The Grower's Gift (Progeny of Time #1) (12 page)

Ty stood up abruptly, upsetting the coffee table. "Be ready to leave tomorrow morning."

He turned and walked to the door. Maya stood up and took a few steps towards him. "Why are you being like this? What's it to you anyway?"

The door had already rippled shut after Ty.
 

Rober stood up to follow Ty. Maya grabbed his arm to halt him. "Can you take me to the school now? I don't want to leave."

Rober extricated his hand from her grasp, looking worried. "The school's closed now. Besides, I don't think it's a good idea. I'll talk to Ty though, try and dissuade him."
 

"How about you let us go and we'll find our own way there?" Giles suggested.
 

Rober shook his head and strode out of the room.

Maya sat back down on the sofa with a thud. "A fine mess this is. What are we going to do now?"

Giles edged closer and put his arm around her shoulders.

"It's probably for the best that we return home. This was a bad idea from the start," Giles said.

Maya left for the bedroom. Fear— ice cold, immovable fear was all she felt coming off of Ty. It made no sense. Why would taking her to the school cause him such dread?

CHAPTER TEN

Two fully armed SFs stood outside his apartments when Ty woke up the next morning. They didn't say much, except that he was not to leave the family building. His father's orders. Ty had a pretty good idea that it was due to his mother passing her sentence on the visiting delegation yesterday, and now his father feared retaliation. Still, Ty had to get Maya out of the city.

His father was nowhere to be reached to retract his order, and his mother had given strict instructions not to be disturbed while she performed some tests at her facility.
 

Ty was too afraid to call Rober and enquire about Maya. His calls might be monitored, and the risk of anyone finding out about her was too great. He asked his guards to escort him to the SF headquarters, wanting to at least secure a craft now, so that he could take her back home as soon as he got his father to revoke the dumb house arrest order.

The SFs shook their heads. "All flights are canceled. The whole city is on lockdown. The shields were sealed late last night."

"For how long?" Ty asked.

"Until further notice."
 

There would be no way to get Maya out until Dakota and New LA came to their senses and did as the Remarques wanted them to.

Ty left the SFs in the hallway and went back into his apartment. He pulled his phone off his wrist and transformed it into a tablet to scan the news. His mother had already executed her first hostage the night before. The second execution was scheduled for seven that evening. She had started with the members of the less prominent families. Ty was sure that wasn't because of any sense of loyalty; his mother merely wanted to save the best for torture, in case the executions didn't have the desired effect.
 

The aquamarine bracelet burned cold against his skin as he tried to control the panic rising in his chest. How long before his mother found out about Maya? Lana would tell her for sure once she returned from Chicago. If she hadn't already.

Ty folded up his phone again and texted Rober not to let anyone know where Maya was until he found a way to get her out of the Ring.
 

As soon as he got the reassuring reply from Rober, he took off the aquamarine bracelet. He turned his phone into a watch and placed it on his wrist to hide the burn marks left by the stones.

He tracked down his sister Eve in the garden, where she was fiddling with one of her hyacinth bushes in the vast park that took up floors 75 through 100 of the Remarque building. Two SFs stood a few paces to her left.

"Ty, where have you been?" Eve asked, brushing a strand of hair off her forehead and streaking it with dirt. "Daddy said you returned the day before yesterday."

She pursed her lips at him, but her eyes were kind and said she was happy he'd come.
 

Ty wiped the dirt off her forehead. "I came back late and I was at the talks all day yesterday. I got you something."

He crouched beside her, pulled the bracelet out of his pocket and handed it to her. She took it and peered at it intently. Then her whole face lit up in a smile.
 

"This is handmade, isn't it? You can see the flaws in the weave and everything." She threw her arms around his neck and squeezed tight. "I love it, thank you."

Ty picked her up and hugged her back. "I also got you a box to put it in, but I lost that. It doesn't matter, because you should wear this all the time."

She let go of his neck and put on the bracelet. "I will. And you should take better care of your things. Me, I never lose anything."

Cold, heavy dread settled in Ty's stomach. It was a trivial sort of special power his sister had, harmless, yet she was telling the absolute truth. Whenever she misplaced a possession all she had to do was wish for it back and there it was, right beside her. The bracelet should stop her being able to do that.

Ty put her down and looked back at the SFs. They were too far to overhear, but he led Eve farther into the garden anyway, on the pretense of wanting to see her butterflies.
 

Sweat broke out from every pore on his face as soon as they entered the humid enclosure where thousands of multicolored butterflies of all shapes and sizes fluttered around. At least the enclosure was soundproof and all the SFs stayed outside. A lilac and yellow butterfly settled on his sister's outstretched hand, It flew away as Ty turned her to face him. "I mean it, Eve. Don't take the bracelet off at all. It will help stop your power from showing."

Eve's eyes widened, flicking from Ty's face to the bracelet and back. "Really? You mean I don't have to be so alert all the time about it if I wear this?"

Ty shook his head, wishing he could tell her that was so. "You still have to hide it from Mom and Dad. Promise me you will, Eve."

She wriggled out of his grasp. "Ouch, you're hurting me."

Ty never even realized he had grabbed hold of her.

She stood there rubbing her arms and staring at him. "I went to see Julian this morning when I saw the SFs were trailing me. You know how they scare him."

"Yes. I should have gone to see him too." Their brother would go into an all-out fit if he was left alone in the room with an SF. Ty never wanted to find out why that was so, but he had a pretty good idea. He'd been away in Africa with his father when his older brother Julian had the accident that left him a child forever, even though he was now twenty years old. Ty was sure his mother had done something to him to stop him using his special gift, and the SFs were very likely a part of it.

Eve took his hand. "Don't worry, Julian is fine. Daddy made sure he won't recognize the SFs, but you should have gone to see him. He's very upset with you. Says you haven't been to visit him since New Year's."

Ty wasn't proud of it, but it was so very hard to keep all emotion locked away when he was with his brother. If only Salvio would teach Julian to control his power the way he taught Ty, he'd be alright now.
 

Another butterfly, a black one with red slashes across its wings, landed on their clasped hands.
 

"Don't worry, I'll wear the bracelet, Ty, I promise," Eve said. "Tell me the truth. You want me to hide my powers because if anyone found out, I would end up like Julian."

Ty willed his mouth to smile, yet he was certain she saw the strain. "Julian hit his head and they couldn't fix him."
 

Eve bit her lower lip. "I hear them arguing about Julian, Mom and Daddy. I'm eleven, I'm not stupid, Ty. I still remember the time he made it snow in the family room. I remember because the next time I saw him, he no longer recognized me."

Ty remembered the snow too. Vividly. A year later Ty found out his mother had stopped Julian from using his gift. He'd overheard his parents arguing about it too. Heard his mother scream she would not have one of
those freaks of nature
in her family. Nor would she experiment on her own children at the facility. The fact that Violetta Remarque refused to subject her own children to the horrors she put her students through before tossing them aside was her one redeemable feature. It wasn't much.
 

The same could happen to Eve. It would certainly happen to Maya if she ever set foot in his mother's facility.

"Ty, do you have a special power too?" Eve asked.

Ty's face stiffened. He forced a smile and ruffled her hair. "No, I don't. And Julian really did fall, Eve. I was with him that day."

She looked at him like she believed neither of his lies, but she didn't press him for more.

"I know what we can do! Let's go have lunch with Julian," she said as they climbed out of the butterfly enclosure.
 

Ty lied he had to help their father with something, because seeing Julian on top of all his others worries seemed like a bad idea. He promised Eve he'd go see him soon and left the garden. Ty spent the rest of the day playing Castle Life, where he always played a shepherd with no worse cares in the world than VR wolves getting into his flock.

~

Maya had already spent most of the day pacing up and down beside the communication panel by the door. No one called. She kept trying to convince Giles to try and call someone. He finally conceded with another halfhearted attempt and soon declared it beyond his ability.

"I think Ty's plan has merit," Giles said and slumped down on the sofa again.

"I will not go home until I learn to use my gift."

Giles smiled at her, in that way he always did when she got angry at things beyond her control. "It's like an explosion when you get this worked up."

Maya didn't even bother to reply.
 

Giles did manage to figure out how the dishwasher and the closet worked. It wasn't like any closet Maya had ever seen. All you had to do was stand inside and direct it to dress you, and it did.
 

It had fashioned a perfectly tailored, golden brown body suit for Maya, complete with knee high boots. Giles whistled appreciatively when she walked out of the closet dressed in the skintight outfit. Maya hated it. The material was too sleek to be natural, and it moved with her unnervingly like a second skin. She changed back into her regular clothes right away.

By the time the sky had turned the dark green of night Maya's feet and back ached from pacing by the door, but her heart was beating furiously in her chest. Giles had long since disappeared into the imaginary world of a VR game.

Who did they think they were, keeping them locked in like this?

She'd even tried to use her gift on the door, letting the warmth build in her palm and sending a surge of it towards the door. All it did was make her faint with the effort.

"The door ripples like water when it opens," Maya reasoned to herself as she studied the door more closely.
 

To the best of her knowledge the door was made of mahogany. She'd never seen wood behave like water.
 

"If it looks like wood, it probably acts like wood. And water ripples if a stone strikes it," she mused to herself. "So either way, if I hit it with something hard and heavy, it should open."

By eleven o'clock that still seemed like the best plan. Giles had already fallen asleep on the sofa, the VR glasses hanging off his face.
 

Just as well, he'd only try to stop her.
 

Maya hauled the food maker to the door. It was the heaviest thing in the whole apartment that she could carry.
 

Panting and groaning, she lifted the oven over her head and flung it as hard as she could at the center of the door.

The door rippled and she let out a whoop. They were free!

Then the ripples absorbed the oven and a streak of black water rushed towards her.
 

It hit her square on the chest.
 

Maya's heart stopped beating as the back of her head collided with the floor.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Rober's call interrupted Ty as he was settling down to play a tune on a flute he'd carved from a piece of wood in Castle Life.
 

"Come to my house now! Maya's hurt!" Rober yelled and hung up.
 

The sprawling hills where the sheep grazed had yet to fully fade from Ty's vision, but his heart was beating frantically.
How could Maya be hurt?
 

He ran past the SFs still stationed at his door to the elevator and punched in the floor number to his father's study. He pressed his tattoo against the door to get into the room, but his father wasn't back yet.

Ty called him on the phone. "Why are you keeping me locked up?"
 

"You know very well why. Or at least you should," his father snarled. "And don't call me at work unless it's an emergency. We'll talk when I get home."

"And when will that be?" Ty asked. His father had already hung up. It was for the best. Ty shouldn't have called him like that. He needed him in a good mood if he had any hope of leaving the house tonight.
 

After an hour and fifteen minutes, his father finally walked into the study. "The SFs are looking everywhere for you, Ty. It was very irresponsible of you to run from them."

His father stuck his head back out the door and told the SFs stationed there to call off the search. He sighed and went to the bar to pour himself a glass of cognac. "You really are acting like a child. It's not safe for you out there until we come to an agreement with New LA and Dakota."

Ty shot up from his father's leather armchair. "That could take weeks. Months maybe. You expect me to stay locked up in here for that long?"

"Yes," his father hissed in cold anger and pushed past him to sit down in his chair.

"No," Ty shot back. "I have duties with the SFs if nothing else."

"You will do as I tell you. There is no need for you to perform your duties for the time being. I've cleared it with the command. I'm going to start including you more in my work. Now go, it's been a long day."