Initiation (35 page)

Professor Bern was confounded by Faustine’s now routine vanishings after each transformation. She’d had three tests since the dance, and the results were always the same. Faustine started to transform, then disappeared. It was always instantaneous, proven when Henri examined the individual frames from the recordings of the tests. She would be there in one frame, and in the next, she was gone. There were no in between frames that showed any clues as to how that occurred.

After the fourth test, Professor Bern had invited me to join Henri and her for their planning meeting. Although I was pleased to be included, I also felt hesitant. I wasn’t exactly sure how much of my personal knowledge of Faustine I should share to aid Professor Bern in her tests.

The tests were designed to help the Initiates explore, understand, and eventually take control of their powers. The aim was to prod their powers without anyone, including Professor Bern, fully knowing how they worked. That was private and specific to each individual. Faustine needed to be allowed to do that on her own, without anyone else privy to her inner thoughts. And I was kind of privy to some of them. Like any human teen, Faustine liked to blab, and I didn’t want to share what I knew without her permission.

I had been brought up in a very different environment and taught to keep my thoughts to myself from a very early age. But Faustine was different; that had been clear even in her first interview where she spilled about her arachnophobia.

My own tests had been very different. My test technician hadn’t had any references to my personal phobias, so she had had no way of guessing what I responded to, as I had to have made up all the situations in my own imagination. With Faustine, we could clearly guess what was going on just by observing her. Because we knew what her stimuli were.

So far, all we’d helped Faustine do was to transform into a demon much bigger than any I had ever seen. Most demons transformed into the size they were in human form. So my human and demon sizes weighed the same, for instance. That was kind of handy; otherwise, I’d have had a serious issue with clothes. Faustine’s change in size was unique.

A spider was all it had taken to initiate Faustine’s transformation. We had introduced a spider into four different familiar settings, each time with the same result. Faustine started off relaxed and happy, but then had a total freak-out. What we didn’t know for sure was what she actually visualized when she was introduced to the image of the spider. Did she just see the spider, or did the spider represent something else to her? Did she see it as a huge hairy monster of a spider rather than the small, innocuous arachnid we saw on our screen? We’d never know, because that was private. It was protected knowledge, something that only Faustine would know, and she would eventually learn to deal with it on her own. Of course, the Academy would teach her skills to help, but at the end of the day, the control of her powers was in her own hands.

However, she’d never even get to the stage of learning if she kept disappearing on us. So we gathered around Professor Bern’s desk to figure out how we could get her to stay in the chamber for the duration of the test.

Henri took off his glasses. “What gets me is that she can’t remember anything. It’s like she enters a fugue state during her transformations.”

“Hmm.” I disagreed slightly. “It’s not really during her transformation… I mean, she does seem to notice that she changes.”

Both Professor Bern and Henri had questioned Faustine, again and again. Faustine told the same story every time. She felt her fingers fuse, and her body
went funny
. I knew that she’d been aware of starting to fight the shifter at the dance. But after the fighting began, everything went blank. She said it was like being snuggled into a warm blanket. And I found her tucked in, just as she described, after every episode. In my bed.

“Yes, yes. But then what?” Henri shook his head, rolling his eyes. “She just forgets how she vanishes? Forgive me, but I find that hard to believe.”

“You think she’s making it up?” Professor Bern queried.

“Well, yes. Don’t tell me that hasn’t occurred to you.”

“It has. I have wondered if she simply makes herself invisible and takes off. That power is not uncommon among demons.”

True, and I wished I had it. Boy, I could have so much fun with that. Still, Faustine didn’t strike me as the kind who would just walk out… but then I only knew her human form. Who knew what her demon persona was like? Perhaps she just couldn’t be bothered with the whole transformation process. Maybe it just tired her out, so she made herself invisible and went to find a bed.

“What do you think, Cordelia?” Professor Bern asked.

“I don’t know. I’m pretty sure if that’s the case, she must be in some kind of fugue state, like Henri said. I think she’d just ’fess up if she was aware of it. No reason for her to deny it.”

“Well, we’ll take her down to the sealed chamber for the next test. That will at least contain her, so that we can assess how the rest of the test goes. My concern is how she’ll react to not being able to get out. I mean, she changes into a larger demon than I have ever seen, and goodness knows what powers she has. I don’t want her to do herself any harm, but I guess we’ll let it play out for as long as we can, and plan to abort if necessary.”

Yep. That sounded like a plan.

Faustine didn’t seem particularly thrilled about the change in location. She wasn’t given the reason. She was just told that the other lab was busy, so we were going to use another one.

Her less-than-thrilled look changed into one of anxiety when she saw the new test quarters. Even I felt a bit claustrophobic there. The chamber was very small compared to the one she was used to, and it was dome-shaped with a small hatch entrance, which would seal the unit entirely when closed. Inside was just one armchair.

“Ready, Faustine?” Henri asked.

“I guess,” she responded, her voice slightly shaky. “I hate small spaces. Maybe we could wait and do the test next week when the regular lab is free?”

“That would mess up your schedule, dear,” Professor Bern said gently. “Not to worry though, if you need out, just tap on the wall three times, and I’ll stop the test and let you out. Okay?”

“Three times? All right, I guess that’ll be okay.” She followed Henri to the hatch and removed her shoes–per the sign by the door–before she stepped inside the chamber.

I sat down in front of the monitor and waited. My stomach was in knots. Every day I spent with Faustine, I felt closer to and more protective of her. She was so young, so innocent. I feared that her demon persona was more complex than she could deal with. Perhaps the fugue state was a safety tool. I feared what would happen if we messed with it. However, I guessed the whole point of her being here was that her parents felt she couldn’t cope with her current state. Sigh.

I put on my night-vision glasses as Henri sat down, having sealed in Faustine, and watched while he counted down. I wondered what the test background image would be.

The blue screen flickered and changed to a bathroom scene, one in a very plush, luxurious suite. I assumed we were looking at a view of the room from the bath. I guessed it was Faustine’s bathroom from the towels hanging on the heated towel stand. The two white terrycloth towels had
Faustine
embroidered on them in pink script. The bath was hot, with steam rising and fogging the mirror above the marble double sink. Foamy bubbles covered the bath water.

I looked over at the chamber. Faustine lay down in the armchair, bobbing her feet. She was smiling and humming something I didn’t recognize. The video stayed on that image for a while, and then the black shape was inserted–the spider. It climbed up the side of the bathtub.

In the chamber, Faustine’s body immediately tensed. She got out of the chair, grabbed something, and threw it. Then, she jumped up and down, zigzagging around the room, scowling at the floor in horror. I noticed her fingers fuse, and prepared myself. She began to hyperventilate. I knew she’d transform any second.

But she vanished instead.

Professor Bern flicked on the lights and rushed over to the chamber, running her fingers over the door hatch. She pulled at it–locked. Besides, we knew it hadn’t been opened. We’d all had our eyes peeled on it when Faustine vanished.

“Faustine, show yourself, please.” Professor Bern spoke softly but firmly into the intercom.

No response.

“Faustine?” the professor repeated, sounding slightly agitated.

After we’d spent about five minutes staring into the chamber, Henri asked, “What now?”

Professor Bern sighed. “Faustine?” she shouted, and then paused. “Henri, you’ll have to unlock the hatch and go inside. Feel around for her. She has obviously made herself invisible.”

“What if she escapes while I’m opening the door? That would invalidate–”

“I’m not concerned about nullifying it; I need to make sure she’s okay. She could be invisible and unconscious in there.”

“Should I go and check my room? Or I can call Quinn to pop in and check. He said he was going to catch up on some stuff in his room this morning, so it’ll take him no time to check.”

“Seems like a waste of time. There was no way for her to get out of this chamber. I can’t think of a power that would allow her to do that. Well… yes, go ahead, but be quick,” she muttered impatiently.

I already had him on the phone, and after briefly clueing him in, I waited while he rushed over to my room.

“Yep, in bed, fast asleep. Want me to stay with her?”

“Yeah. Thanks, babe. See you in a while.”

“She’s in your room?” Professor Bern appeared flabbergasted, her mouth gaping wide. She went over to her chair and sat down by the monitors, staring at the chamber. “How?”

“A spell?” Henri suggested. “Her nanny was a witch…”

Professor Bern shook her head. “A protection spell? I’ve never come across one before that transports beings. I seriously doubt it, but I’ll do some research.”

“Well, it wasn’t a complete bust!” I said cheerily.

“No?” Henri sounded dour.

“No. Now we know for sure that she transports without actually walking off.”

“True,” Prof. Bern conceded. “We did manage to confirm that she doesn’t walk out of the lab. So now, we need to find out how she actually gets out. Cordelia, you need to get back to Faustine, so let’s regroup in a week, and I’ll have to ponder about how to proceed next.”

I racked my brain trying to come up with explanations for how Faustine could do what she did. It was most likely a power that Professor Bern hadn’t come across before. But just because it was unnamed didn’t mean it didn’t exist. Faustine was, after all, a hybrid–they were all messed up.

We really shouldn’t have been focusing on the how. In a way, that was irrelevant. It happened. Was it a problem that needed to be dealt with? Not that I could see. If anything, it protected her. Heck, turning up all nice and tucked-in in a cozy bed had to be a relief. Whatever the power was, it was a good thing. I’d hate to do anything to screw it up.

That was going to put a kibosh on the Initiate testing program for her, though. There was no way to explore any of her powers if she was going to vanish during every test. And more to the point, Faustine, herself, wanted to get a handle on the blackout periods she experienced. If she was going to live in the real world, she had to at least learn to control her initial transformation. I mean, transforming every time she saw a spider would be a disaster. Imagine if one of those creatures snuck into the shoe department in Bergdorf’s during one of her shopping trips! Also, spiders were the only stimuli that had been tested so far; there were bound to be countless others.

Ugh. I had no answers, but I was starving. I picked up some food from the mentors’ lounge before going back to my room.

“Hey, Quinn. Thanks for waiting. She still asleep?”