by Sara DeHaven
“It feels like law and order is breaking down,” Steve said worriedly.
“Yes, and that’s the whole point of it all, if we’re to believe the rumors we’ve heard. We’re supposed to feel that way, we’re supposed to be outraged and demand a change in government,” Kevin countered.
“Yeah, and we’re apparently supposed to give up our civil liberties as well,” Bruce added darkly. “There’s been talk about a curfew, and it worries me. I see the point of it for now, but I don’t like where this is headed.”
“If it were just happening here, I think I’d find it less overwhelming,” Bree put in. Her enjoyment in the excellent food dwindled with the change in subject. She used her napkin to wipe the yogurt-cucumber sauce that had dribbled onto her hands from her falafel sandwich off her fingers. “I hear it’s much worse in L.A. and Miami.”
“I suppose we should thank our rainy climate for that,” Steve said. “Tempers run high when it’s hot, and at least we don’t have that to deal with.”
“Things were hot enough last night, at Pioneer Square. Javier called me in on it, so I was there for a good part of it.”
There were gasps and questions from around the table at that. Kevin admitted he’d gotten a message from Javier as well, but had been unable to respond because he’d been home alone with Hunter, as Steve had been out having dinner with a friend. Steve gave him a sharp look at that, and Bree wondered what his stance was on Kevin taking part in these powered activities. She couldn’t imagine he loved the idea. She didn’t love the idea of anyone at all being involved, but here they all were.
“It was a madhouse,” she told the group as they finally quieted down enough to let her talk. “I was having dinner with Leander…”
“Leander Rayne? That guy I invited to the St. Patrick’s Day party?” Bruce asked. There was something in his tone that left Bree feeling that Bruce had mixed feelings about the idea of her going out with Leander. He and Daniel had become fast friends, and she’d previously gotten the impression that he would have liked it if she and Daniel ended up together. On the other hand, Bruce wasn’t one to interfere in someone else’s personal life. The same could not be said for Sophie, who immediately waded in with, “Goodness, Bree, he’s gloriously handsome, but I could have sworn I smelled ‘womanizer’ all over that guy. Are you sure he’s your type?”
“It wasn’t a ‘date’ date,” Bree replied, cheeks coloring, “it was a friend date. Or at least that’s what I intended.”
“Oh, this sounds like a good story,” Steve said, eyebrows wriggling suggestively.
Bree felt control of the conversation slipping away from her at a high rate of speed. She attempted to wrest it back by forging ahead briskly. “Anyway, I got a message from Javier, and since Leander was with me, he wanted to come along. He’s something of a Caster and Warder, and he was definitely helpful.” With that, she’d managed to get the attention off her date with Leander, and was able to finish her story of her involvement in the riot. Kevin looked grim, maybe even angry, as she related her utilizing of Gelsenim to cast out the demons of their attackers near the end. She knew it worried him greatly, the risk of discovery of her budding Demon Master potential, but he didn’t comment. Bree had planned on skipping her strange, complicated encounter with Leander, but decided she needed other eyes on this, other perspectives. She hadn’t ended feeling very good about it all, but still couldn’t think what else she could have done.
“You know, I’ve gotta say I’m impressed,” Sophie said as Bree concluded her tale of deceit and seduction. She had pushed her plate away and had her elbows on the table, hands clasped together, and she gave Bree a rather wicked smile over her hands. “I do believe you bested Parrot Boy at his own game.”
“Parrot boy?” Bree asked, mystified.
“Oh, it’s just a little pet name Bruce and I made up for Leander. You know, colorful, talkative, smart, and a little full of himself. Kinda goes with the Bird Master theme. Anyway, I call that thinking on your feet, girl.”
“Truly, I can’t think what else you could have done. Distraction is your only hope with a Reader,” Kevin reassured her, leaning forward to put a hand briefly on her forearm. Bree figured she must look as embarrassed as she felt if she was garnering that kind of support.
“It just feels wrong to be manipulative in that way. But I really didn’t think it was my place to reveal anything about Daniel. I don’t have any particular reason to distrust Leander, but Daniel seems to think he might be a dark power user.”
“Daniel never told me that,” Kevin said thoughtfully.
“Yeah, where is Daniel anyway?” Steve asked.
Bruce replied. “We invited him, but he said he couldn’t make it. He didn’t seem to want to talk. There was something, I don’t know, something in his voice that worried me.”
Bree’s glance crashed right into Kevin’s, and she realized that they must be the only two people Daniel had told about his self-imposed exile and the reasons for it. Bree was intensely relieved that she wasn’t the only one who knew.
“He’s got something to work out,” Kevin said carefully. “Something having to do with Gelsenim’s ‘divided’ theory. He can get a little obsessed when he’s working on something like that.”
“Yeah, and he can get a little ridiculous when he thinks he’s protecting other people,” Bruce countered. There was a brief interruption as Brendan came barreling into the room asking if he could have some cookies. Steve got up and went to check on how much supper the boys had managed to eat so far and mediate cookie negotiations.
The break in conversation allowed a certain tension to be felt in the room between Bruce and Kevin, and as soon as Brendan was out of the room, Bruce leaned forward. “Sometimes I think that man has us all enchanted,” he said intently. “We all have a tendency to do whatever he says. Yes, he’s an experienced Keeper. Yes, he has more power than probably everyone here at the table combined and then some. He’s on something of a mission, and it’s a mission we’ve all signed up for, for one reason or another. But that doesn’t mean that Daniel always knows what’s best for Daniel. Why should he have to try to figure this all out alone?”
He glanced briefly in Bree’s direction, and she answered defensively, “Look, I tried my best to sell him on another course. We had a disagreement about it, but he wouldn’t be moved. And in the end, it’s his life, right? We can’t make him do something he’s not willing to do.”
“That’s all true, but I’m just saying I think it’s probably not best for him to take this type of research on all by himself. Whatever happened to the idea that you were going to monitor him, Bree?”
Bree’s anxiety for Daniel, which had been eating at her all week, rose to the surface and leaped out like a suddenly freed porpoise. “I know, I know! But after he had that break, he just wouldn’t listen, he wouldn’t let me in. I think it’s crazy for him to do it this way, but I just could not get through to him!”
“What break?” Sophie asked, and the simple question brought a sudden halt to the conversation. Kevin looked at her inquiringly, and after a minute’s squirming, guilty, internal debate, Bree decided to let them all know about Daniel having become fully divided. Kevin didn’t try to stop her, although he looked uncomfortable as she spoke. Steve got back early in the recitation, so she didn’t have to repeat herself much.
“Lady protect him,” Sophie breathed as Bree concluded her story.
“Damn it, I thought it was something like that,” Bruce muttered right on Sophie’s heels.
“I know I’m out of my league here when it comes to all this powered stuff, but isn’t it kind of dangerous to just let Daniel be off by himself, without anyone at all checking in on him?”
“I’ve been checking in on him,” Kevin put in quietly. Steve gave him an accusing look. “I’m sorry, love, but he told me in confidence, and I had to respect that. I’m no Reader, but he’s been checking in by phone and email, several times a day, just so I know he’s still more
or less himself.”
“And neither of you could have told me that?” Bree asked hotly. She’d swung from guilty anxiety straight into anger. When she thought of how much she’d gnawed at this very question, feeling irresponsible for not seeing that Daniel was monitored, feeling equally faithless if she told anyone else of his struggle without really knowing how things were going. He’d seemed well enough, comparatively speaking, when they parted, yet she’d been suffering an agony of suppressed worry.
Kevin sighed and gave her a weary look. “I wanted to say something, Bree. I thought it was the best course. But Daniel seems to think he can protect you best by keeping you completely out of it.”
Bruce pounded his closed fist on the table, not very loudly, but hard enough to startle them all. “Exactly. That is exactly it. Bree is the one person who has the best chance at helping him, and he’s keeping her out of it. Does this sound like a man who’s thinking clearly to you? I’m not buying it.”
“Yeah, well, good luck getting him to do something else,” Kevin said tiredly. There was something of his long history as Daniel’s friend in his weary tone. Given Kevin’s mother hen nature and Daniel’s high risk lifestyle, it had probably often been a difficult ride for Kevin.
“Well I, for one, mean to try,” Bruce rumbled, leaning back in his chair and crossing his arms, beard sticking out at an assertive angle.
“He did seem strangely normal when I saw him last,” Bree put in tentatively. “It was actually kind of weird. It made me wonder if I’d somehow imagined the whole break at all.”
“I don’t think you imagined it, not based on what Daniel told me,” Kevin replied. “But on the other hand, when I’ve spoken with him on the phone, he’s seemed perfectly coherent, at least so far.”
“I can see this puts our demon research project on hold,” Sophie commented. “I kind of have mixed feelings about that.”
“Well I’ll admit I’m relieved,” Steve said. “I get why you’re all doing it, but it's scary as hell. Except for this thing you’ve got going on with your demon, Bree. That’s really very interesting, isn’t it? You say you’re not having any negative effects at all?”
She shifted uncomfortably in her chair. “Not as far as I can tell. It has to mean something, that it’s working out that way. It has to mean something about what the demons are all about. Why is possession working so well with me and so poorly with Daniel? If we could find out the answers to that, we’d know so much.”
“I’ve been wondering if it has something to do with being such a good Reader,” Sophie speculated, light brown eyes snapping with interest in her round face. “Think about it for a minute. What do you do on a deep Read? You attune your energy to the other person. You have to have that kind of internal flexibility.”
“Bree, flexible?” Kevin snorted out a laugh.
“I mean on an energetic level,” Sophie returned with a little smile. It was a long standing joke among the group that Bree could be opinionated. “And come to think of it, that’s what you do during a taint clearing or an exorcism, isn’t it? Don’t you have to attune to the demon’s energy to some degree? Isn’t that the particular skill of an Exorcist, beyond the rudimentary Casting ability you need?”
Bree frowned in concentration as she considered Sophie’s theory. “Wouldn’t that mean that most Reader/Exorcists would be able to handle possessions? Or that the demons possessing them wouldn’t feel any hunger? Wouldn’t someone have noticed that by now if it were true?”
Bruce shrugged. “I don’t think most powered ever think about demons with any true curiosity or spirit of inquiry. We’re indoctrinated to believe they’re evil and it’s our God appointed duty to fight them in whatever way we can. And besides, there’s always that first time someone puts the pieces together and makes a new discovery.”
Steve nervously jiggled his fork between thumb and forefinger. “Why wouldn’t Bree’s ability to merge so well with a demon be like every other trait humans have, on a continuum? Maybe Sophie is right and powered who can attune energy are more likely to be good at it, but even of those there are individuals who are extremely skilled at it. Not to mention the fact that demons are supposedly of different types. Maybe it’s a combination thing. The right demon with the right person.”
“What I don’t get is why Daniel would be so negatively affected if this theory is true,” Kevin said with mouth still partly full of a bite of pita bread. Everyone gave him a moment to finish chewing so he could go on. “He’s a high power Reader, of energy at least, and a high power Exorcist. He has incredible flexibility in his powers.”
“That’s a damned good point,” Bruce said slowly. There was a little silence as they all considered what had been theorized so far. It was Bree who broke the silence. “You know, Daniel’s isn’t really like most Exorcists. When I worked with him on that teenager Father Steuban brought to us, he wasn’t attuning much at all. He just sort smothered the demonic energy with ritual energy and then wrestled it out of the kid. Definitely more brawn than finesse on that one.”
“Then maybe my theory is still valid. Maybe he’s not as skilled at attuning and that explains his trouble with demons.”
Steve backed Sophie up. “It sounds like your theory does hang together if you think of it that way.”
“But I’m not sure that explains Daniel’s particular vulnerability,” Bree said worriedly. “Lots of powered aren’t great at attuning, and they don’t all respond so badly to demon contact.”
“Yeah, but how many Demon Masters do any of us know?” Bruce countered. “It’s awfully hard to come up with any meaningful theories when we truly know so little about that particular talent, and how getting demon burned really comes about. What we really need on our team is some high power ex-Keltoi that has gotten out and is on our side. There’s a whole raft of lore that’s forbidden to us nice, law abiding powered.”
“Finding someone like that, especially in time to help Daniel now, seems awfully unlikely,” Kevin said doubtfully. “Like I said before, Bruce, feel free to see if you can get Daniel to consider other options, but I’m betting he can get this divided thing figured out. Consider that as far as we know, no one else has ever come up with a workable hiding spell for power signatures. He’s very innovative, very knowledgeable, and he’s very strong, and I don’t just mean in powered terms. If he puts his mind to this, I think he can come up with a fix.”
“Well I hope you’re right,” Sophie said. She began putting silverware on empty plates.
“Amen,” Bree said softly as she reached to help Sophie start clearing the table. The conversation broke up as they all took on clean up tasks, with Bruce and Steve going out to be with the boys. Bree reflected that they were all feeling frustrated and helpless, not just about Daniel, but about the wider situation with the increased possessions and civil unrest. She talked with Sophie and Kevin about it as they did dishes, the kitchen smelling of the citrus dish soap Sophie used.
Kevin surprised her by insisting that it was still worth trying to be of some help in the riots that had been breaking out. “Given your description of what happened last night, maybe we need to be more careful about just plowing into these situations. But on the other hand, it’s like I was saying the other night. If we help even one person, it’s worth it.”
“Yeah, it’s worth if you don’t get killed,” Sophie said with some disapproval as she scrubbed out her frying pan with more than necessary force.
“We’ll be more careful,” Kevin insisted.
“Careful how?” Sophie challenged.
“I think we have to do better at just picking a single task and focusing on that. A sort of quick in and out strike. Keep in mind that I can keep up a physical ward for short periods of time if I have to. Even if there's gunfire again, we should be safe if we stay alert and on the edges of things. I think we should do what we did before, which is to go in pairs.”
Bree was somewhat convinced by Kevin’s argument, and she liked the idea of working
with Kevin again. Leander had definitely been helpful, and he had the added plus of being a Caster, but the situation with him was now so confused and delicate that she didn’t relish getting into another high stress situation with him. “You know, I think you have the right attitude, Kevin.” She was familiar enough with the kitchen that she was able to put things away as she dried. “I get all stressed out when I think we have to somehow stop all this. But that’s an impossible goal. We’re not Keepers, even if we’re taking on some part of a Keeper’s work. If we just focus on what we can do, maybe we’ll feel better about it.”
“I know I feel better being able to do something, no matter how small,” Kevin replied stoutly as he rubbed a sleeve across his sweating brow. It was warm in the kitchen, and he tended to run hot anyway.
“You two make me feel like I should be doing more.” Sophie pulled out the plug on the sink and squeezed out her dish sponge and put it in its brown ceramic holder, a gift from one of her patients who was a potter. “Maybe, if you guys told me where to go, and I happened to be not at work or on call, I could come and do a little first aid and healing work.”
“I imagine that could be helpful in the aftermath of one of these situations. I think once there’s enough police presence and the whole thing is dispersing, it should be safe, although I’d still feel better if you were there with a Warder.”
“I don’t think I know any other Warders besides Kevin,” Sophie said uncertainly.
“Well, even if you had Bruce with you for some kind of physical protection, that would be better.”
