I woke up, sober and alone, in Tobias's bed at five-thirty the next morning. A dull predawn glow made his windows visible in the dark, but just barely, and I stared at them for a while, thinking.
Then I forced myself out of bed and traipsed quietly into the living room. I slid my shoes on then walked over to where Tobias lay lightly snoring on the couch. I sat down on the leather trunk and watched him for a moment, musing over the fact that he even smiled when he slept. I reached out and touched the hair at the base of his forehead, shifting it gently aside. A small, unconscious smile graced his lips and my heart constricted. He was beautiful, and I loved him, and I was beginning to suspect that he loved me, too, but he was also at that moment the least of my problems.
Ten minutes later, I was at Betty's apartment above CCB's, knocking on the door, filled with cold determination and an atypical clarity. She pulled the door open, wide awake in her fluffy red robe. Her hair was matted against one side of her head and there were pillowcase creases on her cheek.
"I love you, Livvy," she said, pulling me inside, "but it's the butt crack of dawn. Someone better be dead or on fire."
I shut the door behind me with a quiet click as she shuffled into the little kitchenette. "Do you have an empty coffee mug I can borrow?"
"An empty coffee mug?" She stared at me for a moment. "That couldn't wait until a reasonable hour?"
I shook my head. She watched me for a moment, then shrugged and got a red ceramic mug out of the cabinet and handed it to me. "This had better be good, or I'm going to have to kill you with my bare hands. And I'm old. That could take awhile."
"Is this special?" I asked. "Any sentimental value or ... anything?"
She shook her head. "I got them six for ten dollars on clearance. I'm pretty sure they've got lead in them."
"Okay." I pulled it in toward my chest and closed my eyes, then opened them. "You might want to stand back. Just in case it breaks or something."
Betty stepped a few paces back. I closed my eyes and hugged the mug to me, concentrating on the tingling in my hands. I felt the energy intensify a bit and I tried to focus it into the mug. I imagined it turning into a furry, cute, harmless squirrel and for a moment, I thought I felt something like burning in my palms, but when I opened my eyes and held it out in front of me, it was still a mug.
"You can keep it if you like it that much," she said.
"No. I'm just ... I'm trying something, and I need you to see it. I need someone I know and trust to check me on this, and since all of my other relationships are kind of a mess at the moment ... that's you."
She put her hand over her heart and gave a wide, ironic smile. "I'm the only one left, so I get woken up at the butt crack of dawn? I'm touched."
I felt tears come to my eyes, but I blinked them away. "You'll still love me even if I'm crazy or dying of a brain tumor or carrying some kind of alien mutant virus, right?" I still hadn't quite worked out all my theories.
Betty's irony faded, leaving a slightly worried expression in its wake. "Alien mutant virus?"
"You'll understand it better once you've seen it." I swallowed back the weird swell of emotion and tried to concentrate on the task at hand. "I just need you to stand there and watch me. Don't take your eyes off the mug, okay, in case it doesn't last too long. Can you do that?"
Betty released a breath, seeming even more nervous than I was. "Absolutely."
"Okay." I took a deep breath and looked at the mug, unsure of what to do now. What was different from the other times?
Intensity.
Okay, then. I closed my eyes and thought of Tobias. I thought about the first time we'd met, working a busy Tuesday night together, instantly in sync as if we'd been working together for years. I thought about how he'd smiled at me the night before while making waffles. The tingling ran up my arms, intensifying. I clutched the mug to my chest and thought of what it would be like to kiss him, to make love with him, and I was overwhelmed with the want of him, and the tingling intensified.
And then Stacy Easter walked into the fantasy, crooked her finger, and he dropped me in a heartbeat.
And that thought pretty much killed the tingling.
"Damn." I opened my eyes, and looked around. Both of the other times I'd done it, I'd been seriously freaked out. Was it sparked by fear? Maybe. I looked at Betty. "Do you think you can scare me?"
Betty smiled. "Oh, honey, I'm not very - BOO!" and she lunged at me. It startled me a bit, but it wasn't enough. I closed my eyes and tried to clear my mind, opening it to receive something that would adequately freak me out, if I just kept my mind clear -
It's your magic, baby. Isn't it beautiful?
I saw Davina's face, smiling brightly as she watched the bat phone fly around her. Then she looked at me, and spoke, but it wasn't her voice, it was the guy from the alley, Cain.
Is your father Gabriel Ford?
No, I said, and the bat phone lunged at me. I ducked and fell to the floor.
This is your destiny, baby, Davina said, in her own voice now, as she moved toward me. It wasn't right, them not letting you be what you are.
My arms felt rubbery, tingly, hot, the energy buzzing through my body, and I cried out, afraid and desperate to get away.
I hadn't felt myself fall, but when the water hit my face, I sputtered to consciousness flat on my back on the floor of Betty's kitchen. I swiped at my eyes, yelled, "I'm okay!" and the water stopped. I looked up to see Betty standing over me, the cold water pitcher she kept in her refrigerator at the ready. I put my hand on my forehead, dizzy. My heart was still beating so fast and so hard, I could feel it. It almost felt outside of my chest. It almost felt -
It almost felt like it was crawling down my stomach.
I lifted my head and looked down. A red ceramic bunny nose twitched at me, pushing out from the back of the mug. The handle at the other end had contracted in on itself to form the tail. Above the face of the bunny, two flopped-over ears stretched out from the rim of the mug. The body of the mug was rounded, and it puffed in and out, like the thing was breathing. The foot of the ceramic mug had sprouted bunny feet. The top of the mug was still open, sort of as if the top hump of the bunny's back had been sliced off, but it contracted and moved as though a full back were there, invisible muscles working to propel the mug bunny as it hopped down my leg, where it dropped down, landing with an awkward clunk on Betty's white tiled floor. I shifted up and away from it until I was sitting with my back resting against the refrigerator, watching the mug bunny as it stuck its little nose under the cabinet and sniffed around. I looked down at my fingers, and could see the fading wisps of yellow light dancing around them, like strands of smoky yarn. I shook them out, and the strands danced away, then dissipated.
"I think I'm gonna need the day off work," I said, unable to take my eyes off the mug bunny.
Betty knelt down beside me and we were both silent for a long time, just watching the bunny. "Well, I'll be damned."
"Yeah," I said, trying to figure out a way to explain it. "So ... I'm thinking ... alien mutant virus?"
"Nope," Betty said.
I looked up at her. "Well, it can't be a brain tumor. Unless it's contagious and we're sharing delusions. But that..." I shook my head. "No, that doesn't make sense, either."
"It's not a brain tumor."
And then I looked up at her, noticing for the first time that she seemed neither amazed nor surprised that I had just turned her ordinary coffee mug into a living, breathing critter.
"Betty?" I said, suspicion in my voice. "You know something about this?"
Betty put her hand on my shoulder. "Livvy, I think it's time we had a talk."
I sat in Booth 9, staring at my hands folded in front of me on the table. Betty sat across from me, apparently waiting for me to start, but I didn't know where to start, so I just sat there, my mind so beyond reeling it was blank. Next to me, on the padded booth seat, the mug bunny I'd made continued to squeak and toddle around in the orange shoebox Betty had given me to put him in. Every now and again, just to be sure it was all real, I looked at him, and he'd twitch his little red ceramic nose at me.
Yep. It was real.
"Okay," Betty said finally. "Let's get started." She went behind the counter, then came back with two empty coffee mugs. She set them down on the table and took her place across from me.
I picked up the mug and looked at it. "Anything in particular you want? Squirrel, mouse, a tiny ceramic cat, perhaps?"
"Shhhh," she said, and closed her eyes. She took the mug from me, cupped her hands around it, and set it on the table. After a moment, a blue light began to swirl inside of it, and a moment later, it was filled with a dark, steaming liquid.
"Arabica roast, cream and sugar, just the way you like it." She smiled. "It's what I do. I make breakfast food. All of us have powers, mostly little things like this, or what you do, but aside from that, we're perfectly normal. Human. And we live perfectly normal, human lives. Okay?"
I blinked at her. "Us?" I said, finally. "How many are there?"
She shrugged. "Not many. I once heard it was about one in a hundred thousand people, but I don't think there's ever been a real survey. A lot of us like to stay hidden, blend in."
"So, there are more ... people like us? In Nodaway?"
"Hmmm. Don't think so. Just you and me, far as I know." She leaned forward. "You look hungry. Would you like some pastry? I'm especially good with pastry."
"No." My limbs were still buzzy and my brain was still numb, and I didn't think a muffin was going to cure that. "No, thank you."
"Wanna see something cool?" Without waiting for my answer, she closed her eyes, swirled her hands around, and there was an electric zapping sound, followed by a blue light. When I glanced down, a dark, flat pastry glistening with butter and sugar sat on the table in front of me.
There was pride in Betty's smile. "Genuine Grecian baklava. Melts in your mouth. Try some."
"It doesn't come on a plate?"
"I make the food, not the plates. But the table's clean."
"That's not where all the food here comes from, right?" I asked, suddenly suspicious of the baklava. "I mean, you don't just - " I made a whooshing movement with my hands that was supposed to symbolize the magic.
"Oh, hell no." Betty leaned back and smoothed her hands over her hair. "Doing it that much would probably kill me. A girl only has so much juice. No, we do things the old-fashioned way here. Plus, I'm day magic, like you, so I wouldn't be able to feed anyone at night. We can't do it unless the sun's up."
"Oh." I thought back to all my incidents, and realized they had all happened during the day. "Why is that?"
"Beats the hell out of me, that's just how it works. The religious whacks believe it has something to do with eternal natural balance, blah blah blah. I think it's genetic." She shrugged, then smiled brightly. "How about some Danish?" She swooshed her hands over the table, some blue electric light zip-zapped, and two Danish bounced off my head and onto the floor. "Sorry, Livvy. Bad aim there."
I stared down at the Danish on the floor, still trying to process. "Right."
"It's not as scary as it seems," she said. "I mean, I knew one girl growing up whose only power was the ability to change the color of tomatoes. So, you make inanimate objects come to life. It's really not that big a deal."
I pondered that for a moment, then said, "It's a big deal."
"Eh." She broke off a bit of Danish and stuffed it in her mouth. "So ... are you sure you're not hungry? Not to toot my own horn, but this stuff is amazing."
"No." I shook my head. "Thank you."
"Suit yourself," she said, and took another bite.
Zip-zap, and an English muffin appeared on the table in front of me.
"Sorry," Betty said, grabbing a napkin, wrapping it around the muffin, and tossing it on the seat next to her. "It gets a little out of control sometimes when I'm tense."
"I'm the one who just found out my life is a lie. Why are you tense?"
"Because I have to tell you about it. This was not the plan. Your mother was supposed to live long enough to be the one dealing with all of this."
Zzzzzzttt. Five glazed doughnuts landed on the table out of thin air. Betty put her hand over her mug, swirled it around, and I could smell her favorite orange spice tea in the steam that wafted over the table. She took a sip and set the mug down. "Okay. Let's start with you. Do you have any questions?"
I picked up the orange shoebox and set it between the baklava and the doughnuts. "One or two."
"Right." She smiled. "Well, let's start with the obvious. Liv, you're a Magical. Meaning someone with power that extends beyond normal human experience. Congratulations."
"Wow." I wrapped my hands around my steaming mug of coffee, not quite ready to drink it, but appreciating the warmth of it in my hands. "Can't tell you how helpful that heads-up would have been a week ago."
She met my eye, her patience obviously waning. "Would you have believed me if I had told you a week ago?"
I thought about that, and conceded. "Fair enough."
"Okay, then." Betty sighed. "Let's start from the beginning." Pause. "Your father is not Some Guy Named Dave."
I nodded. I'd sort of put that together. At the same time, I didn't want to say his name, so I just kept quiet and let Betty speak.
Betty nodded. "When you were just a baby, your family was in danger. Real, serious, gonna-get-you-all-killed danger. Your father decided to split the family up; it's easier to hide two people than four. He brought your mom and you here to me, and he took your sister and went somewhere else."
I blinked a few times, my mind running back through what she'd told me. "I have a sister?"
She nodded. "Holly. She was a cute little thing."
"Where is she?"
Betty shrugged. "I don't know. The last time I saw either one of them was that night your father brought you and Amelia here to me."
I looked at her for a long moment, remembering the mournful date my mother inexplicably spent staring off into space every year. "October fifth?"
Betty's eyebrows knit. "I don't know. It was in the fall, I think. Why?"
I shook my head. "No reason." I put my hand to my forehead. "I'm a little dizzy."
"Understandable," she said. "Have a doughnut."
I shook my head. "Wait. Okay. So, people were after us? Why?"
"There was something special about Gabriel's power, although Amelia never told me exactly what. But it was dangerous enough that he split the family up to keep you all safe."
"So he ... he never left her?"
Betty looked at me. "He left. Have you seen him for the last twenty-eight years?"
"No. I mean..." I shook my head, trying to get it all clear. "He loved her? He didn't leave her?"
Betty's expression cleared. "He loved her, and you. I've never seen a man so unhappy in all my life as your dad was when he left here that night." She sighed, closed her eyes, and said, "Move the bunny."
"Hmmm?" I said, and then there was a blue zip-zap over the mug bunny's shoebox. I pulled it out just in time for a huge chocolate cake to splat down in the center of the table.
"Wow," I said, setting the mug bunny on the seat next to me.
"Yeah," Betty said, and dug in with one finger, stuffing her cake in her mouth and closing her eyes again. "Mmmm. I make the best chocolate cakes ever. Have some."
"No, thanks."
Her eyes whipped open and flashed with threat. "Have some."
I dug one finger into the cake, and then put it to my lips. At first, I tasted it tentatively, somehow expecting it to zap me with blue lightning or something, but it was just cake. It was perfectly moist, and held the slightest hint of something exotic - cinnamon? nutmeg? - and was, hands down, the best chocolate cake I'd ever tasted in my life.
"Mmmm, good." I licked the last bit off my finger.
"See? Nothing happened to you. It's not scary or dangerous, it's just who we are."
I thought about Tobias, making me waffles last night, using a waffle iron and batter, the way God intended. "I liked who I was."
Betty dug another chunk out of the cake. "Yeah, well, those days are gone, honey." She raised her eyes to meet mine, and her look was serious. "So now, let's talk about you."