They did not look as though they had noticed her—but their voices were curiously indistinct and blurred for their being such a short distance away. It was as though the air between Thea and the two mages had thickened into an invisible soundproof barrier.
She suddenly realized what the matter was. Of course—they must be warded.
She chewed on her lip, frustrated, straining to hear, before realizing that she was still wearing the keypad.
There was more than one way to get around magic shields. Humphrey himself had given her the means.
Situation identical, she typed in lightly when her wrist gadget lit up at her command, minus the wards.
She pressed ENTER. The world, still shadowy and dark in the twilight, didn’t look like it had changed at all—but quite suddenly the sound of that secretive conversation taking place fifty paces away became clear and pure.
“You were once Bureau,” Humphrey was saying. “You of all people ought to understand this.”
“I retired,” Mrs. Chen said.
“You don’t retire from the Bureau,” Humphrey said. “Your abilities are with you always; it isn’t something you can shut off or disavow at will. You may have stopped being directly employed by the FBM when you came here, but that doesn’t mean that you no longer fall under its jurisdiction.”
“Back when I was working for the Feds, we didn’t need to throw children to the wolves,” Mrs. Chen said. “She’s done enough for this round, Humphrey. Can’t you leave her alone, at least until she graduates?”
Thea’s ears pricked up harder. Under the circumstances, the mysterious she could only be herself.
And Humphrey confirmed it in the very next sentence.
“I use what tools are given to me, Margaret, and Thea Winthrop is the sharpest sword I have right now.”
“One you are willing to destroy in order to get to your prize?” Mrs. Chen said. “How much of this can she take?”
“What she needs to. Weapons are honed, after all. I told you, she is a poly-Elemental, and that cancels everything else out. But she’s still a child, still untrained, and probably dangerous if left unguided. If she can help us get back Tesla, fully in control of his considerable powers—Nikola Tesla, Margaret, the only quad-Elemental known to man—good God, do I really have to spell it out?”
“The ends justify the means?” Mrs. Chen questioned softly.
Humphrey’s voice dropped a bit, losing a little of its frightening intensity. “I like her,” Humphrey said. “I will do my best to deal with the situation so that she is kept as safe as possible, but if she is the only weapon I have, then I will use that weapon, and I will not apologize for it.”
“She trusts you.”
“And so she should. I am her shield; she is my sword. We are working together on this, for the most part.”
“Except when you toss her in at the deep end and expect her to find her own way home,” Mrs. Chen said. “You were the one pushing her to go after Diego—”
“Because she was the only one that could,” Humphrey interrupted gently, but Mrs. Chen would not be derailed.
“The point is, Humphrey, I’m watching you. She’s my responsibility, in this place at least. I know you aren’t involving her parents in any of this.”
“I will, if I need to,” Humphrey said. “Paul Winthrop is a friend.”
“Don’t push the friendship, when it comes to his child,” Mrs. Chen said. “I’m warning you. I have my responsibilities, and I will not fail them.”
“So have I,” Humphrey said, and the edge was back in his voice. “And neither will I. And don’t forget that your ultimate responsibility is still to the powers behind the FBM. We all have those.”
“The children…” Mrs. Chen began, rousing to her full height, but this time it was Humphrey who lifted both his hands in a gesture of silencing, and for some reason it suddenly frightened Thea to see Mrs. Chen subside.
“Protect,” Humphrey said. “That is what I am sworn to do. And I will, as I have always done. Whatever the cost.”
Mrs. Chen turned her head away in a sharp little motion, and then, without looking back at Humphrey, walked away toward the lights of the residence hall. Humphrey waited for a long moment, and then reached up to pull the hood closer around his face, before plunging into the deepening night shadows.
Thea leaned back against the rough comfort of the cedar and fought the urge to burst into tears.
Whatever the cost.
What if the cost of Tesla’s triumphant return to this world was Thea herself?
7.
THEY HAD BEEN A team only twenty-four hours before, but as soon as they returned to the Academy, Thea’s friends scattered. Magpie flounced off with her other clique; Tess took up residence in the library; Terry effectively vanished into his Nexus world once again; and Thea glimpsed Ben every so often across the campus or across a classroom, looking troubled if he caught her eye, but apparently determined to keep those troubles to himself.
Thea supposed she could have discussed the Humphrey May incident with Mrs. Chen, but it was not the same as having friends, people she trusted, who had been in the same adventures that she had. She did not realize how much she needed a support group until hers disintegrated.
Perhaps it was that that drove her to break Humphrey’s dictum about discussing any issues concerning the cube. That, and a glimpse of the Walrus, alone as usual, picking desultorily at her lunch nine days after Thea had eavesdropped on the conversation in the woods.
Kristin looked up in astonishment as Thea crossed over to her corner of the cafeteria and slid her tray on the table.
“Hello,” she said carefully.
“Hey,” Thea said, picking up her fork. “From the looks of your tray I don’t think I will like this stuff much.”
“I wasn’t really hungry,” Kristin said, but she picked up one of her wilting French fries and stuffed it into her mouth anyway.
“I missed a couple of biology classes,” Thea said. “Anything I should be doing this weekend that I don’t know about yet?”
“Mr. Crow didn’t give you the assignments?” Kristin asked.
“Yeah, I guess…” Thea stared down at her food. Suddenly she wasn’t so sure that this had been a good idea, after all. But then Kristin said something, and she realized that she hadn’t been paying attention at all. She looked up, saying, “Sorry, what?”
“I said, where’d you go?” Kristin said. “Look, it’s not as though we covered huge swathes of new material or anything, there wasn’t even a quiz you missed, there’s one next week, just before the Christmas break, but you know about that already—and you wouldn’t be asking me for school stuff anyway…”
Thea stared at her for a moment. “You can be scary,” she said at last.
Kristin shrugged. “I’m a Finder, remember? That extends to finding what people don’t want to talk about. Why do you think I always eat alone? I’m not what you might call comfortable company. Even without taking the Walrus teeth into account.”
“I’m not supposed to talk about it with you,” Thea said.
“Just me?” Kristin queried, lifting an eyebrow. “What did I do?”
“Not just you. Anybody. Anybody who…doesn’t already know.” Thea sighed, looking around at the packed cafeteria. It seemed the only table that wasn’t overflowing with chattering, laughing, flirting, squealing, jostling students…was the one she was at. She, and Kristin. Thea suddenly felt as though a spotlight had been turned on her.
“Where’s the rest of them? Your friends?” Kristin asked, following Thea’s gaze around the room. “That’s your roommate over there, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, Magpie and that stuck-up Fi Halloran and Bella Baldacci,” Thea said venomously.
“She seems to be having a good time,” Kristin said, crossing her arms and leaning forward.
“I can’t…talk to her,” Thea muttered, chasing a stray pea around her plate with her fork.
“Thanks,” said Krist
in sourly. “It’s always great to know that you’re the last port of call when someone’s run out of all other options.”
Thea turned a startled gaze on her. “It isn’t like that,” she said, and knew it came out sounding lame. “It really isn’t,” she added after a moment.
Kristin looked around again, indicating the rest of the student body with an eloquent shrug of her shoulders. “Me,” she said. “Of all of them, me. You picked me. Forgive me if I’m finding that hard to believe.”
“You were kind to me,” Thea said.
That seemed to bring Kristin up short. “When was I…uh…kind to you?”
“Oh, a while back. Couple of weeks ago.”
“When you were feeling sorry for yourself,” Kristin said.
“Seriously. I’m not supposed to talk to anyone other than Terry or Tess or Magpie or Ben, but none of them are here. But the person who didn’t want me to talk is precisely the person I need to talk about… and perhaps it would be best if I did that to someone who didn’t know the whole story, whom I could trust.”
Kristin stared at Thea with her mouth hanging open. The expression brought the snaggleteeth into painful prominence, but somehow those had ceased to have the usual repelling effect on Thea. Her instincts were telling her that this really was someone she could trust. What she had seen and heard in the twilight woods had occurred nine days ago—she had been carrying it alone for too long. Agonizing over whether Humphrey May was in fact someone whom she could trust. She was not immune to a sharp pang of guilt; thus far, Humphrey had always seemed to be on the side of the angels.
She gave Kristin a small wan smile. “So, how much time do you have?”
“We could always skip biology,” Kristin said, with an entirely straight face.
They caught each other’s eye again, and suddenly both of them laughed.
“So you noticed I’ve skipped a few of those lately, have you? Oh, but there’s so much…I don’t know where to…Oh, they’ll have me for truancy,” Thea managed at last.
“Fine. Then let’s go and listen to Crow turn our stomachs with how we’re digesting this stuff, and if you still feel like talking afterward…”
It was, already, an instinctive step back, a halfhearted raising of the shields that had been allowed to drop—but the smile that Thea turned on Kristin was real, glinting in the back of her eyes.
“After, then,” Thea said, gathering up her tray, her lunch still mostly uneaten.
Thea spent the better part of biology mulling over what she was going to tell Kristin. She fingered the wrist computer Humphrey had given her, concealed under her sleeve. After the spellspam epidemic of the previous summer, nobody was left in any doubt that computers were not secure against magic, but that was all Kristin knew, and revealing Thea’s magical ability with computers would be huge. And yet, without that revelation, everything else would come across as wildly improbable.
It was a question of either trusting Humphrey absolutely or completely betraying everything—Thea could not see a middle ground. If Humphrey was right, and Thea was indeed a new Elemental, everyone would know that soon enough. It could not be kept under wraps for much longer. But the specter of the Alphiri was still haunting Thea, and after her secret had leaked out to a chosen few, she had been content to let Humphrey dictate the further timetable of things. If she took Kristin into her confidence, she would be changing the equation, and the Alphiri would still be waiting.
Grandmother Spider had once told Thea that Thea had made the choice not to perform magic in this, her own world, because she had been instinctively aware of the danger. Would this be breaking that pact with herself?
Of course it wouldn’t, Thea told herself firmly. It’s no more than I’ve already done. I’ve used magic to travel, to tweak my reality, to change the world’s parameters so that Terry could talk about magic without choking, and to take us all through to San Francisco…. The first time I did it with the five of us, it was revealing it to people who did not know about it before, the first time I did it to show Aunt Zoë that I could weave light, there was a first time I showed it to a lot of people…what’s different…?
By the end of class she had decided to simply trust her instincts. She waited, pretending to fuss with her bag, until most of the rest of the class had left. Out of the corner of her eye she saw that Kristin, taking her cue from Thea’s actions, was likewise procrastinating about leaving the classroom. They glanced at each other; Kristin nodded imperceptibly, and Thea suddenly reached a decision. Under the cover of the flap of her bag, she hitched up her sleeve a little and toggled her keypad on.
This classroom. Empty but for us.
Just as her finger touched the ENTER button, she felt a hand clamp onto her left wrist, and a familiar voice began to hiss something into her ear.
The room blinked and reconstituted according to her specifications…except for one small change. The voice hissing into her ear, the hand around her wrist, belonged to Ben—who had, by virtue of being in direct contact with Thea, been pulled into her sideslip world with her.
“…think you’re doing?” he finished saying, and then straightened, looked around. “What did you do? Did you do anything? What’s going on?”
“You did something?” Kristin said from across the room, sitting up and looking around.
“You weren’t supposed to be here,” Thea said with a sigh, lifting her head to meet Ben’s eyes.
“That…” he said, jerking his chin at her keypad bracelet. “What’s she doing here?”
Kristin’s eyebrow shot up. “Well, excuse me,” she said. “If you two have something to talk about, I’ll just see you later, Thea.”
“No, wait,” Thea said. “You can’t go. There’s nowhere to go to. I brought us here to talk. He wasn’t…planned.”
“Brought us here.” Kristin echoed flatly. “What’s that supposed to mean? It’s Crow’s classroom—what would happen if I opened that door and went out into the corridor?”
“I have no idea,” Thea said. “Technically, there is no corridor.”
Kristin shook her head. “I don’t understand.”
“Of course you don’t,” Ben said. And then, turning back to Thea, “You could have figured out that she would have no clue what was going on.”
“I saw Humphrey May. Here on campus. The night we came back,” Thea said. “Kristin, give me a moment. I’ll explain. But since Ben’s here…”
Kristin sat back down, dropping her bag at her feet. “By all means,” she said. “I’m all ears.”
“So?” Ben said, crossing his arms. “Thea, we can’t discuss this…”
“There—is—no—corridor,” Kristin intoned, waggling her hands at Ben in a mockery of a spell-casting gesture. “I can’t tell anyone, remember?”
“Not here,” Ben snapped. “But we all get to leave.”
“Humphrey May—he’s from the FBM, isn’t he?” Kristin said. “One of those three that the Feds sent in during the spellspam?”
“Yes,” Thea said. “But since then, he’s been around. He’s helped, he’s a friend…”
She stopped, both because her misgivings about Humphrey were what had brought her here in the first place, and because Ben winced when she described Humphrey as her friend. When she glanced over at him, his shoulders were hunched defensively and he looked guilty, as though he had been caught out at something. Thea gave him a sharper look.
“You already knew,” she said.
“No. I didn’t know,” Ben said. Too quickly. “What did he want this time?”
“I didn’t say I talked to him,” Thea said slowly. “I…overheard him talking. To Mrs. Chen. And it was about me. About how I’m a means to an end. It’s Tesla they really want.”
“Who or what is Tesla?” Kristin said, fascinated.
“Not now, Walrus,” Ben said. He looked down, hesitating. “Sorry. But—back at the Elemental house…”
“Back at the house what?” Thea prompted.
Ben
glanced at Kristin once more and sighed, dropping his arms in a gesture of resignation. “I heard him tell Rafe that he’d have to continue acting as liaison, that he—Humphrey—would stay in the Pacific base until the situation was resolved, that Rafe should take the cube back to a Fed safe and keep it under lock and key, and that Humphrey would continue to monitor you.”
“That’s hardly inflammatory,” Kristin said. “All he’s saying is that he’ll keep an eye on you. And Thea, you yourself said that he helped, that he was a friend. So why shouldn’t he stick around? And what’s this Tesla got to do with it?”
“She’s an Elemental, you idiot,” Ben said.
“Who?”
“Me,” Thea said in a small voice.
Kristin stared at her. “An Elemental? For real? Is that how you do this no-corridor-out-there trick?”
“Maybe. It’s part of it. But Nikola Tesla was—is—the only quad-Element mage that’s ever been known.”
“Was or is? And what are you?” Kristin said, leaning forward.
“Was. Is. That’s the point. There’s this cube…”
“Thea,” Ben said desperately, “you know what they said about bringing in outsiders. You couldn’t talk about this to one of us?”
“No,” Thea said, losing her temper. “Apparently I couldn’t. Terry’s so tangled up in whatever he’s doing, I couldn’t even find him. Magpie’s crossed to the dark side, Tess is too busy with her books to lift her head and say hello, and you…well, you were avoiding me.”
Worldweavers: Cybermage Page 9