Apologizing profusely, I knelt to clear up the broken glass. Angry at my clumsiness, Delphia pushed a buzzer on the wall and called the maid. When I stood up, Linc nodded to me. Ingrid had drunk her drugged liqueur.
Ten minutes later everyone was sleepy, so we were hurried off to bed. Delphia said she’d send some warm milk up to me and hoped it would help me sleep. For how long? I was tempted to ask.
Once in my room I covered the two cameras yet again but didn’t dare disable the microphones for fear I’d raise an alarm, then I dressed. It was eleven when Linc hove himself over my little balcony and entered my room. I put my finger to my lips for silence and we left the room together. As we walked, Linc put his hand on my shoulder so I could feel his thoughts about how much he liked me in my black cat suit. He made me laugh because he was so happy to no longer feel, well, other than himself.
Once we were in the hall I knew we were safer—not safe, but safer. Since the break-in in the basement had been found, I knew that the vigilance of the house had increased.
“Let me guess,” Linc whispered.
“There’s something in that ball that Ingrid has and I mean to have it.”
“Find her room and I’ll subdue her. All night if I have to.”
He made me laugh as I began to tiptoe down the corridor in search of Ingrid’s room. I knew she hadn’t left the house; I’d made sure of that. Linc and I crept about as I touched one door after another.
At one door I jumped back.
“What?” Linc whispered.
“It’s Amelia’s room and she’s still in there.”
“Still? What does that mean?” He halted. “Not that Amelia.”
“Yes, that one.”
“She’s dead, but she’s still in there. Why didn’t I know that?”
It wasn’t until we reached the attic floor that I felt Ingrid and whatever was inside that ball.
I knew she was asleep and the ball was inside her room. It was pulling me as though it were a magnet and I a piece of steel. The door was locked. “Too bad Pappa Al isn’t here,” I said, leaning against the door, frustrated.
“Follow me,” Linc said as he tiptoed down the hall. When he reached a window seat, I knew what he was going to do.
“It’s too dangerous,” I said. “You can’t—”
There weren’t any alarms on the windows on the top floor so Linc opened it to climb out onto the roof. Pausing, one leg out, he said,“How about a good-bye kiss?”
“I’ll kiss you if you die in my arms.”
“That’s encouraging,” he said as he disappeared onto the roof.
I climbed onto the seat, stuck my head out and used all my power to guide him and his feet as he inched along the very steep roof. There was a place where the gutter was loose and he nearly fell, but I concentrated hard.
“You wanta back off on that?” Linc said across the roof between us. “You’re making my head hurt.”
“Sorry,” I said and tried to calm myself. My father and I had worked on ways I could calm myself so I wouldn’t inadvertently hurt people. Making Linc’s nose bleed had been the first violent thing I’d done since the witches in the tunnel.
When Linc held on to the frame of the dormer window and pointed inside, I knew he’d found her. He pantomimed sleeping. For a second I panicked. What if her window was locked? But it wasn’t and Linc easily opened it and slipped inside.
I pulled my head back inside and tried to guide him through the room. I knew there were no cameras in the room.
Suddenly, my eyes flew open. She was awake! Worse, she’d seen Linc. My mind whirled with the problems this would cause. Would we ever find Linc’s son now? Would I—?
I needn’t have worried because, soundlessly, without a word, I knew that Linc had slipped into bed with her and he’d already started making love to her.
There were times when I really and truly hated my ability. I could see the two of them as clearly as though I were in the room with them. They were languid lovers, slow, sensuous. Linc loved women and he gave them what they wanted. If they wanted fast and hard, he delivered.
Ingrid wanted slow, sensual. Maybe it was because I’d spent so much time with Linc or because we were connected in some way, but I could feel what he felt. Heavens! I could feel what she felt, too.
I closed my eyes for a moment and leaned back against the wall. I’d hardened myself against sex over the last year. I’d refused to allow myself to remember Adam’s hands on my body, his mouth on my skin. I wouldn’t even let myself remember the warmth of him, his skin nearly as dark as Linc’s.
But now, connected to the couple making love on the other side of the wall, I could feel Adam, feel his mouth on my breast, his hand kneading. I could feel his lips on my stomach, his hands on my thighs, moving upward, stroking, caressing, driving me mad with desire. When he entered me, my legs grew weak and I slid down the wall, feeling him, smelling him.
“Adam,” I whispered,“my Adam.”
For a moment I sat there, my legs spread in front of me, feeling my husband’s caresses as though he were with me. I could feel every move that Linc and the blonde woman were making, her hand on his skin, curving over the muscles of his chest, down his washboard stomach. Since I’d met him I’d refused to look at the beauty of Linc, refused to acknowledge his rampant sexuality, but now…Now it was as though it was me in that bed with him. I was the one stroking his thighs, running my hands over his buttocks. I was the one with my arms open to him, longing for him to enter me.
“Could this be classed as adultery?”
My eyes flew open and I was embarrassed. I closed my legs, closed my mouth that had been open to kisses, and tried to stand up, but my knees were so weak I stumbled.
“Who are you?” I asked, my voice hoarse.
“Oh. You,” I said. It was Devlin—or at least that was the name that had been put into my head. This time he was dressed in full Highland regalia, from brogues to a ribbon pulling his long gray hair back. “What do you want?” I sat down on the window seat. I was embarrassed to have been seen in a lustful fantasy, but also angry to have had it interrupted.
“This is a philosophical matter,” he said, his hands behind his back and pacing. “Is it adultery to be in bed with a man who isn’t your husband if you only do it with your mind?”
“Of course not.” I tried to smooth my hair and wished I had on more clothes than a silly little cat suit. I crossed my arms over my chest as my nipples were still hard. I could still feel what Linc and Ingrid were doing just on the other side of the wall from me, but it was fading from my consciousness. I could tell they were going to be at it for hours and I wanted…I wanted to weep with envy.
“Who are you and what do you want?” I snapped at Devlin. “And why were the slaves so afraid of you?”
“They know their master,” he said.
“Your ego is without limits.”
“Why isn’t something as tiny as you afraid of me?”
“Little body; big mind,” I said. I could feel the rhythm of Linc and the woman.
“Now who has the ego?” Devlin said, but I could see he was pleased with me. He sat down on the seat beside me, which was disconcerting because his body overlapped mine by half a foot. I moved over.
“How galling life must be for you,” he said in a chummy way. “To have the power of your mind yet have to hold back. Tell me, how much of it do you use? Fifty percent?”
I couldn’t help it but I began to relax. This man was dead; he was a ghost. And even at that he was a weird ghost, changing his see-through body whenever he wanted. In other words, here was a man/thing who was stranger than I was. “About ten percent,” I said. “Shall I experiment on you?” A couple of times I’d dealt with angry ghosts who didn’t want to leave a place. I’d always won.
“Shall I show you what I can do?” he asked companionably.
I didn’t want to see what he could do, but I also felt that he didn’t want to see what I could do. My father said that
if I were ever to tap into my power…
“Where is Linc’s son?” I asked.
Devlin got up and went to lean his back against the wall. The bed where Linc and Ingrid were making love was against that wall. He closed his eyes for a moment.
“Ah, I do remember those days. I remember a girl in 1206. She was—”
As he spoke, the wall began to disappear. It was a small circle at first but it began to enlarge until I could see Linc and Ingrid on the bed. They were beautiful together, him with skin like pale chocolate, hers like cream.
It was one thing to feel someone else’s lovemaking but it was another to make a wall disappear and actually see what was going on. I concentrated on the wall and made it start reappearing.
Devlin, still leaning where the wall had been, opened his eyes and looked at the reappearing wall in surprise. “I was just trying to share,” he said.
I didn’t answer, just kept filling in the wall.
“Oh, so it’s a war you want, is it?”
Had anyone seen us, I’m sure we would have looked like cartoon figures as we both glared at that wall. I would begin to fill up the hole, then the hole would widen, then fill, then widen.
It was Linc who stopped us. I hadn’t thought about it but I would have assumed that what Devlin and I were doing with the wall couldn’t be seen by…By what? Mortals? Normal people? Others?
But Linc saw the wall telescoping in and out. Worse, he saw me, and maybe Devlin, standing there and spying on him.
Devlin laughed and the wall was solid again. “Know you could do that?” he asked.
I tried to get over my embarrassment while seeking Linc’s mind to make him forget what he’d seen. “I had no idea, but I don’t think I can do it unless someone starts it.” I tried. I put my mind on the wall but it didn’t move. Unlike my daughter and my niece, I couldn’t move tangible objects. “I don’t have the power.”
“Ah,” he said in a way that irritated me.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I looked at him hard. “You haven’t answered any of my questions.”
“I did!” He sounded offended. “I told you how to find the child.”
“Oh yes, your riddle. Is the Touch of God in that crystal ball?”
“That one?” He opened the wall a bit so I could see a leather bowling-ball bag, then could see inside the bag. The ball was in it. He closed the wall. “She has no idea it has any power. She found the thing in the basement and took it to play her game.”
“She broke into Linc’s house and stole papers. She killed his agent.”
Devlin reached toward the window seat, picked up a box of Godiva chocolates, and opened it. “Want one?”
I hesitated.
“Worried about calories?”
“No, poison.”
“Darci, dear misunderstood Darci. Don’t you yet realize that I’ve been sent here to help you?”
“Sent by whom?”
“The Good Guy.” He held out the box again and I took a chocolate. I wasn’t sure if they were real or an illusion, but they tasted good.
“Why would you help me find my husband?”
“You do know why you were given your powers, don’t you?”
“World peace?”
Devlin chuckled. “More or less. You fight evil with evil. You—”
“I am not evil.”
“No, but you have powers that in the wrong hands could cause great evil. Do you not know why your husband was kidnapped?”
I wanted to scream. I wanted to grab his collar and shout in his face, “Why?” but I didn’t. I choked out a quiet, sedate,“Why?”
“Good control,” he said, taking his hands off the box of chocolate, which hung in the air.
A floating box annoyed me so I snatched the box to put it on the window seat, but it disappeared in a poof. “You should meet my daughter and niece,” I muttered.
“Who do you think taught them how to make their teddy bears belly dance?”
I took a step toward him. “If you ever harm them in any way, I’ll—”
Suddenly, I was inside an iron cage, something old and dirty, like from a medieval dungeon. I could feel people behind me, smell their unwashed bodies, feel their fear. I refused to believe any of it. I concentrated and the people vanished. I think I could have made the cage disappear but, laughing, Devlin removed it.
“You have little power now, but you could have more.”
“Why?” I said. “Why were Adam and Bo taken?”
“For you, of course. To get you, to pull you to them so you could be destroyed.” His body was growing dimmer, fading. “Your power can be taken. The witch knew that. Darci, you must know that your power can be increased. If you are to win, it must be strengthened.”
He was now just a faint outline. I concentrated but he didn’t get more solid. When I doubled my concentration, he laughed. “Not yet, Darci, dear. Not yet. When you can keep me from leaving a room you’ll be ready.
“You’re to be tested. Are you worthy of so much power?”
With that he was gone.
I sat down on the window seat. After I’d killed the people in the tunnel in Connecticut I’d been so exhausted I’d had to be hospitalized. I wasn’t near that now but I did curl up on the pillows and close my eyes.
All I wanted was a normal life, I thought. I wanted a husband and a couple of kids. I didn’t want to talk to people who faded in and out and talked in riddles. I didn’t want to have cages dropped around me. I didn’t want evil people murdering others to try to get a power I never wanted in the first place.
Most of all, I didn’t want to be “tested.” Was what had been done to me by the media a test? Could I bear being so misjudged, so hated, when I was innocent? I couldn’t defend myself, nor could those who loved me defend me. People around the world laughed at what they saw as my extreme parsimony. One night on the news was a segment someone thought was funny. The newscaster said, “Move aside Scots, we now have Darci.” He went on to say that a new word had entered the English language. Whereas in the past the Scots had been the epitome of penny-pinching (How do you make copper wire? Give two Scots a penny.), now it was Darci, as in “Don’t be such a Darci. You can afford it.”
Adam had wanted to tell people that I’d collected nickels and taken any money he gave me because I’d wanted to get the people of Putnam out of debt, but I wouldn’t let him. I couldn’t embarrass my hometown like that. Adam said that what had been asked of me was blackmail. “It’s primitive,” he’d shouted. “The boy was offering you seven million dollars for your virginity.”
I refrained from pointing out that Adam had made me risk my life for that same virginity.
Anyway, the last thing I needed was more “testing.” Testing to find out what? That I was a good person? May God forgive me, but if I could get my family back I just might be persuaded to do something for the other side.
Even as I thought it, I knew it wasn’t true.
I sat up on the window seat and tried to stop feeling sorry for myself. I could feel that Linc and Ingrid were still at it in the room. Poor Linc had so much pent-up desire that he might never quit.
Part of me screamed, “What about me?! What about my pent-up desire?”
Slowly, I got off the window seat and walked to the door of the room. Maybe I could make just a tiny hole in the wall, one that I could slip through so I could get the ball. Or maybe I could hex the door so that it unlocked. I hadn’t tried that.
As I thought, I put my hand on the knob. “Oh,” I said when it turned. It looked as though before Linc had succumbed to Ingrid’s lust, he’d remembered to open the door for me, his partner.
I opened the door the narrowest crack I could, then crawled in on my hands and knees. Even so, Linc saw me. I felt his eyes on me more than saw them. I couldn’t bear to again see him in bed with the woman. I tried to block out the noises of pleasure the woman was making, tried to not feel Linc’s eyes on me. I grabbed the bag off the floor and started to
take it. On second thought, I saw an old iron bunny rabbit on the hearth. I opened the bag, removed the glass ball and inserted the bunny. If I used my True Persuasion I could keep the woman from looking inside the bag and seeing that the ball was missing. In fact, if I worked hard enough I could make her lose the bag. Perhaps she’d leave the back door of her car unlatched, turn a sharp curve and all her luggage would roll out, down a hill and into a lake.
As soon as I had the ball, I clutched it to me and ran down the stairs and back to my bedroom. I wanted to get as far away from Linc and what was happening in that room as soon as possible.
When I was back in my room, part of me wanted to stay up all night and see what I could find out about the ball, but another part of me wanted the oblivion of sleep. Sleep won. I put the ball into the middle of the bed, under the covers to keep it safe and warm, then I took a long and somewhat cold shower. I needed to cool my body off from what I’d been feeling from Linc.
I got out, dried, and put on a long cotton nightgown. I was so cold I was shivering as I got into bed and pulled the ball to me. I put it against my stomach, wrapped my arms around it, pulled my legs up to it. I hadn’t felt so comforted since the last night I’d spent with my husband. Whatever was inside that ball, I wanted it. No, I needed it. Even more, I felt it needed me.
* * *
“I can’t do it,” Linc said. It was afternoon, two hours after lunch, and we were at the slave quarters. What Linc couldn’t do was break the glass ball. He’d used a hammer, a tire iron, and he’d repeatedly thrown it against rocks. The “glass” had not so much as chipped.
I was sitting on the ground surrounded by the old files and was going through them one by one.
This morning at breakfast Linc had been yawning, but he’d been so happy that I’d wanted to hex him out of sheer jealousy. The spell of nonmasculinity had worn off so he was himself again and flirting madly with all the women. He was kissing hands and cheeks and saying he was dying to get their naked bodies back under his hands. I didn’t interfere as I had other things on my mind. I wanted to get back to my room to see what I could find out about the crystal ball.