Crowned. Cheryl Ntumy S.
glances up.
I follow her gaze and suck in my breath. The walls are staring to fade. The illusion is coming apart.
“He doesn’t like to wait.” Emily starts up the stairs again. Where is she going?
“Wait! What about Rakwena?”
She stops. “It took him a while to adjust but he’s fine.” She looks down at me. “Don’t worry. John would never let anything happen to either of you. You’re far too important.”
“Emily–”
She flickers, running up the fading staircase, and then passes out of sight. I hurry through the doorway. When I turn to look over my shoulder, the house is gone. The gate opens just enough for me to squeeze through, then closes behind me. I can feel the Puppetmaster’s energy rise into the air and depart from the premises.
“Well?” asks my grandfather, when I climb into the car. “How was it?”
My head is swirling with jumbled thoughts as I tell him what happened. “What does that mean?” I ask, when I reach the end of my report. “The greater good? How can building an army of unwilling, brainwashed ungifted be for the greater good?”
He shakes his head. “You see what he is doing, don’t you? He is trying to win you over.”
“He’ll never win me over.”
Ntatemogolo starts the car in silence. He doesn’t even nod his agreement.
I glare at him, indignant. “He’ll never win me over!”
He glances at me. “Am I the one you are trying to convince, or yourself?”
I have a retort on the tip of my tongue, but it seems wiser to keep quiet. The meeting threw me off. My enemy thinks he’s my friend. He is cruel and calculating, probably guilty of kidnapping a gifted, and yet one of his victims returned to him of her own free will. He’s done terrible things, but as I stood beside him in that room he was almost a normal person. He was polite, even gentle, and it wasn’t an act. What does that mean?
Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe it was an act and Emily is suffering from a supernatural version of Stockholm syndrome; I’m not sure. I’m not sure of anything any more.
The University of Botswana, fondly (sometimes disdainfully) referred to as UB, is quiet on Saturday morning. Dad’s office, hidden on the top floor of the Biology building, is cluttered in that way unique to academics. Papers upon papers, stacks of books he hardly uses, and copious handwritten notes that seem obsolete next to his computer.
I hitched a ride to UB with Dad so I could meet my friends at the nearby Riverwalk Mall, and decided to stop at his office to check my email. There’s nothing from Rakwena. It’s only been a few days and I know there’s a good chance he hasn’t checked his mail since he left Botswana. The cell said no outside contact; I’m sure they take that seriously. But he was inducted last month – he’s officially part of the clan now, and there’s no need to keep him cut off from the influence of his telepath girlfriend.
I’m not even sure I’m still his girlfriend. Did we break up? No one said the words “it’s over”, but our actions implied it. Maybe we are over, but that’s no reason not to contact me, if only to make sure I haven’t been hacked to death in my sleep. Doesn’t Rakwena care about me any more? Is he too happy in his new life to ruin it by reaching back into the past, or is something else going on that I don’t know about?
Maybe it’s better he doesn’t contact me. Rakwena’s cell brothers were open about the role flirting with girls plays in topping up their energy levels. What if he’s romancing his way across South Africa, dropping kisses left and right?
“Are you all right, love?”
Dad’s looking at me, an anxious half-smile on his lips. His hair’s been cut and stands up at the front like he’s a member of a pop band. The circles under his eyes have faded, but he hasn’t lost the nervous energy he’s been giving off since he learned the truth.
“I’m fine. Just thinking.” I sign out of my email account.
“No news from across the border?” Sometimes Dad can be surprisingly perceptive.
“Nope. But he’s probably busy.”
“What with assimilating into a community of magical beings and all.”
I smile. “Right.” Dad has left two browser tabs open to international news, and one of them catches my eye. “I thought this cell phone issue was just a local problem.”
“Hmm?” He looks at the screen. “No, it’s happening in a lot of places. Not just phones – internet, electricity, radio. Even the local airport is having trouble with air traffic control.” He walks over to the desk and leans forward. “See? Scientists say–”
“The energy surges are in ten locations around the world, including here.” There it is again, that funny nagging sensation, like knowledge buried deep in my gut trying to find its way out. “What could be causing it?”
“No one knows. Some of my friends think ET’s heading this way and his advanced technology is messing with our archaic systems. Other people think it’s–”
“Terrorists.”
He sighs. “Please stop stealing my words, darling. It’s unnerving.”
My pulse is racing. It’s not ET or terrorists. I don’t know what it is, but I’d bet all the money in the government coffers that this is a problem of the magical kind. I turn away from the computer. “What do you think?”
Dad shrugs. “I think it’s some kind of military exercise. Isn’t that usually the case?”
Sure, usually. Energy surges in ten locations around the world, gifts going haywire, gifted CEO missing… Right now I can’t see a pattern, but it can’t be a coincidence. I get to my feet. “I’d better go.”
“You sure you don’t want a ride?” He takes my place at the computer.
“I can walk.”
“You’re meeting Malebogo and Elijah?”
I refrain from rolling my eyes. I don’t know why Dad can’t just call them Lebz and Wiki. “Yep.”
“Anyone else coming?” His expression is a tad too innocent. He’s looking at the computer, tapping away at the keyboard, but I know where his thoughts lie.
I pull the strap of my bag over my shoulder with a sigh. “No one else, Dad. No gifted, no sorcerers, no drifters. Just Wiki and Lebz, who are absolutely not gifted.”
“You’re sure?” Tap-tap-tap-tap. Blink. Tap-tap-tap. Who does he think that nonchalant act is fooling?
“I’ve known Lebz and Wiki since we were born; you’ve been friends with their parents for twenty years! Don’t you think I’d know if they were gifted?”
He stops pretending to work and turns to me. “What about Elijah?”
I grin. “Wiki’s gifted, but not in the way you’re thinking.”
He nods, finally satisfied. “I’m just trying to keep you safe.”
“From what?”
“Who knows? Werewolves, or whatever.”
“Werewolves, Dad? This isn’t a movie.”
He glances at me. “No werewolves?”
I give him a look. “Either you can shape shift at will or you can’t.”
He raises a sceptical eyebrow. I’ve told him before that my world isn’t all that different from his, but I think this is the first time he’s actually