Connection (Le Garde) (29 page)

“
Oh, yes,” Amelia said, nodding. “I’m a very private person, and having someone in my head at all times, especially someone like Joseph.
 
.
 
.it was overwhelming at first.” She smiled as she tore small peels off of her slices. “We grew into each other, though.”

“
I just don’t know,” I said, throwing the peels from my orange into the trash can. “I have a boyfriend and I have to keep lying to him about this.”

“
Aaron’s not your boyfriend?” she asked, her dark eyebrows raised.

“
No.” I rolled my eyes. “Drew won’t shut up about it.” I pulled the orange apart and started slicing it into smaller pieces. I avoided her eyes. “Do all Pairs end up together? Romantically?”

“
No, not all of them.” 

“
Really?” I asked, meeting her eyes. I couldn’t help grasp onto the hope that my romantic life hadn’t been predetermined by some supernatural thing I had no control over. “Kristina said everyone did.”

“
Kristina doesn’t know as many Pairs as I do.”

I smiled. “Well, that’s good to know.”

Amelia pulled grapes, blackberries, and raspberries out of the fridge. “Here, you add these. I’ll get the yogurt and some bowls.”

“
What’s everyone doing downstairs?”

“
Joseph is bragging to Aaron about his genealogy research,” Amelia said. She took out a tub of yogurt, clear, plastic bowls, and a bundle of forks and spoons. “You’ll probably want to hear some of it, too.”

She walked ahead of me. I followed her to a door next to the fireplace. There was a key pad next to the door, and Amelia shielded it from me as she punched in the key. They were secretive here. I wondered if Aaron and I could get past the key pad with our power.

It opened up to the top of a staircase. As we walked downstairs, I wondered why she’d even decided to make this. I was glad she had, though, since I’d had a chance to ask her about things without Aaron right next to me. I didn’t know if that made me a bad person or something. I just wasn’t ready to do that with him. I wasn’t ready to give him all my time. I wasn’t ready to fall in love with him.

The basement was furnished into a study. Desks with half a dozen computers lined one long wall, bookshelves the opposite one. Maps covered the narrower walls. Aaron and Joseph were bent over another map laid across a table in the middle of the room. Aaron looked up at me from one of these maps, grinning. I knew he’d be able to tell I’d been thinking about him, so I tried to concentrate on something else. It was hard, though, when he was so excited and adorable.

18. l’office (the agency)

Aaron

“
Anna, you’ve got to see this,” I told her.

“
In a minute,” she said, smiling back at me. I could tell she and Amelia had just been talking about me, but I couldn’t pick up the details. I turned back to the map spread out on the table in the middle of the room. Joseph had lain out Pairs across the world. I couldn’t believe how many there were. He used tiny dots only visible under a black light, and he shone his black light across the map.

Anna came to stand next to me, holding out a bowl of yogurt and fruit salad.

“
Oh, thanks,” I said, taking it from her. “Look at this.”

“
What is it?”

“
These are Pairs across the world,” Joseph said.

Her mouth fell open. “They are?”

“
Those that I know of,” Joseph said. “This is actually where they were born. I have another map of where I met them, and another where they currently are. The last one is on the computer since it’s always changing.”

Anna glanced over her shoulder at the computers along the long walls, where Kristina and Drew sat. She thought what I did: could we access all that with our power? Either Joseph trusted us or he underestimated us.

I stared over the map again. Most of the dots were in Europe and North America since that’s where Joseph studied. About a quarter of them, however, were littered across the rest of the world. I pointed to the one in the Congo. “There’s your mom.”

Anna smiled and pointed at California, where there was a bundle of dots jumbling together. “There’s your dad.” She shook her head. “But this is so many. Hundreds.”

Joseph nodded. “There are a lot of us.”

“
How have we never heard about this before?” Anna asked. “How do they keep it secret?”

“
There are a lot of things that happen that people can’t explain. A lot of it can be explained by the Pairs.”

“
So, Le Garde isn’t together anymore?” I asked. Since Anna had been upstairs, Joseph had been explaining his genealogy research, explaining how he found my dad and Anna’s mother. We’d just started poring over maps when Anna and Amelia came down.

“
No,” Joseph said with a frown. “Tensions were too high after the war to reunite, and now I fear we’ve become too spread out and lost some of our purpose. Plus, there’s The Agency and other troubles keeping us apart.”

“
The Agency?” I repeated. I felt a spike of alarm from Anna; she was thinking of the people Kristina had warned us about.

“
They’re nothing to worry about, of course,” Joseph said, giving us a smooth smile. “A branch of the federal government whose purpose it is to study Pairs and Partners.”

“
The federal government?” Anna said faintly. She plopped down into a chair. “They know about us?”

“
They know we exist, yes,” Joseph said. “They leave us alone if we behave ourselves.”

I put my bowl of fruit salad down. “I thought they were interested in our powers.” 

“
They are. Who wouldn’t be?” Joseph ate a spoonful of yogurt and moaned. “Delicious as always, Amelia.”

Amelia, who was sitting on one of the desks, inclined her head. “Thank you, Joseph.” She paused, glancing at Anna and I. “You know how I feel about this conversation.”

Joseph pursed his lips, putting his bowl down. “Yes, I do.” They stared at each other for a moment as I moved a chair next to Anna to sit.

“
What are you hiding from us?” Anna asked.

Neither of them said anything for a moment, but I noticed Kristina and Drew were now watching Joseph. Joseph sighed, motioning to Amelia and picking his yogurt back up.

“
The Agency isn’t harmless,” Amelia told us. “If you stay off the radar, they will leave you alone. If they find out about you, they’ll come asking questions. If they do, you need to call us right away.”

“
Is that all they’re going to do, ask questions?” I asked, narrowing my eyes.

“
If they think you’re a threat, they’ll take you into custody. They’ll usually do tests on you, lab work. If you’re strong enough, they won’t let you go. They want the source of our power.”

“
Holy shit,” I whispered. Anna was panicking next to me, even worse than what she’d felt in the movie theater a week ago, and I touched her knee.

She pushed my hand away and stood up. She turned on Joseph. “You weren’t going to tell us any of that?”

“
They’re not going to be interested in the two of you,” Joseph said calmly.

“
But what if they were? What if they came, and we had no idea who they were?” She glared at him. “We’re not stupid kids.”

Joseph’s voice hardened. “I never said you were.”

“
They might think we’re useful,” she said. “We could get them past the gate, past that key code by the door.”

A tense silence hit the room, and Joseph glared at Anna. She shouldn’t have said that.

“
We would never do that,” I said, getting to my feet.

“
Of course not!” she said, keeping her gaze on Joseph. “But what would they do to get down here? How much danger are we in if they find out about our power?”

“
Very little as you are still children in their eyes and you have hardly any control over your power,” Joseph said. “You
do
need to be careful. Kristina gave you good advice when she said to practice where others won’t notice.”

“
But if they do notice?” I asked.

Joseph huffed. “If they do notice, you do what Amelia says and call us. Better yet, call Kristina and Drew, as they can come much quicker than we can. Work on your power so you can defend yourselves.”

Anna sat back down next to me, thoroughly freaked out. I slowly sat down, too. I thought of touching her knee again to try to calm her down, but I had a feeling she didn’t want comfort right now. She wanted answers.

I looked at Joseph and Amelia. “You said they want the source of our power.
 
.
 
.what is the source?”

Joseph shook his head, leaning against the table behind him. “No one knows. As I said before, it has patterns, but it’s not something that can be controlled.” He paused. “I didn’t want to worry you. The two of you seem so young to me, but you’re right. You’re not stupid children. You’re with us now.”

Anna looked down at her yogurt. “Thank you for meeting with us.”

I nodded. “This is amazing.”

I heard a buzz. Anna took her phone out of her purse. “Oh, no, it’s my mom.” She stood up and walked to the bottom of the steps. “
Salut.
”

I walked over to stand by her. Joseph and Amelia began talking in low tones.

“
Mom? I can’t hear you very well.” Anna looked at her phone, then brought it back to her ear. “I don’t have very good reception. I’m at home! I’m just in a weird spot.” She fell silent for a moment, her mother’s voice speaking in French. Anna responded, “Yes. Yes, okay, I’ll see you then.” She hung up and turned to me. “We should go. My mom wants to come home a little early.”

“
How early?” I asked.

“
Two or three,” she said. “It’s nearly eleven thirty.”

I nodded. “Yeah, let’s go.”

“
Leaving already?” Joseph asked.

“
My mom doesn’t know I’m here,” Anna said. “Thank you again.”

Joseph motioned toward the steps. “We’ll walk you out.”

The six of us walked upstairs. We left our bowls in the kitchen. “I’m glad you two could come over,” Joseph said.

“
Thanks for helping me with the fruit salad,” Amelia said, touching Anna’s shoulder.

They walked us to our car. Drew gave me directions to get out of here while Anna talked with the others.

Drew dropped his voice and leaned toward me. “Don’t worry, man. She’ll come around eventually.”

“
Thanks,” I told him. I couldn’t imagine how he’d react if I told him I’d gotten a girlfriend since I’d last seen him—a girlfriend who wasn’t Anna.

“
If you get lost, just call us,” Drew said.

We did get lost, and I did call. Anna didn’t trust me to talk on the phone and drive at the same time, so she relayed directions to me from the phone. I nearly grabbed the phone from her, but her wreck with Steven had been only a week and a half ago.

After half an hour, we were finally on Interstate 80. “Don’t speed,” she told me. “I don’t care if I get in trouble, just don’t speed.”

We talked about everything we’d just learned. I told Anna how Joseph had found our parents, tracing their parents around the world. When he approached them about sixteen years ago, they seemingly had no idea what he was talking about. I asked why he thought they were Paired with someone if they denied it, and he said he didn’t for sure, but he had a strong feeling since the patterns pointed to them. I didn’t know what that meant. What patterns? I wanted to spend a whole year with the guy, learning all he knew.

“
The Agency, though,” Anna said quietly. “That freaks me out.” 

“
Yeah, I know. We can handle them, though.”

She smirked at me. “As long as we don’t visit the power plant soon.”

“
Okay, that was a bad idea,” I admitted.

We pulled up to Anna’s house right at two o’clock. Her mom’s car wasn’t back yet. “Wow,” Anna said, grabbing her iPod and purse. “Thank you for not speeding but still getting us here in time.”

I smiled. “I’m a professional.”

“
Professional what?”

“
Professional safe driver.”

Anna laughed, opening her door. “Yeah, okay. You should go before my mom gets here.”

“
Aw, come on. Your mom likes me.”

She stepped out. “I do, too, but I haven’t even asked her if you could come over.”

I rolled my eyes. “And you didn’t ask her if you could go to San Francisco for the day.”

“
Fine, come in. But tell her you just showed up, okay? I didn’t invite you.”