The Intuitives(60)

“Wonderful!” Ammu turned to Daniel, who looked like he wanted to throw up. “Daniel, I would like you to sing any tune that represents the way you feel as you watch what Kaitlyn is doing.”

“Dear God, don’t ask him to do that,” Rush couldn’t help but interject, and Sketch laughed out loud while Daniel blushed furiously.

“Hmm? OH! Right. Yes, I see. The feelings that come to you through the runes on the floor, I mean,” Ammu corrected himself, looking like he was trying not to chuckle.

“Thanks a lot,” Daniel muttered, but Rush just grinned without any sign of remorse.

“Go on, Disco,” he joked. “Let’s hear it. Give us a Kaitlyn-rune melody.”

Daniel glared at him, but Mackenzie looked up from her series of movements long enough to say, “Hey! If I can perform an ancient spiritual cleansing by doing slow Muay Thai moves around a chalk circle, you can hum us a damn tune.”

“Fine,” Daniel muttered. He grew quiet for a moment and then began humming, very softly, an eerie melody that didn’t sound quite like anything any of them had ever heard before.

“What do you want Sketch and me to do?” Rush asked, more than happy to do any crazy thing Ammu asked of him now that they had made their deal.

“You will know when Samantha indicates that the time is right,” Ammu replied cryptically.

“Good enough for me,” Rush said. He folded his arms across his chest and stood back to watch the fun, Sketch mimicking his pose beside him.

“Wait, wait, wait,” Sam said, holding up one hand after Kaitlyn had finished her drawing. “Go back to the beginning.”

“Beginning?” Mackenzie asked, she and Daniel both stopping and staring at her.

“Yeah,” Sam said. “Mackenzie, wherever you feel like the ritual should start, go back there and wait for a second.”

“OK,” she agreed, shrugging and walking about halfway around the circle.

“Daniel,” Sam continued, “wherever that tune starts, I’m going to count you into it, OK?”

Daniel didn’t look happy about having to start over again, but he nodded just the same.

“And Kaitlyn,” Sam finished, “Go back to the part of the circle where Mackenzie is standing and trace over the runes again, moving in the same direction she does. I’ll point to you when it’s time to move to the next rune.”

“Okie dokie,” Kaitlyn agreed.

Sam took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Rush raised an eyebrow but said nothing. Ammu, however, began to watch her with a new intensity.

“OK, everybody,” she said. “Here goes nothing. One… two… one, two, three, four.”

Daniel began to hum again, but this time he followed the beat that Sam had introduced, while Mackenzie moved to the same rhythm, punching and kicking at the air in slow motion. Sam pointed occasionally to Kaitlyn, who would trace the next rune while Mackenzie bowed in front of it.

As they came back around toward the beginning of the circle, Rush began to frown. He felt a strange sort of hum in the air, and he found himself wondering whether this was what it felt like right before you were struck by lightning.

It was not a comforting thought.

Suddenly, Sam threw her arms up over her head, and a dark void began to open between her hands. It started as a pinprick, so small that Rush couldn’t be sure he was seeing anything at all, but he felt it with absolute certainty. It was as though a hole had opened up between himself and something waiting just on the other side, in the same way that a narrow tunnel might suddenly allow you to hear someone’s voice through a wall of solid rock, or allow you to catch the scent of winter lingering on the other side.

As the hole grew, becoming as wide as a marble, and then a golf ball, and then a baseball, and then a softball, Rush could feel the thing on the other side struggling to shove its way into the tunnel, which was still too narrow for it. He felt it yearning toward him, and at the same time tugging at him, like two powerful magnets drawn inexorably toward one another.

“What the hell?” Rush exclaimed. He took a huge step backward and stumbled into Ammu, who barely managed to keep them both from falling.

“What?” Sam cried out, seeing Rush’s reaction. She yanked her hands back into her lap, her wide eyes meeting Rush’s across the span of the room between them, and the void snapped closed without a sound.





30


Instructor Report



“So, what went wrong?”

“I thought it was an excellent first attempt, all things considered. With time—”

“We don’t have time, dammit! What… went… wrong?”

“Why, nothing, really. The boy just—”

“Nothing? You’re trying to tell me that nothing went wrong? Then where are my results?”

“As I have been saying, it is a bit early, in my opinion, to expect the project to come to its full fruition.”

“It’s full fruition? Nothing happened!”

“I admit the process did not reach completion, but—”

“Completion? It didn’t even start, man!”

“I apologize, Colonel, but why do you keep repeating everything I say as a question? I find it very disconcerting as a method of communication.”