The Misadventures of Anna Cabbot

Riverside

Anna flopped onto her back without enough force to make the mattress bounce and clawed at the neck of her t-shirt. The strangulation sensation went away momentarily. It didn't help at all with the fact she was wide awake at...12:06 on a Tuesday morning.

She'd been rolling around in bed for at least a couple hours now without success.

To add insult to injury, the line of gnarled scar tissue between her breasts burned, like her nerve endings were freaking out all over again they couldn't find each other.

Sleep wasn't going to happen. Not anytime soon.

"Shit," she muttered. "Shit, shit, shit."

She swung her legs over the edge of the bed and buried her face in her hands. The house around her was peaceful; little to no street noise came through the open bedroom window. Still, it was enough to ground her in the here and now, which was probably part of her problem. Her anxiety hindbrain kept trying to take her back two and a half years ago to ICU while her rational mind tried to bludgeon it into submission with facts.

This was her bedroom in her rented side-by-side duplex in Buffalo's Lower West Side neighborhood. She was still upright and breathing and okay, and she knew how to handle being okay.

Right. A walk around the block to tire herself out it was, then. 

Anna heaved herself up and pulled on a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt. She didn't bother to take her phone with her, though she leaned against the wall by the front door and debated whether she wanted to take a cup of tea with her.

No to the tea. She wasn't in the mood to carry anything other than her own metaphorical baggage.

The streets were calm and quiet, and it was easier to let her feet do the autopilot thing. Naturally her mind wandered.

Witches bent toward necromancy weren't common. Typically, when Death came calling, they collected. In Anna's case, Death had come for a visit and then left her there, albeit with her magic permanently tinted with a hell of a Get Well gift.

Anna scuffed her feet as she crossed the Ferry Street Bridge to Unity Island.

Water. She'd wound up near water.

She didn't know whether it was a childhood and adolescence spent in the New York Finger Lakes region or something else, but water had always calmed her — lakes in particular.

In this case, it was a river.

Anna picked her way carefully onto one of the breakwater rocks and gingerly sat. She drew her knees to her chest, wrapped her arms around her shins, and stared across the flat expanse of the Niagara toward Canada. To her left, upriver, was the Peace Bridge, lit in alternating blue and red lights.

Water murmured against the rocks.

She straightened her legs out, ears strained for the tiniest misplaced sign or sound. Nothing moved, and it reminded her so much of that moment she pressed her fingers to the base of her throat to feel her pulse. 

It was there, sure and steady.

Something large and waterlogged flopped out of the dark depths of the Niagara River onto her thighs.

"Holy shit," she yelled.

It flung an appendage and something both slimy and shiny plopped wetly next to her.

Water continued to murmur against the rocks.

Anna pulled herself together to cast a witchlight above her head with a flick of her fingers. She dumped a little too much into it initially, and it flared like a floodlight until she wrestled it under control. Only then did she finally look down and see a soaked mop of dark hair on top of a pale face attached to a very pale, very naked body. She craned her neck and double checked that yes, said body was also very male.