by Dima Zales
Boy, did that sound good to me.
7
Graham walked me up to my door, which surprised me a little. Before he left, he gave me a warm smile and stroked my upper arm affectionately, which surprised me even more. The vibe I’d been getting all day from him was a little more than friendly. I hoped I was reading too much into his behavior. Graham seemed nice, and he sure looked good, but I shouldn’t get involved with one of these people. There were too many unknowns.
Being on my own was a firmly established habit, anyway. I was the woman who had fits, after all. That didn’t exactly give me a top spot on Dorf’s datable-women list.
But maybe it doesn’t have to be that way now.
If it weren’t for the panic attacks, things might’ve been different. Maybe they would be different in the future. If the panic attacks really did stop. And if I want to have to lie to someone all the time, I thought, remembering Graham’s warnings.
Well, no sense in worrying about that right now.
I let myself in. It felt good to be home. I hadn’t been gone all that long, but the house had that just-home-from-vacation feeling — the smell was a little off, and it was oddly quiet.
I curled up on the couch with a hot bowl of soup and a cold soda. It seemed like a million years ago that I’d last done this very normal thing. It was great.
I’d only slept a few hours the night before, so I was in bed by 8:00, Sniggles the bear tucked under one arm. My own worn, mismatched sheets had never felt so good.
I came wide awake in the darkness, certain that something was wrong. I slid out from under the covers, then smoothed them quickly, making the bed look unused. Opening the top drawer of my bedside table, I pulled out my mother’s old .38.
When Mom was alive, she always stored the bullets separately. Ben’s kids came to the house back then, so loaded guns were a no-no. I no longer bothered with that precaution. I checked by feel to make sure the cylinder was full, then moved as quietly as I could across my bedroom and crouched in the corner behind the door.
Mom had made me go shooting at the range in Frederick a couple times a year. I hadn’t done it much since she passed. It just didn’t seem like a priority. Dorf was pretty darned safe. I carefully settled my finger outside the guard and thumbed back the hammer. It had been long enough since I’d used the gun that these actions were no longer automatic. I couldn’t remember when I’d last cleaned the thing.
There were footsteps on the stairs. Surprisingly, the intruder didn’t sneak into the room. Instead there was a soft knock and a pause before the bedroom door swung open. The light flipped on, and a female voice said, “Beth?” I peeked around the side of the door and saw bleached-blond hair. Kara.
She looked back out the door. “She’s not here.”
“She’s here,” Williams said.
Shit.
I waited until Kara left the room, then stood and moved quickly into the doorway, gun leveled. Putting all the steel into my voice that I could, I said, “Stop.”
Kara and Williams stilled. They both had their backs to me and seemed to realize I was armed, maybe from my tone of voice. They’d been about to check the second bedroom, which was right across the landing. Both slowly looked over their shoulders at me. Kara’s face was very surprised. Williams’s was blank. I took a slow step back, so I’d be out of lunging range, and shifted the gun toward Williams. The three of us stood there for a few seconds, staring at each other.
It occurred to me that I wasn’t feeling a panic attack coming on. I was scared, but I was also angry. I’d had it with these people, especially Williams. A sadist, Graham had said. I could believe it.
I realized I might very well shoot him. A strange sense of calm descended on me.
Williams’s expression changed fractionally. A finger on his right hand twitched. He didn’t strike me as a twitchy sort of person. I wondered if he’d just put up some sort of force field to protect himself. It would be just my luck to get killed by my own ricochet.
The moment of distraction helped me get a handle on my anger. Good as it’d feel to shoot Williams, he hadn’t actually made a move in my direction, yet. I took two more steps back and pulled the gun back and up to my shoulder, still holding it with both hands.
“What do you want?”
“We just want to talk,” Kara said.
I waited.
She smiled nervously. “You need to come out to the mill. We’re not getting anywhere with it. Callie says we need you there.”
“What, nearly burning one woman to death isn’t enough for you?”
If the jab bothered Williams, he didn’t show it. In contrast, Kara seemed genuinely upset at the thought.
“That’s not going to happen to you! Look, I know it’s really fucking scary — it is, totally. But it’s also really important. You’ve got to come.”
“How long have you guys been doing this? A year? Ten years? I come along and join your little freak show, and two days later, you can’t do it without me? Bullshit.”
“I know it’s weird. But Callie’s never wrong. She doesn’t see all that often, but when she does, it’s right.”
“No.”
Williams made a small, exasperated noise and pushed past Kara. Without hesitation, I brought the gun down and fired at him. I only got off one shot before he slammed me back against the wall with one hand and took the gun away with the other. God he was fast.
Either I was right about the force field, or my aim had really gone to hell — he’d been a yard or two away and coming right at me, and I hadn’t hit him.
No ricochet had come back at me. I was sort of sorry for that. I’d rather die by gunshot than be burned to death.
Williams dragged me out of the room and down the stairs. Kara followed, looking scared and swearing under her breath. He hauled me around the corner and into the living room, then froze.
Graham was standing in the middle of the room. His expression was only mildly annoyed, but I got the sense he was madder than he looked.
“You’re kidnapping my trainee?”
Williams didn’t say anything.
From behind us, Kara said, “Graham, we need her out there. Callie says.”
Graham cocked his head. “I don’t think so.”
He brought one hand up and looked at it. At first I thought he was checking out his fingernails. Then I realized he was holding a cell phone.
“How fortunate you just happened to call as you were leaving the house, Kara. I was able to follow along with your progress quite nicely.”
Kara blanched. She pulled her own phone out and ended the call she clearly hadn’t known was going on.
“Look —”
“Get out.” Graham sounded almost bored.
Amazingly, Williams dropped me and stalked out of the house. Kara followed, squeezing to the side, as though she wanted to stay as far away from Graham as possible.
I have to admit, it was sort of weird. They were afraid of him. Well, Kara was obviously afraid of him, and Williams was at least unwilling to challenge him. I still hadn’t seen anything particularly scary about Graham. He seemed like a middle-management type — sending people here and there, training newbies, that kind of thing. What had I missed that Kara saw?
He watched them leave. Once they were gone, he turned back to me, looking concerned.
“Elizabeth, are you all right?”
“Yeah,” I said.
I sat down on the couch and reached back to rub my shoulder where it’d hit the wall.
“Just need an ice pack or two. That’s getting to be standard with you people.”
“Not all of ‘us people’ are the same,” he said quietly, sitting down beside me. “Of course, you have no idea if that’s true or not,” he added wryly, as though he could read my mind.
He put an arm around my shoulders but must’ve felt me stiffen, because he just patted me, then let me go.
“Seriously, are you okay?”
“Yeah, I am. Thanks f
or the save. I’d probably be on my way to dead right now if you hadn’t shown up.”
That got a big smile.
“Did Kara really call you by accident?”
He grinned. “Yep.”
“Man. What a loser kidnapper, eh?”
He laughed. “I don’t normally want my people to be losers at anything, but in this case I’m delighted. Now,” he said, his expression softening, “why don’t you take some Tylenol and try to go back to sleep. I’ll hang out here, just to be sure they don’t come back.”
That didn’t exactly make me feel better, but what could I do? Saying I’d be fine alone and he should leave would sound silly, considering what had just happened.
Which reminded me that my neighbors had probably all called the police. A .38 makes a big noise on a quiet night.
But everything was still silent outside — no sirens, no Suzanne at her front door, hollering to find out if I was okay. In fact, when I went to the window, I didn’t see lights on in any of the surrounding houses.
Again, Graham seemed to know what I was thinking. “They were keeping things quiet. None of your neighbors heard anything.”
I must’ve still looked perplexed.
“We haven’t talked much about workings,” he said. “One kind is a noise-dampening field. Most of us learn to make those. I’m sure you’ll be able to do it yourself, once you get to that stage.”
“Wow,” I said. “That must come in handy. What else can I learn to do?”
He smiled. “Well, lots of us can open locks.” He gestured at my front door. “See? They didn’t have to break in. One of them did a working to unlock it.”
“Huh. I’m surprised more of you don’t take up lives of crime.”
He laughed a little too hard — it hadn’t been that funny. Maybe Graham was a notorious cat burglar on the side.
“Okay,” I said, yawning. “I’m going to try to get a little more shut-eye. There’s a blanket and an extra pillow in that cabinet over there. Or you can watch TV in the den. Help yourself to whatever’s in the fridge. Which isn’t much.”
“Great, sounds good. When you’re up and about, let’s discuss that abilities-testing I mentioned. I don’t want to let too much more time go by.”
“Okay. Good night.”
“Good night. And Elizabeth,” he said as I turned toward the stairs, “I’ll be having a talk with the others. This won’t happen again.”
I nodded. I hoped I looked grateful enough. The way he’d said it gave me a little chill, so I had a feeling the talk would be effective.
I headed up to my room. After a moment’s hesitation, I locked my bedroom door. After all, what if he’d told me that thing about opening locks just to make me think there was no point in locking my door? Probably dumb, but hey, it couldn’t hurt.
I flipped off the overhead and turned on my bedside lamp. Then I got in bed. Lying back, I noticed a bullet hole in the ceiling. So there had been a ricochet, and it went straight up. I guess bulletproofing was par for the course, too.
Not good. The gun had given me a moment’s confidence, had let me put anger ahead of fear, however briefly. If I couldn’t even shoot these people, I really was helpless.
I woke at around 7:00 and trundled directly into the bathroom. Callie’s place was nice, but I wanted to shower in my own bathroom, with my own shampoo, my own conditioner, and my own shower pouf. I also needed to make serious use of a razor.
When I was clean, I dressed in a sweater and fresh jeans, trying hard not to think about which pair would be most flattering. I was probably wrong about Graham’s interest, and even if I wasn’t, getting involved with him was out of the question.
When I went downstairs, I found Graham cooking breakfast. He must’ve actually gone shopping first, since the meal included bacon, eggs, toast, bananas, and OJ, none of which I’d had on hand. He’d also made coffee. It was all delicious.
After eating, I felt like crawling back into bed for a nap, but instead we got in my car and headed east. I think I dozed part of the way. Big meals early in the day always made me sleepy.
Our destination turned out to be Rib Mountain, a four-mile-long ridge just west of Wausau. It took more than an hour to get there, since we had to wend our way up through the state park that surrounded the mountain.
On the way there, Graham told me a little more.
“You remember about the four stages of development, right?” He waited for my nod. “So, we’ve got you into the first stage, now — you’re really seeing through, instead of just getting random glimpses.”
I guess I could see through. I’d seen Bob, at any rate.
“The next stage is getting what we call a ‘gift.’ Kara’s ability to heal, Callie’s ability to sense future events — those are gifts.”
“Does Williams have a gift for shields?” I asked, remembering the bullet hole in my ceiling and how I’d been trapped in Callie’s house.
“Yes, but we call that sort of thing a ‘barrier.’ The word ‘shield’ is too restrictive for what can be done with a barrier.”
Good lord, just what I didn’t want to hear.
“So,” Graham continued, “what we’re going to do today is see if your gift has emerged. Usually people spend a while just seeing through, but since you were stalled, maybe your gift will come quickly.”
“What’s the difference between workings and gifts?”
“There’s no real difference. The word ‘gift’ is shorthand for a working you can do automatically, without having to actually learn how. Most of us have at least one thing we can just do, without even thinking about it. Sometimes gifted working can be fine-tuned through practice, but the basic ability is always just there from the get-go.”
“What about the things you were mentioning last night — making disguises, unlocking doors, and such?”
“Right now you can sense essence that’s been disturbed by a working. Eventually, you’ll be able to see essence in its natural state. Once that happens, you can begin to do workings aside from your gift. We called that ‘learned’ working. You can also learn to do half-workings at that point — mainly disguises and false images. Some people devote a lot of time to learned workings and become very adept.”
“Are those the third and fourth stages?”
He grinned. “Very good — yes. Sometimes you’ll hear the stages called ‘castes,’ though I don’t care for that term, myself.”
I nodding, thinking about the possibilities.
“So even if I don’t have a gift for healing, I might be able to learn to do it?”
“Definitely. People who aren’t gifted healers can still learn to do healing work. Their abilities will probably be much more limited than those of a gifted healer like Kara, but it would still be useful.”
We pulled into the parking lot at the top of the mountain. Our car was the only one there. It was too late in the year for skiing, snowshoeing, and other winter sports, and too early to do much else besides slog through cold mud.
That last seemed to be what Graham had in mind. He got a backpack out of the trunk, and we headed into the woods. I think we covered less than a mile, but it took the better part of an hour, since there was no trail to follow.
I realized at one point that Graham must’ve been telling the truth about the sound-containment thing. I could certainly hear us crashing along through the dead leaves and brush, but nothing else seemed able to — several times we startled wildlife at close range.
At least I wasn’t the only one who suffered. About half an hour into our hike, Graham tripped and fell in a pretty substantial mud puddle. He stood up, brushing pointlessly at his pant legs, which were drenched and muddy up to the knees. Then he shot an annoyed look at the snag he’d tripped over.
“You okay?” I asked.
“Yeah. Darned rock.”
We continued on. Finally, Graham motioned to stop. He stood still for about a minute with his eyes closed, concentrating on something. Then he nodded to himself
and said, “This is good.”
He opened his backpack and got out two large trash bags, which he unfolded and laid on the ground. We each sat on one. My butt instantly got very cold.
“Okay,” he said, “I’m going to test you for some common gifts. If nothing shows up, that’s no big deal. It just means you haven’t hit the second stage, yet.”
“Is there something about this place that makes it good for testing?”
“Yeah. This mountain’s made out of very hard rock, so it’s much older than the surrounding land — approaching two billion years. Its essence has been worked and reworked so many times that it’s thick with all the echoes and remnants. That makes it a place of power for people like us — the essence is easier to grasp, and sometimes you can build on the remains of someone else’s working, which increases what you can do.”
“So, the older things are, the more powerful they are?”
“Age is often associated with thickness, but it’s not consistent. Sometimes relatively new sites can get pretty thick. It depends on how much working has been done there and how much of it sticks in the essence. Some places seem to be naturally sticky.”
Graham spent the next two hours trying to figure out what I could do. He had me see if I could turn myself into mist, which involved trying to “feel transparent,” in his words. That didn’t go anywhere. He had me try to change into an animal by visualizing it. I remained stubbornly myself.
From that point, the list of failures just grew. I couldn’t communicate with him telepathically. I couldn’t heal a tiny cut he made on his finger. He pricked my finger with a pin, and I couldn’t heal that, either. I didn’t seem to have any effect on water or fire or stone or metal or the weather. I couldn’t move things with my mind. I wasn’t unusually strong or fast. I couldn’t speak or understand foreign languages. I couldn’t go invisible. And I couldn’t fly.
Which of course made me ask if they really had people who could fly. Graham’s response — “none living” — wasn’t particularly encouraging.
