“The feeling is…” I hesitated, and knew I was letting loose a little too much sarcasm, “…mutual.”
“I kinda doubt that.” He sat back down and pointed at the couch. “Have a seat.”
“Right here?” I pointed to the couch he indicated.
“Wherever,” he said with a slight shrug. Then, as if sensing that my immediate thought was that the bed back in my room seemed like a good option, he added, “In the office.”
I snapped my fingers theatrically. “Damn.” I sat on the couch and stared at him. He stared back, still wearing that smile.
“So. What do you want to talk about?”
“Oh, I don’t know. How about the season the Vikings are having?”
He raised an eyebrow. “You a sports fan?”
“Nah. I just thought it’d be more fun than what Ariadne wants us to talk about.”
“What do you think Ariadne wants us to talk about?” He gave me a shrewd look.
“This is gonna be a brutally long session if all you do is ask me questions every time I say things.” My eyes searched the walls for a clock.
“Why would you think that all I would do is ask questions?” His smile got broader. “Talk about anything you’d like, we’ll go from there.”
“Let’s talk about the Directorate. How long have you been here?”
He thought about it for a beat. “About three years.”
“How many doctors do they have on staff here? I mean, Perugini, Sessions, you…do they have a full-time herpetologist too?”
He nodded without any hint of levity. “For the reptile metas, sure.” After a moment in which I was sure he was dead serious, he laughed. “Kidding. I don’t know. I pay less attention to their staffing than I do to their staff.”
“And your job is to help them…” I tried to find a phrase that would fit and be insulting, but I failed, “…psychologically decompress?”
“That’s a part of what I do,” he said, his voice smooth. “Agents get put in stressful situations, they may have to use violence in their work, and it’s something that stays with them. Also, the metas we have here sometimes go through a rough transition. Though,” he said with a sense of irony, “usually not quite as rough as what’s happened to you.”
“I was gonna ask how you manage to keep any of them here if what happened to me was normal.”
“You probably know this, but what happened to you was not ‘normal,’” he said. “I’ve counseled a lot of metas who have come here after realizing that they won’t be able to fit in with their former lives the way they thought they could before. None of them have been attacked the way you were—hunted by a psychotic super-meta who wanted to capture you.”
“Kill me,” I said in a whisper. “He wanted to kill me. But not right away.”
He gave me a tight smile. “I heard, but it’d be indelicate of me to bring it up first. Still, I guess that makes you unique.”
“I’d settle for less unique. It’s probably less painful.”
“But you don’t get to choose, do you?” He leaned forward in his chair. “You’re a succubus, the first of your kind of meta that the Directorate has seen. Top of the power scale when it comes to your strength and speed, and you’ve been granted a different power than someone who could, say, affect the temperature in the room or breathe life into the dead or put someone to sleep with a song.”
“Different.” I squirmed on the couch, feeling a sudden desire to burrow into it, away from this conversation. “That’s one way to put it.”
“How would you put it?” The way he asked it was so smooth, so empathetic, that it touched a nerve in me and I didn’t try to dodge, I just answered.
“I would say…” I took a deep breath. “That I’ve been disconnected from people my whole life. First, because I was locked in a house with my mother, and now because I can’t touch anybody without killing them. That I’m doomed to go through life untouched, like a porcelain figurine set up on a high shelf, so fragile it might break if anyone were to take it out.” I tasted bitterness in my mouth. “Except I’m not the one that’s fragile. Everyone else is.”
He stared at me and then nodded, real slow. “I can see how you’d feel that way.” He paused, as though steeling himself. “Can I ask about your mother?”
“She’s missing.”
“That’s not what I was gonna ask.” He didn’t look away, even though I did. “If this is too deep for the first time we’ve talked, go ahead and stop me, okay? But I’ve heard rumors, and I’m wondering if they’re true. Did your mother beat you? Lock you in metal coffin?”
“Yes,” I said in a muted whisper, “that is too deep.”
“Okay.” He nodded, picking up a notebook and a pen. “How about this? Let’s go back to what you want to talk about.”
“Um. All right.” I thought about it. “Do you have to report everything I say to Ariadne and Old Man Winter?”
He smiled, but it was overly cool. “Professionally, that would be unethical. You and I are stepping into the territory of doctor and patient, which means that there’s confidentiality that extends to whatever we discuss in the course of that relationship. So, no—I’m not reporting to the higher-ups on what we talk about here, unless what we talk about here crosses the line—”
“Into something dangerous?” I asked, an odd sense of numbness falling upon me. “Into something threatening?”
“Exactly. Ariadne and Mr. Winter want to make sure that you’re mentally healthy.” His eyes were focused on me, but not in the uncomfortable way that Old Man Winter did. They were warm, and knowing, and that was why I couldn’t meet them. “I don’t think I’m revealing any big secrets when I say they have high hopes for you. The Directorate may be one of the only places you can safely exercise your powers in the world, that could give you a path, and some meaning if you wanted it.”
“They want me to join M-Squad.” I said it while looking at the laces of my shoes, studying a little piece of snow that had caught on the edge of the rubber sole and hadn’t quite melted yet.
“They see a path there for you.” He looked down at the notebook. “They see a natural fit with what your mother used to do in the old days for the Agency. From what I’ve heard, you have a certain fearless quality and tenacity that would serve you well in a variety of walks of life.”
My mouth felt dry. “What if I don’t know what walk of life I want to tread?”
He paused before answering. “Then I’d say you’re probably an eighteen-year-old.”
“I’m seventeen.”
He laughed, a low, quiet one that actually brought a smile to my face. “From what I’ve heard, you have a lot of confidence—a lot of brass, I’d say—in standing up to adults who seem like authority figures. Not mouthy, pointless defiance. Rebellion is a natural teenage quality, but most teens are not gonna confront a guy like Erich Winter about much of anything.”
He put down his pen and notebook on the table at his side and looked back at me. “You’ve got confidence in some areas that most others your age don’t. But here’s the thing about self-confidence: a lot of it comes from knowing who you are, and knowing that whatever problem that comes your way, you can solve it.” I looked up and met his gaze. “So do you know who you are?”
I cleared my throat before answering, and it still came out crackly. “Not really.”
He put his hands up. “There’s your answer. If you don’t know who you are, it’s kind of tough to know what you want, at least on more than a basic ‘eat-sleep-play’ level.”
“But wouldn’t you think…” I swallowed hard before continuing, “after all I’ve been through, especially with the changes and revelations lately that I might have a hard time with that? That I might struggle with who I am and what I want?”
He laughed. “God, I hope so. Otherwise I’d be worried. Metas and humans aren’t that different in a lot of the things they go through, but metas deal with their process of growing up differently when their powers start
to manifest. Every human struggles to find their place in the world. Sometimes you feel like you’re in control and in charge of your life and everything is grand. Other times you feel powerless and insignificant. If you didn’t experience these same feelings of grandeur and wonder and worry…you wouldn’t be human.” His skin crinkled around his eyes with his smile. “Whatever else you may be, meta and all that, you are human. And normal, for what you’ve been through.”
I felt a knot in my throat and a burning in my eyes. “I don’t feel normal.”
“Yeah,” Zollers said with a drawl. “That’s normal too.” He leaned forward, features animated. “You’ve been through hell and a little more, but no teenager knows what ‘normal’ is. So,” he finished with a smile, “in that regard you’re as ‘normal’ as anyone else your age. Hell, most adults feel that way too, just not as consistently. Now…do you have anything else you want to talk about?”
I opened up, a little at a time. I didn’t tell him everything (especially about Wolfe) but I did tell him a lot. An hour flew by as he asked me questions about life in our house, about being punished the way I was by Mom, about how I still missed her, even in spite of all that. About how I wanted some part of a normal life, or at least what I envisioned as a normal life in my TV-influenced brain.
I got close to letting it all go, but I just couldn’t. I let him know more than almost anyone, which wasn’t saying much, but there was something else, something below the surface that I couldn’t define, and I wanted to keep it that way. For now, at least.
When I left, it was with another appointment scheduled for a couple of days later. I walked out of the doctor’s office feeling much different than when I had gone in, lighter, somehow. As much as Zack wanted to talk to me, I couldn’t have felt comfortable telling him even half the stuff I had talked to Dr. Zollers about. And I still hadn’t told him the worst of it.
The sky was slightly brighter when I walked back outside, though there was still no break in the clouds. In spite of it, I could see the lightness in the sky where the sun must be hiding, and felt the slight creep of a smile at the corner of my lips as I trod across the salted sidewalks, back to the dormitory I was calling home.
Chapter 9
“You should try the bacon-wrapped dates.” Zack wore a smile as he extended the plate toward me. I looked at it with hesitation born of my confusion at the word date (again) but I grabbed one of the little delicacies from the plate and tentatively put it in my mouth. I was rewarded with a lovely tang followed by a sweetness. I felt like it was a little symphony being played on my tongue, and I couldn’t have been happier about it, although I did have a brief vision of Zack wrapped in bacon that I shook out of my head to the sound of Wolfe’s laughter.
We were in a restaurant at the mall; an Italian place with an Italian-sounding name, lots of warm wood finishes, smooth tableclothes, and the smell of the freshly baked bread lingered in the air, enticing me. I picked up a slice from the table and dipped it into the plate of olive oil and parmesan cheese our waitress had made before I took a bite. Heavenly.
“I take it this isn’t how you ate at home?” Zack’s smile had morphed into a full-blown grin. Outside, the last light of day was shining in through the external windows of the restaurant. It was built into the side of the mall, which I hadn’t walked through yet. I felt a buzz of excitement to be able to explore when I finished eating. It was one of the best dinners I’d ever had and we weren’t yet past the appetizers and bread. Hell, I’d never even had a meal with an appetizer course before. Fancy.
“Lots of ramen noodles, some TV dinners, occasionally hamburgers made in a skillet,” I said. “I think Mom attempted turkey once, with tragic consequences for the bird and us.”
He made a face. “Sounds tiring, eating the same thing over and over.” He grabbed a bacon-wrapped date by the skewer and popped it into his mouth as I devoured another. “Pace yourself. You’ll want to leave room for dessert.”
“I don’t know where I’ll find room for that.”
But I did. After my steak, I had some of the chocolate cake. It was richer than any Mom had ever brought home (on the rare occasions she brought one home). When I was done, I felt fuller than maybe I ever had. “I think you’re glowing a little bit,” Zack said.
I smiled back at him, a long, lazy one. “I’m surprised I don’t feel sick after all that food.” I paused for a beat. “And I’m not surprised I feel better.”
“Yeah, Doc Zollers does wonders for people.” He looked around. “Want to go for a walk? You probably have a meta-strength metabolism to keep you thin but I promise you, my physique doesn’t come without a ridiculous amount of work.”
I tried not to stare at his body because I already knew it was good. Instead I focused on his eyes. “A walk sounds like a good idea.”
He paid for the meal and we left, walking outside until we reached the “official” entrance to the mall. A massive bookstore was to my left, and shops were clustered on my right down either side of a long hallway. We walked along, oddly silent, though I kept looking at him out of the corner of my eye. Every once in a while, I’d catch him looking back, and like a chicken, would pretend I was looking past him at something else.
It wasn’t hard to pretend that, actually. The stores were a barrage of colors, lights, and products that I’d seen advertised on TV but had never laid eyes on in real life. I stopped at the first of the clothing boutiques; there was a plastic figure, life sized, with no features, wearing clothing in the window. I frowned at it. The dress it was wearing was black and sheer with a low cut neckline and a high hemline.
“Nice dress.” Zack’s voice had a far-off quality to it.
“I agree. But what’s that it’s on?” I studied the plastic creation, as though I could discern what it was just by staring.
“Haven’t you ever seen a mannequin before?”
“No. What is it?”
“You know,” he said. “Fake people.”
“Like Southern Californians?”
He laughed and I gave up. I’d heard of mannequins before, but I couldn’t recall ever seeing one on TV. We walked past a store filled with mobile phones and I had to curb an impulse to run inside and snatch one up to fiddle with it. Sure, I’d seen people in the Directorate use them, but to me they were still something out of fantasy. We hadn’t even had a regular phone at home.
We rode an escalator up to the second floor where the movie theater was. The box office had a short line in front of it, and movie posters were plastered into frames on the walls on either side of us. Behind us was an opening that looked down on the first level of the mall and across the wide space to the walkway opposite. Intriguing smells wafted over to me: popcorn from the movie theaters, and from the food court behind us the scent of burgers, Chinese food, and maybe hot dogs; I wasn’t sure.
We’d decided in advance what to see, and I heard Zack buy two tickets as I continued to look around, mesmerized by the sights, sounds, and smells that were all around me.
I was staring at an ice cream stand when a flash of dark hair across the gap caught my attention. A woman had been standing at the railing, and I hadn’t noticed her until she moved. Her hair was long, like mine, dark and stretching down around her shoulder blades, and for some reason it looked wild and unkempt to me. She was close to middle age, wore a red dress, shorter than the black one I’d seen before and cut lower at the neck. She turned and I saw her profile. My heart jackhammered at the sight of her, the realization.
It was Mom.
Chapter 10
I was moving the moment it hit me, my feet pounding along the floor. I jumped to the railing and leapt across the wide gulf that separated one side of the second floor from the other. I landed, feeling the pressure of the impact run through my knees and ankles, but I felt no pain in spite of having cracked my foot earlier in the day. The woman in red turned, only a few feet in front of me, and her eyebrow raised when she saw me breathing heavily from the exertion of my runnin
g leap.
It wasn’t Mom.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to scare you.” My mind was racing. From a distance, she had seemed like a dead ringer. Up close, it was obvious that it wasn’t Mom. “I thought you were…someone else.” Mom never wore makeup; this woman’s eyes and cheeks were covered in it, giving me the impression that she was fighting the clock with everything she had, even though she was still pretty. Also, I was a little surprised by her lack of a coat given the weather—even more so by the dress.
Her eyes were cool, and she looked around, as though she were trying to decide where I had come from. They froze on my cheek as Zack ran up behind me. She stared at him, then back at me, with eyes that were filled with a sort of concern. “Did he do that?” She pointed at my cheek and I remembered that I had a bruise from my fight earlier.
“What? No,” I said with a little laugh. “He didn’t hurt me. He couldn’t.”
“Oh,” she said. “Sorry I’m not who you thought I was.” She turned to walk away. I watched her go, noticed the sway of her hips, and wondered what kind of a man would be attracted to a woman so obviously starved for attention.
There was a hum from the crowd gathered around me; people were talking, those that had seen my jump, low, muttered voices of incredulity. I think I heard someone mutter, “PCP.”
“Way to stay nonchalant.” Zack eased up beside me. He watched her go, his eyes never moving off her backside and answering my internal question about what kind of man would be attracted to her. The looks of others as she moved through the crowd provided more clarity; apparently, any man with a heartbeat. I looked down at my simple turtleneck and jeans with my new heavy coat. Practical, I supposed, especially for the girl who kills with a touch—but not likely to generate the kind of attention she was getting. “What is she wearing?” I said it mostly to myself.
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