Agents of the Glass (10 page)

“Everyone at this table started out at Level 1,” said Martin, breaking his long silence. “But obviously only a very few foot soldiers end up here, seated at this table with Mrs. Cardigan, so don't get your hopes up.”

“Please, Martin. Let us remain civil,” said Mr. Nakahara. “Mr. Llewellyn is on our side, remember?”

“We'll see.”

“Let's continue, shall we?” Mrs. Cardigan said calmly.

Silas gritted his teeth. Andy had done everything he'd been asked, with an absolute minimum of questions in return. Martin's questioning of the boy's loyalty without any reason didn't sit well with him.

“Right. Moving on,” he said, clicking to the next slide, a photograph of the NTRP tower, the letters brightly illuminated against an ominous, dark sky.

“This is why you're here today, Andy,” Silas continued. “For years, NTRP's programs have encouraged, even rewarded, viewers for abandoning any sense of right and wrong. All in the name of entertainment.”

“And the almighty advertising dollar,” added Reza.

“All the values and qualities that we stand for have been swept into the gutter,” said Mr. Nakahara, “replaced by greed and selfishness, dishonesty and corruption, pride and vanity. I can only guess at the damage they are doing to impressionable young people, especially those who don't have anyone in their lives to provide some direction.”

“They're going to be broadcasting inside Wellbourne,” said Andy. “I bet you already knew that.”

“We've known about it for several months, from the moment your teacher approached Deanna Decameron,” said Silas. “Tragic, really. Wellbourne is a fine school, and it's just unconscionable that they should allow this to happen.”

“You can't really blame the school,” said Reza. “They don't know what they're getting themselves into. They think it's going to be educational programming. That's what they were promised.”

Martin scoffed. “You're all assuming that Dr. Everly, the head of the school, has no connection to NTRP. I'm not so sure.”

Confused, Andy turned to Silas. “What kind of programming is it going to be?”

“
That
is the million-dollar question. I'm sure there will be some educational content—enough to please the skeptics—but after that, who knows?”

“We know that they're up to something new,” said Reza. “Something more dangerous than ever. We don't have much information, but we do know that
she
is a big part of their plan.”

Andy's jaw almost hit the table as the next slide appeared. Staring back at him from the screen were the strange pale eyes of Winter Neale.

If you already guessed it would be Winter, give yourself a pat on the back. So, you ask, if Andy is so smart, why was it such a surprise? The answer is simple: Andy has looked directly into those strange, and strangely hypnotic, eyes, and you haven't. Winter has a way of making people believe exactly what she wants them to believe—and that, in a nutshell, is what makes her so dangerous.

“Winter? Are you sure?”

“Andy, do you remember the story I told you about Brother Lucian and his disk of blue glass?”

“Sure. When he looked at people through it, some of them had this kind of…like they were glowing or something. You told me what it was called but I forget.”

“The
lumen lucidus.
”

“But it only worked on people who…Syngians, right?”

Silas nodded. “Exactly.”

Mrs. Cardigan set her knitting on the table and then removed a velvet pouch from her sweater pocket.

“Wait!” said Martin. “I thought we had decided—”

Frowning at him, Mrs. Cardigan untied the string at the top of the pouch. “Martin, sometimes you have to trust your instincts. Maybe he'll prove me wrong, but I doubt it. I have faith in this young man.”

From the pouch, she removed a not-quite-round piece of blue sea glass, slightly larger than a quarter and worn smooth on all sides. It was nearly a quarter of an inch thick, and around the circumference were engraved the first letter of each of the eight qualities. Mrs. Cardigan pushed a loop of simple black cord through a hole in the glass, pushed the other end through the loop, and pulled it tight.

“Yes, it's what you think it is,” said Silas. “We call it Lucian Glass. That is one of the original pieces, found by him in the church ruins.”

“I want you to have it, Andy,” said Mrs. Cardigan.

Andy stared at it for a few seconds, mesmerized, before gently reaching for it. He held it in the palm of his hand as if it were as fragile as a robin's egg.

“Don't be afraid of it,” said Silas. “It's already survived an earthquake, fifty years of bouncing around on the rocks in the North Sea, and more than eight centuries in the service of the Agency. You're not going to break it.”

“But you must take great care with it,” said Mr. Nakahara. “There is a…limited supply. You see, this particular shade of blue has never been duplicated. It was made by an unknown glassmaker, using a method, or a formula, that has been lost to time. Have you told him about Abeniz Caiotte? The legend?”

“Is that the guy in the glass coffin?” Andy asked. “The one who stole all the glass from the churches?”

“That's the one,” said Silas. “You have a good memory.”

“So, w-why are you giving this to me?” He held it up to the light, rubbing the worn surfaces between his fingers.

“You asked how we came to these positions,” said Mrs. Cardigan, tugging on the cord around her neck to reveal a slightly larger version of the glass in Andy's hand—the same slightly irregular shape, the same strange blue color. “There's something we left out. You see, not everyone has Brother Lucian's gift. Only one person in a hundred thousand or so is able to use the Lucian Glass to identify people with the
lumen.
All of us—the Level 3 Agents, that is—have that ability. All these years later, we still don't really know how it works, only that it does. And we don't know for sure, but we…well, some of us, at least…believe that you may have the gift, Andy.”

“Me? What…why do you think I can…” He held the sea glass up to the light and shook his head. “I don't see anything. It just looks like ordinary glass to me.”

Reza glanced across the table in Mr. Nakahara's direction and then at Martin before speaking. “There are some things that we can't tell you…not until we've had a chance to discuss them with the rest of the Level 3s. I hope you can trust us.”

“If it makes you feel any better, I don't know the answer to your question, either,” said Silas. “It has to be that way, sometimes.”

“There are some rules about the glass,” said Martin. “Don't go showing that thing around. You should wear it, but keep it secret. If anyone asks, it's just a piece of beach glass that you picked up last summer in North Carolina.”

“W-wouldn't it be better if I just left it in its bag…at home?” Andy asked.

“No doubt it would be safer there,” said Martin, “but you never know when you'll need it—assuming that you actually are able to use it. Which I, for one, have my doubts about.”

“Yes, we're well aware of your concerns, Martin,” said Reza. “Now let's get back to the business of Winter Neale. Silas, the next slide, please.”

“I took this photograph six years ago at a friend's wedding,” said Martin. “The bride is related to the Neales, and Winter was the flower girl; that's her in the center of the picture. She was seven at the time and looked like a perfect angel, but something about her seemed…Well, I can't explain it. And then I sneaked a peek at her through the glass. It was unlike anything I'd ever seen. And I've seen plenty.”

“What was it?” Andy asked.

“A textbook example of the
lumen lucidus.
I had to look a second time, because I couldn't believe what I was seeing. It was the clearest, brightest, most perfectly defined
lumen
that anyone has observed since Abeniz Caiotte in the fourteenth century.”

“But…is that…Does that really prove that she's, you know, evil? Maybe it was—”

Martin cut him off. “No offense, kid, but this is eight hundred years of experience talking. I know a
lumen
when I see one, and I know what it means.”

“There is other evidence,” added Mr. Nakahara softly.

“That's right,” added Reza. “The dogs.”

Bewildered, Andy could only shake his head and ask, “Dogs?”

“I'll bring her in,” said Billy, opening the door to another room. “Penny! Come on, girl.”

Penny, white with copper-colored speckles and spots, ambled into the room, her tail wagging wildly.

“Andy, meet Penny, your new best friend,” said Silas. “As promised.”

Andy kneeled, laughing as she licked his face. “She's beautiful. She's really…mine?”

“Absolutely. She's no ordinary dog,” said Mrs. Cardigan. “She may be a mutt, but she has a pedigree of a different and more important kind, one that goes back to the days of Brother Lucian himself.”

“There were always stray dogs hanging around the church,” Silas explained, “hoping for scraps of food. One day, Lucian noticed that whenever the first Syngian, Leveraux, was around, all the dogs would scatter—all but one, that is. That dog, named Argos, got very agitated every time he saw Leveraux, but he wouldn't leave. The hair on his back went up, and he bared his teeth, snarling viciously.”

“Lucian was fascinated by the coincidence,” said Mrs. Cardigan. “Over the years, he learned that Argos acted the same way around
anyone
with the
lumen.
Argos became an important tool in identifying Syngians, but the problem was—and
is
—that only a few dogs in a million have this gift. They are even rarer than people who can see the
lumen
with the glass. Adding to the problem, they're
always
mutts, which makes them even harder to locate. We have people constantly checking shelters for spaniel-setter mixes, because many of their bloodlines go back to England and France, and the dogs with the gift tend to look a lot like Penny. For all we know, she may be a direct descendant of Argos.”

“But…if she's so valuable, why are you…” Andy's bewilderment seemed to have multiplied. “What am I…”

“For the moment, you are going to take excellent care of her. Get to know each other. In a few days, Silas will instruct you to take her for a walk in Central Park; someone will meet you there and go over the training with you. Penny isn't fully trained yet, but she's ready to start work out in the field. There will be times when you can't use the glass—that's where Penny comes in. She can pick Syngians out of a crowd, and there will be times when that is going to be extremely helpful. For now, though, the most important thing is for you two to get to know each other.”

With a sigh, Mrs. Cardigan stuffed her knitting back into the tote. “I think that's enough for today. It's a lot to digest in one morning.”

Andy pushed his chair back from the table. “What about Winter? What am I supposed to do about her?”

“Pretty much the same thing you're doing with Penny,” said Reza. “Get to know her. Get her to trust you. Hang around as much as you can, without being obvious.”

“Just don't trust her,” said Martin. “And for God's sake, don't fall in love with her.”

“I'm not going to…Jeez! It's like I'm on trial or something.”

Martin's dark eyes bored into poor Andy. “There's no something about it. You
are
on trial.”

“To be honest, we don't know what NTRP has in store for Winter,” said Reza. “We've had our eyes on her for a long time, and we know there's been contact with NTRP. They're being very careful, but they must think that she's ready to…Well, that's what we need to find out.”

“For now your job is simply to observe, to listen, and to report
everything
back to me,” said Silas. “When in doubt, tell me. I'll decide if it's unimportant.”

“If you're right about Winter, and she does have the…
lumen
-whatever-you-call-it…I still don't get how that makes her so dangerous. Or what you can do about it. You told me that the Agency doesn't kill people. That wasn't a lie, was it?”

“We won't lie to you, Andy,” said Mrs. Cardigan. “But you also have to understand that we can't always tell you
everything.
At least not yet. You're safer…you're better off not knowing for the moment.”

“Before you go, please allow me to try to explain why Winter Neale is so dangerous,” said Mr. Nakahara. “I think it's crucial that you understand what is at stake. Winter isn't like anyone you've ever met. In addition to her…gift, she comes from one of the wealthiest, most politically and socially and financially and just-about-any-other-way-you-can-imagine connected families in the country. One way or another, with her talent and looks and all those connections, she's going to end up in the public eye. And when you combine that with the bottomless resources of NTRP…”

Reza finished for him: “Frankly, it scares us all half to death.”

“B-but why?” Andy asked. “What do…Syngians
do
? You make it sound like they have superpowers or something.”

Mrs. Cardigan placed a hand on his shoulder. “They
do
have superpowers—not like Superman or the X-Men. But believe me, their power is all too real. They have a kind of personal magnetism that blinds ordinary people to their words and actions. People want to be—no, it's more than that, they are
desperate
to be—friends with them.”

“Actually, magnets are a good way to illustrate the point,” said Martin. “I've been tough on you, but I'm sure you're a nice, personable kid who has no trouble making friends. So, imagine for a moment that you're a magnet, maybe something stuck on your parents' fridge, holding up that Valentine's Day card you made for your mum in the second grade—you know, the one you finger-painted. Compared to you, Winter Neale is one of those huge electromagnets they use in scrapyards to pick up cars.”

“He's right,” said Reza. “The difference is that dramatic. You'll see. People who should know better will fall under Winter's spell, and she will manipulate them in ways that will shock you. You're here because you've demonstrated many of the qualities that we hold dear, and an unusual ability to resist the ones that we have been fighting against—at least, so far. The real tests lie ahead, I'm afraid.”

Mr. Nakahara rose from his chair and walked around the table to shake Andy's hand. “We're asking a great deal from you, we know. It may sound like something from a bad movie, but the very future of humanity—at least the way we know it—may be in your hands. This girl, Winter, in the hands of NTRP…is the stuff of nightmares for an old man like myself. Good luck, Mr. Llewellyn.”