Unseen

Interesting.

I completed my perambulation, and arrived back at the front to find Marion Bearheart and Luis standing in the shade of the porch, talking. She waved to me impatiently, and wheeled herself inside.

I paused next to Luis, who said, “Do I sound paranoid if I say I don’t like all this?”

“Yes,” I said. “But I don’t like it, either.”

“Excellent. Glad I’m not the only one.” He gave me a quick, furtive kiss as I moved around him toward the door, for which I rewarded him with a wide-eyed look of surprise and then, considering, backed him up against the wall and kissed him long and thoroughly. Which I felt was highly appropriate, given that it had been a very long drive and I could see no conceivable way that we would have a night of unfettered passion within the confines of this school.

After going still with utter shock, he finally joined in with a will, his lips warm and soft and sweet around mine, his hands moving slowly up my back as we kissed. It soothed some wild need in me that I hadn’t actually known was present until it howled for release. Luis finally sighed into my open mouth, ran his tongue around my lips (which made me flare even hotter inside), and drew back to whisper, “We’re keeping the boss lady waiting.”

“No,” Marion said, from the doorway. She had glided up unheard in her chair and was watching us with eyes that I was fairly sure seemed amused, and perhaps a little envious. “You’re reminding the boss lady of what it is we’re supposed to be fighting for. I’m all in favor of kissing breaks. But now you’re keeping me waiting, so move your asses.”

She zipped off, and with a shake of his head and a muttered imprecation in Spanish that I didn’t bother to try to understand, Luis followed.

The interior door slid shut behind me as I stepped in, and I saw our friendly Weather Warden Ben standing off to the side, in a booth that was likely bulletproof as well as fireproof; he touched a series of controls, putting in motion security measures that I was fairly sure would come as a nasty surprise to any intruders. Which, I was also sure, applied to us, since we were not recognized as being part of the group as yet.

“Don’t worry,” Marion called back over her shoulder as she disappeared through another doorway. “You’ll get DNA-keyed when we’re done talking. All the doors will open for you, unless I override it.”

The fact that someone still held the final power of life and death did not reassure me, even if it was someone so theoretically benign as Marion. “Explain the security, please.”

“No,” she said, very calmly but just as firmly. “I don’t discuss the security arrangements with anyone but those on duty. Only I know all of the safeguards, and I’d like to keep it that way.”

“And if something happens to you?” Luis asked.

“My friend, if something happens to me, you’ve got much bigger issues than how many gunports there are in the walls.” She cast a quick look back at us. “I’m not an idiot. I’ve made provisions for information to be available if you need it, but my goal is that you never do. Clear?”

“Clear,” Luis said. “But I don’t like it.”

“Nobody said you had to. This is why I’d rather you’d handed the girl over at the rendezvous and stepped aside; everybody involved wants to overrule everyone else for the good of the kids. We have a chain of command here, and you’re going to obey it or leave.”

That was blunt, and it had the ring of absolute authority. I exchanged looks with Luis, shrugged, and followed Marion.

I spared a quick look for the entry hall, which was warmly furnished in wood paneling and comfortable chairs and sofas, but with a faintly new feel to it. This building hadn’t been standing for long, or if it had, it had been repurposed and redecorated.

I noticed there were no windows in the entry hall, and a quick check on the aetheric told me that it was less a room than a fortress. Anyone entering this far could be sealed here, in a room thick with concrete and reinforced with steel, and safely dispatched from a distance.

However, the alarms didn’t sound, and the steel fire doors didn’t drop to seal us in. We passed through, into what was a meeting room of some kind, with a large oval-shaped table and several matching chairs. And windows, although reinforced with wire and aetheric security. All seemed quite new, again. Marion rolled herself up to a gap where a chair would have gone, and indicated two others for us to take across from her. There was a bowl of fruit, and Luis reached in and grabbed an apple, which he tossed to me, then picked out a banana for himself, which he peeled while Marion fixed us with a silent, assessing gaze. Luis didn’t seem bothered by her regard in the slightest. He seemed more concerned with the brown spots on the fruit.

I followed his example, took a quick, crunchy bite of the apple, and chewed the sweet, tough fiber with gusto.

Marion snorted. “Yeah, you’re cool, you two—I get it. Lucky for me, I’ve been cracking tougher nuts than you my whole career, children, so let’s drop the drama. Thank you for bringing the girl. It’s going to save everyone a lot of trauma, not least little Isabel.”

“Ibby,” I said. “She prefers to be called Ibby.”

“I’ll make sure everyone knows. We want her to feel safe here, and at home.” There was a manila folder sitting on the table in front of her, and Marion opened it and glanced inside. There were photographs; one was of Isabel, gap-toothed and smiling eagerly. The other was a family photo of Ma

It was the last photo they had taken together before Ma

“When exactly did the girl show her first signs of talent?” Marion asked. Luis took a bite of banana and shook his head. “Did her mother or father ever indicate they thought she might be manifesting any—”

“Nothing,” Luis said bluntly. “Ibby was a normal kid, normal and sweet and perfect, right up until the moment she got snatched out of her grandmother’s house. What they did to her made her like this ... It’s not normal.”

“I’m aware of that.”

“Yeah? You aware that they took these kids in for weird tests every day? That the ones that failed got thrown out to live like little animals or die? That Ibby was one of the ones they decided to keep, and when they realized they couldn’t make her believe we didn’t love her they got inside her head and made her think I was dead and Cass had killed me? They showed it to her, Marion. Showed me burning to death, to a kid her age who’d already seen both her parents die.” Luis tossed his half-eaten banana on the table and sat back, crossing his arms. “Jesus, what’s normal about her now? She wanted to protect herself. She wanted revenge. So she not only let them jump-start her powers; she worked at it—she wanted it. She was scared to death. And what you get out of that is one hell of a strong Warden, untrained, way too young to handle that power.”

Marion let him finish without saying a word, then looked down at her folder before she said, “I’m sorry that she’s endured so much. I wish I could say it would get easier for her, but the simple fact is that it won’t. There are only three paths from this point: She controls her powers; we shut down her powers; or she becomes a rogue.” What Marion kindly didn’t say was that there was a fourth option: death. Luis and I were already acutely aware of it.

“She’s not turning rogue,” Luis said. “She’s got control.”

“Luis, be sensible. She’s six years old. No one, anywhere, has control at that age, especially of the kinds of powers she’s manifesting. It’d be one thing if she’d stopped using them immediately after leaving Pearl’s control, but that’s not what’s happened, is it? She’s used her powers steadily since leaving the Ranch.”