Lost in Thought (28 page)

“It’s not,” he said gently. “It’s no less possible than anything else we can do.”

I felt like I might hyperventilate. Or something. Maybe pass out, which I usually tried to avoid, but might welcome at that moment.

Anything but believe what he’d said was true. Since my arrival at Northbrook, I’d learned many things that defied belief, and many things that frightened me, but none more than this. So instead of cop-212 | C A R A B E R T R A N D

ing, I asked a stupid question. “Why didn’t you tell me people could do that?!”

He actually smiled. It was a small one, and it made me blindingly angry for a second, until he brushed his hand lightly across my cheek and I came to my senses. I definitely wasn’t thinking straight, but how could I, in light of what I’d learned? “Because we didn’t think anyone could anymore.”

“How?” I asked. “How does it work?”

“I don’t know,” he said, then held his hands up quickly. I’m sure my frustration was obvious on my face. “I’m sorry. It’s just…how do any of our abilities work? It’s Thought. And there hasn’t been anyone with that gift for more than forty years. The limited evidence we have says a Hangman can stop a person’s heart and that it’s completely natural.”

I digested his words and then I laughed, a completely inappropriate laugh, but I couldn’t help it. “Amy was right. I really am a heartbreaker,” I said, before I dropped my head onto my arms resting on the table.

Carter’s warm hand traced light circles over my back. I practiced some of my auntie’s yoga breaths and tried to come to terms with this new revelation.
If I think hard enough, I can kill someone.
Just thinking about thinking about it scared me. What if I did it by accident? Could I do it to myself? Suddenly all the times I’d jokingly thought in my head,
I’d like to kill that person!
took on a whole new, frightening meaning.

What if I actually
could?

“You have to touch the person,” Carter murmured. “My guess is it needs to be skin to skin, though I don’t have any evidence of that, just a good hunch.” Suddenly I envisioned myself wearing gloves for my foreseeable future. My skin was, apparently, a deadly weapon. Carter went on, almost as if reading my thoughts. “It’s not a simple thing, to use a gift with impetus. It’s impossible to do it accidentally or casually.

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Nearly impossible,” he amended. That was a small relief, at least. Maybe I could reconsider the gloves.

“It’s not like your visions, where the object sometimes forces its history—or future—on you. That’s just a sense. No, this gift…you’re essentially a Thought Mover, but you can only move one thing: a Thought of, well, death. It takes conscious effort and a channeling of the gift. It’s almost a physical sensation, actually. You can feel it, when you exercise the impetus, kind of like electricity in your veins. So I’ve been told, anyway,” he tacked on at the end.

“So I don’t have to ask you never to touch me again?” My voice was muffled by my arms and the table, but I was sure he could hear me. Maybe my mind wasn’t in exactly the right place, but that was the most miserable thought I’d had in relation to this whole miserable scenario.

“I don’t think that will be necessary,” he said with a chuckle. “Unless you decide you want to kill me, in which case, I’d appreciate a little warning and a chance to discuss it.”

It was almost amusing how Carter could be so serious about things except for when it was time to be serious. I ignored his joke and asked, “Can I do it to myself?”

He inhaled sharply, exactly like he had when he’d seen the name Marwood on the page, and his hand stilled on my back. “NO! Why would you even ask that?”

I turned my head slightly to look back at him. “It’s something I need to know. I…wasn’t considering it. I just want to know what I’m dealing with.”

Carter released his breath slowly. “As far as I know, none of us can use our gifts on ourselves.”

“That’s good to know.”

We were quiet again except for the sound of my yoga breathing. I wasn’t sure if it was helping, but it gave me something to concentrate

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on. Of course, I should have known the worst of the news hadn’t come yet.

In his most soothing voice, Carter said, “You might not like what I tell you next.” Before I had a chance to react, he continued. “The Council will be very interested in this. I’ll…have to tell my uncle.” He paused. Dan Astor was already interested in me, so I wasn’t sure why this was a big deal, but then Carter dropped the real bomb. “At least one of the Marwoods worked for the Perceptum almost since its inception. Up until Virginia disappeared, anyway.”

That got me to sit up. I hadn’t been able to shake my fear of the Perceptum despite numerous reassurances. “By ‘worked,’ you mean…”

He nodded solemnly. “They did what their gift allowed. They were…the Council’s executioners.”

I BEGGED CARTER not to tell anyone. I was not beneath bribery, of a sort, so I kissed him until he agreed. Or compromised, anyway. It wasn’t exactly what I was looking for—which was not telling anyone, ever—but he promised not to talk to his uncle about it until we tried a little more to confirm my father’s parentage. I contemplated completely dropping the subject, but Carter wouldn’t let me, and I didn’t honestly want to. Even if the truth was distressing, I thought I wanted to know it. With that in mind, I finally made a call I’d not exactly been putting off, but hadn’t made until it suddenly became a priority.

“Lainey!” came my Uncle Martin’s rich voice from the other end of the line. “What a pleasant surprise! I didn’t expect to hear from you so soon after your birthday. What’s going on? Have you found a piece you’d like to purchase? You haven’t used much of your investment budget lately…”

Talking to my uncle always made me feel like a little kid talking to Santa. I felt warm and happy knowing he was there for me even if I only saw him maybe once a year. Whenever we spoke, I almost always

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asked for something, and he always tried to give it to me. I knew he had many, many clients, but I was pretty sure I was the only one he considered family. Usually my unexpected calls to him had to do with one of the other weird clauses my dad put into my trust fund, giving me a special budget every year to use only for investments. My chosen market was, naturally, antique furniture.

Carter was next to me and I idly ran my fingers over his as I spoke.

We were sitting in front of the fireplace in the bookstore lounge after the store had closed. I was nervous to make this call, not because I didn’t think my uncle would try to help me, but because I was generally afraid of what I’d learn. The combination of dim lights, soft couch, warm fire, and Carter helped me feel more relaxed. I took a deep breath and got to the point.

“Unfortunately not, Uncle Martin. There’s not a whole lot of time for me to go shopping up here. But I don’t mind! You know I really like it at the Academy. I…never knew what I was missing before.”

“So what can I do for you today, or maybe you were just missing your family, called to hear a friendly voice?” He said the last part with a smile, I could tell. Uncle Martin knew me well. It must have been obvious I needed something.

“I…” I started, and then stopped. I’d never asked questions like this about my father before, and I didn’t exactly know how to start.

Carter gave my hand an encouraging squeeze and I cleared my throat.

“I was hoping you could tell me some things…about my father.”

Uncle Martin made a thoughtful noise. “I’m going to guess the question means something different this time than when you’ve asked it before,” he said.

“I guess, yeah. You’re right. I…was hoping you could tell me about where he came from.”

“I’ve always wondered when you’d ask,” he said. “It surprises me it took until now. I knew it would be sometime soon; with the unusual

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nature of your school placement, you were bound to want to find out where it came from.”

“Do you know?” I asked. “You said it was anonymous, but I thought maybe…”

He laughed a little. “Thought maybe telling you about it was another clause in your trust, like offering your place at the Academy?

Unfortunately not. What I said earlier was the whole of my knowledge, even if I wish I could tell you more.” I think he could sense my defla-tion over the phone line. “I’m sorry, Lainey. I do so hate to disappoint you. But I’ll tell you what I do know. It isn’t much. Your father was…very private about his past. He liked to say his real life started when he turned eighteen and nothing before that mattered. He put himself through college, made a fortune on nothing more than his own wit and maybe a little good luck, and then met the loves of his life: first your mother, then you.”

I smiled at that. Not remembering them myself, it was sometimes hard to imagine how much my parents probably loved me, but I had evidence enough to believe it wholeheartedly. Uncle Martin continued, “His childhood, I gather, was not a happy one, but I like to believe it made him the strong, self-reliant man he was. I think you’ve inherited those traits, by the way, even if your childhood has been one of more joys than sorrows. I know he was born in Boston, but if he ever learned who his birth parents were, he never told me. He was adopted by the Young family before he was one year old. The rest you already know.”

I stammered out my thanks, but was mostly depressed by his lack of information. I didn’t know where else to turn if he couldn’t help me. Aunt Tessa knew even less, and that was the extent of my list of people to ask.

Carter, thankfully, was there to make the obvious next step obvious to me. I gathered he could hear most of Uncle Martin’s part of the

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conversation. He scribbled something on the edge of my notebook and raised a questioning eyebrow at me.
His adoptive family?
is what he wrote.

I felt foolish for not thinking to ask more about them. “What about the family who adopted him? Do you think they might know more? If you even know who or where they are.”

“I don’t know much about them, either,” he said, but before I got too depressed, he went on. “But I do know where his adoptive mother lives. Or lived, in any case. Your father left a small sum to her in his will. Perhaps I shouldn’t tell you this information, but, well, I understand why you want to know more. Her name is Chastine Young…”

his is it,” Carter said.

He idled in front of a modest, one-story house with faded white siding and a cracked concrete driveway. Okay, T

“modest” was a polite way to describe it. It was actually pretty shabby, as were most of the surrounding houses. The crowded neighborhood wasn’t quite one where I felt unsafe, but it wasn’t the nicest I’d ever visited. It was also where my father had grown up. We were in an urban area outside Boston looking at Chastine Young’s house.

It had taken me two days to work up the courage to call the number Uncle Martin gave me. My father had had no contact with her from the moment he left home up until the day Uncle Martin called about her bequest in his will. She was also, I thought, my only hope, and I’d been desperately afraid she’d have moved or died or, worse, refused to speak to me. But after some initial surprise, she’d invited me, almost excitedly, to visit the next weekend. Maybe I’d inherited some of my father’s renowned “luck” too, among all the other less-appealing things.

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There were no spaces on the street by Mrs. Young’s house, so Carter parallel parked a little ways down. As we walked back, I tried to imagine my father playing in this neighborhood when he was a kid, but I couldn’t picture him in it. I had the feeling it had been run down for a long time, and my idea of my handsome, urbane father just didn’t fit.

“Try to relax,” Carter said and grabbed my hand.

He sounded so much like Amy always did that I laughed. “Please don’t tell me to take up yoga.”

We climbed the crumbling concrete front stairs and stood under the small aluminum awning while I gathered my courage. I took a deep breath and rang the doorbell.

A soft chime sounded from inside, and after a little while, the door cracked open in front of us. A tiny, aged woman peered at us through the screen. I had to work to hide my surprise. Chastine Young was far older than she should have been, with short, curly white hair and a slightly stooped back. She’d clearly lived a lot of life, if not necessarily years, and much of it not easy. I was ready to introduce myself, but it was fairly obvious I didn’t need to. As soon as she looked at me, she gasped and put her hand to her mouth.

“Oh my word,” she said quietly.

“H…Hi, Mrs. Young?” I stammered. I took another deep breath and went on in a stronger voice. “I’m Lainey Young—we spoke on the phone—and this is Carter Penrose.”

“Oh my dear,” she said, echoing her first words. “Just like Virginia…”

I glanced at Carter. Any doubts I was still harboring vanished.

Carter had been convinced all along, but I’d held out the tiniest hope that it was a coincidence after all, that I was not the last Marwood.

She opened the screen for us and gestured inside. “Well, why don’t you come in, Lainey? I suppose I’m your grandmother of a sort, and it’s nice to meet you.”

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We followed her into a small, dim living room, filled with furniture that had seen better days many years ago. I thought it was possible my father had known this furniture. Everything in the room might have been worn, but it was tidy, and smelled faintly of lemon cleaner, as if it had just been dusted. Carter and I sat together on what served as the couch, but was no bigger than a love seat, while Mrs. Young fluttered by a doorway. “You wait here while I get us some tea—an old woman needs her tea—and then I’ll tell you everything you want to know.”