Graham walked me up to my door, which surprised me a little. Before he left, he gave me a warm smile and stroked my upper arm affectionately, which surprised me even more. The vibe I’d been getting all day from him was a little more than friendly. I hoped I was reading too much into his behavior. Graham seemed nice, and he sure looked good, but I shouldn’t get involved with one of these people. There were too many unknowns.

Being on my own was a firmly established habit, anyway. I was the woman who had fits, after all. That didn’t exactly give me a top spot on Dorf’s datable-women list.

But maybe it doesn’t have to be that way now.

If it weren’t for the panic attacks, things might’ve been different. Maybe they would be different in the future. If the panic attacks really did stop. And if I want to have to lie to someone all the time, I thought, remembering Graham’s warnings.

Well, no sense in worrying about that right now.

I let myself in. It felt good to be home. I hadn’t been gone all that long, but the house had that just-home-from-vacation feeling — the smell was a little off, and it was oddly quiet.

I curled up on the couch with a hot bowl of soup and a cold soda. It seemed like a million years ago that I’d last done this very normal thing. It was great.

I’d only slept a few hours the night before, so I was in bed by 8:00, Sniggles the bear tucked under one arm. My own worn, mismatched sheets had never felt so good.

I came wide awake in the darkness, certain that something was wrong. I slid out from under the covers, then smoothed them quickly, making the bed look unused. Opening the top drawer of my bedside table, I pulled out my mother’s old .38.

When Mom was alive, she always stored the bullets separately. Ben’s kids came to the house back then, so loaded guns were a no-no. I no longer bothered with that precaution. I checked by feel to make sure the cylinder was full, then moved as quietly as I could across my bedroom and crouched in the corner behind the door.

Mom had made me go shooting at the range in Frederick a couple times a year. I hadn’t done it much since she passed. It just didn’t seem like a priority. Dorf was pretty darned safe. I carefully settled my finger outside the guard and thumbed back the hammer. It had been long enough since I’d used the gun that these actions were no longer automatic. I couldn’t remember when I’d last cleaned the thing.

There were footsteps on the stairs. Surprisingly, the intruder didn’t sneak into the room. Instead there was a soft knock and a pause before the bedroom door swung open. The light flipped on, and a female voice said, “Beth?” I peeked around the side of the door and saw bleached-blond hair. Kara.

She looked back out the door. “She’s not here.”

“She’s here,” Williams said.

Shit.

I waited until Kara left the room, then stood and moved quickly into the doorway, gun leveled. Putting all the steel into my voice that I could, I said, “Stop.”

Kara and Williams stilled. They both had their backs to me and seemed to realize I was armed, maybe from my tone of voice. They’d been about to check the second bedroom, which was right across the landing. Both slowly looked over their shoulders at me. Kara’s face was very surprised. Williams’s was blank. I took a slow step back, so I’d be out of lunging range, and shifted the gun toward Williams. The three of us stood there for a few seconds, staring at each other.

It occurred to me that I wasn’t feeling a panic attack coming on. I was scared, but I was also angry. I’d had it with these people, especially Williams. A sadist, Graham had said. I could believe it.

I realized I might very well shoot him. A strange sense of calm descended on me.

Williams’s expression changed fractionally. A finger on his right hand twitched. He didn’t strike me as a twitchy sort of person. I wondered if he’d just put up some sort of force field to protect himself. It would be just my luck to get killed by my own ricochet.

The moment of distraction helped me get a handle on my anger. Good as it’d feel to shoot Williams, he hadn’t actually made a move in my direction, yet. I took two more steps back and pulled the gun back and up to my shoulder, still holding it with both hands.

“What do you want?”

“We just want to talk,” Kara said.

I waited.

She smiled nervously. “You need to come out to the mill. We’re not getting anywhere with it. Callie says we need you there.”

“What, nearly burning one woman to death isn’t enough for you?”

If the jab bothered Williams, he didn’t show it. In contrast, Kara seemed genuinely upset at the thought.

“That’s not going to happen to you! Look, I know it’s really fucking scary — it is, totally. But it’s also really important. You’ve got to come.”

“How long have you guys been doing this? A year? Ten years? I come along and join your little freak show, and two days later, you can’t do it without me? Bullshit.”

“I know it’s weird. But Callie’s never wrong. She doesn’t see all that often, but when she does, it’s right.”

“No.”

Williams made a small, exasperated noise and pushed past Kara. Without hesitation, I brought the gun down and fired at him. I only got off one shot before he slammed me back against the wall with one hand and took the gun away with the other. God he was fast.

Either I was right about the force field, or my aim had really gone to hell — he’d been a yard or two away and coming right at me, and I hadn’t hit him.

No ricochet had come back at me. I was sort of sorry for that. I’d rather die by gunshot than be burned to death.

Williams dragged me out of the room and down the stairs. Kara followed, looking scared and swearing under her breath. He hauled me around the corner and into the living room, then froze.

Graham was standing in the middle of the room. His expression was only mildly annoyed, but I got the sense he was madder than he looked.

“You’re kidnapping my trainee?”

Williams didn’t say anything.

From behind us, Kara said, “Graham, we need her out there. Callie says.”

Graham cocked his head. “I don’t think so.”

He brought one hand up and looked at it. At first I thought he was checking out his fingernails. Then I realized he was holding a cell phone.

“How fortunate you just happened to call as you were leaving the house, Kara. I was able to follow along with your progress quite nicely.”

Kara blanched. She pulled her own phone out and ended the call she clearly hadn’t known was going on.

“Look —”

“Get out.” Graham sounded almost bored.

Amazingly, Williams dropped me and stalked out of the house. Kara followed, squeezing to the side, as though she wanted to stay as far away from Graham as possible.

I have to admit, it was sort of weird. They were afraid of him. Well, Kara was obviously afraid of him, and Williams was at least unwilling to challenge him. I still hadn’t seen anything particularly scary about Graham. He seemed like a middle-management type — sending people here and there, training newbies, that kind of thing. What had I missed that Kara saw?

He watched them leave. Once they were gone, he turned back to me, looking concerned.

“Elizabeth, are you all right?”

“Yeah,” I said.

I sat down on the couch and reached back to rub my shoulder where it’d hit the wall.

“Just need an ice pack or two. That’s getting to be standard with you people.”

“Not all of ‘us people’ are the same,” he said quietly, sitting down beside me. “Of course, you have no idea if that’s true or not,” he added wryly, as though he could read my mind.

He put an arm around my shoulders but must’ve felt me stiffen, because he just patted me, then let me go.

“Seriously, are you okay?”

“Yeah, I am. Thanks for the save. I’d probably be on my way to dead right now if you hadn’t shown up.”

That got a big smile.

“Did Kara really call you by accident?”

He grinned. “Yep.”

“Man. What a loser kidnapper, eh?”

He laughed. “I don’t normally want my people to be losers at anything, but in this case I’m delighted. Now,” he said, his expression softening, “why don’t you take some Tylenol and try to go back to sleep. I’ll hang out here, just to be sure they don’t come back.”

That didn’t exactly make me feel better, but what could I do? Saying I’d be fine alone and he should leave would sound silly, considering what had just happened.

Which reminded me that my neighbors had probably all called the police. A .38 makes a big noise on a quiet night.

But everything was still silent outside — no sirens, no Suzanne at her front door, hollering to find out if I was okay. In fact, when I went to the window, I didn’t see lights on in any of the surrounding houses.

Again, Graham seemed to know what I was thinking. “They were keeping things quiet. None of your neighbors heard anything.”

I must’ve still looked perplexed.

“We haven’t talked much about workings,” he said. “One kind is a noise-dampening field. Most of us learn to make those. I’m sure you’ll be able to do it yourself, once you get to that stage.”

“Wow,” I said. “That must come in handy. What else can I learn to do?”

He smiled. “Well, lots of us can open locks.” He gestured at my front door. “See? They didn’t have to break in. One of them did a working to unlock it.”

“Huh. I’m surprised more of you don’t take up lives of crime.”

He laughed a little too hard — it hadn’t been that funny. Maybe Graham was a notorious cat burglar on the side.

“Okay,” I said, yawning. “I’m going to try to get a little more shut-eye. There’s a blanket and an extra pillow in that cabinet over there. Or you can watch TV in the den. Help yourself to whatever’s in the fridge. Which isn’t much.”

“Great, sounds good. When you’re up and about, let’s discuss that abilities-testing I mentioned. I don’t want to let too much more time go by.”

“Okay. Good night.”

“Good night. And Elizabeth,” he said as I turned toward the stairs, “I’ll be having a talk with the others. This won’t happen again.”

I nodded. I hoped I looked grateful enough. The way he’d said it gave me a little chill, so I had a feeling the talk would be effective.

I headed up to my room. After a moment’s hesitation, I locked my bedroom door. After all, what if he’d told me that thing about opening locks just to make me think there was no point in locking my door? Probably dumb, but hey, it couldn’t hurt.

I flipped off the overhead and turned on my bedside lamp. Then I got in bed. Lying back, I noticed a bullet hole in the ceiling. So there had been a ricochet, and it went straight up. I guess bulletproofing was par for the course, too.

Not good. The gun had given me a moment’s confidence, had let me put anger ahead of fear, however briefly. If I couldn’t even shoot these people, I really was helpless.

I woke at around 7:00 and trundled directly into the bathroom. Callie’s place was nice, but I wanted to shower in my own bathroom, with my own shampoo, my own conditioner, and my own shower pouf. I also needed to make serious use of a razor.

When I was clean, I dressed in a sweater and fresh jeans, trying hard not to think about which pair would be most flattering. I was probably wrong about Graham’s interest, and even if I wasn’t, getting involved with him was out of the question.

When I went downstairs, I found Graham cooking breakfast. He must’ve actually gone shopping first, since the meal included bacon, eggs, toast, bananas, and OJ, none of which I’d had on hand. He’d also made coffee. It was all delicious.

After eating, I felt like crawling back into bed for a nap, but instead we got in my car and headed east. I think I dozed part of the way. Big meals early in the day always made me sleepy.

Our destination turned out to be Rib Mountain, a four-mile-long ridge just west of Wausau. It took more than an hour to get there, since we had to wend our way up through the state park that surrounded the mountain.

On the way there, Graham told me a little more.

“You remember about the four stages of development, right?” He waited for my nod. “So, we’ve got you into the first stage, now — you’re really seeing through, instead of just getting random glimpses.”

I guess I could see through. I’d seen Bob, at any rate.

“The next stage is getting what we call a ‘gift.’ Kara’s ability to heal, Callie’s ability to sense future events — those are gifts.”

“Does Williams have a gift for shields?” I asked, remembering the bullet hole in my ceiling and how I’d been trapped in Callie’s house.

“Yes, but we call that sort of thing a ‘barrier.’ The word ‘shield’ is too restrictive for what can be done with a barrier.”

Good lord, just what I didn’t want to hear.

“So,” Graham continued, “what we’re going to do today is see if your gift has emerged. Usually people spend a while just seeing through, but since you were stalled, maybe your gift will come quickly.”

“What’s the difference between workings and gifts?”

“There’s no real difference. The word ‘gift’ is shorthand for a working you can do automatically, without having to actually learn how. Most of us have at least one thing we can just do, without even thinking about it. Sometimes gifted working can be fine-tuned through practice, but the basic ability is always just there from the get-go.”

“What about the things you were mentioning last night — making disguises, unlocking doors, and such?”

“Right now you can sense essence that’s been disturbed by a working. Eventually, you’ll be able to see essence in its natural state. Once that happens, you can begin to do workings aside from your gift. We called that ‘learned’ working. You can also learn to do half-workings at that point — mainly disguises and false images. Some people devote a lot of time to learned workings and become very adept.”

“Are those the third and fourth stages?”

He grinned. “Very good — yes. Sometimes you’ll hear the stages called ‘castes,’ though I don’t care for that term, myself.”

I nodding, thinking about the possibilities.

“So even if I don’t have a gift for healing, I might be able to learn to do it?”

“Definitely. People who aren’t gifted healers can still learn to do healing work. Their abilities will probably be much more limited than those of a gifted healer like Kara, but it would still be useful.”

We pulled into the parking lot at the top of the mountain. Our car was the only one there. It was too late in the year for skiing, snowshoeing, and other winter sports, and too early to do much else besides slog through cold mud.

That last seemed to be what Graham had in mind. He got a backpack out of the trunk, and we headed into the woods. I think we covered less than a mile, but it took the better part of an hour, since there was no trail to follow.

I realized at one point that Graham must’ve been telling the truth about the sound-containment thing. I could certainly hear us crashing along through the dead leaves and brush, but nothing else seemed able to — several times we startled wildlife at close range.

At least I wasn’t the only one who suffered. About half an hour into our hike, Graham tripped and fell in a pretty substantial mud puddle. He stood up, brushing pointlessly at his pant legs, which were drenched and muddy up to the knees. Then he shot an annoyed look at the snag he’d tripped over.

“You okay?” I asked.

“Yeah. Darned rock.”

We continued on. Finally, Graham motioned to stop. He stood still for about a minute with his eyes closed, concentrating on something. Then he nodded to himself and said, “This is good.”

He opened his backpack and got out two large trash bags, which he unfolded and laid on the ground. We each sat on one. My butt instantly got very cold.

“Okay,” he said, “I’m going to test you for some common gifts. If nothing shows up, that’s no big deal. It just means you haven’t hit the second stage, yet.”

“Is there something about this place that makes it good for testing?”

“Yeah. This mountain’s made out of very hard rock, so it’s much older than the surrounding land — approaching two billion years. Its essence has been worked and reworked so many times that it’s thick with all the echoes and remnants. That makes it a place of power for people like us — the essence is easier to grasp, and sometimes you can build on the remains of someone else’s working, which increases what you can do.”

“So, the older things are, the more powerful they are?”

“Age is often associated with thickness, but it’s not consistent. Sometimes relatively new sites can get pretty thick. It depends on how much working has been done there and how much of it sticks in the essence. Some places seem to be naturally sticky.”

Graham spent the next two hours trying to figure out what I could do. He had me see if I could turn myself into mist, which involved trying to “feel transparent,” in his words. That didn’t go anywhere. He had me try to change into an animal by visualizing it. I remained stubbornly myself.

From that point, the list of failures just grew. I couldn’t communicate with him telepathically. I couldn’t heal a tiny cut he made on his finger. He pricked my finger with a pin, and I couldn’t heal that, either. I didn’t seem to have any effect on water or fire or stone or metal or the weather. I couldn’t move things with my mind. I wasn’t unusually strong or fast. I couldn’t speak or understand foreign languages. I couldn’t go invisible. And I couldn’t fly.

Which of course made me ask if they really had people who could fly. Graham’s response — “none living” — wasn’t particularly encouraging.

At the end of the session, he sat back with a sigh. A few moments passed.

“Remember, just because you aren’t demonstrating a particular gift now doesn’t mean you won’t be able to do it later.”

“Yeah, okay.”

I told myself that was good — the less I could do, the less interest this group would have in me.

“Are there other kinds of abilities people have?”

“Yeah, sure, there are lots of different gifts. The stuff I’ve been testing you for is big — the things that tend to be too impressive to go unnoticed. But there are tons of subtler, more unusual gifts. Sometimes you hear them called ‘quirks.’ The word’s considered pejorative, though, so I try not to use it. Really, every gift is a gift.”

I nodded and wondered if he had a so-called quirk himself. I sensed it would be rude to ask, so I kept my mouth shut.

“At any rate, I suspect you just haven’t come into your gift, yet. There’s a rule of thumb for figuring out how long someone’s going to keep developing: you take the person’s age at the time they enter the first caste and divide that number in half. Then you add the two numbers together. When the person reaches that number of years, they probably aren’t going to develop much more raw power, though they could keep learning and refining their skills.”

“So, if you start sensing workings at age ten, you keep developing up to age fifteen?”

“Yes, exactly. There are certainly exceptions, but it holds true for most.”

“So if I’m starting at twenty-three …”

“You have a lot of developing to do,” Graham finished. “It’s possible you’ll be able to fly, but not until you’re thirty,” he said, and winked.

Great. It was all well and fine to develop slowly, but if I could do something now, I’d like to know it. I felt like a guppy who’s just realized its aquarium is full of piranhas.

“Is there a way to test for the more unusual gifts?”

“Not specifically. There are literally thousands of them, and some of them are pretty hard to pin down. It’s possible that many of us have one or more that we never find out about. For instance, one guy I knew could put anything up his left nostril, so long as he could pick the item up and push it in that direction. But he didn’t know about it for the longest time. I mean, who really tries to put a chair up their nose, right?”

“Yeah. Wow.”

I hoped that if I had any quirky gifts, they didn’t involve bodily orifices.

“Anyway, this last test is open-ended. It might allow an unusual gift to show up. What I’d like you to do is just open yourself to the energy of this place and see what might come to you.”

I sat there, feeling dull. “I don’t know how to open myself to the energy of a place.”

“It’s a bit like meditating. Have you ever done that?”

“Nope.”

“Well, try closing your eyes and relaxing all your muscle groups one at a time. Then allow yourself to focus on your surroundings — what you feel, what you hear, what you smell. If your mind wanders, just bring it back to those things. Try to notice as much sensory information as you can, but don’t think about it. Just notice. That’s all you have to do, really.”

I sighed and closed my eyes, certain the exercise would be pointless and boring. I tried to focus on my senses. My rear end was going numb, and that occupied all my sensory input at first. Slowly I began noticing other things — the sound of the wind in the bare tree limbs came first. It actually was quite loud, though it had been background noise a minute earlier. The breeze touching my face was obvious, but I found I could also feel colder and warmer spots on my legs, depending on how the wind was striking them. The smell was what I think of as not-quite-spring. It was wet, and that was springlike, but it was still dead, like old leaves. When spring really came, in a few more weeks, it would start to smell like fresh dirt and earthworms in a place like this. Far off I heard a bird call, though I had no idea what kind.

I sat there, just taking those things in. It actually wasn’t boring at all. It was interesting and sort of stimulating. I felt energized, more awake to the world than I had in ages. My hands grew warmer, and I could feel my pulse beating in them, which was weird.

After a while, I felt sure there was something in front of me that I needed to pick up. My internal editor immediately pointed out how dumb that was, but I shushed it. Graham was trying to teach me. I’d always been a conscientious student, and that wasn’t going to stop now.

Without opening my eyes, I reached down to the ground in front of me. For a moment, it felt strangely slick, as though all the texture had gone out of things. Then my fingers found the dead leaves, dry on top and damp beneath. I brought my hands together in the leaf litter and felt something soft and warm in them. I raised my hands and opened my eyes to see what I had.

It was a small golden-brown mouse. It crouched in my cupped palms, then sat up on its haunches, looking at me and sniffing. It had impressively thick whiskers on its snout. They quivered charmingly. It didn’t seem scared at all.

I’d never been afraid of little critters — even snakes and rats and spiders were fine by me. I actually thought this little guy was really cute. Was it a “he”? I checked the back — yep.

“Hi, buddy. What’re you doing out this early in the year, huh?”

I looked up at Graham, half expecting him to be repulsed by the fact I’d picked up a rodent. Instead he looked … well, it was hard to describe. There was an element of surprise there, but the word didn’t do it justice. Maybe it was a mixture of several feelings. He looked from the mouse to me and back, and didn’t say anything at all.

“Um … so, I can tame wild animals?”

He kept staring at me and the mouse, apparently at a loss for words.

Finally he said, “That’s really unusual. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen someone do that.” He paused. “It’s definitely a good ability. Very good.”

“Really?”

“Yes,” he said firmly. “Definitely. Just think how useful it could be.”

I was dubious. I mean, what was I going to do, sic a hoard of mice on Williams the next time he came to kidnap me? Maybe Graham was trying to make me feel better about a not-very-useful gift. Come to think of it, maybe the mouse wasn’t wild at all. Sometimes people dumped their unwanted pets in places like this.

He got up and opened his back pack to put his trash bag back in.

“You’d best let Mickey there go back to what he was doing.”

“Okay.” I set my hands down in the leaves, expecting the mouse to hop off, but instead he ran up my arm and into my hair. Like I said, I wasn’t afraid of creepy-crawlies, but a mouse in my hair was a surprise, even for me. I reached up, then hesitated. If I dug around in there, he might bite me.

“Graham …”

The mouse wiggled his way inside the collar of my coat and curled up against my neck. He was so warm and soft. Suddenly, I really wanted to keep him. He just had to be someone’s pet — he was so friendly.

“What? Did it take off?”

“Yeah.”

I just didn’t say where. I got up and handed him my trash bag, and we headed back to the car. The mouse seemed content to sleep all the way home.

When we got back to my house, Graham walked me up to the door and gave me a kiss on the cheek. When he started bending over to do it, I was a bit worried he’d touch my neck and squash the mouse, but he touched my shoulders instead.

It turned out to be sort of lingering, for a kiss on the cheek. I felt my body sit up and take notice, against my better judgment.

He pulled back and looked at me, then leaned in again and brushed his lips against mine once, twice. His breath touched my lips, and I tipped my head up to him. He kissed me slowly, tracing a fine line along my lower lip with the tip of his tongue. I opened my mouth, and he deepened the kiss gently until our tongues were stroking together. His hand slid down to my lower back and pressed my body into his. I could feel the hardness in his groin, and felt a warm tightening deep in my belly in response.

It had been a long time.

It would have to be a little longer.

My hormones shouted and waved angry placards, but I pulled back anyway. Getting together with Graham right now just wasn’t a good idea. He leaned his forehead against mine and gave me a little smile. Instead of pressing things, he looked pleased I’d let him kiss me at al