Chasing Before (25 page)

The silence in the gym is complete. Then Wolf gasps and sits up. He reaches for his ridiculous samurai topknot, as if to check that it’s still there, and then skulks back to his seat.

“Now you practice with your partners,” Furukama says. “To start, if you are the attacker, your objective is to find an embarrassing memory. If you are the defender,
your objective is to protect your memories. The practical applications of psychological warfare are many. If you are privy to secret fears, you have ammunition to use in battle.”

Brady and I face off. He stands with his thumbs hooked into his belt loops. “Want to go first? Think you can do better than the poser?” he asks.

“Who couldn’t?” I say with false bravado.

“Furukama makes it seem easy, but then, he’s been at it for five hundred years. Go on. Give it your best.”

I steady myself. The gorge dividing us from Area One seemed pretty insurmountable. I can use that as a moat around my memories so that Brady will have to scale the sheer cliffs to get to them. Once I form the image, I lift my palm to indicate that Brady can start.

When he connects, I don’t rush to access his memories like I would in a normal memory transfer situation. Instead I concentrate on keeping him out while trying to stay moderately aware of my physical body—like a split consciousness. With one half of my mind I picture my moat, and with the other half I draw the outline of my body in the physical space of the gym.

On the inside, I build the cliffs higher and higher to counter Brady’s attack. On the outside, I can see Moby and Cash, the student pair closest to us, in a fuzzy blur.

I put up a decent fight, but Brady breaks through at about a minute and a half and forces us into a partial memory of me waking up on a transatlantic flight, rubbing my
eyes and wiping drool from the corners of my mouth.

I pull my palm away. “Uh . . . no one else needs to see that.”

Brady punches me lightly in the arm. “Hey, I went awfully easy on you. I reckon you’ve got more embarrassing moments than that.”

It was gentlemanly of him to not peek in on me while I was in the shower. “So you did a specific search?”

“That’s right,” Brady confirms. “It’s easier to get past somebody’s block if you mine for something specific. In your case I searched for a memory of you buckled into a plane seat. First you lock on to that image, and then you force your way in. Now you try.”

I take a moment to come up with a specific image. It has to be something common enough that he would have done it, but unusual enough that I can easily pinpoint it in his memories. For some reason I choose tetherball. Brady and I touch palms again, and I conduct a search attack, picturing a schoolyard, a pole, and the plump white ball hanging from it by a rope.

But I don’t get far. Brady’s mind is boarded up with an endless amount of
DO NOT ENTER
signs. I poke and prod at it, looking for weaknesses, but before long Brady pushes me out completely and I’m staring at his face even though our palms are still connected.

“What did you look for?” He grins and then lets his hand fall.

“You playing tetherball.”

“There’s your mistake. I was homeschooled out in the sticks. Never got the chance to play it.”

“I’ll get you next time,” I tease.

“Sure, sure,” he jokes back. “Your nose twitches when you concentrate real hard. Like a bunny. It’s awfully cute.”

“Well, you have a vein that throbs in your forehead,” I shoot back.

“Let’s try it again, Twitchy.” He nods encouragingly, and we go through the drill again. By the time we switch partners, he’s seen me drinking orange juice straight from the container, using my finger to brush my teeth, and ripping a page out of a library book. I’ve seen Brady scrubbing potatoes and playing hopscotch with his sister—hardly as embarrassing as the memories he’s found of me.

Brady rubs my shoulder. “You have to get the hang of finding the good stuff. But it’s quite a feat that you saw anything at all today. It’s awfully rare for the first class.”

“You think so?” I need to excel to meet Furukama’s expectations, and to stay on track to eventually expose the Morati.

Furukama assigns us new partners. A willowy girl introduces herself as Emilia. Her white-blond hair is plaited in a single thick braid that reaches her midback, and her loose silk pants and camisole look more like pajamas than workout gear. Her relaxed posture and sleepy eyes peg her as an easy target. As soon as we begin to spar, she is alert, and she doesn’t allow me in a single time. She seems content, though, to view drab memories of mine—moments when
I’m washing dishes or standing in line at the supermarket.

At the end of class we line up to leave. Furukama didn’t even check on me once. Maybe he’s already regretting choosing me over Autumn. Then again, if Autumn was going to find the Morati, you would think she would have done it already. Furukama, too, for that matter. They’ve both practiced memory extraction a ton, after all.

Of course Julian was probably right when he claimed that they didn’t have the advantage of practicing with an actual angel. My sessions with Julian should give me a steep learning curve.

With that in mind I head back to the dorms to seek out Julian. I knock twice to announce my arrival, and then enter his room. But it’s empty. Julian is gone.

twenty-eight

I CLOSE MY EYES and concentrate on homing in on Julian’s signal. I reach out across the campus and find him in the administration building. My guess is that either Libby or Furukama has brought him in.

Before I go to Julian, I pass by my room to drop off my binder.

Outside Neil’s room there is a cluster of students, mainly girls. One of them, a short olive-skinned girl wearing a light green headscarf, approaches me nervously. “Aren’t you the girl from Neil’s band? The piano player?”

Flustered by this unexpected attention, I can only gape at her. “Uh . . . yeah. That’s me.”

“Oh! Neil’s so dreamy!” she squeals, and the others in her group join in the fangirling.

“That he is.” I open the door to my room.

“Omigod! You live across the hall from him?” One of them shrieks as I tuck myself inside. “You’re soooo lucky!”

I shut the door firmly behind me, muting the excited chattering of the girls in the hall.

I chuck my binder onto my desk and take a quick peek under the bed to check on the memory globe. It glows even brighter, calling to me to touch it. I turn away quickly; the less I look at it, the better.

As I exit my room, the cluster of girls observes me with bright eyes and huge expectant grins. I raise my hand in a half wave, and they start squealing again. How loud will they scream when Neil finally appears? At least they have the decency to not enter his room and roll around on his bed. But then, everyone respects the unspoken but inviolate rule of room privacy here, with the exception of the Morati, obviously.

I follow Julian’s signal and arrive at the administration building. I admire the bell tower before climbing up the wide stone steps to the entrance. The small wooden door stands in contrast to the ivory grandeur of the rest of the building. It’s like they’re showing off how great they are, but they don’t want you to come in.

Inside, the impression is similarly grand. The entryway could be a replica of the main hall of Grand Central
Terminal in New York City, complete with an information desk in the center, manned by a yellow-uniformed girl with the shiniest blue-black hair I’ve ever seen.

According to my scan Julian is in a room on the right-hand side of the great hall. All the heads of careers have their offices and quarters here, including Nate. I approach the information desk. The girl flips through a glossy fashion magazine. It must be frustrating, knowing that she can never wear anything featured on its pages unless she touched the actual fabric on Earth. Not that most of the featured fashion is anything real people actually bought.

“Excuse me. Which way to Furukama’s office?”

The girl looks up from her reading. “Down that hallway,” she says in an Indian lilt, pointing to the left.

“Thanks.” So it must be Libby who has Julian in her office. “Is Nate around? Or did he get stuck in Area Three?”

“Nate is here.” The girl frowns and slides her magazine into a drawer. “Please do not tell him I was reading.”

“Trust me, I won’t.”

I turn to the right, expecting the information desk girl to correct my mistake. But she doesn’t say a word.

I continue to follow the signal of Julian’s brain waves. He’s very close. In fact, he must be a few rooms down from where the door stands open to reveal Libby inside, sitting at a desk, writing something on a pad of paper. She’s leaning forward toward Neil, who sits across from her, his back facing me. Their heads are close together, engrossed in discussion. Keegan is slumped on a small sofa, his head resting
on his shoulder, and the brim of his cap pulled all the way to his chin.

Before I can sneak past, Libby looks up. “Felicia!” she calls cheerfully. “Are you here to join the healers?” Neil turns at the sound of my name. He gives me a restrained smile, no dimples in sight, and my heart sinks. He’s not going to call me out in public about fleeing his room last night, but I can tell he’s bothered by it. He’ll like me even less when he finds out why I’m here.

I take a deep breath. “Uh, not exactly. I’m here to visit Julian.”

As I expected, Neil frowns.

“Julian is in my custody now,” Libby says. “We need to better monitor who has access to him. That’s why I’m keeping him here.”

I don’t want to do this in front of Neil, but since he’s attached to Libby at the hip now, it can’t be helped. “I’ll need access to him every day. As part of my training for seraphim guard.”

“I assume this is Furukama-Sensei’s suggestion.”

There’s not another chair in Libby’s office, so I sit on the sofa with Keegan. He straightens up, lifts his cap, and gives me a terse nod of his head.

“No, it’s Julian’s.”

“You’ve been to visit him?” Neil’s posture goes rigid. His eyebrows press so close together, they almost touch.

“I had to visit him, to make sure he was okay,” I say. Neil nods, and his eyebrows relax slightly. He may not be
thrilled about my visit, but he understands compassion. “Julian thinks if I do extra training with an angel, it will be easier for me to find the Morati posing as humans.”

Libby considers this. “Perhaps someone further along in the program than you would be more ideal for such training.”

“The thing is, I don’t think Julian is so keen to cooperate with anyone but me,” I say.

Libby looks at Neil, and he shrugs. She twists her hair and puts it up with her pencil, biting her lip. “Let’s discuss with Furukama-Sensei if we can find candidates to train with Julian in addition to you.”

“That’s really up to Julian, isn’t it?” Anyone who could take on the Morati would be in the seraphim guard class, and that’s precisely where Julian thinks the Morati are hiding out in disguise. Not to mention if anyone else finds the Morati first, I won’t be able to get my memories out of them. I need to be the one who uncovers and confronts them.

Libby narrows her eyes. She doesn’t like being challenged. “If he won’t comply, perhaps a little more brimstone exposure will convince him,” she says hotly.

“Great idea. Throw away our one advantage again—”

“Let Felicia do it,” Neil interrupts. “Look what she achieved in Level Two. She won’t let us down.” Is he defending me because he’s on my side? I want to think so. Maybe he hasn’t forgiven me for last night, or for so many other things, but I’m relieved that he still has faith in me.

“Fine.” Libby straightens her red scarf. “We’ll all go visit him together.”

Keegan gets up to join us, but Libby waves him away. “Not you, Keegan.”

“Aw, man! I miss all the good stuff.” Keegan juts out his lower lip.

Neil bops him on the head affectionately. “We’ll be back in a minute.”

Libby, Neil, and I walk down the hallway past three more offices until we reach one with a burly member of the security force standing at attention outside the door.

Julian’s new room is not much different from his old one—smaller maybe, but as bare. The trusty eggplant-colored sofa is still the central attraction, and he has added a small folding table, like the one Grammy always had me pull out for her so she could eat her evening snack of tinned peaches while watching the evening news.

When we enter, he looks up from his game of solitaire. “Oh, good.” Julian gathers up the cards and shuffles them. “Now we have enough players for a game of hearts.”

If his behavior is any indication, he’s made quite the recovery since yesterday.

“I’m glad you’re feeling better,” Neil tells him, not at all unkindly. “And that you’re willing to help Felicia catch the Morati.”

Neil and Julian size each other up, and I realize that they’ve not had much contact. In fact, this is probably only their third meeting after Julian’s retrieval of Neil in Level
Two and Neil being present for Julian’s arrest.

“It’s my pleasure. I do enjoy spending time with her.” Julian lifts up his palm like he’s offering it to me already for training. “Touching her.”

“As long as it’s only her palm you’re touching.” Neil steps forward to lace his fingers through mine, clearly drawing a line but remaining outwardly calm. In that moment I know that Neil is worth at least ten of Julian. And that he believes I’m worth a second chance.

There’s a period of silence as we all let this awkward conversation sink in, and then Libby clears her throat and begins to lay the ground rules for our visits. We won’t be continuously supervised, but the person guarding Julian has permission to come in at any time, so we won’t have complete privacy either. That’s more than fine with me.

“You can start now if you want,” Libby says as she leaves.

Both Neil and Julian wait for my decision. I don’t want to let go of Neil’s hand, not after the way I ran from him last night. “Tomorrow,” I tell Julian. “I’ll be back tomorrow.”

Libby dismisses Neil from their meeting, explaining that she wants to talk to Keegan alone. She’s doing it as a favor to us, and I’m grateful.