The Tower (35 page)

She turned to me and said, “You really thought I was going to shoot you dead, didn’t you?”

I nodded. “The thought did cross my mind.”

Terry slowly shook her head and smiled. “It crossed mine too.”

I laughed, and Terry continued in an undertone, “But I wasn’t going to end up like...”

Terry’s voice trailed off, so I asked, “Like what?”

“Never mind,” she replied stiffly.

“Oh, come on, Terry!”

“I said never mind!”

“Okay, okay,” I said hastily.

“And for the record, Adrian, you’re the one who shot me, okay? It took Mr. Baker nearly an hour to heal my arm, and I had to wait my turn since Alia was the priority case.”

Terry rolled up her left sleeve and showed me where my focused blast had ripped through her forearm. Perhaps Mr. Baker wasn’t as skilled a healer as Alia, or maybe he just didn’t have the strength left after saving Alia’s life, but Terry’s arm was deeply scarred on both sides.

“I’m really sorry, Terry,” I said, looking uncomfortably at the damage.

Terry narrowed her eyes. “Do me a favor and stop apologizing. Come on, it’s your turn.”

I actually managed to sink one ball, but my next shot was a scratch. Terry pulled the cue ball out of the side pocket and proceeded to sink the nine with a combination shot.

“Another game?” Terry asked in mock-innocence.

“Sure,” I said. I had long since stopped letting losing to Terry bother me.

Resetting the table, I said seriously, “Terry, after what happened out there, I really want to spend some time learning to block controllers.”

Taking the break shot, Terry asked, “What makes you think I know anything about blocking controllers?”

I was stunned. “But... when it came to combat, I thought you knew everything.”

Terry laughed. “Nobody knows
everything
, Adrian. Not that I haven’t tried to learn, of course. But when it comes to blocking, you’re going to have to wait just like me.”

“What do you mean?”

As we continued to play, Terry explained, “The best, and really only way to learn how to block controllers is by having a controller actually use his power on you. But most forms of control can cause brain damage if used on people younger than eighteen or twenty or so.”

“Oh, yeah,” I said, remembering what Cindy had told me.

“You can already block peacemaking and dreamweaving, can’t you?”

“Yes,” I answered, though I suspected that it had been a rhetorical question, seeing as Terry knew me almost as well as I knew myself.

“Then you’re already as good at blocking as I am, and there’s not much more either of us can learn until we’re older,” said Terry. “Believe me, it’s frustrating for me too. Being young sucks.”

Blocking was the one aspect of combat training that I had no moral qualms about doing, and yet I’d have to wait several years before I could begin. Terry was right: it sucked being a kid.

I asked her, “So, what happened that night, Terry? I mean, after you knocked me out. How did we escape?”

“The Knights bought us time,” said Terry, eyeing a combination shot that could potentially end the game. “They held the Seraphim off until the last minute, and we managed to drive away. It was insane, though. Mr. Baker was healing Alia, Mark was driving like a maniac, and Ms. Gifford... Well, the puppeteer reentered her so I had to restrain her until we were out of range, and of course you had killed my left arm so it wasn’t easy.”

“I’m sorry about that,” I said.

Terry fouled up her shot. “Adrian! Would you please stop apologizing?!”

“Oh, right,” I said, leveling my cue stick on the table. “But I still can’t understand why the puppeteer chose me and not you. And why did he stay with me like that? Why didn’t he release me like he did Cindy, and go after someone else?”

I missed again.

“You really don’t know your psionics stuff yet, do you?” said Terry, and took three balls in rapid succession as she explained, “The puppeteer was much too far away to lock onto any of us directly. But he was clearly a skilled finder as well. That’s how he could focus his power on Ms. Gifford and you. Mr. Baker is an excellent blocker. As for Father Parnell and me, well, we aren’t even psionic, so the puppeteer couldn’t sense us with his finding.”

“Cindy wasn’t hidden?”

“Her hiding bubble was only around the other house,” Terry reminded me. “Cindy was trying to put a new bubble around our car when the puppeteer entered her the second time.”

“How many Knights died to save us?” I asked.

Terry missed, and as I took my shot, miraculously sinking two, she answered, “We didn’t know the final body count until yesterday night, when the last of our team finally made it back to New Haven. We lost fourteen, Adrian, with only five confirmed kills to show for it. I knew six of the Knights pretty well.”

“I knew some of them too,” I said quietly. “Maybe not as well as you, but still... Are there going to be funerals for them?”

“Father Parnell is making most of the arrangements.”

At least nineteen dead in one night. When I first asked Cindy about the conflict between the Angels and the Guardians, she had called it a feud. But Cindy was talking about a time when she had been a Guardian under Diana Granados. Perhaps it had been an escalating feud back then, but I had to agree with Ralph’s assessment now. This really was a war.

“Come on, Adrian, next shot,” said Terry, snapping me out of my thoughts. “You’re actually getting good enough at this to make it interesting.”

But not quite good enough to win.

I still felt somewhat weak that day, so when my sister’s bedtime came and Cindy suggested that I share it, I didn’t argue with her. Slipping under my covers, I looked over at Alia, who was being tucked in by Cindy.

“Both of you go straight to sleep, okay?” said Cindy.

“Okay,” said Alia, yawning quietly.

Cindy turned to me. “Especially you, Adrian. That way you might be able to get right back on the horse starting tomorrow.”

I nodded. “I guess we’re not about to leave New Haven again.”

Cindy smiled. “No, Adrian, I can pretty much guarantee it. You were right, after all, about the mission.”

“For the record, Cindy, I thought last year’s camping trip was a good idea.”

“Well, we’re going to have to temper our good ideas with good sense from now on, unfortunately.”

“It’s not so unfortunate,” I said. “As long as I can still go outside, I don’t mind living peacefully here in New Haven. Terry might go insane, but it’ll be worth the risk.”

Cindy laughed. “Well, no more missions, anyway. I made that very clear to Mr. Baker.”

“Thanks, Cindy.”

“Straight to sleep, Adrian,” said Cindy. Then she winked and added, “No midnight assemblies, okay?”

Chuckling, Cindy closed the door.

Suddenly having an idea, I whispered to my sister, “Hey, Ali, you were in my hospital room longer than anyone, weren’t you?”

“Of course,”
replied Alia.
“Where else would I be?”

“So, um, did you ever hear me use the word ‘assembly’ in my sleep?”

“No, but you said ‘Terry’ like one million times.”

“But never ‘assembly’?” I persisted.

“No, Addy. I mean, I don’t know. Maybe you did. But you were really crazy all night. Sometimes you were talking like I used to.”

“I don’t know why, Alia, but I think this is important. Please, think. Did I ever say ‘assembly’ or anything really strange? Anything at all?”

“Everything you said was strange, Addy,”
said Alia, and then she smirked, adding,
“If it’s something inside your dreams, why don’t you ask Terry when you meet her there?”

Telekinetically grabbing my sister by the ankles, I hung her upside down over her bed and shook her until she stopped laughing. Plopping her back down onto her mattress, I grinned and said, “Maybe I will. Thanks for the tip, Ali.”

Alia giggled.
“Anytime.”

As I rested my head back on my pillow and closed my eyes, I thought that my sister might have a legitimate point. This whole “assembly” business was definitely tied to Terry – she was always in those dreams. But where had I heard that word before?

Terry did not appear in my dreams that night. In fact, I had no dreams at all, which was, considered what I had just come through, nothing short of miraculous.

The next day, Cindy refused to let me sleep in, insisting on tutoring me as she always did. Though it was a Monday, Terry came home right after school and dragged me down to the dojo to practice CQC. My best guess was that they had decided behind my back that the best treatment for me was to keep me occupied. I secretly agreed, though by the end of the CQC session, I was so tired that I begged to be let off kitchen duty that evening. Cindy agreed to let Terry have another go at being her assistant, and we all regretted it at dinnertime.

“A salt shaker contains more than a teaspoon of salt, Terry,” I said, discovering that our fried chicken had taken a dip in the ocean.

Alia was too polite to comment verbally, but she drank three glasses of orange juice and left half of her meal unfinished.

“I’ll help with the kitchen stuff from tomorrow,” I promised.

There was a succession of funerals that week. I didn’t attend most of them, but I did go to the one for the Knight that had found Alia and me on the street last summer. It felt strange seeing him lying in the casket. I knew next to nothing about him. Not even his name, until I learned it at the funeral. I realized that it could have been me in that box, or Mark, or Terry, or even... No. That was one place my mind refused to go.

I was still waking up almost every night, stargazing and wondering why I was so obsessed with this one strange dream about Terry arguing with a pair of strangers. One of them, I was absolutely certain now, was the gray-haired peacemaker. Sometimes there was a third man there too, but I could never see his face. Asking the dream-Terry about it wasn’t as easy as my sister had made it sound, since you really can’t control what goes on in a dream.

Alia badgered me about it almost every morning, asking,
“Did you talk to Terry last night?"

“No,” I’d reply, wishing I could still shut her up with the ring.

Once, Alia even suggested,
“Why don’t you just ask the real Terry?”

I scoffed at the stupidity of the notion. What was I going to say? “Oh, Terry, I was wondering if you could help me. You see, I often have dreams about you...” She’d probably break my neck!

March 24th was Alia’s “finding day,” which was the day Cindy had rescued her from the forest where she had been abandoned at the age of four. We didn’t know Alia’s real birthday, so this was as close as she got to having one.

Cindy and I baked the double-layered chocolate cake, and Terry helped with the decorations. Though still quite short for her age, Alia was nevertheless getting too big for her kiddie bed, so Cindy finally ordered a normal-sized one for her. It had arrived the day before and Terry helped us assemble it in our bedroom.

Mark couldn’t come to the party, but he called and talked to Alia over the phone for nearly half an hour. Along with the bed, Alia received a sizable addition to her unicorn collection, toys, puzzles and coloring books.

There was one more surprise that evening, but it was for me, and not at all pleasant.

I was walking down the corridor on my way to the bathroom when I heard Terry’s voice from inside her room.
“Hold it like this, Ali,” Terry was saying. “Keep your arms straight. Feel the weight.”

I knocked on her door, asking, “Terry, is Alia in there with you?”

“Sure, Adrian,” I heard her answer. “Want to see something cool? Come on in.”

I opened the door and saw what, to Terry’s mind, was “cool.” Alia had a pistol in her hands and was pointing it at me.

After overcoming my initial shock, I entered the room and roared, “What the hell is going on here?!”