“The Academy is full of people whose duties can include killing,” Anastasia protested.
“The Academy is full of scary people,” Eerie agreed. “Some people think that you’re the scariest of all.”
“Do they really?” Anastasia asked, pretending to be scandalized.
“Yes. But you know,” Eerie said, hushing her voice and leaning forward, as if she was confiding something important, “if they knew what I knew about you, they wouldn’t feel that way. Because you have an important secret.”
“Heavens!” Anastasia gasped, holding a hand to her mouth. “And what is it that you know, exactly?”
“I wasn’t sure, the first time, because I was… busy,” Eerie said hesitantly, blushing. “But I thought so. I have been watching you since then. I saw it, on the island. What you did to Therese.”
Anastasia shook her head and smiled.
“Is this the same conversation we were just having? What is it that you think you saw?”
“Don’t play around,” Eerie said resentfully, rubbing her arm nervously. “I’m not stupid. I saw it. Your protocol, Anastasia. Your secret.”
“Oh my, how could that be?” Anastasia said, wide-eyed. “How could you have seen such a thing?”
“The Etheric Network,” Eerie said offhandedly. “All Operators are connected to it, like it or not. That’s just, you know, the way it is.”
“I see,” Anastasia said, folding up her shocked act and putting it away, for the moment. “I wasn’t aware that it could be used that way, as a monitoring device.”
“It can’t.” Eerie cocked her head to the side, considering. She must have dyed her hair recently, Anastasia thought, because her hair was different shades of blue in streaks, probably the spots that had been bleached previously. “Not by anyone else.”
“Well, putting aside what you saw or didn’t see, what exactly do you plan on doing about it?”
“Wait. Did I not explain it right? I know your secret,” Eerie said slowly, obviously confused. “You have to stop.”
“I have to stop…” Anastasia encouraged.
“Yes,” Eerie said, nodding.
“I have to stop what?” Anastasia asked as patiently as possible.
“Messing with Alex. And me. You know,” Eerie said, her hands twisting around the handle of her knitting basket. “You know what you are doing.”
“I suppose I do. And assuming I don’t, then you will what?”
“I will tell everyone,” Eerie said quietly, obviously dreading the thought of talking to ‘everyone’. “Isn’t that enough? I only want you to leave us alone.”
“I wasn’t aware there was an ‘us’ for me to leave alone,” Anastasia said dryly. “Let me recast the situation for you for a moment, Eerie. As you pointed out earlier, my position sometimes requires me to take violent action to protect the Black Sun’s interests. Why is it then, I wonder, you assume that I would acquiesce to your demands, when it is so much simpler to deal with blackmail by removing the blackmailer?”
“Because you can’t,” Eerie said, utterly without bravado. She seemed confused, as if Anastasia had said something very foolish indeed.
“Aha!” Anastasia cried, delighted. “Is this where the kid gloves come off and the threats start? How, I wonder, would you stop me?”
“I wouldn’t,” Eerie said softly, her irises briefly turning the color of a golden oil slick, a metallic rainbow. “But she would.”
“Who is that?”
Eerie shook her head.
“You know who. You already know each other,” Eerie said, standing up. “I don’t want to take anything from you. I don’t want you to do anything except leave us alone.”
“Maybe,” Anastasia offered, leaning back in her elevated chair, “instead of things getting ugly between us, we could talk about something you could do for me. A favor for a favor, Eriu?”
There was brief pulse of light in a brilliant range of colors surrounding Eerie’s head, and then it was gone. However, Anastasia could still smell a faint trace of sandalwood in the air.
“I don’t know who that is,” Eerie warned. “My name is Eerie. And I’m not doing you any favors, because I’m not asking for anything. Leave me alone. Leave us alone.”
Eerie nodded at the end of her speech, as if she was satisfied with her performance, and then stood up and headed for the door.
“Eerie, that is no way to make friends…” Anastasia offered, as the Changeling slipped out the door.
After she left, Anastasia shook her head, as if to clear it, and then laughed once, cold and contemptuous.
“As if I would,” she said, grinning at the chair the girl had vacated.
Then she composed herself, sighed, and went to go see if Eerie had killed Renton.
“I’m not sure where to start.”
“Why don’t you start by telling me how you feel?”
“About what? You? Me? What happened? What?”
Rebecca shrugged and tapped ash from her cigarette into the stained ceramic ashtray.
“Whatever you want. Just start with what’s bothering you the most.”
That prompted another silence, as the boy sat on her leather couch with his forehead as creased as the cushions he sat on. The t-shirt and jeans he was wearing were getting tattered and ratty, Rebecca observed critically, and made a mental note to take him shopping soon, if she couldn’t wrangle one of the girls into doing it.
“Okay,” he said finally, folding his hands as if he planned on praying. “Why didn’t you tell me you were an Auditor?”
“Didn’t want you to know,” Rebecca said, anticipating his complaints and forcing her recalcitrant window open to let out the smoke. “Didn’t figure that you would talk to me if you knew.”
“Oh. Okay. Um. I don’t feel good about that.”
“Why is that, Alex?”
“It feels… dishonest, somehow. I mean, I know you didn’t lie to me or anything, but…”
He trailed off, staring down at his sneakers, which, she noted, were in even more dire shape than his clothes.
“I wasn’t honest with you,” Rebecca admitted. “I should have told you right away. But I thought knowing that would frighten and alienate you even more than you already were. The Academy has been a challenging experience for you, Alex. I wanted to be someone who you felt comfortable leaning on. Someone you could trust.”
“And that’s the other thing,” Alex said, more forcefully, clearly getting to the heart of the issue. “Once you… well, once you got hurt, everyone went crazy, Rebecca. Everybody. Even Anastasia. Now, well, now I’m not so sure that you aren’t manipulating me, my emotions — hell, everybody’s emotions. It’s not just that I am having trouble trusting you. Now, I’m not even sure I can trust the way I feel.”
“Alex, if I was manipulating your emotions all the time, would you be so worried about it?”
She gave that time to sink in.
“Hmm.”
“Exactly. It doesn’t work that way,” Rebecca said thoughtfully. “Do you mind if I give you an example from your life?”
Alex nodded slowly, brushing aside the hair that stubbornly insisted on falling in his eyes. Rebecca added a haircut to the mental list she was compiling.
“When Emily was manipulating you, do you remember how hard she he had to work? How close she had to stay to you, and how much she followed you around? Do you remember how much… contact she had to make with you?”
Alex nodded again. She decided not to notice the blush openly, but in a way, she was a little bit glad for Alex, that he had done something worth blushing about. It was another connection in the web of connections she was building around the boy, tying him to the people around him and the place he was in.
“Well, if I wanted to control your feelings to any great degree, all the time, then I would pretty much have to do the same thing. So you see why that’s impossible, right? I see ninety students in a slow month, Alex. No empath is that powerful.”
“But, then, why did it get so weird? When you were…”
She didn’t make him finish the sentence, but she was touched by the genuineness of the pain she felt radiating from him. Even if Alex had mixed feelings about trusting her, he obviously still wanted to. So all it would take was a little nudge…