On the Line (Alternate Places Book 3) (36 page)

He expected them to be able to find nodes by looking through
them as well, so he stopped a little before nine and made them look at
different places, and then take him there like a passenger. Kaitlyn found it
hard to find new places, though she
could
find someplace that a person
had been to before by touching them easily enough. Don hardly even seemed to
need to be told someplace existed and he could find it.

Better
than Zack could, which made Kate feel a little
jealous, but only for a moment. After all, everyone had their own strengths.
Two days before she wouldn't have believed that opening a line would have even
been possible for an Alede at all. If it worked a little differently for her,
she'd deal. She'd whine about her new super power not being shiny enough
when... She just decided to be happy with what she had. Jealousy was always a
petty thing to hold onto. Beneath even her.

Then they all went to work, Don down to the apothecary, her
setting to work straightening the candle shop. Claire waived at her and she
winked back. Jelly walked in at nine sharp, though Lisa didn't get there till
nearly ten-thirty. Jelly had simply gotten a ride with Patty she told Kate, not
mentioning what they did the night before. Probably feeling a little awkward,
Kate realized, though she'd never feel that way herself.

People were coming in for transfers fairly steadily and Zack,
noting a lull in the schedule substituted her for himself in the lineup, just
making repeated trips to Lesser Shia. After about twenty minutes a translator
came, along with an administrator named Hathe.

“Are you... The Line-Walker Hartley?” The translator asked,
repeating what the other man said in that eerie yet hyper-efficient way they
had, speaking almost over the other person, but not quite.

Kaitlyn smiled and shook her head no.

“Nope,
I'm
the new person... Oh, wait! I'll be right
back, stay here please?” She smiled and waited for the man to tell her he'd
wait before ducking back into the line and finding her way to the candle shop.

“Zack... Hathe asked after you? Would you come with me to see
him so he knows I'm a real person and not you in drag?” Kate had figured out
that that's what the man had actually meant by his questions early on.

That or he'd figured her for a Demon, and was just hoping
that Zack cleaned up that nice. He really did, but Maria looked different than
that.

She walked through first, followed by Zack about fifteen
seconds later.

Hathe smiled and shook both their hands enthusiastically. He
asked Zack if this lovely lady was his wife or perhaps a clone of him, modified
to be so beautiful? Zack let her explain the situation, so that Hathe would realize
that she was as important as he was.

“Except I'm
not,
really,” She told Hathe directly. “I
can do this and may even end up being all right at it if I get enough practice,
but I'm going back to school soon, so you won't see me here for months, and
then probably only part time. The same is true with Don, the
other
new
Line-Walker.”

Hathe shook her hand again and started talking to Zack
exclusively. So she went and got the rest of the people making transfers from
the mall. Zack came back and ate lunch alone at the front counter, while she
worked in the back, then spelled her the same way. Maryl came and kicked Jelly
and Lisa out of their now shared office for a while, taking Zack in alone. They
both came back out about fifteen minutes later and Zack went to Lesser Shia for
his afternoon work there.

Three transfers came in while Zack was gone that normally
would have just been sent away or rescheduled for later. Since she'd been shown
the way to most of the regular places, Kate decided to give taking them herself
a shot. She got everyone to where they needed to go without too much hassle,
only hitting the wrong node once.

She apologized to the hairy individuals that she'd walked in
on immediately. They were short, about four foot tall and looked a little like
cats. Other than that she didn't recognize their kind, but found her mistake,
coming in three nodes over, and fixed it without too much hassle. The transfers
just smiled at her and shrugged. She'd
warned
them about it being her
first day after all.

At two Lisa asked if she'd be available for Eloise Penbroke,
which of
course
she was. On the phone Eloise sounded far more formal
than she'd ever heard her before as if she were talking to someone important.

“Hey, Eloise! It's still just me. To answer your question,
yes, we are officially forming our own working group, a nation of sorts, even
though we only have three Line-Walkers yet and it takes, it seems like, about
seven hundred years experiential on average for someone to learn how to do it
right. The vast majority of people can't or won't learn and can't even take the
void for a little while without massive help. So, I don't think our numbers are
going to sky rocket any time soon.”

The Mage leader expressed how pleased she was that the Mages
and the Line-Walkers had such a strong working relationship and hoped that
something similar might continue in the future. This ended as a question though
and Kate instantly saw what she was getting at.

“Argh. Eloise, did George Penbroke or any of his people call
you this morning with a heads up or did they just tell you that this little
nation idea was in the works? We agreed last night to get with you and form a
treaty and solidify things so that your people wouldn't worry...I mean we
all
want to keep working from here, even though we'll have our own embassy, too. It
makes us look stronger if we have a large organization backing us after all.
Plus, we're keeping Lisa, no matter what and maybe Gregory, if we can. You too
if we could swing it, so it makes sense to get in good with the whole group,
right?” She knew that her flattery might sound false to a politician's ear, but
she meant it, even the part about trying to keep her, too. If the Mages were
dumb enough to let her get away, they didn't deserve her.

They arranged to have her over for dinner that night, late,
but Kate told her that she had to get with Merri on that and give her a chance
to make something nice or she'd kill her and then there'd be only two
Line-Walkers left. Eloise laughed at this and let her go to see to it smoothly,
saying she looked forward to seeing them all and sounding like she meant it.

After she hung up, she cleared her throat, loudly.

"Jelly? Can you cover the front desk here? I have some
things to do. Getting in touch with Merri about the dinner arrangements and
things like that."

Jenifer looked anxious, but Kate smiled and told her she'd do
great. All she had to do was ask people to call back later and if they got too
pushy, call for Claire, who'd be able to handle almost anything perfectly.
That, or she could just make stuff up, as long as it wouldn't start a giant
fight.

At three, Wu-Li brought Donald back so that he could practice
taking people places if anything came in, since that would be important too. Along
with sweeping the apothecary and learning what herbs were used for what
illnesses. The Master, who looked thirty or so, but had lived for over six
hundred years, asked Kate to come with him. Back at the shop he took her into a
familiar back room and smiled at her, not bothering to bow, and asked her to
strip.

This didn't fool her, since she knew that the Master didn't
have sex as a rule, trying to save that for procreation only, which sounded
dismal to her. He turned his back and tossed her some sweats to work out in,
though no shoes. Not that she had a hang-up about shoes as long as running on
pavement wasn't on the menu.

Instead he threw smoky gray lines at her that hit hard.

"Can you sense those in any way? Before they connect
with your energy I mean." He never bothered to fake an accent for her, but
his English was nearly perfect.

"I can see them. They come out of your hands in lines,
then circle back, into your body. You flare a little, at the top of your head
and under your feet when you do it. It's pretty neat." That last bit came
with a little bit of flirtatious giggling, but the man wasn't affected by it
very much. If at all.

After about ten minutes of observation and practice Kate
worked out how to cast the lines
out
, but not bring the energy back.

Wu-Li nodded, and suggested she practice this, but only with
a ready source of energy on hand. They worked out that she should have four
decent shots in her or two big ones. Then she'd exhaust herself dangerously and
have to try something else in order to survive. Running away came to mind, but
that didn't always work, she knew.

Then standing in front of her, relaxed and almost cozy, he
shot a line of pure black force at her that could probably have taken her head
off, literally, had it connected. She responded by instinct, with a whipped out
band of white. It was a loop running from her hand to her middle and never left
her body, so it didn't cost her much energy at all, but it
did
brush the
attack aside.

Could she do something with that? Put energy just outside
herself, like a shield? She tried it, but nothing much seemed to work except
brushing things aside as Wu-Li threw at least eight different kinds of energy attacks
at her. When he flew at her, leaping through the air at her lightly his hand
projecting something, she called out for him to wait.

For once, instead of thinking it a ruse or clever trick to
get him to stall, he actually stopped and put the energy attack held close to
his hand away.

She waved her hand at him frantically, asking him to do it
again. Fine lines, a loop she saw, almost as if made of tiny gossamer wires
hung in front of his hand. She could only see them as a faint shimmer of white
held around a deep black core.

Pointing she asked what that did, indicating the loop that
hung in there. Instead of saying anything, he walked over to a cement block he
had, one of about twenty stacked along the back wall of the room and ran his
hand past it, carving a piece of it off that was about the size of a candy bar.

"Um... Can I see that one again?"

She sat down on the floor and focused, drawing her own small,
but elongated circle in the air, attached first to her index finger then coming
back to her pinky, never breaking the line. When it looked the same as Wu-Li's,
more or less, she waved her hand at the block, but nothing happened. She tried
it again and then again, with the same results.

She looked up at him and grinned, “Well, I guess that one's a
bust!” She laughed a little bit, not really feeling too bad about her lack of
results for once.

Wu-Li looked at the cement strangely for a moment, then
nudged it with his foot, causing it to fall into several large pieces and three
smaller bits that had been part of at least two cuts each. Raising his eyebrows
at her he shook his head.

“Not such a bust at all it seems. You just made such fine and
deep cuts that it held together under its own weight. I'd rather find something
you can do that gives you greater range, a distance attack, but this is a good
starting place. We'll work on this again tomorrow and see what else we can find
for you before you go away again.”

He let her go then, asking her to be most careful with her
new ability, at least until she learned how to control it. After all, if she
cut off her own hand, she could heal it herself, but someone else's
head
would probably do them in all together. Kate noticed that he didn't mention her
head, probably remembering what had happened with Zack a few months before,
even though she doubted it would apply to her that way.

Because he'd had her simply strip before, and she hadn't
worked up a sweat she just changed there, in front of him. He smiled and bowed
at her slightly, then left the room. She wondered if she'd embarrassed him?
Probably not, all things considered. He was modest, but he'd been around for
hundreds of years in
this
world, living his day to day life, working
with sick people, at least some of whom had to be naked part of the time.

After a few moments he came back with a stout looking
package. It didn't smell very good, but he explained that part to her quickly
enough.

“Master Dan has opened a new apothecary in the Australian
Central Nexus. One of the benefits of knowing all the Line-Walkers is, no doubt,
that I can work a good deal in the price of deliveries, no?” He smiled as she
took the package, since he'd known that she'd want to visit with Master Dan. She
leaned forward and kissed him softly on the cheek.

“Of course! I already owe both of you a lot for what you've
taught me and besides, Dan's a cutie.” She winked at him and spun out of the
store before he could admonish her for having kissed him.

After having left the small shop it occurred to her that it
had
a node in the back, but having already left it would be a little embarrassing
to go back inside, like she wasn't smart enough to remember that kind of thing.
So she walked to Candles and More and let Lisa know where she was headed, not
knowing how long the delivery would take her.

"You can take anything you want for free, but remember
that the going rate for this kind of delivery is about ten thousand gold per
trip."

The way she said it set Kate's teeth on edge, seeming more
than a little bitchy for some reason. She looked closely at the Mage trying to
figure it out, hoping it wasn't going to be a permanent thing. Instead of
saying anything about it, she moved forward and gave Lisa a hug, holding tight
until the other woman relaxed into it.

“I
know
. Right now it gives me a chance to practice,
which is a good thing, right? Plus Wu-Li and Dan are friends, and I owe them
more than that already, just for the lessons they've given me.” This ended with
a kiss, on the cheek, being they stood in their work place and most of their
clients weren't as understanding about such displays as they could be.