Chapter 10 #4
“You want anything, Rayn?” Cass asked, leaning forward.
“No, thank you,” I told her.
“You bring your bottle, kid?” Hart asked me.
I nodded.
“You want something in there?”
“No, thanks,” I repeated. I appreciated the offer, but I was already on edge and didn’t want to add anything more to complicate things.
“Suit yourself,” Hart replied with a shrug, then made himself a cup of coffee.
A few minutes later, a grey-haired faun came clomping into the room to a bunch of delighted greetings, hugs, and laughter. Even Izzy was grinning, showing those crooked teeth. Kurtz came and sat next to him, ruffling his purple hair. “Heya, Izzy.”
“Heya Kurtz,” he replied. “How’s retirement?”
“Fantastic. But I can’t leave my kitty-cat hanging.” He bared his big teeth in a grin over at Raj, who rolled his gold-brown eyes. Then he looked over at me. “Hey there,” he said. “John Kurtzweil. Everybody calls me Kurtz.”
“Hello,” I replied meekly.
“You’re Rayn? The kid from the asylum?”
I nodded, glancing around nervously as the rest of the room fell silent.
“Your parents know what they sent you into?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. I— They’re dead, so I don’t know for sure. I wouldn’t be surprised if they did or if they didn’t.”
“Jesus,” somebody muttered, and I didn’t think it was Hart.
Kurtz pressed his lips together. “I’m asking because I need to know how to play this,” he said. “I need to know what to tell them, how to be thinking about the motivations of the families who are looking to send a kid there.”
I swallowed, nodded, then spoke again. “Not everyone’s parents knew what was happening to them, or why.
Some families knew that they were stealing our magic—and that is why my parents sent me.
Because I had the ‘wrong’ kind of magic.
But I don’t know whether or not they intended to help me or to keep me prisoner, although,” I added with a grimace, “I suspect it was the second.”
“Some of the families Ward contacted to let them know the conditions their kids were in immediately called to report the facility for neglect and abuse,” Hart put in, leaning forward on his elbows. “So we know there were people who did genuinely think it was there to help their family members.”
“What we don’t know,” Raj added, “is what, exactly, the current condition of the operation is. Is it there to extort money from families who don’t know what happened, or has a new facility been set up?
If the latter, is it actually intended to help people with mental illness or trouble controlling their magic, or is it there to abuse and exploit its patients, just like before? ”
Kurtz blew out a heavy breath.
“So what do you need me to do?” Izzy asked, glancing around the table.
“Since we don’t know what we’re walking into,” Raj explained, “it’s hard to say exactly what we’ll need.
It’s possible we won’t need much of anything—some background yelling, for instance, during a phone call.
They might ask to speak to you on the phone or do a virtual evaluation.
They might ask to meet you in person.” He shrugged.
“Maybe nothing at all other than being willing.”
Izzy nodded. “I can do that,” he said, although he sounded a little nervous.
“Rayn,” Raj said then, looking at me. “I need you to tell us as much as you can. As much as you’re willing to.”
I took a deep breath. I didn’t enjoy talking about it—didn’t particularly want to talk about it—but I knew that it was important.
That what I could tell them might lead to stopping whoever was trying to revive Tranquil Brook—or was pretending to.
Either way, they needed to be stopped, and what I knew might make a difference.
So I told them about how my parents had sent me away because I’d lost control of my magic—although not specifically how or why.
I told them about the early years, when they’d mostly just kept us isolated so we couldn’t hurt each other.
Told them about the early rituals that had drained our magic.
Told them about the first, mostly experimental devices that had left burns and scars as they siphoned off power.
Told them about the later models that burned less, but took more.
About the wave of Arcanavirus that had ripped through the asylum, providing more magic for the magi and machines. About the neglect and the secrecy.
About how Mason and Ward and Hart had found and freed us.
I skipped over the dreamwalking.
I couldn’t reveal that. Not with Raj in the room.
I finished, staring down at my hands in their thin, dark grey gloves.
No one spoke.
A few people moved—I could hear the shifting of chairs, the rustle of fabric.
I heard a soda bottle open, then saw it appear in front of me—a dark-skinned hand twisting it open with two paper napkins so that he didn’t touch it.
I looked up at Raj, who leaned over me.
I swallowed, my throat a little sore from speaking. “Thanks,” I whispered.
A big, warm hand briefly touched my shoulder. “No, Rayn,” he said softly. “Thank you.”