Living with Your Past Selves (Spell Weaver) (31 page)

“That’s brilliant if it could be made to work. But to fool her for days, we would need extensive images and sounds to feed to her. It would be like producing thousands of hours of video, not just one loop. In the short term, there’s just no way.”

“All right, then, can you ‘divert’ the signal? You know, when she tries to connect with Stan, she connects with someone else instead. Someone who isn’t part of our group, isn’t normally close to us?”

“Hmmm. Maybe. She’ll be suspicious of that too, but it’s so unusual she may think the problem is on her end. Let’s try that. Tal, that really is brilliant.”

“Actually, Stan suggested that the other day, when we were talking about defensive strategies,” I admitted.

“Give Stan my compliments, then. Listen, you can send messages to people mentally now, right?”

“Worked with Stan, anyway. Yeah, I think I can do it.”

“Send one to Dan, Gordy, and Shar as well if possible. Let them know what is happening. And make sure Stan says or does nothing suspicious until tomorrow morning. I’ll need a little preparation to set up the diversion. And Tal…”

“Yes?”

“Emphasize the importance of not saying or doing anything where anyone outside the group can see or hear. Once Winn realizes that she isn’t connecting with Stan, for whatever reason, she’ll start using other students. Anyone, and I mean anyone, could easily become her eyes and ears without knowing the difference.”

“Nurse Florence,” I said worriedly. “If she’s been spying on us through Stan all this time, doesn’t she already know everything?

“I would say not, given how surprised she seemed to have been by Gordy’s sword. I think she was just peeking through Stan occasionally, enough so she could feed you the occasional “inside” information to make you think she was the one helping you. Now, though, I think she would have started using him much more, so it’s a good thing we figured this out now, rather than later.”

“Okay, then. I’ll send out those messages as soon as I get home.”

“Good.” Nurse Florence drooped a little, as if she didn’t know quite what to do now that she had imparted her information.

“Let me walk you to your car,” I suggested.

“That’s a good idea. I don’t need to stay here anymore.”

She got up very slowly, got her coat, and we went out to the faculty parking lot together.

It was sad to think that she had done so much for me, but now, when she needed me, I couldn’t really think what to say or do to make her feel better.

I started to sing, but she stopped me.

“There are some things, however painful, that one needs to feel,” she said.

Well, so much for that idea. I just had to hope that my presence gave her some comfort…and that this would be the last time that she had to grieve for a long, long time.

CHAPTER 18: THE SCIENCE OF MAGIC

When I got home, I did manage to send the messages, but my hands were shaking a little by the end of the last one, not so much from making the connections themselves, though there was distance involved, and hence considerable effort, as from the generally unnerving situation. Bad enough to know someone was out to get me. Discovering it was the most powerful person in town made the situation that much worse. But now, knowing that she had been spying on us and would be doing it even more was creepy, to say the least.

What if Nurse Florence was wrong, and that fly buzzing around was a shifter? What if Carrie Winn could see through my eyes without my being aware of it? I finally slept that night, but it was a nightmare-ridden sleep, and I woke up still feeling tired.

I went through my morning routines robotically. Only breakfast left to go, and then I could…what? Go off to school and try to figure out which person I bumped into in the hall was really the eyes and ears of Carrie Winn?

To make the situation worse, my dad, who had been content for quite a while now, decided this morning would be a good time to raise the tension level.

“Tal, you know, if you ever want to invite a girl over for dinner, that would always be fine with your mom and me. In fact, we’d like to meet your girlfriend some time.”

Yeah, well, so would I.

“I’m between girlfriends at the moment,” I said, making a weak attempt at a smile.

“That Carla Rinaldi seems like a very nice girl,” my mom offered. “I ran into her mother just the other day at the mall, and she said—”

“Mom, you aren’t matchmaking, are you? Because I can find my own girls, thanks anyway.”

“Yes, you could be quite the ladies’ man, Tal, but you aren’t.” My dad looked straight at me, ignoring the newspaper for once. “You spend all your time with Stan from down the street, and now a few other guys. I thought when you starting working out with the football team and decided to play soccer again…”

Normally, I could have handled this conversation. Normally, I would have had decent sleep and not been worried about prying eyes on me every second.

“You thought what, Dad?” I said, more harshly than I had ever spoken to my father. “That I’d go from being Johnny Weirdo to Johnny Normal again? Well, I’m afraid this is as normal as it gets.”

“Tal, I don’t appreciate your tone one bit!”

“And that’s the problem. You don’t appreciate. I have really high grades and a successful band. I’m fast becoming a successful two-sport athlete. I have an internship with Carrie Winn. I have friends, I don’t smoke, drink, do drugs. I don’t do anything high risk.” Well, not the kinds of things most parents would have to worry about, anyway. “And you’re upset because, what? I don’t have a girlfriend right now?”

“Tal, I do appreciate everything you’ve accomplished,” replied my dad, more defensively than usual.

“Then, what? What the hell is it that’s bugging you?” I was practically shouting now.

“Tal,” said my dad, his volume rising, “we raised you better than to behave like this!”

“Dad, I don’t know how else to say this: I’m not gay, I’m just busy.”

It is one thing to know the elephant is in the room. It is another thing when it jumps up on the table and tramples your Rice Krispies. For a second my dad got so red in the face I thought he was going to have a heart attack right on the spot.

“I never once said I thought you were…like that!” he finally replied, quietly but intensely.

“Yeah, well, you didn’t have to say it, did you? I could see it on your face every day.”

I shoved back my chair and got up as fast as I could. My mom just sat there, stunned, and I felt sorry for her, but I didn’t have any comfort for her left in me right then. I just needed to get away from her, from him.

“Taliesin Weaver! Sit down this instant!” Dad’s voice had steel in it I had never heard before. I was so angry at that moment that I might still have ignored him, but he was out of his chair with remarkable speed, putting a hand on my shoulder firmly and pushing me back down into the chair. I could have resisted, but even at my angriest, I couldn’t actually get violent with my dad. Nonetheless, I looked up at him with unconcealed defiance.

My mom looked as if she were about to cry. I did my best to ignore her.

“Tal, what is wrong with you?” Dad asked urgently. “This isn’t like you at all.”

“I’m just tired, Dad. Tired of always falling short,” I said, the anger cooling slightly. I was tired, and I just wanted the conversation to be over.

“I don’t know why you think I’m disappointed with you. What have I ever done to make you think that?”

“We love you,” added Mom, in a trembling voice, suggesting she was still dangerously close to crying.

Well, my dad had asked, so I told him. I told him every little facial twitch, every under-the-breath remark, every innuendo I could remember from the past four years. I had to give him credit. He listened, though it wasn’t really evident how much he was actually hearing. He had gone from red-faced to expressionless fairly quickly.

When I finally finished spilling my guts all over the dining room table, Dad was at first completely silent. Then, very quietly, he said, “When I was your age, we didn’t even talk about things like that. Everyone tried hard to pretend they didn’t exist. I guess that isn’t right, but that’s the way I was raised.”

“I know that,” I said slowly, “but—”

“Let me finish. I listened to you, now you listen to me! Okay, I admit, I worried about you sometimes. I worried, but I couldn’t talk to you about it. I can see now I should have. You knew what was on my mind anyway.

“I know I shouldn’t feel this way. I know I shouldn’t care whether you’re gay or straight, but I do. That much it sounds like you figured out. But what you don’t know, it’s hard for me to even say, but I know I have to, is, Tal, gay or straight, you are my son. I love you. I will always love you. And I feel terrible that I made you wonder whether that were true.”

I hardly knew how to respond. As long as I could remember, my dad had been pretty closed off emotionally. Oh, he had said he loved me before, but it always sounded like a very staid greeting card without any real depth to it. Opening up that far must have been hard, and it seemed to me that he was shaking a little.

I had not expected this conversation to end up in a family hug and a tidal wave of mutual apologies, but it did. My mom finally did cry, but at that point I think more from relief than anything else. I could tell my dad still wasn’t a hundred percent sure I was straight. But I could also tell he was trying really, really hard not to care. Brought up in the era he had been, he couldn’t possibly be expected to go further than that right then.

I met Stan pretty late, but we were close to school, so we still managed to be on time. We didn’t talk much—both of us were waiting for the thumbs up from Nurse Florence. That might have been just as well, since the confrontation with my dad had left me feeling pretty raw. Yeah, things had worked out better than I expected, but it still wasn’t the easiest conversation to get through, and my original reasons for exploding all over my dad—the tiredness, the anxiety—still remained.

At the beginning of lunch Stan and I strolled casually by the nurse’s office, and Nurse Florence gave us the thumbs up, so we went in.

“We’re okay?” I asked, just to be sure.

“Anyone trying to see through Stan will actually be seeing through another student neither one of you know,” replied Nurse Florence. “That means I can ask Stan what he was able to find out in Carrie Winn’s office.”

Stan started fumbling in his backpack and finally pulled out a flash drive that must have been buried at the very bottom.

“Don’t put it up on my computer,” said Nurse Florence quickly. “The network administrator might notice, and it would be hard to explain. Just tell us.”

“Okay. She really doesn’t have much in the way of security on her network, and the office network did connect with the network at Awen, but I can’t make sense out of the data I got. Her security men are theoretically supplied by a security company she has a contract with, but there is no list of them anywhere on her system. The security company sounds like something out of a TV mystery. It looks like a shell company owned by a series of other companies that don’t have much more substance either, but if one traces the line of ownership far enough, it eventually comes back to Carrie Winn.”

“What?” I said incredulously. “She is contracting with herself to hire security? That makes zero sense.”

“I doubt it is that simple,” replied Nurse Florence. “Think— why would someone need to create a front like that? Tal? Stan?”

“Money laundering?” I tried, but I could see from her face that was not the answer she was looking for.

“I’m no expert, but I think you need an actual company bringing in actual money, not just a shell.”

“Since there is no list of names, she is trying to hide who her security people are,” suggested Stan.

“Quite possibly, but why?”

“I’m not liking what I’m thinking,” I said. “Could there be something…supernatural about her security?”

“I’m afraid so,” replied Nurse Florence grimly. “I can’t imagine why Winn wouldn’t deal with a real company if she were going to hire ordinary security. All of this fake companies owning more fake companies kind of chain is a lot of work to set up—hardly worth it to someone who isn’t trying to hide something. This situation opens up a whole world of new possibilities, most of them nasty. She could be recruiting from Annwn. Picture a large security force, all with the advantages of faerie blood. Maybe they are even all shifters. Maybe Winn is not the only one on her side who can do magic. There isn’t any easy way of telling what we are up against. Stan, what about the rest of her staff?”

“There are some real employee records on both her business and home servers, but as far as I can tell, she went to great lengths to hire people from out of town, with no ties to anyone in town. The domestic staff lives in a separate building right behind Awen, and none of them seem to have any dependents. The business employees all seem to live no closer than Carpinteria in one direction or Santa Ynez in the other…”

“Which makes it difficult to do exactly what I wanted to do—get information from their family members. I was hoping in an organization that large to have at least a few children of employees on campus, if nothing else. Any of us would be too conspicuous showing up at someplace like Carpinteria High School for no reason.”

“I can try to extend my range and maybe start seeing through people from greater distances,” I suggested.

“That’s a good idea, but your first priority right now should still be finding ways for your magic to affect technology. Faerie or not, the guards will be expecting their guns to work and will be thrown off balance when they don’t. Now, if there are more questions…”

“Just one,” I interrupted. “What progress have we made on Eva’s body guard?”

“None, I’m afraid. I can’t seem to find a girl with the right skills in Eva’s circle, and introducing some guy who tags along all the time would be hard to explain to her.”

“She kind of knows what’s happening,” I said sheepishly, suddenly realizing I had left that particular detail out in earlier conversations with Nurse Florence.