I sit and stare at the table top for a long time. It feels like I've eaten a bag of rocks instead of a salad. Question after question run around in my head. Who are they? Why are a merman and a demon living here? Should I trust these people? Where exactly am I? What are my options? Why should I trust them? What is this place? What will happen if I do tell them? Do I trust them?
It keeps coming back to trust. I close my eyes, relax in my chair and send "myself" out. If there's wrong here, I will find it. I find out a good many things, but I find nothing wrong. I open my eyes. All three men are watching me. Manning has returned to his seat, the video tape is lying on the table in front of him.
Sighing, I finally make my decision. I stand, go over to the door and quietly shut it. If my grandmother knew what I was about to do, she'd have several litters worth of puppies. I turn and look at Manning.
"Are there any listening devices in this room?" I ask him.
"Listening devices?" he answers. I can tell he's stalling.
"Bugs, hidden microphones," I elaborate. I'm in no mood for games.
"No," he says. He's lying. His heart rate goes up and his eyes dilate. Never taking my eyes off of Manning, I "feel" around the room and find one microphone. It's very cleverly hidden. Abe suddenly pushes his chair back. With a loud crack, the table splits into two equal halves.
"What the HELL!?" yells Hellboy as he shoots out of his seat. Manning is also out of his seat with a very shocked look on his face.
The two halves are held together by the wires of the microphone imbedded in the wood. I go over to the broken section and, with some difficulty, pull the two halves a little farther apart. I finally have enough space to reach in and grab the wires. With an almighty yank, I rip the microphone from its hiding spot inside the table. I let the two sections of table crash to the floor. The coffee cup, salad plate, video and file smash together in the center of the table creating a huge mess. I walk around the remains toward Manning.
"Rule number one: What I'm about to reveal does not leave this room. Ever!" I say. Staring at him, I hand Manning the remnants of the microphone. "Rule number two: Never lie to me."
I step back, turn and look at the other two. Abe is still sitting; his dark eyes seem a bit larger than before. Hellboy has stuck the cigar butt back into his mouth and he seems to be searching for something in the pockets of his duster. I can see Manning pull a small box out of his coat pocket. I look over and see it's a box of matches.
"Here," he says to Hellboy as he tosses the box across the room. Hellboy neatly catches it.
"Rule number three: Don't smoke around me. I detest the smell," I continue. As I'm talking, Hellboy lights a match. It goes out before he can bring it to the cigar.
"Not again," he growls. He starts reaching for another match.
"I wouldn't bother if I were you," I tell him. He glares at me. "I won't allow you to light that vile thing in my presence."
"How are you going to stop me?" he growls.
"Actually, Red," Abe says, smiling, "she's being doing a very good job of it so far." He stretches his long frame out and gets into a rather comfortable looking position resting his feet on what's left of the table. I try and ignore the way light plays across his mottled skin.
Hellboy looks at Abe and then at me. Comprehension finally dawns across his face.
"You're a pyrokinetic," Hellboy states.
"Hardly," I tell him.
"Then how did you put the match out if you can't control fire?" He's confused again.
"You do realize that the air we breathe is mostly comprised of nitrogen and very little oxygen?" I ask him as I start walking toward him. He nods. "You also realize that fire requires oxygen to burn?" He nods again. I stop in front of him and put my hand out. "May I have the box, please?" He puts the box in my hand and I take a match out. "Since a fire cannot burn without oxygen, the removal of oxygen from a certain area will cause any fire to extinguish. Do you follow me?"
"I think so. But how do you remove the oxygen?" He says.
"I simply 'push' the oxygen molecules out of the way and replace them with nitrogen molecules," I explain. "Of course this can only be done on a limited scale otherwise an imbalance is created."
I strike the match on the side of the box and light it. I let it burn about half way down. Without moving a muscle or taking my eyes off of him, I extinguish it. Hellboy stares at the now half burnt match, and then he takes it from me.
"How?" he asks.
"The only people outside of my family who know what I'm about to tell you are the Teachers who trained me. I cannot stress enough how important it is that this information never leave this room," I start to explain. My stomach is now in a hard ball, and the muscles in my neck are one big knot. I take a deep breath and let it out, letting as much of the tension go with it as I can. "I'm a mage. All mages can control an element, Earth, Air, Fire, or Water. We're very rare, and the ability usually only runs in certain families."
"So you used your ability to control air to move the dirt under the fence?" asks Hellboy.
"Actually, no," I answer. "I'm very unusual for a mage in that I can control both Air and Earth."
"So how did you get so lucky as to get two elements?" asks Hellboy.
"My father was an Air mage and my mother was an Earth mage," I tell him.
"You have to understand, Miss Cavendish," Manning interrupts, "how very hard it is for me to believe all this. People who can control the elements? That's a pretty far stretch. After all, we've never heard of mages before, and it's our job to know."
Abe quickly moves his feet off of the table as, with two loud cracks, the table breaks again. It's now lying in quarters. Even more coffee and salad dressing seep onto the floor. Manning stands there, staring at the trice broken table.
"Believe," I tell him.