More Than an Echo (Echo Branson Series) (14 page)

“No!” I cried, pushing my combat shield out as far as I could. The strength of that shield surprised both of us as it knocked her backward and against the doorframe.

 “Get away!” I ordered, reaching over and turning the light on. “What in the hell are you doing in here?”

Tip righted herself and brushed off the seat of her pants. “Jesus, Echo, it took you long enough.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Take it easy, kiddo,” she said, holding her hands up in surrender. “I wasn’t going to do anything.”

I looked into her eyes, and this time, I lowered my shields just long enough to see she wasn’t lying.

“She’s telling the truth,” Zack announced from the doorway. “It was time to see if you were able to put any of your lessons to good use.”

“And you passed,” Tip said over her shoulder, starting down the stairs.

“Tip?”

She turned back to me and waited.

I nodded to Zack he could go, but he hesitated a second and then, almost angrily, went downstairs.

“I’m sorry,” I said to Tip standing in the doorway. “I didn’t mean to yell at you.”

She shrugged and jammed her hands in her pockets. She must have felt me reading her, because her shields were back up and in place. “Yeah you did, but that was the point. You gotta do what you gotta do, Echo, and you have to protect yourself. Mel has big plans for you.” She took half a step in and then stopped. “You did great, kid…uh…Echo. Really. I’m proud of you.”

She stood there a moment, hands in her pockets, air thick with a tension I couldn’t define.

When she left, Zack came back up the stairs.

“Zack, does she hate me or what?”

Zack looked at me and shook his head. “You’re so busy struggling with your lessons, you don’t see it. I’m thinking it’s the
or what
.”

Three years had come and gone in the Bayou and I was such a different person than the frightened little girl who first floated into Melika’s place. Some of the changes were subtle, while others were quite distinctive. Physically, I was taller, now nearly five feet eight. I had sprouted three inches in as many years. I had really filled out from all of the manual labor required of us: chopping wood, repairing the dock, schlepping garbage here and there. All of it kept me slim and tight, and I liked that feeling. My hair was well beyond my shoulders, and all the outdoor sun had changed it from mousy brown to a golden honey. 

I had also taken and passed my GED, which was a requirement of all of us. It was embarrassingly easy, but Melika and Tip had still been proud of me. I wanted Danica there with me, but the number one rule was no naturals on the Bayou. It was one thing not to have Danica, but an entirely different thing to have to say goodbye to Jacob, who had learned all he could from Melika and Tip and had to go back into the real world.

He had done his best to keep a stiff upper lip during our tearful goodbye, but he failed miserably...so did I. I would miss our morning boat rides, our philosophical conversations about life and death...our fun times together. Jacob would grow to be a good man. He had a big heart and a warm personality. If only he could battle the demons of the dead who haunted him daily, he might actually learn to enjoy life. He would probably be one of the few of us who would bury his gift deep inside him so he could have as normal a life as possible. I could not even imagine what life would be like as a necromancer. The dead, in my opinion, ought to be left alone, in peace, to do whatever the dead do. Jacob agreed.

When we returned from taking Jacob to the bus stop, I was surprised that Tip was gone as well. She remained gone for quite a few days, longer than she’d ever been gone in the years I’d been on the river. This was when Zack explained that Tip was a hunter. Her job was to see if rumors about other supers were true and to bring them the help they needed. Sometimes, the help was not wanted, other times, it was too late. According to Zack, Tip was one of the best hunters in the country.

This surprised me. Hell,
Tip
surprised me. It seemed the older I got, the longer her eyes lingered over me. I had thought that Mel saw that smoldering look in her eyes and sent her away to cool her off. I had no idea that she was
a hunter.
I wondered if she was hunting me sometimes, the way her eyes followed my every movement, and while I didn’t hate it, I wasn’t sure what it meant.

Anyway, by the end of my third year, I had begun preparing for my own insertion back into reality. It was scary thinking about leaving the only real home I had ever known, my only real family. Melika had been the one adult in my life who had made me feel wanted. I may have had to work my ass off, but at least I knew where I belonged.

So, when it came time for me to think about college, it surprised no one that she invited Danica to town for a conversation about where
we
wanted to go. Prior to this visit, Danica and I talked about going to a women’s college on the East Coast. We both loved the idea of ivory towers and all that tradition. So, when we met up with Bishop in New Orleans for a powwow about college, Danica and I had no clue just what they had in mind.

“Danica,” Bishop began, leaning forward so that her glasses hanging around her neck stroked the table. “You have proven yourself to be a very loyal and true friend to our Echo. It is not every day that a normal of such integrity and strength of character comes into our lives, but you, my dear, are one such person. That sort of loyalty and friendship should not go unrewarded.” Bishop took both of her hands. When she did, I felt a cold chill go up my spine. “And you have come to trust us as well, have you not?”

Danica nodded. “Absolutely.”

“Then, please know I share this piece of life with you because of all the two of you have gone through. Since you have proven complete and total trust, I am giving you a gift few others on this planet ever could: the gift of time.”

The chills turned into something more ominous. Something was coming and Danica wasn’t ready.

“Time?”

“I want you and Echo to consider Cal or Mills College back in Oakland.”

“Oakland? But we wanted to go away for college.”

“And you still can, if you want. But...my dear...” Bishop ripped the Band-Aid off as fast as she could, “...your mother will be diagnosed with cancer while you’re in college.”

My breath caught as I stared first at Bishop and then at Danica. Time stood still in that moment.

Bishop continued. “It is a vision I’ve had more than once since you’ve been coming to New Orleans. I know it comes as a shock, but I wanted you to know so that you can remain closer to home and be with her during her last years.”

The gift of time. Wow.

Danica blinked back her tears and then looked at me. I could barely manage a nod. I could barely move. “So...my mother is going to die from cancer while I’m in college?”

“I do not know precisely when she will pass, my dear, but I do know that if she passes while you’re in college, it will turn your life around in ways you cannot even imagine; and none of them for the better. Believe me, Danica. You are meant to do wonderful things; great things.”

I reached for Danica’s hand and laid mine on top of it.

“But…what about Echo? She can’t afford a school like Mills.”

Bishop simply smiled. It was so like Danica to worry about whether or not I would be able to go. “Don’t worry about Echo. Her SAT scores, while not as good as yours, will help get her in, as will my contacts there.”

“You have contacts at Mills?”

“Oh yes. I did a reading for the president a long time ago and, well, it kept the school from having to go co-ed. She owes me a few chits.”

Danica looked at me, her eyes filled with tears.

If Bishop was giving her the gift of more time with her mother, who was I to take that away? “Then Mills it is.”

And that was it.

It was at this moment I realized just how far-reaching the supernatural world extended, because when Melika and Bishop asked people to do something, they were never turned down. Whatever it was they did to get Danica and me into Mills was a godsend because life happened just like Bishop had said; Danica’s mother was diagnosed with brain cancer in our sophomore year, and it was only months before she succumbed to it. Because of Bishop’s generosity and trust of Danica, Danica was able to spend quality time with her mother before she passed; a priceless and wonderful gift.

It was just the first of many gifts coming from the Bayou.

When the time came for me to graduate from the Bayou and Melika, I couldn’t believe that four years had gone by so quickly. I had learned so much and grown up in ways I never imagined. Suddenly, I was eighteen and had finally gained control of my powers and learned all Melika could teach me. Of course, that knowledge didn’t make it any easier to leave the Bayou and my new family.

Truth was I was petrified of leaving. I had fallen in love with the darkness and wetness and heat of the river. I loved everything about it, including the fresh, clean scent to the odors of alligators floating on the water. Once I had gotten used to the harsh realities of no electricity or plumbing, it didn’t even  faze me. What happens in a place like the Bayou when there’s no television or computers are conversation and a great deal of reading. Zack and I must have read over a thousand novels, and I firmly believe it was all that reading that prepared me for college. By the time I got to Mills, I had read over half the books on most of the required reading lists.

Four years in one place was also a record for me, and I couldn’t picture myself going back to Oakland. I hadn’t been back in the years since I’d left. Other than Danica, there wasn’t anything there for me. I really didn’t want to leave Louisiana. I guess in a way I felt like I still wasn’t ready. I had sunk my roots deep into the rich soil of the Louisiana Bayou and it didn’t seem fair that I had to pull them out. I just couldn’t imagine what life would be like not being there; not waking up to the sounds of the birds and the gentle lapping of the water as it sloshed against the bank. I had had a taste of how rich life can be. Maybe the best lesson I’d learned was not to settle for anything less than greatness.

“Now you know what a well-lived life looks like,” Tip said to me the day before I was getting ready to go back to Oakland. “Once you know that, you are obligated to live one.”

I’m pretty sure that was the moment the walls around my heart began to crack where she was concerned. After four years of feeling her eyes one me like hands caressing every inch of my body, it finally dawned on me why she had always called me kiddo: to remind herself that I was underage. It was the moat around the fortress protecting her heart.

“I never knew you were so poetic.”

She grinned. “There’s a lot you don’t know about me. I may not be as bad as you like to think, but my role here was never to be anyone’s friend. I do what Mel tells me to. I go where she tells me to go, and I teach what she tells me to teach. But there’s a helluva lot more to me than all of that.”

“I
do
know that, Tip, but—”

“I don’t think you do. Up until your eighteenth birthday, you were just a little girl who thought I was this big, scary Indian who crept around spying on you.”

“Weren’t you?”

Tip chuckled. “Yeah, but that’s only a fraction of who I am and what I do here. Who I am when you’re here is the woman who makes sure you stay safe, who helps you with your telepathic abilities, and who is going to miss you more than you could possibly know when you go back.” She reached out and tucked a strand of hair behind my ear.

“Thank you for not calling it home. I’m not going
home
.”

She nodded, but said nothing, her eyes raking over my face. I wished I could feel her emotions.

“Home is here. I feel so much like a stupid high school kid who’s getting ready to go off to college and is scared to death. Does that sound dumb?”

“Not at all. You’re leaving the first real home you’ve ever known, but college...that’s where you belong. That’s the one thing I never understood about you. You’ve got it all going on and you don’t even know it. The world will lay prostrate at your feet some day, Echo Branson. It’s time for you to spread your wings and fly. Trust me. You’re ready for this.”

I think this was the first real conversation we had ever had. “Thanks. That means a lot.”

Tip rose, picked up a rock, and threw it in the river. “See those ripples? That’s how you’re going to affect the world... waves that ripple farther than the eye can see. I’ve looked into Mills. It’s perfect for you.”

I looked at her back as she tossed another rock. I had never looked at Tip as anything other than a big, scary and sometimes mean Indian, but at this moment I saw her for the first time as a softhearted, somewhat romantic woman who possessed feelings she probably shouldn’t have had.

And that thought scared the crap out of me.

Turning around, she wore an odd smile on her face and I wondered if she had managed to read my thoughts. “Echo, this place has been brighter since you arrived, and it’s been a helluva lot of fun having you here. I’m…really going to miss you.”

I rose and picked up a rock and tossed it in. “I’m going to miss you, too.”

She laughed. “No, you won’t. You’ll get into Mills and begin a new life, leaving the Bayou and all of its memories behind. Everyone does.”