# Senior Living

## Carol

Dawn came up gray over the foothills, and Carol Godwin watched it through the frosted window of her staff quarters, a mug of something dark and herbal warming her hands. She could feel both strands of her weaving all through the night, two thin threads running down the leyline under the snow, one eastbound to the dorm and one coiled in her own basement. Both souls were awake now. Both trapped. Both miserable. It was the best part of the work.

She touched the east thread first and squeezed.

Far away, in a warm second-floor room smelling of two young women and sleep, Martin Star's soul jolted upright inside Amy Greene's slim, twenty-two-year-old body.

Carol let the thread go, took a sip of her tea, and smiled at nothing. The tall one, Amanda Kemp, had been planning something special all week. Carol had felt it in the girl's thoughts like a handprint on the glass of the leyline: no classes Friday, a long weekend, her girlfriend exhausted from the volleyball season, and a promise made. A free use day. Amy had asked for it herself, every circus, and Amanda had agreed to it with that slow, approving grin that made Amy go all warm and pink.

And Carol had delivered to Amanda, inside Amy's body, a man she could not understand.

She dressed slowly for the day ahead, enjoying the anticipation the way another woman might enjoy the first sip of a good wine. Dark tights. A snug knit sweater in deep maroon. The little teal polo with SHADY OAKS stitched over one breast, because in an hour she was due to run a therapeutic exercise session, and her newest resident, Mr. Martin Star, was on the schedule. Amy, poor thing. In a dying man's body, with Martin's cancer in her gut and Martin's prostate pulsing between her legs, and a spell on her tongue so she couldn't say a word of truth to anyone.

By the time the session rolled around, the dorm would be well underway. Carol let herself picture it, the two of them tangled in that big warm bed, the tall girl rolling over to collect her reward, and little Martin Star, the great radio man, hoisted up on his own misogyny like a slab of meat. Oh, it was going to be a good day.

The found bloodline had been …