“And you haven’t been telling me everything. You have to tell me when there’s bad news.”
“There is bad news all the time! It would be easier to tell you when there is not bad news!”
“And when you’re feeling frustrated.”
“Also, all the time!”
“And for God’s sake, stop trying to nobly protect my feelings by keeping things from me!”
“Fine!” I broke. “Captain Goode is smarter than us! And his power is stronger than our useless training! And we’re the only ones with our respective powers! There’s no one else! Happy?”
We stared at each other, both of us breathing heavily, a tension different from our powers snaking across the room, ensnaring us both.
“What do you mean … only ones?” He was white-lipped, tense, and edgy as a rabbit surrounded by wolves.
“Captain Goode told me there is only one person with each power at a time. That when we die, our power is passed along to someone else to be born with it. So I am the only living person who can heal, and you—you are…”
“The only person whose touch kills,” he finished. “Could he have been lying?”
“Mr. Adeoti confirmed it with a glove we got from him.”
“I see,” he said numbly, taking a few steps back to sit down hard on his bed. The protesting creaks were the only sounds between us for some long seconds. Our argument had blown through the room, leaving us awkward and vulnerable.
“Tell me what you’re feeling,” I said.
Sebastian stared out at nothing, as inscrutable as a curtained window.
“This talking rule works the other way, too,” I said. “I can get Mr. Kent to help.”
That got his attention. “It feels … lonelier.” He frowned. “I’m glad to know there aren’t others out there with this power. I am. But I … there’s a part of me that hoped maybe someone had learned how to fully control it. Or there were enhancers other than Captain Goode, who would take it away.”
“Right.” That same weight sank deep in my gut—for Sebastian and myself. The sudden loss of people who I had assumed would be out there, somewhere. I had friends with powers, sure, but I had felt a special comfort reading about the healers in the Society of Aberrations library, thinking I might one day see if others shared my particular experiences. The strange freedom and recklessness our bodies gave us. The constant urge to fix things. The worry that I’d outlive everyone I knew. But it was only me now. One person.
“Your turn,” Sebastian said.
“Pressured,” I said slowly. This was the conversational equivalent of edging out onto a tight rope, uncertain if it would hold my weight or send me crashing to my death. But Sebastian had been brave enough to try. I could, too. “If I’m the only one in the world with this power, then doesn’t it make me responsible for every person’s health? Even though I can barely keep myself alive. I don’t know how I’m expected to keep the entire world alive at once.”
“I don’t believe that’s expected of you,” Sebastian said.
“How can you know that?” I asked. “Dr. Beck treated the powers like a new scientific breakthrough, mainly to justify his experiments. Captain Goode makes them sound like some destiny in service of the Empire to justify the Society of Aberrations. All I can see is that no one has any idea what the point of these powers is and they are simply making something up.”
“Right,” Sebastian said, his brow furrowed. “Then I will simply say that I don’t expect you to heal the world.”
“What do you expect?” A strange sense of comfort filled me as I realized I would trust his judgment over any grand explanation.
“The same of anyone with power,” he said. “To do what they can to protect the ones without it. It doesn’t matter how many, as long as you keep doing it.”
“Says the man counting the lives he needs to save.”
“You’ve made me lose count.”
Something loosened in my own body, some tenseness I hadn’t known I was holding in until it began to melt away. “Then you don’t think we have roles to fill?”
He turned to me then, his jaw set, his eyes snapping. “If we were making assumptions like that, then I would be responsible for killing the entire world.”
A scoff escaped my mouth at that thought. “And we would have to be mortal enemies instead of…”
I trailed off, cursing myself for adding those two words to the end. Not quite friends. Not quite … whatever it was that was more than friends but also not. Possible-beyond-friends-if-it-weren’t-for-the-Mae-shaped-guilt-in-our-hearts. That didn’t quite roll off the tongue.
“Halves,” Sebastian finished for me.
“Yes, that is the word.” I slid forward to the edge of his range, ten feet from his bed.
His eyes flickered away and of course he blushed, because he was Sebastian and he always blushed.
The attic was silent around us, but I could hear my blood responding, burning my ears, rushing to my cheeks, prickling in my palms. Sebastian ducked his head, his eyes closed, his hands clasped, elbows loosely planted on his knees. He was back to training his power.
“Miss Chen couldn’t raise hers back up,” I told him. “It’s no use against Captain Goode.”
“It will be useful after him,” Sebastian said.
We sat in the musty attic until long after the sun rose, streaming in through the slanted window, slowly inching closer and closer to each other.
And I felt no pain.
Chapter Fourteen
“UNDERNEATH THAT RIDICULOUS description is yet another drawing of what one assumes is Mr. Braddock, but it really does not do him justice.” Mr. Kent tossed a fourth newspaper in the fire. “So, to sum up, Mr. Braddock killed the India Secretary, attempted Captain Goode’s assassination, and has committed two other murders in three days.”
“I killed the India Secretary,” Miss Rao grumbled next to me.
“You may need to leave a note next time,” I said, squeezing the arm I was already holding.
I was squished between her and Miss Chen on the parlor couch so I could heal them with my very slowly returning powers.
The rest of our group was spread around the room; Mr. Adeoti pored over Captain Goode’s glove and recorded every detail at the writing desk; Rose and Catherine reviewed his notes and the newspapers near the window; Mr. Kent paced in front of the fireplace while Emily and Laura practiced their needlepoint, telekinetically and manually. Sebastian had finally deemed it safe enough to leave the attic as long as he stayed far away from the rest of us, which landed him in a very feminine, frilly armchair in the farthest corner of the room, where he peered at one of Mrs. Tuffins’s novels with skepticism.
“We must be taking much more drastic actions now,” Catherine quoted Captain Goode from one of the few papers Mr. Kent had not managed to burn. “The longer Sebastian Braddock and his accomplices are free, the more and more people are going to die.” She balled up the paper, and it followed its friends into the fire.
“More scaring the populace,” I said feebly.
Catherine shook her head. “I think he’s threatening us. He’s going to keep killing more and more. Unless we turn ourselves in.”
The words settled thickly over the room, souring the air.
Suddenly, glass shattered.
My heart leaped as I turned to Miss Chen, hoping she had regained control of her power.
But she only groaned. “Sorry,” she announced. “I just threw a glass figurine at the wall. Everything is still miserable. Carry on.”
I felt my jaw tighten and wished that it was rage that fueled our powers, because I had an endless supply after almost three days of waiting. No matter how much we tried, Miss Chen’s training techniques did nothing to speed up the process. Captain Goode’s effects couldn’t be reversed.
“Dammit, we need to do something,” I said.
“Even when you two get your powers fully back,” Mr. Kent said, “I wouldn’t think it’s a good idea to investigate like we were before. It will almost certainly lead us into another trap of Captain Goode’s. He knows how we’d investigate and track another murder.”