The Delphi Revolution (The Delphi Trilogy Book 3)

by Rysa Walker

  It will not matter because these children are not like their children. It will not matter to them that the adepts never asked for the powers they have or that the vast majority of these kids worked hard to avoid trouble. They struggled to keep their light hidden, because they understood the consequences of being different. Most of them were even willing to live belowground, like rabbits in their warren, to avoid those consequences.

  And then Senator Cregg came along and decided a little fear might help him win the presidency—or at the very least be a nice fat windfall for his bank account. Time to pull these kids out of the shadows. Time to put them on display and reap the full payoff for Penelope’s theft of the Delphi formula all those years ago.

  If Colonel Smith is right, if the current administration simply wants the Delphi problem managed and doesn’t care how, then there will be no better time for them to manage that problem than the present. Each day brings us closer to vacation season, and armed troops rolling down the beach scares away the tourists.

  I check my messages again to see if there is anything from Deo or Aaron, but Daniel’s text telling me they were on the way to the airfield is the last thing on my list. Should I try calling them or wait? I’m about to ask Daniel when I feel something brush lightly across my forehead, like a spiderweb or a strand of hair. My hand goes up automatically to check, even though I’m certain nothing is there. It’s Snoop—and if he’s peeking into my head right now, he knows I’m using the nickname he hates. So I lamely add an apology. And then I think that he could be colluding with Magda. Or even Dacia . . . and add another apology, because I don’t really believe that. Deo and Taylor both seem to think Snoop—Jeffrey, his name is Jeffrey—is a good guy. I trust their instincts.

  A moment later, Daniel’s phone buzzes. He stares at it, confused, and hands me the phone. “Do you know what this means?”

  No big deal. Getting used to Snoop.

  “Yes. I was looking at my messages just now, and your number was the last thing I saw. Snoop must have snagged that thought.” The phone buzzes again.

  Do NOT come to Sandalford. 202 Crane Rd. Code is 15*234439. Leave lights OFF.

  Keep to back road. Be careful. Bears on patrol.

  Another message from Snoop comes in as I’m texting back to ask if he’s heard from Deo.

  And that formula thing you were thinking about. His mother regretted stealing it. She wanted the Senator to destroy it after she saw what it did to Graham. That’s why the Senator pushed her out that window. I picked that little gem out of the Senator’s head just before they burned down The Warren last October. I hate Graham Cregg as much as anybody, but he didn’t kill her.

  Thump.

  Still no response to my question about Deo. I scan back through Snoop’s final text again. It explains a lot, and I find myself fighting a tiny bit of sympathy for Cregg. It would be awful to have a parent who committed suicide, but how much worse to think that you had something to do with it? And then to learn that your father—the person who had been fanning the flames of guilt all those years—was actually the responsible party? No wonder Graham turned on his father when he learned the truth.

  We touch down next to the fire station. Our heads have barely cleared the rotors when the pilot takes off again. Apparently, he was told to dump his human cargo and get back to Bragg. Sophie holds one hand up to shield Lily’s face from dust and sand. The station, mostly staffed by volunteers, is either empty right now or we’re not enough of a curiosity to generate interest, because no one steps outside during our brief landing and takeoff.

  It’s a little over a mile to the address on Crane Road. We stay two blocks back from the shore, where there’s tree cover we can duck under if we hear or see a vehicle. Sophie and Lily would both be much happier about the trek if we were able to walk along the beach. They seem to have warmed up a bit to Daniel, however. When I look back at one point, Lily has a bird’s-eye view from her perch on his shoulders, and Sophie seems happy to have a break from carrying twenty-five pounds of wriggle.

  The warning about bear patrols has me jumping at the slightest sound, however. I wish Aaron were here, not only for the usual reasons, but also as an early warning system. I feel exposed.

  “We’re okay,” my dad says.

  “Is that based on something you know or simply to keep me from worrying?”

  He smiles. “A little from column A and a little from column B. My seer seems to think the worst thing that will happen between here and that address is we pick up some sandspurs on our jeans. You want to explain why she thinks of herself as a Fiver and not a seer?”

  I spend the next few minutes explaining The Warren and its slang, with Daniel and Sophie chiming in.

  “Sandalford was Aaron’s contribution,” I say. “An in-joke. The name is a pun on a warren in Watership Down that isn’t quite the happy place it seems to be on the surface. Magda seems to love the name, so she must not have read the book.”

  “Or,” Daniel says, “maybe Magda did read the book and knew exactly what Aaron was implying.”

  That hadn’t occurred to me. But he may be right.

  The house on Crane Road sits one row back from the ocean. It’s fairly new construction and considerably smaller than the mansions along the beach. A Carova Realty sign is nailed to one of the beams on the porch. That’s the company Miranda Hawkins works for on occasion as a house cleaner. Either Miranda gave them the code voluntarily, or Maria plucked it out of her head last time she was at Sandalford.

  We brush the sand from our feet and enter the house. The blinds are closed, so it’s dark. I make out a sofa and a large table—a pool table, maybe. When we close the door, a scuffling noise comes from up ahead. Daniel hands Lily back to her mother and draws Miller’s gun, pointing it toward the sound as we move forward. And then, from the other direction, I hear footsteps hurrying down the stairway. Not thundering down, though. Someone relatively small. Female.

  Daniel pivots around, pointing the gun at Kelsey.

  She gasps. “Dear God! Put that thing away!”

  I rush forward and wrap her in a hug. “We’ve been trying to reach you. I thought you were in the lockdown at Sandalford. Why didn’t Snoop tell us you’d be here?”

  “I was at Sandalford until a few hours ago. I’m not entirely sure he knows I’m here. Maria is running the operation in cells, telling people only what they need to know. That will go double now that Dacia is there, although secrets never last long at Sandalford.”

  “Is Deo—”

  “No. He’s still there. I’ll explain later. We have an emergency. Is this Sophie?”

  Sophie nods, looking confused.

  “Good. We need you to take over.”

  “Take over what?” Daniel asks.

  “Caleb.” I say the name at the same instant that Kelsey does. The same instant that Ashley thinks the name. “Maggie and Caleb are here, too,” I add.

  Daniel intercepts Lily and puts her back on his shoulders. She happily grabs a handful of his hair while he laces his fingers together to form a baby backrest behind his head.

  “You should probably stay down here with them,” I tell my dad, nodding at Daniel and the now-laughing Lily.

  “As should you, Anna,” Kelsey says. “He’s medicated, but—”

  “No. I have to see him. I’m not sure if it will make things better or worse, but Ashley is in here.” I tap the side of my head.

  “Oh. We thought your father . . .” Kelsey glances over at my dad and gives him a nod. I feel like I should make introductions, but then she turns and heads back up the stairs. Sophie and I follow.

  “He’s had as much sedative as I can safely allow. It should have kicked in by now, but it hasn’t. Dr. Batra gave me several vials of morphine, too, but Caleb’s so small . . . I wanted to hold off until there was no other option. If he doesn’t calm down, though, he’s going to hurt himself. Maybe others, too. He blew out that entire wall of windows in the great room at Sandalford this afternoon.”
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  She turns down the hallway toward a bedroom on the second floor. “This suite has the largest tub. Taylor mentioned there was an isolation tank back at The Warren. I have the lights dimmed, the water warm, and soft music playing, but . . .”

  Kelsey’s comments raise about a half dozen questions for me, chief among them how Caleb wound up at Sandalford and now here. But I push these aside and focus inward, because I need Ashley’s advice on what to say to Caleb.

  If he blew out of a wall of windows, he already knows, Anna. Dacia had me put him on an IV sedative before . . . so he wouldn’t see what she did to me. But you can’t keep secrets from Caleb. He doesn’t read people automatically like Maria. His ability is more like Dacia’s, I guess. If Caleb thinks you aren’t telling him something, he’ll go hunting around in your head until he finds it. As soon as I knew Maria wanted to pull him in to fight, Caleb knew, too.

  And he was frightened.

  No. He was excited. Ready to fight. As I said, he likes using his ability. And he knows how much I hate the Creggs and Dacia. But we can’t allow him to follow that instinct. He’s still just a little boy, and . . .

  Will he know that you’re . . .

  That I’m in here? Probably. Depends on how much Maggie and Sophie are blocking him.

  If he doesn’t know, should I tell him? Will that make things better or worse?

  I don’t know. But Caleb feels very alone right now. Daniel Quinn is paying attention to the wrong child.

  I don’t think that’s entirely fair to Daniel. Sophie is nervous enough leaving Lily in the same room with my father, given what she’s seen him do. There’s no way she would have handed her child over to him. And if Caleb had read Ashley’s thoughts, he would have picked up a whole lot of ambivalence about Daniel.

  But Kelsey is standing with the bathroom door open. There is a hurt, angry, and extremely powerful child waiting, so I don’t have time for any more internal dialogue.

  The first thing I notice when I step inside is the wall of water rising straight up from the edge of the large garden tub in one corner of the room. It doesn’t quite touch the ceiling but hangs in midair, a bit like a shower curtain, just translucent enough for me to see a tiny huddled figure at one end.

  Maggie is propped against the outside of the tub, near where Caleb sits. Even in the dim light, it’s obvious she’s not well. A small mountain of empty granola-bar wrappers is next to her feet, but she looks like she’s lost weight since yesterday. Her cheeks are almost sunken.

  “Get her out of here,” Sophie says to Kelsey. “Downstairs or outside. And if you can, find some more food . . . for both of us.”

  Kelsey’s already on it.

  The curtain of water ripples, thickens, as we move closer, surrounding Caleb like a cocoon. He’s watching me, although I sense this more than see it.

  ANNA. GO. AWAY.

  The words are clearly a command, accompanied by a gentle push that slides my feet across the marble tile toward the door. He’s pushing Sophie toward the door as well. He’s straining to do it. I can tell because the water curtain drops about a foot. But Sophie is straining, too, her jaw clenched tight as she braces herself against the wall.

  Caleb’s tone reminds me of Peyton Hawkins last fall, when I first told her about Kelsey. As soon as she heard the word doctor, Peyton said her monkey—her name for the force inside her head—didn’t like needles. Fine. Neither do I. So it was easy to back off and give her space.

  But Peyton wasn’t alone. She had—and still has—her mother, her brother, and her father, all of whom love her and will do their best to protect her. And her talent is aptly called a monkey. I was worried that she might break a few glasses if she didn’t get her way. Caleb’s ability is King Kong. He can level buildings.

  Making him angry is a bad idea. But the instincts of every parent I’ve ever hosted tell me that Caleb doesn’t really want me to go. Or at least, he doesn’t really want Ashley to go.

  “I’m sorry, Caleb. I’m sorry you’re hurting. But I won’t go.”

  The wall of water forms a giant hand that reaches out and pushes me toward the door again. It’s not as forceful a push this time, but I’m now drenched. Sophie is still dry. It’s almost like he splashed me in anger.

  But . . . he only splashed me. Even with Sophie blocking, Caleb could have done worse than splash. That hand he sent to push me could as easily have been two streams of water up my nostrils. Into my lungs. But instead of drowning, I’m wet, like him. It might not be an invitation to join him, but I’m going to take it that way.

  I kick my shoes into the corner, peel off my jeans, and step through the wall of water. It doesn’t part easily. Caleb seems to be reinforcing it the same way I reinforce my own walls inside my head. But I persist and eventually step into the other end of the tub, giving Caleb as much space as I can while still being here with him.

  The water is warm. Some guest must have left behind bath salts, because I catch a hint of lavender in the steam surrounding us. Kelsey was clearly desperate, resorting to every trick she knew to try to calm Caleb down.

  I lower myself into the half-full tub and meet the red-rimmed eyes of a toddler in superhero underwear. Aquaman. I don’t know if that reflects Caleb’s sense of humor or Ashley’s, but it fits.

  Ashley is in there. In there with Spider Cregg.

  Yes. But not in the same room, okay? He can’t hurt her.

  I want to add that Cregg doesn’t want to hurt her, but I don’t know that for certain. And absolute honesty is probably the best bet with Caleb. If he senses that I’m misleading him, that I’m lying in any way, things could go very bad, very quickly.

  Do you understand why she’s in here, Caleb? Why Ashley’s in my head?

  He stares back at me, and the expression is so familiar that I have no doubt Daniel is his father. It’s the same look Daniel wore when he sat on the picnic table the other day, trying to decide whether he was ready to talk about Sariah.

  Maybe Caleb doesn’t trust himself to talk, either, because when he answers my question, it’s with a flood of images and sensations rather than words. I see Ashley’s face close up, under the streetlight, and then I watch as the Sunsphere cracks and the fragments take flight like seeds from a dandelion puff. Dacia’s angry face and Ashley telling him, sleep, baby, it will be okay in the morning. Waking up at Sandalford with no Ashley, no Maggie. Dacia telling him Ashley will be back soon. That he will stay with her and Maggie for a bit. Staring into Dacia’s ice-blue eyes and extracting her memory of shooting Ashley. Her memory of shooting the children at Overhills. Of shooting a string of other people. He pauses for a moment longer on one face, a woman with curly light-brown hair. Then I see a baseball bat, long before Dacia had a gun, coming down to hit Molly.

  I make it quick for you.

  The next memory isn’t Dacia’s. It must be from Caleb’s perspective. The glass wall behind Dacia explodes out toward the ocean and Dacia flies backward, clutching Maggie to her body. The picture freezes with Dacia inches from the window.

  The bear lady made Ashley dead because Ashley told me to only explode the big gold ball. I wanted to explode the whole house when I found out. Not just the window. But Maggie was there. Other wabbits, too. It would be bad to hurt them.

  Yes, Caleb. You were a very good boy.

  Tears spill over, streaming down his little face. “Don’ wanna be good boy any . . . more.”

  It’s the first time I’ve heard Caleb speak aloud. He sounds younger than the voice in my head, and the quiver in that last word absolutely breaks my heart. I pull him into my arms without thinking, and I don’t hesitate when Ashley moves to the front, even though it’s a risk, even though it pushes me to the back of my head and closer to Graham Cregg. Ashley knows how to soothe Caleb better than I do. And as for Cregg, I am so angry right now, so livid in the face of this child’s pain, that I will rip into that mutated spider-rat with my bare hands if he so much as touches the wall between us.

  I haven
’t been inside my mind office in a while. At least I don’t remember being back here, although I guess Cregg must have stashed me somewhere when he was cruising around in my body. Once I find the two file cabinets marked Jaden and Molly, I huddle down next to them. I could use Jaden’s calm right now. I could use Molly’s determination.

  Even back here, I feel Caleb’s small body shaking against my chest, his hands clutching my shirt just as they clutched Ashley’s coat yesterday. I can only imagine his pain at seeing Ashley killed. And that one image, the woman with the light-brown hair. He lingered on that one face, like it’s someone he knew. Someone he remembered.

  I’ve never seen a picture of Caleb’s mother. I don’t even know how old Caleb was when Sariah was killed. I don’t know how much he remembers about her. But that was her. I’m certain. He pulled out Dacia’s memory of killing not just the aunt who has taken care of him but also his mother. It’s a miracle that the kid was able to pull back his anger when he saw Maggie.

  The thought that enters my brain next isn’t one I want to entertain. In fact, I spend several minutes trying to convince myself that it’s being planted by Graham Cregg. I visualize myself standing up, moving around to escape him, to escape the thought, but I know that it’s pointless. What I’m thinking, what I’m remembering from the nightmares I’ve had lately, isn’t something that Cregg is pushing on me. If anything, I can blame my mother’s comment about needing to hunt for the human side of the monster.

  All I can think about is the dream this morning. Standing on the patio, staring down at the broken body of Penelope Cregg, her pinky neatly severed by the metal edging strip around the rosebushes. A hand gripping my collar, twisting, lifting me off my feet. Your fault.

  I don’t want to feel sympathy for the monster. But I do. Sitting here in this tub, one step removed from my body that clutches a sobbing boy that much of the world would call a monster, too.