Mind Magic (33 page)

“It has to exist. The children are
somewhere
.”

That wasn’t necessarily true, Rule thought grimly. Bodies were easy to dispose of. Rule knew damn little about Edward Smith, not enough to guess whether he was ruthless enough to kill children. Why had he done what he had? What were his goals, and how much would he sacrifice for them? Danny’s account made him sound smart, cold, and manipulative. Was that accurate? Would he remain cool under pressure or react impulsively? Faced with possible exposure, he had smoothly steered the blame to Ruben. But would he think that was enough? He could have decided he had to eliminate all traces of his clandestine project.

Danny was still talking. “. . . not surprising I didn’t know about it. I’m not an accountant. I could find the records about the Refuge because I knew where to start—with Bright Haven. Nonprofits have to keep records. They didn’t make it easy to trace their supposed donors, but I could work the trail from both ends, since I had access to the NSA’s data. But Mr. Smith must not have used Bright Haven to finance this other place. That’s why I didn’t know about it.”

She could be right. If Smith had a hiding place for the children, Lily might be there, too. If not, they still had to be found. Dead or alive, they had to be found. Rule wasn’t sure he was the best person to do that, but . . . “If the children are being held in the same place as Lily, I’ll try to free them when I free Lily. If they aren’t there, I’ll use the resources available to me to try to find them.”

She frowned suspiciously. “What do you mean by ‘resources’?”

“The situation’s too fluid for me to be specific. I could be killed. I could be captured and jailed again, which would force me to delegate the search to others. Or I might free Lily and clear Ruben of suspicion without locating the children, in which case we could have the entire FBI looking for them.”

She thought that over, then said in a low voice, “Okay, but you have to promise that if you find them, you won’t kill them or allow anyone else to kill them.”

His eyebrows shot up—then down. “I don’t murder children. I don’t allow children to be murdered.”

“They . . .” She stopped. Swallowed. “Just promise.”

He did, finishing, “. . . if I can do so without undue loss of life.”

The rigid shoulders slumped in relief. “Okay. Okay, that’s good.” She freed one hand from its grip on her computer and held it out.

They shook on the deal. That wasn’t a lupi custom, but it seemed to matter to this girl who was uncomfortable with touch. Rule repeated his pledge; Danny promised to level with him about “everything connected to Mr. Smith and the children,” then asked if they could talk someplace by themselves.

“We can. May we leave your laptop here and turned on so someone can monitor the news?”

She considered that in frowning silence. He didn’t push. Their acquaintance might be short, but it was sufficient for him to know that Danny did not make decisions quickly. Finally she said, “Saul trusted me with his flute. I guess I could trust him with my laptop.”

*   *   *

THEY
went for a walk. Mike, Reno, and Eric went with them, staying far enough away to give Danny the feeling of privacy, if not the fact of it. For about ten minutes, they walked in silence. The tension had returned to her shoulders.

It was returning to Rule’s gut, too. He broke the silence. “Perhaps you could start by telling me why you believe Smith is using mind control.”

She shook her head. “The evidence for that is anecdotal, and you’ll need a lot of background or you won’t understand.”

“Hmm. To your knowledge, are any of the people working with Smith nonhuman?”

That startled her. “What?”

“Elves, for example. Or just people whose magic feels different from anything you’ve ever touched.” True mind control was incredibly rare. It seemed impossible that the NSA could have achieved it with a drug.

Her brow wrinkled. “None of them that I’ve touched have any kind of magic.”

“Including Smith?”

“No, he has a small charisma Gift. Pretty minor, but it’s there. Could you not ask questions yet? I need to tell this like I planned.”

“All right.”

She cleared her throat. “I first got suspicious when Amanda showed up at the Refuge because I knew he’d lied to me. Mr. Smith, I mean. Initially, I wasn’t going to report any blocked telepaths I found. I didn’t see any reason to. They were lucky to have a block, and they couldn’t do him any good. But Mr. Smith said he wanted to track them. Blocks can suddenly disappear, or so I was told.” She darted him a quick glance. “Is that true?”

“I don’t know.”

“I don’t, either. Not anymore. But the Omega Project researchers believe that’s so. According to Dr. Webb—she’s the one who went with me to St. Elizabeth’s—preliminary data suggest that some, possibly many, telepaths are born with their Gifts blocked, but puberty disrupts or dispels the blocks. That theory is based on a statistical analysis of catatonic patients incorporating the age of onset of symptoms. I didn’t know anything about statistics back then so I couldn’t evaluate their methodology, but it seemed sound. The problem was that their data might be skewed because they didn’t know how accurate their model was for determining which catatonic patients were telepaths. That’s why they need my help, only I freaked out and couldn’t do it.”

“And Mr. Smith told you the same thing? That blocked telepaths might suddenly lose their blocks?”

“Uh-huh. The idea was that maybe, by the time any telepaths I found became unblocked, his people or the Omega people would have discovered a way to help. It made sense. I thought it made sense.”

“You wanted to help them.”

She nodded but didn’t speak. When the silence dragged on, Rule prompted gently. “Then Amanda showed up at the Refuge.”

“She was blocked!” Anger drew Danny up straight and stiff. “Blocked when I found her, and still blocked when she came to the Refuge. They thought I wouldn’t know. I’d gone off to college by then—”

Rule’s eyebrows shot up. “At sixteen?”

“I’m very smart. That’s not bragging. It’s just a fact, like having brown eyes or Asperger’s is a fact. I wanted to enter college early so I could get away from the Refuge, so I studied hard, and once I left, I didn’t go back for visits. Except for once. It was the anniversary of Zipper’s death, so I went there to bring him some flowers. Amanda snuck out. I was at Zipper’s grave, and she snuck out so she could tell me how stupid I was to bring flowers to a dead dog. Amanda,” Danny announced like a judge pronouncing sentence, “is a mean little sneak and a braggart.”

“It was an unkind thing for her to say.”

“She doesn’t like me. They had told her to stay away from me—”

“Who?”

“Dan and Sharon, the houseparents. Maybe the others, too. The research people. They thought she’d obey them because she doesn’t like me. I’m not guessing about that,” she added. “That’s what she told me. Anyway, Amanda wanted me to know I wasn’t Mr. Smith’s pet anymore, that she was more important than me. I said blocked telepaths weren’t all that special, and she laughed and said she wouldn’t be blocked much longer. She was all puffed up about how important she was, because they were going to unblock her and she was essential to—” She stopped, swallowed, and finished quietly, “To Mr. Smith’s plans.”

“What plans, Danny?”

She took a deep breath. “The first time I saw a reference to the drug was in a financial report that listed ‘LDN1 supplies’ but didn’t say what LDN1 was. I couldn’t find anything more about it until after I ran. Someone slipped up and used its other name in a report—Lodan. A search with that name turned up more reports. No supporting data, but some general reports on a drug they called Lodan. I think they must keep most information about it on computers that are permanently offline. But at least none of those files were changed when the financial stuff was, so I can show them to you. There’s one labeled ‘Practical Applications of Lodan’ and . . . and it’s clear they intend to use the kids as weapons. I think . . .” She had to stop and swallow. “I’m pretty sure they used the kids to kill that man. The one whose body Lily found.”

Rule spoke in a carefully neutral voice. “Lily said there was magic on the body. That an odd kind of telekinesis had been used to cut the man’s throat.”

Danny nodded once, the movement jerky. “I need to tell you about Nicky.”

*   *   *

THE
woods here had more trees and less brush than the ones Demi had traveled with Rule Turner last night. More trees meant less brush, she supposed, because the heavier canopy cut off too much sunlight for smaller plants to grow well.

The shade felt good. Air-conditioning would have felt even better. She missed air-conditioning.

As they walked, she told him about Nicky. How they’d met, what Nicky was like—an early-admission student like her. An animal lover and vegetarian like her, too, though he took it farther than she had—“He won’t own anything made of leather.” And his uncle had Asperger’s syndrome, so he understood. And he liked her. He was her first real friend since the third grade. He wanted to be a veterinarian, and he got really good grades, and he liked a lot of the nonviolent computer games she did.

Nonviolent because he was a Quaker. It wasn’t just that he’d been raised that way, either. He
believed
in Quakerism. She explained about the Society of Friends carefully so Rule would understand.

Nicky was also Gifted.

The words had tumbled out until she got to that part. She liked talking about her friend. She didn’t like talking about the rest of it. It felt like betrayal. It
was
betrayal—she was breaking her promise. But he wouldn’t want her to keep silent anymore. She had to believe that.

“It felt like a telekinesis Gift?” Rule repeated when she’d stumbled to a halt.

“Almost the same,” she corrected. “But it isn’t TK. He can’t pick things up with it. The only thing he can do is lash out. It’s force, he said. Pure force. When he was little, if he got mad, he’d just flail out with it, and sometimes he broke things. Once he hit his mother, and that scared him. As he got older, it got stronger. That scared him, too, because he has a temper. Not so much for himself, but he hates bullying and . . .” She had to stop and swallow. It was Nicky’s hatred of bullies that had led Mr. Smith to him.

“But if it’s just force,” Rule said softly, “not a blade . . .”

“The force could be shaped. Back then, he didn’t know how to do that and he refused to learn. He wanted his Gift to go away.”

“He told you that? When?”

“When I first found out about his Gift. I was so startled!” Partly just because he’d touched her. That always startled her. But mostly because she’d never felt magic like his. He’d known something was wrong, and she’d done something she never did. She’d told him about her own Gift. “He made me promise not to tell anyone, so I didn’t report him to Mr. Smith.”

“Were you supposed to? He wasn’t a child, an orphan.”

“College students aren’t eligible for the Refuge, but Mr. Smith wanted to expand his program by recruiting people who were adult or nearly adult. So after I went to college, I was supposed to report any Gifted students I found, but there were only a couple. I couldn’t go around grabbing people, could I? Mostly I didn’t touch the other students, so I only found two who were Gifted. And then Amanda showed up at the Refuge.”

“And you stopped trusting Smith.”

Her forehead wrinkled in a confusing wash of feelings. One of those emotions she could identify, though. “I was so angry! I said I’d quit if he didn’t come talk to me. And he did, too. He came to see me at the dorm. He claimed his people had figured out how to help telepaths, but only if they could be treated while they were still blocked. I said that Amanda told me they were going to unblock her, and he said that was the only safe way to do it. Tests showed Amanda would be one of the unlucky ones who came unblocked at puberty, so they had to remove her block themselves to do it safely.” She sighed. “He made it sound reasonable. He even said I could take a sabbatical and see if Amanda did okay before I looked for any more Gifted kids for him. But he couldn’t explain away one thing.”

“Why not?”

“Isn’t it obvious? If everything was like he said, why hadn’t he told me earlier?”

“About Amanda?”

“He should have come to me and said, ‘Danny, I have good news. We can help any blocked telepaths you find, but we have to bring them to the Refuge right away.’ But he didn’t do that. He waited until I was gone to bring her there, and when I showed up, they told Amanda to stay away from me. They didn’t want me to know about her. So I didn’t believe him, but I didn’t have actual evidence that he’d lied. I needed facts.”

“So you hacked into the NSA computers.”

“No, I talked to Nicky. Then I hacked into the NSA. It was Nicky’s idea.”

Rule seemed surprised about that. She explained why she’d decided she could tell Nicky about Mr. Smith. It went against the agreement she’d signed, but when Mr. Smith broke his word by bringing Amanda to the Refuge, she wasn’t bound by hers anymore, either. Not that the courts would see it that way, but she did.

“The elves would agree with you.”

She thought about that for several moments. “That makes me extremely curious, but this probably isn’t the time to ask about elves.”

“Probably not.”

“Getting full access took a long time. I got into the NSA computers within a week of getting Mr. Smith’s log-in, but I had to find the place where he’d hidden all the Bright Haven data. That was slow. And I didn’t know about the drug yet, not until after Nicky went missing.”

He needed her to explain that, so she told him how Nicky was suddenly not at college and his parents didn’t know where he was, and how she thought of Mr. Smith right away. “I don’t know why exactly. Lots of things might have happened to Nicky that didn’t involve Mr. Smith. But I knew he’d have loved to get hold of someone with Nicky’s Gift, and I couldn’t stop thinking about that, so I went to the Refuge to find out if he was there.”

She told him what had happened at the Refuge—the uniformed guards, how Mr. Smith had found her, and what he’d said. She described seeing Nicky and how odd he’d acted, and how confused she’d been until he pretended they’d been boyfriend and girlfriend. That had been so absurd she’d realized he was lying—and if he was, it was because of Mr. Smith. Then he told her to run.