You are the lighthouse, the seamark/
The tempests created this tide/
I'm pulled to the black silver ocean/
Where the current and the heavens collide/

It was almost half a day before Candice knew it had happened. She began to feel it in her fingers and toes first, like warmth thawing through her after being in the cold. It was like someone taking a blindfold off, or releasing hands that had been tied, and once she realized what it was, she couldn't help but laugh. This was what she had been waiting for.

The collar was out of neurotoxin. They couldn't control her anymore.

---

Claire had never liked flying very much—which was kind of funny, now that she thought about it, considering that both her father and uncle could fly like birds. It must have skipped a generation, she thought philosophically, trying to convince herself that it was perfectly natural for a huge metal tube to be hanging suspended in midair, that there was no way that the airplane would simply decide to crash. The guy next to her wasn't helping—apparently not bothering to notice that she was alarmingly underage, he had been unabashedly checking her out, at least until Peter had noticed and leveled a protective-uncle glower at the man. He was still occasionally leering at her when he thought Peter wasn't looking, and she quickly found another reason to hate air travel—whoever you ended up sitting by, you had to deal with for six hours.

She had been having an especially hard time the last hour, because Peter had fallen asleep (how he could, she didn't know, on the bizarre uncomfortable not-a-pillow the flight attendant had given him). Extremely fed up with the stares of her aisle-mate, she turned to him, considering waking him up—and stopped, staring blankly at his hands.

After a few seconds, and a few double-takes to be sure she was really seeing what she thought, she shook him hard. "Peter," she whispered. "Peter, wake up."

His long eyelashes fluttered open (now that gene, she had inherited) and he looked up at her, half-awake. "What is it, Claire?" he asked with remarkable patience for someone who'd just been very rudely awakened.

"Peter, you're glowing," she hissed, thrusting one of his hands in front of his face.

Peter stared at his hand—blinked rapidly—stared some more. It was true: he was glowing like a firefly, lit up to the wrist with eerie white fluorescence. Quickly, he stuffed both of his hands under his blanket, where they could be seen only faintly, as if he had been covering up a flashlight. "Claire, why am I glowing?" he asked quietly, trying not to let his voice raise to the panic-pitch that it wanted to.

"Don't ask me," she said. "There's probably someone on the airplane with abilities."

He looked as if he very much wanted to scream. "Well, this is certainly an unforeseen problem," he said. "Do me a favor? Can you kind of look around and…I don't know, see if anyone is glowing?"

As casually as she could manage, she sat up on her knees, scanning the aisles for any unusual lights—there was nothing. "Sorry," she said, dropping back down to her seat. "Everyone looks normal."

"This is just great," he said, exasperated. "How am I supposed to control someone's abilities by associating emotions with them if I don't know who the person is?"

"Yeah, really didn't think of this one before," Claire agreed. "Any ideas?"

He looked miserably at his softly glowing hands. "None. Think anyone will notice?"

She raised her eyebrows at him. "More than somewhat."

His snapped his fingers, the sound muffled under the blanket. "Wait—why don't I just—" Without finishing his sentence, he began to blur his hands, shifting them into normal, nonfluorescent ones. "There," he said, uncovering them and inspecting them with satisfaction. "That'll do it."

"You're very smart, Peter," she congratulated him.

"Thanks," he aid dryly. "Let's just hope this is a one-time thing."

---

Claude wasn't very upset at being left behind. He was never one to go haring off on mad schemes, and besides, he had a lot more faith in Peter and Claire than anyone else seemed to. Occasionally annoying as Peter may be, if he said that he was going to do something, he did it, or died trying. It was a kind of throwback honor code, and it was as rare and reliable as anything Claude had ever encountered.

But, Nathan and Mr. Bennet would insist on running after them in a protective jealous frenzy, declaring that they were only for show and were not to be used for practical purposes. At least Claude now understood where Peter had gotten his housepet mentality, if his brother had been hovering around him like this all his life.

He had been left on babysitter watch while they went off to their heroics, and he frankly bid them good riddance. He would far rather live with the world than take it on any day. Candice had been a fairly docile charge so far, never giving him more trouble than an occasional acid remark—which, as the king of acid remarks, he was patently immune to. He brought her food and he ignored her, and she seemed to accept his established routine.

Except for today. Today, when he unlocked the door and entered her room, plate of breakfast muffins in one hand, he found not Candice but Claire, sitting pertly on the bed—and like a fool, he fell for it. "Claire?" he gaped. "What are you doing here?"

"I think you've got the wrong room, Claude," she laughed, walking up to him. In retrospect, he berated himself for not seeing through her thin excuses—but at the time, he was too busy gawking to realize what was happening until it was far too late.

Once she got within a few steps of the door, she sprinted for the opening, pushing him aside to get to the hallway. It was then that his brain made the necessary leap, and grabbed for her belatedly, yelling in surprise and frustration. He dropped the muffins and took off after her, but she'd already swung herself onto a windowsill and jumped, landing gracefully on the asphalt and racing away.

He stared out the window, still somewhat trying to understand what had just happened. Candice was gone.

That was very bad.

---

Peter and Claire stood outside of the hotel entrance, luggage in their hands, looking forlornly at the doors. Neither of them had had to say anything—they'd both just stopped there, slamming to a simultaneous halt as if they had hit an invisible wall. Within the past week, they'd had respective traumatic experiences involving hotels, and no matter how many channels the TVs had or how many mints maids left on their pillows, they were feeling sick at the prospect of checking into another one.

Peter wasn't sure how long they had been standing there—long enough to attract puzzled stares, at least—when he began to hear things in his head. For most people, this would have been considered a sign that reservations needed to be booked at the nearest mental hospital, but Peter was thrilled. Mind-reading was one of his least-stable abilities, and he was always happy when he was able to channel it in.

—look harmless enough, he heard. Skinny blond girl and a guy with his hair in his face, what are the chances they're a plant? They haven't done anything suspicious since I've been watching them, God knows I've been watching for long enough—

"Claire," Peter said evenly. "Don't be obvious about it, but look to your left. Do you see that black-haired woman standing by the van?"

"Yes," Claire said uncertainly, tucking a stray curl behind her ear. "What about her?"

"She's thinking about us," Peter told her. At her quizzical look, he tapped his head. "I can hear her."

"Do you think she's from The Company?" Claire asked nervously, moving closer to him.

"I don't know. I don't think so," Peter told her. "But I think we need to find out."

"Okay, how about this—you go talk to her, and I'll circle around in case she tries anything," Claire suggested.

"Why am I always the bait?" Peter complained.

"It's the big eyes," she teased him. "Now give me the gun."

"Are you sure?" Peter asked, surprised. Given her last experience with that very gun, he hadn't thought she would ever want to touch it again. She was becoming less and less fragile any minute, solidifying like salt crystals before his eyes. He admired the new, competent Claire—he just hoped that she wasn't growing stronger at the price of her innocence.

"Yes," she said grimly setting her jaw.

As discreetly as he could, and with no little apprehension, he handed the gun over to her, then turned and walked in the opposite direction.

Hana only looked away for a moment, overcome by a fit of the coughs from her car's exhaust fumes. When she turned back, though, a single minute later, they were gone, neither of them standing where they had been before. She spun slowly, searching the parking lot, but she couldn't see them anywhere.

Suddenly, she heard footsteps directly behind her, and a hand touched her shoulder. With military-instinct reaction time, she grabbed the hand and threw its owner into the van, pressing her forearm against their throat and effectively pinning them in a swift matter of seconds. She had just recognized her victim—it was the man, Peter—when she heard the sound of a gun cocking, inches away from her head.

Out of the corner of her eye, she could see the blond girl, holding a gun pointed at her with an admirably steady hand. Hana didn't wait to find out if she had the guts to pull the trigger—she snapped her foot up and around, kicking the gun out of the girl's hand and sending it skittering across the pavement.

"Hey!" Peter said, managing to push her arm away from his throat, a little breathless. "Hey, calm down. We're not trying to hurt you, we just want to talk."

Hana had to admit this was probably true—if they had wanted her dead, they would have just shot her at a distance. She moved away from the van, letting Peter up and regarding the pair with healthy suspicion. She slid her van door open and nodded to it.

"Get in," she said shortly. When they didn't move, she said impatiently, "We're making a huge scene, and neither you nor I have the time to deal with the police. Get in or leave."

After exchanging a long, meaning glance, they got in, watching her carefully as they did so. She followed behind them and shut the door, leaving them in windowless semi-dark.

"So talk," she said, brusque and in-control. "What do you want?"

"Just to know why you're following us," Peter said neutrally.

Hana was surprised—she must be losing her touch, if they had seen her tailing them. "Fair enough," she said. "I'm following you because you said you wanted to take down The Company, and I was trying to figure out if you were lying." There—the cards were on the table, and she hoped to God they were aces.

"How do you know that?" the girl asked sharply.

"I read your email," she said simply, ready to come clean for lack of other options—they could choose to believe her or not, but it was too late for polite lies now. "I can access wireless signals with my mind." Their eyebrows flew up in unison, and she found herself suddenly, unaccountably irritated. "I havethis ability, all right?" she snapped. "I don't know where it came from, but I'm just different."

Peter grinned, brown eyes shining like spent pennies in the hazy half-light. "Small world," he said.