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Catherine Reader wouldn’t normally use the word cold to describe herself. Firstly, she usually ran hot. Secondly, she was open, and warm, and charming. Partly because it made it easier to borrow from people, sure. But there was the undeniable fact that she loved people, being around them and finding out exactly what made them tick. How they worked. (This fascination had often made a younger Catherine wonder if she was an alien. She imagined herself coming from a distant planet and having to learn to mimic the humans so they wouldn’t find out. It nearly helped.) So, Catherine was not by any definition cold.
However, that’s exactly what she was at that moment. After her conversation with Dax she’d vowed to properly try to not borrow from anyone, and she’d meant it. Although now, with the last vestiges of what she’d taken gone, she felt hollow. A gaping, yawning cavern in her chest, swallowing her into its inky insides. It hurt. Badly. Like she was folding into the overwhelming pressure. Pressure to take, pressure to isolate. She would have to cave at some point.
Surely she could borrow a little, she reasoned. A voice sounding quite a lot like Dax told her she couldn’t. You do hurt people, Catherine. And under Dax was her last foster mother telling her she was like St Elmo’s Fire. First, it had been a compliment. Energetic, that was a good thing, right? Lively, happy, bright. Then it settled on her. It meant too much. And under that was the attempted exorcism, after she’d forgotten she had to smile and act normal. After she’d dared to take a break from her alien-pretending-to-be-human game. And then were the jeers, Me Too Cathy, and she’d hated that.
And under that was the sound of tyres screeching and squealing, the smell of rubber burning, her stomach dropping from a mixture of the seconds of weightlessness and the cloying strangle of guilt. The car throttled. Chase was a mechanic, she’d sucked all the knowledge out of him. She’d kept it, too, when his head hit the dashboard and foot left the clutch. A car’s choke made the fuel rich when starting the car. Chase had choked. The coroners would say it was from trauma to the head, but she knew. After all, she’d done it.
But no one blamed fires for needing to burn, to consume, did they? Feeling much like she’d been drenched herself, she remembered that while they might not be blamed, they were put out. Would that be her? Catherine Reader, buy two get one free. The drink you feel like you have to pick up, just for the bargain. The one you don’t want, hands full, more inconvenient than if you hadn’t taken it at all. The one you leave behind.
So she had to make herself worth it, worth their while to keep around. Be charming, be fun, be funny, be useful. Don’t show that none of it’s real. Don’t let slip that it’s all as fake as the powers you say you have. Don’t let them even get a hint of the fear. Leeching surely couldn’t be an accurate descriptor when she felt so much like prey. If all she did was take, why did she feel like she’d only given? If she was draining everyone dry, why did she feel so empty? So scared she’d turn and they’d all be standing there, watching her. Telling her they knew.
Her dilemma ground to a halt as her internal void growled at her. She had limited options for who to go to. Gideon… you were supposed to be able to go to siblings with anything. But she had a feeling that walking up to your long lost brother and announcing you’d been sapping his power and energy for the past month wouldn’t go over so well. Owen, maybe. Although, for all she pandered to him, Catherine was terrified of him.
Back in the children’s home, she’d despised the ambivalence of the carers there even more than the taunts of the other kids. They were being paid to care, so surely they should’ve cared for her. Rather than shrugging, turning away, pretending it wasn’t happening. She’d hit an older boy, once. Pulled his energy right out after he’d made fun of her and she’d snapped back, his fist dropping limply back to his side. Fist curled perfectly, like he had, she landed her punch square in his solar plexus.
Once he’d doubled over, coughing and wheezing, the workers stepped in. They ignored him, reaming her out for her violence. They didn’t care he’d started it, grounding her for two months. She’d hated that. Catherine hated a lot of things, but if you thought it through she was never entirely wrong.
Anyway, Owen. Authority figure. She had thick enough skin to ignore anything a COLA would say, and given that they all liked her well enough (except for Dax, whose fault it was she hurt so badly, but he didn’t know, or did he know-?) that wasn’t much of an issue. Power, though? Power and control, that scared her. If she had all of it, no one would be able to hurt her again. She didn’t, yet. One day. But as of right now, Owen had enough of it to get her locked in concrete and thrown into the sea, probably.
She grimaced, sighing. It would have to be Dax. He’d promised not to tell, for all that would matter. Not much, given his Owen-centric hero worship, but he hadn’t said anything yet. He was smart enough, and not at all drained. He’d come up with something, as little as she wanted to rely on someone else.
Finding him was easy, if you knew where to look. She snuck out after curfew (and didn’t touch Mia, didn’t skim just a little even though it would’ve helped), leant against the rough brick of the canteen’s outer wall.
When the molten red streak saw her, he shifted seamlessly from a fox to a boy.
‘Catherine,’ he panted, a little out of breath from his run. ‘What did you do?’
Ignoring the sting of the not-unfair assumption, she stood. They were the same height. It made her feel a little better. ‘Dax. I think… I think I need help.’