‘I was seeing you do stuff—and wondered if I could do it too. I lassoed the egg.’
Wil guffawed, making the cutlery dance into place with a wave of his hand. They bowed to me before arranging themselves neatly.
Saul took a seat at the table. ‘You saw? What does that mean?’
I could feel my cheeks go pink. I wished I could find a button to switch off my propensity to blush. ‘Um
… wel , moving things—that’s like a white line. I suppose I’m sensing energy or something.’
‘She sees emotions too, Dad,’ Zed added. ‘She can tel if you’re lying.’
‘Very useful.’ Victor looked at me with a calculation I wasn’t sure I liked. He was very low emotion compared to the others, or maybe he was just better at shielding.
I turned my eyes from him. ‘Healing is blue. When Mrs Benedict dipped into the future, she sort of faded a little. I’m not sure about the rest, but I think each power has its own identity.’
What about telepathy? asked Saul.
I flinched, stil not liking the feeling that someone else was in my head. ‘I can’t see that—at least, I don’t know what to look for.’
‘It takes the lowest energy of al the gifts when done close to the person you are communicating with. The signs might be too subtle to pick up.’
I rubbed my temples, remembering the pain of talking to Zed at a great distance. Where had I been when I’d done that? The warehouse?
Zed tugged me back against him. ‘Don’t think about it right now, Sky. I can tel it’s hurting you.’
‘Why can’t I remember?’
‘That’s what we’re going to find out,’ Saul said firmly. ‘But after breakfast.’
‘What about school?’ I knew Zed and Yves should have left already.
‘Family powwow—we get to skip classes.’ Yves grinned, putting the first pancake in front of me. His boffin image slipped somewhat when I saw how happy he was to cut school.
‘Like that day, back in September?’ I turned to Zed. ‘You missed a Friday.’
‘Oh that. Yeah. We were helping Trace hunt down the people who shot that family in the drugs deal.’
I remembered now how drained he’d been that Saturday when I’d met him at the ghost town on the hil side.
‘And these family powwows—you get to see what happened?’
‘Yeah, but we get results,’ said Trace, sitting down with his own plate. ‘We got the bas—’ he glanced at his mother’s frown, ‘son of a gun. He’s up for trial early next year.’
‘You mustn’t worry about us, Sky,’ Zed added, knowing my thoughts even though he didn’t have my gift for reading emotions. ‘It’s what we do.’
‘The family business,’ agreed Xav, tipping the maple syrup on to his pancake. ‘The Savant Net working as it should.’
‘And we’re proud of it,’ concluded Victor, tapping the empty space in front of him. ‘Where’s mine?’
A plate containing a freshly cooked pancake hovered in the air towards him. Zed clapped his hands over my eyes. ‘No lassoes.’
I laughed. ‘I promise—no more experiments with food.’
The mood turned sober after breakfast. Saul went out briefly to check his assistants had everything under control on the ski lift, then returned, shaking the snow off his boots.
‘We’re al set,’ he announced. ‘Let’s do this in the family room.’
Zed led me into a space at the far end of the house which doubled as a games room. Trace and Victor moved the table tennis table back while Uriel and Yves gathered floor cushions in a ring.
‘We just want you to sit with Zed,’ Saul said, taking his place opposite me.
‘What are you going to do?’ I was already feeling nervous. What had I let myself in for?
‘We’re treating this like an investigation.’ Trace sat down at my right hand. ‘Which is appropriate because we believe something’s happened to you as a result of a crime.’
‘I do feel like I’ve been brain-mugged,’ I admitted.
‘Each of us is going to use our gift to read you—
nothing invasive, just a touch to sense which is the strongest lead.’ Trace flicked his eyes to Zed. ‘I’m gonna need to hold your hand if Zed wil let go—I have to be in contact with my subject to al ow my gift to work. I should be able to tel where you’ve been recently—before the warehouse. You don’t have to remember; if you were physical y there I should be able to track you. Wonder boy here, as the seventh son, he gets to channel it al as he’s the most powerful of us.’
I swivel ed to look up at Zed. ‘Is that true?’
‘Yeah, I’m like the screen to display the information. Compare the results. I can see what everyone else is seeing.’
‘And he doesn’t even need batteries,’ quipped Wil , slumping down on my other side.
They were making fun of it but I could now understand some of the darkness I’d seen in Zed, the strain of the evil he had been forced to witness. It wasn’t just his own insight but everyone’s that channel ed through him, meaning he saw it in al ways and in greater depth than the rest. Little wonder he had felt he was slipping in that ugliness until he found an anchor.
The second son, Uriel, the post-grad student, nudged Wil aside.
‘Hi, Sky, we’ve not met properly yet. I’m the only sensible one in the family.’
‘I can see that.’
‘My gift is to read memories, anything to do with the past. I know you’re afraid I might blurt out your secrets, but you mustn’t worry: I can’t force you to show me the past, I can only open doors which you unlock.’
‘I understand.’ I drew strength from feeling the warmth of Zed’s chest against my back as I sat between his legs. ‘And if I want to keep the door closed?’
‘Then you do. But we think that you need to start building up a complete picture of everything that’s happened to you to understand what’s real and what you’ve imagined.’
I frowned. I didn’t like the sound of that.
‘It’s like music, Sky,’ Zed said. ‘Orchestrating the score one instrument at a time. You’ve been running on the melody for a while now and we think you’ve been leaving out the bass, or the foundation notes.’
‘You mean, about what happened when I was little?’
‘Yeah. It’s there.’
Dark spaces. Wonderful seams of pain and abandonment. Who had described me like that?
‘We think that when you’ve seen what’s behind al your doors, you’l find it easier to close them on others, stop people reading you so easily. In turn, it should give you control over the more recent memories, like discovering the key pieces in a puzzle.’
That was definitely something I wanted, no matter how scared I was of the process. ‘OK, let’s sort me out.’
Mrs Benedict drew the curtains while Yves lit candles around the room with a click of his fingers—
this was the guy who could make things explode, I recal ed. I was relieved to see the evidence that he had his gift wel under control. The candles smelt of vanil a and cinnamon. The house was very quiet. We could hear the distant sounds of people enjoying the slopes, the rumble of the cable car going over the points, the sound of the trees rustling, but in this room, this haven, al was peace. I could feel the different gifts of each Benedict brush me—just a gentle caress, nothing to alarm. Zed kept his arms looped around me, relaxed, unworried.
Xav the healer was the first to speak. ‘Sky, there’s nothing medical y wrong with you—I can see no sign of mental il ness, though I could feel your distress.’
Zed rubbed the nape of my neck. ‘Not crazy after al .’
‘I can’t read the future clearly,’ admitted Karla.
‘There are many possible paths leading out of this moment.’
‘But I know where she’s been recently,’ Trace said. ‘She’s been in a room in a first class hotel—
satin sheets, lots of glass, you touched something made from white leather and a deep pile carpet. It is safe to say you were held somewhere before you ended up in the warehouse. If we got hold of the clothes you were wearing, I could probably tel you more.’