But, apparently, she had told a couple of them where she was going, and with whom. And when Landry came back looking for her, he had found the information waiting. Seth had been careless. And Palmer Landry had been lucky. No one had noticed him watching Larkin House, and the person he had asked to point out Seth Dana had been an unsuspecting mute.
“You mean to tell me you’ve gotten rid of Barbara already?” Landry demanded.
“I never had her,” said Seth. “Never wanted her, for that matter, nor she me. I just helped her when she happened to need help.”
“Sure. You’re Santa Claus. Just tell me where she’s living.”
“I’ll take you there if you want.” He had intended to draft Bartholomew into some seconding anyway. But later. Bartholomew House was right across the street.
“Who’s she living with?” asked Landry.
“Her family,” said Seth. “She found a house she fit into quicker than most of us do.”
“House?” The man frowned. “Whorehouse?”
“Hell no!” Seth looked around at him. Landry had a justifiably low opinion of his wife. Latents were hard people to live with. But Seth had not realized that it was that low. “We live communally here, several of us to a house. So when we say house, we don’t just mean the building. We mean household. We mean people.”
“What the hell are you? Some kind of religious nuts or something?”
Seth was about to answer him when Barbara Landry herself came out the back door of Larkin House.
The sound of her footsteps caused Landry to turn. He saw her, shouted her name once, then was out of the car, running toward her. Barbara Landry was weak, as Patternists went, and she was inexperienced at handling her new abilities. That last made her a possible danger to her husband. Seth reached out to warn her, but he was a second too late.
Recoiling in surprise from Landry’s sudden rush, Barbara instinctively used her new defenses. Instead of controlling him gently, she stopped him solidly, suddenly, as though she had hit him, as though she had clubbed him down. He fell, unconscious, without ever having touched her.
“My God,” Barbara whispered horrified. “I didn’t mean to hurt him. I had come to see you. Then I sensed him out here threatening you. I came to ask you not to hurt him.”
“He’ll be all right,” said Seth. “No thanks to you. You’re going to kill somebody if you don’t learn to be careful.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
He lectured her as though she were still his charge. “I’ve warned you. No matter how weak you are as a Patternist, you’re a powerhouse as far as any ordinary mute is concerned.”
She nodded solemnly. “I’ll be careful. But, Seth, would you help him for me? I mean, after he comes to. He probably needs money, and I know he needs even more to forget about me. I don’t even like to think about what I put him through when we were together.”
“He wants to be with you.”
“No!”
“He could be programmed to live very comfortably here, Barbara. Matter of fact, he’d be happier here than anywhere else.”
“I don’t want him enslaved! I’ve done enough to him. Seth, please. Help him and let him go.”
Seth smiled finally. “All right, honey, in exchange for a promise from you.”
“What?”
“That you’ll go back to Bart and make him give you a few more lessons on how to handle mutes without killing them.”
She nodded, embarrassed.
“Oh, yeah, and tell him he’s going to second a couple of people for me. I’m bringing the first one over tomorrow.”
“Oh, but?”
“No excuses. Save me the trouble of arguing with him and I’ll do a good job for you here.” He gestured toward Landry.
She smiled at him. “You would anyway. But, all right. I’ll do your dirty work for you.” She turned and went down the driveway. She was a rare Patternist. Like Seth, she cared what happened to the people she had left behind in the mute world. Seth had always liked her. Now he would see that her husband got as good a start as Clay had gotten.
RACHEL
Rachel’s newest assignment had bothered her from the moment Mary gave it to her. It was still bothering her now, as she stood at the entrance of a long communal driveway that led back into a court of dilapidated, dirty, green stucco houses. The houses were small?no more than three or four rooms each. The yards were littered with beer cans and wine bottles, and they were overgrown with weeds and shrubs gone wild. The look of the place seemed to confirm Rachel’s suspicions.
Farther up the driveway, a group of teenage boys tossed around a pair of dice and a surprisingly large amount of money. Intent on their game, they paid no attention to Rachel. She let her perception sweep over them and found three that she would have to come back for. Three latents who lived in the court, but who were not as bad off as those Mary had sent Rachel after.
This was a pocket of Emma’s descendants hidden away in a corner of Los Angeles, suffering without knowing why, without knowing who they were. The women in three of the houses were sisters. They hated each other, usually spoke only to trade obscenities. Yet they continued to live near each other, satisfying a need they did not realize they had. One of them still had a husband. All three had children. Rachel had come for the youngest sister?the one whose husband was still with her. This one lived in the third house back, with her husband and their
