“Yeah.” GB smiled. “She’ll be fun to work for.”
“Just watch out for her sense of humor,” Joby said. “Her son’s a friend of mine, and believe me, a tendency for sadistic pranks runs in their family.”
“I didn’t meet him,” said GB.
“No,” Joby said, feeling the smile leave his face. “He and some friends ran into demons in November. Two of them were killed.” The waves of grief were always smaller now, but still managed to surprise him. “Cob was sent away for his own protection.”
“Sent where?” GB asked. “Where is there for us besides here?”
Joby hesitated. The Garden Coast’s existence was under tighter wraps than ever. With Ferristaff no longer around to draw attention to it, everyone just hoped the demons would have no reason to probe so far north. Still, GB had been vetted by several members of the council. The address in Seattle GB had given them checked out: gutted by fire two years earlier, a couple dead, their son still missing. Joby saw no reason not to answer GB’s question. He was one of them now.
“He’s in a place called the Garden Coast, well north of here,” said Joby. “GB, what I’m telling you is one of our most closely guarded secrets. It’s vital that no demon ever have reason to suspect it’s there. You mustn’t speak of it to anyone unless they bring it up. Okay?”
“Sure,” GB said. “You get good at keeping secrets on the street. Does Nacho know about it?”
“We all do,” Joby said. “Everyone who’s of the blood, I mean. That’s why I’m telling you. In fact, quite a few of us are up there now working to hide it more thoroughly, and preparing for the worst if it’s found. You may end up helping them yourself, once you’ve settled in here.”
“Have you been there?” GB asked.
“Just once,” said Joby. “It was quite beautiful, but I’d be of no use up there now.”
“Why not?” GB said, giving Joby another shy smile. “You seem pretty helpful.”
“What they’re doing takes all kinds of power I don’t have,” Joby said wistfully.
“That’s not what I heard,” said GB. “If you’re of the blood, you’ve got powers.”
“Well, yes, I have been told that,” Joby sighed. “But if so, mine are hidden way too well to find. Since all the trouble started I’ve tried, a couple times, to do things, or even just to sense this power everybody says I have. But nothing happens. I’ve talked to Solomon about it, and—”
“He’s one of the ancients, right?” asked GB, his eyes suddenly alight.
“Yes,” Joby said. “I forgot you hadn’t met him yet. He and Jake are both stretched pretty thin, as you can imagine.”
“So, Solomon said you don’t have powers?” GB said skeptically.
“Not exactly,” Joby said. “Just that it’s much harder for someone who wasn’t raised to use them early. He says it’s like being French. Either you’re born and raised that way, or you’re toast.”
“Yeah, but . . . maybe I shouldn’t be questioning an ancient,” GB said hesitantly, “but I’m not sure that’s right.”
“Well, the proof is in the pudding.” Joby shrugged. “Like I said, I’ve tried.”
“You didn’t try with me,” GB said. “I think . . . I could help you do it.”
Having resigned himself once to being a magical retard, Joby wasn’t eager to jump through still more pointless hoops. “That’s very kind of you, GB,” he said, “but—”
“You gotta let me try, at least,” said GB. “You’ve done all this stuff for me. I really wanna do this for you. Okay?”
“Well, what did you have in mind?” Joby said, seeing no way around it without completely rebuffing GB’s generosity. Might as well fail one more time and have it done.
“Okay,” GB said, heading for a table at the back of Joby’s room. “Let’s sit here.”
“We’re going to do it now?” Joby asked. “Here?”
“Good as anyplace.” GB shrugged. “We’ll be able to see if anyone comes in.”
“What exactly are we going to do?” Joby asked, sitting down beside him.
“First, we have to find it,” GB said. “Sounds like you lost it pretty early. But it’s gotta still be in there, and once you remember what it felt like, the rest’ll be like swimming.” He smiled. “Once you’ve done it, you can do it.”
“Uh-huh,” Joby said, certain that GB was in for a disappointment. “And if there’s no magic in there to remember?”
“It’s there,” GB said firmly. “Nacho says you use it all the time without knowing, so we prob’ly don’t even have to look that far back.” He turned to Joby, seeming suddenly uncomfortable again. “But, here’s the deal. You gotta promise not to tell anyone how we did this, okay?” His expression became grave. “I mean seriously promise.”
“Why?” Joby said uncomfortably. “What are you going to do?”
GB said nothing for a moment, then, “If I tell you, will you promise not to even tell the Council what I said?”
“That depends on what it is, GB. To be honest, it’s sounding like whatever you’ve got in mind is nothing we should be doing anyway.”
“It’s nothing bad,” GB insisted earnestly. “It’s just that . . . when people find out what I can do, they get all tweaked sometimes. So . . . so I just don’t let them know I can.”
“Are you going to tell me what it is?” Joby pressed.
GB sighed, seeming braced for trouble. “I can sort of get in people’s heads and . . . look around for things.”
“You read minds?” Joby said. Then, less comfortably, “Are you doing it now?”
“No!” GB said hotly. “That’s what I’m talkin’ about! The minute people find out, they get all paranoid. But it doesn’t just happen. I have to work at it, and I never do it without permission. Anyone who uses the power at all would feel me in there in a second anyway, but people still treat me like some kind of peepin’ Tom.” He frowned. “So now I’ve told you. You can trust me or not. It’s your call.” His sullen expression made his expectation clear. “If you tell, I’ll just go find some other town to live in.”
Joby wondered uncomfortably whether other people around Taubolt had been reading his mind. “You can’t be the only one who has this gift,” he said.
“Most of us can send things into other people’s minds,” GB said, “but being able to pull things out, that’s rare.” He shrugged unhappily. “Lucky me.”
“Is it . . . unpleasant?” Joby asked.
“It doesn’t hurt, if that’s what you mean,” said GB. “Might feel a little strange, is all.” He looked hopefully at Joby. “You’re gonna let me?”
“I might,” Joby said, still trying to decide.
“And you won’t tell anyone?” GB asked.
“No,” Joby said. “I won’t betray your trust. But I’m counting on you not to betray mine either by doing anything I’ll be sorry for later.”
“I won’t,” GB enthused. “Honest! Okay. First, lay your hands out flat on the table, and I’ll put mine on top of yours.” When they’d done so, GB said, “Now close your eyes and get relaxed. Think about fallin’ asleep or some-thing . . . on a warm day. . . . Let your body just slow down, your breathing, your blood . . . everything gettin’ slower.”
They were silent as Joby let himself relax, noting that GB’s hands were very warm, and getting warmer.
“Okay,” GB said. “I’m gonna start lookin’. It feels different for different people. It could feel like gettin’ dizzy, or like your ears are ringin’, or even like you’re forgettin’ things. But I won’t do anything to hurt you, and I’ll get out the minute you ask, okay?”
Joby nodded, tensing up a bit despite himself.
“Okay,” GB said, “now, when I find what we’re lookin’ for, you’ll sort of see it—like a daydream. Latch on to that and concentrate until the dream gets stronger. Ready?”
Joby took a deep breath and nodded again, then felt it, right away, like a waterfall of inaudible voices in his mind. “
Wow,” he whispered.
“Shhhh,” GB said. “Pay attention, watch.”
For a long while nothing changed. Joby just felt GB’s feather-light presence sifting through his mind like a barber’s fingers running through his hair. It was kind of relaxing, really. “Nothing’s happening,” he said at last.
“You always use such tiny brushes of power,” GB replied. “I can’t find anything big enough to make you see it.”
“It feels kind of neat though.” Joby smiled. “God, this is weird.”
“Keep quiet,” GB urged, then uttered a soft exclamation and said, “There!” Joby felt a sudden plunging sensation, as if he’d lost his balance. His hands clamped down involuntarily on the tabletop beneath GB’s. “Relax,” GB said calmly. “Can you see it? Man! How could anybody miss a thing like that?”
As GB spoke, Joby had already begun to slip into a dream of astonishing vividness, both frightening and fascinating—not just images but sound and touch—all his senses. Soon GB’s voice was all that proved he was still in his classroom.
“Where is this?” GB asked.
“It’s the lake!” Joby said, recognizing his surroundings in amazement. “I remember this! This was our swimming hole.”
As Joby spoke, the experience ceased to feel like mere memory at all. The rising sun crested trees across the lake to spill across the rock ledge where he sat naked and dripping in the early sun, covered in undulating reflections of sunlight, and feeling suddenly as wild, as still, and as beautiful as everything around him. Lost in light and warmth, he gazed out across the dazzling water, and became aware of movement all around him in the silence.
Tiny flies danced on the lake’s surface. Bees and dragonflies darted or hovered all along the shore. Ants searched rocks and pebbles for morsels to bring back to their queen. Thistle seeds and iridescent strands of gossamer drifted through the air, backlit with rainbow fire by the rising sun, until it seemed the entire world was one slow, swirling dance of glinting, golden illumination. It was the strangest feeling, yet familiar in some nameless way as well. A small wasp landed on Joby’s arm, carrying the rainbow in its wings, but he felt no fear of being stung, only the tickling touch of kin. A bottle fly, also covered in rainbows, landed on his knee; one more intimate connection with the moving, luminous scheme of life that stretched away across the lake into the forest beyond, and on out of sight. With a surreal surge of wholeness and well being, Joby wondered how he’d stumbled into this sudden fairyland, and what might happen if he tried reaching farther into—
“Whaaaaaaawhoooo!”
The shout and several pounding steps behind him were all the warning he received before Jupiter’s body came hurtling past him to land like a depth charge in the lake, drenching Joby and his perch with spray, and shattering the spell.
“Jupiter!” Joby shouted, filled with delight to see the boy alive.
“Were you blind?” came GB’s voice.
The dream dissolved in shards of light and sound as Joby’s eyes flew open, swimming in unshed tears.
“How could you feel all that and not notice?” GB laughed, seeming oblivious to Joby’s sudden pang of grief at having had and lost his young friend yet again.
“Feel what?” Joby asked, pulling himself forcefully back into the present.
“That was it, man!” GB said incredulously. “What’d you think, your average tourist sees the whole world edged in fire? You could’ve flown across that lake and taken half the water with you filled with that much power!” GB shook his head and laughed again. “No gifts, huh?”
Joby was astonished. “You mean that feeling was—”
“The power we all tap into.” GB nodded. “I anchored that memory in your conscious mind before I pulled out, so it should come back pretty easy when you want it. Now all you have to do is learn to find that feeling in yourself again, then aim it with your will, and things will start to happen, dude.”
“Like what?” Joby said, still filled with disbelief.
“Let’s find out.” GB grinned. Reaching into his coat pocket, he pulled out a book of matches, tore one loose, and laid it on the table between them. “Here’s what you do,” he said. “Try to fill up with the memory of that morning—your whole body, not just your head. Then focus that feeling on what you want the match to do until it does.”
“That’s all?” Joby said. “But I still don’t know what I’m doing.”
“There’s nothin’ to know,” GB insisted patiently. “Once you’ve learned to tap in, you don’t have to know how it works any more than you know how you’re makin’ your lungs fill up or your legs move. You just want ’em to, and they do. Tell ’em not to and they don’t. For us, the power’s built in like that too.”
Doubting it could really be so easy, Joby concentrated on the match and reached for the strange ecstasy GB had helped him recall a moment earlier, amazed at how effortlessly the seductive feeling returned now. At first, he imagined the match sprouting wings and fluttering off like a butterfly, but that seemed too hard to hope for on a first try, so he decided just to make it light, since that’s what matches did anyway.
Staring at the match, the memory of “power” grew even fiercer within him, becoming a kind of pressure in his face as the image of the match aflame grew more vivid in his mind. With a smile, Joby started to believe it might actually happen, and—
The match went up all at once—not just its tip, but the entire length of it! Joby lurched back in surprise, then lunged forward to beat it out with his cupped palm. He’d been so sure nothing would happen that he’d never worried about scorching the tabletop.
“Kind of a boring choice,” GB grinned, “but not bad for a beginner.”
Joby gaped at him in stunned disbelief.
“Hey, that wasn’t me,” GB said with mild amusement. “You’re in, man.”
“What do I do now?” Joby asked, still in a daze.
“Whatever you want.” GB shrugged happily. “Practice, I guess. I can help you if you want, but we’ll have to do it someplace private, so people don’t start askin’ questions. In fact,” GB said, looking troubled again, “maybe you better wait awhile before you show people, or they’ll think it was awful sudden and I’ll get discovered.”
“All right,” Joby said, still too overwhelmed to think straight. “We can meet in my room at the inn or somewhere in the woods.” He shook his head in wonder. He’d done magic! Real magic! Snap! Just like that, his whole world had changed again.
Agnes stood inside one of Taubolt’s newest boutiques, discreetly concealed behind reflections in the store’s large plate-glass window, and watched Joby Peterson being fawned over by a crowd of hooligans up the street. Since getting Nacho Carlson and that vagrant boy off the hook, he’d become the darling of delinquents everywhere.
Community service, Agnes thought with contempt. What impression was that likely to make on anyone? No one on her side of the issue had even been informed of the underhanded coup where that decision had been made. She’d clearly placed far too much trust in Donaldson—not a mistake she’d make again.
Turning away in disgust, she walked out of the store in a huff just as Peterson’s band of thieves produced a burst of braying laughter at some doubtless filthy joke. The sound brought back her first encounter with him in the Heron’s Bowl all those years before. The proof of his poor character had been plain even then. What was such a perverse young man doing teaching school? She’d be looking into that immediately.
It all seemed very curious, Merlin thought as he stood outside his grandson’s room waiting for Joby to answer his knock. Joby had sent him a general delivery letter, of all things, saying he had something urgent to discuss. Admittedly, it was a lengthy hike to Merlin’s house up on Avalon Ridge, and, yes, he had been gone a lot, what with all the work involved in defending Taubolt, and it was true that “Solomon” did not have a phone. Still, a letter by post? Joby was lucky it had come to Merlin’s attention at all. Why had he not just left a message wit
h anyone on the Council? And why was he not answering now? Mrs. Lindsay had seemed quite sure about seeing Joby come in. Merlin knocked again, suppressing a distasteful hybrid of irritation and concern.
“Come in,” Joby called, sounding muffled and unwell somehow.
“Joby?” Merlin called back. “It’s Solomon. I can come back if you’re sleeping?”
Receiving no answer at all, Merlin’s concern increased. Finding the door unlocked, he opened it and peered inside. No one was there. Early evening light poured through the half-open window onto Joby’s unmade bed. A chilly breeze ruffled class assignments stacked neatly on Joby’s desk. That was all. Yet Merlin had heard someone call to him quite clearly. Seeing Joby’s partly opened closet door, Merlin went with growing discomfort to see if Joby were inside it for some reason. When he pulled the door open, however, what he found left him gaping in disbelief.
Leaning into Joby’s modest wardrobe was a woman Merlin hadn’t seen in centuries, dressed precisely as he’d seen her last, just before she had betrayed him.
“Nimue!” he exclaimed, aghast.
“You remember! After all this time.” She grinned coquettishly. “I’m flattered.”
Behind him, the merest breath of air and a soft click as Joby’s room door closed. Merlin whirled, still dazed with disbelief, to find an adolescent boy of astonishing beauty smiling slyly from across the room. His fair hair was shot with miser’s gold, his chiseled features rife with malice, his blue eyes, icy. Merlin knew him instantly, for Hell’s master made no effort to shield himself from Merlin’s probing mind. “Lucifer!” Merlin gasped.
“Very good.” The fair boy smiled. “Not one of your celebrated Council members has managed to see through my disguise at all. But then, I didn’t want them to. If you don’t mind, however, I prefer GB at present.” The boy moved gracefully to place himself between Merlin and the door, as if that mattered now. “Kallaystra, dear. Come say hello to the man who’s caused us all this trouble,” GB said, waving vaguely at his own body.
The Book of Joby Page 65
