Fathomless (23 page)

He stopped and looked at Eddy. She still had her hand over her mouth. He slogged on again: “Geldman's treatments were working fine until today. All I had to do was keep from immersing myself in water, especially salt. A quick shower's all right, or rain. Not immersion. That's why I didn't jump in right away after the kid fell. I waited to see if Sean could reach him.”

“You jumped in soon enough,” Sean said.

Eddy dropped her hand gag. “And you had to. Geldman must get that.”

“Oh yeah,
he
does. He believes in karma, even if he doesn't call it that. Help someone, your magic gets stronger and purer. Hurt someone, it gets twisted. The porpoises did a lot, though. They're supposed to be Deep One allies, according to the
True Atlantis
book. Maybe they were hanging around the jetty because they recognized me, and that's why they helped me with the kid.”

“Or they were there because of Mr. Haddock?” Sean said.

“Maybe.”

Instead of sinking her marine biologist teeth into the idea of porpoise allies, Eddy stayed focused on Daniel's situation: “Geldman needs to talk to your father, then. To make him realize you
were
a hero.”

She'd meant well, but Daniel reverted to the scowl he'd brought into the common room from Helen's office. “All my father cares about is for me to be normal. He'll take me being a magician if he has to, but I better be a human magician.”

A soft click from Eddy's throat shut him up. He shook his hair, still ocean tangled, over his eyes and looked at her through the curtain. “Not that I don't want to be human, too. All the way, down to the genes, if Geldman can eventually pull that off.”

Sean puzzled over Eddy's flush until he brightened up and realized that Daniel was hinting at kids. Really? Daniel was thinking that far into the future about him and Eddy? And was she, too? He gave his throat a thorough clearing. “You think Geldman could get rid of your Deep One DNA?”

“He doesn't know if he can. Right now he's just thwarting the trigger genes.”

“If anyone could, though.”

“That's what I'm hoping.”

Eddy went for Daniel's hand, and again Sean wondered about the feel of the webbing (rubbery?
clammy?
), but she didn't twitch an eyelash. For a minute it looked like they'd all get back to the equilibrium Helen had interrupted at Geldman's. Like Daniel had said, it hadn't been Helen's fault, but Sean's gut tightened a little when she walked into the common room looking too sober for his comfort.

“Daniel,” she said. Soberly. “I told your father you'd call him after you've had a chance to absorb what happened today.”

“I'm sorry I took off—,” Daniel began.

“That's all right. It was probably better you did. Could you come out here for a minute?”

Daniel and Helen retreated down the hall. Eddy glare-pinned Sean to the couch. As if he were going to eavesdrop again. As if he'd have had time to get set up. Two minutes after leaving, Daniel came back into the common room, and Sean heard Helen walking downstairs.

“My father,” Daniel said. He took a deep breath. “Dr. Bremerton, the geneticist I told you about? My father wants him to come to Arkham and make sure Geldman knows what he's doing.”

Questioning Geldman's magic was like asking Everest to prove it was a mountain. “Hasn't your dad seen you since the treatments?” Sean said.

“Plenty of times. He's being an asshole.”

“Kind of,” Eddy said. “But give him some credit for being worried about you, Daniel.”

“Maybe I would if he wasn't such an asshole about it. At least Helen's fixed it so it's not totally obvious my father's checking up on Geldman. There's going to be a meeting tomorrow night, her and Marvell and Dr. Bremerton and Geldman. Just to get everybody up to date, is how she put it to all of them.”

In Sean's opinion, Helen had pulled some win out of a losing situation, but Daniel flopped out on the couch, a forearm across his eyes. “I ought to be in on the meeting,” he said. “I told Helen so, too.”

Eddy moved to the empty recliner instead of the foot of the couch, even though there was still plenty of room for her skinny butt. “What did Helen say to that?”

“No.”

“Just no?”

“She said if I was there, people couldn't speak freely. So instead they get to talk behind my back and then not tell me shit.”

“You think they're hiding something from you?” Sean said.

“I
know
my father and Dr. Bremerton are. Helen, too, probably. I can't tell with Marvell and Geldman. It's like, their mental wards are too strong for me to get through.”

Eddy paled, and her voice sharpened: “What do you mean, you can't get through mental wards?”

Daniel rolled over, putting his back to them both. A few seconds later, he rolled flat, arms by his sides. “Sean,” he said. “You asked how Mr. Haddock could tell I was a Changer.”

“Right.”

“Deep Ones live underwater, so how do they talk to each other?”

“Like whales, singing?”

“Partly. They're also telepaths. Mr. Haddock knew what I was by reading my mind.”

“Could you read his mind back?”

“Of course he could,” Eddy broke in. Red was creeping up her neck, like mercury rising in a thermometer. “He just said his father and Bremerton and Helen are holding back. To know that, he must be able to read them.” She paused. “And he must be able to read us. We're not trained paramagicians, like Marvell. We're not wizards like Geldman.”

The reestablished calm was shaking at its foundations, and Sean finally got why. “But if Daniel could read people's minds well enough to know they have secrets, couldn't he read the secrets, too?”

Daniel rolled upright. “I'm not fully telepathic yet. It's more like empathy—I can sense emotions, and I can usually tell if someone's lying. That's all.”

“That's still a lot, Daniel,” Eddy said. Her voice had frozen to an ice shard. “That's the second big thing you didn't tell us.”

Daniel squirmed before he said, “It's all one package, Deep Ones, telepathy.”

“No, and you know it's not. You're the one who split them up. And you could have told us you were telepathic—”

“Empathic,” Sean chipped in desperately.

Eddy ignored him. “You could have told us about it without even mentioning Deep Ones. You could have just said telepathy was part of your magic.”

“If I'd told you guys right away, it would've scared you off,” Daniel pleaded.

“So instead you go around secretly reading our emotions. That's like wearing X-ray glasses and looking through our clothes. Or worse. Looking all the way to our bones.”

“I don't know,” Sean said. “Looking just through clothes would be worse.”

“Keep out of this.”

Not this time. “Besides, X-ray glasses suck as an example. You wear those on purpose. Daniel can't help being empathic. And he's right. If the first thing out of his mouth had been ‘Hi, I'm an empath,' we
would
have freaked. We couldn't have acted normal around him. Well, as normal as we ever act.”

Eddy had turned to him bristling, but he'd made the rare shot she couldn't rebound. “All right. But it still feels weird, I'm sorry.” She vaulted out of her recliner; the momentum carried her to the door, from which she looked back at Daniel. “Anyway, I don't care if you sensed all along that I liked you. I don't care if you sense how much I like you now. I just don't like realizing you had so many secrets. So if you have any more, maybe make a list for me, will you?”

Daniel hadn't gotten his mouth all the way open before she took off down the stairs. Empathy must have told him to let her go, because he slumped back on the couch. “Thanks for the help,” he said sincerely.

“You know she'll get over it, right?”

“I'm hoping so.”

“You can't, like, feel it?”

Daniel worked up a quizzical smile. “Kind of. And she did use the present tense.”

“Huh?”

“She said ‘how much I
like
you.' Not ‘liked.'”

“What is it with girls, anyway? They're all, pay attention to their feelings. Then they find a guy who
has
to pay attention, and they flip.”

“Yeah, but nobody wants to feel like an open book. Especially around closed ones. What about you?”

“What about me?”

“Well, first time we met, you
acted
friendly, but you
felt
jealous.”

Hell no,
Sean almost said. But memory said
hell yes
. He shrugged.

Daniel continued, “I thought you were Eddy's boyfriend, or else you wanted to be.”

“You were off the mark there.”

“I know it now.”

“It was just how tight we've always been. When there started to be other guys—”

Daniel's brows went up.

“Hey, not
many
other guys. But I still didn't want her to dump me as her best friend.”

“She's not doing that, Sean.”

“I know. We're cool.”

“She wouldn't have dumped you for anybody. That's not how she flies.”

“I know. I guess I worry about stupid things sometimes.”

“Tell me about it.”

Sean laughed, then Daniel joined in, then they both sat silent. It was an okay silence, and if Daniel was taking advantage of it to read Sean's feelings, big deal. Mainly what he felt was
wiped
. Funny, though, how Daniel had said it was Eddy who flew a certain way, when it was Sean who'd been doing all the flying—

Flying. The window. The crow-in-waiting over Nyarlathotep's head, the one Orne had prepared for a guest magician—

That was so not something he needed to think about. Naturally he opened his mouth and said, “Hey, about the meeting tomorrow. How they're not going to let you sit in.”

“Don't get me started on that again.” But Sean had already turned on Daniel's ignition. “If it were only Helen, she'd have let me in. I didn't want to say it in front of Eddy, because you know how she is about Marvell—”

“What's Marvell got to do with it?”

“Helen talked to him about the meeting before she came up. He's the one said it wouldn't be appropriate for me to be there.”

Surprise? Not. If Marvell would go control freak all over Sean, why not all over Daniel, too?

And all the more reason why, wiped or not, they might have work to do tonight. “We saved you pizza. Let's go nuke it. Besides—” Sean paused.

“Besides what? Wings? Breadsticks?”

“No. Just something I've got to show you in the library. About tomorrow. If you really want to hear what they say about you.”

Maybe the more Daniel's huge eyes protruded, the harder he was doing his empathy number on you. They were popping now. “Pizza sounds great,” he said.

“And?”

“Whatever else. Especially whatever else.”

Whatever else, then, if they could pull it off.

 

17

Over
the rest of the pizza, Sean matched Daniel's confessions with two of his own: how his magical line ran back through a dozen generations to Redemption Orne and how he'd been meeting Orne in the
Founding
windows. Daniel seemed relieved that he wasn't the only one with strange ancestry, but he out-Eddied Eddy in his doubts about the seed world. In the end, it was the fact that she'd actually helped Sean keep exploring it that persuaded him to give the “guest avatar” a try.

Sean climbed the stepladder to the left window, while Daniel stayed on the dais, ready to connect with Sean's ankle. Their first two attempts, Sean passed into the seed world alone. Evidently Daniel had to really grip Sean, not just touch him. The third attempt, he held on tight, and Sean popped them both into their respective crows. Daniel's collapsed off its branch, narrowly missing Nyarlathotep's pointy crown. He twitched and flailed the way Sean had during his initial transfer; then, just before Sean had gotten panicky enough to summon Orne, he hopped up, comfortably crowish and ready to fly. They took a spin over the bay that would become Arkham Harbor, not a jetty or dangerous breakwater in sight, just waves caught in mild mid-swell. It rocked having someone to cruise with, but they couldn't go farther that night. He still had to show Daniel the hollow chestnut tree and the amber rondel that, beak-tapped, turned into a lens overlooking the library. Crowded wing to wing, they found they could both peer through the spy-hole and, presumably, hear everything said at the conference table.

The seed world was awesome, Daniel squawked, and the spy-hole was, like, fate. Sean croaked agreement. But when they popped out, Sean on the stepladder, Daniel clutching his ankle, the obvious problem occurred to them. To spy on the library, they had to be about as blatantly visible to the meeting attendees as two people could get.

Daniel's eavesdropping hopes were fizzling unless Sean could remote-connect with the window the way Orne did. Out in the hall, Sean used his mind key to gather ambient energy and then
intended
it through the closed library doors and across the room, where he imagined it settling on the glass crow like an invisible hand. Daniel touched the targeted door panel and said it was getting hot, but nothing else came of Sean's effort except a rotten headache.

While he was resting for another try, Eddy came downstairs. She'd gone to Daniel's room to apologize. No Daniel. She'd gone to Sean's room. No Daniel
and
no Sean. Add one and one, and you got the two of them screwing around with magic somewhere.

The way Eddy had reacted to Daniel's earlier secrets, Sean couldn't blame him for spilling right away about their seed world trip. Her response was relatively mild: Sean shouldn't have gone into the window without her around, and he shouldn't have taken Daniel with him, and they were both going to get their asses expelled if they weren't more freaking careful. However, she didn't say a word against their eavesdropping plan. Sean made the mistake of asking why the unprecedented disregard for authority, and she blew up, though quietly, so Helen wouldn't hear. God, hadn't Eddy kept her mouth shut a million times when Sean was up to shit? (Yeah, but—) And, God, didn't he think Daniel had a right to know what they said about him during the meeting? (Yeah, but—) And finally, what was she, some kind of knee-jerk protocol droid, unable to think things through for herself? (Nope, not a chance.)