Twisted Miracles

by A. J. Larrieu

  When we cleared the fishing camps, Ryan pushed the throttle up and took us along the raised interstate to the pass that led to Lake Maurepas. I’d forgotten how cold it got out on the water, and I shivered as we picked up speed. My hair escaped from its ponytail and whipped against my cheeks and neck.

  “Here,” Shane yelled over the roar of the motor. He’d shrugged out of his black windbreaker and was handing it to me.

  “I’m fine!” I shouted back, but he ignored me and sent the jacket floating through the space between us.

  I gave up and slid it on backward. It swallowed me whole. Shane was a foot taller than me and twice as broad—I used to wear his T-shirts as nightgowns. The fabric of the jacket was still warm from his body, an instant relief, and I realized he must’ve used his powers to heat the air around him before he’d taken it off. It unsettled me, as though he were laying warm hands on my skin. I chanced a glance at him, but he was looking straight ahead, stone-faced.

  Despite my nerves, I was glad for the windbreaker. It took fifteen minutes to get across the lake and into the tributaries, and it was another half hour before Lionel signaled Ryan to stop, saying, “This is as good a place as any.” I wondered how many they’d tried before.

  Ryan took us close to the bank and tied us off on an overhanging cypress branch. This far in, the river was narrower, and the bank was clotted with scrubby underbrush. There weren’t any camps nearby, and I hoped we were far enough away from the small towns that dotted the area. Too much interference.

  “Have you listened for her yet?” Janine asked me as she settled herself at the bottom of the boat. The men circled around her.

  “Not really. I just got in this morning.” I took the place they’d left for me between Ryan and Shane, wincing as the cold metal of the boat bit through my thin dress slacks. Shane’s leg was almost touching mine, and I worked hard to keep my thoughts from straying.

  “Well, we’ll just see what we can do.” Janine held out her arms, and we all linked hands. My pulse quickened as Shane fitted his palm to mine. His mental presence was as familiar and unavoidable as a favorite song playing in my head. He wasn’t pushing any further than my surface thoughts, but those were conflicted enough. I took a deep breath and looked expectantly at Janine.

  “Just concentrate on Mina,” she said. “Whatever you can remember.”

  It had been so long since I’d used that part of my brain it was like trying to do long division without a calculator. I knew how it worked, but it was hard to remember the steps, what to do first. My mind felt foggy and jumbled from the lingering effects of the sedatives, and everyone would be able to tell. No help for it now.

  It was hard to think of Mina without thinking of her brother. Her chin was pointed and feminine where his was firm, but they shared the same wide mouth and high cheekbones, the same dark eyes. I needed to focus on a specific image. I searched my memories and settled on one of Mina as I’d seen her last, sitting in the kitchen at the B&B, drinking a beer and talking quietly with Shane while I snuck out the front door to take a cab to the airport. It was tinged with shame and regret, and Janine would pick up the emotions as well as the images, but this was the clearest memory I had. I got the feel of her solidly in my head, her curly black hair, her warm brown skin, the dark red T-shirt she’d been wearing. Then I focused on the quiet, tenuous touch of Janine’s mind—so different from Shane’s solid presence—and strengthened the connection.

  Janine immediately assimilated my memories, combining them with everyone else’s. The images from Ryan’s head were foggier, as though he couldn’t quite focus, but he hadn’t known her as well as we had, and his memories were tangled with the buried pain of losing his brother. Brandon had died in a hunting accident when Ryan was just sixteen, but it wasn’t the sort of memory that faded, and the current situation must have brought the incident to the front of his mind. I felt for him, and for Janine. The Tooleys knew better than anyone what Lionel and Shane were going through.

  Janine’s own memories of Mina stretched almost as far back as Lionel’s, but she was focusing on a recent image, one of Mina and Ryan sitting on the back porch at the Tooleys’ place. It couldn’t have been more than a month old, and I realized with a jolt of sorrow that my own five-year-old memory might be the last one I’d ever have of her. I took a deep breath to hold back tears and felt an answering pressure from Shane’s hand. It almost made me lose focus, but I got myself back under control. Then Janine’s gift kicked in, and we were off.

  I’d once asked her to describe how she searched for things, and she’d said she didn’t quite know. For her, it just happened, the same way you’d run your hand over a piece of linen and feel the place where the fabric was torn. She cast her mental eyes nearby at first, focusing on the sparsely populated riverbanks closest to the lake. We went slowly. This was the careful pass, the fine-tooth comb. Janine lingered here and there, moving on when the twinge she’d felt turned out to be nothing. It was hard to tell how long we sat there, tapped into each other’s heads, pushing farther and farther away. Eventually, a few miles from our anchor point, Janine was at her limit, and I knew without asking that she hadn’t found Mina. We all felt Lionel’s sharp stab of disappointment.

  Janine retreated more quickly than she’d gone out. It would have been easy to miss something, but we were covering ground we’d searched before, and hopelessness was thick in everyone’s minds. Janine brought our collective awareness back to the gently rocking boat, but she didn’t dissolve the connection. It was more out of reluctance to give up than anything like hope. Then, just as we all began to pull away, she stopped us.

  “Wait,” she said.

  Everyone froze. I didn’t dare open my eyes. I struggled to make my thoughts go quiet, holding myself motionless while Shane’s hand clenched mine. It was an endless, perfectly silent moment before Janine let out a breath and said, “There.”

  The boat exploded with activity. Shane leaped behind the wheel and started the motor, mentally untying us from the tree at the same time. Lionel knelt in front of Janine, holding her by the shoulders as she said, “I’m not sure, I’m not sure, it could be nothing.” Ryan looked shocked, rubbing the palm of his hand with his thumb.

  “Which way?” Shane asked, his face grave and his lips thin. His hope was held back like water at a floodgate, whipped white by fear that what Janine felt wasn’t Mina, only what was left of her.

  Janine pointed to the right, farther upstream, her eyes still unfocused. Shane shoved the throttle up and trimmed out the motor in one quick mental motion. A pair of egrets along the bank took off and winged above the cypress trees as we sped upriver, flying through Slow No Wake zones, past fishermen who yelled out expletives as we disturbed their lines. The whole time, Janine sat in front of the wheel, her eyes still distant, pointing the way through tributaries. I lost track of where we were after the second turn.

  When Janine held up her hand, Shane pulled the throttle back so fast, I toppled over onto the floor of the boat. We all looked up. In a turn of the river, its propeller lodged in a tangle of fallen tree limbs, was Mina’s flat-bottomed fishing boat, empty.

  Chapter Three

  Shane nearly dove into the water, but Lionel held him back while Ryan took the wheel and brought us in close. Debris had collected in the lee between the hull and a partially submerged log: paper cups, beer cans, bits of wood and duckweed. A blue ice chest lay in the bottom, overturned and empty. Mina’s life vest was wedged underneath it. At the sight of the vest, Shane gave a cry and broke free from his uncle.

  “Shane, wait—” Lionel said, but Shane had already leaped across, clearing five feet of muddy water as if he’d had a running start. He crouched in the boat, running his hands over the army-green metal as though he’d find her there in some secret compartment.

  Ryan was shaking his head and frowning, his thoughts so loud, I couldn’t help picking them up. Drowned, he was thinking. Drowned.

  “Come on,” Shane called, jumping from
the boat to the bank. “We can split up, cover more ground.” His eyes were dilated, his shadowmind already focused on the search.

  “That boat could have drifted from anywhere,” Ryan said, but Lionel pointed to the rope wrapped around a tree, tying it off.

  “She stopped here,” he said. “Or someone did.”

  I didn’t want to think about the implications of someone else having tied off Mina’s boat. “Maybe she took off the vest to dig for bait along the bank.”

  “Janey?” Lionel asked softly, but Janine shook her head. She was spent. A sustained search like that, while we were in motion, must have been exhausting. Lionel told her to wait with the boat while we searched the bank, and she nodded gratefully.

  Ryan and Lionel used their powers to jump to land, but I paused at the edge of the boat. Swapping memories was one thing. Using telekinesis to lift my own weight was another. I didn’t trust myself, and the distance was too far for me to jump. I wavered until Shane noticed, and before I could ask him not to, he wrapped his powers around my waist and lifted me to solid ground. He released me the moment my feet hit the earth, already turning away.

  Once we were all across, we fanned out along the muddy ground and started hunting. What we were looking for was hard to describe. If Mina was dead, I wouldn’t be able to pick up a thing. But if she was alive, even barely, we should be able to feel her. Just like you could recognize an old friend’s voice over the phone, a converter could recognize the unique energy of a person’s mind.

  As I reached out, I picked up the minds of strangers out fishing, the dull, simple signatures of perch loitering in the network of sunken logs below the surface of the river, the quicker, tangled feelings of egrets and cranes nesting along the banks. It was a little too cold for the reptiles to be out, but I could feel them holed up in the sticky mud beneath my feet. Even through the fear, it felt familiar. Home had a feeling you never forgot.

  We walked miles into the marshy woods, far past where Mina would have gone looking for worms or grubs. Finally, Lionel called us off, saying we should contact the authorities about the boat. We rode back down the river until Shane got a signal on his cell phone, and he made the call. To their credit, the police brought in searchers right away, and it was almost 1:00 a.m. before they called it off for the night. But they found nothing, and neither did we.

  * * *

  I maneuvered into riding with Lionel back to the B&B, Shane following behind us in his Camaro. Lionel didn’t press me to speak, and it was quiet as we drove through the dark. I used to think the cypress swamps around the city were beautiful. Now all I could think about was Mina lost somewhere among them. I watched Lionel’s St. Christopher medal swing from the rearview mirror.

  “Where’s Bruce?” I asked finally. I would’ve expected Lionel’s partner to come with us. He’d been like a father to us.

  “Back at the B&B. He’ll be happy to see you.”

  I knew it was true. It made my throat tighten painfully. That Bruce would be happy to see me in the midst of all this tragedy just reminded me that I’d never told him goodbye, either.

  Lionel reached over and squeezed my shoulder. “We’re all glad you’re here, sugar.”

  “Yeah, me too,” I said, meaning it and lying at the same time. Lionel gave me a small smile.

  It was almost three o’clock when we sank into the French Quarter, canyons of old brick and black wrought iron rising on either side of us as we exited the interstate. When Lionel turned down Ursulines, I couldn’t help feeling a jolt of familiar joy at the sight of the B&B, a three-story brick and stucco mansion painted a warm shade of orangish-red, decorated with wrought-iron balconies and window boxes. As a kid I’d thought it was a palace.

  We went in through the garage door around the corner, and Lionel headed for the kitchen. Bruce was waiting up like I’d known he would be, a coffee mug and a newspaper in front of him. I had a feeling he’d been pacing the old softwood floors two minutes before we’d walked in.

  Bruce was a big man, tall and broad, imposing until you got to know him, with thinning reddish-blond hair, a long beard streaked with gray, and the weathered complexion of someone who’d spent his life working outside in the sun. He’d earned it as an oil rig engineer, but he was retired now. He made a funny picture next to Lionel, only five-nine, trim and black. They embraced for a long moment, and I heard Bruce murmur questions as Lionel shook his head. After they broke apart, Bruce turned to me and smiled sadly.

  “Hey, Bruce,” I said, and he came to me and wrapped me up in a hug.

  “Cassie, it’s so good to see you.” His deep voice was muffled in my hair. Bruce had the kind of slow, thick New Orleans accent that made me glad to be back just to hear him talk.

  “You, too,” I said.

  “I’m so glad you’re home, chère. We can use all the help we can get.” Bruce was just a regular guy as far as special talents went, but he knew about our unusual abilities. He’d always been supremely unconcerned about them, as though we all had abnormally long middle toes.

  “I’m not sure how much use I’ll be.”

  Bruce patted my shoulder with a huge hand. “We’ll find her. Don’t you worry.” He believed it. Maybe that was his superpower. Optimism.

  I thought of sitting down, of leaning my arms on the massive kitchen table with both of them and helping to bear the weight of the failed day, but the sound of the garage door opening again told me that Shane was pulling up behind us.

  “I’m pretty beat,” I said, not quite meeting Lionel’s eyes. “I think maybe I should head up to bed.”

  “Go on, girl, get your rest. Your old room’s ready for you.” If he knew I was being a coward, I couldn’t feel it. He must have been putting up shields. I was far too weak to put up my own. I leaned into his brief hug and headed down the hall to the private wing of the house.

  There were guests at the B&B—I could feel them as I made my way through the living room and up the stairs, avoiding the creaking step two up from the landing. I wondered how many rooms were occupied, and whether I would’ve been able to hold it together in Lionel’s place. What a time to have to deal with a bunch of cheerful tourists. But if the Tanners shut down now, they might as well shut down for good. Their profit margin was slim enough in the good months.

  My second-floor bedroom was just as I’d left it, the same old yellow curtains and the hand-stenciled leaf border running around the wall, the same quilted bedspread made by a Tanner ancestor. The plaster medallion on the twelve-foot ceiling needed dusting. Like a lot of the rooms in the B&B, it had an exposed-brick fireplace along one wall, and leaning on the old, white-painted mantel was a picture of me and the Tanners and Bruce at my high school graduation. Even the smell of the room—wood polish and lavender—was familiar. Despite everything, it was comforting.

  I was twelve when I saw this place for the first time—twelve years old and sure I was going crazy, hearing voices in my head, trashing bedrooms in my sleep. I’d lost count of how many foster parents had sent me back, how many social workers and therapists had tried to cure me of everything from acting out to early-onset schizophrenia. One couple had even brought in an exorcist. If Lionel hadn’t taken me in—if Shane hadn’t found me—I would’ve ended up in an institution.

  My bag was still in the back of Shane’s car, and I didn’t have the guts to face him in order to get it, so I undressed and put on an old T-shirt and socks scrounged from the antique dresser. Shane’s jacket I hung on the doorknob of the heavy oak armoire, wishing I’d thought to leave it in the coat closet downstairs. My low-heeled pumps and the hems of my pants were caked with mud, so I put them in the claw-foot tub to deal with later.

  I couldn’t shed my fatigue quite so easily. My mental muscles weren’t exactly in shape after five years of relentless inactivity, and for the past twenty hours, I’d been running a telepathic marathon. My defenses were nonexistent. As I crawled into bed, I heard the drunk guy in the Blue Room silently debating whether he should call his e
x while his buddies slept, the teenage girl on the rollaway on the third floor wondering if someone named Michael was going to ask her out. I wrapped a pillow around my head, but I knew it wouldn’t do any good. I could even catch the faint thoughts of the four single women staying in the room across the courtyard, up late chatting like girls at a slumber party, wondering if that bartender would be working again tomorrow night. Then I heard the boards on the stairs creak. Shane, heading up to bed.

  His room was directly above mine. It hadn’t been a problem when I lived here before. When I wanted to be near him. Back then, after Lionel and Bruce were asleep, I used to sneak up the stairs and meet him in the hallway, and if the Rose Room was empty, we’d go out onto the balcony overlooking Ursulines and watch the tourists yell and laugh and stumble in the street. That was before I was old enough to sneak back to his room.

  I remembered the feeling of his hand covering mine in the boat, the steady pressure of his mental grip as he’d lifted me to the bank, and the featherlight touch of his consciousness as we’d searched for Mina. I could sense his fatigue, his anxiety, his hope, and it didn’t help that his emotions mirrored mine. With only twelve feet and a thin wood floor between us, there was no way I’d be able to block him out all night. I went for my purse and my pills.

  I didn’t realize my hands were shaking until I nearly dropped the bottle, but the feel of the threads catching on the orange plastic was enough to make me instantly calm. I had two caplets in my hand when there was a knock at my bedroom door, and Shane pushed it open. I jumped and hid the bottle behind my back.

  “I brought your bag.” He took a half step into the room and set my duffel on the floor. “I could tell you were still awake.”

  “Thanks,” I said, not moving. Even several feet away, I sensed his concern. My hand tingled where he’d held it, and my heart pounded with a thousand inappropriate memories of his hands in other places, doing other things. My face heated. The situation wasn’t helped by the fact that I was only wearing underwear and a thin T-shirt.