Sleight

by Tom Twitchel

  It seemed as though pieces of my world that I’d been working at keeping separate were beginning to intersect. Talia showing up at the cafeteria, the secrets about my past, all of the pressures were overlapping. Knack life, home life, past life, social life. All of them tangled up and choking me.

  My head felt as though it was going to explode.

  I walked to the bus stop in a daze, wanting nothing more than a nap. The dusting of snow on my jacket started to melt when I got on the bus. Puddles of water dotted the steps and floor. Swinging into a seat I scooted over to the window and stared out. The snow was definitely sticking.

  The bus jerked to a stop and shook me out of my daze. Snow was now falling in thick flurries that made it difficult to see. There is funny aspect about a change of weather in the Pacific Northwest: a significant change in the weather is really cool until it isn’t convenient. Then people get a little goofy. As I got off the people around me hurried, slipping and sliding with irritated looks on the faces, running off to wherever it was they were going.

  Flipping the collar of my jacket up to keep the snow from falling down my neck, I hunched and walked to the pawnshop entrance.

  And immediately noticed a difference. The neon sign was on and reading ‘open’. Smiling in spite of Kayla’s ambush and my fatigue, I walked in and saw Mr. Goodturn behind the counter, tinkering with an antique toy. The familiar scene clashed with all that had gone on since the last time I had seen him in his shop. And this will sound crazy, but it smelled alive. It felt alive with him in it. My bad mood was swept away in an instant.

  “Ah, Benjamin. Good afternoon. I’m glad you got back before the storm socks us in,” he smiled at me over the rims of his glasses.

  “It is so good to see you in here,” I said. “I felt pretty guilty for not opening the shop last week.”

  “Not to worry. Pawnshops are the last things a young man should be worrying about while he is matriculating and dealing with the weighty issues of growing up.”

  I shrugged my backpack off, and set it on the floor. Leaning on the counter I sighed. “Mr. Goodturn, I still have a lot to talk about with you.”

  Putting down the pliers he’d been using he wiped his hands on a cloth and cocked his head.

  “Our doings with the other side of the knack community are troubling you?” he asked.

  I nodded. ‘Yeah, and other stuff. I just need to talk to someone about it. To you”

  “I understand. Let me wrap up a few things here and we’ll chat.”

  “Okay, thanks. I’m going upstairs to check on Justine,” I said.

  “Oh, Miss Winters left about an hour ago. Constance was going to drive her downtown to her car, and then follow her home.”

  “She was okay to go home? Drive her own car?” I asked.

  “I doubt she will be engaging in any strenuous activity, at least I would hope not, but her recuperative knack is a marvel. Constance was impressed with her resilience and healing ability.”

  “Is anyone else upstairs?” I asked.

  Pushing his glasses back in place he shook his head. “No. Breno is back in his apartment. Preston is out...attending to details. Brock is still sleeping. With the old place empty I wanted to be back in the middle of my trinkets and tchotskes.”

  I shivered as some snow found its way down the back of my jacket and under my shirt. “Well, if nobody’s up there I’ll just hang out here and wait for you.”

  “That won’t take much time at all,” he said, wiping his hands on a rag. “I’m finished with this piece. Let me just lock up.”

  I smiled, knacked the door-lock and telekinetically yanked the cord on the neon.

  He looked up at me over the rims of his glasses. “You’re getting quite comfortable with your knacks. And you have acquitted yourself well in times of stress.”

  Times of stress. I thought back to early November. I’d stumbled back home in a panic to warn Mr. Goodturn that Sonja had been renting an apartment from him without his knowledge. When I’d found him I’d thought he was dead. It had been one dark shard in a day with many.

  “Mr. Goodturn, how did Sonja surprise you the day I got kidnapped? How did it happen?”

  He rubbed his cheek, where light stubble made a papery sound against his fingers. “Ah, that. She had help. I would have sensed her if she had approached me herself. The two hoodlums that took you and Miss Winters surprised me as I was locking up. It went badly from there.”

  Badly from there. Like so many of the things that had been happening lately. What would slip next?

  “I’m sorry. I never got to say that to you. I should have been here. I avoided you and I screwed up.”

  “Benjamin, I’m the one to blame. I should have brought you deeper into my confidence, to better prepare you. To protect you. I am so thankful that you were not injured, but now...now you are at the threshold. The next steps you decide to take will define who you are, not just in the human world, but within the knacked world. And it will not be an easy or painless journey.”

  The scene from Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, where Yoda has just laid it out for Luke came to mind. Luke, the idealist and at that point, the optimist, had said ‘I’m not afraid’. Well, I wasn’t feeling that.

  I was afraid.

  SIXTY-FIVE: THE THREE MONKEYS

  HE HOPPED OFF his stool and waddled back to his office. I followed him and a weird sense of nostalgia washed over me. The circumstances were different but the setting was just like the first time we had started to share our secrets.

  When we’d taken our seats, him in the wooden office chair, me in the ancient metal folding chair, he gave me a weary smile.

  “It has been a long and winding road that brought us to this point Benjamin. How are you?”

  I almost laughed at the simple question. I knew that he was being ironic.

  How was I? “Not great,” I said. “I’m struggling with everything that’s going on and I feel...I feel like I’m losing myself. Who I am and what I stand for.”

  He squinted at me. “This is the conversation we need to have. And I want to preface the discussion by saying that you will need to take time in deciding how you truly feel about what we talk about today. Let’s start with what’s on your mind shall we?” he stated.

  Where to start? I started rambling. Maddy coming to town, Baffle in trouble and what I’d done to put him there, my concern for Justine, Constance’s relationship with me and my mother, but most of all, the big issue, where did I belong in the bizarre struggle we were engaged in? How could we justify what we’d done to the Shades, who despite what they were doing, were real people, not some abstract monsters?

  “That’s quite a bit to take in,” he said, taking his glasses off and wiping them on his shirt. “Let an old man try to piece that together. Baffle, he is a concern. Whether your solution was the right way to go about dealing with him or not, it is done now. You can’t retreat. You’ll need to see it through even if that means coming forward with what you know.”

  What I knew. Baffle had planned on killing Mr. Conroy and blowing up a gym full of people.

  He stared owlishly at me as he put his thick glasses back on. “As to young Miss McIntyre that is a wonderful problem. You’re so young Benjamin. Your life is going to be so different ten years from now, and even more so in another ten. And so it will be for Madison. You’ve already brought her into your confidence. You’ve tried to protect her and been somewhat successful, but at some point, like Miss Winters, she will make decisions on her own that you can’t control and that is the difficulty. So it is more than just young love. It is about consequences.”

  “How can I live my life worrying about every possibility? It’s like the old thing my mom used to say about possibly breaking your neck in the shower so why bother getting out of bed. She called it being too paralyzed to live,” I said.

  “Just so,” he said. “Letting her know how you feel is, I think, a good thing. You’ll regret it if you don’t. But be careful ho
w much you share with her about what has been happening. You can’t take that back.”

  Thinking about how telling Maddy how I felt about her made me feel queasy. “What if she doesn’t feel the same?”

  He smiled at me and cocked his head to one side. “Better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.”

  Tennyson? Really? I made a face.

  “Benjamin, I don’t know what she has been doing for the last several weeks, but I believe what I believe.” He patted the arms of his chair.

  My hands were sweaty and my stomach was rumbling. I was worried about broaching another big topic. “I snuck into your room. It was a night when Constance and Breno were—working over you.”

  Nodding, he leaned back. “Ah. And you saw things that made you curious. Things that involved my three little friends.”

  His reference to the monkey clock made gooseflesh break out on my arms. “The clock, it glowed. Constance drew something from the clock, but Breno was like the pipeline, a conduit,” I said.

  “And you wish to know the secret of the three monkeys.” He folded his hands over his belly. “I will tell you a little, and at some point I may do more than that. The clock contains a piece of me. A physical piece. I have slowed it with my knack so that even though it is apart from my body it still lives. Breno contains a piece of my knack, a very, very small piece. With the help of a gifted healer, the three can combine to reverse catastrophic physical damage or illness that befalls me. The event you witnessed has only occurred a few times before, each instance dragging me back from the abyss. You see, even though I am very old, I still cherish life, and have more to do before I pass.”

  “A piece of you? Part of your knack? How did you—”

  Raising a hand he clucked his tongue. “Ah. Some details are still best left to the future.”

  It sounded more like voodoo than knack magic. I wondered at the connectivity of our knacks with the history of superstitions and legends. Where did the exaggeration begin, and the reality leave off? He had firmly chosen to shut down discussion of the topic, but I had another question that had been weighing on me.

  “What about wiping out the memories of all the Shades? You said you’d done it before when Danton asked you. How do we reconcile that with trying to do right?” I asked.

  “Ah, Benjamin. Why do people put down a dog or a horse that is so sick or injured that it is a kindness? When an animal is rabid it is destroyed.”

  A shiver ran up my spine. “We’re not talking about animals, we’re talking about people. Murderers are put in jail, they aren’t always sentenced to death.”

  “Yes, that’s true, but I stand by my analogy. What would happen if Sonja or Irena Weller were put on trial? The first problem would be the details of whatever charges were brought against them. It would require a public acceptance of the knack world. But for the sake of argument let us say that they were tried and convicted. What then? They would prove difficult to hold. And what if their powers were detected? Would they be experimented upon? Used as tools? I dare say that my way is by far the most humane approach, perhaps too altruistic, if Sonja’s exploits are any standard by which to judge.”

  The intelligence of his argument was hard to debate but I was still struggling.

  “But we decide. You decide. I make decisions about using my abilities. Who holds us accountable? When do we cross over an invisible line that makes us as bad as them?”

  He closed his eyes for a few seconds. When he opened them he gave me a small smile.

  “Benjamin, those questions, your heart, are why I care so much about you. It took me decades to arrive at a philosophy that I could live with and be content. Those are the questions. I can’t choose for you. Only for myself. I won’t stand by again and watch the rise of an unrestrained megalomaniac. I won’t fail society that way. And I won’t fail myself. In the end we must keep our own counsel.”

  The reference to his unsuccessful attempt at ending Hitler’s command of the Third Reich made me feel cold inside. He believed that his lack of follow through had caused tens of millions of deaths. So did that mean we should be hopping a plane and start assassinating terrorist leaders throughout the world? It gave me a headache just trying to understand our place in the world. I decided to turn the conversation in another direction.

  “Kenwoode talked about you and him on the East Coast. You were called...Weller said that people called you...” I was having trouble saying it out loud.

  He grimaced. “The Mad Dwarf?”

  I nodded. “Kenwoode said you were waging a war against the Shades.”

  “That would be hyperbole to make whatever point he was discussing with you. What I did back east is a closed chapter. I am not unrepentant but I also make no apologies. Or explanations. To you and certainly not to Preston.”

  “You told me that Kenwoode was trustworthy though, but I know he’s done things, hidden things, that are sketchy. Why should I trust him?” I asked.

  He bobbed his head. “You shouldn’t.” He saw my look of confusion. “Oh, there are things where he can be counted on and trusted. But in a vacuum he will make his own choices and look to no one but himself for validation.”

  “But—”

  “Benjamin. Let me paint this more clearly. When you understand someone’s motivations, their code of ethics, it is a valuable predictor of their future actions. It makes them dependable within that context. But the parameters change related to the individual and a set of circumstances. Within our needs and challenges I see Preston’s participation as worth the risk. To put it simply: I know him.”

  I shook my head. “What he did to Constance, hiding his telepathy from me, that’s dishonest.”

  “To you. Based upon one point of reference. Constance. There are many threads in their shared history and while I abhor what Preston did, Constance ignored predictors and frankly doesn’t know as much as she thinks she does. If you try to domesticate a wild animal and it eventually bites you, who is to blame? As to his being guarded about sharing his knacks, that is everyone’s personal choice and he is more secretive than most. I believe his metamorphosis bothers him. He doesn’t like it. He uses it as a means to an end but I am sure he would give it away for another talent.”

  Trust him, don’t trust him. Sometimes yes, sometimes no. I guess it was true whenever you needed to count on someone, but to me it seemed too great a risk when it came to Kenwoode.

  “The animal analogy doesn’t work for me. He’s a person. He knows the difference between right and wrong. He used Constance. He let her believe that he had feelings for her and took advantage.”

  He dropped his chin on his chest and let out a long breath. “Benjamin, I’ve heard that story and some of what Preston did was indefensible. Yes, he’s a thinking man, but men make poor choices all the time. And so do women.”

  Another thought occurred to me. “Why is he so focused on battling the Shades? It’s like an obsession.”

  He rubbed his chin. “Yes, that is an accurate assessment. The answer to that is the product of a number of problems that Preston dealt with over the years. Suffice it to say that he believes that he needs to atone for working with them in the past, and that individuals in the Shade community have cost him dearly. An incident when I rescued him, involved a Shade individual attempting to exact retribution for the perception of Preston’s change of colors. The situation did not endear people with Shade affiliations to Preston, and he lost someone dear to him. The Shades, and individuals in their fold are his White Whale.”

  “Why would you bring him here to help you recover then? Knowing what you know, he seems undependable.”

  “Quite the contrary. Knowing him I had complete confidence that he would do exactly as was necessary to aid my rehabilitation. And he owed me a debt.”

  It was becoming clear that I wasn’t going to change his perspective.

  “So what do we do next?”

  “Ah, that is the rub. Preston is hoping to uncover the individual we
have referred to as the Master Shade. When we identify that person we will neutralize him, or her, and for a time, buy some peace.”

  “What if—”

  The bell on the front door jingled, and through the two-way mirror, I saw Sawyer walk in.

  I have to admit I wasn’t thrilled to see him.

  It didn’t help that Talia was right behind him.

  SIXTY-SIX: CONNECTING A THREAD

  MY CONVERSATION WITH Mr. Goodturn ground to a halt as soon as they entered the store. Sawyer pocketed what looked like a set of lock picks, and they closed the door behind them. Eyes darting around the interior of the pawnshop, Sawyer walked warily toward the office. Everything about him radiated fear and suspicion. I figured he’d earned that. Wearing what he always wore, corduroy pants, black on black shirt and coat, stood out in stark contrast to the dusting of snow on his beanie and the shoulders of his jacket.

  Talia was wearing a heavy parka that bulged at the back, probably hiding her wing contraption. She pushed back the fur-lined hood, snow falling onto the floor.

  We got up and walked out of the office, causing them to stop. They peered over the counter and glanced at the rear sections of the shop. Clearly they were spooked and worried about getting jumped.

  “Benjamin and I are the only ones present. Please, Benjamin, if you would, re-lock the front door,” said Mr. Goodturn.

  Remaining where I was I used my knack to flip the deadbolt. I even flipped the ‘open’ sign over so that it read ‘closed’ on the side that faced the street. Sometimes it’s the little things that make you smile, but this didn’t seem like the time or place to indulge in knack-pride.

  Sawyer bounced from one foot to the other. “Mr. Goodturn, sir, I’m so sorry. I take responsibility for whatever I’ve done that caused problems for you. I was worried about my sister. No excuse, but that’s the truth. I got Benny’s text. Is Brin okay?”

  “Did you just fly in? Where’s your broom?” I asked Talia snarkily.