Nightingale

Chapter 14 Creatures of the Night

On the first day of school, Olivia decided to leave early. Club auditions wouldn't begin until tomorrow, so she decided to cut out earlier than she normally would.

As Olivia stopped by the office to check her mailbox, the secretary stopped her.

"A young man came by just a few minutes ago," Allison said, "looking for Bron."

Olivia's heart slammed to a halt. Her hand froze at the mailbox. "What did you tell him? Where is he?" Olivia imagined the worst.

"I sent him away," Allison said. "He told me that his mom said to give Bron a message. I knew he was lying, so I told him that he had the wrong school, and sent him packing."

Olivia nodded her head, grateful for small favors.

"What's going on?" Allison asked.

Olivia scrambled to come up with a cover story. "Bron had a girlfriend at his last school. Her old boyfriend was jealous. I think that the young man you met may have been looking for a fight. Do you have him on the security cameras?"

Allison swiveled in her chair, flipped on a monitor, behind her, and then went to channel three. She backed up the camera by fifteen minutes, until it showed Riley entering the school, pausing momentarily to look at the trophy case. The camera got a good side view of his face.

"Do me a favor," Olivia said. "If this boy comes back—or any of his friends—just do what you did today. Send them packing."

"Okay," Allison said. "Do you think we should call the police?"

"I doubt that they'd be any help," Olivia said. "No crime has been committed." Allison nodded. "Now do me another favor. Show me the parking lot view."

Allison went to work on the cameras, showed Riley arriving in a white van, then leaving not three minutes ago. As Olivia watched, her stomach cramped with nervousness.

Things were getting messy. Olivia wasn't supposed to tell a nightingale what was going on, but between the Draghouls hunting him, and Galadriel's strange illness, Bron needed to know more, and now!

Bron spent most of his last period in the bathroom, locked in a stall, panicking. When the last bell rang, he fought down his nervousness and strode down the hall.

Whitney waved at him and flashed a smile. He smiled back, turned to say "Hi."

A hand clapped his shoulder, and he jumped. Somehow, he knew that it would be one of those freaks from Best Buy. He turned to see Olivia.

"Bron," she whispered discretely, "we need to get out of here. Now!"

"What's going on?" he asked. The halls were crowded with kids, giving him a sense of anonymity.

"Just come to the car," she whispered.

Whitney came down the hall. "Hi, Mrs. Hernandez," she said. She looked as eager as a puppy.

"Nice to see you, Whitney," Olivia offered. "We've got to run to an appointment. See you tomorrow."

She steered Bron toward the door, hurried to beat the crowds. Bron waved to Whitney, who made the phone signal and said, "Call me!"

Then they rushed outside.

"You heard?" he asked softly. "About that boy?"

"I heard," Olivia answered.

"It was an accident!" Bron apologized.

"Keep quiet," she said. "We'll talk in the car."

Immediately, he realized from her tone that this wasn't going to be just any talk. This was going to be the talk. Olivia smiled as she passed another teacher. They crept out of the school in the midst of a crowd.

As they exited Olivia halted in the shadows and stood peering over the parking lot. Bron felt acutely aware that she was searching for something, someone—some sign of the enemy. The sun was so bright that every shadow became impenetrable. Any of them could have held a lurking figure.

She pulled Bron out into the sun and hurried downhill to the parking lot. When they reached the car, Bron felt a sense of relief wash over him. Tuacahn was far from the main drag down in Saint George, and though it was only ten miles outside the city, the setting was remote, off the beaten track.

They climbed in the car, and Bron asked, "Are we ready for that talk?"

Olivia opened her mouth as if to speak, closed it. She started the car, put it in drive, and joined the caravan of students heading down from the hills for the day. When she reached the main road, she drove past some homes, and finally pulled off onto a gravel road that led to a stalled housing development.

She turned off the engine, and sat.

There were no houses here, no plants. Everything had been bulldozed. The world was pared to the basics—stone, sky, sun, shadow.

Bron studied Olivia's face. He could see worry lines in her brow, and stress in her lips. She seemed to be looking inside herself more than at him. She finally let out a deep breath, and prepared to speak. "You understand what man is, homo sapiens sapiens?"

"Yeah," he said.

"You know that ... creatures evolve. You know that there were once homo sapiens neanderthalensis, a humanlike species that lived beside early man for hundreds of thousands of years? Fossil records show that they lived in caves together, hunted together, and lived as friends. They stalked woolly rhinos, traded beads made from shells, buried their dead beneath blankets of flowers. But they were different from each other, two different species. They couldn't interbreed."

Bron wondered where she could possibly be going with this. What did it have to do with the boy who was killed?

"Recently, a new species has been discovered, which lived at the same time as them, in the same area of Asia, near Kazakhstan. Did you know that? There were three distinct species of early humans in Eurasia, and there was another in Indonesia."

Bron felt confused. "What are you trying to say?"

She said bluntly, "Bron, I'm not human. Neither are you."

Bron studied her face for a long moment. He broke out in a long laugh. "That has got to be the greatest joke ever!"

Olivia's face betrayed no hint of mirth. Her mouth was straight, and worry lines creased her eyes. He wondered if she might be crazy, or on drugs.

"I know that this sounds hard to believe. Let me show you something." She held out both hands. "Look at my fingers."

She had dainty hands, a musician's fingers, toughened and wizened. He'd seen her guitar calluses before.

"Watch carefully...." she warned as she raised her palms toward him. He saw muscles flex inside her wrists. Suddenly on each thumb and fingertip, a single oval suction-cup sprang up.

"Ah!" Bron shouted, and instinctively leapt away from Olivia. He grasped blindly for the door handle, and nearly fell from the car before he realized that she had suction cups on her fingers. Just like his.

He demanded, "What are those?"

Olivia held her hands up so that he could see. "I won't hurt you, Bron. I'll never hurt you, but I had to show you this. These are called sizraels. They're... a mutation, an advantage that our species has over normal humans. You have them, too. There is no sense in pretending otherwise."

He stopped, stared at his own hands for a long moment, trying to let this sink in. He couldn't deny it, so he asked guiltily, "What... what are we supposed to do with them? Do you use them to, like, climb walls?"

She grinned. "We're not flies, Bron. We can't climb walls, or crawl around on the ceiling like Spider Man. Our sizraels are far more... dangerous than that."

She relaxed her wrist, and the sizraels vanished. "You see?" she said. "They're like the claws on a cat. We can make them appear, and disappear. Mostly, we keep them sheathed."

Bron began breathing hard, taking great gulps of air. It felt as if the hair began to stand up on his head. He shivered.

"Take it easy," Olivia said. "I won't hurt you."

"Yeah, but—"

"I won't hurt you." Her tone was convincing enough, and he calmed a bit, but he was still scrunched against the far door.

"Just my luck," he whispered. "I finally get a cool mom, and you're not even human." Olivia didn't smile at the compliment. This wasn't an occasion for humor.

"So what do you do with them?" he asked.

"That's kind of hard to explain," Olivia said. "You're familiar with mythology, right?"

"I'm taking a class this semester," he admitted.

She struggled to elucidate. "You've heard about creatures like me," she suggested. "For thousands of years, humans have been aware of us. We call ourselves masaaks, to differentiate ourselves from humans. I use my sizraels to ... help draw memories from other people, or to insert new memories into them."

Bron didn't know what to say to that. The situation sounded more and more insane, but she went on. "Bron, among my people, I'm what you would call an at-tujjaarah a'zakira, a memory merchant. I can borrow memories from others, or steal them completely, but I can also give you memories. Would you like to see how it works?"

Bron nodded slightly, yet shrank away. He didn't really want to see how it worked. The very notion that it could work terrified him, but he didn't want her to know how frightened he was.

"Come closer," she said. "I need to touch you, on the head."

Bron drew closer, and Olivia leaned forward and grasped him by the forehead, her sizraels locking onto him. She placed her thumbs on his supra-orbital ridges, just above each eye. Then her fingers splayed out, her forefingers on his brow, and her little fingers resting on the very back of his skull. Her fingers felt cool, and suddenly there was a tingling sensation as electricity arced between them.

Olivia held him for a moment, but nothing had changed. The cab of the Corolla was just as bright as it had been. The air carried that slightly new car scent.

"So what is my name?" she asked.

"Olivia. Olivia Hernandez."

"And what is your name?"

Bron opened his mouth to answer, but nothing came out. He felt as if it was just on the tip of his tongue, but he couldn't quite get it. "I... I can't—"

"I'm sure you can remember your own name," Olivia said. "You've heard it a hundred times per day, for your whole life. What was it again? Carl? Sanjay? Bron? Miguel?"

He shook his head. None of those names sounded familiar to him, or at least none sounded right. His mouth opened in astonishment, and he peered about, as if he might find a clue just floating in the air. "Give me a minute," he said. "I'll remember."

"A minute?" Olivia said. "A minute wouldn't help. A year wouldn't help. You see, it's not up there anymore. I have it now. I own your name. I'm storing it right here." Olivia grasped his hands and raised them up, put them on her skull, way back up about four inches past her jaw.

"Can you feel this bump here, on the back of my skull?" She held his hands there. "Those are called the secondary lobes," she said. "Humans have only two lobes to their brains, masaaks have four. Ages ago, when humans first evolved, that new brain of theirs, with its two lobes, was a huge evolutionary leap. It doubled their capacity to learn. Our brains, with their four lobes, are the next step.

"You must never let a doctor give you a brain scan. They'd be baffled by what they'd find."

He touched her lobes gingerly, but there wasn't much to feel. He had the same odd bumps, he knew. He might have thought that Olivia only imagined a physical difference, but he couldn't remember his own name, and he felt bewildered by that, shocked and confused.

"Is this... some hypnotist's trick?" he wondered.

He squinted and struggled to remember. Nothing would come.

"Now," Olivia said, "I'm going to remind you of your name."

She touched his head again in her way, and held him for an instant. Though her mouth did not move, she whispered his name into his mind, so that it exploded as if spoken by ten thousand voices. His name roared in his ears, and even his bones shivered.

"Bron!" he shouted.

Olivia smiled.

A moment ago, he'd been struggling. Now the memory burst upon him so clearly, so naturally and profoundly that Bron felt elation. Tears came to his eyes. He sat blinking stupidly, mouth open, at the revelation of his own name.

"You see," Olivia said. "I can take your memories from you, and I can return them. Or I can just sit and sort through them if I like, looking for information—even your deepest, darkest secrets. That's how I know what is happening to you. I know how your sizraels unsheathed yesterday, when you were talking to Galadriel. Anything that you know, any skill that you have, I can take it away from you. Anything that I know, I can share with you—within some limits."

Bron's mouth had gone dry, and he licked his lips, took a deep breath. "What limits?"

"Those lobes that you felt, they're very small. I can't hold all of the memories of even one person. So I have to specialize, pick and choose. I try to take only certain kinds of information, the kind that I love best."

"I don't follow," Bron said. Outside, a hawk shrieked as it floated just above the field, trying to startle mice from hiding. Bron shivered.

"The memories that I love best," she said, "are all about music. I've learned all that I can. I've borrowed knowledge from so many great minds.... I've even traded for it. There are others like me, you see, other memory merchants around the world. We form something of a 'living library' of knowledge and experiences. Would you like to know what Beethoven knew? Or Caruso? Or Michael Jackson? I can share that with you. Let me know a favorite composer, and I might be able to call a friend, get some of the memories that you're after."

Nothing in his life had prepared Bron for this. "You, you said something about mythology," Bron said. "What are you really?"

"Can't you guess?"

Bron shook his head.

"In the Mediterranean, we were called the 'Ael,' the speakers for the gods. We have been called many things—and most of the names have been lost in time—the shazaal, the massa, m'kithra—but you'll recognize some of the more-familiar names—'witches,' 'demons,' 'angels.'"

"How can you be both angels and demons?" Bron asked.

"Some of us are evil," Olivia replied. "Some of us feel nothing for humans, and use them mercilessly."

"Like those guys that chased us?"

"Yes," Olivia said. "Like them. Bron, the information that my people hold is very precious. There are tens of thousands of us hiding around the world. We're like ... a vast storehouse of information that you can't even imagine—math, history, philosophy. There are secrets we know, hidden from mankind for thousands of years. We're trying to save the world, make it a better place. But our enemies would destroy much of that, take what we know, and throw it away."

"Why would they do that?" Bron asked.

Olivia grew quiet. "That's not for me to answer, not now. You'll find out soon enough."

She fell silent for a moment, then said, "In ancient Greece, they would have called me a muse, a goddess who comes to bestow the gift of music and inspiration."

"Oh," Bron said. He felt dumbfounded, as if he might explode with this revelation. She knew what was going on in his mind. He remembered his training sessions in his dreams, and now he understood why he was suddenly... talented.

"So," he wondered, "what do you want with me? Why are you telling me all of this? I mean, I could have lived here for years, and I never would have imagined something like this."

"You're wondering why a muse would give her gifts to you?" Bron nodded. "I'm a teacher. That's what I do—spread knowledge, and hopefully help bring a little light, and joy, and beauty into the world."

A white sedan pulled into the empty development and sat for a moment, blocking the exit. Olivia put her hand on the key, peered at the sedan through the rearview mirror.

Bron feared that they'd been found. He studied the driver, a middle-aged woman with bad hair and pale skin. She peered about, as if lost, then backed out and drove away.

Olivia let out a breath. Bron decided that there was nothing to worry about.

Bron asked, "Does Mike know what we are?"

Olivia shook her head. "No, and you must never tell him. He knows that he and I can't bear children, but he hasn't guessed at the reason, and I won't tell him. He ... did find out a couple of times. Before we got married, I made the mistake of trying to tell him. He became very frightened and upset, every time, and so I had to sneak into his room as he slept and take the knowledge."

Now Olivia reached out, took Bron's hand gently, and gazed into his eyes.

"That's another gift that I can bring you, if you want: forgetfulness. Are there any memories that trouble you, any dreams that wake you in the night?"

"No," he said. Bron had more than his share of painful memories, but he wouldn't want Olivia fooling around in his head.

She smiled benevolently. "If you understood my powers, you might think better of that. The offer will always be open. If dark thoughts trouble you, I can offer relief."

"I don't want anything from you," he said. "I don't need anything."

Olivia recoiled just a bit, as if offended, and Bron regretted his words. "There's something that you need," she said. "You need to understand who you are, what you are."

"How did you know that I was one of you?" Bron asked. "I mean, even I didn't know!"

"There are signs. There aren't many of us, but I spot others from time to time. You've got an odd shape to your skull, rather boxlike. That was the first clue. But then I smelled you, and I knew. Male masaaks your age give off... a scent, pheromones that draw women. When you go into musth, it will attract every female who is ready to breed within miles."

Bron had no idea what to think about that. "What do you mean, when I go into musth?"

"In a year or so you'll be old enough for your first musth," she said. "Your scent right now, it's very ... uneven. But when it comes, it will be powerful... and dangerous. We call it flourishing. Just as a flower puts out its scent, so will you. I won't be able to be near you then.

When I smell it beginning, I'll leave."

"I don't understand," Bron said, though he suspected that he understood her all too well. "What will happen?"

"You will begin to flourish, and any of our kind who taste your scent, any women who are fertile, will come to you. They'll smell it from miles and miles away. Do I need to make it any clearer?"

"What if I go away, into the mountains or something?"

"Then no one will find you. But the musth will come upon you again, and again, every six years or so. You mustn't fight it. If we're to survive as a species, you mustn't fight it."

Bron grew thoughtful, and for a long time he didn't say anything. "If I'm a masaak," he asked, "then why haven't my sizraels ever come out before this? I mean, until a couple of days ago...."

"Isn't that obvious?" Olivia said. "Someone erased some of your memories, the ones that let you know how to extend them. I suspect that it was your mother. She didn't have to take much, since you were only a child. Someone wanted you to live among the humans, learn to pass yourself off as one of them. We're different from them, you and me. If you had grown up with a masaak, it would only accentuate the difference in your mind. Some of our children learn to see themselves as superior to others. They grow up cold and cunning, without compassion. They see humans as animals to be herded and used."

Bron felt confused, betrayed. "I can't believe that a mother would abandon her own child that way. I mean, I don't know how different a masaak is from a human, but even a crocodile loves her young."

Olivia shook her head. "I can't guarantee that your mother loved you. Those people we saw Friday, they are masaaks, too. They're more than just a cult. They're more evil than you can imagine. The/re bred to be cold, dispassionate. The old man, he was training the young. Very often, their women mate in a frenzy, and then don't want to keep their young. So they give them to humans to raise.

"It's called 'brood parasitism.' Just as some birds lay their eggs in other's nests, so do some masaaks. That boy that you saw at the store, Riley? He was one of them, a child left to be raised by humans. But such children are still precious to our enemies, and in time they will be gathered up by their masters."

Bron wondered at this. He was cold and dispassionate, he knew. Or at least he could be that way. He'd learned to turn off any affection that he felt for most of the adults in his life. He'd loved the Stillman children, but in the end, he was able to turn even that off.

"So," Bron said. "I come from some kind of a breeding program?"

"Probably," Olivia said. "For thousands of years, your people have selectively bred for strength, speed, intelligence, and beauty. How well did you do in wrestling?"

Bron shrugged. He didn't want to brag. "Fourth in state, for my weight division."

"That's a relief," Olivia said. "If you were a purebred, there's no way that you would have placed only fourth."

"Why is that a relief?"

"Because it means that you're not completely evil. The evil masaaks ... think of their bodies as being like the hardware to a computer. They're bred to be cold, cunning, indifferent. If you were one of them, you would be... easily corrupted."

Bron worried about that. He sometimes felt so distant from others, so ... broken. Now Olivia was suggesting that someone might have made him that way, left him broken on purpose.

"But what about training," Bron said. "Some people say that nurture is more important than nature."

"Imagine that I could take out your memories, your 'software,' and put in new ideas and attitudes—anything that I want. If I inserted the right propaganda, the right mix of hatred and cynicism and superiority, I could create something... completely evil, both on the genetic level, and on the nurturing side. Your friend Riley had that happen to him. That's what our enemies do."

"So you think they'll come for me?" Bron asked. He was frightened by the thought, but Olivia was pale and shaking, and he wondered if he should be even more scared.

"I think they should have come a year or so ago. You're growing quickly, and just as your body matures, so do your powers...."

Bron felt intrigued by the possibilities. "I read a story about changelings once," Bron said. "The fey, the dark elves, put their beautiful babies in human cribs, and let the humans raise them."

"Some fairytales come close to the truth," Olivia said. "That is but one name that we have been called, 'the fey.'"

Bron had to ponder that. The word 'fey,' had so many undertones—powerful, dangerous, beautiful, and deadly.

"The changeling grew up," Bron said, "and went to war with the fey."

Olivia didn't say anything, but there was a hopeful look in her eyes. That's what she wants me to do, he thought, go to war with her enemies.

"Bron," Olivia said. "That boy Riley came to school today, hunting for you. The secretary caught him in a lie, and told him that there was no one at Tuacahn with your name. Maybe she threw them off our trail, but you need to know, our enemies are looking for us now. We'll need to keep a low profile. Don't go into town. Try not to attract any more attention."

"Okay."

"And you need to know that the boy who was killed, it wasn't our fault. They hunted us. I threw the caltrops out of the car hoping only to disable their vehicle. If they hadn't been speeding, no one would have gotten hurt. If they had caught us, you can't imagine what they would have done."

Bron considered that for a moment, nodded. But a thousand questions warred in his head. "So, do you think I can take people's memories, too?" It seemed like a tremendous power, greater than anything that he had ever conceived.

It also seemed absurd. Everything that Olivia had said was warring in Bron's mind. He couldn't process it fast enough, and yet, he had to believe her.

"Not all of us can take memories, or grant new ones," Olivia replied. "We will have to perform some tests with you, begin training. But I think that you're not a memory merchant, like me. I think you're something far rarer. Mrs. Stillman said that you sucked the energy from her at your last home. Your social worker was quite amused by that accusation. It could be madness talking, or she could be right, in a way. Yesterday, you rejected Galadriel, and she just curled up in a ball and quit breathing and all but died. And Mr. Lewis, back when you were a child, he curled up and died, too."

"I've never heard that," Bron said.

Olivia paused. "It's in the state's records. I think that you're a danger to those that threaten you. You're what we call an asufaak arru'yah, a dream assassin."

"A what?" Bron demanded.

"A dream assassin. It's a rare kind of masaak, the very rarest. With my powers, I can access many parts of the brain, but not all. I pull memories out of the cerebral cortex. I can even train neural pathways. But a dream assassin can go into a place that I never see, deep into the amygdala. He can draw out... hopes, desires, and ambitions from those around him. He can use them as fuel to shape his own goals."

"I couldn't have done that," Bron said. "I never touched any of those people!"

"A very powerful dream assassin wouldn't need to touch them," Olivia said. "Your will alone could have sapped them, even from a distance. Among every breed of masaak, there are some who can sap others from afar. We call them leeches. I think that you're not only a dream assassin, you're a powerful leech."

"Wow," Bron said sarcastically, "an assassin and a leech. Can you think of anything else to call me?"

Olivia smiled through tight lips. "We've been using these appellations for thousands of years. Among our people, they don't have negative connotations. Far from it. Leeches are revered, and dream assassins ..." She changed the subject. "Think about this, Bron: each one of these people gave you reason to fear or dislike them. You saw Mr. Lewis as a threat to your mother, and how did he die? He lost the will to live. He simply curled up in a ball and quit breathing—just as Galadriel will, unless you learn how to control your powers!"

Bron took a deep breath in surprise. "I wasn't trying to hurt her! I never wanted to hurt anyone!"

"I know," Olivia said. "Don't blame yourself. It's a natural defense mechanism, like an adder striking by instinct when surprised. We're going to have to go to Galadriel. You'll need to return what you took—by accident. You're going to have to give her the will to live."

Bron considered. "What if I give Galadriel too much ... ambition? I might end up like her, without the desire to do anything at all."

"No, you wouldn't," Olivia said. "You would simply save yourself. You'd leech the will from others around you."

He considered this for a long moment, then said, "Why should we bother with her? Why not let her die?"

Olivia shuddered and took a deep breath. "How could you even think such a thing?"

Bron shrugged. "People die every day. She's trouble just waiting to happen. She's the kind of person that when she trips, someone else gets to take the fall. When she gets cut, the rest of the world bleeds."

"What do you mean?" Olivia asked.

Bron tried to explain. "She's rich, beautiful, spoiled. She begged me to run away with her, but if I had, what do you think would have happened when we got caught?" He waited for Olivia to answer, and explained, "I would have gone to juvie. She would have gotten grounded. I would have gone up on charges—runaway, rape, theft, kidnapping. She would have lost her cell phone privileges. That's the way that it works when you're a kid from social services. You saw Officer Walton. He can tell you. If a window gets broken, must be one of us who did it—not some kid from a 'good' family. As soon as Galadriel went missing, he came knocking on my door. How fair is that?"

"It wasn't fair," Olivia said.

"Damned right it wasn't fair. That girl is a danger to everyone around her!"

"You can't be that cold!" Olivia said.

Bron gave her a knowing smile. "Oh, yeah? Watch me."

Olivia didn't know him at all. He'd been pulled from one home after another, abandoned by his mother. Everyone he had ever loved had been stripped from him. No one had ever cared for him. Why should he care for someone else?

Or is there something even more wrong with me? Bron wondered. Had he been bred to be cold and callus? Did that lie at the root of his problem?

Or maybe he was just scared to try to fix Galadriel, afraid that he wouldn't be able to do it.

"Bron," she said. "You have been hurt so much, it's going to be hard for you to reach out. You've got to overcome that!"

Bron had never actually wanted to kill anyone. He might have been angry and hurt, but he'd never acted on that anger. He'd never lashed out at someone.

"You're right," Olivia said, trying another tactic. "She's a danger to others. Maybe it would be just to let her die. But have you wondered why Galadriel's such a danger? It's because she just doesn't give a damn about anything—you, herself, her future. The thing that she lacks, the thing that nobody else in the world can give her, is yours to give. You can do more than just help her survive. You've never felt what she's feeling right now, so you don't understand her, but you could make her whole."

Bron studied the red-rock cliffs to the north for a moment, and his dark eyes flicked up with interest. Olivia felt small for using this tactic. Men have a powerful instinct to save others, to risk their lives. That's why from time immemorial, men have gone to war. She was using Bron's instinct against him, but she told herself: it's not just to save Galadriel. It's to save Bron, too.

Bron asked, "How do you do it?"

"I usually sneak up on them at night," Olivia said. "It can take a long time to reorganize memories—"

"No, I mean how do I do it? How am I supposed to fix her?"

"Look, ducks are born knowing how to fly south for the winter," Olivia said. "Just touch her forehead. Instinct will take over."

Olivia bit her lip, then fell silent. She started the car and drove slowly back onto the highway. The new white Corolla was as much as one could hope for in the way of camouflage. With the overbearing summer heat, white was the color of choice for cars in Saint George, and with the tinted windows, she and Bron were about as anonymous as one could be.

Yet as she peered up the road at a sedan approaching in the distance, she could not help but feel that a noose was tightening around them.

The Draghouls are coming, she thought. We can't see them, but I know they're here. I can almost feel them....

A phone call to the hospital that afternoon confirmed that Galadriel was in the Intermountain Regional Medical Center, undergoing treatment.

Mike had left a note at the house. He was up in the hills, checking on the cattle that were out in the open range. He wanted to get them back out of the hills before the muzzle-loader hunters descended on the area.

So Olivia offered to drive Bron to the hospital. Reluctantly, he agreed to go. He didn't want dinner. He paced around the house, nerves on edge. While Olivia got ready, Bron went outside. Clouds were scudding in from the south, big thunderheads streaming up from the Pacific.

Bron stood by the Corolla and watched some birds flitting by the rail fence—bee eaters that seemed to dance in the air, hover and dive, snatching up flies and mosquitoes and honeybees. He tried to capture the rhythms in his mind, put their dance to music.

The air smelled of dust and a rising storm.

Bron went to a rose bush by the hummingbird feeders. From a distance the white roses looked tawdry. Their petals were aging, burning brown on the edges. Bron picked the nicest blossom and peeled away the older petals.

"Ready?" Olivia asked as she came out of the house

"As I'll ever be," he mumbled.

Olivia eyed the white rose. "Nice touch," she said. "I thought you didn't care if Galadriel lives or dies?"

"Aren't you supposed to take gifts when you visit the sick?"

They piled into the car and headed through town, past the juniper forest and then out of the valley altogether, where the sagebrush poked up through rocks. Once the scenery turned bland, Bron's thoughts focused inward. He sat staring out the window, clenching and unclenching his fist.

"You all right?" Olivia asked, just to fend off the silence.

"I feel like I'm being asked to take a test," Bron said, "in a subject that I've never studied before—never even heard of."

"Relax," Olivia urged. "You'll do fine." He wasn't sure she believed it. "Now that you recognize what's going on, I think that these incidents will become fewer and farther between. I know that you didn't really want to hurt Galadriel. Once you wish her well, if you wish her well strongly enough, I think that she will heal."

"What about Melvina?" Bron asked. "I might have accidentally taken something from her, too. I... didn't like her."

"She lives so far from here, you can't do anything for her today. She'll stay the same cramped, miserable person that she is now—until you return the ambition you've taken."

Bron considered. He didn't want to see Melvina again, but his reluctance shamed him. Olivia talked about it as if it were a done deal. "When would we go?"

"Maybe next Saturday?" Olivia suggested. "You're going to have to learn how to use your powers anyway. We could make a day of it, maybe find something fun to do up in Salt Lake? When was the last time you went to the water park, or took in the rides at Lagoon?" Lagoon was a large theme park in the northern part of the state.

"I went to the water park last year, but I haven't been to Lagoon since... I was eleven." Olivia smiled. "We should go to Lagoon, unless there's something you'd like better? 'Lion King' is coming to Salt Lake—the musical."

"That would be fun," Bron said, but there was an edge to his voice, a lack of enthusiasm. He didn't really want to go. She was the one who loved musical theater.

"No, wait a minute," she suggested. "Why choose between the two? We can do both!" She talked excitedly as she made plans—suggesting that they go to one of the better places for dinner: Zinn Bistro.

Bron broke in, "If I give these people ... ambition, what happens to me? I mean, I don't have much myself, or at least not so much that I want to get rid of any."

"As I understand it," Olivia said, "you were the one who was cleaning the Stillman's house, doing the dishes, fixing the meals, taking care of the children—all on top of going to school?"

"Yeah," Bron admitted.

"You've got more ambition than is good for a kid your age."

"Yeah, but what if I give too much away?"

Olivia glanced out of the corner of her eye, kept her attention on the road. "I don't know much about dream assassins," she admitted. "No one does. There hasn't been one for a long time...."

"Why's that?" Bron asked.

Olivia chose her words carefully. "Too few are born."

"My parents were dream assassins, right?"

Olivia shook her head. "No." She sounded a little bewildered. She finally said, "I told you that masaaks don't have a lot of offspring. That's part of the reason that there aren't many of us. But you should know that our talents are ... like hair color. Most people in the world—throughout Asia and Africa—have black hair, more than seventy percent. Us memory merchants, we're like people with black hair. Most masaaks have my gift, though few have it so powerfully. You're ... like an albino, which is a very rare thing, even for a masaak. Your parents could have been... anything."

"So there are other kinds of masaaks," Bron asked, "with different talents?"

"Let's not worry about that right now."

"You said that we don't have a lot of children," Bron said. "But there are other reasons why we're so few, aren't there?"

Olivia smiled. "In the old days, the humans sometimes killed us. They called us witches or warlocks...."

"Cool," Bron said.

"Why is it cool?"

Bron struggled for words. "I guess, everyone wants to be an oppressed minority."

Olivia grinned. "Everyone wants to feel special. I'm not sure that they want to be oppressed." She tried to sound casual. "I told you that I'm not supposed to answer your questions. Someone else will: the Weigher of Lost Souls. She'll tell you everything that you need to know."

Bron grew quiet. At last he said, "I don't know. Would she have to ... touch me? I mean, isn't it kind of dangerous, what she does?"

Olivia suggested, "She doesn't have to 'teach' you. She can just show you some things. It would be like watching a movie, except that you would smell and touch things, and you'd feel the world, and think remembered thoughts. It's better than 3D."

There was something that she wasn't telling him, Bron knew.

"All right," Bron said, "as long as she doesn't do anything wonky to me."

"She won't," Olivia assured him. "This woman and I, we're more than just friends. We're more like ... allies. There are a lot of muses like us—math, science, athletics. You'd be surprised at what you could learn."

Bron cast a sideways glance. "Allies against what?"

She smiled nervously, kept her eyes fixed to the road. He was fishing for information that she wasn't supposed to reveal. They were coming past some scenery now, three volcanoes up ahead. With the thunderheads coming in from the south, the black volcanoes looked as if they were lowering beneath clouds of ash. Her answer seemed evasive. "Against the rising tide of ignorance."

Olivia shifted her hands on the steering wheel. She had been clutching it so tightly that her knuckles had gone white.

"I've been thinking," Bron said, "about what kind of damage a memory merchant might do. I mean, they could steal secrets from corporate executives, or government leaders! Right?"

"Yes," Olivia admitted. "I would even go so far as to admit that such things have been done—though not by me."

"They could, like, wipe out memories from their enemies. They might make great spies—sort of like James Bond, except with super powers."

"Yes, they could be like that," Olivia said. "So if we're on the good side, who's on the bad?"

"You're not ready for the whole truth," Olivia said. "And I'm not the one to tell you, even though I really want you to know."