“Now,” Demetrius said
with a sigh. “Tell us about those flying people you saw in Neighborlee.”
He had taught all his
students how to tell a story. A spark of interest and new energy came back to
the eyes of both elderly men when she described flying over Neighborlee and
seeing the trio park and get out of the truck, link arms, and rise up in the
air. And the tingle of energy, the visible-but-not-visible shimmer, that were
clear signs of a Gift in use.
"Adults, you think?
So they developed or were already using their Gifts around the time you
did." Beau thumped his fist on the table. "We missed them. How could
we have missed them?"
"We're set in
our ways." Demetrius smiled as he interlaced his fingers over his belly
and slouched in his chair. "Haven't we been using literature to teach our
students how real superheroes should act, how to hide their talents, how to
live double lives? Who's to say that these three didn't discover similar
stories before they found out what they could do, and were clever enough to
apply those principles when their Gifts emerged?"
"You don't think
that book thief you tussled with, fifty-some years ago..." Beau shook his
head. Jane caught the tail end of a glare Demetrius shot him.
"What book
thief?" She followed gut instinct. "You ran into someone in
Neighborlee who might have had a Gift, and you got in trouble, so you left him
there?"
"Too old,"
he muttered, frowning at a spot on the table. A sure sign he was lost in
memories or thinking up some new theory.
"Too old?"
She turned to Demetrius.
"Too hard
nowadays to swoop in with falsified paperwork and whisk young ones like you
away anymore," Demetrius said. His relaxed posture looked rock hard now.
“We have to do
something to protect Neighborlee. Why do the Rivals always go back there? Why
do you think they’re going to focus there and not somewhere else?”
"Neighborlee, my
dear child, is unique in one specific aspect: an unusually high ratio of lost,
unclaimed children found within the town's boundaries. And, if you think about
it, an inexplicable tendency for all of them to end up in the orphanage there,
instead of being snatched up by other child welfare agencies throughout the
county or even the state. Yet, out of every ten such children, nine display not
a smidgen of anything unusual."
"Who says?"
She grinned when both old men cocked an eyebrow at her in almost perfect
synchronization. "If those three I found stayed hidden from you, and from
the Rivals, what if there are others, with much smaller, less noticeable Gifts?
What if Neighborlee stays safe because … I don’t know … they work together, to
protect each other? Only a fraction of us have visible Gifts. The rest could
still have the genetics for something amazing. How many grow up and stay
in Neighborlee, and marry others like them, and maybe produce Gifted kids?"
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