Novel - Arcanum 101 (with Rosemary Edghill) (13 page)

“Then there’s yelling, and running, and screaming,” Ethan said. The words were humorous, but his expression wasn’t. He looked thoroughly shaken by his narrow escape tonight.

“And Kurt, might be you want to work a bit harder on your shielding,” Mr. Songmaker added.

Kurt nodded. “I wasn’t expecting… that,” he said, sheepishly.

“I wasn’t either,” Aimee said loyally. “It was… hungry.”

“It wanted,” Kurt said. “And it hurt. But it wasn’t anything I could fix.”

“And if’n you’d tried, you would of found yourself in a power o’ trouble,” Hosea said. “And as for you, Aimee, if’n you’d stayed with Brian, it could be you might not have been taken quite so much by surprise.”

Aimee hung her head and fiddled with the ends of her long hair in shame.

“It was my fault, too,” Brian said. “If I hadn’t—”

“Next time, you’ll know,” Mr. Bishop said simply.

“You knew what was out there!” Tomas said angrily. “And you let us walk right into it!”

“That was what you were out here to do,” Mr. Bishop pointed out reasonably. “And we were right behind you to step in if things got completely out of hand. Talent draws Talent: in your future lives, whether you choose lives of Service or not, it’s more than likely you’ll find yourselves facing problems like this again. You’ll need to know how to respond.”

Tomas looked around the campfire.

Kurt still looked like he’d been hit over the head with something, and Aimee and Annabelle looked as if anybody even said “boo” to either of them, they’d run screaming. Ethan looked angry, and Brian looked guilty. Lalage looked pretty excited, like she’d like another monster to come along so she could take another swing at it. VeeVee looked mad enough to be spitting fire herself.

Every single one of them looked like they believed every single word Mr. Bishop had just said.

And Tomas?

He didn’t know what to believe. This morning he’d been sure he knew exactly how the world worked—and there was no place in it for either monsters or magic. Now? He’d seen both. He had to believe.

But he didn’t have to like it.

VeeVee was so angry she couldn’t speak, which was just as well, since what would have come out of her mouth would not have made anyone feel better. Hosea Songmaker could probably tell just how angry she was, and if he couldn’t his possessed banjo Jeanette surely could. She wasn’t at all surprised when Hosea gave her a look and nodded towards his tent. She didn’t even wait to make sure the other kids were back in their own sleeping bags so they didn’t get the wrong idea. She unzipped the flap, crawled inside, and dropped down on the canvas floor, seething.

Hosea was right behind her, closing the door-flap against the bugs.

“All right, young’un,” he said, reaching up to turn on a lightweight LED lantern hanging from the criss-crossed supports at the top of the dome. “Let’s hear it.”

“You explained it to them!” she burst out. “You told them, one M, one P, so they could protect each other and cover the holes in each other’s defenses. The only one who thought this was a snipe-hunt was Tomas! And the first thing they do is trade partners! What did they think this was, some sort of game? Somebody could have gotten hurt or even killed out there, and why?” She punched the floor. “Because they’re idiots!”

“Because they’re young’uns,” Hosea said mildly.

“They’re Talents!” she fumed. “That’s no excuse—”

“Whoa, whoa, now hear me out,” Hosea interrupted. “Y’all’ve been a workin’ Talent for how long now?”

“Since I was nine, and even then I wasn’t that stupid!” she exclaimed.

“And y’all’ve been out there, doin’ adult work, Guardian work fer a couple years.” Hosea shook his head. “VeeVee, none of them others have been workin’ Talents fer half as long as you, ‘cept mebbe Lalage, and ah guarantee you, none o’them is going to up to yore standards fer a couple o’years yet—”

“It was amateur!” she retorted. “It was childish!”

Hosea shrugged. “‘Pears to me that’s about normal.”

“But we can’t afford to pretend be normal,” she said flatly, getting a startled glance from him. “You ought to know that. We’re extraordinary. Extraordinary things happen around us, usually bad. And we have to be ready for them. Always.” She looked down at her hands, hands that had done things few here would have guessed. “Acting like other people is a luxury, and we don’t have that option anymore once our Powers start to manifest.”

Hosea ran his hand through his hair, a baffled expression on his face. “Sugah, ah know y’all are a pro, but th’ rest o’ the kids—”

VeeVee looked up at Hosea, her anger as hot as any fire she could conjure. “We might be kids, but we had damn well better act like pros in the field. Because if we don’t… someone is going to die. And if we don’t do everything we can to make sure they act like pros, that’s going to be on our heads.” She leveled a peer-to-peer, challenging gaze at him. “You want that? ‘Cause I don’t.”

Tomas’s plans for the evening had pretty much gone out the window now. When he’d thought—and Dios! It seemed a lifetime ago!—that this was going to be all a way to scare everybody, he’d planned on giving VeeVee a hard time for believing in it, then making it up to her by being nice, not rubbing it in too much, maybe getting her off alone for a little before the chaperones hauled them all back to their tents.

Now though—she was mad, and even if he hadn’t been seriously shaken by what had happened, the last place he wanted to be was anywhere near her. He’d never seen her like this before. Annoyed, si. Even a flash of anger now and again. But not mad like this. He only hoped Mr. Songmaker could cool her out because… oh man this was the kind of mad that could bust out in bad ways.

The other three guys crawled into the tent right after him, Kurt, who shared it with him, looking seriously shook, the other two, puzzled. “I don’t get it—” Ethan said. “I mean, Jeezus, you’d think me and Brian had done something—man, VeeVee is wound way too tight—”

Tomas saw Ethan still didn’t get it. OK, yeah, VeeVee was wound tight, but she had a good reason to get a mad on. Listening to Mr. Songmaker and he still didn’t get it. “Look, cholo, you messed up.”

The tiny lantern showed Ethan’s face pretty clearly. He looked as surprised as if Tomas had just starting reciting Shakespeare or something. “But all we did was—”

“You unbalanced the tires, man!” Tomas shook his head. “You ‘member what happened when Señora Davies showed us unbalanced tires an’ how they can wreck things? Mr. Songmaker balanced the tires with us when he paired us up, so’s we could cover blind spots. You went an’ unbalanced the tires, an’ the car just about rattled itself to pieces.” He shook his head. “Man, that—That could’a been bad. Anyway, I bet that’s why she’s mad.”

“But the teachers—”

“An’ what if that thing had got them before it got to us, huh? What if it had friends? You can’t count on nobody if you can’t see ‘em, and sometimes even if you can.” He thought about all the people that might have turned on him and given him to the cops. Okay, these kids weren’t like that. But—things happened. “Somethin’ like this, muy loco stuff, you don’t know, so you gotta stick to the plan so at least everybody knows where everybody’s supposed to be.”

Now how VeeVee knew that, and how she’d guessed what that thing was and how to bring it down… well, maybe it was luck and maybe it was something else he didn’t want to think about right now. But he knew it was true.

Ethan, at least, was nodding and now looking as guilty as Brian. Tomas punched him lightly on the bicep. “Get some sleep,” he said. “It’s a long hike back in the morning, no? I’m beat.”

Ethan nodded, paused, then wordlessly crawled out of the tent with Brian behind him. Tomas took over his own sleeping bag with a sigh. “This magic stuff—” he said to Kurt, as he wedged himself into his bag. “It’s muy loco. I mean, I thought you were all—” He fumbled for words. “It don’t seem right.”

“You get used to it.” Kurt said wearily. “How is it weirder than psi? They both use stuff you can’t see to do things you can.” He turned off the lantern and crawled into his own bag. “In fact,” he continued, somberly, “I wish what I did was magic.”

OK, that was just crazy talk. “Que? What kinda sense is that?” Tomas asked. “I mean, what we do, that’s science, you know? Like there are laws, it isn’t wave your hands around an’ spooky stuff happens—”

Kurt snorted. “If you haven’t figured out by now, havin’ VeeVee as your mentor, that it ain’t just waving your hands around… Magic has more laws than psi and—ah hell. Ask her. Thing is, you don’t have to do magic. Fact, it’s easier not to. Easy to control doing it or not doing it, easy to shut it off. This—I can’t shut it off. And neither can you, or you wouldn’t be here.”

Tomas was stunned into silence by that. Kurt was right.

“When this first started… this healing, this feeling what’s wrong with people, with things… I thought I was gonna die. It all came on all of a sudden, and pretty much full power.” Kurt turned over in his sleeping bag. “My folks… they didn’t get it. First they thought I was makin’ it up and sent me to counselors. Then the counselors told ‘em I was psycho, an’ they tried every kind of drug there was on me. I was sick all the time from the drugs and sick all the time from feelin’ other people being sick and sick from tryin’ t’help ‘em. Finally they were gonna lock me up—” He made a sound that wasn’t a laugh. “That would’ve been just great, lock me up with nothin’ but sick people. So I just—ran. Stole their ATM cards, cleaned out their wallets, got as much cash as I could and ran. Went to a 24-hour superstore, got camping stuff, got a bus ticket—Allegany State Park, I just wanted to go somewhere there weren’t people. Or at least where I could get away from people. I snuck in through the woods, figured out where people were camping, camped far enough away I couldn’t feel them but close enough I could sneak down, use the showers, get water, steal food.” Kurt laughed a little for real now. “Funny how smart you get when you’re around crazy people. Turned out I didn’t have to steal much food. People always bring too much, or stuff they thought they’d want to eat and don’t, and that’s usually good stuff like fruit, beef jerky, bread. They bring healthy stuff, then eat junk, same as always. End of the weekend, they pitch what they didn’t eat. Pitch a lot of things. I figured I was doin’ OK. Didn’t think that where someone like me was, there might be somethin’ around that’d think I was mighty tasty.”

That came out of nowhere. Tomas felt his eyes fly open. “Que?”

“Psions, like me. Empaths, healers. There’s other things, some people, they can feed off us or use us, or both. There I was wide open, an’ there was someone lookin’ for something just like me.” Kurt sighed. “Almost got me too, except there was someone on his track, and I was lucky; he showed up just like on TV, just in time to keep me from bein’—well, I dunno. It felt like this guy was pullin’ my brain out through my ears, when this other guy all in cammo kind of appeared outa nowhere, cold-cocked him. Some dude from LlewellCo, only I didn’t know that then. He grabbed me, grabbed the guy, called in a chopper, dumped me here, flew off with the guy in restraints.” Kurt laughed again. “Real Men In Black stuff, except it happened.”

“What about your ‘rents?” Tomas wondered.

“Ms. Llewellyn fixed it with ‘em. I don’t know how.” A sigh. “Hell, I was never what they wanted anyway. They wanted a football player. First time I told ‘em I wanted to be a nurse, Dad just about had a coronary that, and that was before all the healing an’ empathy stuff started. Aaron—that’s my little bro—he’s everything they ever wanted. Nothin’ but football, an’ that’s all he wants. So I guess they’re happy. I get cards and presents, but they never come here.”

Tomas didn’t have to be an empath to feel the pain on the other side of the tent. He thought about saying something, but what? Nothing he could, really. What would Mamacita say if she knew what he was doing? Would she still love him? Or would she write him off, or worse, be afraid of him? The silence deepened, and finally, turned into sleep.

#

Monday morning.

The banging of doors in the hallway woke him a little after six, just as it always did. Tomas muttered and grumbled and rolled over, pulling his pillow over his head. His alarm was set for seven, but it was a rare school morning where he got to sleep that late. There were twenty-two boys in his building, and the bathrooms were on the first floor—where he was—so there was a lot of traffic in the mornings.

The dining hall opened at six—if you were a really early riser—and stayed open until 8:30—if you just wanted to grab something on your way to class, which was usually what Tomas did. Classes ran from nine to noon, there was a ninety-minute break for lunch, and then half the poor slobs were back in the classrooms till four, while lucky guys like Tomas were off doing cool things like working in the garage until Señora Davies threw him out for the evening. Then he’d come up, maybe hit the end of the dinner serving (though usually he just made do with sandwiches down at the Garage, except for Friday nights), hit the books for a couple of hours—because weekends and time after four at the Garage depended on good grades and getting his course assignments in on time—and then maybe cruise on over to the Student Union to hang out. Aaron was almost always there—he said the noise helped him study—and Kenny shot a mean game of pool. He didn’t use his powers—it actually hadn’t occurred to Tomas that he would—but one Friday night Kenny had taken him downstairs and showed him what he could be doing. He’d sunk every ball on the table with one shot, time after time.

“You could make money at this,” Tomas had said, frowning faintly.

Kenny shrugged. “It’d be cheating. Like if Gordy used his power and you played poker with him.”

Gordon Riley, Tomas knew by now, could read minds.

“So…” Tomas said. “Would you?”

Kenny looked at him oddly. “I’d have to have a really good reason. Can’t think of one offhand.”

And actually, Tomas couldn’t think of one, either.

He didn’t know when he’d stopped thinking of his special abilities as something he’d be able to use to get over on everyone who didn’t have them. Certainly nobody here spent all their time preaching about how he was going to have to Use His Great Powers For Good. Not even Mr. Bishop, who was the one who spent the most time talking to Tomas about his powers. But what Mr. Bishop talked to Tomas about was living with them and controlling them, as if the ability to start fires with his mind was some kind of large dog Tomas had accidentally adopted and was now going to have to learn to take care of properly, like it or not.