If she'd ever wanted to become a parent, Lexa thought, then this little slice of life had cured her of that thought but good.
Shalimar and she walked in just before the evening meal—Lady Esther was a great cook—and things had deteriorated from there. Lexa simply sat back in the corner of the room, watching everything transpire and grateful that she wasn't a major player.
Tess was still pursuing Jesse with a vengeance. She developed a sudden need for close supervision of her history report, and nobody but Jesse would do. They were stationed on the sofa; Jesse would inch away to the left, and Tess would snuggle up close. Lexa estimated that by eight o'clock Jesse would be falling off the far edge of the sofa, and wouldn't that be amusing? Whoa, girl, down! Jealous of a fourteen year old? Get hold of yourself; you don't feel that way about Jesse, do you?
This activity hadn't gone unnoticed by Tom. Sullen had given way to smoldering, and the fifteen year old was out for revenge. He retaliated by trying to put the moves on Shalimar, trying to elicit some sort of jealous response from Tess. It hadn't been working. Tess was too wrapped up in hero-worship to pay attention, and a fifteen year old was no match for feral avoidance tactics. That made Tom even angrier.
From what Lexa had been able to gather, this had been going on since the guys had arrived yesterday. Hormones, she groaned silently to herself. She wouldn't go through that period of life again for several million bucks studded with diamonds. How did Lady Esther put up with it? She must be a saint.
Or just very, very wise not to interfere. Lexa caught the gray-haired woman with wire-rimmed blue eyes twinkling at the tableau as she darned socks. That too amazed Lexa; who the heck darned socks any more? Just go out and buy a few more pairs.
Brennan got the best of the situation. Ernest was indoctrinating him into the latest version of Havoc OnLine!, and the pair were busily engaged in demolishing gnomes, wyverns, and the occasional golem. The speakers emitted simulated cries of distress as the various combatants puffed into electronic non-existence, Brennan even managing not to wince when some of them sounded entirely too realistic for comfort. Fun when it's a game, buddy, but not in real life.
Ernest had moved beyond that concept. "You gotta avoid these cloud things," he told Brennan solemnly. "They're called will o' wisps. They shoot lightening bolts and stuff. If they get you, they kill your guy. Then you gotta start over again. Tom's hero in this game is a warlock, so he likes munching on 'em, but most of us just kinda move around and head for the next level."
"Right." Brennan nodded in understanding.
"They're not too hard to avoid," Ernest further instructed. "All you have to do is move away from them. They're pretty slow, so buy some speed for your guy next town we get to. As long as you don't get within range of their lightning bolts, you're okay."
Lexa could tell that something was bothering Brennan just by the way he held his shoulders. She was right. "Hey, Shal, Lexa," he called oh-so-casually. "Take a look at what Ernest has on the computer. Remind you of anything?"
It did. The will o' wisp that Ernest was steering around was a large black smoke cloud with little sparks looming ominously around it. On the screen it looked small and relatively innocuous, unless you were the hero of the game.
In real life it had looked a hell of a lot bigger.
* * *
Lady Esther came back down the stairs after tucking Ernest in and seeing that Tess and Tom were at least in bed, listening to music if not actively seeking sleep. She plopped herself down into the easy chair, lifting the foot rest. She leaned back with a contented smile. "Quite a handful Adam saddled me with, wouldn't you say?"
"Don't know how you do it," Brennan said honestly. "I know I was a mess at that age. I don't know how you manage three of them."
"Children have to grow up somehow," Lady Esther told him. "All three had to cope with some horrific things in the last year or so. Now it's time for them to learn about the nicer parts of childhood."
"I wouldn't call this jealousy thing one of the nice parts," Jesse grumbled, and yawned.
"Ah, but I would." Lady Esther wagged her finger at him. "Don't underestimate the power of young love. You ought to be flattered, Mr. Kilmartin, that Tess has chosen you to fixate on. It means that she instinctively trusts you not to take advantage of that love. That you will provide the self-control for both of you."
"And Tom?" Shalimar put in.
"Yes, that young man." Esther smiled a secret smile. "Remember, ladies and gentlemen, Tom is a psionic. Tess keeps him under control with a daily psionic drain, but that doesn't mean that he cannot use his powers. Don't underestimate that young man. He knows exactly what is going on. And he is closer to Tess than any living being."
"And what does that mean?" Lexa asked.
"We'll have to find out, won't we?" And Lexa recalled that Lady Esther herself was a psionic, though with very limited abilities. Lady Esther gathered up her things. "I'm off to bed. I'll leave you young people to talk amongst yourselves. Just don't get too loud. Tess in particular is a light sleeper."
Lexa watched her hostess disappear up the stairs before turning to the others. "I notice that the two of you haven't said much about your ghostly visitor of this morning," she commented. "The kids are no longer around to scare. Give."
"Not much to tell," Jesse gave back. He yawned again. "Frankly, Lexa, I'm not even certain it was human, mutant or otherwise. It was a man-sized black robe with a hood that shot some kind of energy bolt. When Brennan shot back, it shattered and disappeared. That doesn't sound human."
"But you think you destroyed him?" Shalimar pushed. "Or it, or whatever?"
"Probably," Brennan said, flexing his stiff arm. "We couldn't find anything more of it afterward." He had given up the sling, and was now gradually increasing the usage that he put his arm through. Another day, he thought, and he'd barely remember that he'd been knifed. Life goes on. "It's gone, we couldn't find any trace of it, and it hasn't come back. That says 'destroyed' to me."
"But we don't have a lot to go on," Jesse allowed.
"Could it have been the cause of those rainbow lizard flocks you saw?"
"Makes sense," Jesse agreed, trying not to yawn yet again. "If we go a couple of nights without them, I'll buy into that theory. Maybe we've cured what's going on in this house with one easy Brennan whammy."
"It couldn't be that easy," was Shalimar's opinion.
"I agree with Shalimar. She and I will take shifts tonight," Lexa decided. "That way we can be in on the beginning of whatever's causing this place to seem haunted. If it shows up again, we can track it down and destroy it from the start. We'll be done with it."
"Hey, wait a minute. What about me?"
"You, Brennan," and Shalimar fixed him with a
determined eye, "are recuperating from a knife fight that nearly turned you
into two people."
"I'm not taking the
pain-killers anymore. I can stay up and do my share."
"No, you can't." Shalimar wasn't having any of it. "And you, Jesse Kilmartin, look like death warmed over. Get any sleep last night?"
"Yeah, I—"
"—woke up after an hour with nightmares again," Brennan put in. "Sorry, buddy, but misery loves company. Face it, Jess; you haven't slept right for almost a week now. Why don't you pop a couple of my pain-killers? You've seen them work on me. Puts you out like a light."
"I don't know…"
"Do it," Lexa advised. "You're not functioning on all cylinders, Jesse. You need some uninterrupted sleep."
"Well…"
"Do we have to pour them down your throat?" Shalimar put her arm around the molecular's shoulders, big-sister fashion. "Listen to your loving teammates. You've been yawning all night long."
Jesse shrugged, a lop-sided smile on his face. "Look, I'll make you a deal. If I wake up, I'll take a couple." He grinned. "Besides, a late night snack would taste a lot better."
* * *
"Shalimar."
The feral came awake in a flash. The hushed whisper kept her from leaping out of bed, but she was ready to go into battle, should it be needed.
It wasn't.
Lexa sat on the bed opposite, Lady Esther beside her, waiting for Shalimar to toss the bed covers away. Shalimar belted a short robe around her waist, tucking slender legs underneath her and pushing her mop of ringlets back over her head. "What time is it?"
"Three-ish," Lexa told her. "I was just about to get you up for your shift when I found Lady Esther wandering."
"I was not wandering," Lady Esther corrected. "This is my own house. I go where I please, when I please. And right now it pleases me to check out both Tom and Ernest. There's a little mental tickle going on that I've learned not to ignore, and right now it's telling me to check on both my boys. Coming?" What Lady Esther left unsaid was the desire to have both Lexa and Shalimar as her troops to defend the boys from whatever was present in the house. Both women trotted after Lady Esther, heading upstairs to the attic level of the large abode. All three children had been enchanted by the idea of bedrooms on the third floor of the old house, fighting over the largest room; Tess won.
The stairs creaked on the way up, and both Shalimar and Lexa winced, although Lady Esther trekked onward without so much as a shiver. She was used to the noise and barely heard it. The first stop was Tom's room. Lady Esther gently pushed open the door.
It reminded Lexa of her own brother's room at that age, cluttered with posters of obscure and not so obscure bands tacked haphazardly over the walls. The desk was covered with papers and dirty socks, several of which had spilled off onto the floor. A book bag sat in the center of the room, hanging open with several dog-eared texts pretending to hide inside.
Tom himself was sprawled across his bed, covers awry, his arm flung across his face. He was clearly having dreams; he was muttering too quietly to be understood but the anger at the dream-people was evident on his features. Frowns and snarls flitted across his face, then vanished to move on to a victorious smile. He groaned in his sleep, and turned over so that his countenance was no longer visible.
"Nothing here," Shalimar said quietly. "Shall we move on?"
Lady Esther halted her with a gentle hand on the feral's arm. "Can't you see it?"
"See what?" Shalimar automatically narrowed her eyes, switching to feral vision. There was nothing to be seen. Tom slept restlessly, his breathing shallow, eyes darting back and forth under closed eyelids. "What do you see?"
"A stream of psychic energy," Lady Esther said. "No, not a stream—a river. He's overflowing with it."
"Doesn't that make sense?" Lexa asked. "I mean, he is a psionic, and a powerful one."
"It means that Tess isn't able to keep up with him," Lady Esther informed her quietly, not masking her concern. "He doesn't pour out this level of psychic flow during the day. Tess usually drains him early in the morning, just before school. This amount of psionic energy is being built up during the day, and is spilling over at night when he and everyone around him is asleep and vulnerable. Those dreams he's experiencing; what if he should inflict them on someone else?"
"That would not be good." Shalimar remembered very well coming in contact with Tom's powers only a few months previously. Tom's internal neural inhibitor had been first burned by Lexa and then forcibly removed by Jesse under the influence of Tess and Ernest's mad scientist father and his collar device, and the result had been a flood of psychic influences that had nearly driven them all mad. As it was, Absalom Maguire—who was at the epicenter of Tom's nightmares—was driven incurably insane since that time. The rest of Mutant X, trying to escape from a short distance away, had had to contend with the leftovers of Tom's nightmares for the next several weeks until the memories faded, and not one of them wanted to go through that again. No, an out of control Tom was a thing to be avoided at all costs.
Lexa, ever practical, asked, "where is this river going?"
"Next door," Lady Esther replied grimly. "Ernest's room."
If Tom's room had been the typical teen-ager's hangout, then Ernest's was a techie-nerd's dream. There was the obligatory bed, but that was stashed away in the corner as inconsequential, making room for the computer on the desk and it was clear that the computer was where Ernest spent most of his free time. The other hard sciences weren't forgotten: the night stand served as a workbench for a miniature chem. lab, and a plastic model of the human body danced upon the bureau. Instead of the band posters that Tom favored, Ernest had invested in a large scale drawing of the periodic table and a blown up version of the galaxy according to the Hubble telescope.
But none of that interested the three. What was far more fascinating were the tiny rainbow lizards that were growing from Ernest's fingertips. The things were a scant four inches long from nose to tail, and they skittered under the bed and away into the walls as soon as they budded off from Ernest. The eleven year old slept through the process, merely turning over in his sleep. The rainbow colored lizards crawled around him and over him and away from him.
"What the hell is that?" Shalimar whispered, repulsed.
"The result of a psychic influence," Lady Esther replied grimly. "I can see Tom's river flowing directly into him. Ernest has a fear of snakes and lizards; I suspect his father used to torture the child into doing his wishes by subjecting Ernest to their presence. These lizards are an outgrowth of Ernest's nightmares. The pleasant colors are no doubt his attempt to cope with his distaste."
"I'd heard of this in theory, back in the Genomex think tanks," Lexa amplified, "but I never thought I'd see it in real life. Tom's nightmare's are affecting Ernest. Ernest, being a molecular with the power over molecules, is actually rearranging those molecules into little tiny lizards. No wonder we couldn't find a nest in the house. There was no nest; Ernest was creating a new flock of them every night." She looked up at the other two. "Ernest isn't the only molecular in the household any more."
"Let's go check on Jesse," Shalimar said, dread in her voice.
The trio descended to the second floor where the guest bedrooms joined Lady Esther's own suite off of the same hallway. Lady Esther shook her head. "The psychic river," she said, "flowing down here is even stronger, if anything. And it flows into the gentlemen's room."
"I think we'd better go very carefully on this one," Lexa cautioned. "I've got a bad feeling. Hear anything, Shal?"
The feral shook her head. "Not a sound. Nothing but breathing." She listened again, her face going grim. "Too many people breathing. There should only be two people in that room. I hear three." She motioned for Lady Esther to move to the side and out of the way. "I'll open. You be ready to throw something lethal. On three: one…two…three." Shalimar flung open the door and sprang inside.
Brennan was sleeping soundly, though that changed when the door banged open. His prior position was one of complete ease, sprawled across the bed with the covers only half over him. Shalimar was treated to a broad expanse of bare chest gently rising and falling with the even regularity of sleep. That condition vanished in the heartbeat immediately following the banging of the door against the wall, the sound echoing in the small room like a gunshot. Brennan leaped out of bed in one fluid movement, a lethal lightning bolt already twisting between his fingers.
Which was a good thing, because the equally lethal bolt of light that Lexa treated their unwanted guest to had little to no effect on the specter. Though the jolt lit up the room, the black-robed figure soaked up the light like a black hole drinking from the well of the universe. It stood next to Jesse's bed, looking down on the sleeping molecular and leering.
Lexa's flash also illuminated the figure's face. All three mutants gasped as the features became clear: Absalom Maguire! Tess and Ernest's father, the one who was irredeemably insane, who was safely incarcerated in the Bush Rehabilitation Center. The same man who had tortured each member of Mutant X and his own children in a monstrous attempt to take over the world. The same one with so little mind left that he was incapable of feeding himself. How could he be here?
The lightning bolt that left Brennan's fingertips had an extra boost behind it, that boost fueled by fear. He remembered all too well the collar device that Maguire had devised, the collar that forced a mutant to function at a level far beyond human endurance and destroyed the mutant in the process. Maguire had used that device on Brennan himself, and Lexa and Shalimar had also felt the agony that it inflicted.
But Jesse had been Maguire's special project, Jesse and Ernest: the moleculars. With their powers, Maguire had dreamed of transforming the world. It had only been through the heroism of Mutant X and the children, and the slimmest margin of luck, that all had escaped intact with only nightmares to haunt them.
And that nightmare was growing out of Jesse Kilmartin.
Exactly as the lizards had budded off of Ernest's fingers, so too was the malevolent specter that wore Maguire's face. The creature grew, drawing its substance from the sleeping molecular. Brennan hurled jolt after jolt at it, Lexa striking in between.
The black-hooded specter only laughed at them, but the sheer volume of energy drove it back and away from Jesse. It sent one of its own charges streaming at Brennan, and Shalimar tackled the elemental to take him down to the floor before the charge fried him. With a final high-pitched giggle, the figure poured itself out through the window, flowing out into the night's shadows in an entirely inhuman fashion.
Shalimar ran to the window. "It's gone!" She turned back, her face white with terror. "That couldn't have been Maguire!"
"Then what the hell was it?" Lexa asked harshly.
"Nothing human," Brennan said, picking himself up off of the floor. "Thanks, Shal."
"It was the substance from which nightmares are created," Lady Esther told them. "You would probably put it into more scientific terms. Where young Ernest is terrified of lizards, you have just seen what has been haunting Mr. Kilmartin's mind at night. Wake him up swiftly, before that thing comes back."
"How can he have slept through this?" Lexa asked with annoyance. The man continued to slumber, breathing in and out with unfeigned regularity. There was no sign of waking up. "Jesse can't have been that tired. Did he take any of your pain-killers, Brennan?"
The elemental looked sheepish. "Sort of."
"Sort of?"
"I mean…" Brennan searched for a way to explain. "Jesse's been going through a lot. And you heard him, downstairs; he wasn't going to take anything. So I… kind of… slipped a couple of powdered ones onto his ice cream." He gestured to the still sleeping molecular. "It worked."
"Um… Brennan?"
"Yes, Shalimar?"
"Me, too."
"Oops. Two?"
"Two."
"Total of four pills." The pair looked at Lexa.
"Don't look at me," Lexa exclaimed. "Drugging a team mate, even for his own good?"
"Don't tell me you've never done that, Lexa. You're worse than any of us. You'd knock us silly if you thought it was best."
"Are you accusing me of—"
"How many, Lexa?" Brennan asked. "Shall I count the pills left in the bottle?"
Lexa let her shoulders slump. "Three. He's a strong guy," she protested. "How was I supposed to know that you two would pull the same stunt?"
"The same stupid stunt," Brennan clarified. He shook his team mate. "Jesse! Jesse, wake up, man."
"Wha—?"
Brennan set his jaw. "We can't afford for that thing to come back. We can either wake up Jesse, or Tom. And Tom has a math test tomorrow. Jesse, it is. Time for harsher measures." He rubbed his fingers together. Sparks flew, and Brennan aimed them to where they'd be the most effective.
"Yow!" Jesse leapt up out of the bed, clutching his pants so that they didn't fall down over narrow hips. "What was that for?" He realized that he was the center of attention for three ladies as well, and reddened. "What's going on?"
"Maguire came to visit," Brennan told him grimly.
"Maguire? That's impossible! The man's safely locked up in an insane asylum." Jesse hitched his pants up again. And sat down suddenly with a slightly shocked expression, his knees giving out from underneath him. He blinked. "Why do I feel like the room is spinning out of control?"
"Because we fed you drugs last night," Lexa informed him waspishly. "All of us. Get over it."
"I think a nice pot of coffee would be a wise choice right now," Lady Esther said calmly. "I suspect there is a great deal of discussion that will be needed between now and when the children wake up." She headed for the door. "Come down when you're presentable, gentlemen."
Jesse stood up again and grabbed for his tee shirt, then hurriedly grabbed at his pants which were trying to make their own escape. "Do you mind?"
Lexa exchanged a certain look with Shalimar. "Let's sweep the house, Shalimar. Just in case that thing is trying to make a return."
* * *
Jesse sat down at the kitchen table a little faster than he'd planned. The smell of coffee was anything but enticing, and he held his head in his hands, wishing that the refrigerator and the stove would stop changing positions. And that the light above the kitchen table would stop whirling around in frantic figure eights. He swallowed hard.
Brennan did the talking for him. "So what was that thing? It sure looked like Maguire. But Absalom Maguire is not getting out of the funny farm any time soon, so what was it?"
Lexa set down her mug. "Shalimar and I think it was a psionically-induced pseudo version of Absalom Maguire, brought on by exposure to a very under-controlled and over-powerful psionic. Lady Esther agrees with us."
"I'm not handling three syllable words right now," Jesse informed them, eyes closed. That was a good thing; The earlier version of his eyes that Brennan had seen just moments ago included terms like 'blood-shot' and 'red-rimmed.' "Catch me in the morning."
"It is morning," Shalimar said sympathetically, "just very early in the morning. Drink your coffee."
"You want me to throw up?" But Jesse sipped at the strong brew gingerly, shuddering.
"It makes sense, if you look at it." Lexa moved on, ignoring her team mate's distress. "What's going on in this house is actually similar to what Maguire was trying to do, creating things using super-charged moleculars. He super-charged Jesse and Ernest using both technology and the powers of psionics in a weird kind of a mutant circuitry. Genomex had made a couple of half-hearted forays into this type of research almost a decade ago—I think Adam even led one of those attempts, with his passion for teamwork—but nothing looked promising. They eventually gave it up, and put their resources into other projects. And fired Maguire."
"I guess Genomex didn't use the right researchers," Brennan said sarcastically. "Tom seems to be doing a fine job all by himself, without even a high school diploma. Just goes to show how over-rated a PhD is. Lizards from Ernest, a psuedo-Maguire from Jesse here. What next?"
"May I suggest we not wait to find out?" Lexa's sarcasm was just as pointed as Brennan's.
"Good plan." Shalimar tried to get things back on track. "But how do we go about breaking this link? How do we get Tom to shut down? Do we tell Tess to do a major psionic vampire drain on him?"
"That's a stop gap measure," was Lady Esther's opinion. "Remember, these are children. Very powerful children, but children none the less. We need a permanent solution, or this scenario will be repeated in a matter of months."
Lexa thought for several long moments. "Before Maguire got his hands on Tom, Tom had had a neural inhibitor in him to prevent fall out from his exceptional mental abilities. Maybe he needs another one. Maguire got Jesse and I to burn it out; who put it there in the first place?"
They all looked at each other. Jesse snored.
Brennan shook him roughly. "Wake up."
"Huh?"
"C'mon, Jesse; you're a part of this. Stay awake."
"Right. Awake. I'm awake."
"I would not let Mr. Kilmartin fall asleep again," Lady Esther advised. "In fact, I recommend not letting either he nor Tom sleep at the same time. Tom is sleeping now, and the psychic river is flowing. I can see it; it is streaming through this kitchen into Mr. Kilmartin."
Mutant X automatically looked, but there was nothing to be seen. Not one of them considered doubting the elderly psionic, however. If Lady Esther said it was there, then it was. Which meant that they needed to deal with it.
"How about getting Tom up instead?" Brennan suggested. "Jesse's a little out of it right now."
"Not practical," Lady Esther informed him. "Tom can appear awake while showering, eating, and attending class. His psionic river will flow at any and all times; while he is daydreaming, for example. Which means that Mr. Kilmartin is in danger of producing that spectral being whenever he sleeps and Tom…I believe the terminology those young people use today is 'zone out.' I recommend that Mr. Kilmartin himself sleep only immediately after Tess psionically drains Tom in the morning. And there is one more highly important reason that we not wake Tom at this time."
"Oh? What is it?"
"Tom has a math test in three hours," Lady Esther informed them tartly. "And he needs a passing grade very desperately."