I'd like to skip ahead to the next day, but that night, Dad brought me to the Barnes household with him.
I didn't want to go. Emma and I had been close—real close—and being around her now that's she'd turned evil hurt. But Dad had been insistent. He wanted to talk to Emma's dad, Alan Barnes. And he wanted me there with him.
So he'd called Mr. Barnes, and made sure that the man was home, and then dragged me and my photocopies along with him.
And now we were sitting in Mr. Barnes's office, in his house, staring at him from across his desk.
I had memories of that desk. Of this room, really. Of playing with Emma in here, pretending to be the big-name lawyer and her secretary. And sometimes, we'd played tea party, on that little coffee table there, in front of the couch. And then, later, when we'd gotten older, we'd come in to use the computer, when Mr. Barnes was at work, to look something up for school, or just to log onto the PHO and look over the various capes.
But we hadn't done that for a couple of years, now.
"Alright, Danny," Mr. Barnes finally said, after a few minutes of silence. "What's all this about?"
"I'm guessing that your daughter told you about the rat," Danny said, and Mr. Barnes went still.
"What rat?" he asked.
"Madison Clements found a live rat in my daughter's backpack today," Danny said, his voice even.
Mr. Barnes blinked. Then, suddenly, his face went pale.
"Oh my God," he whispered. Dad just nodded.
"The school is trying to claim that Taylor smuggled the rat into school on her own," Dad went on. "And then somehow kept it quiet for four periods, until Madison reached down into my daughter's backpack and started feeling around. I imagine that was the story that Emma would have told you, yes?"
"No," Mr. Barnes said, his face still pale. "Emma didn't say anything about a rat. She didn't tell me anything at all about something happening with Madison today. Possibly because she hadn't heard, or perhaps because she knew how something like that would look."
Dad nodded.
"The girl who almost died from being stuffed into a locker full of rats and mice, finding a live rat in her backpack? That's going to look like a threat," Mr. Barnes went on. Then his eyes went wide.
"Shit," he said. "Danny, that's going to look like a threat against you."
Dad nodded again, and I could feel my own face going pale.
I hadn't considered that angle. If the police thought it was a threat against Dad, they weren't going to pay any attention to Emma and Madison and Sophia. They'd come down on the gangs, and leave my bullies alone, to keep doing what they had been doing without fear of retaliation. They'd-
"It's not," he said, derailing my increasingly frantic train of thought. "Nobody's gotten into contact with me in the past few days. And unless somebody gets in touch with me in the next day or so and references it, I think I can safely say that it wasn't one of the gangs.
"No, I'm pretty sure that the problem here lies in the other part of my statement. That Madison Clements, one of the girls my daughter has accused of bullying her, was the one who reached into Taylor's backpack and found the rat."
Mr. Barnes went still, and stared at my father.
"What are you saying, Danny?" he asked, his voice quiet.
"I'm saying, Alan, that we now have proof positive that Taylor wasn't making it all up," Danny said, his voice still quiet. "Officially documented proof, at that. And if she was telling the truth about part of it, there's a good chance she's telling the truth about all of it. And I'm saying that, if this goes to trial, I'm not going to take it to civil court, and sue for damages. Not any more. I'm going to take it to criminal court, and let you try to out-spend the state, when they charge your daughter with attempted murder. I'm saying that I'm looking at this as if it were a direct threat to my daughter's life, Alan, and just like you have to defend your daughter, so do I.
"And just like you have resources to defend your daughter, so do I."
Mr. Barnes stared at my father for several seconds.
"You're talking about murder," he finally said.
Dad gave him a steady look.
"If your daughter is innocent," he finally said, "she wouldn't have anything to worry about. If she really has been telling you the truth, all this time, than the only way this could possibly blow back on her was if I specified her in particular. Which you know that I'm smart enough not to do. Right?"
Mr. Barnes nodded, jerkily.
"All I would do, Alan, is tell somebody—in a bar—that my daughter's being bullied, and threatened, and that she goes to Winslow. And that the faculty refuses to do anything about it. I won't name names, I won't give a description. I'll just tell them that I want it to stop, and to know that my daughter is safe. The rest will be up to them. I won't have any knowledge on the matter. And you know that I'll be able to get away with it, because somebody is issuing death threats to my daughter. And no jury in the world is going to convict me of complaining with intent to kill. Are they?"
Mr. Barnes sighed, and shook his head.
"So," Dad said. "What do you think I should do, Alan? Should I talk to the police, and hope that they're going to be able to handle this? Or should I talk to...other people?"
Mr. Barnes seemed to almost collapse in on himself. Then, after a moment's thought, he reached over, and picked up the phone off his desk. He punched in a number, and let it ring.
"Emma?" he said, when the other person picked up. "Are you with Sophia?"
He listened a moment, and then nodded.
"I need you to come home, dear," he said. "Now. Bring your friend. We have...something to talk about."
There was another answer.
"You have fifteen," he said, his tone harder than I'd ever heard before. "I'd suggest you hurry."
There was another answer, and his face went cold.
"Young lady," he said, "You may be my youngest daughter, and I may love you a great deal, but I am still your father. You will be here, in fifteen minutes or less, or you will be grounded for the rest of your high school career. Am I understood?"
There was another response.
"No buts," Mr. Barnes said, apparently cutting his daughter off. "You have fourteen minutes to get here, and in the door. You are in deep...deep dog doo, right now, and every minute you're late, it's just going to get deeper."
And then he hung up the phone, and looked back at us.
"You know she'll try and deny everything," he said. Dad nodded, and reached down, picking up the briefcase in front of him.
"That's okay," he said, setting the briefcase in his lap, and unlatching it. "I have a little...something for us to read through. While we wait."
He opened the briefcase, and withdrew the first stack of photocopies we'd made that afternoon.
"It's rather...entertaining reading," he said, with a friendly smile. "I'm sure we'll enjoy going through it. You know. For old times' sake."
By the time Emma arrived, almost twenty minutes later, Mr. Barnes had passed all the way through annoyed, then through angry, then through enraged, then through furious, and had finally hit that little plateau of anger where you're not so much raging, as incredibly, peacefully, calm. You know what I mean. That place where everything feels peaceful and okay, and you don't really notice that you just accidentally put that little spikey thing you stab your papers onto through the palm of your hand, because that's not important right now.
Dad had managed to get him to hold still while I retrieved the first aid kit, and we'd bandaged him up, and cleaned up most of the blood, but it was still evident that something had happened on his desk.
Both Emma, and Sophia, were visibly tired when they came into Mr. Barnes's office, and I had to wonder what they were doing, that caused them to be so tired, but I didn't push the issue.
There were so many other things to push, after all.
"Emma," Mr. Barnes said, looking up from the page he'd been reading as his daughter walked in. "Sophia. So good of you to drop by."
"Dad?" Emma said, sounding uncertain. Mr. Barnes was one of those people who got more polite as he got angrier, which meant that a polite greeting when you knew you were in trouble was never a good sign.
"I imagine you've met my good friend Danny Hebert a time or two," he said, ignoring her, and gesturing to Dad. "And I think his daughter goes to your school. I don't know if you remember her, of course, but she tells me you two used to be friends."
He stopped, and waited until his daughter opened her mouth to respond, before speaking up again.
"Of course," he added, cutting her off, "that seems to have stopped at right about the same time you met Sophia."
He paused, and gave her an expectant stare. Emma didn't even look like she'd even thought about it before falling right into his trap.
I mean, seriously. After something like that, how can you not realize that a pause like that isn't an invitation to continue?
"I know," Emma said, heaving a big, artful sigh. She even sounded sad, and a little mournful when she spoke. "I really miss having her as a friend. But when I met Sophia..."
She trailed off, and shrugged. "I don't know what happened," she said, artfully.
"I think you do, Emma," Mr. Barnes said, his voice quiet, as he glanced back down at the page in his hand. "Actually, looking at these journals, I think you know exactly what happened. You just didn't want me or your mother to find out."
It was at this point, I think, that something about his tone finally registered with the two of them, because even as Emma opened her mouth to say something, Sophia nudged her, and she went silent again.
"If you're talking about Hebert's accusations-" Sophia began, before she was cut off by Mr. Barnes's hand slamming into his desk.
Thankfully, this time he missed the spike, although I don't think he did the rest of his hand any good.
"I am not talking about her accusations," he growled at her, and she shut her mouth with a click. "I am talking about you girls' attempted murder of Taylor Hebert, and about the continuing death threats against that poor girl. I am talking, Sophia Hess, about something that will see the both of you go to jail. And despite everything that we owe you, there is absolutely nothing I can do to stop it. Do you understand me?"
I don't know if you've ever seen a black girl's face drain of blood, but that's exactly what happened to Sophia Hess right then.
"Death threats?" she whispered, her eyes wide. "What are you talking about? What death threats?"
"Somebody put a live rat in Taylor's backpack today," Mr. Barnes told her, his face serious. "Less than two months after she almost died from being locked inside a locker full of rats and mice. Your friend Madison apparently found it during their World Affairs class. Even leaving aside the question of why she would be rummaging around in another student's backpack, there's only one conclusion that the police are going to be able to draw from that kind of incident."
He shrugged, and Emma's face suddenly blazed with fury.
"Now hold on!" she said. "We didn't have anything to do with that rat! I've told you, Dad! That's Taylor! It's all Taylor! It always has been! I don't know why she's so jealous of Sophia, but she's been trying to drive us apart, to drive my friends and I apart, ever since we all started high school! I can't believe that you'd take her side on this!"
And with that, she burst into tears. I had to hand it to her. She really was a good actress. I could see that they were fake, because I'd known her for so long, both the good, and the bad. But I knew from experience just how convincing she could be when she put her mind to it, and it looked like, this time, she was really putting her mind to it.
Her dad sighed.
"Emma," he said, sadly. "Sweetie. Honey. You know I love you. You know I'd do anything for you. But I've got...about four hundred and some pages, here, of systematic notes saying the exact opposite of what you just tried to tell me. Notes, and emails. Emails that you signed by name, Emma Millicent Barnes. Emails that you sent. And sweetie? You've got a real bad habit, sweetie, of not logging off your email when you go to sleep for the night. So even though you changed your password, I could still get on to your account, and verify that these emails are real. They're not just something that Taylor put together to frame you. They're real emails, that you really sent. So I'd advise you to either shut up, or at least stop lying to me. Because right now, I'm prepared to accept every word Taylor says as the gospel truth, unless you and Sophia can give me a really damned good reason not to."
Then he turned his gaze to Sophia, who had just opened her mouth. The black girl shut it, and he nodded.
"What you may not be aware of, Sophia Hess, is that Danny Heberts is the head of hiring and negotiations for the local Dock Workers Union," he told her in that same implacable voice. "He is the single person most responsible for keeping the Empire Eighty-Eight and the ABB, among others, from getting a foothold in the dockworkers, and he is the single biggest barrier to their being able to freely use what shipping does still come into this port to smuggle guns, drugs, women, and whatever else they want into and out of this city. And you two have just put him in a position where he will likely have to turn to the gangs to protect his daughter's life. That's going to give them leverage over the docks, Ms. Hess. That's going to make it very, very hard for him to refuse to let them smuggle whatever the hell they want through those docks. That's going to drop the price of drugs, of guns, and of everything else that's making them money, and it's going to make it that much easier for Lung and the others to smuggle girls and anything else they want out of this city to their brothels in Thailand or elsewhere. And that will double or even triple their profits, and give them that much more money and soldiers to work with, and that much more ability to expand their operations and their reach in this city. So congratulations. You two have single-handedly contributed more to the rise of crime in Brockton Bay than any other two people in living memory."
Sophia's eyes went wide, when he said this, and she actually staggered, bumping into the door frame in shock.
"But...that can't be true," she whimpered, staring at Mr. Barnes. "I've...I...I..."
"You have definitely made a difference in this city," Mr. Barnes said, his eyes still boring into hers. "And I'm sorry to say that I have contributed to that difference. It will be something that I will regret for the rest of my life. And it will be something that weighs on my mind, the next time I am asked to give another young person such as yourself a chance. Evil begets evil, Ms. Hess. Sometimes directly. Sometimes...not. In this case, it has not been direct. But it will, I think, be all the more noticeable, in time."
"But...I didn't...I couldn't...that's-"
"I've had death threats," Dad interjected, and I whipped my head back around to stare at him. "The gangs have tried to put pressure on me before, to let their people into the docks. They've been trying to put pressure on me for years. I've had Cricket, Stormtiger, Rune, even Hookwolf and Oni Lee come after me. Not to mention unpowered assassins. The first time that the Protectorate fought Lung, it was because he'd just attacked the front gate of the DWU building. And that's not the only time he's tried...or the only time they've had to find some way to distract him. The police and the PRT are going to take this seriously. This isn't just a case of the strong hunting the weak any more, or whatever bullshit philosophy you're using to excuse what you've been doing. This is a case of somebody actively trying to destroy this city, and they have to take that seriously. But we both know what they're going to find, don't we? They're going to find that there wasn't any gang activity related to my daughter's getting shoved into that locker. They're going to find out it was you. You, and Emma, and Madison."
He settled back on the couch, and gave them a friendly smile.
"And I'm going to have to take steps, aren't I?" he asked her, his voice gentle. "Because they're not going to arrest you, are they? They're going to let you walk, right? You're too important to the school, too valuable to Winslow's sports team and funding, for the school not to cover this up. You're strong, and everybody else around you, is weak. Including the faculty. They'll cover it up, and not do anything, because you're important, and my daughter...isn't. And then I'm going to have to go hat in hand, and beg for a favor. I'm going to have to give Kaiser, or Lung, whatever he wants, in exchange for their making sure my daughter is safe. And what they want, is the city, isn't it?"
She said nothing, still giving him a shocked look, and his smile suddenly vanished as he leaned forward.
"Isn't it?!" he snarled, and even I jumped a little.
Sophia jumped a lot more than a little.
But she nodded, staring wide-eyed at him.
"The police know this," Mr. Barnes said, as Dad sat back again. "And they know the kind of pressure Mr. Hebert is under to let the gangs into the DWU. And when they can't find proof of gang involvement, they're going to have to look elsewhere. They have to make examples, you see. They have to prove that they can do their job. Otherwise, Mr. Hebert will have to find people who can. And we have this lovely, lovely journal of bullying. A journal that is going to make it look like you two, and your friends, have been doing exactly the kind of thing that would escalate to death threats over the course of the past two years. So they're going to arrest you, and bring you in, and they're going to throw the book at you. Particularly you, Ms. Hess. And because no jury in the world is going to believe a girl who has been shoved into a locker full of rats is going to voluntarily get within five miles of one without months of heavy therapy, therapy that Danny can't afford, that means that they'll return a guilty sentence. Which means both of you are going to go to jail over this. And there's not a thing I can do to stop it. Unless..."
"Unless?" Emma breathed, staring at her father, her eyes wide, and a little wild.
"Unless you can find some way to prove to Danny Hebert that his daughter is safe, and that she will not be bullied, and that she will be free to go about her school career without any kind of harassment, or hurtful remarks, or anything of the kind. And he is going to want vengeance for this, I'm afraid. He's going to want to know that Justice will be served. Which means that just transferring to another school isn't going to cut it."
Sophia's mouth closed, slowly, at that, and she slowly sank down to sit on the carpet. They both looked stunned, but Sophia, in particular, looked like she'd just had the entire world yanked out from under her feet. Like, somehow, everything she knew to be true in the world, had just been proven false. No. Not false. Like it had just been proven wrong, and that it was directly responsible for her betraying everything she believed in.
Mr. Barnes let that sink in for a few moments, before he spoke again.
"That will be all, ladies," he said, his voice still quiet, and calm. "Ms. Hess, I imagine you can see yourself out."
"So that's how you did it," Dad said, as he stared at the rat standing in front of us, once we'd gotten back home. "You've got control over rats."
I nodded, not trusting myself to speak.
To be honest, I was having second thoughts about all of this. It had sounded like such a good idea in my head, when I'd done it. Bring my own rat to class, and wait for Madison to do exactly what she'd always done. Frame her for the rat, and force everybody to focus on what she'd already been doing. Even if I admitted to bringing the rat, just like Dad had said, there was no reason why Madison should be rummaging around in my backpack without permission. And that way, when I went to the PRT with my powers, it wouldn't be the school doing the investigating. It would be the PRT. And they didn't care about Emma's dad, or how rich he was, or how sharp he was in the courtroom. And even if they did, I'd be a Ward, and it wouldn't matter, because the Wards went to Arcadia. Everybody knew that. And Emma didn't have the grades to get into Arcadia on her best day. And if she wasn't stealing my homework, I was pretty sure that Madison didn't, either.
Two years ago, the thought of leaving Emma behind while I went to Arcadia would have felt like having my arm cut off. Now? Now, I could live with it. I could definitely live with it.
And then Dad and Mr. Barnes had started talking about things like death threats, and talking to the gangs about getting me protection in school, and selling out the docks to Kaiser, and...and...and...and I'd just screwed things up big time, hadn't I?
"Are you really going to have to go to Kaiser?" I asked him, and he turned, and smiled at me.
"Nah," he said. "That's sort of a nuclear option, and they all know it. But they also all know that I'd be entirely justified in using it, at this point. So they'll find a way to fix the problem. Expelling students is going to be a lot safer than letting me start a gang war in the middle of the school. And those are their options, right now. That, or letting me sue the school into oblivion."
"What if they just expel me?" I asked him, my voice quiet. "I mean, wouldn't that be easier than expelling all those students?"
"And firing those teachers," Dad pointed out, letting his smile morph into something a little hungrier. "Yeah, it would. In fact, I expect that they'll try to do just that. We'll probably get the notice sometime tomorrow or Thursday. In theory, it's a great idea, and it'll solve most of their problems fairly easily. There's just one teeny tiny little problem with it."
"What's that?"
"If they expel you for getting death threats, what's to stop me from going to the police, or the PRT? Or to the gangs, for that matter? At the end of the day, I'm afraid that I've got more leverage over Ms. Blackwell than Sophia or Emma do. Or anybody else, for that matter. I've got her career in my hands, sweetie, and she knows it. And while I might not be able to pull this kind of crap in Arcadia, in Winslow? In a school where they paint the gang signs openly on the outside walls? Oh yeah, sweetie. I've got all the leverage I need in a school like that."
"But what if they call the police?"
"That works in our favor," Dad pointed out. "Police love a paper trail. And you've got a hell of a paper trail in those journals of yours."
He smiled again, and gave me a hug.
"You may not have thought about it that way, sweetie," he said. "But you did things just about exactly right. This is the textbook response to this situation. Minus, you know, the whole bit with using parahuman powers to control a live rat."
I opened my mouth to respond, but before I could, I heard a tiny little pitter-patter, and then felt a thump in my lap. I looked down, and saw the rat staring up at me. Once he was sure he had my attention, he nodded, sharply.
"Squeak," he said, firmly, and I had to smile, at that.
"You think?" I asked him, and he nodded, again.
"Squeak," he said, and I surprised myself with a slightly strained laugh.
"I guess so," I admitted, and he gave a self-satisfied whisker twitch, and then dropped back down to all fours.
"Huh," Dad said. "He seems...smarter, than I would have expected."
I shrugged, carefully.
"They get smarter, the more I work with them," I explained. "I'm not sure why."
"Does this one have a name?" Dad asked.
"This one is Squire Rattus," I said, firmly, glad to direct my attention back to my power. "He is a gentleman and an adventurer from the great and noble house of Rattus."
Squire Rattus looked up at that, and gave me a disapproving squeak.
I sighed.
"Sorry," I said. "A gentlerat and an adventurer, et cetera et cetera. Anyway, he's the smartest of them. So far, anyway."
Dad nodded, staring at the rat.
"So..." he said, slowly, cocking his head as if he'd see something different if he looked at it from a different angle. "Is there any reason why he's wearing a fedora?"
The next day, I found myself at loose ends. I didn't have any homework to do. I'd had some, but I'd done that yesterday, and Dad hadn't been able to find out about any more when he'd swung by the school. And, honestly, there's only so much reading you can do. Especially when you're at the tail end of the library cycle, and you've read most of the books you checked out two weeks ago.
I don't know about you, but...unless it's a really exceptional book, I can never stand to read the same book twice. At least, not back to back.
So, with most of my past-times exhausted, I did the only thing I really could do.
Namely, practice.
And to start with, I decided to practice my meditation.
Meditation, you say? Yes, meditation.
You see...huh. I don't actually...I can't think of a good way to say this. So I guess it's probably for the best to just rip the bandage off, and let you see.
I have magic.
Not super-power magic, although I've got that, too. But real, genuine, bullshit-level magic.
Which is great, and all that. Or, at least, it will be, someday. If I can deal with the catch.
What's the catch, you ask?
Simple: unlike superpowers, you have to learn to use magic. And magic is complicated. I mean, we're talking a whole different branch of physics level complicated. And it's different for every person. So you can't just build off the experiments of everybody who went before you. You have to start from the very basics, every time, and do your own experiments, and figure things out for yourself.
And one of the very fundamental basics, one of the skills that almost everything else revolves around, is meditation. Meditation, and the art of tapping into the universal pool of potential magical energy.
Ultimately, meditation is all about clearing your mind, and letting your senses detect that universal field, and simply focusing on the magic you're trying to do. It's just about releasing all your cares, and your worries, and calming yourself, and clearing out any distractions.
When I first learned how to do this, I asked my teacher—her name is Ms. Liberty, in case you were wondering—if that was so I could unleash the entire potential of my brain. Her response was short, to the point, and probably not suitable for polite company. Apparently, wizards get asked that a lot. It turns out that we use our entire brain anyway, because otherwise, there wouldn't be any point in carrying it around all the time. Which...makes sense, I suppose. Even if it does kind of lead to some other interesting questions about how magic and superpowers work.
Anyway.
Meditation is kind of hard for me. I'm just...I don't do the whole "clear your mind of all distractions" very well. There's always something going on in my brain. Something to think about, something to focus on. Something to draw my attention, just for a moment, to make me spin out over the implications. I can focus just fine, mind you. Just...not on nothing.
And Ms. Liberty wants me to practice until I can do it in my sleep.
I hate meditation. Just so you know.
But if I'm going to have magic, I'm going to have to know how to use it. And if I'm going to learn how to use it, I'm going to learn how to use it well. So that means I have to practice meditation. I have to sit down, and cross my legs—and my legs do not cross easily—and become a island of motherfucking tranquility, in a sea of inner rage. Or something like that.
I may have read too many fantasy stories, growing up.
Anyway. That's what I have to do. So that's what I'm going to do.
So I sit down, and cross my legs, and put my hands on my knees, and am just about to close my eyes, when I realize just what it is that's been driving me nuts about trying to meditate the whole time I've been doing this.
I've been trying to leave my powers out of it.
And that means that I've been getting distracted by every Tom, Dick, and Jerry that runs through my neighborhood, and scares the neighbors silly.
Huh.
So...what if I don't do that? What if I...hmmm.
This bore thought.
In fact, it bore so much thought that it took me a bit before I realized that I seemed to have gotten somewhere in my quest to calm my mind. Which was...useful.
And worth developing.
Which is why, after several hours of practice, I finally managed to put myself into a meditative trance. Not by isolating myself from the information that my powers were bringing me from the countless rodents within a two block radius (two hundred and twenty-six rodents, in case you were wondering), but by just...letting it pass through the back of my mind.
It's a lot harder than it sounds, to be honest. Which is why it took me several hours to get it down.
And that explains why, at about three in the afternoon, Ms. Liberty opened the door to my room, and found me sitting cross-legged in front of my bed, with my eyes closed, pointedly not thinking about anything whatsoever.
"You know," she said, sounding contemplative, as I opened my eyes to regard her, "while I understand that every magician is different...and while I know that things are a little weird in Brockton Bay...I have to say, having your mice dress up in miniature Gandalf costumes to help you meditate is a little bit weirder than most. Not the weirdest thing I've ever seen, I'll grant you. But it's definitely in the upper half."
I frowned, and followed her gaze, finally noticing the mice that had arranged themselves in a circle around me. And, sure enough, each one of them was wearing a very tiny gray hooded robe, and had somehow settled down into a cross-legged position of their own.
I blinked.
"What in...in heaven's name are you doing?" I asked them. One of them—apparently the leader—looked up at me, and squeaked.
"Stabilizing my influences?" I asked him. "What the heck does that mean?"
He squeaked again, and I sighed, and looked up at Ms. Liberty.
Ms. Liberty is my magic teacher. She's really good at it. And she's really powerful. One of the seven or eight most powerful wizards on the planet, if I understand her correctly. There might be as many as ten who are more powerful than she is. But certainly not more than that. She lives in Brockton Bay, with her...uh...her great-great-great-great-great-grand-daughter?
I think that's it.
Anyway, she's a lawyer. And she showed up in our house about a week after I got home from the hospital, to tell us why the lights were flickering, and the television sometimes turned on for no reason.
Or turned off for no reason, which was even more annoying.
Like I said, I have magic. Not much. Just a little. Apparently, I got it from my mom. According to Ms. Liberty, Mom probably didn't have much—just enough to get her into trouble, and make sure that we had to be careful with our computers. I shouldn't have had much, either. But...getting locked into a locker filled with rats and mice is apparently good for more than just triggering superpowers. According to Ms. Liberty, the terror I felt super-charged my magic, and let me tap into power that I wouldn't have had ordinarily without a lot of training and practice. Not a lot of power, she says. But enough to spot-weld the door to my locker closed when I sparked electricity on the locker door in my panic. Which is why they found me after an hour or so, but couldn't get me out for another five hours. They had to literally cut the locker apart around me.
Whoops.
Anyway, like I said, I don't have a lot of power. Not yet, anyway. But apparently, if I keep working at it, that can change. And Ms. Liberty is willing to teach me how to work at it, and how to control the results. She says I have a lot of potential. I'm not sure what that means, or how she can tell. But that's what she says.
"I think he means that your parahuman power has been interfering with your meditation efforts," Ms. Liberty said slowly, bringing me back to the present. "And that's why you haven't been able to meditate properly."
"Huh," I said. "I noticed that it was throwing things into my brain when I tried to block it. You think that's what he meant?"
"Maybe," she said. "Powers don't like not being used. And it looks like your power is one of those that you can't really turn off."
"Oh. So...what does that mean?"
"It means that your magic will almost certainly be expressed through your power," she said. "Or, at least, that your magic will have to be used together with your power."
"Huh?"
She gestured to the mice seated around me.
"I'm guessing the meditation became easier as time went on?" she asked.
"Uh...maybe?"
"That's probably because these little guys took up station around you," she said. "Bringing them into the circuit probably was what let you smooth yourself out."
"Huh," I said, looking at them again. "But why the robes?"
"Two reasons," she said, crossing the room, and taking a seat at my desk. "Either that was your subconscious—or even your parahuman power—screwing around...or it was the mice themselves."
"The mice?"
"Animals have symbolic properties," she said. "Each one has its own properties, and each one has an influence on your magic. That's why a lot of wizards will try to live with a particular type of animal, and use it in their magic when they can—it helps to balance out their own weaknesses, and keep their magic more balanced. Mice are a symbol of focus, of seeing the big picture, and of appreciating the smaller details. Which, at its heart, is what magic is all about. Your power takes you in the exact opposite direction—it wants you to multi-task, and try to accomplish everything in big, grand gestures. Using the mice to stabilize the input probably is how your brain balances those two urges out."
"Yes, but...the robes?"
She shrugged.
"You've said they get smarter as you work with them?" she said. I nodded, and she sighed, before continuing.
"Intelligence denotes humor," she explained. "Humor, and imagination. The two are linked on a lot of levels, including the ability to relate to others. It's entirely possible that, as your mice and your rats get more intelligent, that they'll start to get dramatically sillier."
"Oh boy," I groaned, as I felt my shoulders slump. Ms. Liberty just shrugged, again, although I could have sworn she was hiding a smile.
"Either way," she said, "it should be worth keeping an eye on."
Then I frowned, and looked up at her.
"Hey," I said, as a thought occurred to me. "If they're getting smarter...do I need to worry about them turning on me, or something?"
"I doubt it," Ms. Liberty said. "Most parahuman powers seem to be heavily geared towards not harming their users directly. It seems more likely that they'll start to become unexpectedly helpful. Although if you find one of them doing your taxes, I want to talk to him."
Then she frowned.
"Preferably before he gets smart enough to figure out the going rates," she added, and I had to grin.
"Don't worry," I said. "I don't think I'll be playing around with gerbils anytime soon. That way lies madness."
"Okay," Ms. Liberty said. "Don't let yourself leave your trance. But I want you to picture yourself reaching out. Don't do anything, yet. Just try to feel around yourself. See if you can feel the energy around you."
I frowned, and then sort of...shifted, if that makes any sense. I don't think it really does, to be honest, but there aren't any real words for what I did. Just...all of the sudden, I was focusing on my mind, and then, suddenly, I was still focusing on my mind, but now I was focusing out, as well.
"I can feel it," I said.
"Good. That is the universal magical field. It powers all of your spells, and is what makes your magic work. The more you can channel power from that field, the less of your own energy you will need to use."
My own energy being the limiting factor, here, of course. When I use that up, I'm done. I might be able to burn life force for a little bit more juice, but that strikes me as being dangerous on all kinds of levels. Not least of which is that, when I'm getting tossed around by a Brute, I don't want to do anything that might make me easier to kill.
"Now," Ms. Liberty said, as the power began to stir, and eddy around her hands. "I want you to see if you can feel what I'm doing. Try to feel the way the energy is moving, the way it ebbs, and flows."
I blinked—or would have blinked, if my eyes hadn't already been closed.
"It feels sort of...are you making a ball?" I asked her. "Some kind of...uh...flickery...ball...thing?"
There was a pause.
"Hm," Ms. Liberty finally said. "You may be more sensitive than I expected. You can open your eyes, now."
I opened my eyes, and saw a little tiny ball of fire floating above Ms. Liberty's open palm.
"Huh," I said. "It was a ball."
She just nodded.
"I think it's the mice," I said, thoughtfully, as I stared at the ball. She looked at me, and raised one eyebrow for me to go on.
I shrugged.
"I think...my power lets me multi-task, right? So I think the mice are sort of...feeling the magic, too. Like they're sort of...I don't know. Sensory extensions, maybe?"
She cocked her head a little, and pursed her lips.
"You've said you can see through their eyes," she said, her tone thoughtful.
"Sort of," I said, knowing that I was sounding grumpy, and not caring. "Mouse vision is weird. Well, they're all weird, really, but rats can see a bit better, I think. They're really better for smell than vision, though."
Ms. Liberty shrugged.
"Regardless," she pointed out, "if you can see or hear through your rats or mice, it makes sense that you'd be able to tap into other senses, as well."
"Like sensing magic?"
"Your power seems to change the rats and the mice it works with. Perhaps it does so in more ways than we suspected?"
"Huh," I said. "That sounds...useful."
"It could be," she said. "Or not. It depends on how reliant you are on your mice and your rats."
"And squirrels and chipmunks," I said helpfully.
"Yes," she said, her voice desert dry. "Not to mention gerbils, squirrels, prairie dogs, porcupines, beavers, guinea pigs, and hamsters. Few of which you will be able to use regularly like rats and mice. Not unless you relocate to a more rural environment, anyway."
"Ah...true," I admitted. "So...what next?"
"Now you practice sensing magic. Until you can do it without having a circle of rats or mice meditating alongside you," she said. Then she frowned, and reached into her pocket.
"When you're not doing that," she added, pulling a small brown book out of her pocket. "Read, and take notes. I would say that there will be a quiz, but most of the time, that quiz consists of not blowing yourself up the first time you cast a spell."
"Oh," I said, feeling obscurely disappointed that I wasn't going to get to start playing around with magic immediately.
"You have until this time tomorrow to finish," she added, and my head snapped up to stare at her. She gave me an almost wry smile, then, and I scowled at her.
"That's not much time to read, and practice," I pointed out.
"I have faith," she said, as she rose to leave. "You'll do fine. Trust me."
I almost growled, as she left, but I tried to get to my feet to get the book anyway. Tried being the operative word.
Turns out, when you spend that many hours with your legs crossed? Your legs to sleep something fierce.
"Owowowow!" I whimpered, as I limped to the book, and my desk. "Ow! Pins and needles! Ow!"
Not the most auspicious start to my spellcasting career, I thought to myself. Perhaps I shouldn't have focused quite so much on my meditation.
Like what you're reading? Check out Bill Lindsay on to see more of Queen of Rats, both the original, and the updated version!