“Me?” For someone who’s normally so right about people, he couldn’t be more wrong.
“I thought I understood you before but now I realize more than ever how strong a witch you are,” he says. “Your real Gift is your connection to the physical world and when we went to Wales—”
“We didn’t actually go to Wales. We were in a trance.”
“We went to Wales. You and your animal and me, we were there. I’m not sure how to describe it but you became part of the earth and the earth became part of you.”
I just shake my head quickly and I’m about to say, “We didn’t go to Wales,” but I don’t. I’m not sure what happened. I don’t know where we went. But something significant did happen and the animal in me came too.
*
“So?” Nesbitt says to Gabriel as he piles bacon into a toasted sandwich and holds it up to take a bite. “Can you do Obama?”
Gabriel sighs dramatically. “This is the problem with my Gift. Everyone thinks I’m some sort of performing monkey. ‘Do Obama.’ ‘Do Marilyn Monroe.’ ‘I’d love to see Princess Diana,’ ‘Hitler,’ ‘Kanye West’—whoever he is.” He’s complaining but grinning all the while.
We’re sitting at the ridiculously long dining table. Nesbitt has cooked and laid out a buffet for twenty. Scrambled eggs, bacon, sausages, mushrooms, tomatoes, some kind of fish, porridge, boiled eggs, bagels, honey, hams and cheeses. Meters of food. Van is having toast and coffee.
Then something occurs to me. “But they’re fains. You didn’t become them, did you?”
“Yep.”
“But you didn’t get stuck as them?”
“No. I only got stuck as me being a fain.”
Van says, “When Gabriel was being Obama he was just taking on the outward appearance. Inside he was still Gabriel. He was trying out what it was like to look like a fain. But when he made the more radical decision to actually try to be a fain—inside—then he got stuck. He did it far too successfully.”
“I’m too talented for my own good.”
“Yes, Gabriel, you have a wonderful ability; however, please no transformations just at the moment. Let’s savor having you back with us as yourself.”
Nesbitt starts to clear the table. He’s on the other side of it from me when he says, “I’m still waiting to see Nathan turn. Not sure what he becomes: wolf or wild dog.”
“You want to spend the night with me and find out?”
“No thanks, mate,” he replies. “I want to cook breakfast, not be it.”
“You know, Nesbitt, I really don’t think I’d eat you. I can’t imagine you’d taste that good. Too fatty for me.”
“Don’t worry about me, kid. The second you start to turn, I’m getting my gun out and shooting you.”
I stare at him but before I can think of anything to say, he adds, “Don’t look so alarmed, mate, my aim’s spot on. I’d just wing you. You heal quick—no harm done.”
And from his voice I know he’s serious. I mumble to Gabriel, “See? People ask you to show your Gift by turning into Obama; me, they shoot and say, ‘No harm done.’”
I’m trying to keep light and happy for Gabriel. I need to ignore Nesbitt but when I reach for more bread I see my hand and all the scars on it and the black tattoo and I want to scream at Nesbitt that it hurt, that every scar I have hurt, and my body is covered in scars that have healed quickly but they all hurt, and I can’t say about any of them, “No harm done.”
I stand up, push my chair back, and walk out of the room, saying, “I thought we were leaving.”
Barcelona
We’re back in the car and roaring up the drive with a spray of gravel. Nesbitt is driving. Gabriel and I sit in the back.
I say to Van, “You said you were going to a meeting of the Alliance but we still have to find Annalise. That’s the top priority.”
“We’re doing both. We need to find Mercury’s home. And Mercury only trusted a few people with that information. Pilot is one of those people.”
“So we’re going to see Pilot?” I ask.
“We will when we know where she is,” Van replies. “But she’s being almost as elusive as Mercury at the moment. She fled from Geneva when Clay and the Hunters arrived, apparently heading to Spain, but I don’t know where in Spain and it’s a big place.”
“So, what do we do?”
“We go to Isch, a supplier. She’ll be able to help.”
“Supplier of what?”
“All the things that a Black Witch might desire. Ingredients, information, assistance.”
“And this Alliance meeting you mentioned, that’s also in Barcelona?”
Van drags on her cigarette. “As luck would have it.”
But the way her face is serious and drawn doesn’t make me feel lucky at all.