by Jade Kerrion
Dee’s jaw dropped. He’s protecting us?
In the only way he knows how. Healing and manipulating emotions.
This is crazy. What kind of world do you mutants live in?
Jessica shrugged. The same world as you, most of the time.
The music started up softly, a sensuous tune with a heart-pounding rhythm. It flowed through the club, coaxing whispered conversations and hesitant smiles. Dee cast her brother a glance. From behind the soundstage, Dum nodded and flashed her a thumbs up sign. His fingers danced over his sound equipment, and the volume of the music gradually increased. Feet twitched and bodies bopped along to the tune.
Minutes later, the dancing began, bodies gyrating on the dance floor. Dee began moving around the tables, collecting orders and serving drinks to smiling and relaxed customers, all the while marveling at the power of two empaths at work, each doing what they did best.
8
Within a month, Legends had become Dee and Dum’s second home. Dum was the superstar, but Dee raked in the cash. The tips from individual customers did not increase, but the volume of customers did. Early one morning, she eased her way through the packed club. With a sigh of relief, she arrived in the kitchen, mostly in one piece, and sank down on a high barstool, out of the way of the bustling kitchen staff.
She grinned as she dug her tips out of her pocket and flipped through the paper bills and credit card receipts. A few more nights like this one, and they would be able to pay next month’s rent. She could even make a payment toward the loan she had accepted from Danyael.
College, however, was still not in the works.
“Hey, I don’t pay you to sit around and count cash.”
Dee glanced up and smiled at Mario. Warm humor infused his voice. He had good reason, after all. No fights had broken out in Legends since that night when Danyael had personally intervened to end the fight and save lives. Instead, customers poured through the doors to listen to Dum spin magic through his music. The lines started two hours before the club opened, and snaked around the block through the night and into the early hours of the morning.
She chuckled, a rueful sound. “It’s a warzone out there. I caught at least three elbows in the ribs just trying to cross ten feet.”
Mario scowled. “It’s all great in the club, but the bouncers have their hands full. It’s October, and the wind is just brisk enough to be uncomfortable. We’re going to have a riot if people can’t get into the club quickly enough to suit them, and it’ll get worse as it gets colder.”
“You could get portable space heaters, and speakers so they can hear Dum’s music.”
“Does your brother’s…you know…” He waved his hands uncertainly.
“Magic?” Dee supplied dryly.
Mario grinned. “Yes, magic. Will it work outside the club?”
Did Dum’s empathic powers travel through walls? Danyael’s did not, she knew that much, but Danyael was a defense-class empath. His empathic powers were limited in range and did not travel through objects. Jessica, on the other hand, was an attack-class telepath; walls and distance did not stymie her mutant powers. Was Dum an attack- or defense-class mutant? “I’ll have to ask Danyael; he might know. Still, it wouldn’t hurt to try.”
Mario nodded thoughtfully. “That’s not a bad idea. It’d cost a bit to set up the space heaters and the speakers, but if I could set up a bar or two—”
“And turn the parking lot into a dance floor,” Dee added
A huge grin creased Mario’s face. “Now that’s thinking big, real big.” He slapped her on the back, and the impact nearly launched her off her barstool. “Sorry,” he said in a perfunctory way. Wringing his fingers, he scurried out with a gleam in his eyes.
Dee stifled a chuckle, jumped off the barstool, and walked out of the kitchen. A wave of heat and humidity surged over her, and she rolled her eyes. Who would have imagined that the kitchen, with its ovens and stoves at capacity, would actually be cooler than a room full of tightly packed bodies?
Automatically, she glanced over to the soundstage, but Dum was apparently on a break, and the crowd was working its way through a pre-programmed playlist. Where was he? She cringed at the thought of squeezing through the crowd in search of her brother. Jess?
Yeah?
Have you seen Dum?
He’s getting me a drink.
Huh? The question slipped out before she could help herself. Jessica was the last person who needed help with drinks. On several occasions, Dee had seen the alpha mutant use her telekinetic powers to fill a cup of soda when the bartenders were too busy to serve her. No one seemed to bat an eyelid anymore when cups glided smoothly through the air over the heads of dancers and lowered with flawless precision into Jessica’s hand. Dee was the only person who dared confirm that Jessica drank only soda. No one else felt up to the task of challenging an alpha mutant, even if she was only fourteen.
Fifteen, Jessica corrected primly.
Dee worked her way across the club, squeezing past customers and deploying elbows, subtly, of course, when necessary. Jessica was at her favorite spot just inside the entrance, which allowed her to maintain the peace outside the club, where most problems occurred. Dum reached Jessica just before Dee did. A faint smile hovered on his lips as he handed Jessica a plastic cup of what Dee hoped was soda. The smile transformed his usually serious face, and it widened when Jessica accepted the cup and smiled up at him. She did not flash her usual infectious grin, but something softer and subtler that bordered on flirtatious.
Dee rolled her eyes. She had always known of Jessica’s adolescent crush on her undeserving brother, but to see her brother reciprocate was the height of disbelief. When had he noticed anything beyond his ear pods?
Dee swallowed hard, her lips twisting into a half-smile to ward off the sudden ache in her chest. Since Danyael, of course. The alpha empath had done, in a month, what Dum’s twelve years of therapy had failed to accomplish. Danyael had succeeded in drawing Dum out of his private, silent world. If Dum wanted to celebrate his return to the real world by becoming a superstar deejay and flirting with a council-trained alpha mutant, who was Dee to get in the way?
I’m just his damn sister, after all, and he still doesn’t talk to me.
Dum’s silence did not just irritate Dee. It infuriated her.
She hated silence. Like a living thing, silence clawed at the walls of her mind. When she stopped talking, she could feel silence collapse in upon her, a dull but heavy pressure that bore down on her lungs and made it hard to breathe. Waiting tables was, in essence, the near-perfect job for Dee. If she wasn’t talking to customers, she was talking to the kitchen staff, and if not the kitchen staff, she was exchanging celebrity gossip with the chatty hostess, Brenda.
The silence became most oppressive toward the end of her shift, after the lunch crowd cleared and her responsibilities focused on cleaning her section in anticipation of the dinner crowd. That day, she hummed to herself as she scrubbed down the tables with a soapy sponge. The faint buzz of noise kept silence at bay. Grumbling under her breath, she worked at a particularly sticky spot where a child had spilled several servings of maple syrup.
“I see you still talk to yourself,” a voice interrupted her thoughts.
She dropped the sponge and spun around. “Edward?” With a loud whoop, she threw her arms around his neck. “Oh, my God, I never thought I’d see you again—”
“Whoa, easy now.” Edward chuckled, an amused sound, but he hugged her as tightly as she hugged him.
The memories of the five years they had spent growing up together in Elysium came back in a rush. Memories of colorful murals on cinderblock walls, of mud-streaked linoleum tiles and sneakered feet that pounded merrily over them, memories of crowded kitchens that served simple but lovingly prepared meals, memories of the support, the laughter, and the love that had surrounded Dum and her after their mother’s death. After they had lost everyone, Reyes Maddox and the families of Elysium, Edward Delver’s amon
g them, had become their family.
Edward smelled of lemon-scented soap, and he was solid and strong. More importantly, he did not push her away. No one else really held her, not Dum, who wallowed happily in his private world, and certainly not Danyael, whose body language screamed “hands off.” Dee swallowed hard against the lump in her throat as she pulled back from Edward and stared into his blue eyes. “It’s so good to see you again.”
“You too, Tweedle-Dee.”
“Stop it.” The nickname had been cute when she had been thirteen; not so much at seventeen. She sat down at the table she had been scrubbing. Following her lead, he sat across from her. He placed his hand on the table, and she met him halfway, entwining her fingers with his, needing and craving the physical connection. “Where have you been?”
“I could ask the same of you. I went to Operation Hope several times over the past few months, trying to track you down, but they didn’t have any address listed for you—at least none that they would give me—until I checked again last week.”
“But why were you checking?”
He shrugged. “Just trying to find others.” Was it her imagination or did his voice catch briefly? “Most of them are still out in Colorado.”
“In another enclave?”
Edward shook his head. “No, no one has had the heart to start another enclave, not after Reyes disappeared on us the night the council attacked Elysium, and certainly not after the government declared him a traitor for his role in Sakti’s attack on D.C.”
Dee scowled. “Reyes wasn’t responsible for Sakti’s attack on the city.”
“Who was then? The alpha empath, Danyael Sabre? If Thomas Maddox wasn’t so intent on killing Danyael, Sakti would never have attacked the city to lure him out.”
“This isn’t Danyael’s fault, either.”
Edward’s eyes widened. “Do you know the guy?”
“Well, yeah.” Dee looked away. The intensity in his eyes cautioned her against saying any more, despite her instinctive need to confide in him. She tried to tug her fingers out of Edward’s grasp, but he tightened his grip on her.
He shook his head. “I’m sorry. I just came to see you, really. I wanted to see how you and Dum were coping.”
“We’re doing better these days. It was a bit rough a month ago when we weren’t sure how we were going to get by financially, but between our multiple jobs here and at Legends, we’re paying the bills.”
Edward’s grin flashed. “That’s awesome.”
“And how are you and your parents doing?”
Edward lowered his gaze. He was silent for a long time, and his chest rose and fell on a sigh. “Dad was killed in the explosion in the tunnels, the night the council attacked Elysium in search of Danyael Sabre. Dad told Mom and me to wait at the top of the stairwell. He had gone ahead of us to make sure it was safe, but then the explosion blasted through the tunnels. The explosion threw us back from the stairwell and knocked us out. We woke up in the hospital.”
Dee clasped Edward’s cold hand in between hers. She had known Michael Delver. A former coal miner, Michael had been rough around the edges, but he had always been kind, a man who protected and doted upon his wife and only son. “I’m so sorry to hear that. Your mother must have been devastated.”
“She was, for a little while.” Edward’s lips twisted into a bitter smile. “She’s gone now.”
Her hands tightened on his. “Edward?”
He shook his head.
Dee tilted her head and looked into his moist eyes. “Tell me. You know you can tell me anything.”
Several moments passed before he continued speaking. “She was unhappy in Colorado, surrounded by memories of Elysium and Dad, so we moved out to Washington D.C. in June to live with her sister.” He shrugged. “The area seemed to suit her better, though she wasn’t thrilled about the humidity in summer. On July Fourth, Sakti terrorists broke into my aunt’s home. They tied me up and made me watch while they killed my mother and my aunt. They said something about parents dying for the sins of their children.” Edward closed his eyes, as if trying to block out the memory. His hand, in hers, trembled. “I couldn’t get free, and the police didn’t come looking until two days later, when my aunt’s workplace reported her missing.”
Dee’s eyes widened. “You were alone for two days?” With your dead mother and aunt? Oh, God.
Edward shrugged again, a defensive action, Dee surmised, rather than a dismissal of his pain. “The city was in an uproar after Sakti’s attack. No one really noticed until an unmarried woman failed to show up at work. Her employers assumed she was safe since she didn’t have any children. They didn’t account for her having a nephew.”
“It wasn’t your fault.”
“I’ve said that so many times to myself that I’m starting to sound like a broken record. What about you? Where have you been? It’s like you and Dum vanished off the face of the Earth.”
“The council took us in.”
His eyes widened. “The Mutant Affairs Council?”
“Yes. Reyes, Danyael, Dum, and I escaped from Elysium, but Reyes was hurt. Danyael left Dum and me in Aspen while he took Reyes to seek help from a former friend. The council found us in Aspen and took us back to D.C.” Dee stared down at their entwined fingers. “Uh, there’s something I need to tell you. Dum…Dum is a mutant.”
If she thought his blue eyes could not get any wider, she had been wrong. “A mutant?” he asked, “What kind?”
“An empath, like Danyael Sabre, but not as powerful,” she hastened to assure Edward when his features twisted with hatred. “Danyael’s working with Dum now, training him to use his mutant powers.”
“To do what? Kill people, or get people killed?”
Dee’s brow furrowed. “That’s not fair.”
“Why are you defending him? He’s the reason the council attacked Elysium. He’s the reason Sakti attacked D.C. Because of him, my father and my mother are dead.”
“Other people killed them, Edward. Not Danyael.”
Edward clenched his teeth. “He may not have triggered the explosion that killed my father or dragged the knife across my mother’s throat, but he’s responsible all the same.”
Dee shook her head. “You don’t know Danyael.”
“And you do?”
She shot to her feet, the motion tearing her hands from his grasp. “Yes, I do. He helped us break away from the council.”
“Oh, and he did that out of the goodness of his heart? Doesn’t he have a grudge against the council?”
“It’s not like that.”
“Then what is it like?” He leaned back in his chair and folded his arms across his chest. His smile was both smug and mocking.
Her eyes narrowed. She had forgotten how much his know-it-all attitude aggravated her. He might have been three years older, but it did not make him Einstein.
Edward’s gaze turned flinty. “You have a crush on him, don’t you?”
Dee’s eyes widened and she chortled, a bubble of laughter that sprang up unchecked. “Danyael?”
“I’ve seen pictures of Danyael and Galahad. Women throw themselves at them.”
“At Galahad, not at Danyael.”
Edward pointed out the obvious. “And they’re identical.”
“Physically, but Danyael has…attachment issues. I’m not that crazy.” Yes, one had to be crazy to love Danyael, and downright suicidal to stand between Zara Itani and the man she wanted. “Besides, he’s too old for me.”
Edward grinned. For a moment, he looked again like the idealistic young man she had known from her life at Elysium. “Thirty’s too old for you? Does twenty work better?”
Dee grinned back at him. Oh, yes, indeed. Twenty did work better.
Mario could work fast when he felt like it. Within a week, the large parking lot outside Legends had been transformed into an outdoor party. Space heaters dotted the perimeter of the parking lot, and speakers had been strategically positioned to carry the music aroun
d the block. Spotlights taped over with colored glass paper turned the parking lot into a multi-colored dance floor. Bars were placed in impossible-to-miss locations, and Dum’s soundstage had been moved outside. Dum had gaped when told of the arrangements and then rushed home for a heavier jacket.
He did not actually need it. Tightly packed bodies generated a lot of heat. The space heaters were turned off after customers complained of the excessive heat. The cool night breeze was most welcome and cheaper, though more erratic, than air-conditioners. The crowd was larger, the music livelier. Passersby were lured by the music and then reeled in by the heady air of celebration, courtesy of Dum’s empathic powers that ebbed and flowed, keeping rhythm with the beat of each tune.
The laughter was loud and the tips generous. Dee’s only complaint was that the parking lot was twice the size of Legends, and the customers keep her bustling. By midnight, her feet ached, and by three in the morning, she was surprised they were not black and blue. As the last reluctant customer filed off the parking lot, she sank down on a stone bench outside Legends and slowly eased off her high-heeled shoes.
“That was an excellent idea, Dee,” Mario said, sitting down beside her. A broad grin split his face.
Dee gently massaged her toes. “Made oodles of money, huh?”
“Yes. You did too, in tips, right?”
She patted her full pocket. “Got my rent covered, and then some.” She glanced over at Dum, who was turning off his sound equipment. Several staff lingered close to the soundstage, waiting to move the equipment back into the club. “Thank you for giving him a chance.”
“No, thank you for bringing him and Jessica.” He nodded at the blond telepath who stood within winking distance of Dum. “You brought me my two best employees.”
“Yeah.” Compared to her mutant brother and friend, what was she? Dog meat? Sighing, Dee shoved to her feet and picked up her shoes, dangling them from two fingers. “Can I wear sneakers tomorrow?”