Seventh Seal - Jacquelyn Faye Page 0,16

Child?

Therapy. We need to talk.

I shall be home for the remainder of the day. Feel free to stop by.

You're still at Nana's?

Of course. Where else would I be?

"Oh, I don't know, Mother. Building a candy house to lure children into your oven?" I wanted to type it, but my fingers wouldn't let me. Sometimes, my fingers were smarter than I was.

"What?" Yuki was staring at me like I had lost what little of my mind I had left.

I shook my head at her. I'll see you this afternoon, I texted to my mother and stuffed my phone back in my pocket. "Let's get the coffee and get out of here. I have a hag to banish."

"Banish?"

"Yeah. She needs to get her ass back home before she doesn't have a home to go back to."

"I'll pretend I know what you're talking about if you buy me an iPad."

"My mother, but I'm not buying you an iPad," I said with a laugh, thinking she was joking. She might have been, her face was all smiles, but I could feel disappointment wafting from her in waves. A scene played itself out in my mind. Yuki, in an effort to defy her father, cut off her beautiful, waist length hair and bleached the tips to hold the purple dye better. In a fit of rage, he had destroyed everything in her room, including her first-generation iPad. The one she had saved for and bought on her own. It had happened just before he had sent her to live in Cedar Falls in disgrace.

"I know. I was just kidding, Master."

We turned down the coffee aisle and she ran ahead to replenish the three boxes of coffee we'd gone through since the last time I made it to the store. By the time I made it to her, she had them stacked in her arms and set them on the floor, shoving them on the bottom rack of the cart one by one. "That's it. To Grandmother's house we go."

"One more thing." I pushed the cart and headed to the back of the store instead of toward the registers.

When she saw we were headed for electronics, she started getting antsy. When I stopped in front of the Apple display, she growled, shook her head, and started pulling on my arm. "I told you I was kidding! You're not buying me an iPad. I was really joking!"

"I know you were, but then I saw what your father did."

She hissed and stepped back away from me. "No."

"Yes," I said sternly and started looking around for one of the sales associates. Two of them were hovering around another female employee with pink pigtails stocking the DVD rack. "Can I get some help over here?"

"Coming," the older of the two headed in our direction. "What can I get for you?"

I pointed at the largest tablet on the display. "One of those, please."

"Sure thing."

"That's an iPad Pro!" Yuki stared in awe, clearly having a vocal debate in her head about shutting her mouth or continuing to protest.

"Yep."

"Seriously, Master. You can't!"

The associate unlocked the sliding glass door on the display and pulled out the matte white box. "You want it?"

"Yes," I answered.

"No," Yuki protested.

"I'm paying." I ignored her, and after my proclamation, so did he.

He stepped behind the kiosk and rang it up, and I held out my card before Yuki could utter another word.

I had seen something else in the brief moment I'd been in her memories. Something I didn't know about Yuki. She loved to draw. Her dream had been to become a graphic artist. The fight between her and her father had boiled down to one thing. She wanted to go to night school. He had adamantly refused. And then made her life a living hell when she rebelled.

The associate stuffed the purchase into a bag and handed me the receipt. "Come on. Let's go pay for the rest of the stuff and go torture my mother." I handed her the bag and leaned in close to her, whispering in her ear, "Draw me something pretty." I kissed her cheek and ruffled her hair, and then dropped the whole topic.

"Thank you, Master." She was shuffling her feet and I barely heard the words that escaped her lips.

"Don't thank me. I'm going to put you to work."

Clearly confused, she asked, "How?"

"Well, first I'm going to find you a local art school. I'm going to get you enrolled. And then, you're going to pay off your tuition by creating all the