Knavery: A Ripple Novel (Ripple Series Book 6)

by Cidney Swanson

  “Mademoiselle will live a very, very long time,” he murmured, “if I have any say in this matter.”

  Gwyn harrumphed and removed her hand from his.

  “Forgive me, mon coeur,” said Chrétien. “Truly, je suis désolé.”

  I am sorry.

  Gwyn felt tears burning behind her eyes. When he whispered to her in French, she could forgive Chrétien just about anything. He sounded so darned … French when he did that. And somehow, that cut through all the bull crap and all the excuses and all her defenses.

  She kept her voice soft, so it wouldn’t shake. “It’s just that Sam didn’t even like it when she first found out. I mean, now she’s fine with it and all, but I’ve got the genes and I’ve got the desire and I can’t ripple and it’s just not fair!” A single tear slid free. Gwyn swiped at it irritably.

  “It is indeed unjust,” said Chrétien.

  Another tear worked its way free and Chrétien caught it with his thumb.

  “Sacre bleu!” whispered Gwyn, borrowing one of Chrétien’s old fashioned swearing phrases. “I’m making a scene out here.”

  “We are alone,” said Chrétien.

  “Exactly the sort of time I’d use to ripple away,” said Gwyn, bitterly. “Except, oh, that’s right: I can’t.”

  “Mon coeur,” sighed Chrétien.

  “It’s fine. It will be fine. I’ll be fine.”

  “At any time that you desire to ripple, you have but to call for me.”

  Gwyn nodded. Used her cloth napkin to catch a last few errant tears. “You’re right. I’m being ridiculous. I’ve got everything I need already.” She took Chrétien’s hand in hers and squeezed it tight. “I’m ready to tell Sam and the others.”

  “Truly? You are certaine?”

  Gwyn nodded again. “It’s time. Let’s go up to the apartment, though. I can hear Ma rattling around in the bakery, and I don’t want her asking why the café smells like incense.”

  Five minutes later, in response to Chrétien’s silent call, Will and Sam materialized in the apartment above the bakery café.

  “What is it?” asked Sam. Turning to Chrétien she asked, “Is it Fritz?”

  “No-no-no-no-no,” said Gwyn, rolling her eyes. “Nothing so dramatic. Sam, seriously, you need to chill about Fritz. He’s not coming after us. He lives in mortal terror of my very dangerous boyfriend and his ninja dad.”

  Will frowned, ready to protest, but Sam placed a hand over his. “Well, we’re here. What is it?”

  Gwyn looked to Chrétien for support.

  “Permittez-moi?” he asked Gwyn politely. Would she permit him to speak of it?

  “No, this is down to me,” she said. She took a deep breath and then blew it all out between her teeth. “So, I thought I’d tell you about my dad.”

  Sam’s breath caught audibly. Immediately, Gwyn felt bad for having said nothing all week. She should have spoken sooner. Especially, considering who her dad turned out to be. Well, there was no turning the clock back now. Nothing for it but to forge ahead. Gwyn took another deep breath, her nostrils filling with the scent of the day’s first batch of chocolate chip cookies.

  “It turns out I can’t ripple even though my dad had the genes for it. He doesn’t ripple, either, so far as Ma is aware.”

  Sam’s eyes flew wide. Will’s narrowed.

  So, this is going well, Gwyn silently communicated to Chrétien. She heard soft laughter—his response—in her mind.

  “Sam,” said Gwyn, “I’d like to introduce you to your long-lost cousin Gwyn.” She held out her hand as if to shake. “I mean, me. Cousin to you. Sam.”

  “Cousin?” Sam and Will said the word at the same time.

  “Yup. Cousin. As in, Sam’s mom had a brother and that brother hooked up with my mom seventeen years and ten months ago.”

  “You’re joking,” said Will.

  “Oh, please,” said Gwyn. “There is no joking. Joking is not happening. Does this look like the face of someone who is joking?” She assumed her don’t-mess-with-my-derrière face.

  Sam, her face bright in a way Gwyn thought was probably going to lead to squealing, threw her arms around Gwyn. “I’ve always wanted a sister!” she managed to say, in between peals of laughter.

  Gwyn laughed. “Cousin, Sam. Cousin. Not sister.”

  “Right,” replied Sam. “I know. It’s just … I don’t have any girl cousins. Just two horrible boy cousins—”

  “They’re not horrible,” said Will. “I’ve met them.”

  “They were horrible,” said Sam. “When I was little.”

  “I have horrible boy cousins?” asked Gwyn.

  “No. They’re on my dad’s side, so you’re safe,” replied Sam.

  “They’re really very nice,” said Will. “And hardworking. And smart.”

  “Save it, Will,” said Gwyn. “I’ve already got a boyfriend.”

  Will grinned and sank into the couch occupying one wall of the apartment. “So this is on your mom’s authority, I take it?”

  “Yup,” said Gwyn. “And, uh, she would know.”

  “I never see Oncle Henri anymore,” murmured Sam. “He moved back to Louisiana thirteen years ago. Mom used to call him and they’d speak French. Well, Cajun French.”

  “Yeah,” said Gwyn. “Apparently the gooey melting-before-anything-that-speaks-French, I got from my mom.” She looked sadly at Chrétien, shaking her head.

  “But, wait, what you said first,” said Sam. “About rippling?”

  Gwyn sighed and picked at the polish on her thumb. “I can’t ripple. I’ve been trying. All week since my birthday when I made Mom tell me who my father was.” She shook her dark hair behind her shoulders and caught at several tendrils, beginning a French braid. “But it’s fine. No big deal.”

  “It’s because you didn’t have anything traumatic before you hit eight years old,” said Will.

  “Excuse me?” replied Gwyn, tugging at her hair. “I had plenty of trauma growing up. I had no dad. I broke my arm in kindergarten. Then I moved from here to Southern California—that was very traumatic. And then I moved back, which was worse. Well, not really, I suppose.” She deflated into the couch and looked up at Will. “So, I’m guessing none of that counts?”

  Will shook his head. “Mick can give you a list of the sorts of things that seem to trigger full blown Rippler’s Syndrome. But it’s stuff like seeing someone you love die before your own eyes or—”

  “Okay, okay!” snapped Gwyn. “Have some respect for your girlfriend’s feelings, already!”

  “It’s okay,” murmured Sam.

  “Anyway, you’re right,” said Gwyn, sighing heavily. “I never had any heavy duty awful stuff like that.”

  “Oh, Gwyn,” said Sam, her voice coming out in a sad, breath-y sigh. “I’m so sorry you can’t ripple.”

  Gwyn gathered more hair from the left, pulling tightly as she continued braiding. She needed a French braid today. It was going to be hot. Okay, it was going to be hot and she needed something complicated to do with her hands so she didn’t start crying again.

  “Sucks, man,” said Will. He sniffed the air, reminding Gwyn of a dog. “But, hey, at least there’s cookies.”

  Sam frowned at Will; Chrétien kept silent, his eyes fixed on Gwyn.

  “Oh, fine,” Gwyn said, dropping all pretense of braiding her hair. “It does suck. Hugely. It is the suckiest of sucky news ever in my entire sucky life.” For a moment her face squinched tight. But she wasn’t going to cry over this. Not in front of her friends. Time for a change of topic.

  “Anyway,” she said, blinking rapidly, “I told Ma I wanted to invite Henri to come meet me in Las Abs, and she threw a conniption at first, but then she finally said yes, so then I contacted Henri and he said yes, too.”

  “He did?” asked Sam. “That’s great, Gwyn. Really, really great. I mean, Dad and I have asked him every Noel—every Christmas—since Mom died, and he’s never once said yes.”

  Gwyn’s mouth curved into a
smile. “I guess daughter trumps niece.”

  “Oh, yeah, it does,” said Will, laughing. “Wow. Just … wow, Gwyn. This is amazing. Would it be okay if … I mean, it’s just, Mickie and Dr. Pfeffer would probably love to, you know—”

  “Stick needles in me and run tests,” interrupted Gwyn. “Yeah. I saw that coming, too. You guys go ahead and tell them.”

  “Does Sir Walter know who your father is?” Sam asked softly.

  “I told him the night I found out,” said Gwyn. “I sort of had to. I was bawling like a baby after Ma told me at Sir Walter’s, and he came to see if Chrétien had ‘said aught amiss’ or some such ridiculousness.”

  She took Chrétien’s hand, which had been resting softly on her shoulder, into her hand. “Come here, handsome. Why aren’t you on the couch with me? I need some support, already.” She patted a very, very small spot beside her on the couch, smiling with wicked delight at Chrétien’s discomfort as he considered the small space.

  “There is no room,” he said.

  Gwyn rose to make space, then promptly reseated herself on his lap once he’d sat down. She loved the way mortification brought a rosy red color to his cheeks. Just like all those seventeenth century portraits where everyone’s complexion was alabaster and roses.

  “Now, why don’t you two run along,” Gwyn said to Sam and Will. “Go … eat cookies for breakfast or something. I feel an epic make-out session coming.”

  Will vanished before she’d finished saying “make-out.” Sam remained a moment longer, held a hand out to the empty space and said, “Will?” She must have felt his icy touch, because a second later, she disappeared as well.

  “So,” said Gwyn, smiling at her very red-faced, very alluring, very seventeenth-century boyfriend. “How about you put me in a better mood?”

  ~ ~ ~

  Sam and Will sat at Sam’s lookout, behind the construction site that would be her home in thirty-nine days.

  “Did not see that coming,” murmured Will, using one hand to dig a tiny rock free from the red-gold soil.

  “We should have,” said Sam. “I mean, look at how she can hear everyone so well.”

  “Hear people’s thoughts, you mean?”

  “Like a true de Rochefort,” said Sam. “It’s so obvious, when you think about it. She had to have rippler blood in her to be able to hear so well, right?”

  Will shrugged. He brushed dirt off the newly-freed stone. “I’ll admit that one had Mick pulling her hair out. How Gwyn can hear stuff when I suck at it so bad.”

  “You should get back home and tell Mickie,” said Sam. “This is big news.”

  “Mick will still be sleeping. She’s keeping crazy hours right now. She’s obsessed with this gene research she and Pfeffer are working on.”

  “Oh my gosh, Will. That’s it!”

  “What?”

  “Mickie and Pfeffer’s research! Gwyn would be the perfect guinea pig!”

  “Slow down. Guinea pig? For what?”

  Sam took a shallow breath. “Your sister and Pfeffer are working on how to wake up the gene for Rippler’s Syndrome, right?”

  “Yeah. Something to reverse Immutin.”

  Sam nodded. “The drug that permanently removes the ability to ripple. The one Fritz stole from Pfeffer’s computer and wants to weaponize.”

  “We don’t know that’s why Fritz stole the computer.”

  Sam frowned. “Will. This is Dr. Fritz Gottlieb we’re talking about. He stole the research so he can use it as a weapon and take away Sir Walter’s ability to ripple.”

  “Yeah,” said Will, tossing the rock from hand to hand. “That’s what Mick thinks. I just like disagreeing with her theories every now and again to keep things interesting.” He grinned and hurled the tiny rock out over the canyon.

  Sam shook her head. “Do you think Mickie and Pfeffer could do something for Gwyn? Something to wake up the dormant gene?”

  “I’m afraid that would be a very bad idea.” Will kicked his left heel in the dirt. “The problem, the way Mick sees it, is that it takes a catastrophic event to engage the gene in the first place. And you can’t manufacture that artificially. And even if you could—which would be all kinds of twisted—who would be willing to experience genuine trauma just to ripple?”

  Sam nodded. “I guess.”

  “Besides, Mick says Pfeffer’s delusional.”

  “Pfeffer’s a genius.”

  “Yeah. Which sort of argues he might have a better sense of what can and can’t be done. But Mick insists all the information they have points to trauma happening early in life. Before eight or nine years of age. Ten on the outside. Some changes happen in the way the brain transmits blah-blah-blah—you’d have to ask Mickie. My eyes sort of glaze over when she talks biology.”

  “Was Mickie’s early childhood less … troubled than yours?” Sam asked.

  “Oh, yeah,” Will replied. “Dad was clean and sober for a long stretch. Till I was four or five.”

  “Which explains why you ripple and she doesn’t.”

  Will nodded.

  Sam shivered, remembering the roar of the engine, the sound of her mother’s cries to call her friend Maggie from the street, the ache of those years after her mother was no more.

  “I wouldn’t repeat what happened to me,” she said softly. “Not even to ripple.”

  “Yeah.”

  The two sat quietly as the sun crept over a tall hill to the east.

  “So, Pfeffer isn’t giving up or anything,” Will said at last, “but I don’t think he would agree to use Gwyn as a guinea pig if he came up with something. Especially if it involved inducing trauma. He’d probably shoot himself full of Immutin first, just to keep anyone else from having to be a guinea pig.”

  “That sounds like Pfeffer,” Sam agreed.

  “Although my sister’s just crazy enough she might try it first, so Pfeffer wouldn’t lose his ability.”

  “Assuming they can come up with a ‘cure’ for Immutin in the first place,” said Sam.

  “Right. And that sounds like a long shot.” Will took Sam’s hand in his. “I think the bottom line is that if Fritz succeeds in making Immutin using Pfeffer’s research, and if he then figures out how to weaponize it and use it on all of us, we might have to get used to life in solid form.”

  “A short life,” added Sam. She squeezed Will’s hand extra tight.

  “I’ll take a short life with you in it over a long life without you, any day,” said Will. He nuzzled the side of her neck. His lips were soft and warm. Sam focused on staying solid.

  “I know,” she said. “Me, too.”

  It wasn’t even a question. She couldn’t bear to lose Will. Although, ironically, that might be the sort of major traumatic event that would kick Helmann’s Disease into Rippler’s Syndrome.

  Sam leaned her head on Will’s shoulder. “So, I guess we’d better pray the science of weaponizing intravenously administered drugs proves beyond Fritz’s abilities.”

  “Or that he loses interest,” said Will.

  Sam shivered again, in spite of the sun’s warmth on her shoulders. Somehow, she didn’t see Fritz losing interest in taking out Sir Walter. Or anyone else who happened to be in the way.

  And if that happened, the world would suddenly find itself in danger. A lot of danger.

  3

  A COOL MIND ALWAYS TRIUMPHS

  For the first two weeks he was back in the custody of his dear Uncle Fritz, Georg was hungry all the time. He supposed he should be glad his uncle fed him, but after the months he’d spent invisible, it was annoying how much of each day spent in solid form had to be devoted to consuming food. And Georg was back to spending all of his time in solid form, thanks to his dear Uncle Fritz’s injections of Neuroprine, the drug that prevented rippling in two week increments.

  In the weeks following Fritz’s kidnapping of Georg and his now-dead brother Hansel in France and their relocation to Fritz’s San Francisco base, Georg and Fritz had come to a tentative pe
ace. That was to say, Georg had taken stock of his options: remain angrily defiant of his powerful uncle and live as his uncle’s prisoner, or admit to himself that cooperating with Fritz provided his only hope of securing future freedoms.

  He’d gone with the second choice. Georg had been careful to avoid seeming too eager for reconciliation. He’d raged at Fritz just the right amount over Fritz’s murder of Hansel. That had been easy. Georg had been enraged. Nor did he have to fake the loneliness, the regrets, the emptiness without his favorite sibling at his side, especially confined as he was to the dull quarters just across from Uncle Fritz’s private office.

  The first week in San Francisco had been awful. The incarceration, the loneliness, the insupportable boredom—these had all taken their toll. But it was during this time Georg realized he would have to win his uncle’s trust back if he ever wanted out of his small chamber.

  Georg let a week pass, and then another, and then a third before beginning Operation Reconciliation. By Georg’s count, it had to be mid-July now. In France, they would have just celebrated Bastille Day. The thought made something pinch tight in his belly; Hansel had loved holidays involving fireworks. Without his brother at his side, Georg felt rudderless, but “without his brother” was the only future he had. It was time to push ahead.

  Thus, when Fritz came to Georg’s cell to draw blood (for the second time in his three week stay), Georg spoke to his uncle. His voice rasped from lack of use.

  “You were our favorite,” said Georg. “Hansel and me, I mean. We looked up to you above all the others. Dr. Hans Lieberman was nothing beside you.”

  Fritz coughed out a short laugh. “Indeed.”

  Georg stared at the vial containing his blood. Something stirred in him. Curiosity. Georg had always been curious. Too curious, Mutti had said. Once others had begun to repeat the accusation, Georg had learned to be secretive. He grew up stealing secrets the way his siblings stole sweets when Mutti’s back was turned.