Divided against Yourselves (Spell Weaver) Page 9

  “I had seen Gianni with you, though, so when I said ‘Hi’ to him, I kinda pretended that I knew you, and he talked to me. He even had me come home with him a couple times and gave me cookies.”

  Khalid’s expression hinted at what I would have suspected anyway—that the cookies were about the only food he hadn’t had to steal in weeks. The wave of sympathy about to engulf me, however, didn’t quite wash away my feeling of uneasiness about his being around Gianni. In that second I wanted to probe his mind—hard, if necessary—to verify his story, and his permission be damned. I wasn’t about to take any chances with Gianni’s safety.

  Nurse Florence, as if reading my mind, put a restraining hand on my arm.

  “Khalid, we all know Gianni, but you could have fooled him. You won’t be able to fool us if you allow us to see what is in your mind. Otherwise, we’ll have to keep you in a place where we know you can’t hurt anyone.”

  Khalid looked at us one by one, as if trying to find a sympathetic face. Mine was now expressionless. Dan, Shar and Carlos were all looking at him suspiciously. Gordy was clearly puzzled. That only left Nurse Florence, and she was the one who had just given him the ultimatum. He looked so trapped that I began to sympathize with him again, but I squashed the impulse. We needed to know the truth, period. Then I realized what I needed to do to get the truth.

  “Khalid, how about a trade?” I asked. “You can look inside my mind if we can look inside yours?”

  “Is that wise?” asked Carlos quickly. The others looked equally skeptical.

  “Personal stuff only, not information about our dealings with Morgan, the extent of my magic, or anything like that. Nurse Florence can monitor to make sure Khalid doesn’t go where he shouldn’t. Well, Khalid, what do you say?”

  I could tell Khalid was still conflicted, but my willingness to do what we were asking him to do had at least cracked his resistance.

  “Will it hurt?” he asked quietly after several seconds had passed. “When you go in my mind, will it hurt?”

  “As long as you relax and let it happen, not one bit,” replied Nurse Florence in her most reassuring tone.

  “Can I look in Tal’s first?”

  “That’s the idea,” I replied.

  “OK,” said Khalid, still visibly reluctant.

  “Dan and Gordy, I think you can stop holding him,” pointed out Nurse Florence. They did, slowly and with noticeable reluctance—and they stood close enough to seize him again at the slightest sign of trouble.

  “Take my hand,” I said, extending my right hand as if for a handshake. Khalid took it reluctantly. His hand was shaking just a little and felt grimy against my skin. His skin was also pretty rough for someone his age, but I guessed living on the street would do that. Nurse Florence took my left hand so she could keep track of what was happening more easily. As soon as I felt her mental presence, I opened part of my mind to Khalid. There was no immediate response, so I started projecting to him, and after a few seconds I felt him take hold. In only a few more seconds he let my memories engulf him.

  Khalid showed the greatest interest in my memories from the time I was little until I was about his age. I could feel him lingering over times I had enjoyed with my parents, as well as various childhood and adolescent milestones: my first kiss, learning to play the guitar, learning to drive. I didn’t have to read his mind to know that most of the memories he was reveling in had no parallel in his own life.

  Then he brushed against some of my more recent, more difficult memories. For a few seconds he was even with me on Ceridwen’s roof when I almost died, but that kind of experience must have been too intense for him, since he almost immediately broke the connection.

  “You…you’re a hero,” he said to me with something akin to wonder, as if I were some kind of superhero who had stepped straight out of a comic book.

  I found myself blushing a little. I’d like to think I was hero, at least sometimes, but because I couldn’t share what I had done with most people, I seldom got any outside validation for my feelings. “I would have died without Nurse Florence and all of these guys,” I replied as modestly as I could. “They are all heroes.”

  “I thought you were good people,” said Khalid. “I just didn’t realize how good.”

  “OK, buddy, now that you know a little more about us, it’s time for us to know a little more about you,” I said.

  Khalid still looked reluctant.

  “Why don’t you lie down on that cot over there, and we’ll get this over with as quickly as we can,” suggested Nurse Florence. Khalid, still moving hesitantly, almost as if his ankle was still injured, settled onto the cot.

  “All right, Tal, you and I will each take one of Khalid’s hands. Dan and Shar, you each take our other hand, and Gordy and Carlos, you each take one of theirs. I want everyone in on this, so there can be no questions later.” The guys obediently held hands, having probably figured out that the physical connection would make it easier for Nurse Florence to broadcast to them.

  “Are you ready, Khalid?” Nurse Florence asked. The kid nodded once, and Nurse Florence immediately moved gently into his mind, as did I.

  I was almost knocked off of my feet by the overwhelming feeling of sadness, not quite despair, but certainly bordering on it. I already knew his life hadn’t been a picnic, but that knowledge had not prepared me for plunging into this ink-black abyss.

  I caught very brief flickers of a beautiful woman with jet-black hair and eyes like dark stars, but the image was hazy, as if Khalid had not seen her for years. His mother! Khalid had tried to hold on to that memory, but it was relentlessly fading away, vanishing into the surrounding blackness.

  The image of his father was clearer but offered little comfort. Oh, I could feel a few happy memories, vague as the image of Khalid’s mother and probably dating from the days before she left, but once his mother had left, his father had become increasingly distant and severe, until the day on which his father could no longer deny Khalid’s extraordinary nature, and that day Khalid remembered as a red jumble of pain.

  At one point his father hit him—my own jaw ached from the bare-knuckled blow—but that pain was nothing compared to his father’s departure, a cowardly escape while Khalid had slept, a knife through his heart that made me want to leap out of his mind screaming. I didn’t, because I still didn’t know for sure whose side he was on. His background was authentic, but someone who hated his life so much could be an ideal candidate for recruitment by someone like Morgan.

  Given the potential danger, Nurse Florence and I looked carefully, but all we could find were distant images of Morgan. Khalid seemed to have avoided her, just as he said. Nor was there any evidence of contact with any other hostile person—or thing, for that matter. We saw his talks with Gianni, little bursts of light highlighting the surrounding blackness, and not even a trace of any sinister purpose; much to my relief, Khalid liked Gianni, wanted to be friends with him, and had no ulterior motive.

  We saw his fumbling and unsuccessful attempts to talk to other kids, his numerous thefts, his spying on us, which turned out to be more than just sizing up how to get his hands on Zom. Khalid saw our friendship and wished that he could somehow be a part of it. We even experienced his panic-stricken views of today’s chase, images that made my own heart pound and my breath come in short, ragged gasps, images that made my own ankle ache redly.

  We felt also his dejection when he was caught, his plan to impress his father by showing up with such a valuable artifact disrupted beyond repair. And I knew why he didn’t want to go to Annwn, or any other place outside the Santa Barbara area: he wanted his father to be able to find him when his father changed his mind. (I know, I know—Khalid didn’t understand how unlikely that scenario was, and perhaps we would need to wean him off of it over time, but I wasn’t going to even try today, when he had already been through so much.)

  By that point there could be no doubt: Khalid had been, of necessity, a thief after his father had deserted hi
m, but what he was not was a threat to any of us, and he could definitely use our help—big time!

  After Nurse Florence and I withdrew from Khalid’s mind, I glanced around and saw that the guys were just as moved as I had been. How could anyone be unmoved after getting his soul sand blasted like that? Gordy was actually crying, though I was sure he would deny it if I asked. Dan was at least on the verge of tears, and I picked up a flash of intense emotion from him; he was remembering the death of Jimmie, his own little brother. Khalid was two years older than Jimmie had been then, but it was easy to see that something in Khalid’s memories had hit Dan right in the little-brother center in his brain. Carlos was less moved but clearly shocked at what Khalid had been through. Shar looked embarrassed for the way he had reacted to Khalid earlier.

  “Any questions?” asked Nurse Florence somewhat redundantly, since clearly there were none.

  “Khalid,” she continued, “I think we all see now why you don’t want to go to Annwn; you have friends, or at least acquaintances you want to get to know here. Aside from your father, the only people you feel any kind of connection with are here.”

  Well, the biggest reason was his father, as I had just been thinking, but I could see why Nurse Florence didn’t want to reinforce that idea, and it was true that Khalid had felt some kind of connections with us.

  Nurse Florence paused for a moment. “So no Annwn. We have already decided, have we not, that we can’t turn him over to the police?” she asked, looking at us.

  “Even if we wanted to, I doubt they could hold on to him,” I joked.

  “Well, social services isn’t going to work either. Khalid wouldn’t like that kind of situation, and they couldn’t hold on to him either. I can only think of one thing we can do in the short term: one of us needs to take him in…until his father or someone else claims him.”

  I knew Nurse Florence was adding that last part for Khalid’s benefit, trying to navigate the treacherous waters of his forlorn hope without deliberately making it stronger. Fortunately the guys recognized the problem and did not challenge her statement. Anyway, we all had to take a minute to absorb what Nurse Florence was saying.

  “How would we explain him to our parents…or anyone, for that matter?” asked Carlos. I had been thinking exactly the same thing myself.

  “It won’t be hard to create a cover story about his being an exchange student of some kind. I can easily use the Order in Wales as the agency involved. My colleagues will be more than happy to join that pretense when I tell them what is happening.

  “Wales?” said Gordy. “He doesn’t exactly look like he’s from Wales.”

  “There are Arabs even in Wales,” replied Nurse Florence with a smile. “They may be less than half a percent of the population, but they do exist, and that’s all we need to establish credibility. I can plant memories in Principal Simmons and Principal Carmichael over at the middle school, so they think they have heard of this particular exchange program before. The rest of the details are easy enough. Khalid’s luggage was somehow lost at the Santa Barbara airport; Tal and Stan can plant the appropriate flight information so that Khalid appears in the passenger records from LA to Santa Barbara, and they can take care of the earlier part of his route as well, just in case someone checks. We can also invent some problem with the host family. One of the parents has fallen ill, maybe. Anyway, some story that explains why Khalid suddenly has no place to stay. We just need to know which set of parents to sell it to.”

  As always, Nurse Florence could cook up an expert cover story, but for a moment I was distracted from the discussion by the mention of Stan. Where was Stan? I hadn’t seen him since before school started. I knew he had been with Nurse Florence when the robbery occurred. If he hadn’t joined us for the chase, which probably wasn’t practical, why wasn’t he around when we got back?

  Nurse Florence paused, and I realized she must have noticed my inattention.

  “Sorry! I just realized Stan isn’t around.”

  “Don’t worry about him,” said Nurse Florence smoothly. “He’ll be back shortly; I’m sure. Let’s focus on finding Khalid a home.”

  “I’ll take him,” said Dan quickly. I knew Dan was volunteering because of the memory of Jimmie, and I wondered whether having Khalid in his house was really a good idea. It might stir up too many memories.

  “No, it’s better if I take him,” said Shar, much to everyone’s surprise, including Khalid’s.

  “Don’t look at me like that!” Shar continued. “Now that I know what his story is, I know we can be friends. And that exchange-student story, no offense, Nurse Florence, is a little lame. I can explain him to my parents as someone who needed to flee from the Middle East fast and is temporarily separated from his parents.”

  “That sounds much more complicated,” replied Nurse Florence doubtfully.

  “But it works,” insisted Shar. “Remember, my parents had to flee Iran after the overthrow of the Shah in 1979. I guarantee they won’t ask too many questions if they think Khalid is a refugee. In fact, they’ll pretty much roll out the red carpet. We just need to work out a reason his parents aren’t with him. Maybe his parents were already out of the country—damn, which country should we use? Well, we can figure out what the most likely trouble spot is in a minute. Anyway, his parents are in…Austria, let’s say. It took my parents a while to get out of Europe and into the United States, so they won’t question that. Somehow whoever was taking care of Khalid managed to smuggle him out via the U.S. embassy—”

  “Why would the U.S. embassy do that?” asked Carlos.

  “My parents aren’t going to question the details. I don’t know—maybe whoever was taking care of Khalid bribed someone at the embassy. After he got out through embassy channels, he ended up here—”

  “Because the embassy couldn’t figure out how to send him to Austria to be with his parents?” said Dan skeptically. “That really doesn’t make sense. Your parents are intelligent people. They are bound to notice the problem with that part of the story.”

  “His parents are dead then.” When Shar said that, Khalid gasped audibly. “No, Khalid, not for real. We’re just working out what we tell people. Anyway, Khalid has relatives in this country, but the State Department hasn’t tracked them down yet, so he needs a place to stay. That works, doesn’t it?”

  “It works if we are trying to write a movie script,” I said with a smirk. “It definitely has great possibilities as the opening to a suspense thriller. But as a credible story in real life, it has more holes than Swiss cheese!”

  “Well, then, Khalid’s parents are in hiding, and Khalid needs to pretend to be someone else, just in case the people after his parents come looking for him. We can pass him off as a cousin. Most Americans can’t tell the difference between Persians and Arabs anyway.” I felt a little awkward, since, even though I knew Shar well by now, I couldn’t really tell the difference either.

  “Your parents would let someone in the house who could make all of you a target?” asked Gordy worriedly. I don’t think mine would be willing to do that.”

  “Yes, the ‘Khalid is marked for death’ story line seems like asking for trouble,” said Nurse Florence without hesitation. “Whatever you think, Shar, I think your parents would be hesitant in the situation you describe, if only because it puts you in danger. However, the idea of pretending he is your cousin has merit. It avoids having to create all the background for a non-existent student-exchange program.”

  “His family sought asylum, and the State Department turned them down, but somehow they got him into the country illegally. We all know that sometimes legitimate asylum requests get turned down. As to how he got smuggled in,” said Shar in an almost defiant tone, looking at both Nurse Florence and me, “he’ll just say it is too painful for him to talk about it. My parents will buy that, and we won’t get stuck trying to work out plausible mechanics for smuggling him in. Tal doesn’t even need to fake passenger lists and that kind of thing, because Khalid woul
dn’t have appeared under his own name anyway in that scenario.”

  “Your parents would risk breaking the law?” asked Nurse Florence.

  “If they believe Khalid is here because his life could be in danger, yes, absolutely. Besides, we have a very large extended family. If my parents want a little ‘plausible deniability,’ they can always have him use the name of one of my actual cousins, someone we haven’t seen in a few years, assuming that if someone from the INS knocked at the door, they could always claim Khalid had fooled them. But they may not even bother with that. Either way, they will take Khalid in with that cover story—I know it in my gut.”

  Nurse Florence smiled a little, I think despite herself. “You’d really like to have Khalid with you, wouldn’t you, Shar?”

  “Yeah,” said Shar, looking at Khalid. “Now that I know his real story, I want to help…especially after I made such a jerk out of myself to begin with.”

  Khalid looked profoundly skeptical, even marginally afraid of Shar, and when Shar moved a little closer, Khalid backed away from him. However, Shar hugged him, and I could see Khalid cringe, then gradually relax a little. After all, no one had hugged him in—what did we learn from his memories? God, three years. That bastard of a father had deserted him when he was eight!

  Immediately, I realized my emotions were getting out of control and did my best to calm myself. Khalid might not be a fully functional telepath, but he had overheard part of my conversation with Nurse Florence when I became too agitated, so at the very least, he could pick up nearby thoughts with a sufficient emotional charge.

  “Well, we appear to have Khalid well taken care of,” said Nurse Florence with obvious relief.

  “Practice!” said Gordy abruptly. “We’re all gonna catch hell for being so late.”

  “Coach Miller found a way to explain your absence to your other coaches, so don’t worry about that,” said Nurse Florence. “I would recommend you all go home and get some rest. Your run half-way across town today should be all the exercise you need. Oh, Tal, you’d better go with Shar, just in case his parents need a little psychic nudge.”