Mind Magic (26 page)

She snorted. After another moment’s thought she asked a hard question. “Am I your prisoner?”

“I’d rather not do it that way.”

What did that mean? That she wasn’t his prisoner now, but she could be? Demi swallowed. “You don’t break your word. Not ever, not for anything.”

“That’s true.”

“If I go with you voluntarily, will you promise not to make me your prisoner? Or—or give me to Mr. Smith or to Homeland Security. Or to any law enforcement. Or let them get hold of me.”

He answered slowly. “Because my word is binding, I’m careful about how I phrase my promises. If you come with me and place yourself temporarily under my authority, answering my questions freely and honestly, I will offer you the same protection and privileges I would provide for a child of my clan.”

“I’m not a child.”

“You are, however, a minor under human law and according to the custom of my people.”

His people. A thrill shot through her. She forced herself to think carefully about the meaning of each word he’d used. “There are things I don’t want to tell you, and ‘temporarily’ is too vague.”

“Very well. If you come with me and place yourself under my authority for the next forty-eight hours—”

“Twenty-four.”

“—for the next twenty-four hours, answering my questions honestly—and ‘I don’t want to tell you’ is an honest answer—I will give you the same protection and privileges I would a child of my clan.”

Demi swallowed and held out her hand. “All right.”

He took it. Her skin tingled from his magic. He shook hands, sealing the deal, but he didn’t let go.

She tugged. “I don’t much like touching.”

“I can guide you better if I hold your hand, but you could hold on to my shirt instead, if you’d rather.”

“That would be better.”

He let go. “May I carry your backpack for you?”

“No.”

“We’ve got about twelve miles to cover.”

“No.”

“Let me know if you change your mind.” He turned his back to her. “Grab hold of my shirt.”

She had to move uncomfortably close to him to do that, adding a new ingredient to the stew, one that made her heart pound. At least it was dark. She latched on to the stretchy tail of his T-shirt and they started off.

She expected him to start asking his questions right away. He didn’t. He didn’t say anything, except to tell her things in a quiet voice now and then, like to watch out for a branch or step over a big rock. She couldn’t hear anything except the sound of her feet scuffing along behind him.

Normally Demi was fine with a lack of conversation. It bothered her this time. “How did you find me?”

“Two HSI agents showed Lily an old photo of an alleged terrorist. Shortly before she was kidnapped, she realized where she’d seen that face.”

“Is she why you’re in Whistle?” That must be it. He hadn’t known Demi existed until . . . “I’m really sorry about Lily Yu.”

His voice stayed even and low. “What do you know about her?”

“Lots,” she assured him. “But she isn’t my fault, even if it feels like . . . but it’s all tangled up together.” She hesitated, then went on in a very small voice, “I think Ruben Brooks is my fault. I don’t see how they did it or what I did wrong, but somehow I must have messed up.”

“Oh?”

“Don’t do that! Your voice sounds . . . don’t do that.”

“I’m not trying to be scary, but I really need to hear what you know about Lily.”

Her brow wrinkled. “Everything I know?”

“Start with why it isn’t your fault that she’s missing.”

“I didn’t make Mr. Smith kidnap her, but he probably did it because he couldn’t find me. I’m not responsible for what he does, so it’s not my fault and I shouldn’t feel guilty.”

“You think your Mr. Smith has her?”

“That’s a theory, not a fact, but it fits the facts.”

“Why would he consider Lily a good substitute for you?”

That was one of the things she’d decided she could tell him. “Because I’m a touch sensitive, too. Just like her. That’s how I recognized you.” The second she’d felt his magic prickling along her skin, she’d known her attacker was a lupus. Lily Yu had described the feel of lupus magic in an interview she’d given
People
magazine: like fur and pine needles. “You could have been some other lupus, but I saw the bottom part of your face, too.”

“You stopped being scared then.”

“Lupi don’t hurt women. Even if I was wrong about which lupus had grabbed me, I knew I wasn’t going to be hurt.” She added with remembered indignation, “I did not know you were going to throw me over your shoulder.”

“You seem to know a lot about me. Or about lupi.”

That wasn’t a question, so she didn’t say anything. Maybe it was okay to tell him she was in his fan club. She wasn’t sure, though, so for now she wouldn’t.

“Why does Mr. Smith want a touch sensitive?”

“Because that’s how he finds them. The kids. Or how he used to. I found them for him.” Guilt swamped her, as it sometimes did no matter how often she told herself she wasn’t responsible for what Mr. Smith had done. “It’s my fault he has them. I’ve been trying to fix it, but everything’s g-gone wrong.” Tears welled up.

He stopped, turned, and put his arms around her.

She stiffened. “I don’t much—”

“—like touching. I know. I’m fulfilling my word. There’s no way I would let a child from my clan cry and not comfort them. I’ll let go of you the second you tell me to.”

His arms were warm. He was warm all over. Demi felt stiff and awkward like she always did when someone hugged her. She was supposed to hug him back, but she couldn’t. She was doing it wrong. She always did it wrong. But it felt okay to stand there and let him do the hugging. It felt . . . not alone.

She didn’t start sobbing. Demi didn’t know how to cry all-out that way. Her eyes burned and her nose ran, but she didn’t sob. She stood there all stiff and awkward and sniffed several times, and her nose got stuffy, and then she told him that was enough comforting.

He stepped back right away and waited while she dug a tissue out of her backpack so she could blow her nose. Instead of asking her more questions about Mr. Smith, he told her to grab hold of his shirt and went right back to leading her through the trees. He didn’t say anything at all for a while. Then he confused her all over again. He asked if she was an orphan.

So she told him about her mother, who’d been Mr. Smith’s secretary at the NSA. “Officially she was an administrative assistant, but that’s not what she called herself. She used to say that a secretary by any other name will still be underpaid.” As they walked through woods, where owls hooted and her feet stirred up the rich perfume of leaf mold, she talked about HER2-positive breast cancer and how she came to work for Mr. Smith.

She remembered that day so clearly, which was funny, because there were big gaps in her memory. But the parts she remembered were as clear as if they’d happened yesterday . . .

*   *   *

FOR
the last two days, Demi and Zipper had been staying with her mother’s friend Sara, who already had two kids and two cats in her two-bedroom apartment, so Demi slept on the couch. Sara was a hugging kind of person, but she’d known Demi all her life so she mostly managed not to hug Demi. Not always, but mostly. Demi liked her a lot. She liked Sara’s kids, too. They were a lot younger than her, but that was okay. She liked playing with little kids, even if they were really loud sometimes. But she did not want to stay with Sara and her kids and her cats, who did not like Zipper. She wanted to stay at home, in her own room and her own bed, until Mama was better. Zipper would be happier at home, too. Demi knew how to do everything she’d need to do, how to take care of herself and Zipper, but no one would listen to her.

She’d cut school that day, which she never did, and taken the bus to the hospital. When she walked into her mother’s room, Mr. Smith was there, too. The bed was cranked up so that Mama was almost sitting up. She hardly looked like Mama anymore, with her beautiful red hair gone and her skin so pale. Even her freckles were pale. She wore a green scarf on her head. Sally was African-American and knew how to wrap and tie scarves so they made really cool turbans. When Mama started radiation, Sally had taught her and Demi how to do that, but Mama didn’t have the energy for that anymore, so she just tied the scarf at her nape. Sometimes Demi rewrapped it for her, making a cool turban.

Mama still sounded like herself, though. When Demi walked in, she was saying something to Mr. Smith about Zipper. She stopped, looked at Demi, and instead of asking why she wasn’t in school, she told Demi to say hello to her boss and shake his hand.

Demi frowned, confused. Mama knew she didn’t like to touch people. But she’d used the voice that meant Demi had better not argue, so she didn’t. She held out her hand and shook Mr. Smith’s. His hand was soft with stubby fingers and a little tingle of magic.

“Now,” Mama said, “tell Mr. Smith what you felt.”

“But, Mama—do you mean—”

“Yes. Tell him.”

That was unprecedented. They never, ever told anyone about Demi’s Gift. She darted a glance at Mr. Smith. “You’ve got a little bit of a charisma Gift. It’s really small,” she said apologetically, as if it might be her fault he had so little magic.

Mr. Smith’s eyebrows climbed up on his forehead. “Remarkable.”

Mama said in her don’t-argue-with-me voice, “Zipper, too. In writing.”

Mr. Smith had laughed, shaken his head, and said, “You win, Margaret. If you’ll sign, I’ll waive the no-pets rule—in writing. She can take her dog with her.”

Then Mama had said, “Light of my heart”—she called Demi that sometimes—“come here.”

She did. Mama looked so tired.

“I won’t be here to take care of you much longer. No, don’t phase out on me! I love you more than the moon and stars. You know, that, don’t you?”

Demi nodded, her throat so tight she couldn’t squeeze a single word through it.

“And you love me,” Mama said as if Demi had spoken everything that was stuck in her throat. “And you don’t want to hear this, but you have to. The damn cancer is winning. Now, we’ve talked about Sally taking you in if worst comes to worst, but she doesn’t have much money, and my life insurance isn’t going to stretch very far. There sure won’t be enough for college, and you’re going to go to college. So after I’m gone, you’ll go stay at a place Mr. Smith operates called the Refuge. You and Zipper. You’ll work for Mr. Smith two weekends a month, and he’ll see that there’s money for college.”

Mr. Smith had told her about the Refuge then, but she didn’t remember that part. If you aren’t paying attention, your brain doesn’t make any memories, and Demi hadn’t been paying attention. She couldn’t think about anything except “after I’m gone.” She knew vaguely Mama had said that before, but this time was different. This time the words were like marbles she couldn’t put down. She kept rolling them around in her mind, trying to make sense of them, but their meaning was sealed up inside glass. She couldn’t touch it.

Six days later, the glass shattered.

Three days after that, she left home forever, moving to the Bright Haven Refuge for Gifted Young People. Her and Zipper.

*   *   *

ON
a moonlit night four years and four months after her mother died, Demi walked with Rule Turner down a dirt road in a river of silvery moonlight banked by the dark shapes of trees and told him about Asperger’s. She used the short explanation, the one Nicky had helped her work out because, he said, people stop listening when you tell them too much at once.

But Rule Turner didn’t seem to get tired of listening. She told him about Mr. Smith—“Edward Smith, no middle name. He’s fifty-six. He’s worked for the NSA for thirty-one years. He graduated from the University of Cincinnati in . . .”

As they crossed a small, grassy meadow, she told him how she’d set up her back door into the NSA’s computers, but not why. Well, she did slip up and mention Amanda’s name, but she stopped because she didn’t know how much she should say. And as they set off down a path she couldn’t see into another sprawling patch of woods, she told him about her plan. How long it had taken her to get the financial data that she’d sent to the reporter. Why she’d sent it. What was in the other two files—and how key data had inexplicably changed overnight to implicate Ruben Brooks instead of Mr. Smith. “I thought if he knew that I had solid data, he’d have to shut down the Refuge and let the kids go, but it went wrong somehow. I don’t know what happened. It all went wrong.”

Demi had thought she was in good shape. She’d walked every day in Whistle, and almost every week she’d taken a long hike to build her stamina. But even on her long hikes she hadn’t walked for twelve miles. She hadn’t walked through woods dense with darkness where ups and downs, roots and stones, conspired to trip her.

Twice more he asked if he could carry her backpack. Twice more she said no.

It was good that he asked. It reminded her that she couldn’t trust him. She needed the reminder, because he was awfully easy to talk to. Over those twelve miles, she told him a lot. More than she should have, probably, and a lot of it wasn’t about Mr. Smith at all. She talked about canine arthritis and what various studies on glucosamine supplements suggested and how she’d picked the spot for Zipper’s grave.

He didn’t get impatient. He seemed to want to know whatever she wanted to tell him. He didn’t get mad when she said, “I don’t want to answer,” though she had to say it several times because she wasn’t sure what it was okay to tell him. She’d have to think about that later.

Most of all, she didn’t tell him about Nicky. She protected her friend’s secret.

TWENTY-THREE