Of Delicate Pieces (4 page)

“They should be headed back to campus right about,” Sigorny glanced at her watch for dramatic effect, “
now
, in fact.”

Kaleb held out a hand and pressed his palm against the world like a mime. Sigorny hadn’t realized the air was trembling until he stopped it. “If the Broderick officials say they’re innocent, something about the mind control has to be true.”

Gabe shook his head. “Actually menticide is more about manipulation than control …”

Here he goes
. Sigorny tuned out Gabe’s intellectual jargon, seizing the opportunity to scribble on her pad of paper. She could definitely twist Kaleb’s quote into something juicier.

“… by stimulating the projection of where the prefrontal cortex of the brain would be.”

Sigorny interrupted Gabe’s tutorial. “Do you believe, Kaleb, that the writing in their notebooks could have that sort of power?”

“Mind control?”

“Thought reform,” Gabe corrected.

Kaleb shrugged. “Whether or not they were manipulated, that wasn’t my decision to make, was it?”

Choosing words was like choosing moves during a chess match. “It’s only an opinion. In your
opinion
, can mere words have so much power over a person? Actually, that question can be for any of you.”

Chase lifted his chin. “Of course words are influential. Isn’t that the purpose of your column?”

“Well said.” She beamed, batting her lashes at Chase. He called her influential. It was quite the high. “What I mean is, do you think words can sway someone to do something they don’t want to do? Alex?”

Come on. Give me something good
, Sigorny pleaded.

“I believe that someone can only be influenced if they want to be.”

Boring.

“And what about Jonas?” Sigorny asked. The figurative dagger pierced each of them differently. Alex looked at Chase. Chase looked at Kaleb. Kaleb looked away. Gabe looked at Sigorny. Their reactions chilled the scene, and her mind recalled the sensation of feeling the hairs on her arms stand on end. None of them spoke. How about a nudge?

“How do you feel about his involvement in all this?”

Kaleb began to speak, but Gabe interjected. “We spoke to you about Jonas months ago. Nothing has changed.”

Sure it has
, she thought. This was so much fun!

“The ranks are still divided, I see. Gabe, you don’t believe that your brother should have been sent to the interrogation levels of the Dual Tower with the rest of the Eskers kids?”

Gabe’s mouth tightened, and Sigorny tried not to stare at the marks streaking his gorgeous face. It was a treat, really, that her questions provoked their emotions. It gave her time to observe them without seeming odd. The defined lines of their features consumed her, so crisp, so definite, like their personalities. She longed to reach out and touch the lines of their high cheekbones, their heart-shaped mouths, and their jaws that twitched whenever she asked a question they didn’t want to answer.

“You are well aware, Sigorny, that Jonas left the Eviar group. His intention, unlike the others, was never to harm anyone.”

“So you say.”

Kaleb took an aggressive step forward. Oh goodness, he was even closer now. “They would have arrested him otherwise.”

She held up her hands. If she outstretched them, they would be on Kaleb’s chest. Adrenaline surged through her. “Okay, okay, I’m sorry.” But she knew she didn’t sound sorry at all. She was under their skin like a disease, and she was pleased to be there. It meant she had the power, and she could write about their reactions all she wanted!

“What specifically
did
Jonas tell you about his involvement?”

“None of your f—”

“Careful, Kaleb,” Gabe said.

She tried so hard not to smile. “The only reason I ask is because I thought you might have researched your family history afterward.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because each of the Eskers kids is connected to a family historically poisoned by greed or bitterness. Even Joey Rellingsworth. How do you think his great-great-grandmother hoarded all those stocks of pure copper? They weren’t miners, those Rellingsworths; they were chemists. Rumor has it, they killed for their supplies.”

Gabe ran a finger along his scars absently. “I read your article about the Rellingsworth family.”

Sigorny’s pride surged even higher. He read her work! He
remembered
her work! Oh, spirited brains remember everything. Still! “I’m just saying that Jonas doesn’t seem to fit with the rest of the Eskers kids.”

Kaleb snickered. She didn’t understand why.

“I apologize if I’ve offended you. I’m only trying to help our peers understand the situation. I’m sure you know that people are still wary of your brother’s connection and even his disconnection with the Eskers kids.”

“I can’t control how people think any more than you can.”

She felt herself smiling but didn’t respond to Kaleb. Hadn’t they earlier established that she actually had that power? With words.

“Come on,” urged Kaleb. “We need to get to the Grandiuse.” The four of them turned to leave, but Sigorny raised her pen in the air. “One more thing, if I could. Alex?”

Chase and Alex regarded one another before Chase pressed his fist to his mouth, stifling his amusement. An inside joke? Peculiar didn’t begin to describe those two.

“You have a pretty solid relationship with Professor Duvall, right?”

Alex humphed.

Oh, don’t pretend you don’t like this, Alex,
Sigorny thought. She pestered enough people by now to know when they truly felt bothered by her. Alex Ash didn’t mind it, which Sigorny found interesting considering the hostility of her friends.

“Has she ever mentioned anything about temperamental ink?”

“Why would she?”

“She is Eidolon’s notorious witch. The ink found in the Eskers kids’ notebooks is the product of witchcraft.”

“I think spirits with knowledge as extensive as Professor Duvall’s prefer to be called the gifted.”

She smiled. “Thank you. I’ll rephrase. The ink is the product of the gifted, correct?”

“I don’t know. I’m not one of them.”

That you know of
, Sigorny thought.
Sephi sure was
.

Alex crossed her arms. “Spirits wouldn’t be nearly as advanced as we are without the help of the gifted.”

“That’s debatable. There’s a reason our societies choose to separate. You don’t think Duvall is somehow involved?”

“Not at all.”

“And why is that?”

Alex raised a palm, balancing an invisible tray. “Because if Duvall was going to send secret messages to students, I’m sure she wouldn’t be sending them to Reuben Seyferr or the Bond twins.”

“True. Duvall makes it no secret that she despises those students which is why I asked. If she were going to put students in an illegal situation, wouldn’t she choose spirits she didn’t favor? The Eskers kids are connected to the hunters who threaten her kind.”

“I suppose that would make sense,” Alex replied, and this caused Sigorny to look up in surprise. “That is if the students they were attacking didn’t include someone with whom she, as you worded it, has a
pretty solid relationship
.” She pointed a finger at her own chest.

Chase chuckled.

“Hm,” Sigorny murmured. “Thanks. To all of you. I appreciate your time.”

“Come on, we can’t be late,” Gabe said, ushering his crew away. “Sigorny, you probably don’t want to be late either.”

Her pride swelled. “Thanks for your concern.”

She would get to the evening meeting. But not yet. She lowered herself to the ground where they had been standing, and she wrote furiously. The scent of ambition began to ricochet off the nearby trees. She loved it. It smelled a bit like new office furniture.

Books wallpapered the looming tower of the Grandiuse, chattering louder than the children sitting among them. The stories lowered their voices as Alex passed, filling her with that adolescent insecurity that they were talking about her. She watched Skye touch their bindings, tilting her head. It wouldn’t surprise Alex if Skye understood their language.

Alex once asked the two sisters who guarded the doors why the walls slouched instead of standing upright as if the structure buckled under the weight of the roof. The little girls, Maria and Elizabeth, ignored her like they ignored everyone because they were too busy writing stories about nineteenth century heroines.

Skye had replied by saying, “The walls are tired.”

With all the whispering, they didn’t seem that tired to Alex.

The interaction with Sigorny nearly made them late, and each table was too packed for them to sit together. A group of girls beckoned Kaleb to their group, but there was barely enough room for even him to fit, and he seemed to be looking for someone else.

Alex took a step closer to Chase. If their group was forced to split, she wanted to stay with him. He squeezed her hand, and his voice knocked on the door of her mind:

We’ll sit on the floor if there isn’t room somewhere else
.

A redhead popped up. Skye flicked her finger in a few directions, and kids left her table to join other groups. She waved Alex over to her multigenerational table. Gabe cursed in a low voice, and Chase flattened his lips in distaste, but Skye, who was a Legacy herself, already tugged Kaleb’s arm, pulling him down onto the bench. He looked pleased.

“Hello, Alex,” Tess Darwin greeted her stiffly. “Chase.”

Gabe plopped down opposite them. Linton Darwin opened his mouth to speak, but thankfully Professor Duvall breezed past them down the aisle. Linton’s words were lost, as were everyone else’s. Duvall held two smoking vials in her bony hands, and the puffs of purple smog stole their voices.

Madame Paleo stood at the front of the gathering hall. When she smiled, her nose widened, taking up most of her face. “Good evening, newburies. Tomorrow we will introduce several new workshops, so please remember to select your desired sessions. This evening’s gathering will be a bit unconventional: an introduction to the new workshops led by another guest from the Dual Towers at Broderick Square. She can only be with us for a few minutes as her line of work has been rather trafficable these days, but she’s been kind enough to find the time to teach the workshops and to greet you this evening.” Her outstretched hand revealed a nearly translucent woman. “Please welcome Dr. Massin.”

The woman quavered like poor television reception.

Alex felt motion sick. “What’s wrong with her?”

“She’s boring,” Kaleb replied.

“Maybe she’s been dead a long time,” Chase guessed.

Funny, she didn’t slouch like the walls.

“Or she’s boring,” Kaleb repeated a bit louder, curling his disinterested body over the table and resting his cheek on his fist. A table of girls giggled at him, and he winked to them in reply. “I could think of a much better way to pass the time.”

He glanced at Skye to see her reaction, but she continued to face the front.

The wispy woman blinked through thick glasses, adjusted her fuzzy Muppet-blue sweater, and greeted them in an echo of a voice as nasally tight as the hair spiraled atop her head. “I’m honored to have been chosen as the sociology representative this session, and I’m pleased that my area of expertise is being taken so seriously, especially after last year’s incidents.”

Alex’s angst rose higher with each person turning to find her in the crowd, and embarrassingly enough, her attire transformed. A loose-fitting sheer blouse slouched over her tank, and her hair twisted in a side braid with a wave of bangs to frame her face.

Chase elbowed her. “Nice shirt.”

She shushed him.

“Sociology.” Dr. Massin sang the word like a hymn, and Kaleb groaned loudly. “It is necessary in order to understand the society in which we live.”

Alex’s mind rummaged through its contents. Images danced like the flashing pages of a flipbook, each pertaining to the topic of sociology. Her tenth grade English teacher. The name Karl Marx. Opening a dictionary and seeing:
denoting social or society. French, from Latin, socius
. A history show and Mr. Lasalle watching from a leather recliner. The pictures continued as her memory attempted to sort through them, to make sense of them.

Somewhere in the back of her mind, underneath the
swishing
of flipping pages, she heard a voice ask Dr. Massin how this was so important.

Alex refocused on their guest speaker, who lifted a hand to her chest in offense. She must not work with newburies very often.

“Of course it’s essential to understand how spirits interact not only with one another but with other forms of the living.”

“Forms?” Madison Constance asked. She sat nearest to the podium, ever attentive. Her hair twisted into a ballerina bun, mimicking Dr. Massin.

“The bodied. The gifted. The broken. The lost.”

Gifted
? They were actually going to openly discuss the topic? Alex scanned the room looking for Professor Duvall, whom she found crouched against the far wall in a heap of shawls and jewelry. Several empty vials lay at her feet. Her expression didn’t indicate any sort of surprise though she fiddled with a large stone.

“Wasn’t that the point of the Intro workshop?” Linton Darwin spoke only loud enough for their table to hear.

“You’d think,” Tess replied, hawk-eying the woman. “What is she
doing
?”

Dr. Massin stood still at the edge of the podium. Her face curled into a smirk. “Part of the social knowledge you carried into death will not change. Your judgment …” Her tweed skirt, which hovered above her geriatric grandma shoes, began to shrink until it tightened against her curves. Her horrid blue sweater shifted to sky blue and thinned to silk.

“Um.” Kaleb rubbed his eyes, and a smile played at his mouth. “Hello.”

“Your stereotypes …” Dr. Massin’s height increased as her shoes shed their Velcro and turned to black pumps. The glasses disappeared from her face, and her black hair fell to her waist. “The way you initially
see
people doesn’t change, nor does the way you categorize them. We all do it. Our minds have been geared that way by our bodied societies.”