Part 4 (2/2)

Orders placed and coffees in hand, I started to relax and Dan started his interview. After a while of telling him stories about my aunt and our life on the road, and his telling me what it was like to be a senator, I really believed he just wanted us to get to know each other. As I was taking the last bites of my eggs and toast, I felt so relaxed-an effect he must have had on most people, if he wanted to-I forgot completely I was supposed to be afraid of him. In fact, I was so relaxed, I asked the question I'd been harboring since I learned about his Sententia gift so many months ago.

”What's it like to be a Thought Mover?” I blurted. Immediately, I sipped my coffee to hide the d.a.m.nable blush creeping over my cheeks, but I didn't take it back. I really wanted to know.

He didn't respond for a moment, but studied me instead. It should have made me feel nervous, but it didn't. He seemed to regard me with a mixture of pride and intrigue, as if this was what he'd really wanted to talk about and been hoping I'd ask all along. But his answer was not what I expected.

With a smile, he finally said, ”You tell me.”

I coughed around the coffee I'd just choked on. ”I'm sorry?” He laughed lightly, but I knew he was serious.

”You're as much of a Thought Mover as any of us, though perhaps you don't realize it.”

”Carter said the same thing once,” I told him. ”I thought he was just making a comparison.”

He shook his head and said, ”A distinction. It's a rare gift to be a Thought Mover. Carter should know. And you, Elaine, are probably the rarest of all. Undoubtedly,” he amended. ”It's remarkable that the two most powerful Thought Movers of their generation, of the entire Sententia, would meet so young and fall in love, purely by chance.”

Actually, I found it a little scary, but I supposed remarkable was another way to look at it. ”Dr. Stewart once told me she doesn't believe in fate, but sometimes I wonder,” I said.

Dan smiled fondly so I knew he wasn't being cruel. ”Constance doesn't like to believe in anything she can't control,” he said. ”But that's one of the reasons she's such an excellent headmaster. As much as possible is in the control of her very capable hands.”

”Carter said something like that before too...But I think you like Dr. Stewart a lot more than he does,” I added.

If anything, his fond smile grew wider, though I wasn't sure if it was for the headmaster or his headstrong nephew. ”Were Constance here, she could tell you that is an undeniable truth.”

I dropped my eyes and said softly, ”I wish I could trade my gift for hers.” And I meant it.

The fleeting touch of Dan's fingertips to the back of my hand jolted my eyes up to meet his. With utter seriousness, he said, ”No, you don't.”

”But...why? Knowing the truth is so powerful.”

”It is,” he agreed. ”When it's a truth you want to know. You're young, but someday you'll understand that lies are often told out of compa.s.sion and being able to believe them is a gift in itself. Constance never experiences that. It's one of the things that has made her so...hard. No, Lainey, your gift is powerful.”

”I'm afraid of it,” I admitted.

He nodded, as if there was no other answer I could give. Maybe there wasn't. ”As well you should be. If you weren't, I'd be concerned. But you've already proven you can carry the weight of your gift without falling to the temptations of it. You should be proud of yourself, Elaine.”

I looked at him for a while, weighing my emotions, wondering if this was how Carter felt around him. He'd called me Elaine again, not in anger or reproof, but out of...affection, I guessed. Like my aunt did sometimes, and Mercy too. I found myself proud to have made him proud. Somewhere in the course of a day, I'd gone from fearing him to being curious about him to being eager for his praise.

”Your abilities are powerful too, Carter tells me. Will you...move my thoughts? Show me?” I asked.

”I can't,” he said, and for the briefest second he seemed vexed by this.

”Huh?” I was so distracted by what I thought I'd just seen in his expression, and by antic.i.p.ating what it would be like to have my mind, literally, changed that I barely understood what he'd said.

But I forgot whatever I thought I'd seen when, with deep sadness, he said, ”What I mean is, I won't. I'm not strong enough, Lainey. Not like you. I never use my gift, not anymore. Not even to demonstrate for you, I'm sorry.”

In all that he'd told me about the senator, this was not something Carter had mentioned, even hinted at. ”But...why?”

”You don't know what happened to my father, do you?”

I shook my head. I didn't really know anything about the elder Senator Astor, save that he'd died not long after his son had joined him in the Senate. And that he was my grandfather, something I was sure the man sitting across from me, turning a cold mug of coffee round in his hands, didn't know.

”My nephew tries to spare you, perhaps too much,” he mused, and then he told me the story, sparing nothing. ”My father was the last, as well as the first and only, Perceptum President to be executed.”

Chapter Seven.

I forgot how to speak. I think I even forgot how to blink. When he'd told it all, I stared at Dan dumbly for what seemed like minutes. I'd always a.s.sumed the late Jacob Astor had died of natural causes, because I had no reason to think otherwise. But no, it was much sadder than that. It was ego and greed that ultimately killed him.

Finally, I said, ”I just don't understand. It seems so...so pointless.” Mr. Astor had been a Diviner with a gift for seeing outcomes-exactly as I'd a.s.sumed about my own father, and what had translated into my ability to determine a person's final outcome, so to speak. From everything Dan told me, it sounded like his father abused his gift, and his positions in both the Perceptum and the Senate, to further nothing but his own bank account and sense of superiority. ”He basically stole from the Perceptum, like it was a game. But what did he have to gain that he didn't already have?” Money and esteem had already been his in abundance.

Dan met my eyes with something like respect. ”You are perceptive. Carter told me that. And the terrible answer is: I don't know. If there were other motives, better ones, he never shared them with me.” Eventually, maybe inevitably, his manipulations grew so extensive they caught up to him. And it was Constance Stewart who did the catching.

”Really?” I asked stupidly. Shock, like alcohol, disconnected my mouth from my brain.

”It was a sorely misplaced lie,” Dan said. ”When you've told so many of them, you sometimes forget who not to lie to.”

I nodded, sagely, I thought. Like of course I knew this already. And in a way, I did. Lying, blatant or by omission, had begun to feel like a job I didn't want but couldn't afford to quit. I wondered if that's what Mr. Astor had felt like, before it was too late. But I was only trying to protect people, I reasoned.

I looked down at the table, toying with my teaspoon. ”Couldn't he predict what was going to happen? In the end, I mean.” If only I'd known my paternal grandfather, I might have told him exactly where all his efforts would lead.

”Probably, if he'd tried.” Dan lifted his coffee, as if he'd take a sip, but set it back down without drinking any. ”We can't use our gifts directly on ourselves, but...well, I'd say it should have been obvious, but I was as blind to what he was doing as anyone.”

”I'm sorry. This must be hard for you to talk about.”

Dan met my eyes. ”I've made peace with it. I've learned from it.”

”What do you mean?” It seemed like maybe the saddest thing he'd set yet, which made no sense.

”I mean that my father's fate could easily have been my own.” I gasped, and Dan smiled sadly. ”That shouldn't be surprising. There's a reason I don't use my gift anymore. I know I'm not strong enough to resist the temptation of abusing it because I did. My father's disgrace was what finally made me admit it. I haven't used it since the day he died.”

The most powerful drug in the world, I thought to myself. Moving thoughts had to be difficult to resist and infinitely harder to quit. Despite what he'd said, it was clear it pained Dan to talk about what happened, just as it pained me to learn my grandfather had actually been a pretty terrible man. I had a million more questions I decided to keep to myself, but I couldn't resist asking one more thing I'd wondered about. ”Is that why you and Jill's mother never married?”

”Yes,” he said. ”I won't deny it. I should have learned my lesson when it cost me my daughter. I loved Angela, but it's Jillian I truly lost. Nearly twice, if not for you.”

So we'd come full circle, back to me and my gift. ”Why don't you hate me?” Another question I'd been dying to have answered but never thought I'd ask.

He said nothing for a few long moments, regarding me not with hostility but a fatherly sort of warmth. ”Carter also once told me you don't see yourself as others do. He was certainly right. Your humility is perhaps an even rarer gift than your heritage,” he mused. ”What I hate are the actions you were forced to take, along with my part in them, but I can't imagine anyone else who'd have followed them with such compa.s.sion. If not for you, I wouldn't have admitted the additional mistakes I was making, and never would have gotten my daughter the help she needs. No, I needed you, Lainey, and I'm not alone. We need you too.”

Here it was, the moment I'd been dreading, all the more since my suspicion of Daniel Astor had begun to change into something else. I knew who he meant-We was all of us, the Sententia, and the Perceptum Council specifically. They wanted me to do my family's job, and I was sure I couldn't.

Instead of answering, I studied the chip on the edge of my empty mug. As I stared at it, I realized it was strange that my mug was empty, since Mercy was usually so prompt about filling them. I glanced over my shoulder and was shocked to see the restaurant was nearly empty. It was almost closing time, and time for us to go. Mercy was sitting at the counter, enjoying her own cup of coffee. A lifetime of waitressing must have told her our conversation hadn't really been one to interrupt.

The senator's smooth voice broke into my jumbled thoughts. When I looked at him again, he was smiling. ”I'd have been surprised if that compa.s.sion didn't make you hesitate,” he said, and stood, pulling his wallet from a back pocket and depositing at least twice as much as our breakfast cost on the table. ”You have plenty of time to think about it, don't worry. You are exactly who we've needed for probably a very long time. We'll wait until you're ready.”

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