recalled if I did. Their stark-white hair and pale skin wouldn’t have been easily forgotten. The fact that they were around my age would have given me even more of an impetus to remember them. And yet I didn’t. They were completely foreign to me.
    After all messages had been delivered, I took new messages from the people wishing to begin conversations with those in the afterlife but, even as I waited, the three individuals never stepped forward. This was probably a blessing in disguise because I wasn’t sure my nerves could handle any more than what they were enduring. It seemed that they were simply there to watch.
    When I had finished taking all new messages, I stood and as was the stated procedure, I left first. This prevented anyone from hiding outside and following me. Eran, of course, came with me, but didn’t speak until we had left the city wall through the same broken opening and started across the fields.
    When we were several hundred yards away, he asked plainly, as if he were simply commenting on the brightness of the stars, “So, do you have any idea who they were?”
    I was surprised. “You noticed them?”
    “No…but you did,” he pointed out.
    So he had been watching me…
    He was astute, which I wanted to commend him on but which would only have enflamed his ego.
    We crossed over a fallen tree branch, him offering me a hand and me denying it, before we spoke again.
    “No,” I answered, “I’ve never seen them before.”
    “But they knew you.” His voice was flat as he said this, but I detected a sense of inhibition in it.
    “Or they knew the Messenger,” I suggested.
    “Maybe,” he replied deep in thought. “Maybe…”
    A few more yards passed before he remarked, again in a questioning manner, “They had the same reaction to you…”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Their faces glistened, their heartbeats sped up, their muscles grew taut.”
    My eyebrows puckered in suspicion. “And how did you know their heartbeats quickened?”
    He answered without a hint of pride or any acknowledgement toward the gravity of his ability.”By the pulse in their neck.”
    His answer was both riveting and frightening. “That isn’t something you pick up farming or raising cattle, Thomas.”
    He shrugged and replied offhandedly, “I’ve learned it along the way.”
    “Huh…,” I mumbled, scrutinizing him. “And what do you surmise made them so fearful?”
    “You.”
    “Me?” I balked and came to an abrupt stop at his inference.
    Eran paused too and faced me. “There was a reason why they didn’t approach you, Friedricha. They felt the same level of sickness you did.”
    “And you know this because of the pulse?”
    He nodded. “Which quickened with every look you sent them.”
    I was astounded. “Why would they think I was to blame?
    “Probably for the same reason we suspect they are to blame… They singled you out the same way you did them.”
    “But…but why would we ever do that to each other? It doesn’t make sense.”
    “No,” he agreed, “It doesn’t. But I have a feeling we’ll understand it soon.”
    “Why soon?”
    “Because they looked like they were just as inquisitive about you as we are of them.”
    “So you think they are going to stay around long enough to understand what happened?”
    He laughed ominously under his breath. “I’d go so far as to say I know it.”
    And as it turned out, Eran was correct.
    After I returned home, with Eran watching to ensure I made it safely