Tess bumped her hip into mine. “You can sit around and stare at me. I’ll give you something to look at.” Then she laughed. “Honestly, Margaret is very cautious, and she’s pretty old, too. So, I guess it’s worked for her, and we should probably take her advice.” She jumped, higher than any normal person could, and grabbed onto a tree branch. She held on for just a second and let herself fall gracefully to the soft ground.
“Personally, I need to move around too. I’m not made for sitting around indoors, either, hoping it’s good enough to keep us safe. I like to know where the next attack is coming from.” She glanced at me from the corner of her eye. “But I’m a little further along than you are.”
I nodded. “True.”
Margaret had mentioned improvements. I jogged a little way ahead and launched myself into the air. I didn’t think I’d make it to a limb as high as Tess had, and I wasn’t really trying to. I sailed past the branch I’d been going for and reached one ten feet higher. I was so shocked, I almost forgot to grab it, so my momentum was pretty strong when I caught myself. Rather than just letting the jolt run through my body, I let the momentum carry me through a flip all away around the tree branch.
I landed on the ground. I wasn’t quite as graceful as Tess, but I turned a slight stumble into a more dramatic landing. Like an elegant drunk, I could fall with style.
She clapped her hands and whistled. “Impressive, Jason! Let’s see what else you can do!” She took off down the trail at a dead run.
Like any normal person given a challenge like that, I chased her.
The last time I’d done any running, my knees, ankles, and hips all reminded me that running was a sport for young men, and I wasn’t young anymore. Right now, my whole body sang with the joy of being in motion. Every stride carried me farther and faster than I’d ever gone before, and my lungs barely registered that I was exercising. When Tess cut to the left to leap over a small stream, I had no trouble making the same sudden movement, or even the same leap.
We jumped over boulders, logs, and water like baby goats at play. I wasn’t quite at her level, falling down a time or two. While some of those spills would have cost me precious minutes—or worse, caused serious injuries—back in my old life, now I had no trouble at all. I just jumped back up and kept running.
I laughed out loud. When had I last had fun like this? Climbing the old, stone barn required stretching and bending I hadn’t even tried to do since that one yoga class I took in senior year of college on a dare. I dropped it after three classes. Now, I barely felt any stretch at all.
Tess’s flexibility stood out to me, and not just because it represented a personal challenge to me as an athlete. The ways we could get our bodies to stretch and bend could only be good together. I wondered if she’d be up for a little experimentation, or if she’d find the idea repulsive since she was essentially as old as my great-grandmother.
I pushed the thought out of my head. The rules were different now. Neither one of us had chosen it, but we might as well make the best of what we’d been given.
We took a break down by the ocean, sitting on the rocky shore and watching the waves roll in, soothing and eternal. I didn’t need to rest. That core of energy, my personal reactor, was still going strong. I didn’t mind sitting there and enjoying the water, though. It was beautiful, and I hadn’t made time to enjoy Maine’s natural beauty before. There was always so much else to do, so many other things that absolutely had to get accomplished.
“That was fun,” I told her. “Thanks for all that.” I waved my hand. “I probably wouldn’t have tried most of that if I hadn’t seen you doing it first.”
She grinned and ran a hand through her short, dark hair. “Oh, come on now. I’m sure you’d have gotten around to it. But to be honest, you’re getting into it a lot faster than most young Ferins.”
“Really?” I tilted my head. “It didn’t seem all that odd. I mean, it was a workout, but it didn’t feel like I was overreaching or doing anything unnatural. It was more like… like it was just there.” I squirmed, uncomfortable with my own inability to articulate. “It’s hard to describe. Maybe it’s because I used to be an athlete the first time around. Maybe my body just remembers it, like the notes to a song.”
She raised an eyebrow. “You think your body knows how to jump twenty feet into the air? Your track and field team must have had one hell of a record.” She chuckled. “Come on. Let’s get moving again.”
I jumped up, eager to feel the wind in my hair again. That time, though, she was thinking less in terms of speed and more in terms of height. She ran only to the tree line, where she leaped up to the nearest branch and scrambled up to the canopy. I hurried to follow her.
I envied Tess her ability to move from tree to tree without being seen. That’s something my body wouldn’t remember. I could keep up with her speed, but I had no idea how to keep my movement light. She’d been doing this for almost a century, and it was apparent in her smooth motions and perpetual grin. I’d been doing it for a few hours. I’d probably catch up eventually, but it still chafed at me.
She jumped from one tree to another. The gaps between them weren’t huge, but they were greater than we’d been doing at this height. I followed, but I missed the landing. My foot slipped, and I went hurtling toward the ground. Sure, the forest floor was soft from recent rains, but nothing was soft enough for a fall from that height.
I was going to die, or at least get seriously hurt.
Panic flooded through me. I flailed my limbs in a vain effort to slow my fall, but at the moment of furious despair, that core of energy deep inside me swelled and burst out. A fire erupted from somewhere inside me, and suddenly, I was in position. I tucked and landed in a roll, springing to my feet at the end.
Wood smoke tinged the air all around me. I couldn’t see any live flames, but black char marks stained more than a few limbs around me. I turned around in a circle, moving slowly. “What just happened?” I whispered in a voice stuck somewhere between awe and sheer terror.
For one brief, awful second, I wanted to go home. Not back to my one-room apartment and not back to Linda. I wanted to go back to my mom in Portland. I wanted to be a little kid again, with cookies and crustless sandwiches and absolutely no fire shooting out of any part of me. I wanted a world that was long gone, and I couldn’t have it.
Tess licked her lips. Her dark eyes were wide, but she held her hands up. “Look, what just happened? It’s okay. It’s not—it’s not a bad thing, okay?”
“I almost started Maine’s first wildfire in two hundred years, and it’s okay?” My voice rose an entire octave at the end of my sentence, much to my embarrassment. “Because that came from me, Tess. Not from some flamethrower hidden up my sleeve, but from me.”
She put her hand on my arm. It didn’t soothe me, not like Margaret’s did, but it still felt good. “I know it did. And it’s okay. But we should get back to the house. Um, right away.”
“Did it send up a signal to NORAD or something?” I grabbed onto my hair and pulled.
“Maybe.” She grabbed my arm and tugged. “Look, you’re not the only one who can do it, but maybe you shouldn’t be playing with it outside.”
I swallowed, and we ran back to the house at full speed, the forest a smear of color as fear settled in my chest.
5
I saw a few shadowy figures when Tess and I ducked back into the mansion, although not for long. I saw a woman with long hair, braces, and stunning medium-brown skin. She seemed almost ashamed that I caught her looking me over. A man with a thin, well-trimmed beard definitely wasn’t ashamed, and Tess put herself between him and me in a way that left no doubt she was challenging him.
Everyone scrambled once it was obvious I was in the house, though, and that was just weird. I was going to ask about it, damn it. It was a hundred percent my right. Was this some kind of secret probation? Double-secret probation? Weird, vampiric pyramid scheme? The idea of selling diet pills or essential oils for et
ernity almost made me laugh, but I stowed that bit of humor and concentrated on the moment at hand. Adrenaline pumped through my body as I marched through the halls, unsure of what would happen next.
Margaret met us in my room. Well, I didn’t know if it was really my room at this point since no one had informed me it was, but I just assumed it was mine. The decision gave me some small comfort.
Margaret sat down on the chaise. I was starting to wonder if there were any proper chairs, or if there were only a million effeminate fainting couches all over the place. “I take it the run didn’t go so well?” she asked.
Tess sank down onto the end of my bed. For a second, her unlined face took on a look of profound exhaustion. “ I guess that depends on how you view a successful run. We definitely got to see how well he’s doing in terms of energy levels and performance.” She massaged her knuckles, cracking a few of them. “At first, it was all in good fun. I noticed he was able to keep up with me a little sooner than we expected, but it didn’t seem like a huge deal. He got control of his hunger earlier too, but everyone’s a little different.”
I tensed a little bit. I hadn’t realized there was anything at all unusual in the way I attacked the food this morning.
“I decided to see what would happen if we took the Squirrel’s Road back,” Tess said, and Margaret nodded, looking on gravely. “That part’s on me, totally. But after seeing him go on our way out, I didn’t expect him to have any problems.”
Margaret held up a hand. “It’s hardly a crime to go out and climb a tree or two. Just please, tell me why you look so uncomfortable.”
Tess sighed. “Because when we did that, he took a spill. And when he tried to right himself, he let out a burst of fire energy to right himself.”
Margaret sat up straighter. She still had the look of a queen, despite her casual clothing. “Are you sure, Tess?”
“She’s sure, and so am I,” I said, placing my hands onto the bureau and leaning into them. “Seeing as how it was me, and I was there, and considering it was my body the flames were shooting out of, maybe you could ask me?”
Margaret smiled gently at me. “I’m sorry, Jason. We’ve been talking about you as though you aren’t here. Sometimes, what we see isn’t necessarily what’s happening. Some vampires, in particular, can create intensely powerful illusions. Tell me what happened when you saw the flames.”
I sucked in my cheeks. I knew what I’d seen and felt. If vampires could make me doubt that, if they could make me doubt reality itself, they might be a bigger enemy than I could fight. I stood up straighter and flexed my fingers. “I was falling—fast. I was scared. I was afraid I’d hit my head and die or something. And I—well, I told you how energized I was feeling this morning, right? That feeling in my core? Well, it bloomed inside of me. Right then and there, it swelled and broke free. I didn’t even know how to fight it, not that I wanted to.”
“As a flame? This...feeling, it burst out of you as a flame?” Margaret’s violet eyes were wide and serious.
“Yeah. Bright, beautiful flames, in astounding clarity. But when I landed, it had vanished. All that was left was a few scorch marks on the trees.” I chewed on my lips nervously for a second. So far, everything had been at least nominally plausible. Suddenly, getting my twenty-year-old body and face again was a little out there, but everything else was something I could wrap my head around. People could be fast. People could be strong, or bendy, or whatever.
People could not generate their own flamethrower.
“What’s going on here?” I asked. “If this is a hoax, and if so, it’s awfully elaborate.”
Margaret gave me a quirky grin. “It’s not a hoax. I did warn you that you would see a few enhancements, right?” She spread her hands wide. “This is simply one of them.”
“So, I just randomly turn into a human torch when feeling a little nervous?” I crossed my arms over my chest.
“Not exactly. It’s all kind of complicated.”
I threw my hands into the air. “So uncomplicate it! How hard is this? I’m the one it’s happening to. Why should I be the one kept in the dark? Imagine if I’d been out in Portland or somewhere around gas tanks, or whatever.”
Tess cleared her throat. “That’s one of the reasons you always have an escort. No one goes out alone until they have control over themselves. It’s about survival for all of us. Can you imagine what would happen if the human authorities got ahold of a young Ferin who set everything on fire every time he sneezed?”
Margaret frowned at her. “We don’t get colds, Tess.”
“Not the point, Margaret.”
I smacked my hand down on the bureau to get their attention—not pointing out the little crack that appeared in it as a result. “That’s enough of being kept in the dark about everything. You say everyone’s excited about me, so why does everyone scurry away like mice when I’m around? Everyone but the two of you that is. You don’t tell me anything about what’s happening until it’s actually happening, and even then, I have to ask. It’s my life and It’s my body. I appreciate that you’ve got your ways and everything, but I’m not about to sit around and hope to get a crumb of information, so long as I jump through all the right hoops.”
Margaret reached for me. I wanted her to touch me—more than I could say—but I took a step back. “Not so fast. Every time you touch me, it’s like a hit of ecstasy. I thought at first it was just because you were, well, you know. But that’s not it, is it?”
Margaret’s eyes widened. “You picked up on that?”
My stomach sank. I’d wanted to be wrong about it as soon as the thought popped into my head. “Yeah, I did. What’s going on here? And no bullshit, either.”
Margaret slouched and looked out the window. “When we get a new Ferin,” she said after a long silence, “certain rules are followed. It’s not because we want to keep them ignorant. It’s that in the past when we’ve had to dump a lot of information onto a Ferin in a short amount of time, it hasn’t gone well. Their young minds can’t handle it. There are too many adjustments. We have one or two Ferin who are designated as his guardians, to help shepherd him through the process, and the others stay away.”
Tess cleared her throat. “Part of the reason they stay away is that they don’t want to frustrate you. They don’t want you making yourself crazy, trying to control a gift for empathy you don’t have because you saw someone you admired using it.” She nibbled on her fingernail. “Which means I shouldn’t have been getting into horseplay out in the woods, honestly. You should have been the one to try it first.”
“It’s fine, Tess,” Margaret murmured. “All Ferin wind up faster and stronger. How fast they get varies, but we all do it. The issue is with the flame.”
“You think?” I pushed my hair out of my face. “It’s dangerous. It’s dangerous to me and everyone around me.”
Margaret shook her head. “Not if you control yourself. The fact is, most Ferin don’t find their gift for months after they turn, if not years.” Margaret sighed and leaned back. “We’ve certainly never seen one who’s shown their gift within days. I don’t think we have a choice.”
I scrubbed the back of my neck. I didn’t know what her words meant, but people always had a choice. “Let’s not be too hasty here.”
“Calm down, Jason.” Tess looked me up and down. “No one’s going to hurt you, all right? All we want to do is take you to see someone.”
“We want to take you to see Mort. Or maybe take Mort to see you.” Margaret leaned forward, bracing her elbows against her knees. “Mort’s a scholar.”
“Well, that makes me feel better. It would be great to sit down and have a chat with a professor instead of a medical professional.” At that point, I knew I was being a jerk, but I was still mad. I wanted them to admit they were going about this all wrong, damn it. I wanted them to admit they were dealing with me all wrong.
“There aren’t doctors or nurses for Ferin, Jason.” Tess scoffed and laid down on her back. �
�Mort is even older than Margaret. He’s been almost everywhere—everywhere Ferin have been found, anyway, and he’s saved a lot of us. He knows more about Ferin history and Ferin development than anyone else, living or dead. If we want to find out what’s going on with you, he’s who we need to talk to.”
“What about the other Ferin, though?” I leaned against the wall. “Am I going to be allowed to talk to them at some point, or is it permanently off-limits?”
“We’ll have to talk to Mort before we can answer that question.” Margaret’s tone didn’t leave any room for debate. “He’ll know what’s worked before, so you don’t get overwhelmed.”
I considered screaming and kicking my feet, but I’d been turned back into a twenty-year-old, not a two-year-old. If I wanted answers, I would have to go and see Mort—and on Mort’s time, too.
6
Tess and Margaret escorted me to another room on the second floor. This one was larger than the others and decorated in a kind of lavender color scheme that instantly set my teeth on edge. The inhabitant, who I assumed was Mort, sat in the windowsill reading on a tablet. He didn’t look all that tall, and he had this weird pseudo-pompadour thing going on with his hair, going from a mid-purple at the roots to white at the tips. The sleeves of his flannel shirt had been cut off at the shoulders, exposing black tattoos, and if I understood this whole Ferin thing right, those glasses must only be for show.
To put it bluntly, Mort was a hipster.
I took a step back, but Tess grabbed me by the arm. “Be polite,” she whispered. “Mort is over a thousand years old!”
“I thought we weren’t allowed to have tech,” I shot back.
Mort raked his gaze over me. “And what have we got here?” He turned his head to curl his lip at Margaret. “He’s what, four days old? He’s barely sentient. Get him out of here until he’s toilet trained at least, would you?”
Forever Young Page 3