The Strange Power

by L. J. Smith

Chapter 2

 

  She knew Curt Gunter. The little girl must be Lindy, his baby sister. Why hadn't Kait realized? Why hadn't her picture shown her? Why couldn't it have shown her cars crashing, with a date and a place, instead of that pathetic kid's face? How could it all be so useless, so completely freaking useless . . . ?

  "Do you need to sit down?" the person holding her asked, and it was Joyce Piper, and she was shivering.

  Kait was shivering, too. Her breath was coming very fast. She clutched harder at Joyce.

  "Did you mean that, about me learning to control . . . what I do?" Kait couldn't call it a talent.

  Joyce looked from her to the accident scene with something like dawning realization. "I think so. I hope so,"

  "You have to promise. "

  Joyce met her gaze full on, the way people in Thoroughfare never did. "I promise to try, Kait. "

  "Then I'll go. My dad will understand. "

  Joyce's aquamarine eyes were brilliant. "I'm so glad. " She shivered violently. "Seventy degrees there, Kait," she added softly, almost absently. "Pack light. "

  That night, Kaitlyn had a strangely realistic dream. She was on a rocky peninsula, a spit of land surrounded by cold gray ocean. The clouds overhead were almost black and the wind blew spray into her face. She could actually feel the wet of it, the chill.

  From just behind her, someone called her name. But when she turned, the dream ended.

  Kait got off the plane feeling giddy and triumphant. She'd never been on a plane before, but it had been easy as anything. She'd chewed gum on takeoff and landing, done twists in the tiny bathroom every hour to keep limber, and brushed her hair and straightened her red dress as the plane cruised up to the gate.

  Perfection.

  She was very happy. Somehow, once the decision to go was made, Kait's spirits had lifted and lifted. It no longer seemed a grim necessity to come to the Institute; it was the dream Joyce had described, the beginning of a new life. Her dad had been unbelievably sweet and understanding-he'd seen her off just as if she were going to college. Joyce was supposed to meet her here at San Francisco Airport.

  But the airport was crowded and there was no sign of Joyce. People streamed by. Kaitlyn stuck close to the gate, head high, trying to look nonchalant. The

  last thing she wanted was anyone to ask if she needed help.

  "Excuse me. "

  Kaitlyn flicked a sideways glance at the unfamiliar voice. It wasn't help; it was something even more disturbing. One of those cult people who hang around airports and ask for money. He was wearing reddish robes-Tuscan red, Kait thought. If she were going to draw them.

  "I'd like a moment of your time, please. " The voice was civil, but persistent-authoritative. It sounded foreign.

  Kait edged away-or started to. A hand caught her. She looked down at it in amazement, seeing lean fingers the color of caramel locked around her wrist.

  Okay, jerk, you asked for it. Outraged, Kait turned the full power of her smoky blue, strangely ringed eyes on him.

  He just looked back-and when Kait looked deeply into his eyes, she reeled.

  His skin was that caramel color-but his eyes were slanting and very dark, with an epicanthic fold. The phrase "lynx-eyed" came to Kaitlyn's mind. His softly curling hair was a sort of pale shimmery brown, like silver birch. None of it went together.

  But that wasn't what made her reel. It was a feeling of age from him. When she looked into his eyes, she had the sense of centuries passing. Millennia. His face was unlined,, but there were ice ages in his eyes.

  Kait couldn't remember ever really screaming in her life, but she decided to scream now.

  She didn't get a chance. The grip on her wrist tightened and before she could draw a breath, she was jerked off balance, moving. The man in the robes was pulling her backward into the jetway-the long corridor that led to a plane.

  Except that there was no plane now and the corridor was empty. The double doors closed, cutting Kaitlyn off from the rest of the airport. She was still too shocked to scream.

  "Don't move and you won't get hurt," the man in the robes said grimly. His lynx eyes were hard.

  Kaitlyn didn't believe him. He was from some cult and he was obviously insane and he'd dragged her into this deserted place. She should have fought him before; she should have screamed when she had the chance. Now she was trapped.

  Without letting go of her arm, the man fumbled inside his robes.

  For a gun or a knife, Kaitlyn thought. Her heart was pounding violently. If he would just relax his grip on her arm for an instant-if she could get to the other side of those doors where there were people . . .

  "Here," the man said. "All I want is for you to look at this. "

  He was holding not a weapon but a piece of paper. Glossy paper that had been folded. To Kaitlyn's dazed eyes it looked like a brochure.

  I don't believe it, she thought. He is insane.

  "Just look," the man said.

  Kaitlyn couldn't help looking; he was holding the paper in her face. It seemed to be a full-color picture of a rose garden. A walled rose garden, with a fountain in the center, and something thrusting out of the fountain. Maybe an ice sculpture, Kaitlyn thought dizzily. It was tall, white, and semitransparent-like a faceted column. In one of its many facets was the tiny, perfect reflection of a rose.

  Kaitlyn's heart was still pounding violently. This was all too weird. As frightening as if he were trying to hurt her.

  "This crystal-" the man began, and then Kaitlyn saw her chance.

  The iron grip on her arm loosened just the slightest bit as he spoke, and his eyes were on the picture.

  Kaitlyn kicked backward, glad that she was wearing pumps with her red dress, slamming a two-inch heel into his shin. The man yelped and let go.

  Kaitlyn hit the double doors with both hands, bursting out into the airport, and then she just ran. She ran without looking behind her to see if the man was following. She dodged around chairs and phone booths, heading blindly into the crowd.

  She didn't stop until someone called her name.

  "Kaitlyn!"

  It was Joyce, heading the other way, toward the gate. Kait had never been so relieved to see anyone.

  "I'm so sorry-the traffic was terrible-and parking in this place is always-" She broke off. "Kaitlyn, what's wrong?"

  Kaitlyn collapsed in Joyce's arms. Now that she was safe, she somehow wanted to laugh. Hysteria, probably, she told herself. Her legs were shaking.

  "It was too strange," she gasped. "There was this guy from some cult or something-and he grabbed me.

  He probably just wanted money, but I thought-"

  "He grabbed you! Where is he now?"

  Kaitlyn waved a hand vaguely. "Back there. I kicked him and ran. "

  Joyce's aquamarine eyes flashed with grim approval, but all she said was, "Come on. We'd better tell airport security about this. "

  "Oh-I'm okay now. He was just some nut. . . . "

  "Nuts like that, we put away. Even in California," Joyce said flatly.

  Airport security sent people looking for the man, but he was gone.

  "Besides," the guard told Joyce and Kaitlyn, "he couldn't have opened the doors to the jet bridge.

  They're kept locked. "

  Kaitlyn didn't want to argue. She wanted to forget all about it and go to the Institute. This was not how she'd planned her grand entrance to California.

  "Let's go," she said to Joyce, and Joyce sighed and nodded.

  They picked up Kaitlyn's luggage and carried it to a sharp little green convertible-Joyce's car. Kait felt like bouncing on the seat as Joyce drove. Back home it was freezing, with twenty inches of snow on the ground. Here they drove with the top down, and Joyce's blond hair ruffled like down in the wind.

  "How's the little girl from the crash?" Joyce asked.

  Kaitlyn's spirits pitched.

 
"She's still in the hospital. They don't know if she'll be okay. " Kaitlyn clamped her lips together to show that she didn't intend to answer any more questions about Lindy.

  But Joyce didn't ask any more questions. Instead, she said, "Two of your housemates are already at the Institute; Lewis and Anna. I think you'll like them. "

  Lewis-a boy. "How many of the five of us are boys?" Kaitlyn asked suspiciously.

  "Three, I'm afraid," Joyce said gravely, and then gave Kait a sideways look of amusement.

  Kaitlyn declined to be amused. Three boys and only one other girl. Three sloppy, meaty-handed, too-big-to-control, hormone-crazed Power Rangers.

  Kaitlyn had tried boys once, two years ago when she was a sophomore. She'd let one of them take her out, driving up to Lake Erie every Friday and Saturday night, and she'd put up with what he wanted-some of what he wanted-while he talked about Metallica and the Browns and the Bengals and his candy-apple-red Trans Am. All of which Kait knew nothing about. After the first date, she decided that guys must be an alien species, and just tried to deal with him without listening to him. She was still hoping that he'd take her to the next party with his crowd.

  She had it all planned out. He'd escort her into one of those big houses on the hill that she'd never been invited to. She'd wear something a little dowdy so as to not show up the hostess. With her boyfriend's arm around her shoulder, she'd be modest and self-effacing, complimenting everything in sight. The whole crowd would see she wasn't a monster. They'd let her in-maybe not all at once, but over time, as they got used to her being around.

  Wrong.

  When she brought up the party, her lake-loving boyfriend blustered around, but eventually the truth came clear. He wasn't going to take her anywhere in public. She was good enough alone in the dark with him, but not good enough to be seen with him in the daylight.

  It was one of the times when it was hardest not to cry. Stiff-lipped, she'd ordered him to take her home.

  He got angrier and angrier as they drove. When she jerked the car door open, he said, "I was going to dump you anyway. You're not like a normal girl. You're cold,"

  Kait stared after the car when it had gone. So she wasn't normal. Fine, she knew that already. So she was cold-and the way he'd said it made it obvious that he didn't just mean her personality. He meant more.

  Well, that was fine, too. She'd rather be cold all her life than feel anything with a guy like that. The memory of his humid palms on her arms made her want to wipe her own hands on the skirt of her red dress.

  So I'm cold, Kait thought now, shifting in the front seat of Joyce's convertible. So what? There are other things in life to be interested in.

  And really, she didn't care how many boys were at the Institute. She'd ignore them-she'd stick with Anna. She just hoped Anna wasn't boy-crazy.

  And that she likes you, a small, nerve-racking voice in her head added. Kaitlyn squashed the thought, tossing her head to feel the wind snapping her hair back, enjoying the motion and the sunshine.

  "Is it much farther?" she asked. "I can't wait. "

  Joyce laughed. "No, it's not far. "

  They were driving through residential streets now. Kaitlyn looked around eagerly, but with a tingling in her stomach. What if the Institute was too big, too sterile, too intimidating? She'd pictured a large, squat redbrick building, something like her old high school back in Thoroughfare.

  Joyce turned the convertible in to a driveway, and Kait stared.

  "Is this it?"

  "Yup. "

  "But it's purple. "

  It was extremely purple. The shingled sides were a cool but vivid purple, the wood trim around the windows was darker purple; the door and wraparound balcony were glaring high-gloss purple. The only things that weren't purple were the slate gray roof and the bricks in the chimney.

  Kait felt as if someone had dropped her into a swimming pool full of grape juice. She didn't know if she loved the color scheme or hated it.

  "We haven't had time to paint it yet," Joyce explained, parking. "We've been busy converting most of the first floor to labs-but you can have the full tour tomorrow. Why don't you go up and meet your housemates?"

  Thrills of nervousness wound through Kait's stomach. The Institute was so much smaller, so much more intimate, than she'd imagined. She'd really be living with these people.

  "Sure, that's fine," she said, and held her head very high as she got out of the car.

  "Don't worry about the luggage yet-just go on in. Go straight past the living room and you'll see a staircase on your right. Take that upstairs-the whole

  second floor is for you kids. I told Lewis and Anna that you can work out the bedroom situation for yourselves. "

  Kaitlyn went, trying not to either dawdle or hurry. She wouldn't let anyone see how nervous she was.

  The very purple front door was unlocked. The inside of the house wasn't purple-it looked quite ordinary, with a large living room on the right and a large enough dining room on the left.

  Don't look at it now. Go on up.

  Kaitlyn's feet carried her down the tiled foyer that separated them, until she reached the staircase.

  Take it slow. Just keep breathing.

  But her heart was going quickly, and her feet wanted to leap up the steps. The stairs made a U-turn at a landing and then she was at the top.

  The hallway was crowded with odds and ends of furniture, piled haphazardly. In front of Kait and to the left was an open door. She could hear voices inside.

  Okay, who cares if they're nice? They're probably creeps-and I don't care. I don't need anyone. Maybe I can learn to put curses on people.

  The last-minute panic made her reckless, and she plunged through the door almost belligerently.

  And stopped. A girl was kneeling on a bed without sheets or blankets. A lovely girl-graceful and dark, with high cheekbones and an expression of serenity. Kaitlyn's belligerence seeped away and all the walls she normally kept around her seemed to dissolve. Peacefulness seemed to come from the other girl like a cool wind.

  The girl smiled. "You're Kaitlyn. "

  "And you're . . . Anna?"

  "Anna Eva Whiteraven. "

  "What a wonderful name," Kaitlyn said.

  It wasn't the sort of thing people said back at Warren G. Harding High School-but Kaitlyn wasn't at Warren G. Harding High School anymore, and Anna's serene expression broke into another smile.

  "You've got wonderful eyes," she said.

  "Does she?" another voice said eagerly. "Hey, turn around. "

  Kait was already turning. On the far side of the room was an alcove with a bay window-and a boy coming out of it. He didn't look threatening. He had a cap of black hair and dark, almond-shaped eyes.

  From the camera in his hands Kaitlyn guessed he'd been taking pictures out the open window.

  "Smile!" A flashbulb blinded Kaitlyn.

  "Ouch!"

  "Sorry; I just wanted to preserve the moment. " The boy let go of the camera, which bounced as the strap around his neck caught it, and stuck out a hand. "You do have kind of neat eyes. Kind of weird. I'm Lewis Chao. "

  He had a sweet face, Kaitlyn decided. He wasn't big and gross, but rather small and neat. His hand wasn't sweaty when she took it, and his eyes weren't hungry.

  "Lewis has been taking pictures since we got here this morning," Anna said. "We've got the entire block on record. "

  Kaitlyn blinked away blue afterimages and looked at Lewis curiously. "Really? Where do you come from?" It must be even farther away than Ohio, she thought.

  He smiled beatifically. "San Francisco. "

  Kaitlyn laughed, and suddenly they were all laughing together. Not malicious laughter, not laughing at anyone, but wonderful torrents of giggles together. And then Kait knew.

  I'm going to be happy here, she realized. It was almost too big a concept to take in at once. She was going to be happy, and for a year. A
panorama opened before her. Sitting by the fireplace she'd seen downstairs, studying, the others all doing their own projects, everyone joined by a warm sort of togetherness even while they did their own things. Each of them different, but not minding the differences.

  No need for walls between them.

  They began to talk, eagerly, friendship flying back and forth. It seemed quite natural to join Anna sitting on the bed.

  "I'm from Ohio-" Kait started.

  "Aha, a Buckeye," Lewis put in.

  "I'm from Washington State," Anna said. "Near Puget Sound. "

  "You're Native American, aren't you?"

  "Yes; Suquamish. "

  "She talks to animals," Lewis said.

  Anna said gently, "I don't really talk to them. I can influence them to do things-sometimes. It's a kind of thought projection, Joyce says. "

  Thought projection with animals? A few weeks ago Kait would have said it sounded insane-but then, wasn't her own "talent" insane? If one was possible, so was the other.

  "I've got PK," Lewis said. "That's psychokinesis. Mind over matter. "

  "Like . . spoon bending?" Kait asked uncertainly.

  "Nah, spoon bending's a trick. Real PK is only for little things, like making a compass needle deflect.

  What do you do?"

  Despite herself, Kaitlyn's heart bumped. She'd never in her life said aloud the thing she was going to say.

  "I. . . kind of see the future. At least, I don't, but my drawings do, and when I look back at them, I see that they did. But usually only after the thing has already happened," she finished incoherently.

  Lewis and Anna looked thoughtful. "That's cool," Lewis said at last, and Anna said, "So you're an artist?"

  The relief that flooded Kaitlyn was painful, and its aftermath left her jubilant. "I guess. I like to draw. "

  I'd like to draw right now, she thought, dying to get hold of some pastels. She'd draw Anna with burnt umber and matte black and sienna. She'd do Lewis with blue-black-his hair was that shiny-and some sort of flesh-ocher mixture for his skin.

  Later, she told herself. Aloud she said, "So what about the bedrooms up here? Who goes where?"

  "That's just what we've been trying to figure out," Anna said. "The problem is that there are supposed to be five of us students, and they've only got four bedrooms. There's this one and another one even bigger next door, and then two smaller ones on the back side of the house. "

  "And only the big ones have cable hookup. I've explained and explained," said Lewis, looking tragic,

  "that I need my MTV, but she doesn't understand. And I need enough outlets for my computer and stereo and stuff. Only the big rooms have those. "