Well, she was his sister after all, he wasn’t supposed to pin her against him.
But he was looking at me. I drummed on my glass to the rhythm of the music. Lee wanted me to dance with him – a conclusion I had reached without reading him, although it would have taken me a lot less time if I had. I had no idea how people who weren’t moodies were able to communicate with one another at all.
It was a nice exercise. I glanced around me. Oleander and Daphne were no longer huddled on the couch. They were dancing, pressed up against each other, Daphne’s hands under Oleander’s shirt, on the small of his back. I didn’t need to feel them to know what they were thinking.
Across the bar, Sherry was keeping her distance from Matthew and Blaze, even though they were all talking to one another. Matthew’s gaze wandered every now and then to Oleander and Daphne. He must have been worrying about her. Like me.
Blaze couldn’t stop laughing. His glass was empty. It had been his second, maybe third; I had no idea how much was too much for him, but I had no doubt that his laughter was covering up for something. The attempt to figure out what he was feeling without reading him was more difficult than I thought. Every now and then he snuck a glance in Lee and River’s direction.
Once in mine. I smiled at him, and he returned the smile.
But his was the kind of smile that didn’t extend to his eyes.
It stopped at his mouth. And when he laughed he didn’t slap Matthew on the back, but merely placed a nervous hand on the bar. And now I noticed that it was him keeping his distance from Sherry and not the other way around. He was standing close to Matthew and far from Sherry. Whatever had made Lee and River ooze with tension around Sherry was making Blaze recoil from her. So it was Sherry who was making Blaze nervous, and he was drinking as a means to cope with his anxiety. I had figured it out. Good.
I took a sip from my glass, deciding that being a normal person was too much work.
Lee waved Blaze over to the dance floor, and River shuffled back to the bar, reassuming her post beside me. I felt the tension sluicing out of Blaze; something about the way he held his shoulders, which slouched the moment he turned his back and walked away from Sherry. Sherry knew. I saw it. She was a cop, she must have been used to people not trusting her. And still, she was hurt by Blaze’s visible relief when he removed himself from her presence. River was waving her hand in front of my face. I focused on her; she was sweaty, and her smile seemed bigger.
“You OK?”
I nodded. “I was playing at being like you.”
“And…?” She focused on her glass, and it filled up with water. I didn’t want to know where she had materialized it from. I hoped not from the tap. No one drank tap water in Tel Aviv.
“Exhausting,” I remarked, gesturing at Lee and Blaze together on the dance floor. They were dancing at least an arm’s length from each other. Now I understood River’s previous comment. Blaze clearly wasn’t interested in dancing closer to Lee, but Lee was oblivious to this, and persisted in his attempts to wrap his arms around him. However, Lee was already high as a kite, and I wasn’t sure how much of his behavior was affected by whatever it was he was on.
“I’m thinking about joining them,” I said to River. “If you approve, of course.”
River downed her water in two big gulps. “You can dance with Lee. It’s too late to try to break you two up even if I wanted to.
I’m going to trust you to keep your promise.” She sounded like Daphne, but she wasn’t a damus. She was just more astute in matters of body language and gestures than me, whereas I had never needed to pay that sort of thing any attention. She lowered her glass onto the bar and smiled a thin, sardonic smile that looked just like Lee’s. “But if you touch Blaze, I’ll chop off all your limbs, toss them in a bag, bury them and make sure no one ever finds your remains.”
“No touching Blaze. Got it.”
“Good,” she said, beaming with her usual wide smile.
Lee shot me a probing arrow. Instead of answering, I turned to him. He smiled and held out his hand. “Do I get a dance?” His pupils were dilated.
I stepped onto the dance floor, careful not to accidently brush against Blaze. “Depends, is your head still screwed on straight?”
Blaze laughed. He put his hand on my shoulder and said, “Lee can dance even when he’s totally wasted.”
Lee raised his hand in a saluting gesture. “I dance even better when I’m totally wasted.”
I let out a chuckle and approached Lee. Blaze removed his hand from my shoulder and winked at Lee, who ignored him. I stifled a groan. Everyone in this club knew more about the relationship between Lee and me than Lee and me. Great.
Lee lowered his walls as I approached and sent me a warm, enveloping wave, tinged with slight confusion, probably a result of what he had taken. I sent him back an amused wave. It was our language, the only one we understood, and all the rest could keep settling for body gestures. Lee wrapped his arms around me. He was sweaty, singing along with the music. I stepped close enough to feel him breathe. I stopped thinking and let my body move on its own. Lee pierced me with his gaze and smiled, which made him miss a line in the song, after which he got mixed up when he tried to catch up with the rest of the lyrics. I laughed.
I felt the conversation behind me resume. River and Blaze started dancing, while Oleander and Daphne left the dance floor for another drink. Sherry laughed intermittently and flicked her hair back. It was short and black, cut just above her jawline. She wasn’t pretty. Her nose was too big and her clothes drab, just a simple T-shirt and pants. And yet, as the evening progressed, Matthew stopped sneaking glances at Daphne and shifted his attention to her. Their foreheads almost touched as they spoke over the loud blare of the loudspeakers.
“You’re wearing a plain T-shirt,” Lee almost yelled into my ear, tearing my thoughts away from Matthew.
“Sorry,” I replied, pressing into him. He smelled of aftershave and sweat and the faint scent of alcohol. “I don’t have any robot shirts.”
Lee smiled. “You want one?”
Standing so close to each other, I knew he could feel the wave suddenly spilling out of me. Before I could say anything he held up his finger and said, “But you have to show me what you did to my shirt.”
I nodded. Lee smiled, and we trailed back to the bar. He pulled a double-tipped black marker from his back pocket, took a napkin, smoothed it out and looked at me. “What do you want?”
I shrugged. “I’m not really a robot expert.”
Lee chuckled. “Neither am I.” He sent me some of his lightheadedness. I felt my brain being swathed in cotton balls, muffling the outside. He took a deep breath and smiled at me.
I returned the smile.
He smoothed the napkin again and took the cap off the narrower edge of the marker. “I think…” he said slowly, “something pretty.”
“Pretty would be pretty nice.” My words came out slurred. I sat beside Lee, almost missing the barstool. He giggled and took back some of my floating sensation into himself. “If you can’t handle it, don’t take it,” he said loudly. I put my head on his shoulder and my hand on his thigh.
Lee cleared his throat. “Something pretty it is,” he said, and I felt the tension building inside him. “Something pretty for Reed, who’s distracting me right now and I can’t concentrate.”
I lifted my head and looked at him.
He smiled. “Put your head back where it was, and don’t disturb the artist.” I could barely hear him over the music.
I laughed, sidling up closer to him and resting my hand on his shoulder. Dipping his shoulder to make me more comfortable, he began doodling on the napkin. The world was light and warm, and there was nothing I wanted more than for that moment to last.
“Should I take some more from you?” he whispered in my ear.
I shook my head. “I like it like this,” I said, and hoped he heard me. The music had become louder. I let myself be swept up by the melody. The walls se
emed to be moving. I wondered what exactly Lee was on, and how much it was affecting me.
I felt his hand moving as he drew, and his body gradually relaxing as his drawing took shape. I wanted to know what he was drawing for me, but I didn’t dare look before it was finished. I felt someone entering the club. I looked at him. He was radiating calmness in soft waves, but it was too dark to make him out.
The newcomer didn’t head to the bar, but kept standing at the entrance, surveying the room. Daphne and Oleander hit the dance floor again. River and Blaze were drinking and laughing. Matthew and Sherry sat at the bar, fragments of their conversation drifting in my direction between songs. There were others in the club, dancing to the music. The bartender was levitating paper balls, making a woman giggle. I couldn’t count the balls. Whatever Lee had taken, it was certainly affecting me. I wanted to give him back some of the lightheadedness he had sent me, but I couldn’t concentrate enough.
Something about the man who had entered the bar felt off. I straightened to examine his silhouette, dark against the red lights glowing around him.
His movements were incongruous with the waves drifting out of him. He felt calm, peaceful, but his shoulders were tense, and the gaze he swept across the room was full of intent. He was obviously searching for someone. I couldn’t focus; no single thought stayed in my head long enough to be contemplated. I sent back the rest of my lightheadedness to Lee, and heard him curse when the wave broke his concentration.
“There!” Lee exclaimed and lifted the napkin. “What do you think?”
Lee’s gesture caught the man’s attention. He was looking straight at me. I blanched inwardly, and immediately reprimanded myself. I was being paranoid. If something dangerous was about to happen, Daphne would have alerted us. He stuck his hand in his pocket and smiled at me with thin, pursed lips. The lights flickered. Now I recognized him. I had seen him only this morning. It was the customer from the café. Daphne’s knees buckled and she staggered into Oleander’s arms.
He pulled a gun out of one pocket and a barrel out of the other, linked the two in one swift stroke and aimed it at me. No. He wasn’t aiming at me. He was aiming at Sherry. Stop him. I have to stop him. I wanted to call out to her, to shout. The music was too loud. She wouldn’t hear me.
I had to stop him. There was no time. Empaths don’t maneuver sorcerers, but a stranger was pointing a gun at Sherry, and by the time she took notice it would be too late.
I maneuvered Blaze, full thrust. I felt his consciousness around me and stirred a feeling of panic in the gun’s direction. I felt his fire sizzling before he himself had realized the cause. I maneuvered River in the same direction, and felt her bubbling in response, forging a puddle.
Last but not least, the bartender who was levitating paper balls. I maneuvered him towards the music, heightening his sensitivity until he could bear the volume no more and stopped the sound waves, at which point I yelled out, “Sherry! Gun!”
The customer fired. Sherry turned around. Blaze set fire to the bullets mid-air, and they exploded. River enveloped the bullets in water, giant bubbles that trapped the shrapnel.
Sherry was still rooted in her spot. Four bullets had been fired, and I was afraid more would follow. Daphne collapsed in the middle of the room, with Oleander barely able to hold onto her.
Empaths don’t maneuver sorcerers, and certainly not other empaths. I was hoping Lee would forgive me. I extracted all the blurriness out of his head and planted it in the gunman. When enough of Lee’s mind had cleared, he realized what I was doing. I felt him maneuvering beside me, numbing the stranger’s mind into oblivion. He was more experienced in that particular emotion than me, and the shooter fell to the ground.
The gun went off again, the bullet hitting a chair; splinters flew every which way. A woman screamed. One of the people on the dance floor slumped to the ground, legs spread out, utterly pale. His two dance partners kneeled beside him, trying to calm him down.
Sherry got up, tense. Matthew stood next to her, clutching his arm. I ran over to him.
“I’m fine,” he said in answer to a question I hadn’t asked. I made him move his arm. “It’s just a scratch,” he said. But it wasn’t. It was a big bloody gash where a shard of wood had torn into his arm. I dabbed the blood with a napkin from the bar, overcoming the temptation to take away some of his pain and absorb it myself. Someone had switched off the music. My ears were ringing in the sudden silence.
Sherry crouched over the unconscious man. She looked at me. “Your doing?”
“Ours,” I said. Lee approached us slowly, still holding the napkin with the drawing on it.
Daphne was on the floor in the middle of the room, black waves drifting out of her towards me. A vision. She was trapped in a vision. I felt Oleander, calm and clearheaded. He was a damus, he’d know what to do. He’d take care of Daphne.
“I didn’t feel anything from him,” I said. “I don’t understand it.”
Everyone was looking at me. They knew what I had done. I was engulfed by a feeling of disgust. I didn’t bother isolating its source. They knew I had maneuvered them. The why didn’t matter. It made no difference that people would have died if I hadn’t done it. They were angry at me anyway, and with just cause. At least this time it wasn’t an entire bar crowd.
Blaze was standing beside me. “A moody must have dismantled him before he walked in.” His voice sounded flat in the silence of the room. “After you dismantle them, it takes time for the feelings to regenerate. They come back slowly. It’s not like with normal feelings. Don’t you remember? How I always told you I felt safe around you?”
I nodded, the memory flitting before me. Blaze lying in my bed, in my childhood room at my parents’ house, naked, smiling at me with outstretched arms. “Come here already!” he said when I tried to fashion an amateurish, makeshift barrier. “If anyone walks in on us, I’ll burn him.” I laughed so hard I could barely keep standing.
“So that’s why. Because you always dismantled my fear, and it would take hours until it came back.” There was distinct guilt in his voice, along with a faint note of longing underneath.
I had done no wrong by maneuvering him back then. He had let me. And yet, I shrank as he recounted it in front of everyone.
Matthew cleared his throat. “It never happened to me.”
I looked him straight in the eye and said, “I don’t touch you. Or Mom, or Dad.”
“How come Daphne didn’t stop him? Or Oleander?” Lee asked. He only sounded calm and rational; his fear was leaking through every crack in his walls.
River snapped her fingers. “Divergence!”
We all stared at her. “An unforeseeable divergence,” she said, as if that explained it.
Sherry held up a hand. “Slower, please.” Her voice was low, clear.
River wiped her hands on her skirt, her one telltale sign of stress. “A last-minute decision. If someone decides what’s going to happen ahead of time, seers can pick up on the course of events and change it.”
Sherry was nodding slowly. “And if he decides only seconds before acting, it would be too late to prevent the divergence. Brilliant,” she said.
“There’s no way they could pull that off on their own,” Matthew said, folding his arms across his chest. “They probably have collaborators on the police force.”
“There are no collaborators in my unit,” Sherry remarked pointedly. “And yet, this shit is here.” She kicked the shin of the passed-out stranger. She looked at me. “Good thing you didn’t stay at the Sinkhole today. Who knows how it would have ended.”
My head started pounding. I could barely think. I needed to lean on someone. The person standing closest to me was Blaze, but I could feel he didn’t want me near him. I’d never maneuvered him without asking permission before. Poking around his feelings, I felt the deep sense of betrayal. The loss and distrust seeping into him. He took a step back, averting his gaze.
Sherry wasn’t scared. She was filled with purpose
, calm and collected. How on earth was she able to take in this information so easily? Or maybe she had already guessed it was so, and this was just another piece of the puzzle she had begun to put together. She kneeled by the stranger on the ground, flipped him over, took a photograph of his face and of the gun in his hand. “How long will he be like this?” She looked at Lee. “What did you take?”
Lee just stared at Sherry, crumpling the napkin in his hand. “Let’s try again. When this man walked into the room I clearly saw he was on something before he pointed the gun at me. What did he take?”
“Datura and belladonna,” Lee replied, thrusting his chin in defiance. No one said a word. The combination sounded hardcore. I knew that for normies it induced hallucinations. I had no idea how Lee had fine-tuned the affect so that we would experience mostly a floating sense of calm.
Lee was avoiding my gaze. He walked over to the bar, stood beside Blaze and downed a glass of water. River went to hug him. Blaze stood quietly beside the two siblings, staring at the wooden surface of the countertop. I heard people murmuring around us. Matthew examined the stranger on the floor. Sherry started collecting information from the people who stayed at the pub. Names. ID numbers. Contact information.
“You get it?” River was saying to Lee, her voice loud enough to be heard over the crowd’s murmurs. “We’re talking monumental collaboration here. Like with the KKK.”
“That makes no sense,” Lee replied. “Back home it’s a movement that sprang out of the craziness of’65. Here it’s something new.”
“So they’re copying ideas that have already proven themselves,” Blaze said, reason suddenly dissipating his fear. “Because I’m telling you, these Sons of Simeon weren’t around when I left.”
Of course they’d been around. But when we were young they were only active in the settlements, places where there was little to no enforcement anyway. They pervaded central Israel when I was studying at university. I had a vivid memory of my conversation with Ivy about them, when she spoke of a new, clean world, one that had true equality. She almost managed to convince me to join. “They’re just trying to make the world better,” she said, “just look at their vision, feel a bit of what they’re offering.” But Daphne had warned me that it was a decision from which there was no going back. The more I thought of Ivy, the angrier I became. If Blaze and River were right, the Sons of Simeon weren’t only killing us in order to fulfill their damuses’ vision, but also using moodies to make sure their murderers couldn’t be found, as if we were in the Middle Ages.
The Heart of the Circle Page 18