by Bill Hiatt
I didn’t want to see any more, but the same impulse that makes people want to stare at car wrecks drew my eyes toward him. This was a wreck, after all—the wreck of my sanity.
Khalid rose slowly into the air, then did an aerial somersault and giggled like a little kid. Not content with that, he disappeared and reappeared before coming in for a landing.
“I’m half djinn,” he said. “I can fly, move fast like Lucas, and become invisible. I’m also fireproof, but there’s no easy way to demonstrate that out here. Now, do you believe?”
The headache was creeping—no, galloping—back into every corner of my brain, and the wind had started roaring around us. Winn raised her arms as if she were trying to order the wind away.
There was some kind of bluish power flowing from her hands. I could see it.
The wind was stripping leaves from the trees. This wasn’t the first time Santa Brígida had experienced freaky weather, but there was no record of anything quite like this before.
The path had reappeared. Lucas and Nurse Rinaldi were trying to hustle me back toward the house, but I couldn’t make my legs move.
“Why…why are you telling me all this?” I shouted through the worsening storm.
“Because you’re like us!” Lucas yelled back. “Because whatever’s in you is awakening.”
Denial Isn’t Only in Egypt
I struggled feebly against Lucas and Nurse Rinaldi, but it was a relief to be out of the howling wind when we finally stepped back into the elevator. It took me a couple of minutes to realize that we were going back to the upper floors of Awen, floors I would be barred by the fingerprint reader from leaving.
My thoughts were flowing slowly, more like tar than water, and the tar hummed in tune with the throbbing of my headache.
What I had seen was too vivid to be a hallucination, but too incredible to be real.
I knew one thing for sure—there was more happening here than I was being told. Everyone except Carrie Winn seemed like caring and concerned people, but I couldn’t escape the feeling that something else was going on beneath their affable façades. Even Khalid might be more than the happy-go-lucky teenager he appeared to be.
As my headache worsened, I had a hard time figured out where I was going. I wanted to keep track in case I had a chance to escape, but I quickly became confused. I knew I was in Awen, but I was in a different part of the house, and I wasn’t sure how it connected to the areas I’d been in before.
I didn’t even bother to struggle by the time we entered a large room. In contrast to the rest of the house, with its elegant furnishings, the room was practically bare, except for a few folding chairs. The stark white walls should have made the room seem larger, but the effect was minimized by the subdued lighting. It was easier on my eyes—but vaguely ominous. Anyone—anything—could have been lurking in the shadows.
There were more than just chairs after all. There was a bed as well, and Dr. Florence was standing next to it, looking concerned.
“Put her down here,” she told Carla and Lucas, who laid me on the bed and then hovered nearby.
The doctor put her hand on my forehead as if checking for fever. Her touch felt odd, as if those fingers were reaching inside me.
“How could this have happened?” she asked. “She’s in much worse shape than I expected.”
“Things were under control this morning,” said Carla. “Her power is increasing much faster than we thought.”
Power? I was getting progressively weaker. The headache would soon be completely debilitating.
“Don’t worry,” said Winn. “The others have already arrived. They’re on their way up.”
Others? All I needed was more people I couldn’t trust.
“Amy, I’m going to do what I can to ease your pain.”
“No drugs,” I mumbled, not that it would matter. They seemed to be able to affect my mind without administering any kind of drug.
“No drugs, I promise,” said Dr. Florence. She put her hand on my forehead again, and my headache became less like a spike being pounded into my head, more like a dull ache. I was able to sit up.
“Easy,” cautioned the doctor. “I’ve deadened the pain, but I can’t guarantee what will happen if you exert yourself.”
I was more aware of my surroundings now. As I expected, Winn, Carla, Lucas, and Khalid were all still there, hovering anxiously around the bed.
What I wasn’t expecting was to see was about a dozen other people. This was the whole group I’d researched, plus one I couldn’t place.
I had expected to meet some of these people over time, but having all of them appear at once was intimidating despite the concerned way they looked at me.
The conspirators were all gathered to figure out what to do with the infiltrator in their midst. Why else would they all have come here so quickly?
Now that I was in less pain and more aware of details, I noticed the guys were all wearing scabbards from which sword hilts conspicuously protruded. I didn’t know how I had missed this before, but Khalid had a bow on his back and a small dagger on his belt. One of the women had a silvery bow. One of the other women had a dagger at her waist. It wasn’t quite the same as if they were holding guns on me—but it was pretty damn close.
“The weapons are defensive,” said one of them as if he could read my mind. “We mean you no harm.”
The newcomer was medium height, with short brown hair, brown eyes, and a slender but well-muscled physique. He was older than in the pictures I’d seen, but there was no mistaking Taliesin Weaver.
“She can see our swords?” asked another one. His curly black hair, dark eyes, light skin, and slender build suggested he was Stan Schoenbaum.
“She’s coming into her magic—more rapidly than is healthy for her,” Weaver replied. “Viviane, Carla, Vanora, we need to confer right now about how to help her. Lucas, do what you can to make our guest comfortable for a few minutes, would you?” Weaver shot me another look as if he could see right into my soul. Then he walked to the far side of the room. Florence, Carla, and Winn followed him without a word.
I’d been thinking Winn was the leader of this group, but the way the others reacted suggested it was Weaver. Even Winn seemed to defer to his suggestion without comment.
“Can I get you anything?” asked Lucas.
“I’m OK, but all those people…it’s a little overwhelming. Could they back up a bit?”
Lucas nodded and stepped over to talk to them. Khalid started to get up, but I put out a hand to stop him.
“Khalid, would you mind keeping me company?”
“Not at all,” he said, grinning from ear to ear.
Since I had younger brothers, I knew someone Khalid’s age would be easier to manage than a guy my age. Perhaps I could get some useful information out of him.
First things first, though. I got him talking about his high school and listened with one ear while I looked discreetly at the group Lucas had corralled on the other side of the room.
Stan was stealing glances at me, so I tried to avoid his eyes. The others were talking in small groups. When they weren’t focusing all their attention on me, they seemed less intimidating, even a little awkward. Could it be that having me there was uncomfortable for some of them? That didn’t make sense, but that was the vibe I was getting from them.
They were too far away to hear what they were saying, but not too far for me to identify them and assess how much of a threat they posed. Given the number of security guards in the building, these guys should have been the least of my worries. However, I couldn’t help wondering about the parts they played in whatever scheme I’d become entangled in.
The most conspicuous one was Shahriyar Sassani, Khalid’s brother by adoption. His hair and eyes were as dark as mine, but his skin was much lighter. He wasn’t quite a bodybuilder, but his muscles had been hardened from years of football practice and martial arts training. About my age, he carried himself as if he had been around a lot longer. I
had taken self-defense classes, but even if he’d been unarmed, there was no way I could beat him in a fight. From the look of him, Wonder Woman would have had a tough time getting past him.
Shahriyar kept looking over at Khalid as if he thought I were some kind of a threat to him. The protective big brother vibes were hitting me from all the way across the room.
The one standing next to Shar and chatting with him was at least a head taller than anyone else in the group. That, his blond hair, his smirk, and his wrestler’s physique made it easy to tell he was Gordy Hayes. I didn’t have as much information about him, but he wouldn’t be easy to beat, either.
Another one looked like the All-American boy from Central Casting—blonde, bronzed, football build. That had to be Dan Stevens. Next to him stood his distant cousin and adopted brother, Jimmie Stevens, taller but a couple years younger. Like Khalid, Jimmie was another one of the mystery orphans whose background seemed fishy to me.
Jimmie had his arms around a woman whose strawberry blonde hair and vibrant green eyes made me certain she was Eva O’Reilly. Striking even from a distance, she’d been with Tal, then Dan, then Jimmie during her teenage years. The Jimmie relationship had stuck, but I knew enough about teenage guys to wonder how that sequence had worked out. The unwritten bro code normally prohibited good friends from forming relationships with each other’s exes, and a woman jumping from an older brother to a younger one? Major social breach. Yet Eva had leaped from one to the other like the gymnast she’d been in high school without ruffling any feathers—that I knew of, anyway. That just didn’t make sense.
On the other side of Jimmie and Eva stood two more mystery men. The one who looked like Weaver at about seventeen had to be Michael, yet another distant cousin, in this case, adopted by the Weavers. He was making an elaborate business of not looking in Eva’s direction. Yet a fourth guy interested in her? Maybe.
The other was an almost perfect replica of Taliesin Weaver now, except that he had much darker hair, blue eyes, and a sullen expression. He had to be Magnus, and he too was allegedly a distant cousin who had popped up out of nowhere and been adopted into the Weaver family.
Khalid, Jimmie, Michael, Magnus—all cousins no one had ever heard of, all adopted by families in Santa Brígida using the same obscure adoption agency based in Wales, of all places. Supposedly, all four of them had come from there, though from what I could determine, none of them had even a trace of a Welsh accent.
If I didn’t know better, I’d wonder if Winn was conducting illegal cloning experiments. Some kind of baby trafficking would have been more likely, except that all four of them appeared in town as tweens or teens, not as babies.
Less mysterious was the short, dark-haired Hispanic with a swimmer’s build—Carlos Reyes. The guy he was talking to looked more uneasy than anybody else in the room. Despite having muscles like Shar’s even from a distance, he seemed less confident. He had muscles like Shar’s but less handsome features. He had to be Alexandros Stratos, one of Santa Brígida’s numerous unexplained nervous breakdowns. He’d been institutionalized for a few months—or so the official story went. I couldn’t find any evidence of such a stay in any local mental facility. It was as if Alexandros had vanished from the face of the Earth for a while.
The one person I couldn’t identify was a woman maybe a little younger than I was. Her pale skin looked as if the sun had never touched it. Her long, black hair made her skin look even paler, as did an unflattering black outfit that reminded me a little of a ninja costume.
When I saw Lucas talking to her, I had a sensation I hadn’t expected—a little stab of jealousy. I had to remind myself that Lucas was part of this…whatever it was.
Aside from the unidentified girl, Eva, Florence, Rinaldi, and Khalid, I wasn’t sure I could take any of these guys, let alone all of them together. If there was a way out of this, I didn't see what it was. Of course, even if I could somehow get past all of them, I’d be in an unfamiliar place surrounded by security. What had I gotten myself into?
“Are you even listening to me?” asked Khalid. It was the first time I’d heard him sound irritated.
“Oh, I’m sorry. I’m afraid I’m a little out of it.”
“I guess you’re entitled. Finding out you have magic is hard. I’m getting the impression yours is developing really fast. We wouldn’t be doing this all-hands-on-deck thing if there wasn’t something wrong.”
“I’m surprised everyone could get here so fast.” The people in this room theoretically had college classes or jobs scattered over a wide area—too wide for them to have all flown back since I’d arrived in town.
Khalid shrugged. “Time has never been the biggest problem when we’ve traveled. It was getting a decent way to do bilocation down that was the tough part. It took years, but we finally managed it.”
Bilocation? I would like to have followed up on that, but Weaver and the others returned. They did not look happy.
“I want to make sure you understand what’s happening,” Weaver said to me. “You have a big choice to make, and you need to choose wisely.”
Was he working up to something like, “Join our cult or die?” At this point, nothing would have surprised me.
“Just to be clear, we aren’t a cult, and none of us intend any harm to you.”
My jaw must have hit the floor, because he added, “Yes, I can read your mind. I normally won’t read someone without permission unless that person posed a clear threat, but we don’t have much time. You don’t have much time.”
“Why not?” I asked. “What’s so urgent?”
“Typically, a person whose latent magical ability awakens goes through a gradual process—months, sometimes even years. Typically, past life personas don’t emerge at all. It takes really unusual circumstances for that to happen.
“Your case is exceptional in both ways. Your magic is awakening so fast that your body is having a hard time adjusting. On top of that, someone you were in a past life is emerging. We can’t tell who it is, but there’s a good chance whoever it is will overpower your present-life persona. You will become that person.”
“He’s not joking,” said Stan. “When King David emerged inside me, he took over without even meaning to.”
King David? Either they were trying to gaslight me, or I wasn’t the crazy one—they were.
“At least David was benign,” said Carla. “When the sorceress Alcina emerged in me, she did an incredible amount of damage before Tal managed to suppress her and put me back in charge.”
Weaver gave me another soul-piercing stare. “You don’t believe a word we’re saying.”
“After all she’s seen in the last few hours?” asked Winn. “How is that possible?”
The headache came back so suddenly and unexpectedly that I fell backward onto the bed. Carla and Florence were both at my side immediately.
“I’m having a hard time even blocking the pain anymore,” said Dr. Florence. “Her body simply can’t take much more of this.”
“If she won’t decide what she wants, we’ll have to make that decision for her,” said Winn.
“No one is deciding anything for me!” I was almost screaming, but I didn’t care. “You’re doing something to me. You’re causing this.”
Weaver looked away from me as if I no longer mattered. “She’s stubborn, and she’s convinced we’re drugging her or something. In that frame of mind, she’ll never be able to handle magic. She could easily harm herself or somebody else.”
I tried to protest again, but the pain had escalated so much that I couldn’t form words.
“Carla, Viviane, do what you can to ease her pain. Khalid, try to keep her calm. Everyone else, we’re going to try to reverse or at least halt what’s happening to her.”
The pain subsided enough for me to try to sit up, but Rinaldi and Florence both gently restrained me. Khalid held my hand.
“If anyone can help you, Tal can,” he said.
Help me how? I had visions of experimen
tal drugs, of electric shock, of brain surgery.
“We’re not going to do anything to you,” yelled Weaver. “Just a little magic.”
“Up for a dance trance?” he asked Lucas. “We need all the power we can get.”
“I’ll do all I can.”
“Stop holding her down,” said Khalid. “Let her see what’s happening, so she’ll see there’s nothing to be afraid of.”
Carla and Florence let go of me, but they hovered as if I was a dangerous lunatic who might attack them at any moment. I hoped I wasn’t a lunatic, and there wasn’t much chance I’d attack. My head didn’t feel as if it would explode right away, but I did feel much weaker than I should. I’d have been lucky to get off the bed under my own power.
The doctor and nurse weren’t looking too good, either. The strain showed in their faces as if they had headaches as bad as I’d been having.
Weaver and most of the others had formed a circle in the center of the room. He had a golden lyre in his hand.
“That’s the Lyre of Orpheus,” said Khalid reverently. “We got it on a quest. It has powerful magic, especially in the hands of a bard like Tal or Magnus. When one of them breaks that out, you know everything is going to be OK.”
I knew no such thing, but Khalid did a good job of making it sound as if he believed it. Despite myself, I liked this kid. I wished he would turn out to be innocent.
Was I hallucinating again? Had I ever stopped? I could swear the lyre glowed in Weaver’s hands, and the light in the room was too low for there to be any natural way to explain that glow.
Weaver strummed the lyre. I’d never heard music that compelling. He began to sing. His voice wasn’t the equal of the lyre’s notes, but he had the best voice I’d ever heard. I knew he’d had a band in high school and become a music major in college, but I had no idea he was this gifted. That sound lifted me out of my weakened body and made me feel everything was going to be all right.
Magnus, whose voice sounded exactly like Taliesin’s, harmonized with him, and my mood got even better. I knew this had to be some kind of false euphoria, but I didn’t care.