Chapter Five
Dani yelled as she tried to simultaneously beat at her flaming arm and yank free of the hand gripping her. The glassway kept her frozen in mid-step, however. A growing strain tried to force her through to the other side, even as her reflection locked her in place.
Heat brushed her neck and cheeks. A rustling voice whispered in her ear.
“Don’t think you can ignore us. You’ll have to face us eventually.”
The reflection released her to stumble out the other side. Her inertia spun her around and she reenacted one of Vern’s takedowns, minus the instructor’s assisting kick.
She sprang back to her feet, fists raised.
“Bad touch,” she cried.
The mirror pane on this side, however, remained unbroken. Her reflection stared back at her with a mix of shock and promised violence. The flames along her sleeve had disappeared, not even leaving ashen streaks as evidence of the encounter.
Two other people stood reflected in the glass. A pair of Ascendants were stationed on either side of a double-doorway behind her. As she hurried to compose herself, they peered out from under the brims of their fedoras with worried looks.
“Something …” She tugged her uniform straight. “Something attacked me in the glassway.”
The Ascendant closest to her, a thin woman with brown curls mostly hidden under her hat, cocked her head.
“Janitor, if there was anything aberrant in the glassway, the window-watcher for that route would’ve alerted us and HQ. You wouldn’t have been allowed to come through.”
Dani started to argue, but realized that from the Ascendants’ perspective, anything outside of the normal operation of the glassways might also be outside of their ability to conceive. Plenty of rules governed how their world worked—even a magical one—and Ascendants were all about enforcing the rules. Plus, as Ben had warned her once, one of the costs of becoming an Ascendant was slowly shedding some of your more human characteristics, such as a sense of compassion or imagination.
So she tucked away the encounter until she could speak to someone else in authority about it.
“Here to see Jared,” she said.
The same Ascendant raised a hand. “Sorry. Visiting hours just ended.”
She plucked at an earlobe as she scowled. “Oh, don’t do this to me. You don’t know what kind of day it’s been.”
“Sorry, Janitor. Regulations state—”
Dan-ni? Hay air?
The voice bounced around inside of Dani’s skull like a ping-pong ball, loud enough to make her cringe. By the Ascendants’ looks of discomfort, she knew they heard it as well.
A moment later, the doors the Ascendants guarded snapped open hard that enough one of the top hinges tore out of the wall. The short hallway behind it looked more like an airlock than a passage, and it ended in a churning gray fog. The mist failed to billow out into the fore room, remaining unnaturally static.
C-c-c-comma pee lay, Dan-ni.
She traded looks with the suits.
“Has he been acting like this lately?” she asked.
The woman nodded. “We’ve had to re-secure the wards a dozen times this week, and he could still break out any time he wants, though I don’t believe he knows it … or doesn’t care. It’s as if he is simply toying with us for his own amusement.”
“At least he’s entertained,” she said. “I’d hate to see him bored, or maybe upset if he doesn’t get a playmate.”
The Ascendants hesitated as if they hadn’t considered this. The other Ascendant coughed and stepped aside.
“Perhaps you could go in and say hello,” he said. “Just for a few minutes.”
Dani tried not to smirk as she strode between them. “Too kind.”
Her pace faltered, though, when she came to the foggy boundary. She tried to wave it away, but the mist refused to budge from its unnatural border. At last, she took a fortifying breath and slipped inside the demigod’s playroom. Fluorescent lights made hazy streaks overhead, but failed to penetrate the fog more than a few feet away. Dani lost sight of the walls after five steps, and prayed they hadn’t reorganized the furniture too much. The bruises on her legs from her last visit had just faded.
As she stumbled along, she kicked aside rubber balls, Lego blocks, action figures, and one of those wooden ducks on wheels, which clacked as it rolled along. When she gauged herself to have reached the middle of the chamber, she spread her arms and slowly spun in a circle.
“Jared? Where are you?”
Dan-ni!
A dark figure leapt out of the depths of the fog and latched onto her with a full-body hug, arms around her shoulders, legs around her waist. Dani whuffed and staggered for balance as she caught the embrace. She leaned back so she could see the boy’s black pupils, which were shot through with gold slivers.
Besides the eyes, Jared’s half-human, half-Pantheon heritage only revealed itself in his grin, which stretched a bit wider than humanly possible, and showed off canines sharp enough to make any dentist get whiplash from a double-take.
Each time she noted this, she had a mini-flashback to seeing those same teeth sink into Ben’s throat to feed off his energy. As always, she forced herself to shake off the revulsion the memory generated. Not the kid’s fault his mother was a lesser member of the Corrupt Pantheon, and his father the insane former Chairman of the Cleaners. One couldn’t pick their parents, but the hope remained that Jared might choose a better path than either of them had.
Jared released her and hopped out of sight with a single bound, trailing gray and white mist. Dani hurried to keep up with him—and then yelped as someone pinched the back of her arm. She swatted and grabbed a hand, turning to find Jared behind her all of a sudden. The fog made it difficult to discern, but she felt certain he couldn’t have repositioned himself so quickly through any natural means.
Teleportation? Superspeed? The Board claimed Jared’s powers would remain in flux until some unascertained threshold of maturity; until then, he continued to manifest and lose new abilities almost daily. At least this was a safer trick than the last time she’d visited, when he’d been belching poisonous gases and lighting them on fire with a snap of his fingers. Or when he’d started sneezing raw sewage everywhere. Or summoning giant cockroaches out of thin air …
Hide-un-seekum, his disembodied voice crowed. Hidded un seeked eww.
She hugged him and laughed. “Yes, you did. Such a good game of hide and seek, too. I never saw you coming. Now stand still so I can get a good look at you.”
Jared pouted, but went stiff-legged and straight-backed, shoulders pinched to show off his bony chest. Ever since being brought in for safekeeping, he’d refused to wear a shirt; anytime someone forced one on him, it disappeared within minutes, never to be found again. Dani couldn’t tell if the jeans and tattered sneakers he wore were the same ones they’d found him in, but it sure looked it.
At least she figured out the source of the fog. Steam rolled off him as if he were a live coal tossed into a bucket of water. It swirled throughout the room and clung to every surface except her skin, which she felt oddly grateful for.
His inhuman eyes studied her in return.
“What?” she asked. “What do you see?”
Moo ore eww, tow dee.
Her mind slowly translated his faltering words. “More of me? What’s that mean?”
Instead of answering, he leaped away into the fogbank, while his call echoed back from different directions.
Pee lay?
Pee lay?
Pee lay?
She spun in place, wary of another pinch. At last, he popped back into view, grinning and prancing about.
Pee lay, Dan-ni.
She reached out to keep him in place, but he vanished and reappeared on her left. She waved for him to stop long enough for her to focus on him.
“Jared, I can’t stay long today, I’m sorry.”
His dancing about came to a halt, and his face and shoulders fell. Disappointment emanated from him with such force that Dani felt like she stood in a surf, fighting the swell and tug of the tide. The pull of his emotions threatened to suck her down into darker currents of brooding jealousy that lurked beneath his childish behavior. The strength of his projections continued to shock her, and more than once she’d questioned the wisdom of exposing herself to it. Still, whenever she saw his smile and heard his guileless laughter, it reminded her of what they might salvage in him.
“Jared,” she braced herself, both physically and mentally. “Jared, you need to draw your feelings back into yourself. Keep them contained. Remember what we talked about? No trying to force others to do whatever you want just because you’re stronger than them.”
He frowned in confusion.
Straw her?
“You are very strong,” she said. “And people are vulnerable to you. If you aren’t careful, you could overwhelm others, especially if they don’t know how to shield themselves.”
He pouted, but the waves of disappointment ebbed away until Dani breathed easier. Jared crouched and peered at her from under his black brows.
Ewe leaf?
She crouched to his level. “I’d stay longer, but I got out late from training today. Otherwise I would’ve gotten here earlier and could’ve played. Next time, I promise.”
He reached out and tapped her forehead. Pulling back, he stared at the tip of his finger, as if seeing something there she could not. Hopefully this wasn’t like the time he’d become fascinated with picking his nose and inspecting the results.
La dee dad tow-dee.
She frowned. “Yes. A lady dead today. A woman died while I was training. Jared, who told you about that?”
He shook his head. New. Knotter.
“Not her? Who?”
His face twisted. Faint auras glowed around his fists, the left hand glowing white, the right glowing purple-black.
Knotter. Knotter!
Dani clutched the sides of her head as his words turned to mental hammer-blows. The fog condensed into vague humanoid shapes which reached toward her with claws. Whispering voices scuttled through her thoughts, hungry, hunting—
Jared smacked the side of his head. The auras faded from his hands and the fog sank back into ashen curdles. Dani let out several slow breaths before straightening, while Jared looked at her as if expecting a spanking.
Sore me. Sore me, Dan-ni.
She grimaced as the pain retreated into a background headache.
“It’s okay. I forgive you. You didn’t mean to hurt me. Let’s try again. I really want to understand what you’re saying.”
Jared screwed up his lips and projected the words with some effort.
Knot her. Knot her la dee.
She sighed. “Okay. You said that. Not her … notter … another? Are you saying another? Another lady?”
He nodded and bounced on his heels.
Goo hope towel. Tack me, Dan-ni.
“Hope towel? Oh, you mean the hospital. We need to work on your vocabulary lessons some more. Maybe you and Ben could study together.” She glanced around, wondering when the Ascendants might cut off her visit. “Why do you want to visit the hospital?”
His gold-flecked eyes locked on hers. Low pulses of fear radiated from him and quivered along Dani’s spine.
“Jared, what is it? You’re worrying me. What’s wrong?”
He licked his lips and shuffled closer. Taking her hand, he rubbed it against a smooth cheek.
Death, Dan-ni. Death in hope towel. It deer and comma hay air.
Trepidation rose as she translated his warped words. Death in the hospital, coming here?
To steal one of Ben’s expressions … hoo boy.