"Yeah. That humming that isn't quite in your ears and not quite in your fingertips."
"I don't get it in my fingertips. Well, the sounds that aren't sounds—real clear, right?—they vary, like people's voices vary, even if everybody is an alto, they all sound different. Kind of like that. Some talents sound, feel different."
"How do I sound?"
"Chiming."
"Chiming?" Jane laughed.
"Yeah, that's how you sound to me, when we're both using your talent. Like wind chimes. Pretty wind chimes. Really soft and shimmery, like in a dream. But when you're ticked and when you're using your talent—whoo, baby!" He winked at her again. "Like tonight. You went from a few chimes about two octaves above Middle C, when you were just sitting and thinking, to the entire string section of the Cincinnati Pops, with a couple dozen harps thrown in, when we were trying to keep Evan from doing Evel Knieval on a bad day."
"If I wasn't fighting you all the time, I wouldn't be making a sound. Would I?" She made her tone belligerent, when in reality she suddenly felt a wave of uncertainty. Jane didn't like the idea of being a noisy talent. High volume, even if Kurt thought it was pretty, didn't exactly fit the image of the Ghost.
"Come to think of it, you were practically silent, until I showed up," Kurt admitted. "Just this nice, soft, kind of hypnotic sound. Relaxing. Kind of like how all those candles you sell would sound if they turned into music."
"Either you've done a lot of drugs in your time, or you're a man who slips through dimensions and sees through other senses without going wonky." Jane slouched back a little more and smiled at him. Maybe she did like Kurt Hanson after all.
"Haven't you turned your brain inside out, trying to figure out what you are, why you are—and why you ended up in Neighborlee?" He sat forward, his smile flattening. "Or do the Old Poops you've been talking about have an answer? Care to share?"
"We don't have an answer," she admitted. "Just a purpose."
"And that is?" he prompted, when she didn't continue. "It seems to me, if you know your purpose for being on Earth, you know why you were sent, and who sent you."
"Not that kind of purpose. It's taken them years, decades, really, to come up with a pattern. A lot of us spend our time guarding towns that have similar characteristics to Neighborlee, waiting for children like us to show up."
"So you can whisk them away from their homes and friends, and put them in... What? Superhero training?"
"Please, it's been too long a day, and too high on the weirdness meter to get nasty." She slouched down on the cushions and rubbed at her temples. How come, just when she thought Kurt might turn into a friend or at least a friendly accomplice, he started throwing accusations around?
"Sorry. Put yourself in my shoes—"
"Sorry, too big, and they probably smell. Most guys built like you are sweaty and smelly."
"Built like me?" He snorted and gave her the widest, most natural smile she had seen from him yet.
"Our purpose is to gather all of the Gifted together, give them shelter, let them grow up as normally as possible, and train them to use their Gifts for good. You had friends, and you said you had people who supported you and gave you guidance and probably didn't make you feel like a freak every time you turned around. That's what the Old Poops do for us. It's hard to feel like you fit in if you're afraid of getting noticed by the wrong kind of people."
"Yeah, well, sometimes we're pretty sure there's either a magic spell hiding Neighborlee from the rest of the world, or some kind of hypnotic programming, or something in the air. People who don't fit in get driven away, and people who belong shrug off the weirdness half the time, and the other half they don't even notice."
"You're lucky," she said, her voice dropping nearly to a whisper.
"Maybe. Okay, your Old Poops are looking out for you. They gave you a family. But that doesn't make up for the weirdness. Every single one of us is an abandoned child. Found in the middle of nowhere—which just happens to be within the protective field that surrounds Neighborlee."
"And a couple other towns we've identified through the decades," she offered.
"Really?" He cocked his head to one side, studying her for a few seconds. "Okay, we need to compare notes. Get you together with Lanie and Felicity."
"And Angela," she said, more testing than questioning him.
"Oh, definitely. People like us, we have to stick together. Angela has her own gifts and secrets and... Well, she's a package deal with Divine's. If either one was damaged, we're pretty sure the whole town would feel it. She's not one of us, so to speak, but she's kind of like our advisor. Scout master. Whatever." He frowned, staring into space for a few seconds. Jane thought she could hear fizzing coming from inside his head, from the intensity of his thoughts. "Then there's Stanzer, whatever he is, whoever he's allied with."
"Who?"
"Town private eye. Good guy. He's kind of like us, but definitely not one of us. And you don't want to hack off his...I don't know, defenders? Protectors? Bodyguards?" Kurt grinned and made a show of slouching down on his couch again and made a brushing motion, as if pushing aside the questions just starting to form on her tongue. "Okay, back to the towns you were talking about. Like Neighborlee."
"Not really. They definitely don't have the feeling I get even a mile from the border. I think the Gifted who were found there, and only one or two from each suspected town, were just flukes."
"Okay, but even flukes, breaks from the pattern, should help define the pattern a little better. Do these towns have power surges, invasions from other dimensions? Or at least, attempted invasions?"
"Umm, not that anyone has noticed. We've only identified about twenty children from these other towns, total, in the last ninety years or so since they started collecting us. Most of the kids come from Neighborlee. Reginald and Demetrius came from Neighborlee."
"Okay, so no proof of power fault lines. Metaphysical fault lines. Nothing near the Afterlife and all that hoodoo and reincarnation mumbo jumbo. Like thin spots in the material of time and space. I'm talking about parallel universes and things that go bump in the night because...." Kurt shook his head and looked away, out the balcony door.
"Because the wall between dimensions gets thinner at night," she whispered. "Because when we dream, we're reaching backwards to a place we don't quite remember, and people we think we belong to... And we can't find them?"
The wide-eyed, relieved, almost ashamed look he gave her made her want to cry.
"So... Truce?" he said, after the silence stretched out into something warm and sleepy and comfortable. The air grew thick with possibilities and Jane looked into his eyes and realized she wouldn't mind looking into those big gray eyes for the next fifty or sixty years.
And wasn't that a scary thought?
"What kind of truce?" She offered up a smile. "You stop sabotaging me and I stop thinking of ways to hogtie you and send you out of town on a rocket?"
"Something like that. We're on the same side, when you really think about it. Looking for new talents to show up, protecting them from themselves, protecting them from the world. And in this case, protecting hormone-bound idiot rich kids from vengeful kids who are just discovering their talents."
"We should work together to find this kid, before he or she does something really dangerous."
"Agreed. Now, if we could just figure out who was there at the quarry. Any chance it's Penny? It seems to me, Angela might have matched the two of you together, maybe expecting you to have some influence on her, give her guidance. That's the way she works a lot of the time, like she's under a spell that won't let her tell you the facts, just lots of hints."
"No." Jane rubbed her fingers together and held her hand up when Kurt gave her an odd look. "I was assigned to Fendersburg mostly because I can feel untrained power at work, itching in my fingertips. That's why I get accused of being anti-social a lot."
"Do I make you itch?"
Jane's mouth went dry. Kurt had asked his q
uestion quite innocently—at least, she hoped it was innocently—but her thoughts took a jagged U-turn.
"Sometimes an itch is more like a tickle. And sometimes... It's like a really good deep tissue massage that digs out all the poisons from your muscles, and you know it's good for you, but it hurts like bloody murder while it's being done. You know?"
Jane wondered if she sounded as much like a blithering idiot to Kurt as she sounded to herself.
"So where do I fit into all that?" He offered her one of those lopsided grins that made her think he laughed at himself, rather than her. And made her melt a little inside. Maybe manipulating others' feelings and reactions was part of his talents, but he didn't know it?
"Sorry, now. You have a lot of control, you aren't fumbling around, figuring out what you can do. Except when you were learning to hijack my Gift." She held up her hand, stopping him from responding, when a new thought suddenly flashed through her mind. "It's a different buzz when someone is just learning. For everybody," she emphasized. "Why can't it be a different sound for everybody, too? If you can learn to differentiate... Maybe you can track people down?"
"Yeah. I don't even notice when Lanie and Felicity use their talent. Well, Felicity was pretty flashy, until recently. When we fought Big Ugly just after New Year's, she did something that kind of yanked her into synch or something." He grinned wider. "I'll explain later, or maybe let her explain to you when you meet her. But yeah, with enough exposure, I can tune people out when I want to hunt." Kurt nodded. "So... We're hunting together?"
"I guess."
"Gee, don't sound so excited."
"You are a goof." She yanked the lid off the cookie jar and tossed him two more cookies. Kurt snagged them out of mid-air and flipped them between his fingers, twirling and twisting like the Harlem Globetrotters did with basketballs. Jane laughed as she hadn't laughed in years.
* * * *
Feel anything down there? Kurt drifted over the long building behind the recreation center at the orphanage.
No. The boys are in that half. Or, at least they were when I was living here. Jane rolled over onto her back and stared up at the clouds. You have no idea how many times I wanted to do exactly this when I lived here. I had just figured out that I could fly, it wasn't just a dream, and the thought of dive-bombing those bullies...
You wanted to get away from all the jerks, and prove you were special in a good way.
We all go through that, don't we? She sighed and drifted upright and sat with her legs crossed. The problem was that I didn't figure out how to stay invisible, how to turn it on and off, until I got out of here. I didn't dare go flying where my Ghost field might fluctuate and people might see me. Even at night. Even this high. I knew it wasn't safe.
Adolescent boys are notorious for going and looking where you don't expect or want— Hah! Kurt did a front roll and pointed down. Four shadows climbed out onto the flat roof of the sixties-style gym building.
Why do you think it's boys in particular?
I spend a lot of time here as a big brother, and there are three times as many boys as girls here, right now. Besides, who would be more likely to zap Evan for putting pressure on Penny? Kurt floated over closer to her. With them both in phase, she could see him, with moonlight passing through him like a holographic projection.
A jealous boy. Jane sighed. It'd be nice if there were more girls among us.
How many are there of you? What was it like, going to school with other kids like you? Must have been nice, being able to talk about your talents, compare the problems you were having, figuring out what you could do. Growing up, it was just Lanie, Felicity and me.
You had your comic books and Angela, and Lanie's folks, right? Sounds like you had a lot of support and advice.
We still felt like freaks. He grinned. But it was fun being a freak. So, what was it like for you?
Actually... She floated closer to him. I was the youngest, so it was like being an oops baby. That got a confused frown from him. You know, the kids are in high school and Mom and Dad realize another one is coming. Oops. Big gap between me and the next oldest students. It was like having a lot of big brothers and sisters, or maybe doting aunts and uncles, and a lot of focus on me. There was always somebody to stand up for me if they thought the Old Poops were putting too much pressure on me, and a lot of people who the Old Poops had to protect me from, because they expected so much from me and... Another shrug. In some ways, I felt really alone. But yeah, like you said, I could ask questions and compare notes and practice out in the open, without being afraid some government agency would swoop down and drag me away.
Because you'd already been dragged away. Hey, speaking of dragged—could you get us some updates on the trouble trio? They belong to Neighborlee, and we feel like we failed them.
Sure, I'll ask. What do you think those troublemakers down there are up to?
Let's follow them and find out. Kurt laughed and did a nosedive, pulling up at the last moment to do a triple loop and climb up to rejoin her.
The boys climbing around on the gym roof paused to look up, faces pale in the moonlight. Jane almost felt sorry for them, being frightened by the sound of laughter above their heads, but a little paranoia was good for the soul, and those boys had no business being up there on the roof at this time of night. Or any other time, come to think of it.
Shouldn't we be waiting for them to do something? Aren't we looking for a newly awakened Gifted?
You're no fun. He stuck his tongue out at her, and drifted back a few yards.
They passed the next hour comparing adventures they had gone on, growing up, or the differences in their training. Jane was amused to realize that much of what Kurt and his friends picked up from reading comic books and gleaning from the lives of superheroes, to apply to their lives, to create the rules they lived by, Reginald and Demetrius had taught their decades of students. Kurt laughed with her when she voiced her thoughts, and agreed. They tiptoed around the idea of getting their two groups together, bringing Reginald and Demetrius to Neighborlee, or Jane taking Kurt, Lanie and Felicity to the Sanctum to meet her teachers.
Sounds like Ford Longfellow, Kurt said, when Jane mentioned the book thief who had clashed with Reginald one time he was in Neighborlee. He's a friend of mine, kind of a mentor. He makes things out of junk, likes to invent, play with things and figure out how they work. And he's got a bigger library in his house than all the surrounding public libraries combined.
Is he one of us? A lost child, but never displayed any Gifts?
Come to think of it, yeah.
What are his children like? Do they have any unusual Gifts?
Well, Jinx is kind of odd, but he's smart. Smart enough to be kind of weird, if you ask me. The girls... Kurt drifted a little closer. Come to think of it, his granddaughters are really smart. Athena is a genius with computers. Doni... Well, she's still a little kid, still figuring out what she's going to do, what she likes, but she's smart. And Angela says both of the girls are guardians. Their destiny is to protect Neighborlee. Seems to me, that means they're super-sensitive. Maybe their superhero powers won't show up until they need them.
That's part of Reginald and Demetrius' theory. The next generation will show powers, even if their parents didn't. None of the other towns we've monitored have had any abandoned children who didn't show Gifts. Only Neighborlee.
Second wave. Okay, that's something to think about. Something we should probably discuss with Angela.
So she's the queen bee, the boss. That fit everything Jane had theorized.
She's the one who knows what's going on when the rest of us are running around, lost. And if you're smart you don't cross her. Ever.
Jane wasn't sure why, but that warning irritated her. She had already figured out that Angela was the one person in Neighborlee whose good side she needed to stay on, no matter what happened or what anyone else said. She already trusted Angela like she trusted Reginald and Demetrius, even when they totally hacked he
r off. Still, for some reason she felt like digging in her metaphorical heels. After all, just because Kurt made her hormones ripple and just because he seemed to be friendly now... Did that really mean he had the right to toss advice around and give her instructions, and she should trust him? Did that mean she should just blab everything she discovered, every secret of the Sanctum, its location, even Reginald and Demetrius' phone numbers?
The Old Poops hadn't raised her to take foolish chances. They had proof now that someone out there knew about the Gifted, and had targeted the people in Neighborlee for study, or something worse. Just because the two groups of Gifted had common enemies didn't mean they had to be allies, did it?
Whoever is down there, whatever they can do, they're asleep, Kurt said, breaking into her thoughts.
Or maybe the Gift only appears when they're angry or worried or afraid, she offered. I'm inclined to agree that our new talent is a boy.
Why?
Penny works for me, remember? All her friends have come into the spa to try out jewelry and makeup samples at least once. I never felt a single blip or itch or tickle. Sometimes Gifts activate at that age just when they get excited, when they're in big groups, maybe vying for attention, or they get mad at someone. She waggled her fingers for explanation. Not a bit.
How excited do girls get over all that goop in your store? He grinned at her, and she thought, hoped, he was only teasing.
Hormones. Boys protecting a girl they like. Rivalries. Bullies. Believe me, girls can get absolutely catty when they see a shade of nail polish they like and don't want anyone else to use it too. Or they want to all be exactly alike, and there isn't enough of something to go around. And we've spent enough time out here. Whoever it is, you're right, they're asleep. Good night. She sighed and turned to float back to her side of town.
How fast can you fly? Kurt pulled up next to her.
I don't know. As fast as I need to.
You never timed yourself?
Who would I get to time me?
True. No pals who can fly?
None close enough. The Old Poops lecture us on wasting each other's time and energy on stunts, or taking other Gifted away from their patrol areas.
Hero Blues Page 18