by Scott Rhine
Thinking back on everyone I’d met lately, I said, “The only person who didn’t confess to me was Captain Harlow Hutchinson.”
The matriarch laughed. “From what I understand of your gift, the person has to regret the sin or secret. Telling you brings an absolution from the guilt eating at them. The Captain, on the other hand, is the sort of person who has no regrets or reservations. I suspect true believers to a cause are immune to you, as are career criminals with no conscience remaining.”
So I can only catch bad guys who want to be caught. Not very useful.
While her mother gazed out the window and tried not to give me any impressions to work with, Lilith changed the subject. “Speaking of your cousins, did you hear Blaise, has dropped out of school?”
Sagging my shoulders, I said, “I figured out she couldn’t hear spirits and blurted it out in front of you. She hates me now.”
“You’re the only one who could tolerate her aura,” said Lilith.
“What do you mean?”
“You haven’t seen that storm cloud that follows her everywhere?”
“I’m not visual when it comes to spiritual senses.”
“Well, she weirds everyone out. Sitting next to her is like having ants crawl on you at a picnic.”
Facts aligned in my brain. “Now that you mention it, I only felt claustrophobic in the basement when she was around.”
Unable to resist listening in, Mrs. Cotton raised an eyebrow. It felt like judgment against Blaise.
“I heard she was born without a soul,” Lilith whispered.
“Ridiculous. In any case, it’s not her fault,” I said, defending my cousin.
“No,” Mrs. Cotton admitted. “It’s her mother’s.”
“Okay, you can’t just leave that hanging,” I said.
“Her condition is an affront to nature. Our healers speculate that the effect occurs because Blaise was conceived after her father died, by unnatural means.”
“Was his death or the method unnatural?”
“Both. He was having an affair with an Otherwordly creature, and the captain killed them both in the act.”
“Ouch. That’s legal?”
“Praiseworthy. He could’ve been leaking Council secrets to those beyond.”
The thought such a casual murder left me cold. Are the lives of nonwitches so cheap to them? I played with the window buttons. “You really think that’s what happened?”
“No. I think he was bored because she was never around, but he did let Corruption into their home.”
From her attitude, Zak might have faced a death sentence for his experiment if he hadn’t been forced by the evil scientist holding a gun on Dina and me, so I shifted topics. “How unnatural could Blaise have been?” How Puritanical were these witches? “Artificial insemination from frozen stuff? Because that’s pretty common now.”
Mrs. Cotton mused for a moment. “The church teaches than if the man is dead before the sample is taken, the child can’t be whole.”
I grimaced. “That’s just wrong. You let her?” Remembering something my father had explained about witch law at Aunt Audra’s mansion, I said, “Hutchinson property follows the eldest woman in the family with a female heir. Aunt Harlow needed a daughter, or she’d be disinherited.”
“She’s one of our best agents. I’ve explained the balancing act to you. I procured a lifetime service contract in exchange for her conceiving the child.” Realizing what she just said, Mrs. Cotton hit the intercom buzzer. “James, drop me off at the boutique on the corner. Take the girls home without me.”
Once her mother and bodyguard were clear of the vehicle, Lilith burst out laughing. “That was awesome. Your confession talent must be hilarious.”
“No. Usually, it’s painful for them and me. I hope it’s not like this long-term, or everyone is going to avoid me like the plague. I don’t take you mother’s slip lightly because she didn’t want you to hear the kind of deals she makes. She’s afraid you’ll be disappointed in her.”
“Whatever. What would you like for dinner tonight? I can have the chef prepare anything.”
“What’s your favorite dish? Other than kale?”
We decided on a dance video game, fried cherry pies, and authentic burritos—none of which would have been allowed without a guest requesting them. We learned that saints in training have no rhythm. Lilith laughed a lot. I got the impression that she didn’t have much chance to do that with her family. I promised to have her over some time after our house calmed down. Dad would put her in stitches with his corny jokes.
The only awkward moment was when I the alarm went off on my new watch and I turned her big-screen TV off.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“I only get an hour a night.”
“Of what?”
“Electronic entertainment.”
“Are you pulling my leg? What else do you do at your house?”
I shrugged. “We read in the living room and sometimes play board games. My mom used to do string art. I liked jigsaw puzzles more.”
“Is your father Amish or something?”
“No, kkh. He takes photographs of people for a living. He’d be like the devil to Amish people.” I pantomimed a camera clicking. “Ahh, my soul!” I camped it up to make her giggle again.
We had fun hanging out, but I had to beg off at eight. “I have a ton to read, and my dad should be arriving home soon. I want to find out how my brother’s doing.”
She put a hand on mine. “I’m really sorry about your Book. Maybe you could write your own.”
“Witches can do that?”
“Definitely. There’s magic involved later to transform a journal into something living, but if you handwrite everything, you can pass it down to your daughters someday. Here, I got four of them from relatives on my eighteenth birthday.” She grabbed a stack off her window seat. “Take your pick.”
I hadn’t considered my future children or becoming a servant of the Book myself. As I chose a brown leather journal, a weird thought occurred to me. I wonder if Anne Hutchinson ever grows tired of hopping and fetching for her lazy descendants.
24. Seeing is Believing
Tuesday morning, Dad greeted me with his usual cup of coffee in hand. “Hey, poppet. I came back so late last night that I didn’t want to wake you. On the bright side, the emergency team returned my baseball bat, cleaned and disinfected.”
“What are you avoiding?” I asked on our way out to the car, dragging a roller suitcase behind me. My aunt had added a few essential tomes from her collection, which covered sacred geometries.
“How can you tell?”
I cocked my head at him. “Please. I’m better at this particular game than Mom ever was, and you couldn’t fool her either.”
He blew out as he pushed the remote-open button on his key. “The good news is that Dina went home yesterday. Unfortunately, Mr. Hamadi has banned her from speaking to you.”
“That’s not fair. Zaki opened a hell mouth, and she gets to be all snuggly-wuggly with him.” I heaved my suitcase into the backseat and flounced into the front.
“We couldn’t tell Dina’s parents that part. Her visit last evening actually seemed to improve his mood, though. It may have just been that the evaluation period is over and strangers have stopped poking him.”
“Eh. My money is on Dina. They’ve been talking every Friday night since Mom’s funeral. She helped him through a pretty deep depression.”
He cocked his head. “I’m his father. Why didn’t I know all this?”
“Zak’s good at keeping secrets.”
When I clipped my seatbelt, Dad finally noticed my new watch. “What’s that?”
“Golden handcuffs. The Council monitors me around the clock so I don’t exercise my scary abilities on people.”
“Scary?”
I rolled my eyes. “People feel compelled to confess to crimes around me. Want to hear what Mad Cow did?”
“Don’t be disrespectful to
your teachers. She’s doing you a huge favor.”
“You’re right. Sorry.” I fiddled with the settings until I found a figure of Mickey Mouse, whose gloved hands pointed to the minute and hour. The shimmering wall of mist option that came up when I randomized the screen brought back too many bad memories. “You were telling me about Zak’s punishment?”
He focused on the road for a while. “I lobbied for him to come home to the cottage with us, but I’m not trustworthy enough.”
“Because you have testosterone.”
“Yep. They did have a point, though. We won’t be home during school hours. The last time we accidentally left him alone with a pencil, he filled a wall with diagrams.”
I shrugged. “Who cares? Quantum teleportation theory isn’t a big deal. He can’t find the energy to power it, and he can’t make a gate out of paperclips and aspirin.”
“Until we can find someone to stay with him full-time or he snaps out of this phase, Zaki will need to stay where he is.”
We fell silent for five minutes, neither of us able to find a way out of this corner for our family. I spoke first. “Since you’re going in early, I’m guessing Ms. Bradstreet delivered on the boys’ school job.”
“Yeah. Between that and selling some of my portfolio, we might be able to hire a day nurse.”
This is depressing. “What do you know about cousin Blaise’s father?”
“I don’t like to gossip,” he replied.
“Please. I need context. All I’ve heard are icky things about him.”
“Harlow met the man when she was touring with a martial-arts team.”
I snorted. “She was a badass even then.”
“You don’t want to make her mad. We ate dinner with your mother’s old team once. A man squeezing through the crowd put a hand on Harlow’s behind. I was about to tell him to step off, but he was already facedown with his arm twisted up to his neck.”
“Nice. How did any guy get through that armor?”
“Chien was a poet. They met in China when her martial-arts team was attending an exhibition. Harlow didn’t scare him.”
Maybe she should have. “Chinese, huh. What magical family was he from?”
“His mother was a seer who interpreted dreams. Witches in the orient work differently. People respect them, ask their advice, and go to them for herbal cures.”
Boston Colony Sensitives weren’t the only game around. Interesting.
After another five minutes of listening to the sound of our tires on the road, I lost patience. “So what are you working on in school?” I asked in a deep voice, pretending to be him. Then, I answered in my normal voice. “Thanks for asking about my day. I’ve been learning that the Jewish Tree of Life contains all Platonic solids collapsed. It’s like a multidimensional protective pattern that can be used for meditation.”
He nodded. “Like a mandala. Your mother loved mandalas.”
His body language was really saying how much he missed her. No wonder he and Vincenzo got along so well. They had a lot in common.
While he was distracted, I tried an end run. “So Colony has a volleyball team. It might help me fit in better if—”
“Not a chance.”
“Not even as a manager?”
“I know how hard you’ve worked, but your secret has to be protected. Right now, you’re a walking ‘shock-and-awe attack’ waiting to happen. Games with other schools are too dangerous.”
Maybe I could channel my serving skills into punches during martial arts training. It wouldn’t be the same, though. “I need some outlet besides my studies, if for no other reason than fluffing up my college applications.” Thank you, Salma, for that idea.
He frowned. “I’ll look at the list of approved activities and charities and discuss this problem with some of my colleagues.” I could tell he meant Mad Cow. Maybe I could stack the deck in my favor during my tutorial period before his classes at Colony. This talent could come in handy after all.
****
Dad dropped me off at the front door and kept going around the driveway loop to reach the boys’ school parking lot. Walking backwards, I wrestled my books up the wide staircase. I bumped into my cousin Blaise who was blinded by the tall box she struggled to carry out the door. The box slid from her grasp, spilling the contents from her locker and basement desk all over.
“Sorry,” I said, reflexively picking up a rolling pencil. Then I realized she was quitting our school.
“Don’t touch me!” she said, crouching to grab her escaping belongings.
I held up my sheathed hands. “Look, gloves. No danger. You’re not leaving for good, are you?”
“I’m tired of being the outcast.”
“Well, that’s because you’re giraffe attending a school meant for fish. I know what it’s like because I’m an owl.”
Blaise squinted in confusion, but she no longer looked so angry. “What?”
“Please. My dad and the matriarch each gave me key parts to your puzzle that your instructors haves been ignoring.”
“I don’t have time for this.” She continued to shovel school supplies into her box. “Mother will be coming out with my gym bag soon.”
I put my hand over her box. “Answer one question, and I’ll go away and let you wallow in as much self-pity as you like. What do you dream of in the basement when they’re trying to teach you to listen?”
“Sometimes I talk to animals.”
“Yes! I knew it! You can’t listen because you came from a witch family of Chinese seers and dream-lore experts. All this time, your talents have been coming through, just not the ones that Colony girls have. You take after your father’s side.”
For the first time, I saw Blaise smile like the morning sun. “Mother never told me.”
I unzipped my suitcase and pulled out the fancy journal. “Record your dreams for a week, and then tell me I’m wrong.”
“You bought this for me?”
“It’s a present from Lilith. Don’t leave. We Rejects have to stick together.”
She clutched the gift to her chest. “But the other girls hate me.”
I waived the comment away. “It’s just your storm-cloud aura. Maybe when you become what you were meant to be, the imbalance will be corrected. In China, people would be lining up for your advice. You should try burning incense, I-Ching, or anything else people in your tradition do. What do I know? We’ll work it out.”
That’s when Harlow burst open the rightmost door. She wore her gray uniform jumpsuit, but her hair was down rather than bunched under a hat. “What’s going on here?”
Excited, Blaise said, “Mommy. I’m a giraffe! It finally makes sense.”
“What?”
“Roll with it,” I said. “Your daughter follows the Chinese seer tradition, not the Boston Sensitives. The Boston ancestors disapproved of how she was born, so they won’t talk to her. But in Chinese tradition, it makes her closer to the spirit world.”
Harlow noticed her daughter’s rare smile. “I’ll be damned. I was wrong to hide Chien’s heritage from her.”
“Can I stay, Mom? Please.”
The captain swallowed hard and turned to regard me. “My job would be so much easier if I could hate you. Then you go and do something like this.” She hugged Blaise. “We may need to hire an outside tutor, but we can try one more time.”
“Yay!”
I cleared my throat. “At least you don’t have to worry about quitting your job now, Aunt Harlow. She can’t use a Book for her Art.”
“You’re right,” said the captain, relaxing against the doorway. “That means I owe you.”
Blaise insisted I sign the gift journal.
I wrote in my best script. “To my closest cousin: Another seer, Daniel, says, ‘God makes deep and hidden things known.’ May your dreams do that for you. I hope you can learn to follow God in joy as naturally as a sunflower follows the sun.”
She spent Chemistry class drawing an incredibly accurate sunflower below my
quote with colored pencils.
****
When Dad picked me up after school, he was practically glowing with happiness. “Mr. Hamadi offered to give Zaki a job in his shop until we find a more permanent solution. He’ll sleep downstairs at their house, so someone will be nearby at all times. I don’t know what changed their minds, but the Council agreed to the arrangement on a trial basis.”
Dad would be driving till midnight to move Zak into his halfway house. He’d only have time for four hours of sleep before returning to work tomorrow, but he’d do it gladly. “You can ride in with the Benedettos.”
“Luca’s back?”
“No exertion or spells, but she can come home.”
The Rejects ride again.
That’s when I figured out another law of saint karma. Help others and help comes to you. Give without expectation to those in need, and you would receive returns in unexpected ways. Let’s see how far I can ride this wave. “What about extra-curricular activities?”
“Ask when you have better control of your abilities. Over lunch, Emma said you’re talented but have a long way to go.”
“Emma?”
“Miss Creutzfeldt. She’s been very helpful. I have a hard enough time raising a teenage girl alone. Your being a Sensitive makes it almost impossible for me.”
“So I’m a prisoner in my aunt’s home? Why not just move me into the attic?”
He sighed as he wiped his face. “I’m doing meal deliveries to shut-ins this weekend. Helping others has always put my problems in perspective before. You’re welcome to ride along. It’ll give you volunteer work for the applications.”
“Sure. Whatever.” Emma? At this rate, he’s going to be calling her late at night for advice and then taking her little gifts as thanks. “Coach Williams said a punching bag might help me catch up to the other girls who are older and bigger than me.”
“Actually, Luca has one of those hanging in the spare stall of the garage. You can ask her to use it tomorrow.”
Alone in the cottage, I finished all my homework and then practiced hand gestures until bedtime. The rhythm and flow were comforting.