by Gloria Craw
The lights of Sin City sparkled out the wall of windows. “The view here is great,” I remarked between bites.
“My parents have a soft spot for Las Vegas. They lived here back in the 1950s, when the town was really starting to grow. My mom loves the view, too. That’s what sold her on this ugly house.”
I was way ahead of Ian in the process of eating, so I tried to slow it down to a more ladylike pace. “You don’t have a television,” I commented. “I thought males of any species couldn’t live without one.”
“It’s on the list of things to buy. Actually, Brandy’s got a long list going. If we’re going to have people over this weekend, we’ve got to make this place look lived in.”
I nodded, and we ate the rest of our food in companionable silence.
I hadn’t expected to become comfortable with Ian in so short a time, but he had a way about him. He was at ease in his own skin, and that put me at ease.
Maybe it was the food, maybe it was that I’d finally let my guard down, or maybe it was relief that I wouldn’t have to leave in the morning. Whatever it was, I felt more relaxed than I had in years. Even with all the crazy stuff I’d just discovered, I wasn’t holding the weight of the world on my shoulders anymore. The room was cool and the sofa was comfy. While Ian texted something, I leaned my head back and let my mind settle into Zen.
I must have fallen asleep, because the next thing I remember, I woke up to the sound of my phone ringing in my pocket. “You’d better get that,” Brandy said from across the room.
Looking at my phone, I saw my home number flashing on the screen. I tried to push the sleepy notes out of my voice as I answered, “Hi, Mom.”
“Alex said you’re at a friend’s doing homework tonight. Is everything going well?” she asked with interest.
“We’re working through an English project. Things are fine.”
“It’s late. Did you get something to eat?”
“Yes. Ian made grilled cheese sandwiches for me…and for Brandy.” I added Brandy’s name because the thrill my mom would get from me spending time alone with a boy would probably send her into cardiac arrest.
“That’s good. What time should we expect you home?”
“I should be home by ten.”
“Take your time,” she said. “Eleven will be fine. Enjoy yourself, and be sure to tell your friends they’re welcome to do homework at our house sometime.”
“I will,” I assured her before hanging up.
Ian had moved to the floor and was sitting with a book in his lap. “Is she worried?” he asked.
“No, she’s happy I might finally be getting a social life. Sorry I fell asleep like that.”
Brandy sat on the other sofa and pulled her feet up. “Ian has that effect on girls,” she joked. “How was the big talk?”
“Long,” I replied. “You look great for sixty, by the way.”
“Fifty-seven, but thank you.”
“Why do Ian and I look like normal teenagers?” I asked. “If we age so slowly, shouldn’t we be in diapers or something?”
“We don’t age at a constant rate,” Brandy explained. “We mature at approximately the same rate as humans until we’re around twenty. Then the process slows down.”
“Great. I’ll add prolonged youth to the benefits of being dewing. Assuming I don’t get killed off before I can make much of it.”
“Have a little faith,” Brandy said. “You’ve got us to help you now. Speaking of which, I was able to get pretty close to your friend in the black car. He feels like Illuminant clan.”
Ian’s nose wrinkled in confusion. “I expected Truss or Ormolu clan.”
“Me, too,” Brandy said, thoughtfully. “Why would someone from the Illuminant clan be looking for her?”
Ian sighed. “Maybe he wasn’t. Maybe this guy was going about his own business, the same way Lillian was, and he noticed something that made him wonder about her.”
“Maybe,” she admitted. “But I don’t like it.”
“What is Illuminant clan?” I asked.
“There are fourteen clans,” Brandy said. “Illuminant clan is one of the more unstable ones. There’s talk that they may join with Sebastian and the Truss clan.”
“Which would be disastrous,” Ian added.
“Since we’re being up front about everything now,” I said, “there’s something I should tell you. Remember how Lillian described a vine tattoo on the arm of the man who left the book at the store?”
“Yes,” Ian said.
“There was an embossed design on the cover of the book he left, too. The leather had cracked, so it was hard to make out, but I think it was a vining wreath.”
“I was right, then,” Ian said. “The tattoo wasn’t a coincidence. A vining wreath is the Laurel clan signet. We haven’t used signets for more than a thousand years, so not many remember them. I ran across a mention of the Laurel signet when I was doing some research to find out where you were.”
I nearly jumped out of my skin. “Could the man with the tattoo have been a Laurel, too?” I asked excitedly.
“That’s the weird part,” he replied. “Lillian would have felt if he was dewing. She said he wasn’t.”
“So, why would a tattoo and an embossing on an old book, both in the shape of the Laurel signet, show up at the Shadow Box on the same day?” I asked.
“For any number of reasons,” Brandy said. “The design you described isn’t that unusual.”
Ian and I looked at each other with doubt, but whatever the design meant, we had other worries. “Something else occurred to me,” I said. “This guy who’s following me—he knows the two of you are dewing? Won’t my coming here make him more suspicious of me?”
“Maybe,” Brandy replied. “But we have to form relationships with humans in order to exist among them undetected. He’s seen the three of us at Fillmore together. It probably won’t set off any alarm bells if we’re friends.”
“You can’t be our only human friend though,” Ian stated. “That would be odd. Which is why Brandy has invited half the high school over this weekend.”
“You’re still coming, right?” Brandy asked, hopefully.
I looked at Ian, who was smiling at me. “Yes. I’m going to start acting like a normal teenager.”
“Great.” She motioned to the empty space around us. “I’ve got to furnish this place in a hurry. Are you up for a shopping trip tomorrow?”
Doing something as simple as shopping with a girl who wasn’t my mother sounded wonderful. “I’ll ask Lillian for the afternoon off,” I replied.
“Wear comfortable shoes,” Ian suggested.
“He’s trying to be funny,” Brandy interjected, “but he’s right. We’re going to borrow the Golden One’s credit card and make a day out of it.”
“The Golden One?”
“That’s what I call Ian because he’s so shiny and bright.” Ian rolled his eyes at her. “Ian’s mommy and daddy have mountains of money,” she added, giggling.
“Brandy has a small hill of her own money,” Ian responded. “I expect to inherit it when she kicks it.”
Brandy didn’t seem to be offended by his offhanded remark about her death. “You always have been a favorite of mine,” she said with laugh and a wink.
“How can you laugh about dying?” I asked.
She tipped her head to the side, considering my question. “I’m not sure why, but the idea of death doesn’t bother me anymore.”
“It bothers me plenty,” Ian said.
“Then it’s one of the few things that does,” Brandy observed.
Shaking my head at it all, I said, “I should be getting home.”
Ian got to his feet and pulled keys from his pocket. “Just in case the tiger is still out there searching for you, I’ll follow you at a distance. Wait while I get my shoes, okay?”
As he left, I smoothed some hair that had come out of my bun. I didn’t understand everything that was happening, but it was a relief to be with
people who did understand and whom I didn’t have to hide around.
“I wonder just how much he told you,” Brandy muttered from across the room.
I turned a questioning look at her. “What do you mean by that?” I asked.
Ian came back looking ready to go. “We’ll talk tomorrow,” Brandy assured me.
My parents were waiting up for me when I got home. They were curled up together on the sofa watching the History Channel on television. They often did that at the end of the day. It was comforting to me. No matter what else in my life was uncertain, their love for each other and for me was never in doubt. Hours ago I’d thought I’d be leaving the next morning, but with Ian and Brandy in my corner, I might get to stay a little bit longer. Maybe a just a few days, maybe a year. Whatever it turned out to be, I’d take every moment I could get.
The next morning I decided Ian was right. Trying so hard to be inconspicuous had made me conspicuous. No other seventeen-year-old girls at Fillmore tried to look like paint on the wall. So I brushed my hair out and let it fall shiny and straight down my back. That alone did a lot to improve my looks. Encouraged, I applied a little pink lip gloss and then debated whether I should keep wearing my glasses or not. Deciding baby steps were best, I put my spare pair on.
Mom was eating breakfast when I came into the kitchen. She took one look at my hair and the pink tint on my lips and her spoon clattered into her bowl. “You look beautiful,” she said, reaching out to touch the dark tresses that fell over my shoulder.
I appreciated the compliment but was still unsure about the attention it might attract at school. I fought down the urge to twist it into its usual bun and secure it with chopsticks from the silverware drawer. Mom was wise enough to say nothing more about it, so I ate my cereal in relative quiet.
Someone knocked at the front door as I was finishing up. Mom went to answer it and came back looking euphoric. Behind her trailed Brandy and Ian. “We thought maybe you’d like to ride to school with us this morning,” Brandy said.
“Uh…sure,” I replied.
I knew Mom was going to get extra mileage out of this impromptu visit. A physical manifestation of people who admitted knowing me was going to push her to the edge. As if on cue, she cooed, “How thoughtful. I always worry that Alison’s old car will have mechanical problems and leave her stranded somewhere.”
“I take better care of the engine in that car than I do myself, Mom.”
“Yes, dear, but it’s old,” she replied, looking at the attractive young people who were apparently friends of mine. “We’ve offered to get her a new car,” she continued, “but Alison is very independent.”
That’s when Alex walked into the kitchen, rubbing sleep from his eyes. He scratched enthusiastically under both his armpits before noticing we had company. When his eyes focused in on Brandy, they filled with admiration. “Hi,” he said, trying to make his voice sound deeper than it was.
“Hey,” Brandy replied.
I struggled not to laugh out loud at my little brother’s attempt to impress a fifty-seven-year-old widow. Ian caught my eye. His look said this was the natural reaction to a drawer.
“Would the two of you like a whole-grain bagel and some juice?” Mom asked.
Brandy winked in my direction. “No, thank you. Ian made grilled cheese for breakfast this morning.”
Mom tipped her head quizzically. Grilled cheese seemed an odd thing to eat for breakfast, but having seen their empty cupboards, I understood it.
“We should probably get a move on,” Ian suggested.
Taking the hint, I hefted my backpack. “Oh, Mom. I might be late. Brandy needs me to go shopping with her.”
Mom nodded. From the surprise on her face, I don’t think she was able to speak.
It was Brandy’s car, a nice white Toyota with tinted windows, waiting for us in the driveway. Ian took the backseat, so I could have shotgun. “How did you guys get through the gate?” I asked as she drove away from my house.
She pointed toward a notoriously grumpy member of the community. “That man walking the dog. I told him I’m a friend of yours, and he let us in.”
“That’s completely against our community rules. Did he ask for your phone number, too?”
“He might have, if his wife hadn’t been with him at the time,” Ian said dryly.
I waited until we were on the main road again, then I said, “I have some questions. A lot of them, actually.”
“I’ll bet you do,” Brandy said. “Why don’t you start with the biggest?”
“Okay. I agreed to help you in exchange for what you could teach me, but what do you want me to do?”
“Oh, boy,” Ian said. “You should have told her to start with the smallest.”
“We want you to use your thoughtmaking to take us to Sebastian Truss,” Brandy said, glancing at me.
I snorted. “Are you delusional? I’ve spent the last three years of my life hiding from him.”
“It’s a lot more complicated than Brandy just made it sound,” Ian said patiently. “My mom and dad’s visit last night had nothing to do with a chance layover at the airport. They were in town for a meeting with the other clan chiefs. For the past decade or so, their policy has been to leave Sebastian and his minions alone. In return, they left us in peace. But it was an uncomfortable truce from the beginning, and now there are signs that it’s starting to unravel.”
“Sebastian is ramping up his manipulation of humans in the United States political realm,” Brandy explained. “He’s got at least one cabinet member in the current presidential administration addicted to a sensationmaker of his, and he’s bankrolling the opposing party’s main candidate. The clan chiefs believe he’s trying to set himself up as a puppet master for the president.”
“Which would be catastrophic for us,” Ian added. “Humankind has been slow to see how the strings of their government and economy are being pulled by outside forces. Sebastian’s ego is so big he doesn’t see how his greed will expose us. When humans react to the threat we pose, we won’t be able to defend ourselves for long. There are too few of us now.”
“The meeting didn’t get very far last night,” Brandy said. “Someone who knew it was going to happen leaked information to Sebastian, and he sent a spy. A human spy. The meeting was stopped when Bruce Dawning got a glimpse of some thoughts coming from a member of the catering crew. The human bolted out of the hotel. He was found dead a few blocks away.”
“Which just shows how serious the situation is becoming,” Ian added. “Sebastian is in motion now. He wants to control the highest political power in the US, and he’s determined to keep the rest of us out of it. Added to that, he doesn’t care how many humans he has to kill to get what he wants. It’s only a matter of time before he starts killing dewing again, too. Our kind can’t take another massacre like the one that happened to the Laurels.”
“It’s a horrible situation,” I agreed, “but what can we do about it?”
“The three of us are going to stop Sebastian Truss,” Ian stated.
“We’re going to kill him,” Brandy corrected.
Shocked, I just stared at her.
“Technically, you wouldn’t be doing the killing,” Ian said. “I will. You’ll just help out before that.”
Brandy read my stunned expression and said, “Think of it as self-defense, not murder. Sebastian would use and then kill you if he could. Killing him first is the smart thing to do.”
“The smart thing to do? Nothing about this sounds smart.”
“Thousands of lives depend on what we’re asking you to do,” Ian said. “We can’t afford to let Sebastian expose the dewing, but we can’t wage an all-out war to prevent it, either. We’re going to have to approach this problem differently than our ancestors did. We’re going to have to go after the root of the problem. We’re asking you to help us do this because it’s necessary. It’s for the good of us all.”
“Even if I wanted to,” I said quietly, “how could I help
you? I’m practically useless when it comes to thoughtmaking.”
“You’re little help to us now,” Brandy admitted. “But if you’re anything like your mother, your powers are extraordinary. If we can teach you how to use them, even partially tap into them, you could be invaluable to us.”
“But why does this have to be the three of us?” I asked. “Why not older people who might stand a decent chance?”
“It isn’t about age,” Brandy said. “Before Jack died, he passed some impressions to me. They aren’t the kind of things I can put into words, but when I face Sebastian, I’ll know his weakness. And Ian may look like a gangly string bean, but he’s got more energy in his little finger than a lot of us have in our entire bodies. He’s a trained fighter, too. With the impressions I have and his strength, we can take Sebastian out.”
“And me?”
“Sebastian is well guarded,” Ian said. “Your thoughtmaking can get us into him.”
“There are other thoughtmakers. I assume they know more about what they’re doing than me. Why not use one of them?”
“They can’t do what we need,” Ian insisted. “Besides, my mom saw you with us when we kill Sebastian.”
I snorted.
“She saw it in a future vision,” Ian said. “She’s never been wrong before.”
“The more the merrier, right? Couldn’t we get more help? Adult help?” Brandy shook her head.
“Spencer and Katherine know what we’re going to do. They’ll be standing by as close as they can, ready to help out, but a big group of us converging on Sebastian wouldn’t work. It would alert him and his people we were coming and we’d never get close enough to him to do any damage. And like Ian said, Katherine saw the three of us there when Sebastian dies. Not the three of us and backup.”
“That’s a lot of faith to put in fortune-telling.”
“It must sound crazy to you, but when someone like Katherine sees something, that’s how it will happen.”
“She and my dad trust what she saw enough to let me come find you. It terrifies them, but they support me anyway.”
If Brandy and Ian weren’t completely delusional, and I could be useful in a fight against Sebastian, agreeing to help them could be deadly. He had killed Jack and my mother, who from what I’d heard had been pretty powerful. Killing me would be like child’s play to him. But if by some miracle Ian’s plan worked and he did kill Sebastian, the threat to the McKyes would die, too. That was the deciding factor. No matter what happened to me, I had to keep the McKyes safe. They wouldn’t be punished for their kindness to me.