Read Online Green Tea and Black Death (The Godhunter, Book 5) by Amy Sumida - Free Book Online

quickly on one of the little gems of Christianity. Praying in tongues was supposed to be a gift of the Holy Spirit, a gift that allowed the receiver to speak in a language unknown to them. When I was a little girl, my Aunty Dorris's husband, Harvey, gathered all the children together in Sunday school and prayed with us until we were blessed with the gift.
       I didn’t get it.
       As a young witch, I knew intimately what the supernatural world held. Now I know that it was also the knowledge my soul carried over from being Sabine. When Odin used his magic to put my soul into my mother, it hadn't been exactly reincarnation. I wasn't reborn to experience the world anew. I'd been born with the memories and knowledge of a full life. I'd just repressed a lot of it so that I could deal with being a child all over again. By the time I met Odin, I'd gotten so good at repressing, I didn't recognize him at first. Seeing him acted like some sort of a trigger though and those memories did break out eventually.
       Back then though, in that stuffy, stark room filled with children, I didn't know why I had knowledge of things. I just knew. I knew there were no impossibilities, so this gift of speaking in another language without studying it, didn't seem so far fetched. I waited with great anticipation for such a cool magic to overtake me. When the other children finally started to “speak”, I laughed. They were talking gibberish, no proper cadences of any known language recognizable in their speech. They were faking it to get out of the hot room.
       My uncle scowled at me, then decided I needed one on one help. He sat next to me, praying for hours, but the Holy Spirit never filled me. He finally gave up, muttering under his breath about apples falling close to trees and my general unworthiness. It was my first moment of disillusionment with my grandparents’ religion but more importantly, it was my first insight into my uncle’s personality.
       “ Vervain’s right here,” Grandma’s voice brought me back to the present. “Sure, hold on,” she held out the phone to me as I gave her the universal, cutting the air, I don’t want to talk to that idiot , motion. The phone landed in my gesticulating hand.
       “ Hello,” I muttered.
       “ Hey, kiddo,” Uncle Harvey's voice grated on my already flayed nerves. “How you doing?”
       “ I’m doing,” I rolled my eyes.
       “ Well we’ll be out there on Wednesday to help,” he continued as if I cared.
       “ We’re fine, just send Aunty Dorris for the funeral,” I countered. The last thing I needed right now was my crazy Christian relations out here in the middle of a possible plague.
       “ Oh no, I wouldn’t leave her alone at such a horrible time,” my stomach clenched on hearing confirmation of what I knew was coming. “I’ll be flying out with her, Connie, James, and Jacob.” On Grandma’s dime I was certain, since they had no money.
       My aunt and her husband had been spewing out babies since she’d married him when she was still a baby herself. My cousins started popping up when I was two years old and kept popping up every two years like clockwork, except for the last few, which had come yearly. There were ten kids now, living in a house owned by the church, and supplementing their income with money from my grandmother.
       Whenever I brought up the fact that she didn't have a lot of money and she shouldn't be sending so much to my relatives, grandma would say “God will provide”. Well she didn't know the gods like I did or she wouldn't be so sure of their help. The only one doing any providing was her.
       But at least I wasn’t bitter.
       “ Yeah, I gotta go now,” I handed the phone to Grandma while Harvey was mid-preach. I just couldn’t deal with his bullshit at the moment.
       Kirill’s hand rubbed my lower back and I took comfort in it for a moment, while I watched the EMTs carry my grandfather’s body out