“Fourteen cents?” Vera said. “That’s it? I’ll pay the fourteen cents.”
Helen set her mouth in a firm line. “We have better uses for extra money than toilet paper.”
“Gail,” Vera said, “this is ridiculous. Tell them we can spend fourteen cents to buy decent toilet paper.”
Manfred slammed his hand on the table. “No!” Gail jumped in surprise; Manfred was the last person she expected to pound the table.
“General supplies is a committee decision,” Manfred said. “If the committee can’t make a decision about toilet paper, what the hell can we make a decision about?”
Gail cut off the answer she was about to give to Vera, and said, “Of course it’s a committee decision.”
Manfred nodded at her, a vein throbbing in his temple. Her household presidents always got so touchy about Gail overruling them. Really, she didn’t do so very often. Only whenever the committee did something the household didn’t like.
Overriding them drove the household presidents crazy.
“Really, Manfred,” Gail said. “A committee decision. Whatever the committee decides is right.”
Manfred didn’t say anything, but the vein in his temple receded as he took careful bites of his dumplings. She would have to handle him gently. He had quit in disgust his first time through.
“Gail, do you have a minute?” Sylvie said as Gail finished the last bite of her dinner. Boiled cabbage. The Wheelhouses were gone, but Manfred, the Grimms and Vera still ate and talked.
“Sure,” Gail said, looking up at Sylvie. “What do you need?”
“Someplace we can talk?”
Gail nodded and stood. “My office.”
As Gail stood, Manfred, Helen Grimm and Vera Bracken all stood also. Oh, Gail realized. This was going to be one of those conversations. She led the delegation upstairs, but there wouldn’t be enough room in her office and so she led them into her living room.
Van sat on the corner of a couch, notes and academic papers at his feet, taking advantage of the call of dinner to spread out and think. The instant the committee booted him from house president he had started up on his next project, a book about the history of the Arms. He grimaced when the troupe interrupted him, and sighed when he noticed the group accompanying Gail. Sylvie, Manfred and Vera were all on the leadership committee, and Helen was an appointed officer. This reeked of official household business.
“Dinner time,” he said, stacking his materials in a corner and fleeing, pretending not to be awkward.
“So what’s this all about?” Gail said, after everyone sat down.
“It’s about the Arm, and the training she’s giving you,” Sylvie said, leaning forward intently.
Gail stiffened. “Is there a problem?” she said.
“Back when the training started, you were very firm about doing this,” Manfred said. “Is this still true?”
Gail nodded. She should have expected something like this from a new house president.
“Why?”
“It’s working.” Gail paused. “And, as always, politics.”
Gail’s household leaders weren’t fools, and they had picked up a lot over the years about Focus politics. They had dealt with many Focuses, and had developed a sixth sense for when the screws tightened.
“So we’re stuck,” Manfred said. “You’re not coping very well.”
Gail looked down at the floor. “I know.”
“How can we help?”
New household president, new priorities. “Help?” Van’s reaction to this issue had been to prod Gail into talking to him and then letting her rant, pointedly not making helpful suggestions.
Manfred shrugged. “Since we can’t get rid of her, we need to help you. What can we do to help you cope?”
A tear leaked down Gail’s cheek. “You’re not mad at me?”
Manfred shrugged again, but Sylvie reached over and hugged her. Gail hugged her back and the tears came. “I’m trying, I really am.” She honked her nose on Sylvie’s offered tissue.
“It’s all right,” Sylvie said. “We still love you.”
---
As she ran, keeping pace with Teacher and attempting to ignore the ache in her legs, Gail’s nerves tingled with the itchy feeling she often felt when Crow eyes or metasense fell on her. She didn’t say anything, not wanting another digression into strangeness. Crow activity in the Detroit area had picked up markedly after Teacher claimed the city, but none of the Crows came close enough to Gail for a chat. The one who signed his name with a lizard squiggle told her, in the one note they had exchanged thus far, that he didn’t need extra dross, but thanked her for offering.
“Halt,” Teacher said. Gail stopped in the driveway of an old two story home landscaped with junipers and coleus, wondering why the interruption. Starlight cast flickering shadows on the street from the old maple above her. They had another two miles to go before Teacher would have normally called for a stop. Gail took the moment to direct her self-healing to her legs. She still didn’t have the trick of self-healing while running.
She just hoped Teacher hadn’t found another climbable building. Gail’s fingernails still hadn’t recovered from the last climb.
“Teacher?” Gail said, quiet, after the Arm didn’t do anything save stand and glower.
“Monster,” Teacher said. “A new and screwy Monster. I think it’s time to see how good you’ve gotten at your fighting.”
“You want me to fight a Monster?” Gail said. This was ridiculous. “I suppose you want me to kill the Monster, too.” She couldn’t keep the sneer out of her voice.
“What, you want to adopt her into your household?”
Gail frowned and raised a quizzical eyebrow.
“You should be able to take down a new Monster. Something screwy is going on, though,” Teacher said. “I don’t know what, yet, besides the fact the Monster isn’t doing the usual new Monster rampage. We’ll keep our options open on the killing, though.”
Teacher had them running through a reasonable residential neighborhood of two story pre-WW II houses on Sturtevant, all on long narrow lots, most with garages in the back yard. The summer air refused to cool tonight, and Gail had already sweated through her running clothes. Teacher pointed back the way they had come, and motioned them past a house with asphalt shingle faux-brick siding, crumbling cement front steps and a roofed-over porch gently sagging in the middle, to a vacant lot still with a paved front driveway and sidewalk to the long-gone front door. The foundation now grew grass; Gail suspected the house may have never had a basement. She drew in on herself, nervous and fearful. After a strange semaphore routine Teacher didn’t explain, the Arm motioned them over a fence into the back yard of the house on the next street over, and over the fence into a vacant lot dominated by a huge old sassafras tree. The only sign that there may have ever been a house on this lot was a small square of broken concrete between the sidewalk and the street.
Gail attempted to calm herself; she sniffed and pointed. Teacher nodded. The Monster was out of her metasense range, but Gail knew the distinctive odor of Monster, the bad memories of the Fight in Detroit on her wedding day fixing the Monster stench deep in her mind. The other odors, though. Gail concentrated and gasped. Teacher caught her mood change and yanked her back into the darkness behind the giant sassafras tree.
“What is it?”
“Cameramen. Reporters.” She recognized the unique odor of high quality film.
“I still want you to deal with the Monster,” Teacher said, after a pause. “I’ll be by your side, but invisible. Got it?”
Gail nodded. Something was wrong here, and she didn’t know how she would feel when she faced the Monster, but right now she worried more about the media presence and the hot eyes of multiple Crows, one nearly within Teacher’s metasense range.
Teacher led her along the houses down what turned out to be Highland Street. After they crossed LaSalle the Monster appeared in Gail’s metasense. There. The old woman mea
ndering drunkenly down the sidewalk, across Highland. The Monster. The, uh, not-Monster.
“Teacher?”
“Talk,” the Arm said. “I know, there’s something wrong with this Monster.”
“She’s not a Monster or even a Transform,” Gail said. “She’s wearing a coat tricked up to radiate Monster vibes. The coat’s drenched in élan.”
“Why’s she still moving?” Teacher said. “Normals don’t react well to élan.”
“What’s the Crow range on dross manipulation?”
“Huh?” Pause. “About a hundred yards.”
“Okay, then the Crow watching us isn’t keeping her alive; the closest one is about three hundred yards out, pacing us. Something else is keeping her alive, then. I don’t know what.”
“Gut feel? Twitchies? That’s how you detect Crows?” Teacher said. Gail shrugged. She couldn’t explain it, either. Teacher snorted. “You ought to thank your lucky stars I’m not Arm Haggerty. She would want data, not gut feel.”
“I prefer data myself, but I’m not turning down freebies,” Gail said. Teacher backed them a house farther away from the ‘Monster’, taking the woman out of Gail’s metasense range. “You know, I’ll bet this is some kind of trap or setup. If someone knows you’re in Detroit, and your well-known dislike of Monsters, they…”
Teacher put her hand over Gail’s mouth. “I know. I figured that out when you mentioned reporters. The closest Crow is a friend of mine, and he’s stumped, too. Someone wants me to kill an innocent and get it on camera. This is Focus Adkins style.”
Gail shivered. “I don’t metasense or smell her, or any of her people here. And neither of the two Crows watching us are the one I told you about that I didn’t trust, Dancer.” Crow Dancer subsisted off the dross at the nearby factory where most of the Adkins household men worked. Although he didn’t realize, Focus Adkins owned him.
“I want you to interview one of these reporters or cameramen,” Teacher said. “I want to see you strut your stuff. I’ll stay invisible.”
Gail nodded, still twitchy. She felt naked without a bodyguard retinue, and although intellectually she knew Teacher was better than the lot of them put together, well, the knowledge didn’t cure her twitchiness. She missed the extra eyeballs. Gail followed her nose to the nearest person, a single man with a camera and portable cassette tape recorder, lounging in the shadows in a driveway between two half-brick houses, five houses farther down Highland and past the ‘Monster’.
“You. Silvio? What are you doing here? Ready for the Monster fight?” Gail said, freezing the reporter in place with her charisma. She knew Silvio, a freelancer who specialized in crime scene photos and perp walk shots for the local suburban weeklies.
“Do I know you?” Silvio said. He nervously ran a comb through his short wavy hair.
“No,” Gail said, lying and laying down the charisma, hard. “Why’d you come here?”
“Got a hot tip about an Arm murder that’s supposed to happen,” Silvio said. “Nothin’ ‘bout any Monsters.”
“Tip from who?” Gail said.
“A guy. About your height, light build, long brown hair in a ponytail. Young man, early 20s. Well dressed, sorta conservatively. Never met the guy before.”
“That’s it? No name?”
“No name.”
“Why’d you believe him?” Silvio shouldn’t have. The tip was nothing.
“You know, that’s strange,” Silvio said. “I shouldn’t have.” He paused. “Why’d I come here? I shouldn’t even be here.”
“That’s right,” Gail said. “Go home. Now.”
Silvio left. Gail, now terribly nervous and feeling exposed, waited until Silvio was long gone before she attempted to locate Teacher. Teacher had vanished completely from her metasense.
“I’m right here,” Teacher said. From right next to Gail. “I’m guessing he got mind-bent by a Crow, likely the distant Crow eyeballing us.”
“I didn’t know Crows could give people orders with their cuddle charisma,” Gail said.
“Learn something new every day.” Teacher sighed. “Newton, say hello to Focus Rickenbach. Tell her what you told me.”
“Hello, Focus Rickenbach.” The whispered words nearly blended in with the night sounds of crickets, mosquitoes, and distant automobiles. They came from the closer Crow, who remained three hundred yards away.
“Hello, Crow Newton,” Gail said, whispering in the Crow’s direction. “You can come closer if you want.” She had interacted with the Newt several times in person, before; she wondered what made him so skittish today. She did keep from giggling when she realized the recent lizard squiggle note had been from him, and he hadn’t bothered to reintroduce himself to her. He remained as socially awkward as always.
“I thank you for your kind invitation, but I think I’ll stay where I am for the moment.” Oh. He didn’t trust Teacher. Interesting to find a Crow who trusted Keaton more than Teacher. “If I told you the other Crow had your meta-signature, would you panic?” She mentally translated Newt’s ‘meta-signature’ comment as ‘metapresence’.
“Uh, probably, as that’s a senior Crow trick,” Gail said, remembering information from her many long conversations with Gilgamesh.
“Then I won’t say, not wishing to panic you,” the Newt said from his perch a thousand feet away. “I do wish you a better night of exercise than you’ve had so far.”
Gail turned to Teacher. “I’m not liking this, you know.”
Teacher shrugged. “We’re going to go back the way we came and continue our running, only we’re going to head off toward this more distant Crow. I want to see how senior a Crow we’re facing. Let’s see if we can get him to run. You understand the goal of the fake Monster trick?”
“The Crow wanted to get you on camera killing an innocent.”
Teacher shook her head. “That’s just the start. This is an attack on the Cause. Someone doesn’t like what I’m doing with you and wants to stop us.” She led Gail back over the fence and back to Sturtevant, where they resumed their running. Gail’s gut said Newton now trailed behind them.
The juice to an Arm project had been dangerous from day one, but Gail thought of the danger in terms of political trouble from Focus Adkins, Hunter-style rampage trouble, or trouble from various law enforcement agencies. She prepared her people accordingly, with an emphasis on house defense and running from danger. She had never thought of danger in terms of capers and tricks. How easy would it be to entrap one of her people into doing something stupid? Far too easy. Her mind ran through idea after idea on how to stop something like this, none of which satisfied her.
Distracted, she didn’t notice the wear and tear of the running, or the fact her automatic healing finally kicked in.
When they finally turned toward the second Crow, Gail’s itchy feeling from the second Crow vanished, and never returned that evening.
---
“Relax,” the slow voice said. Gail did her best, lying on the floor of her office with the door securely locked.
The pain started in her shoulder, sharp and stabbing, as if Teacher had driven a knife all the way down into her lungs. Gail gasped, but then controlled her reaction and didn’t show any more. She attempted to relax again and force the pain away.
“Pull on the juice, let the juice insulate your will from your body,” Teacher said. Gail tried. The pain hurt, but she could deal.
Then Teacher did something and the pain increased tenfold. Gail screamed and thrashed. She tried to fight free of Teacher’s grip and the pain, but Teacher held her tight, and the pain went on and on.
“Draw on the juice,” Teacher said, but Gail barely heard her over her own screams. The pain didn’t stop, terrible and consuming.
The pain stopped.
Gail collapsed on the floor, gasping and shaking. After a moment, the tears started coming. A part of her just couldn’t understand how something could possibly hurt this much.
She wasn’t done crying when Teacher pu
t a gag in her mouth and tied the gag behind her head.
“Mgmph!”
“You can’t hear my instructions if you’re screaming, and you don’t have enough control to keep quiet. Get ready, because we’re doing this again. Draw on the juice this time. Willpower won’t be enough, I promise.”
“Mgmph!” Teacher smiled her nasty little smile at Gail’s gagged screams.
“You have a long way to go before you’re toughened up, Focus. Try to learn something, because we’re doing this exercise for the next two hours.”
Gail knelt at the alter rail at St. Paul’s Methodist Church, just outside downtown Detroit. The moon shone through the stained glass window of Jesus ascending into heaven, and illuminated just the head of the left-most angel. The inside of the church was dark, and she was the only one there.
She prayed.
This church had been her home once, back in the early days after her transformation, after Trisha’s boyfriend ran off with their money, and they had no money and no hope and a winter coming on. The bishop had taken pity on them and let the whole household live here over the winter. She remembered back then, when the household refinished the antique pews and the very antique alter rail where she knelt. Back when Matt Narbanor had been pastor, a different lifetime, back before the Battle in Detroit.
She wished he still lived. He would listen to her troubles, and then pray with her. Now, she prayed alone.
The church remained silent in the darkness. Gail was glad. Even her bodyguards left her alone and stood guard outside the sanctuary.
She missed Matt Narbanor a lot, even more so now. The replacement pastor wasn’t the same. He was one of the normals in Grace Johnson’s household, three months out of seminary. He was one of many who had heard the call to the ministry after Matt’s heroic death.
He wasn’t Matt, though, and not hers, and he didn’t have Matt’s years of wisdom and experience.
She prayed.
How did things get this bad? Too much, too fast. Self-control. Athletics. Combat and weaponry. Juice handling under stress. Complex juice assignments over multiple different people for extended periods of time.
The Shadow of the Progenitors: A Transforms Novel (The Cause Book 1) Page 30