Gift of Death (Gifted Book 1)

by Lin Augustine

  “You sure it’s a man?”

  “I’m pretty sure.”

  “And what makes you think he’s gifted?”

  “I don’t know. It’s just a suspicion. But, even if he isn’t gifted, do you think it’s right to let Carl keep a man hostage? We should report this.”

  “We don’t know if he is a hostage for sure, though. Did he look tied up or anything?”

  “Maybe he was tied up under the sheet.”

  Giselle sighs. “But you don’t know for sure. Maybe it was just one of his friends sleeping and they covered themselves in the sheet. His friends were there too, right?”

  “Yeah, and they were all watching Carl do something on the computer by the sheet guy. One of them said something about a monster.”

  Giselle chuckles. “Ron, don’t get so worked up. Carl and his friends are into video games. One of them was sleeping and the others were probably just watching him play one of those dumb games.”

  “But I heard shouting. I heard someone say, ‘Stop it,’ and ‘Let me go.’”

  “Haven’t you ever been around guys playing video games? They shout all kinds of dumb nonsense.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  Ron’s phone chimes. She picks it up immediately and opens it.

  It’s a text from Chrys, saying, “Check your email. No charger so I keep phone off.”

  Ron smiles and types out quickly, “Yeah cuz you forgot your charger dingus. I’ll check.”

  She stares at the phone for a bit longer, waiting for another message.

  “Anyway,” Giselle says, getting off of the bed, “Iris didn’t make breakfast today since she went down to open the shop early, so if you’re hungry, you can come have some cereal with me.” She stands in front of the bed. “I know you think Carl is up to something, but trust me, he’s all talk and no results. It’s good that you decided to leave him out of this though. Come on.”

  She heads out the door.

  Ron looks at the phone for a bit more, but nothing comes. She gets up and tugs on a pair of jean shorts. She checks the phone one last time—still nothing—so she puts it in her pocket.

  She goes down the hall to the kitchen. Giselle has already placed two bowls and spoons and a gallon jug of milk on the table. She’s pouring some cereal into her bowl while standing up. It’s a generic brand of some sort of puffed corn cereal. She pours in milk as Ron reaches the table.

  Ron pours out her own bowl of cereal and milk and sits down across from Giselle.

  “Listen, Giselle. I know you think it’s probably nothing, but I think we should look into Carl more.”

  Giselle shovels a spoon of piled-high cereal in her mouth, crunching loudly.

  “What if he really is holding someone hostage?” Ron says, touching the sides of the bowl with her hand, enjoying the chill of it. She can already feel a bead of sweat running down her back. “And what if that person really is gifted? They might know where the camp is.”

  Giselle points her spoon at Ron. “That’s a good point, I guess. If you’re that worried about it, we can look into it. And if we’re lucky, we’ll get more intel about the camp.”

  Ron sighs in relief. “Exactly.”

  Ron mixes her cereal so the pieces at the bottom are now at the top, and then she begins to eat.

  Between bites, she says, “By the way, I need to check my email. Do you have a computer I can use? Mine was stolen.”

  She nods. “Yeah, it’s in our room. I’ll bring it out once I’m done with this.”

  “Thanks.”

  Giselle finishes eating first. She puts her bowl and spoon in the sink and then heads to their room. When she comes back, she’s holding a heavy-looking silver laptop with the cord bundled on top and is now wearing dark blue skinny jeans and a lacy white tank top. She sets the laptop on the table in front of the couch.

  “Here you go,” she says to Ron at the table. “I’m gonna head out of town for a couple hours to get some products to restock our store. Wanna tag along?”

  “Oh, no thanks. I’ll just be here.”

  “Okay. Carl always goes to the bar in the evening with his friends, so we can go investigate his cabin when I come back.”

  Ron nods. “Sounds like a plan.”

  Giselle nods back and leaves.

  Ron finishes her bowl of cereal and then another one. Then, she goes to the sink and washes the dishes, including the bowl Giselle left behind. She puts the milk back in the fridge and the cereal on top of the fridge, next to the other boxes.

  She sits on the couch and pushes the cord off the top of the computer. She brings the computer to her lap and boots it up. It’s at full charge.

  She opens an incognito tab in the browser and logs into her email. The first email is from Chrys with the subject, “The Scoop.”

  She clicks on it and reads it, chuckling at Chrys’s all-caps warning to not get involved with the giftists. Way too late for that.

  She writes a response.

  Sorely missed Chrysanthemum,

  Of course I haven’t been caught. Have you forgotten how skilled I am?

  I’m glad that rumor is true, and you can actually get your gift removed. (By the way you’re okay with calling it a “gift” now?)

  I’m sorry to hear about that kid dying. Hope everyone else there is okay.

  I’ve been staying with a couple of giftists actually… XD

  But don’t worry, they’re decent people and I’m safe. I think there may be someone gifted in this town, but I’m not sure yet. I think he’s being held hostage by some other giftists here. Will investigate tonight. Update you tomorrow.

  The one and only,

  Rhododendron

  She sends the email and leans back in the couch, watching her inbox. She wants a reply to come immediately, but she knows that’s not likely. There’s also no point in texting Chrys because she’s probably keeping the phone off to conserve the battery.

  Sighing, Ron signs out of her email and does a search for technology that can detect gifts. She scrolls through the results and clicks on some that seem interesting, but most of them are just speculative.

  On page four of the search results, the site address of one of the links catches her eye: normalnews.net.

  Is that the website of that newspaper Iris is always reading?

  She clicks on the link. At the top is the same logo as the newspaper, but this isn’t the main website. It’s just a forum.

  She scrolls down. The thread is called, “Scanner v2.4, update 11: it works!” by a guy called Normal-C with an avatar of a dragon breathing fire onto a town.

  She skims through the post, but stops reading once the images catch her eye. There are two images side by side below a wall of text. On the left, there is a scanner gun pressed against a guy’s arm, a rectangular screen with a large green circle on it, clearly visible. It looks a lot like the scanner Carl had yesterday.

  On the right, the scanner gun is pointed at a man propped up against the wall with a dirty sheet covering his body. The screen has a large red X.

  Ron’s heart is pounding.

  Below the images is one paragraph. It says, “Left is tested against me. As you can see, it says I’m normal, which is true. Right is tested against someone I KNOW to be gifted and the scanner concludes that as well.”

  That’s the end of the post.

  There are tons of comments below, some skeptical and hopeful, but most are derogatory and doubtful, saying he could have easily photoshopped those results.

  And then, Normal-C replies with a video filmed with a camera strapped to his head, it looks like. It shows him pressing the gun on his arm as he did in the photo. The screen is on but blank. He presses the trigger. There’s a loading screen and then it dings and displays the large green circle.

  Then, he points it at the man under
the sheet, who’s lying down on that mattress instead of propped up on the wall like in the photo. He presses the trigger again. Loading screen. Buzzer sound. Large red X.

  After that post, there are still some doubtful comments, but the derogatory tone is gone.

  Carl. It has to be.

  Ron goes back up to the first page of this thread and clicks on Normal-C’s avatar. He has thousands of posts and comments in this forum.

  Ron starts reading.

  Chapter 19

  I spend a half hour or so skimming through various search results about Bluewater. I pair the town name with “gift” and “gifted” and “giftists” but don’t find anything eye-catching or alarming.

  Bored, I type in “Alicia Brown Oregon missing.” There are some hits, but nothing related to what I’m really looking for.

  Has Mary seriously not reported us missing yet? How has no one noticed?

  I sit back in the chair, staring at the screen. On the one hand, it’s nice that no one’s out there looking for us. But on the other hand, it also kind of sucks that no one cares enough to look.

  A popup notification from my email. I switch to that tab and read Ron’s reply.

  I sigh. Of course she somehow managed to do exactly what I hoped she wouldn’t do. I don’t have much to say to her right now, so I close the tabs. I’ll reply tomorrow, after her update.

  I hover the mouse over the shut down button. I should just turn it off and go.

  Yet, I find myself opening up the browser again and typing in “gifted serial killer.”

  I click on the first article and read it while breathing shallowly. I’ve read it a thousand times. I’ve seen that blurry photo of that young white man smirking at the camera as a girl lays crumpled at his feet. I know this article, that photo, his name by heart. Vic Blanchet.

  Sometimes, I dream about him. I see him killing someone, writing them as a number on his list, and walking away while whistling a happy tune. Sometimes, I am him. I touch someone and when they fall, I feel a sense of exhilaration that nothing else can match. But that quickly fades and is replaced by a longing for my next hit.

  No, not my next hit. His. The one before me, who had this gift. Those are his feelings, not mine.

  Not mine.

  I let out a shaky breath and hold down the power button of the computer. Vic’s face is replaced with blackness.

  Leaning back in the chair, I pull at the gloves on my hands. I tug them a little off and then back on. My hands are sweaty underneath, so the gloves stick to my skin as I tug and tug.

  I get up and go to the window. More kids are out playing on the fields now. Don’t they feel sad about Adrien? Although to be fair, I’ve seen a lot of death—so much that it doesn’t faze me at all anymore. Maybe a lot of these kids are like that too.

  The window is closed so it’s starting to feel way too stuffy in here. It doesn’t seem like this room gets used that often though, so I leave the window closed and leave the room.

  I go down the hall to Li’s office and knock on the door. There’s no answer.

  I knock on the door next to Li’s office.

  “Come in,” Li says through the door.

  I open it. Li and Shikoba are sitting across from each other. A white floral teapot, two steaming cups of dark tea sitting on saucers, and a tray of hard-looking cookies are on the table in front of them.

  Both Li and Shikoba smile at me, Shikoba with his head turned back to see me.

  “Chrys,” Li says, “come have a seat.”

  I close the door behind me and sit down next to Shikoba, who’s in the middle of the sofa directly across from Li.

  Putting my hands in between my thighs to sort of hide the gloves, I say, “Has Valeria spoken to you yet?”

  “About the future?” Li takes a sip of tea and the cup clinks on the saucer as she sets it back down.

  I nod.

  “Yes, that’s what we,” Li gestures to Shikoba, “were just discussing.”

  “We also think it’s highly likely this is coming from Bluewater,” Shikoba says, angling his body towards me. “There’s nowhere else close enough that makes sense, unless someone is camping out in the forest. But, as far as I know, the range on gifts is not that large. Hunter has the largest range I’ve heard of.”

  “That’s why we are putting together a small group to go out and investigate the town,” Li says.

  “I have a friend there in Bluewater,” I say. “Maybe she can help your group.”

  “Someone gifted?” Li asks.

  “No, she’s, uh, normal. We were going to come to the camp together but Valeria said she wasn’t sure if you’d let her stay, so my friend decided to stay in Bluewater.”

  “Of course I would have let her stay,” Li says. “She can come here now, if she wants. As long as she’s okay with being around us and keeping the location a secret.”

  My heart beats quicker. Li would let Ron stay here. We can be together again. And maybe we can stay here for a long time, even after I have my gift erased.

  I can’t wait to tell Ron, but I put that aside for a moment. “Anyway, my friend sent me an email today. She managed to get close to some giftists and she thinks one of them might be holding a gifted person hostage, but she told me she’ll let me know for sure tomorrow after she checks tonight.”

  “That sounds dangerous,” Shikoba says. He leans over and dunks a cookie in his tea. “You should tell her to hold off. We can send others to investigate it.” He bites the soaked part of the cookie.

  I shake my head. “It’s no use. When Ron decides to do something, she doesn’t change her mind. But she’s not reckless. She’ll be careful.”

  Shikoba sighs. “I just hope she’ll be okay.”

  I turn to Li. “When are you planning on sending the group to town?”

  “I was going to send you guys out tonight but, hearing about your friend, I think it’s wise to wait until after you hear from her. Let us know what she says.”

  “You guys? You mean I’m going too?”

  “Well, you are the face of this investigation, aren’t you? Plus, your friend is there, so you have an even bigger advantage.”

  I nod. It would be nice to see Ron again.

  “Who else are you sending?” I ask.

  Li exchanges a glance with Shikoba, who’s nibbling on the cookie. “Just you and Hunter.”

  “Why Hunter? Why not Valeria?”

  “She’s…” Li shifts in her seat. “Her state of mind is too fragile right now. Besides, Hunter will be more useful. If, on the off chance, there is some trouble, he can calm everyone down long enough for you to escape.”

  “Okay, but why can’t you or Shikoba or Elise come too?”

  “Too many people heading into town at once will be suspicious. Plus, Elise has to watch over her kids and many of the residents of that town have seen me and Shikoba’s faces already and know who we are.”

  “They know you’re gifted?”

  “Yes.”

  “How?”

  “That’s not important. What’s important is they don’t know you or Hunter. Hunter has never been out on a mission since he came here, and he told us that he didn’t go into the town on his way here. So are you okay with heading out tomorrow?”

  “Yeah, okay. I’ll let you know once my friend messages me back.”

  “Good. That’s settled then.” Li picks up her teacup and drains it. As she pours another cup, she says, “You are coming to the funeral, aren’t you? It’ll be a short ceremony in the pavilion.”

  I sigh. “I guess I might as well. It’s not like I have anything better to do.”

  Li smiles. “Then I’ll see you in an hour or so.”

  Her words are like a dismissal, and she moves to take a cookie from the tray, but then she pulls her hand back and turns to me again. “Oh al
so, please tell Hunter about the mission tomorrow. And don’t be surprised when you return to your cabin, I sent Ana Maria there.”

  “Yeah, she begged me to move to my cabin earlier.”

  Li chuckles. “Ana Maria really seems to like you.”

  “I really don’t think that’s it though. I just think she doesn’t want to be with other kids.”

  Li just shakes her head, smiling. She leans over to take a cookie and dunks it in her tea. “Shikoba, have you prepared the curriculum for next semester yet?”

  His eyes open wide, like a deer in headlights, but then he resumes his normal expression with his eyes in a slight squint as though he can’t see very well. “I’m almost finished. Shouldn’t be more than another day or two.”

  Li eats the cookie.

  They’re no longer paying attention to me so I get up. “Um, I guess I’ll get going now.”

  “Sure, sure,” Li says, waving at me dismissively but her eyes still on Shikoba. “A day or two? That’s what you said a day or two ago and I know you remember that very well.”

  Shikoba rubs the back of his neck with a nervous smile. “Of course I remember. I’m just putting on the finishing touches, I promise. It’ll be done in a day or two.”

  I head out. As I go through the door, I notice the unmarked door across from Li’s office.

  “Uh, Li,” I say, interrupting their conversation. They look over at me. “What’s behind that door over there?” I point at the door.

  “It’s just a staircase,” Li says. “It leads to the second floor. That’s where our bedrooms are, and some other spare rooms.”

  Li and Shikoba resume their conversation immediately so I close the door behind me. I hadn’t really noticed that the Main House has two stories but now that I think about it, it is a much taller building than the rest.

  I walk down the hall and out of the Main House.

  With my heart thumping in my chest, I walk across the field to the cabins, doing my best to skirt around the kids. Some of them give me sour looks and stare pointedly at my gloved hands, but they don’t say anything.

  I enter the cabin.

  Ana Maria, who was looking over Remington’s shoulder as he sat at his desk, runs over to me.