EMILY DRAKAIGNE

For some reason, I never got into tea. But when I blew into town nine months ago, it was that particular blend they served me at Cafè Bleue Rose that got me going. It was a particularly chilly December afternoon, and I needed something steaming to warm me up.

Now, it's not my way to stay in any city or town longer than three months. The first day I arrived, I ended up wandering into this out of the way cul de sac. There was a small garden in front of the entrance. I remember sitting for a moment near an elm tree, all denuded in the winter snow. For all the garden's desolation, the Christmassy lights of the cafè drew me right in.

Seeing my confusion, the girl behind the counter made a few suggestions. It seemed they offered a selection of specially prepared teas. They got them exclusively from a local grower. The scent of the tea was quite like nothing I'd ever smelled before. I ordered a whole pot of it. It was like drinking pure magick, the kind of thing that makes you believe in fairy tales again.

Devotees of absinthe had seen fit to call it The Green Fairy. This tea deserved just as striking a name for it. I couldn't get over just how...alive it was making me feel. I felt as if the contents of this steaming cup had been prepared by Merlinus Ambrosious, himself. More to the point, I recalled Kyric Groschinger's 1865 classic Children's book series, Scraps and Bucky, which I'd read as a boy. I thought of The Fairy with the Sapphire Hair. On the spot I coined a new name for it—The Blue Fairy.

That began the love affair with Cafè Bleue Rose that lasted a whole nine months. I made it a point to always show up at the doors as close to opening as possible, and I would stay most of the day, writing my proposed Magnum Opus, shooting the breeze with the regulars—and enjoying a pot of The Blue Fairy.

I should describe the ambiance here. They've taken elements from the 13^th, the 18^th and the 19^th Centuries—combining Medieval and Piratical and giving it an overlay of Steampunk. This place is one of the only things that keeps me rooted to this stinking city.

Oh, it's not bad as towns go. There's enough to keep me occupied. But I feel I should have been gone six months ago. Three months is usually all it takes for me to realize what I'm looking for simply isn't here. But this time something would just not let me go. It slowly began dawning on me that what I was looking for, might indeed be here—it simply wasn't ready yet.

It was now late September. I hadn't been to the Rose for a few days. So I was mildly surprised to see the line spilling out into the alley. It was a quarter to Ten and they still weren't open? Must have been thirty to forty people just milling around or sitting on the benches. A few had their computers out, or were checking their iPhones, blind to the life unfolding all around them.

I rested my back up against that elm tree, now fully covered in a wealth of leaves. They had built a circular bench around it. I started catching snippets of neighboring conversations. Seems there had been some problem in the cafe they'd been working all night to fix—it had just taken them longer to fix than expected, but it seems they were almost done. Good. I wanted one of those cinnamon sweet cakes I considered to be one of their specialties—make that two—no, three.

I read body language pretty well so I've got a pretty good sense of where people are coming from. It doesn't hurt that I also pay close attention to tones of voice, to the kinds of stresses and inflections people give their words. You'd be amazed how much you people broadcast your intentions to the world at large, all the while thinking you're exercising the height of discretion. You might as well shout it from the rooftops with a bullhorn!

Three folks caught my attention. The first two were a man and woman sitting on a bench on the right side of the door. They were probably the first two to show up. What got me was that they appeared to be going out of their way to give the impression that they didn't know each other. They were good at it. I doubt anyone would have picked up on it but me. But to my eyes, they were trying just a little too hard to be nonchalant. Just a little too hard.

Nothing stood out about the guy. Completely nondescript. The girl, however... There was definitely something about her. Not her appearance, though. She had a pleasant face, wreathed with long black, ringleted hair. Something told me that she was a very thoughtful young woman. Whatever she was doing, she would put a lot of thought into. I wondered if I'd seen her somewhere before.

My eyes slid over to a table where the third person was sitting. Slightly scruffy looking; shabby coat. His back, ramrod straight. I could understand why no one was sitting by him, though there was room. It wasn't his appearance. Something just didn't ring right about the guy. What it was, I had no clear idea. What I did know, was that I was going to keep an eye on him.

The doors opened and Cecile came out and apologized for the delays but everything had been taken care of now they were once again open for business. She's one of the regular servers. And as I passed her on my way in, I got the strange feeling that something was up. Weird. Once again it was nothing I could put my finger on.

Once inside I drank in the ambiance of the place. It looked like you'd walked into some Nineteenth Century boiler room, gauges, valves and gears everywhere. Coats of arms and suits of armor in between the steam engines. Jack Rackham's skull and crossed cutlasses banner hung from the rafters, along with Bart Roberts and Eddie Teach's—all the classics!

I took a deep breath and smiled. I looked around. The first guy and girl had positioned themselves near the back wall. I was in time to see the first guy sit down. His table was right up against the wall. For some reason he reached around behind his back, almost as if he was fiddling with something.

The girl sat down at a table that was pretty close to him, separated from his by only a few feet. They looked a bit cramped. That seemed a bit odd to me, 'cause usually there's plenty of room. She took out her computer and after a few minutes seemed to hit her stride and was typing away merrily, if a little too focused. She had a very tall drink of some kind which she'd only taken a tiny sip of, before setting it about an inch or so away from her laptop.

Against the other wall, the weird guy sat down on a couch under some book shelves loaded to the gills with books. The air about him was palpably tangible. Something was definitely not right about this fellow. “Stone faced,”—that's the word I would have used to describe him. He had that same kind of bearing that cops and security are trained to recognize in someone planning to rob a bank—or do something worse.

But he wasn't doing anything to anybody. He hadn't even said a word to any of the servers, just pointed at what he wanted, paid his money and went to the couch. But the feeling was growing really strong that I should keep a sharp eye on him.

I had my usual Blue Fairy and two of the cinnamon rolls. My lips smiled in satisfaction—but my eyes took in everything around me—but they gravitated toward the weird guy.

He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a large book. He didn't even touch his drink. He just squinted at what was written in his book and moved his lips as if he was reading aloud to himself. More explanation of why no one was sitting near him.

Or...it might have been the fact that that big book of his was a Bible. “A Christer,” I said to myself, shaking my head. Why is it that that Book seems to bring out the worst in some people?—not all of them of course, just enough to damn the good ones by association. It's like that upbeat, catchy song, The Happy Serial Killer:

“Just want you to know it's nothing personal—but Jesus told me to kill you.”

I made sure that where I sat down was only about fifteen feet away from Laughing Boy, with a clear, unobstructed path in case I had to act to take any kind of action—you know what I'm talking about.

For some reason, near the back of the cafe, the place looked smaller. That wasn't just a trick of the light. The tables the guy and the girl were sitting at really were a bit closer together. Wasn't my imagination, though I couldn't think of a reason why it should be that way. Did it have something to do with the problem they'd been working on through the night. No idea. Weird.

And that's when it got decidedly weirder—big time!

The guy by the wall got up and tried to navigate his way between the two tables, inadvertently bumping into the girl. Her coffee, which she'd been about to pick up, went flying.

“Oh, my God!” I think everyone at Bleue Rose heard her.

The guy was apologetic. “That sucks. I'm sorry.” I could see a mounting fury in the woman.

“You just ruined all my stuff!”

“Just get some napkins. It'll be fine.” A little bit too lackadaisical for my taste. He'd done that to me and brushed it off with that tone of voice, I would have broken his face. It looked like she wasn't having any of that either.

“Fine? There's coffee inside of my computer.” I was liking this girl's fire. But I honestly wasn't expecting what happened next—nor was anyone else.

“You know what—just get away from me!” She jumped up suddenly, thrust out her right arm, pointed right at the guy—and he went sliding up the wall about ten feet and stayed there. Some unseen force was holding him in place!

There were random cries and even a few screams. Sudden panic. You could feel the collective heartbeat of the room, but nobody moved. They were paralyzed, maybe even petrified with fear. Just ordinary people who'd just seen something they'd been told all their lives was impossible—people who'd just realized that all their lives they'd been lied to.

It looked like the same was true for the girl. I think she was just as surprised as anyone else. Her hand struck down as if it was an ax she was wielding. The guy fell to the floor and remained there, looking catatonic.

She slowly turned around, staring at her hands. Had she really just done that? Defied the laws of nature like that? I could relate to her confusion.

Her fingers flexed. She turned her palms up and down and up again. And then as if suddenly making a decision, and to see if she could really do this, she pointed them at the tables around her and six of them went sliding across the floor! It was as if she had surrounded herself by a bubble of force that had moved everything out of her way.

And then she screamed. Her hands were thrust behind her neck, under her hair. The entire place went out of control. Paintings fell off their hooks. The book shelves suddenly vomited out their books.

I'd been so taken with watching the girl and what she could do that I'd completely forgotten about the weirdo. Out of the corner of my eye I saw him jump up. A wicked looking butcher knife, that must have been at least ten inches was clenched in his fist. “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live!” he cried out and leapt for the girl.

I was quicker. I threw myself at him and he crashed to the ground. Before he could recover himself I fastened my palm over his face—I gave my fire free reign and burned out his neural circuits. Then it was time to deal with the girl.

“You stupid idiot! Why'd you let it out what you can do? Everybody in this damn place saw you using your powers! They'll kill someone like you. You can't fight the whole damn city. What the hell were you thinking?” I was mad. Letting the world know what we're really capable of endangers every one of our kind—and there are precious few of us as it is. I'd spent years wandering from city to city trying to find even one more—and I wasn't going to let a novice like her get killed by a goddamn Christer fanatic!

She looked really confused. She didn't know. This was the first time she'd actually used her powers. She didn't knew she had 'em. I didn't like being hard on her like that, but she had to realize the stakes that were being played here.

“Now I've got to clean up the mess you made.” I turned around and looked at everybody else in The Bleue Rose.

The doors slammed shut. No one was going to go in or out.

The curtains and blinds smashed down. No one was going to see what went on in here.

I stretched out my arms and a wave of psychic fire poured out of me. There was no time for anybody to even scream. Their eyes went blank and they crashed to the floor. Some of the servers were almost friends. I hated doing this, but this was a matter of self-preservation.

The girl was aghast with horror. “You...killed them.”

“Lobotomized. Wouldn't have had to do that if you hadn't revealed your powers...”

She looked at me as if I was insane. “I don't have any powers. You don't understand. This whole thing. It was a prank.”

“A...prank?”

“Yes. For that movie about that telekinetic girl. It was all fake. I can't do anything like that. Bob, over there—he had a harness attached to him. We pulled him up by weights on the other side of the false wall.”

That's why the room had looked smaller. That's what he was fiddling with behind his back.

“The tables were on rollers, radio controlled—and the pictures and books? We had a wire jerking them out of the way.”

“And was the guy with the knife part of your prank.”

“N-no.”

“Caught you by surprise, didn't he. He would have killed you if I hadn't been there. I thought you were one of my kind. But you're just like the rest of them. And you know what that means...”

I thrust up my hand. Too bad. I had hopes. But now she was just one more victim. I let out the fire.

She hid her face behind her hand but the other was thrust out, as if to ward off a blow. Psychic fire ripped out of me, tore at her fragile mind.

And nothing happened.

Realization slowly dawned. She had been here, but until that moment when I put her mind and soul in danger—she had not been ready.

“You do have powers.”

She looked at her hands. “No—that's not possible. I've never been able to do anything like that. That was just fake.”

“It was all latent with you. You didn't know. Like everyone else you've been trained to think it's impossible—but playing that role made you believe—at least subconsciously—that it was possible. And when your life, your sanity, was in danger you woke up. We have to get out of here. You'll need training, but I can supply that.”

“I can't go with you—not after what you did to all those people. You would have killed me, if I hadn't—I don't even know what it was I did.”

“You defended yourself. Your powers awoke. Once they wake up, they don't go back to sleep. They grow. If you don't learn how to hide and to control them they'll make you a target. Five months from now, tops—they'll hunt you down.

“You did it as a prank—to advertise a movie. But people were scared. They thought it was real. One of them thought it was so real he tried to kill you. You wouldn't have been able to save yourself in time.

“What do you think the human race will do when they find out what you're really capable of?”

“Do...do experiments on me. Find out what makes me tick.”

“No. It'll be safer to just kill you. I found that out the hard way. We're too dangerous to live.

“Like I said, you'll need training and I can supply that. But you have to understand—you are not of the human species anymore. The Cro-Magnon cannot go back to being a Neanderthal. We are a new species—and this is a fight for our survival. A fight to the Death.

“Believe me—there's no other choice. There's no other choice.”

It was finally hitting her. There was no other choice. She nodded her head.

“I'll go get my coat. I'm Emily, by the way—Emily Drakaigne.”

“Wulfgar Hrafngaerd.”

“What's our next move?”

“We find others of our kind. They're out there. And I've got a feeling it won't take another thirty years to find them, like it did you.”