Second Thoughts (9 page)

The most powerful drug in the world,
I thought to myself. Moving thoughts had to be difficult to resist and infinitely harder to quit. Despite
what he'd said, it was clear it pained Dan to talk about what happened, just as it pained me to learn my grandfather had actually been a pretty terrible man. I had a million more questions I decided to keep to myself, but I couldn't resist asking one more thing I'd wondered about. “Is that why you and Jill's mother never married?”

“Yes,” he said. “I won't deny it. I should have learned my lesson when it cost me my daughter. I loved Angela, but it's Jillian I truly lost. Nearly twice, if not for you.”

So we'd come full circle, back to me and my gift. “Why don't you hate me?” Another question I'd been dying to have answered but never thought I'd ask.

He said nothing for a few long moments, regarding me not with hostility but a fatherly sort of warmth. “Carter also once told me you don't see yourself as others do. He was certainly right. Your humility is perhaps an even rarer gift than your heritage,” he mused. “What I hate are the actions you were forced to take, along with my part in them, but I can't imagine anyone else who'd have followed them with such compassion. If not for you, I wouldn't have admitted the additional mistakes I was making, and never would have gotten my daughter the help she needs. No, I
needed
you, Lainey, and I'm not alone.
We
need you too.”

Here it was, the moment I'd been dreading, all the more since my suspicion of Daniel Astor had begun to change into something else. I knew who he meant—
We
was all of us, the Sententia, and the Perceptum Council specifically. They wanted me to do my family's job, and I was sure I couldn't.

Instead of answering, I studied the chip on the edge of my empty mug. As I stared at it, I realized it was strange that my mug
was
empty, since Mercy was usually so prompt about filling them. I glanced over my shoulder and was shocked to see the restaurant was nearly empty. It was almost closing time, and time for us to go. Mercy was sitting at
the counter, enjoying her own cup of coffee. A lifetime of waitressing must have told her our conversation hadn't really been one to interrupt.

The senator's smooth voice broke into my jumbled thoughts. When I looked at him again, he was smiling. “I'd have been surprised if that compassion didn't make you hesitate,” he said, and stood, pulling his wallet from a back pocket and depositing at least twice as much as our breakfast cost on the table. “You have plenty of time to think about it, don't worry. You are exactly who we've needed for probably a very long time. We'll wait until you're ready.”

If it hadn't been such a serious topic, the possibility of my joining the Perceptum as assassin-in-residence, I'd have laughed at the similarity between the senator's words and Carter's. He was talking about something entirely different, of course, but once done, I couldn't go back from that either. I'd given myself a year until I was ready to take that big step in our relationship. Somehow I knew that was about how long I had until the Perceptum would expect a definitive answer.

A
WEEK LATER
, I was no closer to an answer, but Amy had other concerns.

“Isn't that Maddi Worthington one of your campers?” That's what she'd taken to calling my dorm girls. The one in question had just come into the bookstore lounge where we were seated on our favorite couch by the fireplace, working on homework.

“Mandi
Worthington, and yes. Why?”

“Mandi. Whatever,” Amy said. “I saw her talking to Caleb at the reception and another time or two since then. I can't figure out why. Isn't she a seventh grader? And Alexbitch's cousin, right?” That's what she'd taken to calling Alexis.

“Eighth actually, and yes again, Alexis's cousin. I don't know why she was talking to Caleb though, and come to think of it, I don't know why she didn't come here last year either.”

Amy watched Mandi's progress toward some of her friends in the sitting area. “Well, she's not a Legacy. I put together mailings for all of them—you—the other day.” Amy's work hours were spent at the Admissions office, which also coordinated fund-raising for the Academy. Considering the size of the Academy's endowment, she must have mailed a
lot
of things. “She's not on the swim team, is she?” she pressed.

I glanced at my roommate over my economics book. She was back to rapidly scribbling numbers on her paper, but she was wearing an uncharacteristic frown while doing it. When it came to math, usually that was
my
expression. “You know she's not on the swim team; you come to our meets.”

The frown deepened and the scribbling slowed but didn't stop. “Oh, right. Sorry.”

I put my hand on her notebook. “What's going on here?” I asked. She seemed…suspicious. That was also not like her.

“I just can't figure out why Caleb would be talking to an eighth grade girl, is all.”

I sighed. “Did you
ask
him why he was talking to her?”

“Talking to who?” Carter said as he wandered into the lounge, a few pieces of wood under one arm, a book under the other. He settled the logs in the fireplace and himself onto the couch next to me, throwing his now empty arm around my shoulders. I loved break time.

“Mandi Worthington,” Amy said, voice tinged with distaste. “She was talking to Caleb.”

Carter glanced in Mandi's direction and frowned, his eyebrows drawing together in a look of obvious concern. I barely had time to
think
Oh, no,
before Amy pounced on it.
“What do you know?”
she hissed.

“What? Nothing!” Carter replied. “It's just that she's right over there…” Which was a bullshit line, but Amy seemed to accept it. I made a mental note to get the real scoop on young Mandi as soon as I could.

“Sorry,” Amy whispered. “But…anyway. I don't like it.” She frowned some more and I laughed at her.

“No, really?” I mocked. “Why are you so bothered by this anyway?” I was trying to get her to relax, but in the back of my mind, Carter's reaction kind of had me wondering if she
should
be worried.

“Bothered by what?” Caleb himself asked as he squeezed onto the end of the couch next to Amy. “What's the matter, babe?”

We both squealed in surprise and Caleb grinned. Carter looked amused, like he'd known he was here. Instead of answering, Amy asked, “Where the hell did you come from?!”

Caleb grinned a little wider, just like Carter often did. They were definitely spending too much time together. “Upstairs. Picking up a book for Bio extra credit.”

The second floor housed, in addition to my favorite section of the store—First Editions—all the health-related books. Amy might have been unsure about her future career, but her boyfriend was decidedly on his way to becoming Caleb Sullivan, MD. It was also impossible to see the staircase from our seat by the fire, which explained how he snuck up on us.

“N…nothing, really,” Amy finally stammered. “Just having trouble with this problem set.” She hastily scrawled a few more numbers on her paper in pretend confusion.

It was Caleb's turn to frown, and I couldn't blame him.
“You're
having trouble with math?” he asked, as he glanced over at her now-messy notebook.

“That's
why it's so bothersome,” she replied. It might have been a poor excuse to start with, but she sold it well. “I just need quiet to concentrate. Come with me?” she said to Caleb, who nodded but was obviously perplexed. Amy gathered up her books to head back to campus, Caleb trailing after her, and I looked at Carter expectantly.

“What?”

I rolled my eyes. He never was very good at feigning ignorance. “You know what.”

He sighed, and then ran his fingers through his hair, instantly confirming my suspicions. “She's a Siren,” he said in a low voice.

“Like a warning or, uh, like Odysseus…?”

“The latter. Sirens are…hard to resist. She's a kind of Herald, like Alex. Except worse.”

“That's a tall order,” I said drily. In the Sententia hierarchy, Heralds were one step below Thought Movers. Their gifts projected onto others, though they had no impetus. They influenced—sometimes strongly—but couldn't compel. Alexis was
persuasive;
whatever she said, people were likely to believe.

“Honestly, Lane, from what I've heard of her, Mandi makes her cousin look like a saint. Alexis does things for a reason, even if it's a selfish one. Mandi…she just seems to do shit for fun,” he said, and
that
made me nervous. If I remembered correctly, Odysseus had to be shackled to a mast in order to resist the feminine allures of the sirens.

“So then I should be worried about a Siren, even an eighth-grade one, talking to Amy's boyfriend, right?”

He gave a small nod. “Probably. She's fourteen,” he reminded me. Carter hadn't been a saint at fourteen. Neither had Amy, for that matter.

“Great,” I said. Now I'd need to investigate just why she was talking to Caleb. “Should I be worried about her talking to
you?”

One of the sexy smiles I lived for spread over his face and he leaned in close, his lips practically touching mine as he said, “Even a Siren can't make me think of anyone but you.” He kissed me after that, and I forgot completely that we were in the middle of the crowded bookstore.

Kisses like that made me forget a lot of things, including that he was destined to kill me.

F
INDING MYSELF ALONE
in the lounge, with Amy gone and Carter back to work, I decided to go hang out with Melinda. It was late Sunday afternoon, so I knew she'd be upstairs making dinner. I'd dined with them almost every Sunday night for the last year, but over the summer, I'd started helping her. Slowly, but surely, under Melinda's patient tutelage, I was becoming a halfway decent cook.

When I got up to the apartment, I was greeted by the delicious aroma of oregano and comfort. A lasagna was already bubbling in the oven.

“Jeff?” Melinda called from the living room.

“No, it's me.”

“Lainey!” She popped into the kitchen and dropped her latest Sudoku book on the table. “It's not closing time already, is it?”

“No, not yet, but I guess I'm too late to help with dinner.”

She glanced at the clock over the sink and then at a bowl of apples on the counter and said, “But it's never too late for dessert, right? Let's make a crisp. The boys will appreciate it.”

So we did, Melinda chopping apples while I measured and mixed. It was comfortable and familiar. We worked well together, and I'd missed my cooking lessons since school restarted. I tried not to think about the homework I
should
be doing.

I tried, too, not to think about the things Dan had revealed to me, but it was hard not to. Initially, I'd intended to confront Carter about
his conspicuous omissions right away. I couldn't believe how in all our time together he'd never told me about Mr. Astor, or about Dan vowing not to use his gift. But eventually I realized that wasn't true—I could believe it. I could even give several reasons why he'd done it. I just wasn't happy about it. I was also, I reminded myself, still omitting some big things of my own.

As I stirred my flour and sugar and chatted about this and that with Melinda, I realized Carter wasn't the only one I could talk to. “Mel?” I started.

She looked up from the apples and smiled. “Are you ready for these?”

“Um, sure,” I said, handing over the baking dish. “But that's not what I wanted to ask you.”

There must have been something in my tone that tipped her off, because she stopped scooping apples and frowned. “What's he done now?”

I almost laughed. “It's more about what he hasn't done. Why didn't anyone tell me about Mr. Astor?”

She shook her head, caramel curls bouncing lightly, and her frown deepened. “I knew this would happen,” she muttered and then sighed. “I'm sorry, Lainey. I…well, there's no good excuse. We should have. I suppose Dan did though?” She said it like a question, but it really wasn't. She couldn't hide the traces of anger in her voice either.

“He did. It was…pretty shocking.” Obviously. I had a gift for understatement.

Melinda brushed a hand across her forehead, a motion reminiscent of her nephew's nervous tic. “I suppose that's one of the reasons we never told you. It's not something any of us likes to think about. In fact, it's probably the worst moment in our history.” By “our,” I knew she meant Sententia.

“Was Mr. Astor really that terrible?”

She thought about it. Something in my expression must have told her I hoped the answer was no. “I…didn't know him, not really. Evelyn”—Dan and Jeff's mother—“would probably tell you he was
worse.
The Council believed he was.”

“But elimination?”
That
was what I really wondered about. It seemed extreme, for an already extreme measure. I hadn't wanted to ask Dan about it.

Melinda leaned on the counter. She said, “It shouldn't have come to that,” the words thoughtful and measured. “I—I'm sure Dan explained what he was up to. He manipulated everyone, including other Sententia, other
Council
members,
his
people. The people he was meant to
lead.
He took our gifts and used them against us. I think, in some members' eyes, that was a worse offense than indiscretion.”

I nodded, pushing the baking dish in a slow circle in front of me. “So it was a little bit revenge.”

“No.” She gazed at me with her pretty pool blue eyes, so much like Carter's. “He threatened to expose us. That's what did it. His ego. But…like I said. It shouldn't have come to that. It didn't have to.” She cleared her throat. “It
did
change his son, though. Even tragedies can have silver linings, I suppose.” She reached over her hand to pat mine, still covered in apple and sugar. We both gave a little laugh when we realized, breaking the tension of the story. “Have a cup of tea with me? We can talk about it more while we wait for Carter and Jeff.”