‘I was a guest at a party that went bad.’
He tutted and shook his head. ‘I have a teenage daughter like you.’ He set the motor in reverse to pull away from the beach. He spoke with his hands like a conductor in front of an orchestra. ‘I warn her all the time to watch who she socializes with. Young people can be very foolish.’
I would have liked to point out that my ‘bad friend’ was in her eighties but it would be too long an explanation. I just wanted the fisherman to get me home as quickly as possible.
‘I’m sorry that I’m asking you to go so far out of your way.’
‘No problem. It is not every day I get to fish a mermaid out of the lagoon.’
My kind rescuer dropped me at the little jetty near our apartment.
‘Someone seems to have missed you,’ he commented, pointing to Xav who was waiting by the ramp to shore, blanket in hand. ‘Hey, young man, make sure you look after her better: she could’ve died out there!’
‘It’s not his fault,’ I muttered, embarrassed that the fisherman had assumed Xav was to blame. Fortunately the reproof had been in Italian. ‘Hen party.’
‘Humph: what are girls coming to these days? Weren’t like that when I was young.’ He threw a line to Xav who tied up the boat by the pier. ‘Mind the step, mermaid.’
Xav reached down and pulled me into his arms. He hugged me so tightly against him I could barely get out a muffled ‘thank you’ to my Good Samaritan.
‘Thank you, sir, for bringing Crystal back.’ Xav reached down and shook hands with the fisherman. ‘We’d like to pay for your trouble—the extra gas at least.’
The fisherman understood English but refused the offer. ‘No need for that. Here’s my card in case you have any questions where I found her. Someone should be punished for that—absolutely criminal leaving her there without even a coat.’
Xav tucked the business card in his pocket. ‘You’re right about that. I’ll make sure they don’t get away with it.’
The fisherman cast off and chugged away to his now much truncated day of sport.
‘Oh God, Xav, how did it all go so wrong?’ I asked. ‘It’s my fault isn’t it? I organized the party. I had no idea about her.’
‘You are not responsible for every bad Savant, darlin’. From what you said, she would have been plotting this from the moment she heard Diamond was going to get hitched to my brother. Through you, or from Diamond herself, she would have heard sooner or later. It’s not something we could hide.’ Xav wrapped the blanket tighter about me then bundled me into his arms as he had once before.
‘You’re beginning to make a habit of this.’ And one I wouldn’t mind encouraging.
He carried me towards our garden gate. ‘What was the going rate for rescues? I seem to think you considered charging me for the same service.’
‘I’ll pay anything, just tell me that you’ve found the others.’
‘’Fraid not, but getting you back is one massive step forward. My dad, Trace, and Victor are on the case with the authorities but we need an Italian speaker.’
‘I’ll get on to it right away.’
‘No, you will get warm right away, have something hot to eat and drink. Yves is in the kitchen making your breakfast.’
‘He needn’t have bothered.’
‘You’re doing him a favour keeping him busy. We had to give him something to do, as he is worried sick about Phoenix. Zed’s climbing the walls with anxiety for Sky. If you can put their minds at rest that they aren’t in physical danger from that old witch, it would help.’
‘I don’t think they are. They’re hostages so I think she wants them alive and well.’
Xav kicked open the gate and climbed the stairs. The Benedict men were waiting for me in the living room, trying not to pounce on me with their questions. Xav had obviously laid down the law as far as letting me have a chance to warm up. They were an impressive group: all sharing the dark looks of their parents and their father’s height. Yet they were by no means copies of each other as their characters varied widely from the quiet, still waters of Uriel, the second eldest and the academic among them, to the easy going Will, to the combustible Zed who was spoiling right now for a fight. Xav held his own though, despite the enormous pressure he was under to get answers, and I was given time to change. Ten minutes later I was sitting wrapped in a duvet on the sofa, drinking hot chocolate, and telling Victor, the one who worked for the FBI, what had happened at the party.
‘The Italian police will be here in a moment, Crystal.’ Victor flipped over a page in his notebook. ‘It’s difficult making them believe us as the contessa is so well respected. I think they believe we’ve misunderstood the situation and that the women are all on some surprise side trip.’
‘I can understand that.’
‘They’ve already spoken to Signora Carriera downstairs and all she could tell them was that you had a lovely party and all went your separate ways at the end.’
‘Yes, that’s what she saw. The contessa made sure she had plenty of witnesses to a normal evening. I wouldn’t believe it of her either unless I’d been there.’
Yves got out his laptop. ‘There must be something I can do. Can we track her boat? Give me time and I’d probably be able to work out a program how to do that. Maybe I could tap into the military surveillance satellites that were overhead last night?’
Will, the middle son who was built like a rugby player but with a calm, no-nonsense manner, pushed the lid firmly closed. ‘And get caught by the Pentagon? Way to go, little brother. Phoenix won’t want to spend the best years of her life visiting you in jail.’
‘I wouldn’t get caught.’ Yves tugged the lid open again.
‘My gift tells me that trying it would be dangerous for you right now. Admit it, Yves: you can’t think straight when she’s in danger so it’s hardly time to try something that requires you to be at the top of your game.’
‘What if she needs me, Will?’ Yves’s expression gave away the torment he was experiencing.
‘Of course she needs you, you idiot.’ Will cuffed his brother lightly. ‘She needs you to keep your head.’
Zed crumpled up a newspaper in his fist. ‘I can’t stand this. Why don’t we go over to the countess’s house and take it to her doorstep?’
His father put a hand on his youngest son’s shoulder. ‘I know what you mean, Zed, but kicking the door down won’t help if Sky’s not there. She isn’t there, is she, Victor?’
Victor, the most severe of the seven brothers, shoulder-length hair tied back, grey eyes and a mind like a dagger: sharp and incisive. He could manipulate your thoughts but fortunately had chosen to be one of the good guys. ‘No. The police said there was no one in residence but the caretaker. That’s the most suspicious thing: so soon after a big party, the contessa has cleared out, taking her entire staff with her—and, we may safely assume, our girls.’
Xav wriggled into the space behind me on the sofa so I was leaning against him. ‘I think we’re missing something obvious here. We’ve got a weapon the contessa underestimated.’
‘What weapon?’ Zed asked.
‘My soulfinder.’ His announcement raised a brief smile from the others even though they were out of their minds with worry for their own. ‘Crystal has always talked down her gift, but she finds stuff you are connected to.’
‘Things, Xav, not people,’ I corrected.
‘Are you sure about that? I felt that telepathic link you forged right to my brain: it was the strongest I’d ever met, built of our bond. You don’t do telepathy like other people, cupcake.’
‘I don’t?’ I couldn’t know that, as it had been my first attempt.
‘No, you do your own brand. I’m not surprised you find it so hard to do our sort because you build yours of the stuff that binds us together—friendship, fun, and, um, love.’
My cheeks flushed. He’d sensed that, had he? Not the moment I would’ve chosen to make the admission that I was way more in love with him tha
n I had let on.
Uriel took the chair next to me. He had the lightest colouring of the boys: hazel eyes and gold-shot brown hair like the mane of a lion, similar to mine but without the maddening frizz. ‘That’s fascinating, Crystal. I’d not considered there were more ways than one of doing telepathy, but why not? It sounds like you do something similar to me. I can track things back through time by their relationship to people and places—see glimpses of where they’ve been at key moments in their existence. The resonance of the emotion sticks to them. What you do seems to focus on the here and now and sounds much more useful.’
I wasn’t sure about that but he was very sweet to say so.
‘If I’ve got this right, does it mean you can find Diamond as you have an emotional link to her?’ Uriel glanced over to Trace who was pacing by the doorway to the kitchen.
I bit my lip. Could I? I’d never put it to the test. ‘I could if I had a sense of where to start looking, I think. I still get this problem of being knocked out of orbit by the hundreds of links we all have. I can do simple things like find keys as that is straightforward and people usually have an idea where they left them. It’s going to be tough to do it when there are so many options as to where she is.’
Xav squeezed my shoulders. ‘I think you’ll need something a bit stronger than your sister-to-sister bond. What I was thinking is you should follow the soulfinder link from Trace to your sister, or my dad to our mom. You had no problem following ours, did you?’
‘No, it was channelled right at you.’
‘Too right it was.’ He kissed the top of my head.
Yves dumped the laptop and crouched beside me. ‘So you can also track my link to Phoenix?’
Zed leant over the back of the sofa. ‘What about Sky and me?’
With an alarming groan, Mr Benedict sat down heavily in an armchair. ‘Oh lord.’ He had tears in his eyes, so unexpected with his usually stoic face.
Trace hurried to his father’s side. Moving me, Xav half got up, ready to administer any healing that was required. We all shared the worry that the older man had succumbed to the stress of losing his wife. Mr Benedict held up a hand.
‘Please, don’t get up. I’m fine, boys, more than fine.’ He pinched the bridge of his nose to stop the tears in their tracks. ‘You just don’t know how fine.’ He sat back, hands dangling on his knees. ‘Crystal, my darling girl, you are a soulseeker.’
Xav settled back behind me.
‘A what?’ I asked.
‘It’s your gift. It’s so rare I’ve only met one other and that was the man who found my Karla for me. There are only one or two born in a century. Why did no one realize this sooner?’
I shrugged, not doing a good job of hiding my shock behind nonchalance. ‘I didn’t show the right signs, I guess, until forced to by last night.’
‘But you’re from a family of Savants: they should’ve identified your gift so you could help those of us without our soulfinders. Their neglect of your talent is verging on criminal.’
Victor’s jaw dropped—the first time I’d seen the coolest of the Benedict brothers completely astounded. ‘You mean she can find my soulfinder—Will’s and Uriel’s too?’
‘She can. But right now, she can find the girls for us, which is something the contessa is not expecting.’
I was still reeling. To discover my soulfinder and hear I had an awesome gift all in the same morning was a lot to take in. Still, I had the rest of my life to sort this out; right now we had to focus on saving the others.
‘Let’s give it a go. How do I do this?’ I looked up at Xav. ‘Tell me more about what it felt like to be linked with me and how that is different to normal telepathy.’
Xav caressed my cheek. ‘It was incredible. I could feel you zooming right in to my consciousness so smoothly it was a joy to watch. In telepathy, it is normally more like a gentle touch on the shoulder to gain your attention—a kind of mind-to-mind phone call. With you, you arrived like a plane coming in to land. I could see you a few seconds before you touched down—I suppose I could’ve blocked you then but why would I want to? I didn’t have to hold the bridge between us—you did all that.’
I shook my head. ‘I didn’t do anything. I just followed what was already between us.’
‘Even better. So it didn’t hurt?’
‘No, bizarrely it was the most natural thing I’ve ever done.’
‘OK. So you need to see if you can transfer the skill to other minds. Dad, any suggestions?’
‘Mr Benedict, how did the seeker help you?’ I asked.
‘Please, call me Saul. We’re family now in so many ways.’ Saul reached out and took my hand, his rough thumb rubbing across the back. ‘The seeker was a very old man, a revered elder among my people, who had been doing this for years so he had had time to perfect his method. As I was just a callow youth when he helped me, he did not share his secrets. What I sensed was that he was able to get into my mind somehow and then shape and follow my link. You have to remember I hadn’t met Karla then so he took the step of turning me in the right direction, channelling my connection towards her.’
‘OK. Hmm, that sounds advanced stuff. But you all have your links readymade so perhaps I just have to be able to get into your mind somehow and do my zooming in to land thing from there.’
‘I have an idea.’ Zed squeezed himself on to the end of the sofa. Any more Benedicts around me and I’d be well and truly sandwiched. ‘I hold my brothers’ gifts together when we want to work on something important. You are already linked to Xav, right?’
‘Sure she is,’ Xav confirmed.
‘Then, we try adding Crystal to the Benedict family bond. With Vick’s understanding of the mind, Uriel’s experience of tracking through time, Trace’s of tracking through space, Yves’s general genius understanding of everything, Dad and Will being very hot on sensing when we hit dangerous territory, we should be able to help Crystal find her way. A kind of crash course on being a soulseeker.’
‘Without the crash part,’ added Xav.
‘We hope,’ continued Zed, looking happier for the first time since I’d broken the news of the kidnap. ‘Anyway, Xav here is good at tending the odd bump or two so we’ve got that covered.’
I was going to do it, of course I was, but that didn’t stop me being a bit worried. ‘What will they see if I let everyone share my bond with you?’ I asked Xav.
‘We’re very polite—we won’t look,’ Zed promised, hand on heart though with a less than reassuring glint in his eye.
‘Don’t worry, darlin’, I’ll stomp on anyone who trespasses on our stuff, OK?’ Xav kicked his brother off the end of the sofa.
‘I wouldn’t,’ vowed Yves, ‘and Zed will behave.’
‘Of course, he will.’ Saul made this a pronouncement that I could not doubt. ‘There’s too much at stake to fool around and Zed knows that.’
‘How have I become the one everyone grumbles at? That used to be Xav.’
Xav smirked. ‘Yeah, but I’m now partner to a soulseeker—major respect time, guys.’
For all their teasing talk, the Benedicts were already getting down to business. Trace had moved the chairs into a circle so that we could all touch hands. Uriel had drawn the curtains to dim the lights. Will had eased the cat outside so no interruptions of the feline-seeking-attention kind would disturb us.
‘Ready, darlin’?’ Xav linked one hand with Zed and the other with his dad. The fact that I was sitting cradled in his lap was considered connection enough with me.
I gulped. I so didn’t want to let them down. ‘Let’s give this a whirl.’
Allowing so many people to have access to my mind reminded me of walking out in public in a bikini for the first time. I was scared everyone would be looking at all the bits I wanted to keep hidden, but then I realized it wasn’t a big deal for anyone else and I should get on with the job at hand. The sensation was so eerie: I could feel the Benedict boys’ different natures surrounding me, but most clearly I
felt Xav’s presence. He was totally focused on supporting me; it was like being carried in his arms again, but this time in thought. How had I not appreciated that side of him till it was almost too late? I had known he was caring from the start but I’d spent more time arguing with him than letting him show his best side.
Because arguing is fun, he whispered in my mind. Think of all the kiss and make up we get to do afterwards.
Xav, chided his father, focus.
Give the guy a break. He’s only just found her, said Will. I could feel his humour ripple through the shared mind-conversation.
You’re only saying that so she can find your girl first, countered Uriel. I’m going to argue privilege of the eldest.
Boys. That was Saul again.
Just settling her in, said Xav. She doesn’t do this telepathy stuff like us. I’m working out how to protect her from the things whirling about in your heads.
I then realized I was only prevented from feeling my usual nausea by the fact that I was within Xav’s mental space, hearing the conversation through his filters. I didn’t have those in my mind, which was doubtless why I had spent most of my life being knocked about by telepathy.
Yeah, darlin’, that’s me: your force field. He projected an image of the Starship Enterprise with its shields on maximum, ploughing through an asteroid belt.
I just hope the engines can take it when we get going on tracking one of the soulfinders. Who shall we try? I knew all of them were eager to volunteer. I know Diamond best, obviously, but she is the newest. Should we go with your dad and mum?
The link is strong between soulfinders no matter how new, said Saul graciously. As you know your way round your sister’s mind a little, I think it should be her.
Trace? Xav reached out to his eldest brother.
Ready. And I could feel he was: locked and loaded like he would be before any dawn raid in his job.
I was feeling embarrassed about what I was about to do and they must have all sensed it.
Don’t be shy, Crystal. There’s nothing between Diamond and me that she wouldn’t want shared with you for this purpose, Trace reassured me.