“But what if you had been wrong? What if you waited too long?”
She gave me a kindly smile. “Then you and I would not be sitting here sharing this delightful meal. We can discuss this in more depth at another time, Kinzie. For now, we must move on.”
Mel scooted her plate away and placed her coffee cup in front of her. A moment later, the server reappeared and filled the cup, then silently left again. Once the door was closed, Mel continued on to her overview of the history and policy subjects she hoped to cover over winter break, but my mind lingered on the discussion we’d just left. If adepts could have stopped the brinksmanship that nearly destroyed the world, why hadn’t they? Delaying seemed reckless at best.
Mel glanced at the clock on the wall. Over two hours had passed since I entered this room. “I’m afraid that is all we have time for today, Kinzie.” She dabbed her mouth with her napkin before setting it on the table. “I have a meeting I must attend. I will have Brenda come for you.”
Out of respect, I rose as the older woman did and remained standing until she glided out of the room. When I sat back down, I grabbed another sticky bun, thinking over what I’d just learned. Rothston’s power was impressive. Adepts had saved the world from nuclear annihilation. But they’d failed in Rwanda. Had they simply waited too long before stepping in? And what about the other man-made tragedies throughout history. The Holocaust? And Darfur? Or Waco? Had they tried to intervene? Had something gone wrong? And maybe there were other catastrophes that never happened – that I had no reason to know might have happened – that they had prevented. And could they do other things – like force funding for the research into life-saving drugs even if there wasn’t a profit in it? This place could do so much good, and the possibilities seemed endless. And if they could do things like that, I wanted to be part of it.
ψ
I squinted at the map on the desk. The Rothston Institute was made up of three secondary buildings connected underground to the main one, which had several wings itself. It was going to take me some time to learn my way around, but I loved exploring on my own so that was good. Even if every adept in the country were here, the maze of identical stone and slate corridors would never be crowded. And now, with only the middle school and high school kids here, as well as a few dozen adults, the place felt empty. I liked that. No crowds here.
A knock rapped on the door of the room Brenda had given me. An older student’s room, she had called it when she’d unlocked the door and handed me the key, but it certainly wasn’t anything like any dorm room I’d ever seen. Sasha’s muffled voice sounded through the door. “Kinzie? Are you ready?”
“Hang on,” I called back, rising from my study of the map. I opened the backpack I’d thrown on the four-poster bed, searching for something warm to wear down to a bonfire on the beach, and pulled out the first thing my hand landed on – Greg’s orange fleece. What was it doing here? I laid it on the bed, and dug further for my ratty gray sweatshirt, but it wasn’t there. I dumped the backpack spread out its contents across the bed; my sweatshirt was nowhere to be found. I must have picked up the wrong one at school without noticing, but how could I have mistaken the large orange fleece for my much smaller gray sweatshirt?
A fist thumped on the door again. “Aren’t you ready yet? C’mon,” Sasha whined.
“Just a sec.” I pulled the hoodie over my head, stopping for a moment to breathe in the relaxing autumn scent that hadn’t quite faded away. My head poked the rest of the way through, and I rolled up the sleeves until I could find my hands. The orange material swam around me and I probably looked like Dopey from Snow White, but it would have to do.
Sasha took one look when I opened the door and swallowed a laugh – not quite successfully. And Molley Rhinehart, a preppy-looking strawberry blonde who had pointedly spelled her first name for me at dinner, looked more than ready to join in.
“It’s not you, Kinzie,” Sasha giggled at the oversized garment as the door closed behind me. “Why’d you bring that?”
“As if you don’t know,” I answered with an edge of accusation to my voice. I couldn’t have packed this. Sasha must have switched it to tease me again about showing up wearing it on Monday, and then forgetting to return it to Greg.
“What’s that mean?” asked a male voice, as Curtis Mechenbaum, a shortish, high school senior fidgeted out from behind Molley. I’d met him at dinner as well – Molley’s younger cousin, they told me. Seemed nice enough, but jumpy. His eyes constantly darted around behind silver-rimmed glasses, as if waiting for something ominous to happen. It made me nervous just watching him, so I’d spent most of my time talking to Sasha and Molley.
Sasha swung her straight brown hair over her shoulder. “Sounds like Kinzie is finally admitting she has a thing for my ex,” she cooed.
“This wasn’t what I packed, Sasha.”
She gave a short laugh. “But obviously, you did.”
From her expression, Sasha wasn’t going to admit that she’d switched sweatshirts to tease me – and honestly, I wasn’t sure when she would have had the chance – so I shrugged it off, and followed them to the main doors and out into the cold night air. The three of them chattered about Rothston and people I didn’t know and things I didn’t yet understand. I simply listened, gleaning what information I could as we passed through one of the formal gardens to a torch-lit path that ran along the top of the cliff. Rounded, lichen encrusted boulders edged the path here and there, half overgrown with bramble. Sasha would jump up on these from time-to-time, as if she was surveying her kingdom.
The path crisscrossed down to a broad beach where I could see a fire burning in the distance. It was dark now, but I could hear the breakers and taste the tangy air. My companions wanted to know my impressions of Rothston, since none of them remembered seeing it for the first time, but I wasn’t sure what to say. It was magnificent, thrilling, beautiful, but the best part to me was just simply being part of their work. As one of Rothston’s adepts, maybe I’d have the chance to make a difference in the world – as hokey as that sounded.
“The way things are now, you’ll never change anything,” Molley drawled in response. “None of us will. So, enjoy your turbula exercises. That’s the biggest thing you’ll ever do. We’ll just sit on our hands, so don’t think this is going to have some big effect on your life. It won’t.”
“That’s okay,” Curtis offered. His voice quavered slightly, as if he was afraid to contradict her. “You gotta be really careful with what you do as an adept, Kinzie. You never know what could happen.”
Sasha burst into a laugh at that. “Yeah, and if you listen to Curtis, you can be sure nothing ever will happen.” Curtis smiled sheepishly, but didn’t disagree with the assessment.
The path disappeared into a broad beach of water-smoothed stones. The fire I’d seen from the top was a roaring blaze with tongues of flame licking high into the sky and turning the foam along the wave crests a ghostly rouge. A few dozen people gathered around the bonfire with their talk and laughter filling the air. Preteens skittered through the small crowd, pelting each other with marshmallows, and a game of horseshoes on a sandy patch on the other side of the fire added its metallic clang to the night air.
We skirted the small crowd to an open spot on the far side of the fire where we huddled, toasting marshmallows while Sasha told me the story of Numb Chuck. According to the tale, which supposedly happened around fifty years ago, Charles was an adept ago who fell on some hard times after gambling his money away.
“Why do all ghost stories start with the person living fifty years ago?” I asked, only to have Curtis shush me, like I was going to offend the spirit world with my question.
Rothston had refused to help Charles get back on his feet, Sasha continued. Homeless and alone, he began to influence commons into giving him money in order to survive. But when his finances improved, he didn’t stop, and went on influencing commons to give him whatever he wanted, often leaving them destitute while he lived the
high life. The Seven warned him to stop, but he didn’t so they confined him to the dungeons beneath Rothston, until he promised to obey.
“There are dungeons under Rothston?” I asked. This story was getting more farfetched.
Curtis nodded ominously, but Molley just laughed. “It’s supposed to be where they put rogue adepts. Deep underground. Rats. Bugs. Like something out of a movie. They take us down there in middle school for Halloween,” she informed me. Curtis shivered.
“So what happened to Charles?” I asked, realizing the dungeons were probably just the basement of the old building.
“They kept him there for a month!” Sasha said, her eyes wide and voice overly dramatized. “Until he promised to obey The Seven. But once he was released, he returned to his swindling ways.” Sasha paused at this point in the story. Molley popped another marshmallow into her mouth, while Curtis sat beside me, his eyes staring as if the story were true.
“And?” I prodded.
“He didn’t stop. He kept stealing from people. Sometimes even from other adepts. He wouldn’t stop. Not until one winter morning, when he was found on the Rothston grounds, frozen to death!”
I stared at her, wondering why the anticlimactic ending had been told with such flair. I opened my mouth to tease her, when I realized what it must mean to them. “You mean, someone influenced him to stay outside and die?” I asked.
“Yes. The Seven. And now, Numb Chuck haunts the halls of Rothston at night to warn others of his fate.”
“Or to keep the little kids in their rooms,” Molley added with a giggle.
Sasha threw a marshmallow at her, but Curtis was staring at the fire, jumping at each crack from the flaming logs as if the ghost would rise up in front of him at any moment. I grabbed one of the marshmallow sticks and used it as a light saber to charge the flames and slay the imaginary wraith. The others quickly joined in, and one of the gooey tips caught in my hair. Sasha tried to pull it out, but she was laughing so hard it kept getting worse. Molley finally grabbed the scissors next to the marshmallow bag and, before I could stop her, the bottom six inches on one side of my face was gone, along with the sticky white mess.
The group around the fire was thinning, and I noticed Rex had joined one of the clusters on the other side, but something was different about him. I studied him for a moment before I figured it out – his demeanor. I watched him nod to the middle-aged man next to him, looking almost deferential. Weird for Rex. Out of character. I nudged Sasha. “Who is Rex talking to?”
Her eyes scanned the crowd, before coming to rest on the four figures. “Oh, that’s Brad Jamison,” she informed me. I studied him to try to stick the name with the appearance – on the lean side with hair that was slightly thinning on the top. “You’ll get to know him,” Sasha added. “Pretty cool for an older guy.” She nodded toward the squat, dark-haired woman in her forties and a plump, non-descript man next to her. Marci Lee and Bart Pasternak, she told me. I shrugged, finding the names meaningless. “They’re members of The Seven,” she said as if it were obvious. I squinted, trying to make them out better. With the grandeur of the building, I guess I’d expected Rothston’s leaders to look wise like Mel, or maybe like superheroes. These three looked like soccer parents, or maybe Mr. Jamison could be a middle-school basketball coach. But at least now I knew why Rex was being respectful.
“You want to meet them?” Sasha asked, as she began pulled me along.
I resisted. I had already met a million people today and the names were getting tough. “Not yet. Let me get a little more of Rothston in my head first. I don’t want to look like an idiot.”
“Suit yourself,” she chimed, and let it drop.
“Who’s up for horseshoes?” Molley asked, licking the last marshmallow goo from her fingers. As we headed over to the horseshoe pit, Sasha picked up the closest two red metal U’s. I bent over to pick up the silver ones and felt a twinge of a headache at the base of my skull. I wish these things would stay away. Maybe I needed glasses.
“We need someone else. Kinzie can’t play,” Sasha called to Molley and Curtis, who’d continued down to the far stake.
“What? I can play,” I objected, retrieving the horseshoes and noticing the headache was already gone.
Molley responded from the other end. “Not the way we play.”
“It’s okay,” Curtis offered. “She’ll just be off limits to the rest of us. But that means we can’t play as teams.”
“Off limits?” I gave Sasha a confused look, and she laughed, preparing to pitch the first shoe. It went wide and short, landing a good five feet in front of the pit. Curtis and Molley were just as bad. It took several turns before I figured out what was going on. For each toss the three of them made, one or both of the others would take on an unfocused stare, and the throw would go wild. Once, Sasha mis-stepped, falling to the ground as she released the metal shoe, which landed behind her. They were influencing each other. The object of the game was the same – who could get closest to the stake, but I was the only one who got within two feet of it consistently. Curtis, on the other hand, was getting more and more frustrated because Sasha and Molley would gang up on him, both influencing him to throw the same way, which apparently magnified the effect. His aggravation boiled over when they began taunting him for being beaten by girls.
“Fine,” he spat with determination. “Stand back. I know how I can win.” Sasha dragged me away from the stake – a dozen feet away, at least. I couldn’t imagine he was going to miss this badly. I started to say something, but Sasha shushed me, telling me not to break his concentration. But Curtis just stood there, unmoving. His eyes staring blankly. His face a study in concentration. But he hadn’t even picked up the horseshoe from the ground in front of him.
“What …” I started, when Molley clapped her hands together in delight – and the horseshoe in front of Curtis was gone. I stared at the ground where the iron shoe had just been. “Where did …”
“Yay!,” Sasha called out approvingly as she moved back toward the pit at our end. I looked at the stake and a horseshoe was there – a ringer.
“How …” I stammered, but Sasha’s laugh cut me off.
“You don’t know?” she asked.
“Know what? Where did that come from?” I asked as I neared the pit.
“Translocation, Kinzie,” she said with relish.
“Translo… what?”
Sasha laughed again. “Translocation. Pretty cool, huh? Curtis is one of the best.”
“But …”
“Oh my gosh, look!” Molley squealed as she bounded over. “You can tell it was horseshoe shaped!” As I got closer, I could see that the band of metal around the post was twisted and bent, looking only vaguely like the horseshoe it had been at the other end.
“I don’t understand. What happened?” I asked Sasha, ripping my eyes from the mangled mess.
“Translocation. Moving the object instantly from one location to another,” Curtis stated proudly as he joined us. “Commons call it teleportation.”
“Moved it?” I bent down to examine it. Warm to the touch, then it shattered – too fragile to be lifted. “I’m not sure I understand. Why is it …”
Sasha interrupted. “You didn’t expect him to get it perfect did you? You’ll see when you learn this stuff, Kinzie. Most adepts can’t do this at all, and the fact that you can tell the original shape is pretty awesome. Think about how accurate you’ve got to be to do that! Every atom. Any miss can cascade it into not forming at all, let alone coming out looking like anything.” I blinked, trying to process everything she was saying, but I couldn’t get my head around it. Adepts could teleport? Translocate.
“Transposition errors,” Curtis informed me. “That’s what the mistakes are called. Impossible to avoid. We’re not allowed to translocate animals because of it. You can imagine the mess.” My eyes scanned the shattered horseshoe again. Mess? Horrific was more like it.
“Eeewww,” Sasha added, to complete the picture.
“There’s only one person who does this without a bunch of errors,” Molley said, and Curtis’s eyes dropped.
“Really? Will I meet them this weekend?”
“You already have!” Molley tittered, as I pushed up the sleeves of the orange hoodie that had fallen down over my hands again. I stared at the fleece as a thought occurred to me.
“You didn’t …?” I asked looking at Sasha.
“Didn’t what?”
“This,” I answered holding the material out from me. “I know this isn’t what I packed. You didn’t …”
“Translocate it into your backpack?” Sasha asked, her eyes growing wide. Then she and Molley both burst out laughing. Even Curtis suppressed a grin.
“Translocating it perfectly, not a stitch out of place, would be incredible,” he said, explaining the apparent absurdity of my guess. “Translocating it perfectly into a backpack? Folded? Can’t be done. Not even by …” Curtis stopped mid-sentence and seemed to shrink into the shadows behind his cousin.
“Talking about me?” Rex challenged, as he rounded the fire.
“Kinzie hadn’t seen anything translocated before,” Sasha told him.
Rex looked down at Curtis’s mangled ringer. “Destroying Rothston property again, Mechenbaum?” He nudged the twisted shards with his shoe, and Curtis retreated further away. Rex’s eyes fell to me, and he smiled. “If you want to see it done right, all you have to do is ask.”
Rex was the one they’d been talking about? I met his pale gray eyes and stared steadily back, knowing he’d take great satisfaction if I asked him for anything. My head twinged again, but I pushed the pain aside.
“Oh, I want to see! I want to see,” Molley sang as she skipped over to Rex’s side, gazing up at him like she was star-struck. Sasha had told me there were girls who would fight over Rex’s attention. Molley must be one of them. Truly pathetic.
Rex’s eyes lingered on mine a moment longer before he broke away. “Fine. Let’s see. What should I do?” he asked himself, hesitating for a moment to build the suspense. “Let’s start simple,” he said, directing my attention in front of him.
Foreseen (The Rothston Series) Page 10