by Tanya Lisle
She picked up her hairbrush and started combing through her hair as she let her mind wander away. Uncle Ness. He said he was going to come by on Monday morning, which meant he would still be in town somewhere. All Indira needed to do was find him, wherever he was, and find out if everyone was all right. She’d wake him up if she had to, or slip into his subconscious to find out what happened.
But she couldn’t find him. She combed everywhere that she could think of, but he seemed to have disappeared. She stretched herself as thin as she could manage, wandering as far as she could without losing track of where she’d left her own body, but there was no sign of him anywhere in Whitten.
He won’t make it to tomorrow.
She came back to herself and exchanged her brush for her phone. It was after eleven and her fingers raced across the screen, sending messages to both Penny and Matt. She couldn’t accept that Uncle Ness had just disappeared without a trace, but until he decided he wanted to be found again, the two of them would have been the last ones to see him. If they were still alive and okay, if she hadn’t sent them to their deaths last night, then they might know where he had gone off to.
Relief flooded her when she got the alerts back, both responding almost immediately with varying complaints about the morning and not being up for talking right now. She pressed, though they both went silent, insisting on waiting until school tomorrow to talk and refusing to say what happened after they left. Indira thought about going over there, or dropping in on their dreams for another chat, but let the matter drop. They were alive. That was enough.
And she wasn’t sure she really wanted to know what happened to Uncle Ness. He was fine. He was probably fine. He would go silent sometimes, make it impossible for anyone to find him telepathically or otherwise.
He won’t make it to tomorrow.
***
Penny wandered into History seconds before the bell on Monday morning, looking like she had not slept since Indira had seen her on Saturday. She took her seat next to Indira with a weak smile and a nod, taking out her books and operating largely on autopilot as Mr. Cantrell started working through the material for the day. She didn’t look up from her notes except for an occasional glance at the board.
Indira didn’t need to even skim her thoughts to tell she was stressed and very carefully avoiding her eyes. She didn’t want to talk about it and, in another situation, Indira might have left the matter alone. They were alive and Indira hadn’t killed them. But Uncle Ness was still missing somewhere and she had to know if he was all right. Shiraz’s words wouldn’t leave her mind, and the loss of contact was…
Her eyes narrowed as she noticed an empty seat at the front of the room. Where was Alan? And if she asked, would anyone be able to answer her?
She wasn’t going to break into Penny’s head. She was bad at multitasking and looked like she had been through plenty already without the intrusion. Her mind was buzzing with anxious thoughts, going in circles, and Indira trying to get in right now would only get her violently ejected in the best case, and cause a scene in the middle of class in the worst. Indira waited until Mr. Cantrell passed out the worksheet before quietly asking, “Where did you guys head off to?”
“Oh, you know,” Penny said, avoiding Indira’s eyes and looking back at her sheet. “Stuff.”
“You went to stuff?”
“What?”
Indira tried to smile reassuringly. Penny did not look like she wanted to have this conversation, so she started to probe her mind for answers. “I wanted to know how it went after you left,” she asked. “Did Matt and Esther make it out of there okay? I know Matt was still looking kind of out of it when I saw him last, so I wasn’t sure.”
“Oh, it was fine,” Penny said. “How about you? How was the rest of the party?”
“Good,” Indira told her. She didn’t want to talk about whatever had happened, clearly, and seemed to remember that Indira could read minds. The buzzing Indira had been getting from Penny’s mind went suddenly silent. Indira said nothing about it, pretending like she didn’t notice. “Ended up talking to Kyle for most of the night.”
“Oh?” Penny asked. She didn’t sound entirely happy about that. “How did that go? Did he stop talking about hero stuff at all during the evening at all?”
“Not really,” Indira said, letting the topic change as she rested one hand on her chin and she stared wistfully down at her worksheet. She wasn’t going to mention that the rest of the night had been interrupted by her brother. “At least he’s nice to look at, though, so it wasn’t all bad. And it’s not like everyone else was able to stop. There is a weird fascination with them on Halloween.”
“Whitten’s a little repressed in that area,” Penny said, looking through her notes to copy onto the worksheet, trying to make sense of just what she’d written. Indira moved her notes so that Penny could read them as well. “Thanks. But yeah, Whitten loves them once a year. It’s weird. So you and Kyle?”
“Why don’t you sound happy about that?”
“You know he has a type. He’s only interested in you-”
“Because I come from a city with heroes,” Indira finished for her. “Also I have a great ass. But it’s mostly the heroes thing. And now he’s more interested because I have a very direct interaction with the heroes and villains back in Iverson. And I have absolutely zero problem with that. He’s hot and he has a thing for me.”
“And his father is the police chief,” Penny warned her. “You should know full well why it’s a bad idea to get too close to him.”
“But it’s okay for you?”
“It’s not like that,” Penny said. “It’s just-”
“So do you know where Alan is today?” Indira asked. If she had to listen to Penny tell her why a guy was bad for her, then she was going to find out something about Saturday night, and from the stricken look that flashed across Penny’s face and how firmly she shoved Indira’s notes back to her side of the table, she had found out one thing. “So he also left the party with you.”
The bell rang and Penny bolted for the door, backpack still open and her papers in hand. Indira watched her go, gathering her things and heading to her next class where she also sat next to Penny. She remained hostile and silent until lunch, when she vanished all together into the halls.
Indira didn’t try to follow her, continuing on as usual. For as frustrating as it was and as anxious as she was, she could at the very least enjoy the break before trying to ask Matt the same thing. She hoped that he would be more reasonable. She had abandoned Kyle at the party, after all, and she hoped that he wasn’t too upset about it.
It was surprising to see Matt sitting with Kyle. Penny was still nowhere in sight and Indira regarded Matt curiously as she sat down, trying to figure out if he knew what was going on and decided to see her anyway, or if Penny had not given him a heads up yet. “Hey,” she said as she sat down, meeting Matt’s eyes and probing the surface of his thoughts, though he kept them hidden well away from her prodding.
“No Penny?” Kyle asked.
“She’s got some Committee stuff she’s working out,” Matt told him. He looked across the table to Indira. “Has she managed to ask you about the meeting on Friday yet?”
“Not yet,” Indira said. She wasn’t sure what Matt was trying to do, though tried to keep her confusion from surfacing. She was fairly certain that Penny was avoiding her as much as she possibly could at the moment. Surely Matt knew Indira was looking for answers. If he was proposing that she wait until the meeting on Friday, he was about to learn a few things about her. “I’ll see if I can make it, I guess.”
“I’ve gotta bail on that this week,” Kyle said. “Dad wants me to help him with something. Although, I was wondering where you guys went off to on Saturday.” His look got more accusing as he looked between the two of them. “After the thing with Brittany I couldn’t find either of you.”
Indira felt the sharp look Matt gave her but ignored it, her attention on Kyle. “Sor
ry, family emergency.”
“Oh, is everyone okay?”
Indira nodded. “It’ll be fine. Nothing to worry about. Did you ever figure out what happened to Brittany?”
“Probably low blood sugar or something. Got her something to eat and she was fine. Better than some people. You hear about Alan?”
“Do we have practice this week?” Matt asked. “Or is it a game week?
Indira shot Matt a look, but let him change the subject. Whatever was going on, she was going to get some answers before the end of the day. They couldn’t just not tell her what had happened that night, not after they had gotten her involved. And, as much as she wanted to keep talking to him, she knew better than to let Kyle be around when she made Matt tell her everything.
Chapter 16
Interrogation
She waited until she sat down next to Matt in Chemistry. Unlike Penny, she couldn’t read the fatigue and stress on his face, but something was still bothering him all through lunch. He seemed friendly enough as they settled in, though he had still not let down the defences on his mind.
“Penny’s been avoiding me,” she told Matt.
“You won’t stop asking about Saturday,” he said. “And trying to poke around in people’s heads without their consent isn’t very nice, Indira.”
“Neither is leaving me in the dark about what you guys were up to.” She pressed harder, prodding at the wall and finding herself only more annoyed at how directly she was being denied the information she was looking for. “Did Alan go with you? Did something happen and that’s why he’s not here today?”
“It’s nothing you need to worry about,” Matt insisted. “And you aren’t getting in to see either, so maybe stop trying.”
Indira narrowed her eyes at him before looking back down at her notes. Well, if he wanted to issue a challenge like that, then she wasn’t going to keep being nice about this. She wanted to know what happened to Uncle Ness and she was getting answers now.
She waited until Matt was writing before she made her move. She split her attention, part of her automated to listen and take notes during class, paying just enough attention to answer any question that might be shot her way, though Ms. Rivers rarely called on anyone in the third row for an answer. Once her body was taken care of, she made a new place in her mind.
Indira made her favourite café back in Iverson. It was a place she used to go with her friends when they needed to be told difficult things, like that they should break up with their boyfriends because they decided to get into henching. It was a friendly little café with every bit of unimportant scenery kept just out of focus, from the tables to the other patrons to the wait staff. Because she felt like it, Indira made herself a cappuccino and a second cup of coffee for Matt. Then she remembered the restrictions some magic folk had on their diets and replaced it with a hot chocolate. He could upgrade if he asked nicely.
Mentally, she reached next to her and pulled Matt out of his body and into the chair across from her. He jumped at the sudden change, the chair squeaking against the tile floor as he moved backwards. He looked around at the faded out and blurry landscape until he spotted Indira watching him from behind the cup of cappuccino at her lips. She put it back down as she watched him try to go through every offensive and defensive measure he could think of.
“Hey Matt,” Indira said calmly, putting the cup down. “You should probably know that you aren’t going to be able to do anything while you’re in here, so maybe just calm down. I just want to talk.”
“What the hell is this?” he demanded. “Where am I?”
“Café Sorento,” Indira told him. “Place I used to go when I was back in Iverson. It’s nicer in person.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“Physically, you’re still in class,” Indira told him. “You’re writing… the word energy over and over again on a sheet of paper, but it looks like you’re paying attention. You’re a lot better on autopilot than Penny. She just froze when she tried breaking into my head.”
“So you’re in my head?”
“You’re in mine, actually,” she said. “It’s not very nice to poke around in other people’s heads, right? And I still need to take actual notes, you see. Don’t worry, I’ll give you a copy once we get out of here. So tell me. What happened on Saturday night after you left?”
“Why do you want to know so badly?”
“I can leave you here,” Indira told him. “Someone might notice that, though. Do you really want to risk it just to keep this secret? Because I’m still asking nicely. I could go in there and just take it out if I wanted to.”
“You’re bluffing. There’s no way you’d get in. They would have put a lock on you if you could.”
“Maybe,” Indira said, a sly grin on her face. “But do you want to risk it? And if you do, I’m not lying about leaving you in here.”
“How did they not lock this?” He looked around before reaching out to touch the mug in front of him. His fingers recoiled and he frowned. “There’s no way they wouldn’t have locked your powers. Did you break the lock or-”
“Cheating the powers test. Look, I’ll be honest with you. I’d sworn off using my powers completely until I moved here and suddenly had people trying to break into my head and dropping dead around me without anyone else remembering who the hell they were. So guess what? Apparently I’m back now and I want to know what the hell is going on in this place. So how about you just tell me what happened on Saturday night.”
“Wait, who-”
“Saturday. Night.”
Indira held his gaze as the seconds stretched on in silence between them. Finally, his shoulders slumped and he looked down at the mug in front of him. “We tried to take out one of the towers,” he said. “Halloween night, there’s so many people talking about heroes that the specks around the city don’t listen, so we figured it would be the easiest time to at least go in and check one of them out and see if we could do a little damage. It didn’t go well.”
“That’s unfortunate.”
“We got really lucky,” Matt said, leaning forward and wrapping his hands around the cup, taking the warmth for comfort. “There was security there. They were stronger than we thought they would be and Alan got hurt, but some guy showed up and distracted them long enough for us to get away.”
“So Alan was involved,” Indira said. “And it sounds like Laura and Brittany were dead on about how whatever it was you guys were doing was going to get you killed one day. Tell me more about this mysterious stranger that saved you in the end.”
“He looked like a hero,” Matt said, shaking his head and bringing the hot chocolate up to his lips, though he didn’t drink it, just let it sit there in front of his mouth as he looked off and watched one of the blurry waitresses moving around. Indira made her disappear and his eyes stopped moving. “Red and blue. Glasses. No cape. I’ve never seen him before, but I don’t know many heroes anymore.”
“Like this?” Indira asked, taking another sip of her cappuccino and bringing up a model of her uncle in full hero costume. He normally wore a coat over it, but otherwise he was fairly accurate to what he actually wore. Uncle Ness was a fan of the old school aesthetic, the muted primary tones mixed with a modern fit and practical fabrics.
The recognition on Matt’s face was what hurt the most. He nodded dumbly and Indira set her cup down a little too roughly on the table as she dismissed the image. She had to take a deep breath physically as well as in her mind to keep from reacting too violently, but that was exactly what she had been expecting. Uncle Ness had gone to save them because he was a hero and that was what he did. He was supposed to catch them before they got there, but it was too late to lament that now.
“Your mother’s name was Gertrude, wasn’t it?” she asked, staring Matt in the eyes and not allowing him to look away.
“How did you-”
“That was my uncle who saved you,” Indira told him. She knew better than to admit it normally, but sh
e could feel her heart rising into her throat as she realized that he might not be all right. Something had gone very wrong. “He was a friend of your mother’s from the old days, apparently.”
“I’m so – wait, your uncle? Your uncle is a-”
“I’m going to stop you there,” Indira said, tenting her fingers and pondering the information she had, turning it over and over in her head. Around her, the café flickered as she started putting the pieces together. Most of it was pretty simple. “Whatever it was you did went and got my uncle killed. And you got me to help you with it.”
Matt looked around as the café started to close in around him. He tried to move and do something to protect himself, to hide under the table from the crumbling roof, but nothing would happen. He couldn’t even leave the chair. He looked at Indira, trying remain look calm and despite the panic flickering in his eyes. “He might not be dead.”
“Oh right,” Indira said, letting her anger leak in. She pushed back from the table, letting her chair clatter on the ground behind her and throwing her arms up in the air. “He’s something other than dead! That’s so much better, isn’t it? Fucking hell, what is wrong with this place? Not that you’ll ever tell me anything straight. Everyone’s too scared shitless to talk directly about anything because there’s shit watching us constantly and apparently it’s already killed off a lot of people. Not that you’d know because apparently, once someone dies, no one even remembers they ever existed, right?”
She slammed her hands down on the small table and the cups rattled. Matt looked like he was facing his demise as she finally slumped her shoulders and lowered her head. She let out a slow, steady breath and shook her head, letting a laugh slip out.
“Well,” she said. The chair reappeared under her as the café returned to normal around them. “Now that I have that out of my system, what do we do about it?”
“What?” Matt asked, staring at her dumbfounded and shaken. His eyes were wide as he looked around, trying to make sense of what had just happened.
