Hunter was six, and he was talking a mile a minute as soon as Bree walked in the door. “I want to show you my train. I made a train track, and some trees and houses. And a gate. The cars have to stop at the gate so the train doesn’t smash them to bits ‘cause the train is way heavier.” He pulled insistently on her hand as Bree greeted Kevin with a one armed hug. “Steve’s just finishing the dishes, and Daniel’s not here yet,” he said when Hunter paused to take a breath.
“Daddy, I want to show her my train!” Hunter complained.
“It’s okay kiddo, I’m coming. We’ll check out the train first,” Bree reassured him.
Kevin smiled and waved Bree toward the hall and Hunter’s room, and followed them in. He sat on the bed while Bree settled on the floor with Hunter, admiring his train set up. After Hunter had described it all with exhaustive detail, he settled down to play. Bree seized the moment of quiet to question Kevin about how he knew Daniel.
Kevin took off his glasses and wiped them on his shirttail as he considered where to start. He was a classic computer geek: brilliant, a little on the chubby side, receding brown hair, no great fashion sense, but unlike many other programmers Bree had known, he actually had some social skills, and when not working was very extroverted and people focused. He still had a trace of upper crust Boston in his voice, though he had lived in Seattle for many years. “I'm sure you've heard me mention him before, my Keeper friend in Boston. We've been friends for years."
"I guess that does ring a bell," Bree admitted.
"I knew Daniel as a kid,” he said as he put his glasses back on. “You’ve heard me talk about the powered side of the East Coast culture, very inbred, everybody knows everybody. I’d see him from time to time at the occasional big social event, but we never really connected. He was kind of a shy kid, and I was busy running around with my cousins. We went to the same powered boarding school for high school though, and we've been friends ever since. Though of course, I haven’t seen much of him since I moved out here. In fact, I think you and Seth were on your honeymoon the last time he came to town to town to visit me." Kevin slanted a quick look at Bree. Even after all this time, people were afraid to mention Seth to her. She fixed a look of polite interest on her face, and Kevin continued.
"I do always spend time with him when I go home to visit family. He's one of those people I can talk to like we've never been apart every time we get together. As little as I get to see him, I consider him one of my closest friends."
“He seemed like a pretty tightly wound guy to me,” Bree observed as she obeyed Hunter’s directive to move one of his trains down the track and over the bridge. “Nice enough, kind of sweet, but I think being a Keeper did a number on him.”
“Oh, I’m sure it must have. But I wouldn’t say that’s the only thing that did a number on him. His father was a piece of work. Not a nice man.”
“Dark powered?”
“No, kind of the opposite really. Very righteous, very rigid about the law, served on the Northeast Ecclesias for a lot of years. Good case in point that just avoiding dark power doesn’t make you a nice person. And his mother was a very withdrawn, depressive sort, at least when I knew her. So Daniel has some issues apart from being a Keeper.” Kevin hesitated, and Bree saw him draw in his lips and slide his gaze to the floor in the way he did when he was feeling guilty about something. Really, Kevin was such an open book, you didn’t have to be a Reader to guess what he was feeling.
“I guess that’s not my story to tell,” he said. “Anyway, when I got to really know him, he was so high power that it just blew me and everybody else away. You’d never have guessed it from what he was like as a kid. He wasn’t arrogant about it, or at least not much, but he just kicked ass on nearly every talent, even back then when they weren’t fully developed. Major Caster, good intuitive sense of spells and had the interest to really study the lore. Great Demonsense, and a really stellar Exorcist. He could do Divining, but it never really held his interest. He’s as good a Warder as I am, and he can do a little Healing too. Not much of a Reader in terms of tells, but he’s a high power Reader of energy. I think the only talent he doesn’t have at all is Animal Master.”
“Lordy, I can see why he went for Keeper. But with that mix, wasn’t there ever concern he was a…” Bree hesitated, not wanting to say too much in front of Hunter. She silently mouthed the words
Demon Master
.
Kevin got his guilty look again. “There were rumors, but there always are.”
“Rumors about what?” Steve asked from the door. He came in, dropped a kiss on the top of Bree’s head, and sat down on the bed next to Kevin. He was more than a head taller, slender and blond, and they made a bit of a Mutt and Jeff picture when side by side.
“About Daniel,” Bree answered.
“Ah, the so interesting Mr. Thorvaldson,” Steve said archly. “I would love to hear some rumors.”
“Well, I’m certainly not going to repeat any,’ Kevin said primly. “Stories, though, I’ve got. I was telling Bree about when Daniel and I were in school together. He was kind of the powered equivalent of a jock at school because of his abilities, and I was a nerd and a lowly, one-talent Warder. But Daniel took up with me. I think he basically didn’t like bullies, and I wasn’t being treated that well. I think he did it to be nice at first, but then we hit it off.”
Hunter looked up, caught by something in Kevin's tone. He got up off the floor and clambered onto Kevin’s lap. “Don’t be sad, Daddy,” he said, giving Kevin a hug.
Steve put an arm around Kevin’s shoulder, and looked down at Bree. “See now, I wouldn’t have caught sadness just from Kevin’s voice,” Steve remarked. “I assume you felt a little sad remembering being hassled in school?” he asked Kevin.
Kevin nodded and told Hunter, “I’m not really that sad about it any more, pumpkin.”
“Pardon the question from the clueless normal here, but could you do that at Hunter’s age?” Steve asked Bree.
“Oh yeah,” Bree answered, still absent-mindedly playing with the train. “My parents thought I was just ‘too sensitive.’ Fortunately, Hunter will have more support and understanding than I had with my poor normal parents. Thank heavens it was you two who adopted him.”
“I’m a Reader,” Hunter announced importantly.
“Yes sweetie, we think you’re a Reader,” Bree replied.
“And I’m an Animal Master. I’m Master of Tyrannosaurus Rex!” he said gleefully, and started to bounce up and down on Kevin’s lap.
“I’m sure you would be if they weren’t extinct,” Steve laughed.
The doorbell chimed, and Hunter leapt off Kevin’s lap and charged for the door. “You’d think he was a dog the way he rushes for the door whenever someone comes over,” Steve said as he bent over to help Bree straighten Hunter’s toys. Hunter, clearly having overheard the comment, began barking.
Kevin went to get the door and a moment later, Hunter dragged Daniel in to join them. “And this is my train set,” he was saying. “I made the trees.” Daniel dutifully bent over to inspect the trees after a quick greeting to the others in the room. He was wearing all brown today, sweater and cords. So much for Bree’s theory that he was still holding onto being a Keeper by wearing blue.
“Okay little man, time for your bath,” Steve announced in his no nonsense parent voice after giving Hunter a little time to tell Daniel all about his trains.
“But Papa, Daniel didn’t get a chance to play with my train!” Hunter said, voice beginning to rise.
“It’s okay, Hunter. I live in Seattle now, so I’ll get another chance to come and play with your train,” Daniel reassured him. Hunter looked stormy anyway, but Steve scooped him up and tickled him, then carried him out of the room.
Bree, Kevin and Daniel adjourned to the living room. The dark expanse of the lake with the far necklace of lights on the opposite shore was visible out the window. It was a clear night. Bree made sure she sat where she had a good view of Daniel’s face. She was still feeling uneasy about him, and she wanted to be able to read him if necessary. She hadn’t been able to let go of the suspicious vibe with which their last meeting had ended, when Daniel had wanted to avoid involving the Ecclesias. And somehow, her little talk just now with Kevin hadn’t eased things. As she gazed at him, she was forced to register that in spite of all that, she was getting butterflies in her stomach being around him again. It was hard for her to look him in the face.
“Okay, so spill you two. What’s with the pow wow?” Kevin asked.
“Bree ran into a little trouble at the working she did for me on Friday. We just wanted to run it by you, see if you have any ideas, maybe get your input on the next best step,” Daniel started. He described the encounter, with Bree chiming in with her description of the taint nearly getting away from her, and misjudging the size of the demon during the recent exorcism, and they both shared their speculations.
“I’ve been thinking since then,” Daniel concluded, “what if this is really something new? A new talent in demons? Powered have certainly evolved over the years, why wouldn’t they?”
“And yet by all the lore, they really have been pretty static,” Kevin replied thoughtfully. “Even to the point of using the same names, adhering to the same general types. Isn’t one of the theories that Hell is by nature an unchanging place, and that’s part of why it
is
Hell?”
Daniel leaned back and ran a hand through his hair, in a gesture that spoke to Bree of frustration. His hair already had a tendency to stick up, and he’d just made it worse. “You know I don’t believe in Hell, Kevin.”
“Ah, yes, the ‘other dimensional beings’ theory,” Kevin replied with amusement.
“And I’m not sure I even buy the idea they're that unchanging. We’re relying on history with that notion, and historic documents are notoriously difficult to evaluate, given the context issues, the translation difficulties…”
“But demons really are predictable,” Bree weighed in. “At least that’s been my experience. They like to feed on negative emotional energy, and they create negativity so they can have more of what they like. That’s basically all they want.”
“Yes, but wouldn’t you say they have personalities?” Daniel replied, brows raised in question, expression becoming animated.
Kevin groaned. “Do we have to debate the existential demonology questions tonight? I know you Thorvaldson, you can keep this up for
hours
. Let’s just stick to the subject at hand, shall we?”
Bree was disappointed at Kevin’s putting the kibosh on the debate, which she was starting to enjoy. She reached up and started playing with the end of her ponytail, which was draped over one shoulder, and reminded herself that her plan was to tell Kevin what she knew and hope he and Daniel would take it from there, leaving her out of it.
As Kevin and Daniel argued over what was and wasn’t included in ‘the subject at hand,’ Bree finally acknowledged to herself that she probably was ready to start working at least a little power again. To her surprise, she hadn’t had any nightmares or other ill effects from clearing Daniel's taint, and the repeated images of the botched exorcism on Jeremy had calmed down too. She was awfully quick to be persuaded by Dion once he had a case to offer that sounded easy enough to begin with, and she'd had her interest well and truly piqued by the question of a new type of demon or demon talent. She’d thought of little else in the last couple of days, if one didn’t count thinking about Daniel Thorvaldson, which Bree was working hard
not
to count. On the other hand, she didn’t want to get drawn back into full out exorcism work, at least not now, and maybe not ever if she could get away with it.
“Look,” Bree finally interrupted, even though she could see that now Kevin was enjoying the argument as well. “I think the main question is really what we should do with the information. We can continue to speculate all we want in the meantime, but don’t you think this should go to the Ecclesias, just in case it’s important?”
She saw Kevin glance quickly at Daniel, and something unspoken passed between them.
“I do think that would be a good idea,” Kevin said, with seeming reluctance.
“Well, I don’t see where I would need to be involved directly,” Daniel said, voice gone cool. Bree saw his nostrils flare slightly, and his mouth had tightened again. Her Reader sense spontaneously flared up at these signs of anger.
“Daniel, the Ecclesias out here is not like it is back home.”
“I was just the subject, Kevin, they’ll really just need to hear from Bree,” Daniel interrupted, obviously trying not to sound annoyed.
Kevin didn’t answer, and Bree looked over at him and saw his face had gone tense. “What is it?” she asked.
“Someone just touched the house wards." All three closed their eyes for a moment, the better to focus their various talents to try to read what might be going on. “There it is again,” Kevin said.
“I feel it,” Bree said nervously. "In fact, I feel a lot of people out there. Six of them. They feel, not quite hostile, but like they don't mean well."
“It felt like an exploratory hit,” Daniel said.
Suddenly, all the windows in the house rattled in their frames. “What the hell was that?” Bree exclaimed, as Steve called from the bathroom, “Kevin? Was that an earthquake?”
Kevin was on his feet, facing the window on the street side of the house, and Daniel was already beside him, arms raised to his sides, lips moving in a working. “What’s he doing?” Bree whispered, coming up behind Kevin.
“He’s backing up my wards. Someone is trying to take them down by force, and that cannot be good.” He joined Daniel in the same posture.
Again, the windows rattled. Steve hurried into the living room, Hunter in his arms, wrapped in a towel, brown hair still wet from his bath. “I think we’re having an earthquake! Aren’t we supposed to get under a table or something?”