I’m sorry to cut this meeting short, but I have pressing matters to deal with. I’ll see you soon.
He disappears before I have a chance to ask any more questions. I turn to Emily. I don’t understand this girl at all. The Puppetmaster befriended her pal Amantle under false pretences and gave her a set of bewitched necklaces that placed her clique, including Emily, under his control. He sent them gallivanting around town, pushing them until their bodies almost broke. It took a lot for me and Rakwena to break the spell, and now Emily is right back in the Puppetmaster’s clutches. Her family thinks she’s dead. There’s a tombstone with her name on it and she’s acting like she doesn’t have a care in the world.
“Stop looking at me like you’re going to cry,” she says wryly. “I chose to come back.”
“Why?” My voice echoes in the empty building.
Emily starts down the corridor and I hurry after her. “Because he’s right.”
“About what?”
“Everything.” She moves quickly, almost running down the stairs. When she reaches the bottom she turns to face me suddenly and I almost walk right into her. She takes a step backwards and grabs my arm to steady me. Her grip is stronger than Rakwena’s. I pull my arm away.
“Emily, the man is a lunatic! He bewitched you and your friends and made you do all his dirty work. You were guinea pigs, a trial run for his zombie army.”
“Zombie army.” She shakes her head, amused. Amused! “John has been around for ages – do you really think he hasn’t tried to build an army before? He wasn’t testing his methods. He was testing you.”
“Me?”
She winces. She’s said too much. “Everything he’s doing is for the greater good. You’ll see.” She waves a hand towards the gate.
“I think we need to talk about–”
“Next time,” she interjects, then glances up.
I follow her gaze and suck in my breath. The walls are staring to fade. The illusion is coming apart.
“He doesn’t like to wait.” Emily starts up the stairs again. Where is she going?
“Wait! What about Rakwena?”
She stops. “It took him a while to adjust but he’s fine.” She looks down at me. “Don’t worry. John would never let anything happen to either of you. You’re far too important.”
“Emily–”
She flickers, running up the fading staircase, and then passes out of sight. I hurry through the doorway. When I turn to look over my shoulder, the house is gone. The gate opens just enough for me to squeeze through, then closes behind me. I can feel the Puppetmaster’s energy rise into the air and depart from the premises.
“Well?” asks my grandfather, when I climb into the car. “How was it?”
My head is swirling with jumbled thoughts as I tell him what happened. “What does that mean?” I ask, when I reach the end of my report. “The greater good? How can building an army of unwilling, brainwashed ungifted be for the greater good?”
He shakes his head. “You see what he is doing, don’t you? He is trying to win you over.”
“He’ll never win me over.”
Ntatemogolo starts the car in silence. He doesn’t even nod his agreement.
I glare at him, indignant. “He’ll never win me over!”
He glances at me. “Am I the one you are trying to convince, or yourself?”
I have a retort on the tip of my tongue, but it seems wiser to keep quiet. The meeting threw me off. My enemy thinks he’s my friend. He is cruel and calculating, probably guilty of kidnapping a gifted, and yet one of his victims returned to him of her own free will. He’s done terrible things, but as I stood beside him in that room he was almost a normal person. He was polite, even gentle, and it wasn’t an act. What does that mean?
Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe it was an act and Emily is suffering from a supernatural version of Stockholm syndrome; I’m not sure. I’m not sure of anything any more.
The University of Botswana, fondly (sometimes disdainfully) referred to as UB, is quiet on Saturday morning. Dad’s office, hidden on the top floor of the Biology building, is cluttered in that way unique to academics. Papers upon papers, stacks of books he hardly uses, and copious handwritten notes that seem obsolete next to his computer.
I hitched a ride to UB with Dad so I could meet my friends at the nearby Riverwalk Mall, and decided to stop at his office to check my email. There’s nothing from Rakwena. It’s only been a few days and I know there’s a good chance he hasn’t checked his mail since he left Botswana. The cell said no outside contact; I’m sure they take that seriously. But he was inducted last month – he’s officially part of the clan now, and there’s no need to keep him cut off from the influence of his telepath girlfriend.
I’m not even sure I’m still his girlfriend. Did we break up? No one said the words “it’s over”, but our actions implied it. Maybe we are over, but that’s no reason not to contact me, if only to make sure I haven’t been hacked to death in my sleep. Doesn’t Rakwena care about me any more? Is he too happy in his new life to ruin it by reaching back into the past, or is something else going on that I don’t know about?
Maybe it’s better he doesn’t contact me. Rakwena’s cell brothers were open about the role flirting with girls plays in topping up their energy levels. What if he’s romancing his way across South Africa, dropping kisses left and right?
“Are you all right, love?”
Dad’s looking at me, an anxious half-smile on his lips. His hair’s been cut and stands up at the front like he’s a member of a pop band. The circles under his eyes have faded, but he hasn’t lost the nervous energy he’s been giving off since he learned the truth.
“I’m fine. Just thinking.” I sign out of my email account.
“No news from across the border?” Sometimes Dad can be surprisingly perceptive.
“Nope. But he’s probably busy.”
“What with assimilating into a community of magical beings and all.”
I smile. “Right.” Dad has left two browser tabs open to international news, and one of them catches my eye. “I thought this cell phone issue was just a local problem.”
“Hmm?” He looks at the screen. “No, it’s happening in a lot of places. Not just phones – internet, electricity, radio. Even the local airport is having trouble with air traffic control.” He walks over to the desk and leans forward. “See? Scientists say–”
“The energy surges are in ten locations around the world, including here.” There it is again, that funny nagging sensation, like knowledge buried deep in my gut trying to find its way out. “What could be causing
