by Jenn Stark
“I think they’re following orders.” Luc shrugged. “They had two very special patients who disappeared. Bad business to let slip that happened. Bad form for Interpol to admit they had the children under surveillance without the knowledge of local police. You are not making any friends with them, eh? But they will never come clean.”
“And as far as they know, we had nothing to do with it.”
Luc made a quintessentially French face and lifted both hands. “This is true. They believe you are in Las Vegas. It would not be so difficult to ensure they continue to think this, no?”
“No, not difficult,” Simon put in. He had his laptop out next to his platter of croissants, and in his tee shirt, jeans, and flip-flops, he could have been any hipster twenty-something surfing the Internet in a coffee bar. “I’ve forged a flight manifest, inserted images of you into the airport camera banks at appropriate times, and checked you back into the Palazzo. Other than actually laying eyes on you, there’s no way to tell you’re not in Vegas.”
Okay, maybe not any twenty-something. “Unless they’re in Vegas as well.”
“They aren’t.” He shook his head. “Their flight landed in New York, and they’ve not booked outbound flights or secured hotel reservations for the night.”
“Safe house?” Nigel asked.
“Or some other official digs that are off the radar screen. I have monitors set up to alert me of their data-accessing activities, and we can bug ’em if that fails, once we locate them again.”
I nodded. It was the best we were going to be able to do until I figured out what it was they thought I knew. And with Simon now part of our crew, there was no way I was meeting with any members of the House of Swords while I remained in this house. The others seemed to hold the same understanding. The Arcana Council had helped us out of a major problem, but there was no illusion as to the reason why. Simon could watch and report much more easily from the inside than the outside.
Still, while he was here…
I swiveled in my bar seat. “What do you know about the technoceutical industry?”
“About as much as you do,” he said, shrugging. “Started somewhere mid-twentieth century in earnest, though there certainly had been glimmers of it before. Like most things, started with the elite, the one percenter Connecteds, a way to make the top dogs that much more alpha. Gradually, the mid-level dogs wanted to taste the front of the pack as well, and with the knowledge that it could be done came plenty of money and interest in getting it done. Now it’s pretty much a round-the-world enterprise.”
“Is the Council tracking the sales of it?”
“Not really.” Simon delivered this information so off-handedly, I wondered if he was lying. A quick glance to Nigel showed the British operative was also watching the Fool intently. “I mean, sure, we care if the dark practitioners are getting too engaged with it, if someone really starts to push things too far. But ultimately, we stay out of the trade unless someone’s about to commit genocide.”
“And has that happened, this genocide by pill?” Luc asked, his French voice flat with deceptive calm.
“Not on my watch,” Simon said, shaking his head. “There was some pretty terrible stuff that went down at the time of the Second World War, to hear Armaeus talk. But it got stamped down and swept under the rug of Nazi experimentation during the Holocaust. After that, the technoceutical market went underground again. It’s only reemerged within the last ten years.”
“With Gamon at its head,” I put in.
“One of its heads.” Simon once again seemed a little too cheerfully free with his information. “It’s a Hydra. Mercault dabbles in the sale of it, not the production. You dabble in the production and distribution of it—well, Soo did, but still. There are half a dozen other guys who either produce, distribute, or sell—let alone use the stuff.”
That caught my attention. “Who uses?”
“Mercault, for one. Not a lot, but he definitely augments. It’s too hard for him not to have access to the same psychic abilities some of his lowest lieutenants take for granted. But he’s a bit player, and his usage is controlled.” Simon shrugged. “We don’t know the others, haven’t tracked them, but they’re out there. There’s too much high-grade tech on the market that suddenly is off the market, the trail going cold too quickly. Almost like the dealers know we’re poking around.”
“But they can’t.”
“Well, they could, but if they were that good, they wouldn’t be hiding in the shadows. They’d be hammering on our front doors, looking to knock us off our perch.”
I frowned. “Have you ever gotten hold of the highest-grade technoceuticals?” I broadened my gaze to include Nigel and Luc and Ma-Singh as well. All of them shook their heads.
“Well, that’s got to be the trail, right?” I asked. “If we figure out who’s buying the highest-level drugs, we’ll likely find ourselves in front of one of the other Houses, or worse, one of the other groups out there looking to take down either the Houses or the Council.”
“Could be Gamon,” offered Nigel.
“No.” I shook my head. “She manufactures. She has her own supply line.”
“Unless that supply line is for less august consumption, and she’s looking to cultivate more specialized drugs for a more specialized clientele.”
I blew out a long breath. He had a point. “But Gamon is in the wind. We can’t track her. So we’re back to running down the highest-end producers.” I turned to Simon. “You said you—”
At that moment, Father Jerome stepped into the kitchen. “Sara,” he said quietly. “The children have awakened. They… I think you should come.”
We all stood, none of us willing to miss this showdown with the feral beasts. I was almost excited, until I realized I was the one going into the ring with them. Grimacing, I followed Ma-Singh out the door, his bulk reassuringly solid. He wouldn’t let those kids bite me, I was almost certain.
The priest took us once more down the long hallway, but once through the large metal door, he took another door immediately to the right. “We thought it best, based on what you said, that we not place the newcomers with our current patients. Their volatility might not be ideal.”
“Volatility,” I echoed. “They were volatile to you?”
“They were—upset. We sedated them and spoke to them briefly before the drugs took hold, but I’m not sure how much they understood.”
“They tell you anything before they went night-night?”
“No,” Father Jerome sighed. He shot me a glance. “They did seem to know about your work with Mr. Friedman, however. His injuries.”
“His…” I frowned at Nigel. Nigel frowned back. “I thought they were passed out.”
“They seem to believe it was some sort of dream or waking trance. Seeing the two of you together may elicit a response.”
“It sure did the first time,” I said wryly.
The holding cells for the teens were more glassed-in bedrooms, and for a moment, I felt sorry for them. How long had they been under constant supervision? What had their lives been like before the dark practitioners had come for them?
In the rooms, the teens were awake, dressed no longer in their hospital gowns but in far more typical attire—leggings and a long tunic for the girl, shiny knee-length shorts and a tee shirt for the boy. They both looked up as we crossed in front of their windows. If I expected them to come hurtling against the wall like alien predators, well…who could blame me?
But they didn’t move, merely watched as Father Jerome led us past the bedrooms to a sitting room through a set of heavy doors. As interrogation rooms went, it was rather nice. A long couch, several plush upholstered easy chairs, a wet bar with stools.
Nigel headed straight for the bar. “Tell me this is stocked.” Simon was right behind him.
“Of course,” the priest said. “If you’ll make yourself comfortable, I’ll open the doors to the children’s suites, after locking these. Understood?”
&nbs
p; His meaning couldn’t be more clear. He considered the children dangerous, and to protect the rest of his charges, they wouldn’t be getting out into the main corridor. And while we were with them, we wouldn’t be getting out either.
Without waiting for our nods, Father Jerome strode over to the wall, accompanied by one of his team. They split off to each side of the main door and keyed in codes on the matching iridescent keypads. A section of the wall gave way, revealing not so hidden doors, which they swung open.
“Should we, um, have other people here?” I asked.
“We’ll be fine.” Father Jerome’s voice was firm, cheerful. I edged forward as I heard a second door open, then conversation.
But something was…odd about that conversation. I frowned and looked at Nigel. “Are they laughing?”
He was also focused on the far doors. “They are, and not in the same Village of the Damned effect they had before. Promising.”
We didn’t have time to speculate further as Father Jerome brought the children into the room. I gaped. These really did seem to be children, now that they were closer, not teens at all—despite their tall willowy forms and angular features. They stood close to each other, like they were best friends or brother and sister, and their forlorn nervousness only accentuated their pale, pale features. As one, they scanned the room; then their gazes lit on me.
“Pére Jerome, oui! La!” The girl burst forward with a happy laugh and tugged her —brother? Friend? Symbot?—along with her, closer to our assembled group. She chattered in a nonstop stream of French, sounding more relieved than anything.
“What in the…” Nigel leaned forward, and I rapped him on the shoulder.
“Translate,” I demanded.
“She’s saying she saw you save my life, that you were an angel, a real angel, and that you’d saved her and her brother.” He slanted a glance at me. “That’s her brother, by the way. Anton.”
“Great. Saved them from what?”
But Nigel waved me off and focused more intently on the children. Father Jerome got them settled on the couch and offered them sealed cans of soda. They appeared relieved at the option to open the liquid themselves, but they looked at each other as if for mutual approval. They’d been drugged before, clearly. Hell, we’d drugged them.
I was suddenly not feeling too good about that, but then again, they’d been decidedly different in the bunker below the hospital. These…well, these kids were simply kids.
That realization made me straighten on the couch. The priest turned to us. “Anton and Juliet have been through a terrible shock, but I told them you needed their help. As long as you’re able to ask them questions that don’t cause them too much distress…”
“Why were you in that hospital?” I asked bluntly.
Nigel shot me a startled look, and Father Jerome frowned, then turned back to the children with a beatific smile. He repeated my question in French, and my brows shot up. They’d spoken English in the hospital. Nigel’s patent surprise conveyed I hadn’t misremembered that. English. And decidedly creepy English at that.
The children looked at each other, and the girl’s lower lip quivered. The boy squeezed her hand and spoke to Jerome again.
Father Jerome turned slightly, but surprise was evident on his face as well. I knew what he was going to say before he spoke. “They don’t remember.”
“They don’t remember speaking English either?”
I wanted to think the children were lying, but their pain and confusion was too fraught, their desire to please too obvious. Jerome asked the question in French, then English, and the boy’s face brightened.
“We do not know English well,” he said carefully, as if the phrase was well practiced. He faced me. “But we want to learn!”
I nodded. “Where are you from?”
“Tarare,” they both said at once. The boy faltered and turned to Jerome, who translated his rushed words.
“He said they were from near the city of Tarare, but their school was very good, believed it was important to teach languages. When the pair turned fifteen, however, their parents took them out of school—to homeschool, they said. No reason was given. They’ve worked with their parents ever since, and Christmas is coming.” The priest’s face collapsed into a sad smile. “They think they’ll return to their school friends after the winter break.”
“Christmas?” I frowned. The room where we were, where the children were lodged within the château, of course had no windows. There’d been no windows in the basement either. But it wasn’t Christmas outside; it was late summer.
I glanced at Nigel. “Were Marguerite and Roland lying? Have they had these kids that long?”
“Not at that hospital,” Luc put in. “The young orderly you met, Charles—he was quite clear. The children came no more than two weeks ago, and that’s when the guard shifts started. No longer, he was sure of it.
“But then how…Christmas,” I said.
The answer, of course, was clear—a memory wipe. But who’d done the honors?
I sighed. “Would the kids mind if I came toward them?” I asked Father Jerome. “I don’t want to scare them.”
Remembering their attack on Nigel and me not ten hours earlier, it was surreal to even ask the question. But Jerome put it to his young charges, then turned back to me. “Of course,” he said. “They saw you heal Nigel. They think you can heal them as well.”
I winced but stood and crossed the room toward the children. When I reached them, I dropped down into a crouch. A faint unease still crawled up my back, remembered fear. But it was definitely only remembered. These children…
I took their hands in mine and squeezed. They both looked at me with expressions of hope and possibility, as if finally, here, they would get the answers to their questions. Finally, here, they would understand.
“How are you feeling?” I asked softly, reaching out with my mind.
Theirs were open books—too open, frightfully so.
Father Jerome asked the question in French, and they answered in French, but I did not so much need to know what they were saying anymore. I focused on the lessons I’d learned from Armaeus and filtered my vision to see these two teens, not as boy and girl, but as matrixes of light and energy, an electrical grid where power burst and sputtered along beautiful, elegant lines. Their energy was strong and good, and surprisingly…fresh, I realized. As if it had been newly formed and set into place, a web of healing over damaged components.
Where those components hinged together, I saw the only form of weakness, and I probed there, gently—so gently—even as I spoke words I wasn’t tracking, mindless babble intended to soothe, to heal. And when the girl’s hand—the boy’s? I wasn’t sure. But when it tightened in momentary alarm, the slightest frisson of panic, then let me in…I knew I had the child, that all his or her secrets were now available to me.
This was what Armaeus had done to me so many times, I realized, while I was caught up in a haze of healing, too broken to care what he saw when he looked under the covers. This was how he’d seen into my mind, probing at the weakest points while sending me wave after wave of healing care. And this was how I could look into the poor, lost sections of the children’s minds as well. I could see what they had been, what had been done to them. Slowly, so achingly slowly, I withdrew at last to smile into their wide eyes.
And then I lied to them.
“It’s going to be better now,” I said, and to my surprise, Father Jerome did not have to translate this. I was speaking their language, that same language that had run riddles through their minds, leading me ever further into their secrets, their hopes, their pains, everything remembered and unremembered, formed and unformed. “It’s going to be better. You must sleep, and heal, and tell your parents you can return to your school and your classmates, that there’s nothing to fear anymore. No one will come for you. No one will hurt you.”
“Christmas,” whispered the girl, her eyes wide, and my heart seemed too big for my chest s
uddenly. I tried to pull my hands away, but they clutched at me, their smiles enormous, as if I had given them the very best gift in the world.
But this was nothing I’d done. Not this. Never this.
“You’ll be okay,” I said again, at a loss for better words.
Father Jerome helped me pull away from the children, talking with them all the while, soothingly, haltingly, until they followed him back into one of the rooms and the door eased shut behind him.
I stood and wheeled around, lifting my shaking hands to my face.
“What is it, Sara?” Nigel was on his feet, Ma-Singh as well, both of them bristling to fight a battle that had not yet announced itself. “What’s wrong? What was wrong with those children?”
“Nothing,” I said, shaking my head too quickly. I lifted my gaze to meet his, matching my horror to his confusion. “Nothing’s wrong with them. They’re just…” I swallowed. “They’re not Connected. Not anymore.”
Chapter Twelve
We left for Vegas the following morning.
I didn’t want to think any more about what I’d seen in Father Jerome’s interrogation study, but it wasn’t easy to put aside. We’d argued long into the night over it. The two children from Tarare had been Connected when we’d first encountered them. Their behavior notwithstanding, I’d touched them—they’d struck at me before they collapsed, and I’d decked the girl flat-out.
Still winced when I thought of that too.
But nothing had registered with me as odd in the hospital other than the obvious problem of children turning into miniature psychos, channeling demons or way too much screen time or hallucinogens or—something. Once inside their minds, I’d seen the history of them with the doctors, the shadowy figures who’d affixed the ankle bracelets, the Saint-Charles staff who’d fed them, bathed them, kept them moving. I’d seen further back, the hooded men who’d snatched them off the country road, injected them so, so many times…
I shuddered. For all the trauma they’d endured, however, those kids had been Connected when I’d found them in the hospital, there was no doubt of that.