by Eileen Wilks
Though that’s what they were.
Supposedly the Refuge existed to offer a home to orphaned or abandoned children with Gifts, and to help those children learn how to use their Gifts safely and effectively. To that end, the children were tested and trained—all of them except Danny, whose Gift defied every test they could devise. The essence of touch sensitivity was that it could not be affected by magic, and nonmagical tests were notoriously unreliable in the presence of magic. “But I was very important to the project,” she’d told Rule, “because I could find the kids who could be helped. That’s what Mr. Smith said anyway, and maybe that part was true even if the rest was lies.”
The upshot was that Danny hadn’t known much about the tests and training the other kids received. The other kids hadn’t filled her in because she hadn’t fit in. She never did, she’d told him with a shrug that was supposed to show how little it mattered. When he asked if she’d been bullied, she informed him that the definition of bullying was in flux. According to some standards, the answer was yes. According to others, no. She wouldn’t tell him specifically what the other kids had said or done, but it was clear she hadn’t been accepted by her peers. That, he suspected, had made the approval of the adults in her life very important.
Adults like Mr. Smith. Especially him, because of his connection to her dead mother. She’d believed everything he told her . . . until a girl named Amanda showed up at the Refuge.
“Stop it!” Danny clapped her hands over her ears, her face scrunching up. “Go away!”
The wolves playing with her froze, looking bewildered. Mike rose to his feet.
Rule did, too, and headed for her quickly. Danny’s face relaxed just as he reached her. She dropped her hands. “Oh,” she said, looking around at the wolves. “I didn’t mean you.”
Rule crouched in front of her. “Who did you mean?”
“It’s Amanda.” She scowled. “That’s the second time she’s done that, and I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all.”
“Done what?”
“Talked to me in my head.”
* * *
MANY miles away, Lily muttered and turned over onto her back. Sleep was easing out of her, slow as sieved molasses. As she drifted restlessly into wakefulness, her dream clung.
She’d been looking for Rule, looking everywhere. She wanted to curl up with him again, the way she had . . . sometime. Not very long ago. She’d curled up in his arms recently, but she couldn’t find him now.
But she had found someone. Someone she’d found before, whose mind she could speak with.
Her eyes popped open on that thought. She lay still and tried to reach out again. Tried to find that other mind, the one who could hear her. When she failed, her eyes stung with tears. That was frustration, she told herself. Frustration, not fear. She wasn’t really crying. She was just frustrated. Bloody damn frustrated. She tried again.
There.
Yes, there was Charles beside her, sound asleep. He’d been allowed to wake sometimes, like her. Wake up so they could pee and eat and drink—and brush her teeth, which she’d done twice now—before being forced into sleep again. Which should not have been possible, because it was clearly magical sleep, but it kept happening. She’d learned that it happened to him, too, when their awake-times overlapped briefly once.
Knowing where Charles was didn’t help. He couldn’t hear her mindspeech, so what did it matter if . . .
If she knew where his mind was. If she could sense that mental presence as clearly as she saw the uneven rocky ceiling of her cell. No, more clearly, for this sense didn’t rely on anything as unstable as the flickers of firelight.
Also: there, there, and there.
Lily’s breath caught in shock. That was . . . those were . . . minds. Other minds, not Charles’s. Three of them, roughly level with her and about fifteen feet distant in that direction, which put them on the other side of the fire curtain. She had no words to describe this new perception. It was directional like the mate sense, but had elements of vision and touch, too. The minds seemed to glow, yet also felt tangible. Juicy. As if minds were fruit to this new sense—grapes or plums maybe, but not cool like refrigerated fruit. Warm with life. Warm, thin-skinned, glowing fruit that she ought to be able to reach out and touch.
She tried.
Instead of touching, she somehow shifted her perception so that she looked—or reached?—more widely. Another mind. Not like the others, for if they made her think of fruit, this one made her think of magma: dark-crusted on top, cracked and curdled from the virulent heat burning beneath.
A mind that she suddenly knew was regarding her the same way she regarded it.
This time, she felt it when something flicked the switch that send her plunging down into darkness and sleep. Felt it and screamed, however briefly and silently.
Not in fear. Not in frustration. In rage.
TWENTY-FOUR
“ARE you sure it was Amanda?” Rule asked.
He and Danny sat around the fire with José, Mike, and Theo. Danny had her backpack with her, but it rested beside her, not on her. Mike was there because Danny was his responsibility; he’d Changed back to two legs, a process Danny had watched with intense concentration until he finished. Then she’d flushed painfully and looked away until he pulled on a pair of cutoffs. A dozen others, both two-legged and four, would have joined them if Rule hadn’t motioned them away. Not that they’d gone very far. His clansmen had taken a shine to Danny. They were also curious.
“Who else could—” She broke off as Claude—who’d also switched back to two legs—approached and handed her a Coke. “Thank you. Um, I’m not sure who you are?”
“Claude,” he said in a voice almost as deep as Isen’s. On two legs, Claude would make a good television thug, with his heavy brows, burly build, and surly expression. Humans might have guessed his age at fifty or sixty. Rule wasn’t sure of his actual age, but he’d fought in the Second World War. So had his oldest son.
“He’s the greedy one who wouldn’t let anyone else get a belly rub,” Mike added.
“Oh, the wolf with the crooked left ear.” She nodded firmly. “Claude. I’ll remember.”
Rule made a gesture that should keep the others from interrupting again. Danny had spoken of Amanda twice now. The first time she’d stopped herself, but it was clear that something about the girl had alerted Danny that things at the Refuge were not as she’d thought. Now . . . “Danny,” he said with careful patience, “what exactly did you experience?”
“She tried to talk to me in my head, like I said.” Danny was sitting cross-legged. She scowled at one of her feet, apparently unhappy with the way her shoe was tied, because she undid it.
“What did she say?”
“Just questions,” she muttered at the shoe she was carefully tying.
“What questions?”
“I don’t want to answer that.”
“Why do you think it was Amanda who tried to mindspeak you?”
She darted a glance in his general direction. “I don’t want to talk about her. Not until I can think things through and decide how much to say.”
“It’s important.” How much to tell her? Most of it, he decided. She had a right to know her own heritage. “Do you know where your Gift comes from?”
“That’s a weird question. We don’t know why some people are Gifted and others aren’t.”
“I don’t know where other Gifts come from, but I do know where touch sensitivity comes from. Dragons.”
Her eyes widened. “That can’t be right. I’ve never met a dragon, and besides, touch sensitives were around when dragons weren’t. They’ve only been back in our realm for a year and a half.”
“Apparently it’s possible to have both a genetic heritage and a magical one. Magically speaking, touch sensitives have a dragon in their ancestry.”
“You can’t know that!”
“It’s what the black dragon told me.”
If seeing the wolves h
ad been a marvel, this purely staggered her. Her mouth opened and closed twice without her saying a thing. Finally she managed one word. “How?”
“I don’t know what the process is.” He doubted that it had been the same for this girl as it had for Lily, whose Gift came from her grandmother. Surely, if dragons often turned humans into dragons, then back into humans, there would be stories or myths about it.
“A dragon,” she breathed. “Me. A dragon is . . . my ancestor?”
“Magically, yes. Not genetically, and probably several generations back, since, as you say, the dragons were gone for a long time. Is Amanda a touch sensitive like you?”
She frowned. “Stop asking questions about her.”
“I ask because mindspeech is an extremely rare ability. It’s not a Gift, but a learned—”
“That’s wrong. Telepathy’s a Gift.”
“Mindspeech isn’t telepathy. They’re both aspects of mind magic, but they’re separate aspects. Telepathy is innate and mindspeech must be taught, just like regular speech. Its use requires training and intention. Telepaths—human telepaths, that is—have no control over their Gifts. They swim in a sea of thoughts, unable to shut them out, until they can’t distinguish between their own thoughts and those of others. This drives them insane.”
She nodded. “TIFS.”
His eyebrows lifted. Very few people had heard of that recently coined acronym, which stood for Telepathically Induced Fragmentation of Self. “That’s what the Omega Project calls it, yes.”
She blinked. “You know about the Omega Project?”
“They approached Lily a little over a year ago, wanting her to use touch to determine which institutionalized patients suffered from TIFS. She turned them down.”
Now her other shoe required attention. Or perhaps it was her sock; she pulled the shoe off. “I wish I had.”
“You . . . they asked you to do that?” Rule was appalled. The Omega Project had been formed to investigate the link between telepathy and insanity, with the eventual goal of finding a cure. They’d asked for Lily’s help with one specific study. The end result of TIFS was a persistent vegetative state, but the researchers had been interested in what they believed was the penultimate state—catatonia. Catatonia took several forms, all of which would be distressing for a young girl. For anyone, really, but especially someone so young.
“Mr. Smith asked me to work with them. I only did it once. I had a major meltdown.” The sock came off. She inspected her foot. “Why did Lily turn them down?”
“Several reasons, but the most important one was the link to the CIA. She . . . do you have a blister?”
She sighed. “Yes. I hate blisters. I’ll have to put a bandage on it. Did Lily know about the link to the NSA?”
“No.” And neither, he thought, had Ruben—who should have.
“They funneled their contribution through the CIA so it wouldn’t show up. Mr. Smith said it would make people uneasy if they thought a domestic intelligence agency was looking for telepaths. Which he was,” Danny added. “Stands to reason. If your job is spying, you’d really like to have a telepath on the payroll if you could find one who wasn’t crazy.”
“But they all are.”
She didn’t respond. Maybe that was because she was digging though her backpack, looking for a bandage. Or maybe she was digging through her backpack to keep from giving herself away. “Is Amanda a touch sensitive? Or is she a telepath?”
She froze. Then she gave him a dirty look.
“It’s important,” he repeated softly. “Dragons use mindspeech. The potential for that ability is tied to touch sensitivity, so you could be the only one Lily could . . .” He swallowed. “Danny, the person who tried to mindspeak you might be Lily. That’s why I need to know more about Amanda, so I can figure out if it was her, like you think. Or if it was Lily.” He wanted it to be Lily, halfway believed that already. Wanted to believe it too much to trust his judgment.
She froze, still hunched over her backpack, but didn’t speak.
“Danny, if it was her, that means she probably isn’t very far away. It would really help to know that.”
“Why did she come here?” the girl whispered. “Was it for me?”
“No, she didn’t know about you. She came because . . . well, the reasons are complicated, but they have to do with the murder victim found at that little park.”
“Murder victim?”
“Yes, she found the body. A man was killed with magic, though it looked like a sharp blade of some sort—”
She gave a shrill little cry. Her fingers starting playing her invisible instrument. Frantically.
“Would a real flute be better?” he asked. “Would it help you think?”
“I don’t have a real flute. It’s probably gone forever, like all Mama’s things and our photographs and Zipper’s leash and everything. I don’t know what Mr. Smith did with my stuff. He probably threw it all away and I don’t know what to do!”
Her eyes were wild with grief or panic or some combination. Mike started to reach for her. Rule signaled for him to be still. “Theo,” he said, speaking as softly as he would in the presence of a frightened young animal, “doesn’t Saul play the flute? Did he bring it with him?”
“I’ll see.” Theo stood and headed for the group of wolves lingering nearby.
They waited in silence. Danny stared at the ground. Her fingers resumed their motion. Stimming, she’d called it. He needed to find out what that meant. Rule poured the last of the coffee into his cup and sipped at the foul stuff, not looking at her. It was as much privacy as he could offer at the moment. The others imitated him, though Mike kept shooting him hard glances. He wanted to comfort Danny, but Rule’s instincts—or maybe his wolf—said that the girl couldn’t tolerate touch right now.
Finally Theo returned. Saul—returned to two legs and wearing the usual cutoffs—came with him, carrying a small case. He crouched in front of Danny and held it out.
“It’s a Yamaha,” she said reverently. “Is it really okay? I can play it?” At his nod, she opened the case and carefully took out the pieces, screwing them together. She held it near her mouth and closed her eyes. Then lowered it. “I haven’t played in so long. I won’t sound good. Could I . . . is there a way for me to be alone?”
Rule struggled with himself. He wanted answers now. Wanted to know if Lily had somehow reached out and touched this young woman’s mind. If she could do it again. If she was all right and could tell them where she was . . . he took a deep breath. Danny was tough as nails in some ways, yet fragile in others. If she had truly been a child of his clan, what would he do?
Probably, he thought grimly, he’d continue to browbeat her, as gently as possible. But knowing the attempt at mindspeech had come from Lily wouldn’t tell him where she was or what kind of shape she was in. It was of no immediate help . . . except to his raw emotions.
“José found a tent for you,” he said at last. “Complete with sleeping bag. It’s as much privacy as I can offer. Will that do?”
She nodded eagerly.
“Danny . . . if someone tries to talk in your head again, will you come tell me right away? If it’s Lily . . .”
She thought it over first. Then nodded.
Twenty minutes later Danny, her backpack, and Saul’s flute were all in the small tent José had cleared out for her. She’d wanted to retreat there immediately, but Rule insisted that her blistered foot be washed, the blister disinfected and bandaged. Then Mike had to show her where the latrine was, since her human nose didn’t provide that information, before escorting her to her temporary quarters.
Almost the moment the flap closed, a few uncertain notes floated out. Then, more strongly, a scale, followed by the opening bar to “Greensleeves” . . . high and pure and lovely, with none of the fumbled notes or hesitations Rule had expected. Everyone listened. Most of those on two legs smiled.
Rule did, too. Then he sighed and got down to business. Hal Brownbeck waited about
twenty feet away. A much younger man stood with him. “Theo, is the young man with Hal the one you recommended for my other nuntius?”
“Richard Swan. He’s young and untrained, but his memory’s good. I told him to ask Hal for a quick introduction to acting as nuntius.” The councillor lifted a hand, beckoning. The two men started for them. “A question, Rho, if I may.”
Rule nodded.
“What happens to the girl in twenty hours?”
“I will offer to extend my protection.”
“Is this wise? She’s charming in her vulnerability and lack of fear, but she’s also a liability. Hiding her from the authorities may be difficult and exposes us to possible arrest.”
Rule smiled. Theo was coming along well. When Rule first became Leidolf Rho, Theo had been exceedingly deferential on the surface and deeply hostile underneath. The hostility was no surprise, under the circumstances. The deference, however, had been excessive. The previous Rho had been a son of a bitch who tolerated no dissent, even from his councillors—whose job was to disagree at times.
Theo was still polite, but a good deal less hostile. He was learning to disagree. Moreover, this was exactly the right sort of question to put when they had an audience. It allowed Rule to reinforce his orders with reason. “Danny is the most important person in this camp right now. There’s more to her than the, ah, charming vulnerability you mention. At the age of sixteen, she penetrated the NSA’s computers by stealing the log-in information of a high-ranking official there. She used his access to create a ghost persona which gave her ongoing, undetectable access to those computers. She has identified our enemy and may offer the means of bringing him down. I suspect she’ll be able to help us hide her. She’s been in hiding from the NSA and Homeland Security for nearly a year now, so clearly she knows something about how to do it.”
