Warped (Maurissa Guibord)

run back the way they'd come.
    "And you know all this faithful sidekick stuff?" Opal yelled after her. "It's really not my style."
    Tessa slowed and spun around. "I know," she answered, walking backward a few steps. "How about kick-ass best friend?"
    Opal's grin flashed. "Now you're talkin'."

Chapter 26

"Return the threads?" Will repeated after Tessa had told him about her encounter with the Norn. "I don't understand. Why would they appear to you? And in a looking glass, no less."
    Tessa shrugged. "I don't know. They said that there are threads missing, more than just yours. Seven threads. Seven lives . Somehow they knew, or sensed, when I pulled the thread and released you from the tapestry. I guess they think I'm some kind of weaving mastermind. I tried to tell them it was Gray Lily, but they were ..." She hesitated. "Kind of snippy."
    "There are others, then," Will said, pacing. He wore a pair of faded jeans and a simple white button-down shirt, the sleeves rolled up over his tanned forearms. His hair fell in slightly messy waves to his collar, and there was a faint stubble over his jaw. "And these stolen threads must be in the tapestry still."
    "I guess so," Tessa said. "And the Norn want them back. Like, yesterday."
    Will was watching her. "You say that you saw Moncrieff, this legal agent of Gray Lily's, outside your home?" His jaw tightened. "He followed you?"
    "Yes. But I lost him. He doesn't know you're here."
    "What will you do now?"
    Tessa was baffled by his question. "Do?" she repeated. "What can I do?"
    "Perhaps you should go, while Moncrieff is diverted."
    Tessa shook her head and placed the bag on the small kitchenette table. "I don't think he'll be thrown off for long. I think we had both better sit tight for a little while."
    "Sit tight?"
    "Stay here."
    Will nodded. He eyed the canvas bag. "Is there, by chance, any food in that satchel?"
    Tessa smiled. "There might be."
    Will closed his eyes reverently. "Bless you, mistress."
    Tessa smiled and felt her cheeks get warm. As Will wolfed down his breakfast, she wandered around the studio. Morning light washed through the high windows and made warm rectangles of sun on the paint-splattered floor. It didn't seem as overwhelming now, and Tessa went from spot to spot, looking not at the artwork but at the small everyday things, the little places where her mother had been. She drew a finger around a watermark left on a small table, picked up a small palette knife and wiggled the flexible metal between her fingers.
    "Your mother's work is truly beautiful," Will said, watching her.
    "Yes, I think so too," Tessa answered. She pointed to the framed landscape of Monhegan Island on the opposite wall. "She had shows all over the country."
    Her mother's work had been described as "vividly romantic" and "classical in style but with a new age aesthetic." Whatever that meant. Sometimes Tessa wondered if, wherever her mother was, her world had become as beautiful as the ones she'd created in her paintings. Tessa hoped so.
    "But there is one that does not fit," Will said.
    Tessa's curiosity was piqued. "What do you mean?" she asked. She followed Will as he walked over to a small painting set on the floor in the corner.
    "This," he said, and picked it up. Tessa looked at the painting and caught her breath. She had forgotten all about it. It was a small canvas swirled with pure, thick colors. Below, the scene was wild, whipped into spattering waves in colors of electric green and shimmering gold, while above, the sky swirled in a sunset of magenta and orange.
    "I have never seen a sea look like this from our shores of Cornwall, and yet it seems familiar to me. As an ocean from my dreams," said Will.
    Tessa looked at him in surprise. Funny, that was exactly what she'd thought too. A dream ocean. She had never thought anyone would see it the way she did. He peered at the corner where Tessa was painted in vermilion. He traced her name with his fingertip.
    "You're an artist," he said, looking up.
    Just like that. Not as a compliment or with sarcasm either--a statement of fact. "No," Tessa answered, flustered. "I'm not. My mother was the artist, not me." And this was her mother's studio, Tessa thought. Just as her father had reminded her the day he'd discovered Tessa up here, painting in her own clumsy way. He had shooed her out and locked the door. Turned the key as if he could vacuum-seal the spirit of Wendy Brody.
    Will nodded in appreciation, then turned back to Tessa's