The Lost Gate (32 page)

But if they asked him to spy on someone else, he would do it in a second, because he would trust their judgment that it was useful and necessary to do so. It hadn't come up, but in his lonely hours he had played through many a scenario in which they really needed one of his skills to save them from some dire circumstance, and he came through for them.

Such were the fantasies that filled his mind as he ran, as he did his chores. He would see the girls emerging from school buses or getting out of their cars in the morning as he ran past Yellow Springs High, and wonder what it would be like to talk with one of them. “You left your homework on your desk at home? Let me get it for you—here it is.”

But then he had darker thoughts, ones he was ashamed of. If he wanted a career as a peeping tom, he could do it from his own bedroom and no one would ever know. He couldn't let himself indulge such fantasies, let alone act them out. Drowthers shouldn't sacrifice their privacy just because he happened to have a little power that gave him access to anything, anywhere. And he knew that if he really cared for a girl, he could never do such a thing to her; and if he didn't really care for her, then—as he learned with Lana—he didn't want to think that kind of thought about her.

So many moral dilemmas he wrestled with—wishing that they might actually come up in the real world. Wouldn't it be nice to actually know a girl who wasn't his cousin? But it would be so hard to be a real friend to someone his own age without letting them know what he was and what he could do. And that would be the end of the friendship, he was sure. Not because they would reject him, but because he would stop being Danny Silverman—he was using their last name now—and instead be That Kid Who Can Jump Through Gates In Space.

Danny was lost in thought, as usual, when he came loping down Xenia Avenue and saw a middle-aged woman materialize in the driveway in front of his house. In fact, she appeared in exactly the spot where
he
had first appeared the night he came to the Silvermans for the first time.

She had come through a gate. More to the point, she had come through
his
gate.

He hadn't been touching her or leading her. She had to have found it on her own. Which meant she was a gatemage herself.

Danny glanced around to make sure no one was watching him, and gated to a spot right behind her. He was so flustered that he failed to allow for the fact that he was still running, so he barreled right into her and knocked her down in the driveway.

“Sorry,” he said, getting up. “You seemed to come out of nowhere.”

“So did you,” she said.

“I was just running along Xenia and there you were.”

She sat up and looked back the way he indicated. “You're the gatemage,” she said. “You just made a gate from there to here.”

So she
was
a Westilian. And therefore dangerous. “And I'm about to make a gate and stuff you through it,” said Danny, “unless you tell me who you are and why you came through my gate.”

“If you want a gate to be private,” she said, “then hide it or close it.”

Danny said nothing.

She looked puzzled. Then her face brightened. “You don't know how, is that it? You can make them, but you can't hide them or close them?”

His dread was giving way to curiosity. She obviously knew more about gatemagery than Stone or the Silvermans. “I didn't know you
could
hide a gate from a Finder.”

“You can if you're powerful enough. But I'm more than a Finder. I think I'm a Keyfriend! Of course, I didn't
know
that until I saw one of your gates for the first time in Washington DC. You have no idea how important that was for me.”

So maybe she didn't know as much as he had hoped. “What are you doing here?”

“Sitting on the gravel of the driveway with my nylons torn to ribbons and my palms and knees skinned and bleeding.”

“Sorry,” said Danny.

“No you're not,” said the woman. “You were testing to see how much I knew about you and whether I meant to kill you.”

“Still wondering,” said Danny.

She beamed. “Here's what I know. I jumped through a half-dozen of your gates in the DC area, as soon as I saw the first one and realized what it was. You can imagine, it's frustrating being a gatemage at a low enough level that I can't actually make gates myself—because with all the Pathbrothers and Gatefathers murdered whenever they're found, and all the old gates gone, when would I ever even
see
a gate? I had no idea what a gate would even look like, despite all my research over the past thirty years. And there I am in a taxi, riding along Wisconsin Avenue, and there's this shimmering off to the right. It's not something I'm seeing, just a heightened awareness of a certain place. Only the place I'm sensing is
inside
a church! I'm sensing it through the walls! Naturally, I stopped the cab. Paid him and then hurried over and knew the horrible frustration that even though I could get inside the church, I could not get inside the room where the shimmering was!”

“I take it you eventually did?”

“In a backward way,” she answered. “I found that when I stood in a certain position, I could tell there were two gates. One was the exit point of a gate that took someone into the church, and the other was the entrance point of a gate leading away. I couldn't very well ask a priest to let me into his office, because then he'd see me use the gate—if it was actually a gate and if I was actually a Keyfriend or Lockfriend.”

“I see the problem,” said Danny.

“Of course, he would probably interpret it as some kind of heavenly visitation. Those Semitics are so eager to believe that their gods are still talking to them—fourteen centuries after the gates were closed!”

“Semitics? I thought that meant Jews and Arabs.”

“The people who follow the Semitic gods. Jews, Christians, Muslims. The non-Westilians.”

In his entire life, Danny had never heard that there were any gate-traveling gods besides the Westilians. “I always thought their God was…” But he couldn't think of exactly what he had thought their God was, because he couldn't remember ever particularly thinking about it at all.

“Really God?” she prompted, amused.

“A myth. Like Santa Claus.”

“You mean … like Zeus? And Thor? And Shiva? And Hermes? And Pan?”

“I guess I thought that we were the only real ones,” said Danny, and then he laughed at his own naiveté.

“That's what all the gods think,” she said, nodding. “Anyway, I'm outside the church on Wisconsin, and now I realize that I can tell where the one gate came from and the other gate led! It took a lot of walking to get to a starting place that didn't require me to break into somebody's house—all the gates. You are a naughty burglar boy, aren't you!”

Danny was about to snap at her, but she held up a hand. “Do you think
I'd
stay out of people's houses, if I could make gates?”

He wanted to protest that it was Eric's idea, but she was going on with her story.

“I didn't mind wearing out a pair of shoes—it was worth it. Because until that day I had no idea whether I was really a gatemage or not! And now I know that I'm a pretty good one! I can open all your gates and I know where they lead before I step through them, and I can even see glimpses of what's going on where they come out. And then it turns out I can actually
go
through them! Only one way—the direction you went in—but I'm a gatemage, dammit!”

“So you aren't here to kill me,” said Danny.

“Kill you! I want to worship you!”

“Please don't,” said Danny.

“I want to follow you everywhere.”

“It seems like you already have.”

“You just
made
that gate, didn't you? You saw me standing here and you just stopped and made the gate and came through it.”

“I didn't
stop
and make the gate, I just made it and then realized I was running too fast and couldn't stop, which is why I knocked you down, and I'm sorry.”

“All right then, make it up to me.”

“How?” said Danny.

“Make a gate—just a little one—so I can go through it and get that amazing rejuvenation! It will heal me, won't it? My research suggests that gatemages weren't
also
healers, it's just that going through a gate heals whatever's wrong with your body at the moment. Certainly I feel
wonderful
after gating around after you all day!”

Danny didn't make the gate. If she was actually an assassin—something he could not rule out merely because she said she wasn't—he wanted her to have every disadvantage he could arrange. “Doesn't stop you from getting older.”

“I've always wondered. Does going through a gate regenerate lost body parts? I mean, if I lost an ear, then went through a gate, would the ear grow back?”

“I have no idea,” said Danny. “But I think not, because a man once lost his thumb when he was halfway through a gate, and when his arm went back through the gate, the thumb was still missing. Though come to think that may not prove anything because he was dead before his hand came back through.”

“Well, we need to conduct experiments then, don't we! We need to find out how this thing works!”

Danny didn't like the way she was assuming they were partners now. “I don't think so.”

“Oh, we definitely need to know the exact rules of gating. How can we control the process if we haven't codified the consequences of various gatemaking actions?”

“The part I'm disagreeing with is the words ‘we' and ‘us,' ” said Danny. “I don't even know who your half of ‘we'
is.
”

She blinked. “Oh my. I haven't introduced myself.” She thrust out her hand. “I'm Victoria Von Roth, but you
have
to call me Veevee.” Then, in mid-handshake, she threw her other arm around him and gave him a huge hug. “I love you, strange gatemaking boy! You are the most important person in the world to me!”

“I hope you won't take this wrong, Veevee,” said Danny—and it felt weird to call an adult by a nickname without a title in front—“but I don't love you. In fact, you terrify me.”

“That's just silly, I couldn't hurt a fly.”

“You could tell certain people where I am,” said Danny, “and
they
would certainly kill me.”

“But
anybody
can find where you are. Just follow your gates! I admit there were a few interesting side-trips—why in the world did you go to that office in that high school … Parry McCluer?”

“You're the only living soul I've ever met who can follow my gates.” Then he added, mostly to himself, “Unless the Greek girl can.”

“There's a Greek gatemage?”

“Probably a Finder. Maybe someone more like you. I don't know.”

“Won't you tell me your name, O handsome young Gatefather?”

“We're not sure I'm a Gatefather. Maybe I'm a Pathbrother—they can make gates, too.”

“Name! Name! What do I call you? Sweaty Careless Running Boy?”

“So then you go back through the gates until you find the people who are searching for me in order to kill me, and because you know my name you'll confirm to
them
that you know me, and so they'll make you take them to me.”

“I would never do that!”

“And I would be sure of this because…?”

“Because I can't go through your gates backward. So I can't track back to where you came from.”

“Says you,” said Danny.

“My, but you're careful,” said Veevee.

“That's why I'm still alive,” said Danny.

She patted his arm. “No, you're still alive because of dumb luck. You are
so
careless, despite trying to be careful. You've already told me, first, that you're from one of the Great Houses; second, you aren't one of the Greeks; third, you're afraid of someone killing you. You speak English with an American accent. So you're a North, and if I wanted to sell you out I could let them know where you are without even knowing your name.”

Now Danny saw the craftiness and amusement in her eyes.

“We gatemages,” she said, “we're not stupid and we know how to pretend to be dumber than we are. Am I right?”

“Sadly, yes,” said Danny. “I'm Danny Silverman.”

“You're actually using the Silverman name? Do you want
them
killed, too?”

“Why, are you planning on killing me after all?” And then, realizing that her answer might be delivered with a bullet or poison or a knife, he gated three steps back and to the left.

“Relax,” said Veevee. “I was just pointing out that if you use their name, you put them at greater risk of discovery.”

“Not as great as if I called myself Danny North.”

“Danny, I have to say it again: I've never been so happy to find out that another person existed since my mother first put her titty in my mouth.”

That was such an unpleasant, disrespectful way to speak about one's own mother that Danny wanted to end the conversation. Why was he still talking to her anyway? He should have gated into the house as soon as she appeared, warned the Silvermans, and let them deal with her.

Part of that program was still available. “Maybe we better go inside and have you meet the Silvermans.”

For the first time, her enthusiasm failed her completely. “Oh, the Silvermans already know me, and I them.”

“And you don't like them?” If she didn't like the Silvermans, that was a huge black mark against her.

“Like them? I almost married Marion. I would have, if that
cow
hadn't come between us!”

“These are my foster parents you're talking about,” said Danny coldly.