There was a brisk click at the back of the store, and his mother’s most recent customer emerged from the dressing room, wearing a Storm costume from the X-Men movie. It was too tight for her, but in reality, his mother’s magic hands would have found a way to make the costume work, if the customer really wanted it.
“Hello?” she called. “Do you think this is my size?”
Pierce-face looked back along the aisle, stared, and then hooted in disbelief. “Sure don’t look like Halle Berry, lady.”
Another one laughed until he was red in the face. “Beautiful skin, baby, but just too much of it.” They were almost collapsing with mirth.
Frankie seemed almost unnaturally calm. God, Frankie, please don’t—
The customer was red-faced, and just a little frightened by the hooting apparitions. At the moment when she seemed on the verge of tears, about to turn and flee to the safety of the dressing room, Frankie turned to her and said, “No, ma’am, that’s probably not quite right, but I’m sure we have your size.” His face was utterly sweet and sincere, his voice calming. “And I’m sure it will look fine.” He paused for a moment, his head tilted at an angle. “Excuse me, but do you have relatives in Minnesota?”
She seemed confused, glancing back and forth between this pale, earnest boy and the three intruders, who had quieted, baffled by his line of conversation.
“No,” she finally answered. “No, I don’t think so.”
“Do you know the Ranges? Jessica Range is my girlfriend. I’m going to visit her over spring break. You remind me of her.”
For a moment she stared, as if wondering if he was teasing her. Frankie’s face shone with sincerity, and her shoulders relaxed. “No, I don’t think so,” she said, a tiny smile curving her lips. “But I think she’s a very lucky girl.” She brushed her fingers along his cheek. Then she glared at the three dark-clad apparitions, and returned to the dressing room.
Frankie returned to the front desk. The three so-called “customers” pretended to shop for another minute or so, but their mood was broken, the fun over. Grumbling, they left the store.
Patrick high-fived Frankie. “Does she really remind you of Jessica?” he asked.
“Whattaya think?” Frankie grinned, then his expression went shy as Destiny gave him a tight, long hug. Frankie’s eyes closed, and he gripped her for dear life. Patrick found something to keep himself busy until that hug ended, then the three of them began the work of closing the shop down for the evening. As they did, Patrick had time to think.
He should have trusted Frankie more, known that the capacity for violence is not the same thing as a tendency toward it.
All three of them had dreams, nightmares, night sweats too awful to share with anyone who didn’t already know who they were, and what they had done.
His urges were there. But he had the other Charisma Lake kids now. They were scattered across the country, but they were a tribe, bonded by blood and heart. A tribe. Every day he was learning more, understanding more. He knew that there was something that no one would tell him, something that might help explain everything that had happened.
He sensed that there was a deeper truth, one connecting Patrick and Destiny, Lee and Shermie, Frankie Darling, and at least fifty other brothers and sisters. A pattern he couldn’t understand, but would. He saw it in the eyes of the therapists sent by the government after that terrible time in Arizona. He saw it in Renny Sand’s face.
Frankie still rolled the streets, but his parents were at least trying now. He had seen Reverend Darling’s tears when he first hugged his son after the fire, and if it had taken Frankie a few seconds for his thin arms to twine around his father’s waist, at least it had happened. A long road lay before the Darlings, but at least they had taken the first tiny steps.
That was, Patrick supposed, a small miracle. It was good to know that miracles actually happened from time to time. Miracles like life, and love.
Love. His mom was falling in love with Renny Sand. Despite being a reporter, Renny was actually pretty cool. The guy usually talked pretty straight with Patrick, despite hiding at least one secret.
Patrick knew he’d ferret it out one day. He, and the other kids. They had phones, and e-mail, and they all enjoyed games. The kids were sure they were being observed, but that was a game, too.
Sometimes he woke up in the middle of the night, with one of the bad dreams working its way up through the corridors of his mind. Occasionally when one of his mom’s customers was rude in the shop, he imagined how it would be to show the bastards what pain really was. When the customer left, he would go to Destiny, or his mother, and they would hold him for a while. He would feel their warmth, and he would be all right. Sometimes Destiny needed to talk, or be held, and he was always there for her.
Sometimes the three of them went off on long walks in the woods with his mom and Renny, and they would talk of life, and play, and the seasons, or sports … anything but the dark red thing burrowing within him. And he knew that as long as he had friends and family like these, he was safe. Safe from the world, and from himself.
There was something in him, something with fangs and claws. Something that remembered the violence of the past year and said that it was right, it was good, and that the evil men who died had deserved their deaths, deserved more than death. In fact, they had been fortunate to have perished so easily.
The voices went no further than that before running into a wall composed of love, and morality, and sheer living will.
That thing, the thing within him and Frankie and Destiny that could kill, had killed, wasn’t the greater part of them. It wasn’t who they chose to be.
It wasn’t who he chose to be.
A choice, once made, creates its own path. Truer words were never spoken.
We decide, he said to himself. I decide. No matter what the world throws at me. I have people who love and understand me, and the future is waiting.
And if every goddamned day he had to remind himself who and what he was, then so be it. Every successful person Patrick had ever read about had been constantly forced to remind himself who he was, what he was committed to. They all had urges and compulsions. What had Marcus said? The mark of greatness was to master desire, rather than allowing desire to master you.
Patrick knew he would be great, could feel it in his blood and in his bones. He had survived the tempering flames, and emerged stronger, purer. He would remind himself of that bright hot passage, of the flaming, lethal tornado of Charisma Lake that had swept all before it. Every day and every night for the rest of his life he would remember.
When he closed his eyes, that cone of fire roared. It danced in his dreams, purifying thought.
Exist for the good of mankind.
I decide, he thought.
I decide.
TOR BOOKS BY STEVEN BARNES
Achilles’ Choice (with Larry Niven)
Beowulf’s Children
Blood Brothers
Charisma
The Descent of Anansi (with Larry Niven)
Firedance
Gorgon Child
The Kundalini Equation
Streetlethal
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
CHARISMA
Copyright © 2002 by Steven Barnes
All rights reserved.
Edited by Beth Meacham
A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010
www.tor.com
Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.
ISBN: 0-812-56896-6
First edition: June 2002
First mass market edition: July 2003
eISBN 9781466833982
First eBook edition: November 2012
Charisma Page 46
