by Rysa Walker
We take Ein out and let him wander around for a bit. He has trouble keeping his footing in the loose sand and toddles around like he’s had one beer too many. Aaron usually chuckles at Ein’s antics, but his attention is elsewhere tonight. At first I think he’s looking out at the ocean, but his eyes are unfocused and a bit angry.
“Still thinking about Miller?” I ask.
“Yeah. I’d be a lot happier if that vision of yours wasn’t nearly six weeks in the future. This house is big, but it’s going to be hard to avoid picking up on Miller’s hostility.”
We’ll likely be back here, at least temporarily, even after we find Bree and the other adepts. But I decide not to mention that right now, since Aaron is already dreading the prospect of six weeks.
“Did you get something specific from him earlier or were you just pissed that he was about to tase me?”
“Both. Magda hired these guys because they’re ex-military, and they’re supposed to be good at keeping stuff confidential. Most of them seem okay, but Miller and one of the other guys . . . they give off the same vibe as that Pruitt woman when she was yammering about adepts being God’s curse. And while most people have a violent thought occasionally, Miller is constantly running scenarios in his head any time he enters a room. Thinking about what he’d do if someone jumped him, and then thinking with graphic detail and a great deal of pleasure about what he’d do right back. He had a scenario for all of us. Even Kelsey.”
“So . . . not just casing the room for security but enjoying the possibility of mayhem.”
“Precisely.” Aaron sighs, biting at his lower lip, and then adds, “I was already on edge, though, because when Miller saw you helping unload the truck today, he told me you look a lot like the girl that police are looking for as a ‘person of interest’ in connection with the murders at Overhills. He called Magda immediately, and she told him you had nothing to do with it, but I’m not sure he entirely believes her.”
“Great. So we have hospital security in Maryland thinking I tried to kill Daniel and God only knows how many people thinking I go around killing little kids. What’s to stop Miller from calling the police anyway, despite what Magda said?”
“Money. Probably a lot of it. Plus, he knows that the kids who were murdered were adepts, and like I said, he seems to view them less as kids and more as freaks who need to be contained. I called Sam and asked him to have a chat with Magda about Miller’s . . . volatility. So maybe she’ll find someone else.”
“Or maybe he’ll mellow out after a while?”
“Yeah. Maybe.”
When Ein finishes, we head upstairs. After crating the puppy, I join Aaron on the deck. The stars aren’t quite as vivid as they were the other night, and the wind has a definite chill, but it’s still nice to stand there with his arms around me, breathing in the sea air, as we look out at the night sky and listen to the waves crash against the shore.
Of course, with our bodies in such close proximity, it doesn’t take long for calm contemplation of nature to morph into something else entirely natural but a little less calm. Aaron pulls me away from the windows, into the shadows. He presses his lips to mine, his breath hot against my cheek, and his hands, surprisingly warm despite the weather, slip under my shirt. We stay there, lost in the kiss, until we hear the sliding glass door open.
A blond-haired boy about TJ’s age steps onto the deck and takes a few steps out toward the railing. He’s barefoot, dressed only in a T-shirt and white cotton briefs. A thin band encircles his ankle, black except for a tiny flashing blue light. He looks around, searching, and then stops when he sees me. His eyes are glassy, almost unfocused.
“Get thee to a nunnery.”
The words are clearly directed at me, and I feel a chill that has nothing to do with the temperature. The line is from Hamlet, when he’s talking to Ophelia, and it’s one of Shakespeare’s double entendres—a nunnery was also slang for a brothel back then. I’m beginning to wish I could erase every single bit of Shakespeare from my brain.
“Flee also youthful lusts: but follow righteous—” The boy stops abruptly, his eyes widening in terror as he backs away from us. “Where am I? Where’s my dad?”
He backs up again as Aaron steps out of the shadows.
“Hey, it’s all right,” Aaron says, taking a few cautious steps toward the boy. “Your dad is downstairs. I think you were sleepwalking. Why don’t we move away from the stairs and—”
“What the hell is he doing out here?” Miller roars from the doorway. His body is a dark outline against the light from inside the house, his face illuminated only by the red dot of light at the base of his taser.
The boy flinches and screams as he loses his balance. His arms pinwheel in a futile attempt to stay upright. Aaron reaches out just in time and snags the collar of his T-shirt, yanking him back to safety. Had Aaron been a split second slower or a few inches farther away, the poor kid would have hurtled head over heels down the stairs to the lower deck.
He’s shaking now, although I suspect it’s as much from fright as from the cold. And Miller is still blocking the doorway.
“You stupid idiot!” I’m in Miller’s face before I remember that he’s holding the taser, but at this point I don’t really care. “The kid was sleepwalking, and you scared the hell out of him. Go downstairs! We’ll get him back to his room.”
Miller gives me a look that can only be described as a snarl, but at least he moves out of the doorway so we can get the boy inside. I grab the chenille throw from the back of the sofa and wrap it around his thin shoulders.
“What’s your name?” Aaron asks.
“B-Ben.” His eyes, blue with lashes so blond they’re nearly white, keep darting apprehensively toward Miller. “Ben Fleck. I don’t know how I got here.”
“What’s going on? We heard a scream,” Kelsey says from the top of the stairs. A middle-aged woman who must be one of the nurses is right behind her.
I lay out the basic facts calmly, sending a long, pointed glare in Miller’s direction so that Kelsey understands exactly who is at fault. “Luckily, Aaron has quick reflexes.”
The other woman with Kelsey frowns, pushing forward to get a closer look at Ben. “We halved the dosage of sedative for him because he’s so small,” she says, looking over at Miller. “Must not have been enough. I guess his dad is still under, or else he’d have seen the boy leave.”
“Why didn’t you see him leave?” Miller demands.
“I was using the bathroom,” she says with a defiant tilt of her head. “And nothing in my contract says that the children are to be under constant watch.”
Miller storms off toward the elevator. My opinion of him, already near rock bottom, dips even lower. You can’t get much lazier than taking an elevator to go down two short flights of stairs.
The nurse leans down to look Ben in the face, turning his head slightly, like she’s checking his pupils. “Let’s get you back to your room. I’ll give you some medicine to sleep.”
Ben seems torn about going with the nurse. He nods but also leans back against Aaron, as if for protection.
“Maybe Aaron could walk with you back to your room?” Kelsey says. “And if you’d like, I’ll get you a cup of cocoa to warm you up first.”
Ben looks relieved at that suggestion, so Aaron leads him over to one of the stools at the bar. The nurse, who is clearly annoyed at the delay, goes off to get the medicine. I follow Kelsey into the kitchen.
“So,” she says as we mix up the cocoa. “I take it there’s a bit more to the story than you were willing to say out there? What exactly did Miller do?”
“Scared the hell out of him, mostly. What’s that thing on his ankle?”
“The tracker? One of the nurses mentioned that all of the kids were tagged with GPS locators by the school at Fort Bragg. And no, I don’t like it either, but I guess they were worried about them wandering off.”
“Maybe. But Aaron’s picking up nasty vibes from Miller, and I’m not sure he
’s going to be able to take six weeks of that man’s negativity.”
Kelsey snorts. “I’m picking up nasty vibes from Miller, and I have no psychic ability at all.”
“Yeah. He has one of those faces. The Germans have a word for it.” I comb through the Emily files quickly and locate it. “Backpfeifengesicht, that’s it. A face in need of a fist.”
“I can’t make my usual case for nonviolence, since I would have happily punched Miller when he jumped at you with that taser. How is your hand?”
I hold it up for her inspection. “The ointment helped. Thanks. There was something else I didn’t want to mention in front of Miller and the nurse, though. Have you had a chance to look at Ben’s file?”
“I glanced through all of the files briefly when Magda sent them over. But no, I haven’t looked at his in detail yet. Why?”
“Well, if the file doesn’t say he’s a telepathic receiver, you need to make an addition. He just delivered a message from Graham Cregg.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Carova Beach, North Carolina
December 16, 2019, 9:20 a.m.
“Another fallen soldier,” Miranda says, showing me the empty jar of grape jelly that she’s rinsing out at the sink.
“I’ll add it to the list.” I stash the butter and eggs back in the fridge. “Aaron and I will go into Kitty Hawk and stock up before we head north, so you won’t run short while we’re away. And . . . Christmas dinner? I don’t know exactly when we’ll be back, so we should probably get a couple of hams, since we had turkey for Thanksgiv—”
“When will you be leaving?” Miranda interjects.
I shrug. “Soon—we’re less than a week out from what I saw in the vision. We’re just waiting for Magda’s go-ahead.”
“And you don’t know where you’ll be going yet?”
“Nope.”
She continues loading the dishwashers, and I add a few more items to the shopping list. Most of my time over the past four weeks has been divided between the day-to-day tasks of keeping the residents of Sandalford fed and helping the younger adepts with their online classes. I’ve been glad for the work, since it distracts me from worrying over the fact that we still haven’t located the snow-covered valley we’ll be hiking through in four or five days for this rescue mission.
Taylor has been holed up in her bedroom most of the time, either alone or with Deo nearby as an amp, clutching Sabrina Bieler’s sneaker, which is now stained with sweat and Doritos dust. I’m starting to understand why her family was so worried about Taylor’s health when she was searching for Molly. She’s lost about ten pounds since we got here, even though she’s eating enough to feed three people.
Taylor’s sketches have gotten more detailed, but they’re still just a house in the middle of the woods, although recently she added a well nearby. The only unusual thing is that the room the girl is being held in appears to have curved walls. But that doesn’t mean the entire house is round, and even if it was, round houses aren’t uncommon enough that it helps us nail down the geographical location.
In many ways, the past month has been like being back at the group home. There are ongoing squabbles between the kids, who range in age from seven to fifteen, and who all have troubled family backgrounds. Some of the kids seem pleased at the change of scenery, but others are upset about being so far from home. Some of them cast jealous looks at Ben, who has his dad here, and at TJ and Peyton, who have their mom. The others can call and Skype with their families, but when they were at Fort Bragg, families were allowed to visit in person. Thanksgiving was especially tough, and I suspect that these kids are already thinking about the fact that Christmas is right around the corner.
The biggest difference for me is that I’m now seeing what it’s like to be a houseparent. You can’t manage this many people without rules and boundaries. And that’s even more necessary here, given how quickly minor disagreements can heat up—and I mean that literally. One of the boys is what Jaden calls a Zippo. Overall, he’s been very constrained, but he lost it when Javier—the kid who picked up Bernadette Pruitt’s thought about tossing her bra in the trash—pulled a stray sexual fantasy from our resident Zippo’s head and blurted it out to everyone, including the girl whose breasts the kid was admiring. The Zippo then turned Javier’s lunch into mac-and-cheese flambé, torching the nearby napkins in the process, and prompting Magda to invest in a sprinkler system and additional fire extinguishers.
Once the shopping list is completed, I start chopping veggies for the pasta salad we’ll be serving in a few hours for lunch.
“Why do you think Magda hasn’t okayed your departure yet?” Miranda asks, and then quickly adds, “Not that I’m looking forward to the four of you leaving. After that, there will be very few adults here who don’t think these kids are all los hijos de Satanás.”
“Who knows why Magda does what she does. And I don’t think they all believe the adepts are the spawn of Satan.”
Miranda wrinkles her nose. “Maybe. But I listen when they talk between themselves sometimes, when I’m down there cleaning. They’re not much better than the people Jasper saw carrying the signs at Senator Cregg’s . . . speech.” Her face reddens slightly, and then she turns away to wipe down the counter. “When Jasper was watching it at the bar, I mean. In Corolla.”
She seems uncomfortable, like she’s hiding something, but then Miranda is always a bit on edge when she discusses Jasper. As for the Vigilance people, she’s right that they don’t treat the adepts like normal kids, but to be fair, they are different and the risks are greater. At Bart House, for example, there were a few kids that the counselors knew to keep apart, because they just couldn’t get along. That’s true here, too, but some of these kids could be dangerous to each other without even trying. Deo, for example, can’t go near the other adepts. It would be like throwing gasoline on a match if he bumped into our resident firestarter when the boy was in one of his hot moods. The girl who is an empath—much like Aaron, except she gets all of the strong emotions—is already overwhelmed by everyone in the house, and I’m afraid being too close to Deo might push her over the edge.
And Deo going too close to Ben Fleck might trigger more Shakespeare and biblical quotes from Cregg. One of us still gets a text at least once each week, but I’m more and more convinced that the sole non-Shakespearean text I received on my phone really was from the kid called Snoop Dogg, and that he really is trying to avoid giving Cregg anything other than superficial information. Otherwise, it seems likely that Magda’s security guards would have had to fend off visitors by now.
Miranda also keeps Peyton isolated, not just from Deo but from the older adepts as well. She’s simply too young for us to be sure she can control herself. One lamp has already fallen casualty to her cranky mood when bad weather thwarted her desire to hunt for seashells two days in a row, and there’s a coffee stain on Kelsey’s office wall and probably a few chips of ceramic still in the carpet from a broken mug.
“Be glad you get to escape for a few days,” Miranda says, continuing to scrub out a sink that I’m sure she’s already scrubbed.
“I’d happily trade places,” I tell her. “I’m not a big fan of snow. And now that Senator Cregg has ripped the lid off the Delphi program, it’s not exactly a great time to be traveling around with a bunch of adepts.”
Miranda doesn’t comment, so I finish chopping the veggies in silence and then leave her to her mood.
Even though escaping the chaos of Sandalford for a few days will be a welcome break, the clatter inside my head travels along with me, and it seems to grow louder the closer we get to D-day. Hunter knows that the rescue attempt won’t happen for nearly a week, but he still chomps at the bit every time we see something on the news about Senator Cregg.
And we’ve seen the Senator a lot lately.
Congress voted the week after Cregg’s press circus to establish a bipartisan commission to examine the Delphi Project, the Stargate program that preceded Delphi, all militar
y and government ventures into paranormal research, and any efforts to cover up crimes, both here and overseas, that may have been committed by Delphi subjects. It’s officially the Committee on Psychic Weapons of Terror, but everyone just calls them the Delphi Hearings. The committee members demanded that the military and all government contractors hand over their records on the program, including names and addresses of all persons who were given the serum. That still hasn’t happened, and I’m not even sure that it will—there’s a lot of talk about privacy rights and national security. But there’s also a very real desire for someone to take the blame for this. At first, there was a veritable blizzard of finger-pointing, but now most of Congress has clued in to the fact that these programs spanned seven presidencies, during periods when both of their parties held control of the White House and/or the legislature.
The only ones who could really point fingers without getting blowback are the handful of senators and representatives with Unify America. UA is a brand-new party, after all. Can’t really blame UA for the mess that those other guys have gotten the nation into, can we? Perhaps it’s time to clean house.
Senator Cregg doesn’t say any of this outright, of course. But it’s implicit in his earnest expression when he gives a press conference, when he asks a question during the Delphi Hearings, and whenever he talks on one of the twenty-four-hour news shows. And if anyone alludes to Senator Cregg’s family ties to Decathlon Services Group, he just deflects, noting that DSG is a huge international company and he divested years ago. Anyway, he says, his son was connected to the group that handles human resources for the company, not the research-and-development arm. And if not for his son’s heroic actions at Port Deposit, many more lives might have been lost. Blah, blah, blah.
Each time Senator Cregg’s face pops up on the screen or his name is part of a headline, Hunter pushes forward, hoping to get some new bit of information about Bree. Each time, there’s nothing new. And each time, he asks me if I’m sure we’ll be able to rescue his sister and get her home safely. I’m as honest with Hunter as possible—the visions have always come true in the past. But I can’t answer the last part of his question, because I have no idea what happens to Bree after that short snippet of the future ends.