theurges

CHAPTER ELEVEN: WALPURGISNACHT

 

The first night was weird. Nadine put on her granny nightgown for the last time, and Apache laughed at it as she always did, and they lay next to each other in the strangely cozy, austere room with the lights on, afraid to turn them off. The thousand sounds and mysteries that every strange bed brings, surely all that would be deafening in this place. How would they fall asleep?

"It's just for tonight. I'm taking the job…"

"Oh, good."

"Which I gather means we'll be in our new apartment by noon, the way these people work."

"Yeah, they seem really interested."

"Did you ever think about working somewhere like this? We both got trained in the same place…"

"I can't do anything special. If they wanted me they would have let me know."

"Well, if you're still in, you can pick your bedroom in the new place."

"The big one. Unless the smaller one gets better light. Then, the smaller one."

"Sounds perfect."

They lay staring at the ceiling, still nervous to turn off the lights and listen to all the lives and madnesses and pain all around them, trying to distract themselves.

"If I were alone in this room I really would be bonkers. There wouldn't be a difference."

"Between you and them, you mean?"

"Yeah. Not that anybody could tell, of course."

Nadine laughed softly.

"Same here. I've been dreading this all day. I'm exhausted, but…"

"Twenty-four hours ago we were giggling about what crazies these people are, and now…"

"We weren't wrong, Patch. They are lunatics."

"I'm not so sure. St. John seems nice enough, and Buzz is a charmer. And that Tarquin guy, I mean…"

"Ugh. Sleazeball."

"I guess."

"I really like Claire. And the girls."

"What's your read on Michael? And how come her name's Michael?"

"I went to junior high with a girl named Michael. She had giant eyeballs. You could tell she was going to be beautiful at some point, but in junior high she just looked crazy. She decided we were friends one day after school, and the next day her mom called mine to invite me over for dinner. It was strange. I liked her, but I just couldn't believe people do that. Just invite strangers over to their house like that. Mother said that she must be really lonely."

"What a crappy thing to say!"

"No, I know. She knew how it sounded and she apologized. And of course she demanded that I invite Michael over for a sleepover the next weekend, and actually ended up really liking her. I never really did."

"Nadine!"

"No, she was fine, I just… Didn't get what all the fuss was about."

"It was like that in the Sweat, too. People were constantly trying to spend time with you and be with you, and you barely seemed to notice."

"What?"

"It's true! Jane Crow, the MacCready twins, that little albino boy…"

"Kerry Wood. God, I forgot about him."

"They all were. Jane Crow just about thought you were the queen of Earth."

"Our gifts worked well together, that's all."

"I'm convinced half the reason everybody got obsessed with you was because you were so oblivious. Anybody that self-obsessed obviously must be deep, or …"

"Self-obsessed? I'm not self-obsessed."

"Well. I spent a lot of time cleaning up your messes and entertaining your guests for you."

"I guess that's true. How weird. You were the popular one."

"I forced it."

"You force everything. It's what I love about you."

"Aren't you sweet," Apache snorted.

"I'm going to bed."

"You're in bed, doofus."

"Right."

They drowsed. Nadine thought about turning off the light, but couldn't really be bothered to move. She drifted, with the lights on and her best friend next to her, and thought about everything that had brought her to this point: Mother, and the Sweat, and Garrison Peachtree. Holden, that bastard.

She wondered if she'd really unpack this time, instead of leaving her life in boxes for a year like after the divorce. It seemed like an important step to take, as a grownup. But they'd have to buy bookshelves, and a real kitchen table, and a vase to put flowers in, and if the closets weren't big enough, that would be an issue. It almost seemed easier to leave everything in boxes. Well, it's not like she had a whole lot of clothes she liked, and anyway, Claire had mentioned some kind of devil's bargain shopping spree…

She imagined throwing all her fat clothes on a big bonfire, like at Walpurgisnacht, and starting her new life for real. Apache would love that, a big fire, goodbye to the old. Wasn't Walpurgisnacht coming up? It was sometime in the spring, she knew that. She tried to imagine the old calendar on the big brushed-steel refrigerator at the Sweat: Mondays for the Moon, Sundays for quiet. The way they'd all find their own spots at Vespers every night, and think quiet thoughts, all alone. It always seemed to go by so quickly…

"Nadine?"

"Yeah."

"Is it… okay? If I come with you?"

"Apache Tear! Seriously?"

"Yeah. I mean, this is all very exciting, speaking as a bystander, but I don't want to…"

"Patch, we haven't been apart for more than twenty-four hours since we were teenagers."

"Yeah, but you're turning into a grownup all of a sudden."

"We've been grownups for at least ten years, maybe twenty. This isn't a new development."

"Tell me there's not a difference now."

"They said they'll take care of us, Patch. Both of us. That's all I ever wanted. To make sure we're both okay."

"You've done a pretty good job."

"Yeah, I've done a bang-up job keeping you from being insane."

"No, I mean, look around."

"Yeah, we're sleeping in a former insane asylum now being used to house the formerly insane. The words have changed but the crazy remains."

"I'm the first to admit that I think most of this stuff is crap, but you can't really mean that. You've seen what this stuff can do. Remember Walpurgisnacht? Remember Ruthie Graham?"

Nadine did. It took thirteen children in a circle that night, standing around little Ruthie as she shook and spit and cowered and screamed. They couldn't manage to wake up Bethany or Winter Horse, and eventually figured Ruthie was keeping them asleep while she freaked out. Some kind of spirit or possession or … Whatever it was, it didn't really matter. They'd stood in a circle around her, hands clasped and white lights shining, and they'd fixed it. Without grownups and without teachers. Apache had brought them water and held it to their lips, and tended the fire Jane Crow raised out of the darkness. For six hours that bright spring night, they'd held their hands and stood against the darkness, and Ruthie had lived. They never told the grownups, for fear of reprisal, although Nadine always figured they'd known: the change in Ruthie was remarkable.

"Okay, yes. That was something. But I can't believe you…"

"Let it go. This is good and right, and I've got nothing else going on. Believe that, then. It's going to be me and Jeremiah Tarquin and a thousand babies by the end of the year and I'll put him into bankruptcy by the summertime, how's that?"

"He's really something, isn't he?"

"Don't get moral on me. I know that voice. Yes, he's a creep."

"Creepy creep."

"Sexy creep."

"Oh, Patch."

"I am not going to embarrass you or anything."

"You never do."

"That's a very sweet lie to tell."

"I mean it."

"Hmm. Hey, what's the deal with Dr. Michael, though. Really. Do you think she's a tranny, or a …"

"I think she's beautiful. I hadn't really considered it further."

"Not where she could hear you, you mean. This whole transmitter thing is driving you nuts, I can tell."

"It really is."

"I'm loving it!"

"And why is that?"

"Because you always look at me funny when I try to get dirt on people…"

"-- Gossip is Twinkies for the spiritually starving."

"That's gotta be a Marion Blumenthal original."

Nadine laughed.

"I don't even know when I'm quoting her sometimes. But it's true, too."

"Anyway. You're the biggest gossip in the world, apparently."

"How do you figure?"

"Don't sound so offended. I just mean, you're as dirty and gossipy as the rest of us, you just don't say it out loud. That's what the transmission paranoia's about. Give in. Admit that you're fascinated by all these nutcases."

"No doubt, but I don't see why we should be unkind…"

"It's not unkind to think. You're always…"

"Always what?"

"You can't do crimes inside your head. You own it. Your little house, with the rocking chair and the Lily Tomlin and your wolf…"

"You know about the wolf?"

"Well, you jumped about a foot in the air."

"Could everybody see it?"

"You tell me, Transistor Lady."

"Ugh."

"I just don't think it's healthy. You pretend you're not a monster gossip, but you really are, and who knows how much of your curiosity ends up getting assuaged by your…"

"I am conscientious and compassionate."

"You're also nosy."

"Am not!"

"So what's the deal with St. John and Buzz Aldrin?"

"…"

"Exactly. You tried to check it out. I think everybody must be."

"What do you think it is? You know that stuff."

"What stuff?"

"Like, weird sex stuff."

"You think it's a sex thing?"

"They're guys. It's always a sex thing."

"You sound like me."

"Well?"

"I don't know. St. John seemed to be into it. But he was also pretty into Tarquin."

"Everybody is into Tarquin. Dogs and birds and little babies all think he's the best thing since…"

"Point taken. I'm going to land him, though."

"Is that precognition or just ego talking?"

"Baby, haven't I taught you anything? Same exact deal."

"Huh. And what about Aldrin? That was weird."

"He's all Future Guy, right? So why shouldn't he be…"

"Really?"

"Well, what's weirder? Aliens or bisexuality?"

"I guess neither of them are that weird, if you look at it that way."

She thought about it for a second. It was hard, moving him from one box to another box like that, after sitting next to him in the car all that long drive and watching him flirt with Apache. How could you go from that to Andrew St. John? It wasn't nasty exactly, people do what they do and it's not really your business, but it seemed like a pretty violent shift of gears. Apache was curvy and soft, and Andrew was a sandy-haired stick of a man, and Buzz smelled like tobacco. How did it work? And why was Apache okay with this? Anywhere else, she'd be itching to convert them both, out of boredom, or yelling about the unfairness of the world. Nadine wondered if she would feel comfortable dating Buzz, knowing that he'd been with men.

"I was pretty sure you were into him."

"One look at St. John and I would have dropped it either way. Break my heart."

True enough. You couldn't exactly move in on something like that, even if Buzz hadn't been into it. St. John was too sweet to leapfrog like that. It was one thing to have a crush on Tarquin, as everybody seemed to, but there was something more to Buzz and Andrew.

"And the fact that Buzz was looking back?" Nadine asked, wondering honestly what Apache would say to that.

"…Kinda hot?"

Nadine laughed. That was one way to deal with it. She imagined Andrew and Buzz doing normal domestic things. Gardening, swimming in a river, putting together little circuit boards or translating languages or whatever. That seemed almost depressingly normal. She wondered what kind of dogs they liked. Probably Andrew liked little dogs that didn't make messes and would sit quietly in your lap while you worked, and Buzz was obviously the type of guy that liked huge dogs. So that would be a problem. And Buzz, judging from his car, was probably a total slob, so that would be a problem. She couldn't imagine St. John keeping his house anything less than neat as a pin. She was finally beginning to feel sleepy; thinking about this imaginary relationship was making her tired. But she still couldn't sleep.

"Patch?"

"Yeah."

"Do you have any cigarettes?"

"Do you think we can even smoke in here? I'm sure some kind of smoking guilt psychic alarm will tell Claire Redbud. We might never even know, and then she'll just make a mark down in her little book next to our names, and sometime ten years from now you'll be looking for a raise and she'll say…"

"Claire's not like that."

"You're right. She'd sniff it out and show up pounding on the door…"

There was a knock at the door. Not a pounding, just a polite, firm knock. But it still scared the heck out of them both.

 

CHAPTER TWELVE: THE STORIES PAPER TELLS

 

For three years, all Nadine knew was the Sweat. The upshot to their psychic curriculum was that it only took two hours a day, but some of the younger girls and boys who weren't adept at sharing thoughts, or who needed to develop their skills, still had to spend some free time every day studying the old-fashioned way. And even though she'd spent a chunk of her high school years in a hospital bed, gaining weight she still hadn't lost, she felt unfinished at eighteen, and decided to stay an extra year. She was more like a teacher than a child by that point, but she loved living in the longhouse and helping the younger kids with their studies.

After Apache left -- to join the circus, she said, and Nadine was only 60% sure she was kidding -- she found herself even closer with Winter Horse and Bethany. Most of her friends had graduated, and she worried they thought of her as a spinster, stuck on the Farm forever like some older sister in a Jane Austen novel, watching the world pass by.

But even if that was true -- and to be honest, it kind of was -- she loved her life on the Sweat. Her first trip back home had been wonderful, and the subsequent visits to her parents and hometown had all gone pretty well, but she couldn't imagine thinking of that place as home, after the first year. Home was the Sweat, and silly dreamcatchers and quartz crystals, and Tea lessons about the Goddess, and all the things she didn't really believe, but loved anyway. She loved taking care of the animals on the Farm, and herding the younger kids into bed, and sometimes when the kids were a certain kind of restive, they'd let her teach them out loud.

She'd get postcards from her friends, and they'd come to visit occasionally, always dressed glamorously and full of stories about the world. Jane Crow even sent a letter once, but it didn't contain many details about her life. That was the last time Nadine heard from her, and when Winter Horse touched the paper it was written on, Nadine thought she was about to burst into tears. Pleading a migraine, Winter Horse had retired to her bunkhouse for the night, and Nadine hadn't pushed it further. She didn't want to know.

Postcards arrived from Apache Tear every two weeks exactly. She didn't do well with routine, but it was clear she missed Nadine enough that she was making the effort. They all carried wild tales of magic and mayhem and swashbuckling adventure, obviously intended to entertain Nadine. On the one hand, she was embarrassed that it took her a few tries before she figured out that they were fictions; on the other, she was touched that Apache took such pains to make her laugh.

One week she was smuggling drugs into Mexico and fighting off the federales with a sword and scabbard swiped from the Alamo, the next time she was on a seafaring vessel striking out for the South Pole. V. V. cold, Apache would write. They don't tell you that you have to keep your food close to your skin under your clothes or else it freezes. Have you ever tried to eat a frozen bowl of Froot Loops? That's a kick in the pants. Love, Apache Tear.

The postmarks were never from anywhere so glamorous: Albuquerque, Phoenix, Dallas, Denver, Reno. Always smaller than a real city, always just big enough to be scary. Portland, Seattle, Oakland. Every postcard was scary in one way, because who knew what she was really up to, but encouraging too: at least she was there to write them. Nadine knew better than to write back, because Apache was always on the move, but she was a bit grateful for that, too. She didn't know what the paper would say if you touched it, but she knew the words she'd write; every single letter would have just said, over and over again:

Come home. Come home. Come home. Come home. Come home. Come home.

 

END BOOK ONE: HALCYON

CHAPTER NINE: MICHAEL & CONNELLY

 

Tarquin joined the group, which was now big enough to invite stares from the rest of the staff and patients. Everybody wanted a look at the new doctor, and Nadine felt glumly unprepared. He kept himself on her left side, and Redbud on her right. She kept finding herself wanting to reach out to Apache, and to Buzz, as though they could keep her tethered. She felt like a kite on the windiest day.

And it just kept coming. The traumas and the thoughts from all the patients had started their low thrum outside her house, like a block party a mile away, but she could feel them coming closer. She was going to need downtime. They expected her to stay here tonight? When even Apache Tear seemed to be a bit on edge?

And now that Dr. Tarquin -- Jeremiah -- wasn’t looking her in the eye, she could breathe there too, and what she was finding underneath the tickle and thrill of flirting with the idea of Jeremiah Tarquin was resentment. This was a job interview, not a speed dating service, and there he was laying it on as thick as thick. He bumped her shoulder, perhaps by accident, and flashed her a quick smile, and she just rolled her eyes at herself. Go too far in that direction, and you’d start getting rude. And not only was that unprofessional, her mother would say, but also unwise: boys don’t make passes at girls who ... Well, nobody liked a rude girl, whatever the saying was.

Apache seemed to be fitting right into the group, joshing with St. John and Buzz at the back as though none of this were particularly bizarre or mortifying. The three of them were like some kind of road trip movie already. Nadine wondered what Apache’s gifts really were -- all these years, and she still didn’t know. Apache wouldn’t even get herself tested. Nadine couldn’t help but wonder if Apache wouldn’t be better off working somewhere like this, instead of pretending she were something she really wasn’t.

It was so strange to think about. They were both living in the park, pretending they weren’t special, and having fun anyway. It was easier to just ignore it. But when they were girls, Apache was the one who’d taught her how to have fun in the first place. After the Sweat, they’d lost touch for a few years. Nadine wondered if something had happened in that time that she didn’t know about, to make Apache even more firmly set in pretending their gifts didn’t exist. She wondered if she’d ever know.

"Just Palatine and Connelly, and then we're done."

"Our sweet ladies," Tarquin said archly, and Claire gave him a look.

"And we can drink!" Buzz said.

 

 

Redbud was something else too. Nadine noticed that everybody called her by her surname, and Redbud would always correct them. If you did it six times in a single conversation, it seemed clear, Dr. Redbud would correct you each time. She wanted so much to be friendly and informal, but every bone in her body commanded you to be respectful and quiet. Nadine resolved to call her Claire, no matter how strange it seemed.

And now she’d met almost all of them. All that was left were Grace Connelly and Michael... What was his last name? Dr. Michael... Palladino? Palatine. Mostly she was interested in the situation with Buzz and Dr. St. John. Andrew. Andrew and Buzz. Buzz and Andrew. What were they all about? They acted impossibly close, like brothers or roommates, but there was something... Buzz had been all over Apache. He’d even flirted with Nadine a little bit. And he didn’t seem interested in Dr. Tarquin, like Dr. St. John was... She stretched her mind out a bit, and heard something like a cough to her right.

There's an easier way, Claire said. It took Nadine a moment to realize she wasn't speaking aloud.

I wasn't… I mean, I didn't…

Claire's laughter in her mind was like a glass bell, struck once.

If you figure out what's going on between St. John and Buzz Aldrin, you'll have the gratitude of everyone in this facility, including the patients. I've got a hundred bucks riding on them sleeping together. You've got to let go of worrying about that stuff. We only show what we want to show.

That's a bit different from what I'm used to…

Claire looked at her, suddenly, in one movement like a bird: Is it really?

We only show what we want to show. Huh.

You'll find this immensely helpful, I think. Look at my hand.

Perched on Claire's hand was a small bird. A dove?

It's a lovebird. That's my…

Spirit animals, she'd said.

Your … totem?

That's one word for it. It's really just looking at auras in a new way. I find it helpful in diagnosis. Can you see her?

She could. The little bird perched on Claire's hand, looking around at everything. Nadine had never noticed before how alien birds really seemed to be: all eyes, looking around without echoing anything back. When you looked a bird in the eye, there wasn't really anything looking back. Nothing that made sense, anyway. It was like Winter Horse always said: Without language, nothing is comforting.

Now, think about yourself. See your aura, this way.

At Nadine's feet appeared a wolf, four feet at the shoulder. She jumped. Was that her? Her aura was usually a faint blue, she knew, and this creature felt the same.

Wolf. Teacher. That's good. I knew you were a good choice. Although… Teachers have the most to learn. You haven't had an easy time, have you? But you're learning all the time. You have a lot to teach us, Nadine Blumenthal.

Nadine looked around. Perched on Tarquin's shoulder, hilariously, was a housecat. It was grey-striped, like a witch's familiar. How cute! He was just a silly little pussycat after all…

Look closer.

Nadine did, and Claire was right: there was more to it. Jeremiah's totem wasn't just any cat: it was feral, or nearly so, with deep scars down one side of its face. What did they do to you?

St. John's was the best: a reddish-gold dancing lizard, floating along a few inches from his shoulder, as though pirouetting in fire.

Buzz calls it the Ginger Newt, he says it's a salamander.

Hanging around Buzz was something strange; something crystalline and glittering, with a deep fire. It was like an opal to look at, but the more you looked at it, the stranger it got. Like an optical illusion, or something deep that you could only see a part of, opening into deeper places.

We don't know what it is, what to call it. Buzz says it's a new intelligence, something out of silicon.

Do you believe him?

I didn't, until I took a look. I don't think it's made of the same number of dimensions as other stuff we are used to. I don't have the words. I think it's a computer or something, something from the future. He plays that stuff off, but I know he's onto something. He's the strongest precog I ever met.

She was attracted to it, the way it shone and moved without moving. It was the deepest and the shallowest thing she'd ever seen. Watching it glitter and shift made her feel dizzy.

Why didn't they teach us this at the Sweat?

I don't know. Everybody's got their little houses, like yours, but I had to teach everybody here to see them this way. It's fun, isn't it?

She looked at Apache without turning around, hoping to get a glimpse of her friend's secrets, but all she could see was that damned serpent bracelet, setting off blue sparks. Just thinking about it seemed to make the whole hallway dark, until all you could see were the lights of it, shining. It wasn't the blue of Nadine's gift, not like the wolf, and it wasn't an animal like Claire was showing her; it was the bracelet itself. She wondered, not for the first time, where the thing had come from. She'd never gotten the courage to ask.

"And this," Claire said aloud, "Is the rest of our merry group. Nadine Blumenthal and Apache Tear, I am pleased to present Grace Connelly and Dr. Michael Palatine. They're working together on a case right now, as we often do. We're all specialists here, Nadine, so we're all always on call. That's something you'll have to get used to. More often than not, it's necessary to form teams on specific cases. It can be hard to schedule, but it's not impossible."

"Not with Andy on the case," Buzz said, and Andrew smiled.

"I do all the scheduling. Being psychic is better than email. We've worked out a system where I don't even have to be awake, or answering calls, for you to check in. And I can always wake you up and get you here, if necessary."

Huh.

 

 

Grace Connelly was wildly beautiful. Claire wasn't kidding about that. She looked like the kind of east coast princess that had scared Nadine all through school: the kind of girl that showed up on time to everything, went running every morning at 6AM, brought gifts for the teacher and homemade sweets for the whole class. She was wearing a designer dress and a bow in her hair, and stuck out her hand with a giant grin. Absolutely terrifying.

Grace wrinkled her nose cutely and ran her hand down Nadine's arm as though they'd been friends for years.

"I know, it's weird. Trust me, today's as overwhelming as it gets. But it gets weirder as you go, so there's a tradeoff. Don't be shy."

She squeezed Grace's hand quietly and tried to smile back.

"I put a whole bunch of brownies in the breakroom and I made a sign that no matter what, nobody should touch the last two. Those are for you and Apache."

Brownies. Nadine knew it. Grace shook the jaw-dropped Apache's hand while Apache stared at her: her flowery dress, the silly bow, the absolute perfection of her hair and makeup and smile. This was Apache's Kryptonite, this girl right here, and although Apache never felt shame about anything, Nadine could tell by her face that she was trying to decide between laughing in the girl's face and giving her a big hug. They couldn't be more different.

She had a long, runner's body, and her auburn hair was cut simply, long down the back, held with a band and that darned bow. Her eyes were sparkling and open, and her body language … it wasn't something you could say in words, but when Nadine looked at her with the new sight Claire had shown her, she saw a beautiful swan, swimming across a shining lake. Her body was narrow, hips and waist and shoulders; she looked breakable.

"And this is Michael," said Claire, indicating a woman in a long chic black dress, wearing a ridiculous hat with a veil. There was something hard, yet beautiful, about Michael: her face was stern and quiet, but kind, and her eyes were a beautiful blue-violet. Tarquin put his arm around her easily, and she smiled up at him indulgently.

"Michael Palatine, nice to meet you," she said, and her grip was firm. Nadine was confused, but somehow knew to keep quiet about it.

"It is great to meet you. Can I ask what you both do?"

Grace and Michael looked at each other and smiled, as though it were a secret.

"Michael does identity stuff, soul retrieval, soul-trading, um, reconnecting with the basics of ourselves. You should let her give you a treatment," said Grace breathlessly. "She's just brilliant. I was an absolute mess before she got her hands on me."

Michael shook her head, her blonde hair cascading across her shoulders. Nadine wondered what her handsome face would look like in some makeup, and decided it would just be weird. She was strange and beautiful just the way she was.

"Grace is being effusive. She's perfect just as she is. In practice, I deal with a lot of trauma cases. There are a thousand things that can happen to our personae, depending on what happens to us. When we fracture, or when we're in denial, I can jumpstart things. I'm just like … a pair of jumper cables."

"You're a lot more than that," Buzz said quietly, with respect, and Michael dropped her head quietly. Nadine could tell she was pleased.

"And you, Grace?"

Dr. Connelly smiled brightly and looked Nadine in the eye again, as though they'd known each other forever.

"Terminal illness and pain management. Death, pain, irreconcilable fractures."

"The worst of the worst," Claire said proudly, and Grace simply nodded.

Apache whistled softly behind them. Nadine looked into Grace's eyes, the kindness and the brightness of them, and felt a swift sadness. Such small shoulders.

 

 

CHAPTER TEN: GOOD WISDOM

 

Days on the Sweat went like this: one hour of quiet meditation over breakfast, with no talking -- the worst hour of Apache's day, to be sure -- followed by an hour of light physical exercise. Stretching, yoga, various things Nadine could never remember names for. Then classes for two hours, everybody on the same basic curriculum no matter their age. That was with Bethany, Winter Horse's companion, for whom Nadine quickly developed an abiding love. Then lunch, which was a noisy cacophony. The rest of the afternoon was given to various practice sessions, some out on the grounds and some down in the buffered room below the longhouse that Apache called the Danger Room.

It wasn't just a joke: the energies they dealt with down there were powerful and intense, and the only way to make sure they didn't cause seismic issues or rolling brownouts was to restrict their use to the specially designed room down in the earth. Danger Room was Nadine's favorite class, and on the alternate days when they did more practical exercises out in the farm she soon found she missed it. The walls seemed to reflect your own energy back at you, making it easier to see what you were picking up and what you were giving off. Whatever she was, whatever gifts she had, the Danger Room helped her understand its use and governance the best.

At four o'clock, it was time for Tea. This was clearly Winter Horse's favorite time of the day, when all the girls and boys would gather in the longhouse's lounge for a snack and some discussion time. Winter Horse would always start with a lesson -- she loved making her speeches, and Nadine for one could listen to them all day, although Apache often got restless -- and then the kids would just… talk.

Nadine had never seen anything like it. If you had a problem, you opened your mouth and said something. If you thought something was unfair, or if you thought somebody deserved notice for something they'd done, good or bad, you just threw back your head and said it out loud. If you were afraid, or proud, or angry, or homesick or sad, you could just say it. She loved it.

Of course, she never took advantage. In her first year on the Sweat, Nadine didn't speak once at Teatime, too afraid they'd ask her to elaborate. She didn't like sharing in front of the group that way. But she did enjoy being a part of the group. And of course, Apache would bring up any issues that she and Nadine had agreed upon.

In the first months of Nadine's life on the Farm, Apache's main campaign -- there were new ones on a weekly, sometimes daily basis, but she always made sure to leave space in her speeches for one or two general themes of discontent -- was about age segregation. She said it was silly and dumb to keep the boys and girls apart, because they were all psychic and knew everybody's business, but there was something to keeping a bit of division in the ranks as far as age groups.

The real reason, obviously, was twofold: number one, she didn't want younger kids tattling on her. That was a main one, mostly because she was breaking the rules constantly, often without even realizing it. If you reminded her, she'd nod and agree that her actions were flagrantly in violation of the rules, but this seemed more like a rhetorical issue than anything that might have affected Apache's behavior. The second reason, which was more important to Apache personally, was the fact that Jane Crow was installed at the absolute opposite end of the longhouse.

Nadine knew that this was because, for good or ill, Jane and Apache were the two most influential students in the entire group. If Jane Crow said it was lights out, then it was lights out. Nobody would think to argue. And no matter how insane Apache got, cooped up with all the kids, everybody knew that when Apache said it was time to stop, or go back to home base, or calm down, that you'd better do as she said. They'd follow her to bed just as quickly as they'd follow her into battle.

Apache didn't really understand that, because she had no idea how much the younger children idolized her. If she'd known, it would have mortified her. And for Nadine's part, she had no interest in Apache realizing how much Nadine herself idolized her. So Apache blundered and leapfrogged all over the Farm, running Bethany and Winter Horse and the rest of the staff ragged, and never knew how much the other girls enjoyed following in her footsteps.

So it was a sign of respect, or at least recognition, that Apache and Jane were kept on opposing ends of the longhouse, like the ends of a battery. It was obvious, psychic or not, that they kept the rest of the girls in line. But Apache couldn't see any of that: she was just annoyed because her one actual goal in life was to make Jane Crow her best friend.

Of course, Jane Crow had no idea; she seemed to think Apache was just another one of the younger girls. Whenever Nadine saw Jane alone, she was always looking out to the west, in the distance, like she was waiting until they said she could leave. Nadine found Jane way too intimidating to deal with, but sitting quietly or working on one craft or another with her was always calming. She seemed to hold infinite secrets.

After Tea, and until sundown, the children did whatever they liked. Apache's great idea was something she called Normalcy Lab, where she'd sit the girls and boys down and show them how to do normal things: get a checking account, apply makeup, lay down random combinations of playing cards to see who they'd eventually marry. Her lecture on the microeconomics of college loans was a tearjerker.

 

 

"There's good wisdom and bad wisdom," Winter Horse said. Nadine wasn't sure if she was in trouble, or what, but it was a weird way to start their private counseling session.

"As we travel through life we learn things, about all manner of subjects. Not just school, not just our abilities and capabilities, but also things about other people. About people, I should say, because we are not exempt from these lessons. In fact the hope is that we will apply what we've learned … do you know the word 'synthesis'?"

Nadine nodded, although she was bewildered where this was headed.

"Every person is a mirror, Nadine. Before you learned control, you could hear what other people thought, and feel what they felt. And it was horrible, wasn't it?"

Nadine looked down.

"But eventually you learn to take the lessons from those experiences, and move on. You become stronger, and more compassionate. This is wisdom."

Wisdom. A good word, a nice word. She didn't think of herself as wise, but she knew that she'd gotten a lot nicer after the incident. How could you be cruel to somebody when you knew exactly how they'd feel?

"Sometimes… Nadine, the world can be a confusing place. Sometimes we learn things we don't need to know yet. Sometimes we learn things nobody should know."

She thought about those first neighbors, the way that man would hit his wife. It still felt a little dirty.

"But absent our abilities, those experiences remain. Do you understand what I mean? Just going through life head-blind, sometimes we run into things we don't necessarily need to deal with. The world is not always kind to children."

Nadine nodded. Even if she didn't have these strange gifts, didn't she know somehow about how hard things had been for Perry? Even before that awful night, she knew his mother was afraid of his father, and his father was confused and scared by the things his beautiful, soft little son sometimes did. She just ignored it, like turning up the television so you didn't hear the fighting through the walls.

"When we are exposed to things we can't quite understand… Oh, Nadine. Come with me."

Winter Horse took her out into the garden. It was getting dark, and Nadine shivered. She felt special, out here in the night with their teacher, so close to lights out. Winter Horse waved her toward one of the bushes that hugged the edge of her house, and pointed at a leaf.

A chrysalis clung to it, bending in the breeze. It had been a caterpillar, nothing special, and now it was sleeping and growing, and it would become a butterfly, or a moth, before you knew it. They'd dissected dried-up ones at school the last year before the incident.

"If I pried this thing apart and tried to get the butterfly out, what would happen?"

Nadine knew from experience: a crackly mess, a jumble of wet half-formed wings and a creature caught between two states, two worlds. It would die.

"That's bad wisdom. You can't force anything to grow faster than its allotted time. When you try, it causes complications."

Nadine nodded. That was how the twins across the street had felt, to her and to themselves: like they were being asked to be grown up and they weren't ready. Wasn't that how everybody felt?

"Yes, everybody feels that way. I still feel that way sometimes, all adults do: like they're being asked to do things before they're ready. But that's not bad wisdom. I'm talking about actually forcing this open, with your hands. Could you do something like that? Could you do that right now?"

Nadine stepped back.

"Among people, among women and men, when that happens sometimes they go find the next chrysalis and open it up. It continues to move, from person to person, like a virus. Sometimes people do it because they've been hurt. But sometimes they just do it. And if you're the butterfly, your lot in life becomes healing. Making up for what nature didn't have time to do."

She was talking about Apache Tear. Something had happened to Apache Tear. She wouldn't talk about it, but it was there all the time. Nadine felt nasty for knowing this; she got angry at Winter Horse. Hot tears stung the back of her throat.

"Why are you telling me this?"

"Because there's only one thing we can do. When we know someone, when we love someone, who has been interfered with in one way or another, when they've gotten interrupted by somebody else's cruelty, the only thing that can heal them is time, and love. Their time, and their love for themselves. But we can help."

Nadine nodded. She'd do anything.

"Just love her, Nadine. Don't let her push you away and don't let her scare you. Because she is fighting for her life, every second of the day, just like that butterfly in there. We have to do what nature cannot."

Nadine didn't like to think about anybody hurting Apache Tear, but more than that she didn't like knowing it. Like she was better than Apache, or knew her secrets. Like she was just some other person. Apache Tear was her friend, and accepted her for who she was. This seemed like cheating.

"You'd love her just as much if we'd never had this conversation, Nadine. You know that. I'm just telling you to be gentle. You have to help her fight."

It was true. Nadine would do anything for Apache. If that meant holding onto this secret, bundling it up tight until Apache decided to talk about it, that's what she would do. But she knew Apache would never tell her secrets, because they were all she had. So, it seemed obvious, her duty was to love Apache Tear for the rest of her life.

SEVEN: TARQUIN & ST. JOHN

 

"I think it would be best if you met St. John and Tarquin first. The other ladies are just starting their shifts, and besides... Well, you should meet St. John and Tarquin."

"Watch out for Tarquin," said Buzz darkly, and Claire just gave him another one of her looks. He didn't seem bothered.

"You too," he growled at Apache, and she giggled with delight.

Dr. Andrew St. John was standing around blankly at the coffee cart, looking like he had forgotten where he was. Claire had to call his name twice before he noticed the foursome looking at him.

He was good-looking but nerdy, Nadine thought. Definitely the kind of guy she would have taken to bed in college, cute but always disappointingly distant. At least with her eyes on Buzz Aldrin Apache wouldn't move in on this one too, like she usually did. Although he seemed so soft and quiet that probably she wouldn't be interested. Nadine was barely sure if she was interested; she just knew it was irritating when Apache climbed all over the men, which she always did.

Nadine liked attention as much as anybody, but she was always hamstrung in that she didn't like to demand it, the way Apache Tear did. She wanted a man to sweep her off her feet; to look at her in a crowd of people and say, "This is the special one, this is the one that has the foot that fits this slipper." There had been men in the past -- Holden was the best one, of course -- that had made her feel that way. Apache seemed more interested in bringing shoes to the men instead. And if their feet didn't exactly fit, well, Apache would force it. Cut off their toes if she had to. It never worked out that well.

On the other hand, Apache was never in a dry spell. Nadine’s dry spell was practically as long as her whole life, beyond a few short-term things and Holden. Nadine didn't like to curse, but she took a secret joy in appending "That Bastard" to the end of his name whenever anybody said or thought it. Holden, that Bastard. He'd been like all the Bears at once: too hard, too soft, and just right. Too hot, too cold, just right. That was how they got you.

But this St. Paul guy, this doctor... He was just too soft. Didn't do it for her. She instantly wanted to be his friend, the sparkle in his eye was far-off and wise, knowledgeable and sympathetic, but she didn't get that oomph. He wasn’t like a girl or a woman, he was definitely strong, male, but there was something… He smiled back at her, and actually looked at her unlike Buzz, and took her hand warmly in his.

"Andrew. St. John. I do spirit guides -- I'm a natural medium -- and um, adapting other belief systems for our staff when necessary. I studied comparative religion. Still do. So I help when the patient believes something, um, out of the ordinary. I work on evolving systems of belief in my spare time. A lot of my caseload, my call sheet, is about communication issues, intimacy, voices, that kind of thing. I like working on memories of place, historical stuff. I guess I'm the ..."

"Andrew's our local history buff. He's a walking library, encyclopedia, and National Geographic repository. Don't let him fool you, he's like a natural computer."

And you're the one that can decode him, Nadine thought, and then blushed. Strange thoughts. The computer expert, calling another man a computer with that certain possessive gleam in his eye. Buzz was bizarre.

But St. John was blushing too. He liked praise. But there was something else... Something about the way St. John looked at Buzz, and the way Buzz looked back, she knew she was missing part of the story. But she also knew it was both fruitless and redundant to ask: they wouldn't tell her right away, but she could already tell they were all dying to spill their secrets to the new girl.

"I wonder, what are you feelings on the placebo effect? With something as straightforward as your area of expertise, I'm always curious..."

She shook her head at him, with a smile. Perry, her childhood friend: that was who St. John reminded her of. Her first irrational thought was to ask if they knew each other.

"I mean, there are quantifiable effects with your skillset: either something is true or something is not. With Claire, too: either something happens or something doesn't. But the rest of us... Have you given thought to the idea that a lot of what we accomplish is, beyond being really accomplished by the patient, something the patient could do all along? The placebo effect."

She hadn't thought about it. Her power was so real, so evident, it would have freaked her out to think that any of it was being accomplished on belief alone. But then if you thought about Claire's animal spirits, whatever that was, or Buzz's aliens, the question started to make more sense.

"Is that something I can determine?"

"No. Believe me, we've tried. Not even a psychic as talented as you can truth-tell that deep. If you believe a thing nine-tenths of the way, and that lowest bit, that one-tenth, knows it's a lie, it'll do all it can to protect the lie. Because it knows that it's contributing to the greater good."

"That's ... the kindest thing I've ever heard."

"Well, don't be too thrown off by the word 'placebo.' Tarquin and Almondine used to give me headaches over it. It would be nice if..."

"Don't rush her, Andy. She gave you a good answer."

Claire nodded, ignoring Buzz seemingly altogether. "It's a tour. You can grill her and Apache here all you want at the mixer."

Apache brightened immediately. "Mixer?"

Claire actually laughed, although there wasn't really an accompanying smile like a normal person would identify a smile.

"We play as hard as we work, Apache."

"Hell yeah," Apache said, at a loss for words. The three doctors and Nadine smiled at her, realizing for the first time how out of place she felt. Apache was so good, so caring and secretive about her loyalty, that you really had to push her before the stress started to show. Nadine nodded.

"Patch, I can take it from here if you want to go to the rooms."

"Nah, this is interesting. I mean, I'm not a doctor... But then, neither are you."

They laughed at that, just the two of them, and Claire nodded sharply.

"Point taken."

 

 

Ten minutes later, when they finally came upon Dr. Jeremiah Tarquin, Nadine was wishing they'd left Apache behind. She was all over it, like nothing Nadine had ever seen. And she could see why: if this wasn't a job interview -- and it was, regardless of how blasé the team seemed to be about this necessary step -- she'd have been all over it too.

Dr. Tarquin was gorgeous. Wavy black hair, piercing green eyes, a face you could cut diamonds on... he was probably six-three, a little on the skinny side, but he had a runner's body. You could smell the testosterone coming off him, almost. If she'd been able to see his aura, she couldn't imagine the color, but thinking about the color it would be gave her goosebumps.

"Our resident shaman," Claire said, even more clipped than before. Was she more embarrassed by Tarquin than she was by Buzz? Perhaps.

But Nadine could see it: of course he was a shaman. She could feel her little house's connection to the Earth booming, laughing, tapping on the pipes from her root chakra all the way to her attic like somebody rapping with a silver ring: ping-ping-ping. Was this where the sex voodoo came in? Because Nadine could believe it. The hair on his arms and chest alone sent her Irish blood rumbling.

"Spirits of place, shamanism and dreamtime issues, earth force, reconnections, identity reclamation, hauntings. Anything you need that involves our earth and the energies around it, I'm your man."

"I'll say," muttered Apache, and nobody even looked at her.

"I'm sorry," Nadine said, as though in reflex defense to his extremely strong influence, "You said earth force? Are you a Wiccan or a..."

He shook his head.

"The ley lines vibrate through us all, sister. It's all just energy. It moves from the base of your spine, up through the bones, into your head, but it's the one place we're all... Connected."

Claire cleared her throat, clearly sick of watching him entrance the lot. Nadine did feel kind of like a baby monkey being charmed by a cobra.

"Ahem. Dr. Tarquin -- Jeremiah -- came to us as an archeologist. Most of our patients, at one time or another, either due to their issue or because of the treatments we offer, need a ... An excuse, or an opportunity, to connect themselves to the Earth, to the magnetic and spiritual energy it provides."

"So you're a hippy," said Apache, who didn't seem to have blinked once.

"My dear, I am as far from a hippy as your friend Buzz there is from being an academic. I'm here for cash, grass, and a little bit of ... I like meeting people. It's something I'm good at, the ley lines, the earth stuff, but it's not the thing I'm best at."

"Dr. Tarquin often pretends he's here on some kind of jailhouse servitude exchange program, but allow me to tell you nothing could be further from the case. He loves Earth, he loves the energy he commands, and there is quite simply nobody else who's better at it, as far as we know."

Tarquin winked at Claire. "And they second they do, I'm out of here."

"And the second we find someone, yes. He's out of here. He's simply too rude to the patients and the other staff. Doesn't give them enough personal attention."

Nadine's jaw dropped again. Was that a joke?

"Yes, it's a joke. Stay far, far away from him, Dr. Blumenthal. He is a menace. You too, Apache. You're too smart to fall for his ... bullshit."

Claire said the word like it was a foreign concept, like it was a word she'd learned but never used. Nadine found it oddly compelling, not to mention right on target, but one look at Buzz confirmed what they both knew: Apache had just found somebody even more full of it than Buzz, and the battle was lost. She was in love.

But to tell the truth -- a little -- so was Nadine. He was so beautiful, and so intoxicating. Surely you could tease that fire without getting burned...

What? She was a one-year divorcee, whose only past experience in love included, sadly, her first teenage crush and a truly awful individual who'd torn her life apart. She wasn't equipped to play in the big leagues.

But something... She looked around: at Buzz, and poor quiet besotted St. John, and Claire and Apache, and she realized she was on just as firm a playing field as anybody. Claire might be hotter than any other woman on the planet, and Apache might be more forward than a Bogart femme fatale, but in this world... Who could say she wasn't the most attractive bachelorette of all?

For just a second, she allowed herself to think that her skill and power made her as beautiful on the inside as Dr. Redbud was on the outside. Surely that should count for something, no? She'd spent her whole life waiting for somebody to notice her inner beauty; waiting for that lie to come true. In a company of telepaths and shamans and whatever the rest of them were, surely one of them would see how special she really was?

"Claire," she whispered, while the others were fawning over Tarquin. "I have a request."

"Anything, dear girl. As long as it keeps you here. As you can see, I need all the sensible backup I can get."

"I do see. It's kind of what I wanted to talk about. That word? 'Sensible?' I am not interesting in being that woman. It's clear you've put a lot of time and effort into your image. I was wondering... God this is awful..."

"We're all naked here, Nadine. One thing you'll learn quite quickly is that we don't have time to be ashamed with each other. Not if we're going to be successful or efficient in what we do."

"Well, okay. It's hard to adjust to that idea."

"Trust me. There are innumerable things to get weird about, here. This isn't one of them. I already know what you're going to ask. I did the same when I arrived at Johns Hopkins. The most perfect girl, most perfect façade. I still feel like an alien wearing people clothes."

"Okay, so... I mean, do I have to say it?"

"Not really, but I do want us to trust each other. Lives will hang on it. So yes."

"I want you to make me pretty."

"You already are."

"That's nice, but..."

"You're pretty, inside and out. But you're overweight. And you dress like you live in a trailer park."

"I do. Live in a trailer park, I mean. Until today."

"You're pretty. Inside and out. The rest is just ... placebo effect. As St. John said."

"Could you write me a prescription?"

"Sign your contract and I'll have them falling at your feet, dear."

"Not actually the most comforting way you could have said that."

"I'm not the devil. If I were the devil, I'd have offered you vision on top of the dental."

“Okay?"

"I just really ... like you. It's hard to ... I like you, and I want you on the team. We miss Almondine, but he wasn't a perfect fit. I feel like you are."

"I just don't feel like I fit in!"

"Placebo effect. I can make you over."

"It sounds so..."

"Every woman goes through this. I've read your file. When would you have fit it in?"

"Um."

"You've been too busy, becoming brilliant and funny and confident. Do you know how many women -- how many men? -- have been able to look Tarquin in the eye? Me. And Buzz. In my experience, that's two out of a million. Trust me when I say he'll be eating out of your hand."

"I am worried about getting too far into this life..."

"Apache too. Whole new wardrobes, on the clinic's dime. Changing addresses means changing lifestyles, and we get that."

"You really do sound like the devil."

"You keep thinking that. I am sorry I keep pushing. I just want you on our team... Look. I know your mother wasn't as helpful as she could be, when you were a kid. I didn't have a mother at all. Once you feel as pretty outside as you do in, you'll understand: looks have nothing to do with it. Nobody's going to treat you differently, no matter how much money we throw at you and Apache. It's not about you as a person, it's about you as a business expense, fitting into the world we've created. To me, it's the same as your towncar."

"My...?"

"Oh! You can sell your car. We have drivers."

"Are you telling me nobody cares what I..."

"It's about the patients. And besides, if you think I'm intimidating -- which you do -- you should meet Grace Connelly -- which you will. She makes us both look like sows."

"I don't see how that's possible."

"You're sweet."

"Help me?"

"Already done. It's just your first day. And we still have to meet Grace and Michael. They're going ... to take all your energy. Don't worry about it. Tarquin affects all of us this way. I think he has an undiscovered sort of empathy. Pheremones, or something."

"You don't seem all that affected..."

Claire just threw back her head and guffawed. There was the smile -- and it was beautiful. Not scary or unfocused at all. Nadine felt like she was seeing the girl for the first time. It was young, and innocent, and infectious.

But what did it mean?

 

 

EIGHT: THE GOOD GUYS

 

Eventually that old diesel truck would stop. It would reach its destination and it would stop moving, and Winter Horse would turn off the engine, and it would choke itself to sleep. The squeal of hinges and then the crunch of Winter Horse's Docs in the gravel outside the longhouse, the thuds and thumps of Winter Horse shouldering Nadine's bags onto her shoulders, her low chuckle outside the window of the passenger-side door.

“Nadine, honey. It's not summer camp. You're fine. They're good. We're good. It's going to get easier. We've all been there,” she'd say. Something like that. And Nadine would roll her eyes and shrug, embarrassed, and eventually – what would seem like an eternity, but wouldn't really be that long – she would squeak her own door open, and hop down into the gravel, and take more of her baggage than necessary back from Winter Horse, and set her jaw and her back straight, and walk into the house with open eyes and a friendly smile.

They'd head into the great room of the longhouse, the lodge that gave the Sweat its real name, and her footsteps would clack on the wide red tiles of the foyer, and curious eyes – boys and girls, some older than Nadine but mostly younger – would stare around corners and from other rooms. She would feel their spirits looking at hers, curiously pushing and testing at the doors and windows of her little Nadine house, and she would try to smile, no matter how nervous it made her. She would be too shy to push back, and they'd get bored eventually and start talking to her in language, instead of mentally.

Eventually, Winter Horse would cock her eyebrows at them all, herding Nadine and the rest of the children with a gentle thought into the mess hall, and remind them that they needed to do both. Winter Horse was bilingual, she'd often remind them – to the giggles of some of the older children – and the reason she spoke multiple languages wasn't because she was a genius, but because she'd grown up in a house where they did both. Her mother spoke English and her native French, and her father spoke English and stuttering French in response, and she and her brothers spoke both.

They didn't get the two confused, she'd explain, and they didn't do both at once. They knew it was polite to speak English to people outside the family, and polite to speak French whenever they met other French-speakers. But their ability to do this came from doing both, all the time, and remembering most of all that it was possible to do both, all the time.

“You are balanced on the edge of one country and another,” Winter Horse would explain with a proud smile. “You are balanced between centuries. You are the children of the new age, and you must reach backward and speak their language, and you must reach forward and speak ours. We can teach you to shield your gifts, and to use them. We can give you strength, and we can give you pride. The one thing we cannot give you is the most important thing there is: empathy. Compassion.

“You can do something they cannot do. That means you are responsible for your gifts, and it means something else. Something you might not understand quite yet. The gifts we share mean power. Don't be confused about that. But that power doesn't make them less important than us. It makes them more important than us. Forgetting that leads to nightmares. I've seen it. Forgetting that leads to self-destructive, ugly behavior. I've seen that too.

“There is nothing you can do in this house that will get you sent away, there is nothing you can do in this house that will stop us from trying to help you, or to care for you. And we will never pry, or look at your thoughts, without permission.

“But forget compassion, demonstrate selfishness beyond a certain limit, and we'll be forced to look into things, and make sure this is where you belong. You forfeit your privacy, and your right to a place here, when you become a threat. When I say threat, I don't mean to our little community. Because some of you, we could smell from a mile away. There's real power here. Scary amounts.”

Nadine would look around at the faces, and see reflected there just how many times they'd heard this little speech, and how much most of them believed in it, and just which ones didn't get it yet, or didn't think it applied to them, or thought their secret nastinesses didn't show on their faces, or felt guilt for no reason and were just confused. She'd wonder if she was, at that moment, just seeing their faces – what a normal person could see – or if she was accidentally prying. She didn't have experience of being anybody but Nadine, not really. Just memories of other things.

Eventually, they'd get to the Sweat; eventually Nadine would have to get out of the pickup truck, and look at her new family, and think about life around people like her, life with them, all the pitfalls and the fears she'd never even thought about. Eventually, she'd meet Apache Tear, and Jane Crow, and all the rest. She'd learn to think of them as family, and start the long walk back to speaking the language of her mother and her father. Eventually she'd become bilingual, and learn to live in the world. But on that long drive to the Sweat, the thing Nadine couldn't stop picking at, like a scab, was this: eventually, she'd have to ask herself if she was one of the good guys. She wondered how she'd know.

 

All through dinner and the extensive, thrilling speeches by Winter Horse and some of the older kids, Apache had given her a nearly silent explanation of what was going on. It started out in English, but once they figured out how well they could hear each other, she’d delivered her monologue silently, their somber faces broken only by momentary giggles and, for Nadine, sudden shocks. She’d never met anybody like Apache Tear before.

See that girl over there, with the crazy bosoms?

Bosoms?

Yeah, like, her boobs. You know the one I’m talking about. I was sitting next to her at one of the group sessions last week and I didn’t even mean to, but I heard her thinking about this time a boy from her church came early for a picnic, and she…

It was clear Winter Horse had never dealt with anybody like Apache either. Every sentence, every warning or comment or suggestion, seemed to be delivered right at her.

“Of course, it’s important for us to remember that we don’t have the run of the house. Lights out means lights out. We all need to be at our best if we’re possibly going to make the most of our abilities.”

She and Bethany make the most of their abilities every single night. There’s a girl that can’t turn it off, so she has to listen to them. Hours. I bet that’s why they want us lights out, so we don’t accidentally walk in on them and accuse them of pervertery.

Bethany?

Yeah, her girlfriend. She doesn’t look like you think. She looks like…

A picture of … Jaime Sommers, the Bionic Woman?

Only with a smoker’s cough.

But her hair’s all…

Yeah, she’s pretty awesome. She’s very ‘70s. She wears a lot of turquoise and stuff. I think she’s the one that’s actually into all the witchy stuff…

Witchy stuff?

You’ll see. There’s a certain amount of respect, you see, that the Earth deserves for us to…

“We want to engender a certain amount of respect for the…” said Winter Horse, and the girls cracked up. Winter Horse didn’t notice, or pretended not to notice.

“A certain amount of respect for the Earth. Not just because of the fact that it’s ours to care for, and we need to take care of it, but because there’s an immense amount of work you can do, resources you can draw on, from the earth beneath your feet…”

It’s true, I mean, it sounds like bull but it’s true. Some of the stuff we do leaves you feeling really keyed up. Full of energy. That was my problem, I would store it up, like a battery. I felt like I was glowing. Like a rocket, or I would explode, or… They helped. You don’t push it down, you just … let it go. She’s big enough. Nothing ever goes anywhere, not really. I am cool with the Earth.

What is your gift, Apache Tear?

It’s nothing special. I’ve got it under control. I really just stay here because I don’t have anything else to do. I can’t really get started having an actual life until I’m eighteen, so for the next two years I’m willing to play with crystals and practice all this stuff. The actual school part is better than my old school. I think it’s probably better than anybody’s school here. Maybe yours was better. Private?

Yeah. I went to a private school in…

Jane Crow, too. See her over there?

Apache pointed. There was a girl with a huge black afro or perm or something, with giant earrings and giant eyes covered in kohl and giant breasts. She was awesome. She looked like Janis Ian on her old babysitter’s record albums, only gorgeous. Nadine was immediately nervous. What would you even say to a girl like that?

She’s cool. She’s my friend too, I’ll introduce you.

 

Apache Tear stood at the window, which she’d cracked open smidge by smidge, pushing the crank against its white paint until a crack sounded, loud as loud. When she smoked she looked like a grownup. Like a woman, like maybe with kids and a husband and beer in the fridge, that was how she looked with a cigarette. Nadine didn’t know it get, but Apache Tear would have laughed her butt off if she’d told her that, and said some words that weren’t very nice.

Apache had clearly pulled some strings to get Nadine placed in her second bed on the Farm, Nadine wasn’t sure what it entailed, but she was grateful.

“I don’t know any of the words. I feel like I won’t know what’s going on until…”

“What do you mean, words?”

“Like, the words for the stuff. Our stuff. I can do a thing, Winter Horse does a thing, everybody’s got a thing but I don’t know what it’s called. When we practice all that stuff she was talking about at dinner, all these different control exercises and breathing and … Words.”

“Well, there aren’t any words, really. I mean, there’s always been people with gifts. When they weren’t getting burned at the stake, they were starting religions. That’s part of our heritage. But they didn’t have words for it. The only words we have are, like, science fiction.”

“Right…”

“So we just use those words. Jane Crow says those old guys made us up. If it wasn’t for those guys, Bradbury and L’Engle and all that, we wouldn’t exist. They dreamed us into existence.”

“Interesting. But you say we’ve been around forever.”

“Not like we are now. Not everywhere. We’re new.”

“I like that.”

“I’m kind of sick of it.”

Apache took another long pull from her cigarette. Nadine liked the smell. Apache offered it, and she shook her head, blushing.

“I know we’re special, and that’s great. But I would like the option to be normal. Once we leave here, I’m never doing it again. I’m here to lock it all away.”

Nadine couldn’t imagine. It would be like going color-blind. Like going to a special school to learn color-blindness.

“They know us, in town. They stare when we walk by, like we’re from juvie or something. One of those crazy lockups. Like if they don’t keep an eye on us we’ll go rogue and make them all start acting like chickens.”

That sounded awful. Nadine shivered.

“So… That makes me want to make them act like chickens, you know?”

Nadine laughed, but she knew Apache wasn’t really kidding. It had never occurred to her to simply do without her gifts. You had to use everything at your disposal, Mother always said. Be resourceful. And the first rule of being resourceful was using your resources.

“I don’t ever want to give it up. I just want it to stop being scary.”

Apache nodded, and put her cigarette out on the windowsill, like it was an ashtray.

“That’d be a start.”

FIVE: AMUSEMENTS

 

"Lily Tomlin," said Dr. Redbud upon shaking Nadine's hand. As openings go, it was certainly intriguing. Nadine smiled, confused.

"I beg your pardon?"

"Lily Tomlin. Ernestine. Rocking chair, in the attic. Proportionally large, like you're a little girl. You're transmitting."

Apache and Buzz cracked up.

"Is this like Clue? Lily Tomlin killed somebody in the attic, with a rocking chair. My guess, it was Professor Mustard."

Buzz grinned, but shook his head at Apache. Nadine knew what Dr. Redbud meant, though.

"I ... have a mental space. I don't know what you would call it, but I go there when I need to quiet things down. There's a stained-glass window."

Buzz looked at her appraisingly.

"Mine's a rocking horse, actually. That's funny."

Redbud looked at Apache with thin lips.

"Claire Redbud," she said, sticking out her hand. Apache considered the hand for a while before taking it, and shook warmly.

"Sorry, I... It's been a long shift. Nadine, Apache, it's nice to meet you both. Has Buzz shown you the grounds?"

Nadine nodded, even though he hadn't. There was something strange about Dr. Redbud, and she couldn't put her finger on it. Her ice-blonde hair was clipped short, in a pageboy. Actually, everything about her was clipped: her speech, her boxy Chanel suit, her walk... She seemed like she was either into sticking insects to cards with pins in her spare time, or possibly like one of the naughty librarians in Kid Joe's favorite pornos. Nadine discovered that she felt quite warmly toward this strange creature. There was something kindly, yet remote about her, like she wasn't all there. She was more like Nadine had expected the doctors in this place to be; she reminded Nadine of her mother. It was clear Buzz also liked the woman, a lot.

"Well, if you're just getting off we can save the big meetup for later..."

Dr. Redbud shook her head. Clipped.

"Don't be silly. I always have time for my staff. Now, have you seen your rooms? They're spare, but they do just fine for the patients. We always have recruits stay in the patient rooms when they first arrive. It helps."

Nadine couldn't see how. The echoes and bumps, just in the time it took for a shower and a quick change into a less demanding bra, had her dreading trying to sleep. Lots of crazy people ... Sorry, lots of tormented people, had spent time in those rooms.

"It helps you set the boundaries. And, of course, to be sympathetic."

She could tell Dr. Redbud needed all the help with the latter that she could get.

"The rooms are really nice, Dr. Redbud."

"Claire, please. We're colleagues."

She was beautiful. Nadine wondered if she ever smiled. Her eyes crinkled approvingly as she looked at Nadine, but it wasn't exactly a smile. Her perfectly made-up mouth, the reddest red in the world, like a fairy tale -- would it crack if she smiled? Nadine figured she'd just look even more beautiful. Simply being in the same room with this exquisite, odd creature made her feel dumpy beyond words.

"Claire. Would you give us the tour?"

"I could use a refresher," Buzz said, with a sly look at Apache. Claire sighed and arched one eyebrow at Buzz, but relented immediately.

"Then it's a foursome. Like golf, or bridge. Amusements. Let's have some fun out there."

She set off down the hall from the lobby without a look back. Apache shrugged and grinned at Nadine, and the three set off behind her.

 

 

"Your file says you're one of the strongest telepaths in North America," Claire said as she walked, briskly, toward the first wing.

"Um, I think she was clocked as one of the best in the western hemisphere," Apache said helpfully, winking at Nadine.

"We rely, here at the Halcyon Clinic, in observable metrics and phenomena. South America uses a different scale, not standardized. They have a few hundred years' experience on us, after all. I am aware of your friend's talents."

"Yeah, about that... I don't really have any formal training. I worked with Sylvia Gostock when I was a girl, and spent a few years on a Wiccan commune in high school, but ..."

"The 'Sweat,' they call it. I've always wanted to visit -- clearly, they do good work there. And I've known Dr. Gostock for a long time. We were at Johns Hopkins together, she was my mentor."

Nadine was excited. "You've kept in contact with her? I'd love to..."

"She's actually coming here to visit in a few months. Buzz tells us you'll be well into the swing of things by then. You'll make her proud."

Nadine nodded at Buzz, disapprovingly.

"That was all I ever wanted... Well, hopefully we can impress her as a team."

It was clear this was something Claire wanted desperately -- as much as Claire appeared able to want anything, desperately or otherwise -- and Nadine wanted urgently to help her. To be a model employee.

"Right. Well, we will. But as far as training..."

"Nadine, we have no illusions about who we are, here. The only people with certifiable, measurable experience at this level were already medical doctors. There are no certificates, no graduation days, no caps or gowns for the lot of us. You'll be judged on your talents and expertise, not a slip of paper. We will call you 'doctor' for lack of a better word. And I swear to you, in your lifetime, our profession will make that leap. We will have our own universities, our own internships and residencies... We take our philosophy very seriously here. There are as many things we can fix in the human soul as in the human body. The work that we do here..."

Claire fell silent. She seemed to be finding herself even stranger than Nadine did.

"...I apologize. It was a long shift not because of the patients, but because of the ... A lot of the work I do is in using my reputation as a medical doctor -- there are a couple of other colleagues of ours that do the same -- in order to burnish the reputation of what we do, here."

"Do you miss it? Being a medical doctor?"

Claire looked at her with new eyes.

"I miss the prestige. I won't lie to you. The money, the clubs, the ambition, they were intoxicating, and well-deserved. But my talents ... I realized I had a choice. The same one you're making now. I want to help people in new ways, for which I -- like the other doctors here -- am uniquely suited. We became doctors to change lives, to make a difference. What we do in this clinic, no medical doctor or psychologist can do. There is no contest."

"Plus, you get paid plenty," said Apache, and Nadine's heart shrunk. But Claire just smiled.

"We get paid ... Plenty. And we all have our little areas of expertise, and our private work, to keep us nimble. We work as a team, Dr. Blumenthal."

Dr. Blumenthal. Out of nowhere, just like that. It made Nadine want to giggle with embarrassment. Dr. Blumenthal, in forty-dollar shoes! Dr. Blumenthal, in a size 16 halter dress with hidden breast cups! Dr. Blumenthal, painting over the scuffs in her best heels with a black Sharpie marker!

"We ... lost our telepath, a few months ago. It was an occasion for mourning, although we're proud of where he went."

"Which is?" Nadine hadn't heard about this.

"Dr. Almondine is in eastern Europe, doing occult work with refugees."

"He was like me?"

"He was a much quiet transmitter, for one. That'll come. But yes: psionic and aural management, truth-telling, memory work. What you'll be doing, he did. He was excellent. But you outmatch him in native talent, and there is no substitute for that. I don't think he would mind my saying that, either."

There was a new softness in her voice. Still alien and choppy, as though she were translating an alien tongue and sending it along via satellite, from a long way away. But there was a yearning there. Nadine wished she could get a look at Claire's aura. It was at this moment, for the first time, that she realized how young Dr. Redbud really was. Younger than Nadine and Apache; younger even than Dr. Aldrin. She projected such authority and power that you didn't notice it at first. That, and how short she was. What an imposing woman! Nadine irrationally thought, I want to be her when I grow up.

"He was a creep," Buzz said impulsively. "He was worse than Tarquin."

Claire stopped in the hall.

"He was a treasured colleague. Of yours as well, Buzz. Don't let the ending sour the story."

Buzz nodded: fair enough. Nadine was bemused by the strange boundaries these people had. It was like they couldn't talk about normal things without running into barriers or shame, but say the most awful, truthful things without a thought. It was refreshing, if weird. So far they'd only baldly questioned her skill and experience, but if Dr. Redbud ever said something like that to her, she thought she'd probably shrivel up and die.

"Dr. Redbud -- Claire -- can I ask your specialty? Your ... thing?"

"My thing, yes. I work with animal spirits, and the life force. Sex. Sexual and reproductive dysfunction."

That was a surprise. Maybe she was a naughty librarian after all.

"I'm still getting used to ... These categories. Life force, and such. Can you tell me... I mean, could I maybe follow you around, get some..."

"You'll be rotating with all of us, for the first two months, as we ramp up your own caseload. It's a chance to see how we will work together. And of course, we often find during rotations that there are often holes in our training that don't necessarily exploit all our God-given talents."

"Exploit?"

"Your file says nothing about being an empath, and yet your talents in that arena outstretch those of our own Dr. Connelly."

"What? I'm not a ..."

"You've been influencing people emotionally, on a low level, most of your adult life. It's what gives such amplitude to your transmission. There's a real punch of emotional force behind the things you're sending out. It's the reason I was acting so strange when we met a few minutes ago. I thought I was just tired... I was mirroring your own nervousness back to you. I just figured that out. You scored really low on most of the ways we measure emotional force."

"Influencing people emotionally? That sounds ... really bad."

"Cast your mind back into your past, I'm sure you'll see some issues."

Like, of course, her sixteenth birthday. Made more sense now. If only Dr. Redbud had been there! She could have avoided all that unpleasantness. But of course, Claire would have been Perry's age, or younger, when that went down.

"Yeah. Well, I don't want to do that anymore."

"All part of the training... We have extensive blockers set up so that our newer recruits --" and here she looked sharply, and hilariously, at Buzz, "-- and more volatile staffers don't accidentally taint the work. It won't affect the job we do here, just make things easier on you."

"Dr. Redbud?" said Apache timidly.

"Claire, Miss Tear."

Apache rolled her eyes. No way this hot young thing was calling her "Miss."

"Apache, please. My question is this: could this empath-transmitting-emotion thing, could it make somebody do something crazy?"

Like, for example, decide to pick up sticks and move to a new town where you only knew one person, and then basically depend on them, because she made you.

Oh, Apache. I'm so sorry!

"I don't see any recent effects on you, if that's what you're asking. My domain is the human skin and the human heart, and when we shook hands, all I saw was you: a welcome woman, quite loyal to her friend. Nothing more."

Which didn't really answer the question, exactly, but did more in a way.

"Okay," said Apache, sounding not entirely convinced. The smile she gave Nadine was about equal parts freaked out and comforting.

What have I gotten you into?

 

SIX: THE NEW FAMILY

 

After the strange, awful birthday party, Nadine and her mother found themselves at an impasse. Whatever language they had shared, before the hospital, had now truly broken down. Nothing Mother said made sense anymore, and Nadine knew that nothing she could offer would make much sense to her mother either.

She'd completely given up on popularity as a goal: the wages of popularity had turned out to be too high a price. She felt better off alone, or with Perry. Until the party, she'd even felt that way with Mother. But now, it was all just too strange. Maybe part of it was growing up, becoming a woman, but she'd never know which parts were which. Nobody ever does. The only standards we have for normal are ourselves, and other people. And neither one of them is usually very normal.

She found the Sweat herself. Looked it up, tracked down its leaders, contacted them for information, did the math, and presented all the facts as she saw them to her parents. They'd never understand about her special gifts, exactly, but she managed to do enough quick parlor tricks that they at least believed her about them.

"Think of a number. It's sixty-three."

"Think of a color. It's the washed-out sea blue of that old roller-coaster in the carnival that comes to town every fall."

"Think of a memory. You're thinking of the time we all went to Grandmother's house and the snake was in the front yard. Daddy shoved us behind him and went after it, but the only thing he could think to use as a weapon was the antenna from the car. We never got good radio reception after that, and every time it was disappointing, we'd all three think about the snake, and how brave Daddy was, holding it up like a sword."

"True or false, you think Mrs. Packer's new car across the street is tasteless. True. And by the way, so does she. Her husband only bought it for her because he cheated on her with..."

Showing off, acting like a silly girl. Her mother would always cut her off before she spilled any beans -- Mother hated gossip -- but it convinced them at least. She could tell Daddy thought it was neat, and was proud of her, but Mother was so intent on pretending none of this existed that he kept silent. He winked a lot, though.

So the presentation she gave, that afternoon that changed everything, was really the performance of her life. She knew she needed to go to the Sweat, knew that no matter how strange or demanding or off-kilter they were there, she needed to go out among people like her, so she could figure out what she needed to be.

She didn't have a slide projector, but she did have an easel her mother had bought her in the seventh grade, and a big pad of paper. She drew charts and graphs and defined strange words for them, handed them both literature from the Sweat ("The Lodge" was the official name), and tried her hardest to remind them that she loved them, and was grateful to them for all they'd given her, and wanted always to stay in touch with them.

"But this is the solution. For all of us. I need to find out more about who I am, and you guys need to go back to your lives. I promise I will come home when I've got it under control, and we can do all the things we used to do. I want to make you proud. I can't do that until I figure this stuff out. And this is the only place I can find that will help me do that."

They looked at her strangely, as they always did when she talked the same way she thought. They were so used to teenagers, and to her before-self, talking like children. She tried to be that way for them most of the time, but not now. Not when it was important.

They thanked her graciously, as though she were selling them Tupperware door-to-door, and locked themselves in their bedroom. That was what they always did when they needed to have a meeting. Heaven forbid they actually discuss their family in front of their child. But while that usually left her steaming, feeling left out, today she was glad. Without their daughter in the room, maybe Daddy would be more inclined to stand up for her.

After about two hours -- with some audible wailing from behind the door, although Nadine was scrupulously careful not to listen in with her gift when her parents were alone -- her parents came out and agreed with her. They didn't know what she was, and she could tell they practically didn't care, but they knew how hard life had been since the "accident" that left her apparently comatose for a couple of years. For them, and for her.

She knew within seconds, from their faces and quiet voices, that she was going. She was able to pick up, again, on how frustrated they were. Not just for her sake, but for their own. At first that drove her nuts -- they were parents, how dare they be irritated with their child? -- but she'd come to appreciate it. They were just people, like her. If she was allowed to be freaked out and vulnerable and scared and angry at the lot life had handed her, shouldn't they be allowed the same latitude?

Parents were supposed to give you everything, supposed to be tireless and patient and kind and good. She was angry at having to think about the fact that they got angry and tired just like normal people. But on the other side -- feeling it first-hand, how helpless and sad they were to be in over their own heads -- she got over it. They were just people.

And that meant she had to be tireless, and patient, and kind and good like them. And that meant saying goodbye, even though it felt like she was going to die, because she had a certain kind of wisdom on her side. Knowing what it was like, inside their heads -- and knowing she'd never be able to forget it, just like everybody else she'd swallowed that horrible year -- made it easier to forgive them, for not being strong enough. Nobody was strong enough. Nobody should have to be.

Take feelings out of the equation, her feelings for wanting her parents to be perfect, their feelings about being inadequate and horrible parents, and you just had one solution: she needed to go. She needed to go to the witches. She should have just explained that first, but she didn't want her parents to know how much of them she'd seen. She was ashamed enough to know their secrets; knowing she knew would probably kill them both.

It's hard to be kind and patient and tireless when you can't tell somebody how kind and patient and tireless you're being. On the other hand, that's good practice, because when people need you to be kind and patient with them, the last thing they want is to hear about it. So she sat quietly, loving them with all her heart, while they talked and talked and talked and finally admitted the truth: all three of them would better off, if she left.

So she did.

 

 

The train was a nightmare: too many dreams, too many memories, for even her defenses. The worst were the people that were like her, they were the hardest to blank out. It seemed like everybody, men and women, even kids her age, all had a Garrison Peachtree in their hearts.

Catch a person in the moment of reverie, imagination, daydreaming, and you'd be surprised how often their thoughts turned to love. Those brain-dead moments we all forget when they are done, that's when we're transmitting the strongest. And where better to indulge that dreamy side than on a train? She should have taken a plane. They're a million times faster, and most people just go to sleep without daydreaming on a plane.

But it wasn't so bad. Some of the thoughts were funny, or sexy; not too many of them were actually scary. There was a guy a few cars back who apparently had killed some people in some war -- or was it for fun? -- and for some reason he was broadcasting pretty loud. But on the whole, they were just people. It was nice practice, to shut them out, and knowing them inside made her love them more.

Sometimes it felt like Nadine could burst with love, just seeing who people were. Where they came from, how they got there, their parents, their loves, their thoughts, the books they'd read, the things that changed the way they thought. She loved them, and she knew what they knew, and those two things made her bigger. She liked that feeling.

It wasn't small and silly, like her love of Garrison Peachtree, and it wasn't so big or ugly that it threatened to split her seams. Loving people for who they were was just the right size. She felt like Goldilocks, being in love with everybody just the right amount. Not too hot and not too cold. She wondered if she'd ever marry.

And when they got off the train and she saw the hand-lettered sign, NADINE BLUMENTHAL, and saw the cozy-looking woman holding it, she forgot all of that. A whole new group of people to love.

"Nadine? I'm Winter Horse," said the woman. She had silver hair, in a brush cut, and her clothes were fitted and immaculate. Mother would have called her a lesbian, and for a moment Nadine was worried -- what if she was getting herself into something? -- but the hug that immediately followed was so warm, and soft, and loving, that Nadine forgot to be afraid. Winter Horse was like a regular person's mother, and seemed willing to give that away. It was something to behold.

Winter Horse drove her in that old beat-up, rusty diesel truck to the Farm, another name for the Sweat that Nadine found was only ever used by the old-timer staff like Winter Horse, talking idly as she went. The dogs, the cattle, the goats, the animals. Winter Horse relished talking about animals, and had updated Nadine on their habits and recent medical history before they were outside the city limits. Nadine wondered if she had a partner, a lady-partner perhaps, and what they did when they got home from work. Granola or oatmeal for high tea -- Mother was big on high tea -- and then grilled or stir-fried vegetables, and then they'd feed the dogs or walk them, and then they would come and say goodnight to the children of the Sweat. It sounded nice, not at all creepy.

Or maybe they would light candles, out in the woods, or draw strange symbols on the ground in chalk, and light bonfires, and jump over them naked. Their fifty-year-old bosoms would flop in the misty night as they jumped, and they would sing weird chanting songs. She'd read up on witches, wondering if they'd make her become one.

Or maybe it was nothing so dramatic. Maybe Winter Horse was like a nun at Sacred Virgin, and slept all alone on a cot in a room with one window. There wouldn't be a cross on the wall, necessarily, but maybe something else as its only adornment. Maybe a St. Bridgid's cross, like a knotting of wheat sheaves. And maybe every night she would bless it, and say thanks, and send warm dreams and soft songs out among the children, and they would all sleep. So peacefully, all through the night. And in the morning they could cook together, and sing songs together, and play mental magic tricks on each other, and learn who they were and how to do it, every single day.

Her new family, she thought avidly, and then quashed the thought. Her new school, summer camp, her new academy, her new club. Like the old days of popularity and cheerleading, before the accident and after. Not a family, she already had one of those. No use getting silly.

THREE: ELEMENTAL REACTIONS

 

The driver was weird. Good-weird, but weird. Nadine wondered what the rest of the staff of the Halcyon Clinic could be like, if this was their emissary.

He was dressed like a Viet Nam veteran. He was twenty years too young to be one, but that's how he was dressed. His light-brown hair was down past his collar, gathered partly into a ponytail, but the rest hung down. There were small braids scattered throughout, and later during the drive she'd realize they had strange things woven into them: quartz crystals and beads, tiny transistors, circuit breakers like you'd get for an old car's dashboard. He was wearing a Bahama shirt, open to his chest, and several necklaces. Around one wrist was a leather strap and something that looked like one of those copper magnetic bracelets you'd get at a gas station or a tourist trap on the islands. His goatee was starting to go wild. He had piercing blue eyes that never seemed to settle on anything.

He fixed his eyes firmly on the space just above her left shoulder as they approached. He wasn't waving a sign or anything, but between the Halcyon logo on the car and the fact that he was probably psychic, she figured he knew who she was.

"Nadine Blumenthal?"

She smiled and nodded, unnerved by the way he wouldn't meet her eyes.

"This is my friend Apache Tear. They told me she could come..."

He nodded and looked at Apache appraisingly.

"The buddy system. We encourage it. I'll get your bags."

Nadine looked at Apache while he was struggling with their luggage, and was unsurprised to see her best friend grinning appreciatively. Of course this burnout was just Apache's type. They always were. If he had a motorcycle or a bad credit history, she'd probably propose to him before they reached their destination.

He was cute, though, in kind of a thai-stick throwback way. He certainly seemed more on the ball than their neighbor Kid Joe, the only pothead Nadine could remember meeting in her adult life. There was something soft about them both, something warm and uncomplicated and sweet. But then, Holden had seemed that way too.

He rolled down all the windows without asking, but the weather was so mild and bright that Nadine wouldn't complain. She looked over her shoulder at Apache, whose curly hair was flapping in the breeze, and smiled to see her friend looking so relaxed. She smiled in the wind from the interstate, her face toward the window like a sunflower.

"You're a transmitter."

Nadine blinked and looked at the driver; he was still focusing on her left shoulder.

"I'm a what?"

"I read your file before I left today. Said you are really well-shielded, like you don't pick up many strays, but it didn't say what a strong transmitter you are."

She stared at him, uncomprehending.

"You're thinking really loud. I think your training is going to probably be a lot about that."

"You can hear me thinking?"

"Nadine, when we get to the Clinic everybody's going to."

She blushed. Not even ten miles away from the Clinic and he'd already figured out she was a rube.

"No, nothing like that. Your skills are off the charts. I don't mind telling you Redbud and the others are pretty desperate to have you on the team. You've got nothing to worry about. But it's something ... Most people are transmitting pretty hard when they arrive. If you haven't been around a bunch of psychics too often -- or like in your case, for a long time -- there's no need to really keep it under control. Unless you're an empath, like Grace. Then it can get complicated."

"I don't have any idea what you're talking about."

"Yeah, I know. Sorry. It's a growing field. Not much talk about what happens when we get together in a group like that. Most of the industry right now, that's all they talk about. I have a theory, though..."

Apache snorted in the back seat, and he gave her a smirk through the mirror that was unabashedly sexual. She grinned and looked him in the eye.

"What's your theory?"

"Well, there's always been people with natural gifts, like your friend. They only started turning up regularly in the last thirty years or so. Then comes all the studying and theorizing, and eventually you've got clinics like Halcyon sprouting up around us. But it's still new science, and people don't usually think rationally about new science. Like, the thing that nobody's really noticing is how seldom you get too many psychics born in one place. They seem naturally spread out."

Nadine nodded. It had been lonely.

"But now that we're coming together, at the clinics, or on the internet, it's a different story. You can learn a lot about an element, like oxygen or hydrogen, but you don't really know the whole story until you start seeing them interact."

He jerked his head up to the rearview mirror again, and gave Apache another look.

"Chemistry. Yeah."

They laughed. Nadine was getting irritated.

"So what are you, a doctor?"

"Yeah, gosh."

He held out a hand and she shook it.

"I'm Hamilton Aldrin. You can call me Buzz. I'm on staff at Halcyon, like you. Hopefully."

He kept driving for awhile, so Nadine cleared her throat.

"And what's your ... thing?"

"My thing. Well, I am good with machines."

"Like a mechanic?"

"Like a horse whisperer."

"That's a job? You talk to cars?"

"Um, also trucks and vans. And planes. At the clinic mostly I help people with those kinds of problems. Also aliens, silicon intelligences, people from the future, time travel issues, new life forms. So yeah."

She wondered if he were kidding. She kind of hoped he wasn't. In the backseat, she could feel Apache losing interest by the second. Aliens, that would have been the last straw.

"Aliens, huh."

Buzz nodded. "It's a lot easier to communicate telepathically across vast galactic distances than it is to actually go there. Way less expensive, too. You spend a lot less on gas when you're just picking up the phone."

Nadine grinned. "So what are the aliens up to these days?"

He shook his head. He didn't seem offended -- more tired, than anything else.

"I don't talk about that stuff. Too easy to get joked with. I don't actually talk about my independent research very often at all. It's all about the patients. But I'll tell you this. When we're sitting in the lobby of the clinic having coffee three weeks from now, and somebody walks in that's a powerful psychic, shooting brain beams all over the place loud as anything, they're going to be your problem. But if they are also getting contacted -- or maybe they just think they're getting contacted -- by alien intelligences from across the stars, that's my problem too. Whether or not it's true..."

"It's all about the patients. I see what you mean."

He nodded, pleased to have gotten out of discussing what was clearly a sore subject.

"...Three weeks, you said?"

"Not three weeks exactly. It's going to be a Tuesday, and today's a Friday, so that's a little bit more than three weeks."

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah. You'll be wearing a sort of teal wrap shirt, with khaki pants. I'll be wearing my favorite shirt, coincidentally, and some brown Birks. We'll both be drinking black coffee because the creamer will have gotten curdled thanks to some ... I think it's a poltergeist situation, some little girl on the fourth floor, I can't tell what she'll be up to yet."

"This is a little bit more than three weeks from now, you say?"

"Yeah."

"So why not just pick up some extra creamer, or like, psychically protect the creamer, if you know everything that's going to happen?"

"First of all, that's not my job. And secondly, I don't know everything that's going to happen. I know what the patient looks like, and I know he's going to hit you hard when he walks in, because you'll still be freaking out about something I can't see yet. You won't have your defenses up. We'll be good friends by then, so you'll feel safe, and that's how he gets you."

"Gets me?" Nadine started looking around for the door handle.

"Oh, come on. Just for a second. You won't even spill your coffee."

"I don't drink black coffee, Buzz."

"You will. Way things go in the clinic, you'll be looking for an IV of the stuff. Creamer doesn't matter, where we're going."

Apache finally burst out laughing, in a strangled voice that meant she'd been holding it in for awhile. What Nadine always called the Church Giggles.

"You both sound like total freaks!"

The three of them laughed for a long while, driving down the highway. When it finally died down, Nadine rolled her eyes at Apache in the mirror.

"I know what you're thinking."

"Why, because I'm a 'transmitter'?"

"No, because I was thinking the same thing my first day."

"I haven't even taken the job yet."

"True. But I know what you're thinking."

"And what's that?"

"That you've walked into Crazytown, and I'm the Mayor."

"Buzz, you seem nice and I don't mean to be rude, but you're not exactly giving me much else to work with."

"Okay. Three weeks' time, you tell me."

"Deal."

Please. In three weeks, she and Apache wouldn't even be joking about these guys. They'd have gone through all the jokes there were, twice, and wouldn't have anything left to say. But when Nadine looked at Apache in the rearview mirror, to roll her eyes again, Apache had the strangest expression on her face. Like she was considering this man all over again, from another angle.

 

 

He dropped them off with their bags at the front of the clinic to park the car with the fleet, promising to be back in five. Apache lit up a cigarette immediately, but Nadine wasn't interested. She wanted to dish.

"So. Buzz Aldrin. My esteemed coworker."

"Honey, you have to take this job."

Nadine's jaw hit the floor. "What?"

"I don't know. In the car, that stuff about the aliens and the coffee and stuff... Maybe it's not all..."

"Patch, you can't do this to me. I count on you to save me from BS, not get on board with it."

"It just reminded me of home, that's all. He believes it. You do too. You're trying to pretend you don't, because you think I'll make fun of you, but... It's like being back there."

Nadine knew what she meant.

"But if I take the job, that means I move here. You're two hours away. What, are you going to come with? I can put you up in my apartment and tell them you're my lesbian lover. You could get benefits and cook for me when I come home."

"I think I would poison you after a week."

"I was just thinking that."

"But... Would it be so bad? What have you got to come back to?"

"Um, my best friend -- who seems to have been taken over by pod people from outer space, but if she gets it together and rejoins us on planet Earth any time soon -- my best friend, my house, our neighborhood..."

"It's only an hour and a half, less if I speed..."

"-- Which you always do..."

"And I mean, we just rent. You've barely unpacked your stuff and it's been almost a year since you got that place. And the neighborhood? Please. You're going to miss Kid Joe? And Jewelry Lady?"

Jewelry Lady lived at the end of the block with one million cats, and was famous for buying all the jewelry ever sold on one particular home shopping network. She was on the news once for it. Nobody knew where her money came from -- Apache Tear said she had murdered six husbands and collected insurance on all of them -- but almost everybody liked to go over there sometimes, with a coffee cake or something, and let her show them all her jewels. They made her happy the way children made other people happy. Nadine loved the Jewelry Lady, because she couldn't think of anything in her life that made her as happy as ugly TV jewelry did her. Apache said that was the saddest thing she had ever heard, but Nadine knew she loved Jewelry Lady for the same reason.

"No, I think if I take this job you have to come with me. You haven't got much to go back to either, if you're going to get personal about it."

Apache spat on the ground and smiled ferociously.

"Are you asking me to marry you, Blumenthal?"

"No, I'm asking you to be my live-in maid. Money they're offering, I could let you live in the poolhouse."

Apache Tear did a little dance of joy for her friend -- she loved money -- but Nadine suddenly realized she was being serious. She wasn't joking, suddenly, about bringing Apache with her.

"Apache, I'm terrified."

"You've always been terrified. Of everything."

"No, I mean... You were right. It feels too much like the Sweat. It feels too much like home. It's going to be just like you said, I'll stop drinking and smoking, and my ears will get pointy..."

"Forget what I said. I didn't know what I was talking about. He wasn't wearing Heaven's Gate sneakers, he was wearing filthy Birkenstocks. And if he's not a stoner I'll eat my wig. And obviously you'll still be drinking coffee ... in three weeks' time..."

She said this last in a spooky voice, with her hands hanging before her like Nosferatu's claws. They were cracking up in front of the place, out in front of everybody, when Buzz came back around the building, smiling hugely.

"So you're in?"

"I haven't even gotten a tour yet."

He shook his head.

"You're in."

"We'll see," Nadine said. There was something so irritating about psychics when they pulled that crap.

"There's a great two-bedroom in my complex that just opened up. We've got a pool, and the apartment has its own deck and study. It's expensive, but you could handle it."

Apache looked at Nadine, shrugging.

"Lady says I come with, I come with."

"Patch, it's not like that. We're just joking around."

"Eh, so am I. We'll see. I really do like this weather..."

"It's like this year-round," Buzz said helpfully.

"And the beach..."

"Beach we got," he smiled.

"And new neighbors -- much better than the old ones..."

"You have no idea," he said, looking into her eyes.

Nadine threw her hands into the air, disgusted with them both.

"Just give me the g.d. tour before you two start planning how to decorate my apartment, please."

They grinned behind Nadine as she shuffled her bags awkwardly into the front lobby, huffing and puffing. Apache shouldered her bags, and Buzz darted over to grab a few of Nadine's, but she barely registered the kind movement. She was too busy looking around for a bathroom she could use. Her bra strap was digging like a monster.

 

FOUR: LIKE A FEVER

 

Nadine's sixteenth birthday party was, to understate it a little, a disaster. They'd postponed it a couple of weeks after her return home from the hospital so she could, as her mother said, "get her bearings." She and her mother both knew it was really Mom that needed to get her bearings. It was strange having a daughter again, after two years, and a little hard.

Nadine never learned exactly what they told people in her absence. She knew there were all kinds of stories -- an attack, a secret abortion, a convent, a mental hospital -- but she also knew her mother must have come up with something better. Something glamorous and Frances Hodgson Burnett-inspired, knowing her mother. She'd been born much too late for anything really good, like scarlet fever or tuberculosis, but she didn't really think that would slow her mother down.

The first week, her parents tiptoed around her without even speaking to each other, afraid of setting her off. They'd been resistant to Sylvia's explanations of the psychic struggles their daughter had gone through, and of course in those days the official medical explanation had come down to something like acute schizophrenia, so they were just as lost and confused as they had been the last two years.

But Nadine felt solid, like a rock. She was connected to the ground beneath her little house, and nobody could shake it. And once she realized the bad feelings were closer to guilt than anything else, she just felt sorry for them.

She followed through on her promise to befriend Perry, and soon had him following her everywhere she went, like the sweetest puppy. He was sharp, and funny, and never too annoying, even though he was younger. She felt so much older than everybody around her, grownups included, that she could hardly believe she'd ever hated him just for being a little kid.

The twins across the street were fascinated by her, and would often show up at the door, but after two years she just didn't find them as glamorous as she used to. It became a game, with them, of giving them too little information -- or too much -- and watching them hash out ever-stranger explanations for her. She was sure they were at the root of the rumors all over town, but she soon learned to enjoy her notoriety, and didn't hold it against them.

The second week, she returned to school. And while she respected her little house and didn't spy too much on other people's minds, she didn't see a problem with taking a dip now and then. It certainly helped her overcome the shyness that had always held her back, although she stayed quiet. It was just so hard to be afraid of people, even mean people, bullies, when you could see how much they held inside them. Bad things, things that made you feel sorry for them, but good things too. By the weekend of her birthday party, she was actually something akin to popular.

Her parents wouldn't let her invite any boys, even though most of the girls in the class had done so at their own birthdays. She didn't really mind that either, as long as Perry was there and the girls were nice to him. But that Friday, an astonishing thing happened that ended up changing everything.

Garrison Peachtree, the tallest boy in their class, walked up to her as school was letting out, and asked if he could come to her party. She couldn't believe he had even heard of it, but she was still sorting out the ways and means of popularity. She blurted out a yes before she'd thought twice about it. He was very good-looking, and he was good at sports. The boys all looked up to him, and all the girls giggled about him, but Nadine just honestly liked him. She liked looking at him, but she also liked the things he said in class.

She was a very skinny girl -- although when she filled out, later, it was dramatic -- and she never said anything in class. So even though she knew exactly what she liked about him, and all the things he would like about her if he knew them, she couldn't figure out what he did like about her. Was it just that the other girls liked her? That seemed dull. It was curiosity that led her to invite him, more than anything else.

But Friday night, and all Saturday, her thoughts turned to other things. What if Garrison Peachtree really did see something special in her? What if he had reasons that went beyond her mysterious past and her newfound popularity? Not that he had special gifts, necessarily -- although the possibility made her swoon -- but what if that thing, the mysterious thing that was starting to make the boys ask the girls out on dates, what if that thing had happened to him? What if Garrison Peachtree had chosen her, out of all the girls in the world, or at least the school, to go with him?

By Saturday night, she had decided she was in love with Garrison Peachtree. She seemed to dream of him all night, recalling funny little details she never could have produced in the light of day. The tiny near-black mole on his bronzed left forearm, for example, that hid in the crook of his elbow for much of the day. Or the way his hair always seemed two weeks past a trim, and how it got in his eyes when he was studying. Or the way his shoes were scuffed so oddly: when he sat at his desk, he'd often tip his toes down and balance his feet on them, carelessly, and you could see by the way it was wearing that he must walk on the outside of his feet, like he was ice skating all the time.

In the morning, the morning of the party, she was so entranced -- she'd woken still smelling a ghost, a memory of him -- that she found the courage to tell her mother she'd invited a boy. One special boy, besides Perry, from their class. And she wouldn't hear any protests. Her mother was so shocked she didn't even say anything, just nodded and tried to find a goodie bag that wasn't pink or purple. Nadine was proud, of herself and her mother, for moving on with life.

By the end of the night, she wished they hadn't.

Things started easily, with girls arriving in ones and twos. She kept an eye on Perry at first, but soon it was clear she needn't worry: the girls passed him from lap to lap like a doll or a rabbit at Easter, cooing over his long eyelashes and the worldly jokes he made in his tiny voice. It was like watching a ventriloquist's act, with party dresses.

They played four games, and were just cutting into the cake when Garrison Peachtree arrived. She hadn't told the girls he was coming -- she wanted it to be a surprise, to show them that she was more than her mysteries and secrets, that she was just like them -- and the entranced, shocked looks on their faces was reward enough. But when he came to her, with his gift in his hand, and kissed her on the cheek in one unrehearsed, awkward moment, she felt her heart might burst.

Over his shoulder, she could see things changing.

The girls put down Perry and stepped away from the cake in a single body, holding out their arms romantically toward Garrison Peachtree like the girls in an Esther Williams swimming pool. It was creepy. They practically levitated toward him, floating along on a breeze of love. Nadine's mother appeared in the doorway of the kitchen, demanding to be introduced to their new guest. Perry stared at him from the corner, his dark eyes dilated, almost black.

The bricks in Nadine's little house started to fade a little bit, at the corners, as she felt all their thoughts and feelings echoing back through her. Was it her doing this to them? Or were they doing it to her? What had she done wrong?

With a thought, she slammed every door and every window in her little house, and ran to the rocking chair, hoping to calm down enough to set it right. As the girls crowded around Garrison Peachtree, he started to get scared, and looked at Nadine as though she could protect him. She nodded. Even though he didn't know it, she was going to try.

Soon enough, the spell broke, like a fever, and everyone relaxed. The light came back into their eyes. But Nadine was too afraid, of losing control again, and she couldn't bring herself to come back down the stairs of her little house, away from the stained-glass window and into the sunlight of the waking world. She stood in the corner for a moment, looking at the girls as if she barely recognized them, and then excused herself.

Soon enough, her mother's rat-tat-tat came knocking at the door, and she let herself in.

"Honey, your guests are getting anxious."

"They're going to get a lot more than that if I go back downstairs, Mother."

"Darling, what happened? Everything seemed to be going well. And that boy you invited, well..."

Nadine shook her head.

"The party was a bad idea. Garrison Peachtree is a terrible idea. I can't go back out there. Please, Mother. Tell them the party's over."

"I won't let you do this, Nadine Blumenthal. I won't let you ruin this party. Not after how hard you've been working to get better. This is the perfect opportunity to..."

"--To what, Mother? Prove that I'm not crazy? I already know I'm not crazy. The only person that still needs convincing is you."

"Nadine. Your father and I love you, we're not..."

"I don't need... Mother, I know you love me. I'm not asking for you to love me any more than you do. I'm telling you what I need. I need that party to be over. I need you to send everybody home."

"I won't do it, Nadine. I can't continue to make excuses for you."

"You're so interested in making sure everybody else doesn't think I'm crazy, because of what it says about you. I'm an embarrassment to you."

"You're not an embarrassment, you're my little girl. And right now you're being silly."

"No, what's silly is that you still won't admit what's going on. What I can do."

"What you can do, young lady, is march yourself downstairs and be a hostess. That's something to be proud of. It's not something to be taken lightly."

"Mother, I adore you, but you're talking like it's the '50s. There's nothing grand about being a hostess. Not unless it's all you have."

"That's a rude thing to say."

"There's more where that came from."

"What did they do to you in that place? Where did my little girl go?"

"She's sitting right here, in front of you, in full possession of her faculties, telling you that she needs you to do something. Your daughter needs something from you, and it's something hard. She knows that. But she knows you love her, and you'll figure something out. I'm right here, Mom. I'm not going anywhere."

"You sound so grown up."

"I feel grown up."

"You're only sixteen."

"That's not exactly true anymore, Mommy."

"-- I don't know what you..."

"Not important. Just get rid of them, please. I will make it up to you."

"...Even Perry?"

"Perry can stay."

This is the first thing Nadine remembered. When it was all over, years later, when Grace finally named her baby Virginia, when they'd pulled Future Buzz back across the line, and Michael was married to the King of the City Beneath, and Claire and Jeremiah Tarquin finally told their secret, this was still the first thing she remembered. She'd spend years and effort trying to reach further back, she'd go through hypnotism and past-life regression, trying to catch pieces of what it was like, but this was as far back as she could ever seem to go: 

She was standing on a tarmac, below a steel-grey sky. There was the hum and thrill of machinery in the distance, but she could see nothing. It was like music. The grass along the edge of the paving was white, like snow; it danced in the breeze. The sun was like a silver platter, hung in the sky against the iron. She was wearing white, and facing a lot full of gravel. She came closer, and there it was: the Big Dig. A great hole in the world, that went all the way down into darkness. Here on the pavement she was safe; there, across a line of ice-white grass, was death.

Once it was a little house.

---

BOOK ONE: HALCYON

 

CHAPTER ONE: GIRL'S NIGHT

 

There were blue sparks all along Apache Tear's bracelet. It was a strange, coiled serpent, in some black metal or stone. Nadine had never touched it, but she'd always liked seeing it on her best friend's wrist. It seemed friendly, and old. There were places where its eyes used to be, on either side of the serpent's head -- she assumed there had been jewels there once. It seemed to smile. And sometimes, at night, like tonight, it threw off faint blue sparks that only Nadine could see. Nadine could barely pay attention to their discussion, for all the sparks. Apache couldn't even sense them, but there they were, trailing off into the night.

The two women were sitting on Apache's back porch, drinking home-mixed margaritas and smoking from a pack of cigarettes they'd bought, guilty, earlier that evening. It was Girl's Night, Apache said, and this was apparently what was done on Girl's Night: Drink tequila until three in the morning and smoke silly skinny white cigarettes, full of cotton like long cartoon tampons, barely producing any smoke at all.

"First you stop smoking," Apache said. Nadine smiled privately: this wasn't smoking. Smoking was like down on the Sweat, back when they were kids: hand-rolled, harsh tobacco, homegrown, strong as a skunk and a shock to the system. But Apache did love her girly smokes.

Nadine grinned and raised her glass to the sky. "Never!"

They were drinking from silly commemorative margarita glasses Apache had gotten long ago in Mexico. The stems branched out like saguaro cactus, green glass, and then a wide, wide brim. Apache had been insistent that she mix the drinks, and they were incredibly strong, although the lemon and mix they'd used was almost more overpowering. Nadine had never spent an entire night on margaritas before. She liked the feeling.

The point of Girl's Night, Apache said, was to celebrate changes. Promotions, divorces: anything good and big. Big and good. But nothing particularly good, or big, had ever happened to either of them.

"Then you stop drinking. Alcohol. You start drinking tea and things that takes like grass, and dirt. Green tea and fish oil and black tea. Kombucha."

Apache threw one dramatic hand out on the last word, her bracelet sparking in the blue-white streetlight. Nadine wondered what Apache would say if she mentioned it.

"Really? Because ..."

Apache loved to hear about Nadine's visions; the way a bracelet could throw off blue sparks into the night or a simple pearl earring could catch the sun like a wave, telling secrets and singing songs, but they both knew she didn't really believe.

"Then? No more coffee. No cigarettes, no alcohol, no caffeine. Who will you be then? That's like 99% of your daily intake."

True enough. But Nadine Blumenthal spent most of her teen years in foster care with a Wiccan commune down south in California, learning to control her abilities. She knew what would happen if she lost control, so she didn't.

"They're doctors, surely they ..."

"Then they've got you meditating before you know it, and glowing with a beautiful inner light all the time and being boring all the time..."

"Doctors have to drink coffee. They have to."

Everybody drank coffee. Didn't they? Nadine lived on the stuff, lived for it every morning. That first taste of the day, that bitter hot caress. She knew Apache didn't love coffee the way she did. If she'd had other friends she could ask them.

"Then you stop having sex. Then you start wearing white. Your hair falls out..."

"-- What are you even talking about now? It sounds like a cult."

"That's because it is. You start wearing white, your hair falls out and your ears get pointy. You wear special sneakers that look like everybody else's sneakers. And then..."

"And then, the Kool-Aid?"

"And then, the Kool-Aid."

The thing Nadine had always loved best about her friend Apache, ever since they were girls together in the Sweat, was her complete distrust of anything resembling a group. When Nadine had come to the Sweat, terrified and convinced her parents hated her, feeling like a monster or worse, the first thing she'd seen was Apache Tear grinning at her, daring her not to take the Sweat seriously. She'd saved her sanity, if not her life.

"I really don't think that's how it goes."

"Hey, it's your intellectual funeral. Remember Jane Crow?"

Jane was another friend on the Sweat; a fourteen-year-old runaway, the most glamorous thing the younger girls had ever seen. The day she left, her eighteenth birthday, had been as monumental an occasion for Apache and Nadine as it had been for her. That story hadn't ended well.

Really, it hadn't ended at all: they'd heard stories -- rumors, gossip -- about what happened to Jane after she left, but nobody could say for sure. Some said she'd joined the White Sisterhood, become a weirdo or an assassin, that she'd joined the Church, that she had gotten into drugs and overdosed... There were as many stories about Jane Crow after she left as there were before, but at least before she turned eighteen Nadine knew which stories were true and which ones were embellished. Usually by Apache, who'd always seen Jane as a movie star lost in their midst.

"Jane Crow was a lunatic long before she got involved in... And besides, this isn't like, spiritualism, it's science. It's not a cult."

"It's not science either."

What they taught on the Sweat was that it was science: unmapped, still mysterious, still an opportunity to learn and delve, but a science nonetheless. A science, or world of sciences, that had been ignored until the 1960s because of sexism and fear of women's power. That was the party line of the Sweat, and Nadine believed it.

Ninety percent of what they taught on the Sweat, Nadine thought was bull. Silly fantasies and metaphors and wishes and dreams. But she believed in herself, and in what she could do. Those blue sparks and waves, the way they turned and sparkled in the light, and what she could do with them, when she concentrated. The women and soft men of the Sweat taught her to do that. And even when she laughed at their silly superstitions, their witchcraft and shamanic chants and dreamcatchers, she knew that the lessons they taught her had made the difference.

"Come on, you've seen my results. You've seen what I can do."

"I've seen those creeps on the news, too. They all look like they have orgies. Half of them I can't tell if they're men or women."

"So they have these transgender orgies, but they're also celibate?"

"Yeah, like, that's how weird they are. Like maybe they have brain orgies."

"The fact that you just invented brain orgies makes you creepier than they ever could be. And really, it's not... I've talked to some of them on the phone and it doesn't seem that way. They just seem like ... doctors."

"Like creepy sex doctors that do sex voodoo?"

"No, like boring regular doctors that are always tired and think they're smarter than God and spend forty hours in the emergency room before they can sleep."

"Doing creepy sex voodoo instead of medicine."

"From what they were saying, I think they think of it as medicine."

"They would."

Apache was on thin ice, now. She was pressing the bruise, knowing how Nadine felt about hospitals and clinics. Just walking into them was like walking into a thousand ugly concerts at once, and that wasn't even counting her natural aversion to the places. She didn't have comforting memories of them. Not that anyone ever did, but even Nadine considered her memories worse than most.

"Patch, come on. You've known me since we were kids. You know what I can do."

"Yeah, but you can do it here. All that stuff, you already do. You don't need to..."

"I have to get out, Patch. I need a new ... start, I need to get away from Holden, all that stuff. I really think what they're offering me..."

Not that she knew what the Halcyon Clinic was offering, or wanted from her. Not really. She knew she was one of the better-known psychics on the west coast -- she regularly fielded, meaning screened, meaning ignored, calls from investigative and law-enforcement agencies looking for her help -- and on paper she knew she could be an asset to their team.

When the metaphysical clinics had started multiplying, she'd often indulged fantasies of sending in a resume, with her parapsychology results attached; she'd often thought about being rescued from her ordinary life. But there are dreams, and then there are realities. Nadine Blumenthal's life was about knowing the difference.

"-- I support you in whatever you decide to do. I'm just saying, when the weird orgies start and you find yourself meditating instead of watching TV, don't call me."

Then came the call.

"I will always call you."

"And when it shows up on caller ID as CREEPY SCARY CULT, you'll see I don't always answer."

But Apache Tear would. Sitting on this porch, practically in the dark, mesmerized by the tequila and the sparks and twists of light all around Apache -- the light blue of her worry and care about Nadine's next step, the deeper indigo of her loneliness and fear that Nadine would leave forever; the red we don't talk about -- Nadine knew Apache Tear would never abandon her. She'd known it the first time she ever saw her, when they were girls: it was written all over her face.

"Patch?"

"Yeah, Nade."

"Will you come with me? To look at the clinic?"

Apache shivered, with feigned horror and barely concealed delight and intrigue.

"Like, take a tour with you? In the freaky belly of the scary beast?"

"Yeah. Or you could say it more like, 'In the state-of-the-art metaphysical medicine facility.' Like, when we're there, maybe you could lay off the cult talk."

"They'll have all the cult talk we can handle on their own, I bet."

"So will you? I'm kind of nervous."

"You should be."

"Yeah."

"Of course I will go with you. Somebody's gotta watch out for you. I've seen you in hospitals before."

Nadine Blumenthal had only been in a hospital twice. The second time was when her grandmother died -- the only person with the name Blumenthal who'd been strong enough to stay in touch when she was going through the rough times. Walking through those halls to see her grandmother off had been like the Little Mermaid, walking on knife blades. She had spent about ten minutes inside, total, before getting a nurse to wheel Grandma outside, so they could say goodbye in the sun.

The first time Nadine Blumenthal was in a hospital, it was for considerably longer.

"They said there are buffers and stuff, like, they keep it all walled off. And nobody's, you know, physically injured. Beyond the terminal cases, and pain management, it's all internal trauma."

"Sounds like a blast."

"Sounds necessary, Patch. I have to get out of here."

"Show me the brochure again?"

 

HALCYON CLINIC

Making Dreams Reality

 

The Halcyon Clinic is one of fifty facilities across the United States built in the last five years in response to new developments in parapsychological and metaphysical medicine.

Our philosophy: As many things can go wrong with the human soul as with the human body. By the same token, as many things can go right!

Our medicine and training are concentrated on the fact that these ills can be treated spiritually with much less invasive or traumatic procedures. With ceremonial, shamanic, psychic and traditional training and experience dating back to the dawn of time, we can make a difference.

Our highly trained technicians and doctors are the best in their fields, covering everything from the body to the soul including psionic and aural management, truth-telling, memory retrieval, mental adaptation; identity trauma, personal trauma, soul healing; communication and intimacy, spirit guides, inner voices and mediation, soul-trading; technomancy, transhumanism, new lifeforms, time travel and cosmic issues; sexual and reproductive dysfunction, animal spirits, shapeshifting issues, life force reconnections; terminal illness, pain management, afterlife issues, spiritual and emotional closure; historical trauma, shamanism and dreamtime issues, and spiritual and mental anchoring.

 

"See? Cult."

 

TWO: THE LITTLE GIRL IN THE LITTLE ROOM

 

Her bra strap was digging into her shoulder. All the way on the plane ride there, all the way down the terminal to the baggage claim, and out to the white Halcyon car, Apache chuckling and babbling merrily the whole way. She'd had two rum and diets on the flight, but that wasn't all. She also knew how overwhelming crowds could be for Nadine, and often assumed a protective posture whenever they threatened to swallow her up.

Apache probably didn't know she did it. Nadine often thought, growing up, that Apache had a few secret talents of her own. But whenever she'd tried to talk about it, Apache would get quiet, or change the subject, and her aura would swiftly change color, marbling like smoke in bright light, and Nadine would drop the subject. She hadn't brought up Apache's talents in years.

Apache liked all that stuff, though, the same way she liked living in her dingy little apartment and covering it in knickknacks like some crazy old lady. The same way she liked to wear outlandish jewelry, huge turquoise earrings and giant silver bangles, and broaches on her sweaters of dolphins or kittens. Nadine knew she looked down on other women that dressed that way, like the women in the Sweat, but she knew that was why Apache did it. It was costumery. It was like dressing up, for her. She felt warmly toward those women, too.

Apache was the same about magic things, or religious things. She looked down her nose at it, but secretly thought it was cute. Unbelievable, and superstitious, but kind of neat. She liked it when people believed in stuff, even though she didn't think any of it applied to her. Even when Nadine used her talents, which they both knew were real, Apache would always smile, and shake her head, and call Nadine her Little Witch, or Dr. Blumenthal Medicine Woman, or sometimes -- Nadine didn't like this one -- Dances With Bull.

But even with all that, Nadine knew that when they walked into a shopping mall, or the airplane terminal, or a movie theatre, Apache would start talking, trying to distract her. And if it wasn't working, if the voices started to close in, she'd pull out her aqua iPod and hand it to Nadine, without saying anything. And even though it made Nadine feel guilty, like a bad friend, she always accepted, and put them on, to drown out all the sounds nobody else could hear. They never talked about it. There was nothing to talk about.

When Nadine was thirteen years old, she'd woken from a terrible nightmare, sweating, dreaming of things going on next door. They were true things, she knew that, and they were horrible things. The man used to hit his wife when he got angry, which happened when he got drunk, which happened every night. Sometimes you could hear them, through the wall, but when that happened you could just turn up the TV. This was different. It was inside her, happening in her head as it was happening next door.

Then, as she began to wake up more fully, she started to hear the little boy next door on the other side, crying because his parents had found him in his mother's dress, playing pretend, and he'd been locked in his room. The little boy's name was Perry, and Nadine didn't like him too much before that night, because he was a big baby, a tattletale, and Nadine didn't like tattletales. But tonight, she couldn't hate him anymore. Not ever again.

He was wondering if there was something wrong with him. And in the living room, quietly pretending to read a book, his father was wondering the same thing. And upstairs, Perry's mother was crying too, softly, and wondering what the big problem was. She was thinking she'd buy Perry a million dresses if that's what he wanted.

And then across the street, the twins. They were a little bit older than Nadine, just entering high school. They were laughing, and telling the meanest secrets of their classmates. The light around them was green, and a sickly yellow. She could see them if she shut her eyes, on the tummies on a pink ruffled bed, laughing and writing mean things in their junior high yearbooks. They were just starting to get breasts and the attention was making them feel weird about themselves, but they didn't know that yet.

She could hear them, all of them at once. The couple next door, two separate voices shouting silently. Perry, and his mom and dad, all in different rooms, all crying in mysterious voices that they couldn't hear. Nadine could. And the twins, and the people in the house across the alley from the twins, and the people next to them. It spiraled out, and out, faster than she could keep track.

Until it sounded like being in the middle of the biggest orchestra in the world, or inside a great big tympani, being pounded a million times a second. She thought her ears would burst. And all the voices had pictures, too, and colors, and feelings. She was sad like Perry, and scared like his dad, and proud like his mom; curious and mean like the twins, all of it at once. She couldn't tell what was her anymore. That was the worst part.

By the time her mother came to wake her up for breakfast and school, she was swimming in sweat, pushing against the sheets and weeping softly. Her mother thought it was a migraine, especially when she saw her daughter slapping and beating against her temples. She put the curtains down and brought Nadine cool water, and put her hand against her daughter's face; it felt like porcelain. But Nadine could barely feel it: beyond her mother's hand on her cheek, there was her mother looking at her, worried that something was going really wrong. Nadine could see herself, through her mother's eyes, circled and circling her with a cool blue aura, spiked in pinkish-bloody fear, irritated in spite of herself by her daughter's dramatics, helpless and frustrated. She was herself, and everyone in town, and her mother, looking at herself through her mother's eyes. And then she was everyone in the whole county, screaming rainbows.

If you'd asked thirteen-year-old Nadine what ought to happen in such a circumstance, she'd be able to tell you. Nadine loved fantasy and science fiction, comic books and movies about the strange and unbelievable, rockets and psychic phenomena. Ghosts and crystals and unicorns and auras. Nadine could have told you that the human mind can only handle so much before it shuts down, that long before your mind stretches its sparks and tendrils past the county line, you would just go into a nice warm coma. That's what ought to happen.

But the truth, Nadine discovered, in the tiny little room in her head where she was still mostly herself, was much worse. There are no limits to what the human mind can endure. So she stretched further, and further, toward the sunset. And there was no blessed sleep, no coma, no cool hand against her cheek. Just the horror and the pain, the joys and fears and loves, of everyone. Of places and times, and of people. Innocents and guilty, men and women, children and the delirious past and future dreams of the elderly.

By the time they put her in the hospital, and drugged her up with lithium until she drooled, she was most of America. She spent most of her thirteenth year on this planet being most of America, barely reining herselves in at the coasts, stretching up toward Canada and down to Mexico, creaking at her seams. And among all those screaming voices, only one sounded as familiar inside and outside her head, and it was hers.

She spent that year screaming. There were only glimpses: visiting family, friends from school, staring down at her and the maelstrom behind her eyes. They'd turn away, or burst into tears, or hold onto each other and beg her to come back. But she hadn't gone anywhere, that tiny girl in the tiny room wanted to scream: she was right there! She was everywhere, but also in that bed.

A couple of friends, an aunt, had talents of their own, but she was making such a racket they couldn't even get inside. It took another doctor, a woman therapist named Sylvia, who knew the gift and could control it. She was headed upstairs to do normal medical work, having recently quit reading Tarot on the side to devote herself to full-time pediatrics, when she heard Nadine screaming on the third floor. It was the first memory, the first thing she could grasp, and it happened two months after her fifteenth birthday.

"Blumenthal. Nadine Blumenthal. Stop that at once."

She'd felt something like a firm embrace, like a grandmother's paper shoulder, against the sound of her mind and all the others, and a little crack of light in the darkness. But she was still so small, and the world was yet so big.

"You can stop it. I can help you, but you have to do it on your own."

There was a feeling like a thunderclap, and the tiny room she'd been living in got a little bigger. It was like a sound, and a feeling. The light was white, and very bright. It was coming from Sylvia somehow.

"This room, this tiny room you built inside your head. That's where you're going to live, all the time. I know you understand me. What we have to do is fortify its walls. We're going to make you strong, Nadine. You're a strong girl, aren't you?"

Nadine was irritated: surely this woman knew she was doing the best she could. Did she really expect an answer?

Sylvia laughed.

"You're going to be fun, Blumenthal. I can tell."

For the next year, Sylvia sat with Nadine in her room, four hours a day, even on the weekends. To a stranger, it would have looked like a vigil: the pretty, frizzy-haired woman sitting on the chair, and the mindless body of a tortured girl, twisting on the bed. But what was going on, in a place nobody could see, was a lot more like boot camp.

Each day for a year, Sylvia would enter with her lunch, and smile at the orderlies, sit down and say, silently, "Blumenthal. Show me what you've got."

And Nadine would peek out her head from that little room, and step out into the light that Sylvia brought, and show her a new brick in the wall, or a new window through it, or a new door. She hadn't slept since that one awful, hot night. She had a lot of time to work, between Sylvia's visits.

"Adjust that cornice," Sylvia would say, or, "You need better plumbing if you're going to connect that sink down to the first chakra."

And little Nadine, who still couldn't talk yet, would shrug, and Sylvia would show her pictures of what the words meant, and Nadine would smile, and nod, and start to build them.

By her sixteenth birthday, her little room had become a house. A wonderful house, inside, that was safe from all harm, where none of the voices could bother her ever again. She worked so hard on it she knew every nook and cranny, and she held every part of it in her mind at once.

On Nadine's sixteenth birthday, Sylvia came to sit beside her, and put her hand over Nadine's. She'd never touched her, and Nadine got worried. What if something was going wrong? What if she'd messed up somehow and they had to start all over? What if a wolf came, and huffed and puffed, and blew her house all away again? If she had to start over, she wanted to die. And there was no way to accomplish that, not if she couldn't even move her real body.

"I'm sorry, Blumenthal. It's graduation day."

Imaginary Nadine squinted at Imaginary Sylvia in the bright white, and shook her head. Why?

"I think you're ready. This is a good day. But we have to test it. You know what I mean?"

She did. She'd been thinking about it, a lot: how could she possibly step out into the real world again, after two years of madness, and possibly hope to stay solid?

"I'm going to hurt you, Nadine. This is going to hurt. Do you understand?"

Tiny Nadine in the great big house winced. She did. Sylvia had shown her some ways to defend yourself from other people with the gift, and Nadine knew that meant there were ways to hurt people with it. But if the assaults and sounds of the real world were like an orchestra, that sort of thing was like a sonic boom, like when the jets would fly over.

So now Sylvia would be the big bad wolf, and she would huff and puff, and if she didn't blow the house down, Nadine could go home. She could hug her dad again, and feel her mommy's cool hands on her face. She could bake some cookies and take them to Perry next door, and read him romance novels with the dirty parts left out. He would love it.

And if Sylvia did blow the house down, well, she'd be there to catch Nadine, and they could start all over. Nadine thought to herself about how she'd always wanted a sixteenth birthday party. When you turned sixteen that meant you were turning a corner on being a teenager, into being a woman, and everything could begin. And she'd been waiting such a long, long time.

"Blumenthal, do you understand what I'm telling you? It's completely up to you. Are you ready yet? Do you think you're ready?"

She looked around, at the brass key in the front door's lock, at the bars over the first-floor windows, at the lace curtains she'd borrowed from an old dream of her grandmother's. She felt through the floor, at the foundation, concrete fortified with steel, and down into the earth below her house. The pipes that carried water up from the ground, and into the house. She felt around in her attic, the pale sunlight up there, and the beautiful stained-glass window she'd built for it, and the rocking chair before it. She nodded in the white light, and sat down in the chair, and began to rock, slowly.

"Okay. This is going to hurt."

Nadine smiled to herself. It couldn't possibly hurt enough to scare her.