“You can answer your phone if you want,” Kaleigh said. “I don’t care.”
“I’ll take care of it later.” Fia shifted on the bench, refocusing. “I’m interviewing all the sept members in the town, trying to create a database of humans we come directly in contact with.”
“Must make things interesting. Your partner in the official investigation being a human.”
Fia stared at the young girl for a moment. Kaleigh was awfully perceptive for a teen who had not yet been able to develop her mental telepathy. Curious, Fia opened her mind and shot a thought in Kaleigh’s direction, something that would surely get a fourteen-year-old’s attention if she was listening.
You’ve got something stuck between your front teeth.
The teen lifted her cup and took another sip of coffee, not looking up. “What’s his name?” she asked. “Special Agent Duncan, right? Glen. The other girls think he’s hot. I think he’s old.”
No reaction to the telepathy. So maybe Fia was wrong. Some of the other sept members Kaleigh’s age had already begun to cultivate their extrasensory abilities, but Kaleigh’s development, or lack thereof, wasn’t really unusual. Like humans going through puberty, it hit them at different ages. Over her last couple of life cycles Kaleigh had been a late bloomer.
“I guess Glen is kind of hot,” Fia said, thinking she might try a different tack. Maybe Kaleigh would be more open to her if she just saw Fia as “one of the girls.” “He’s got a fine ass. I’ll give him that.”
“You sleeping with him?” Kaleigh looked up at her over the rim of her mug.
Fia frowned.
“Just asking. I mean, you could if you wanted to. You’re freer to sleep with who you please than most of us are.”
“He’s a human, Kaleigh.”
“So was Ian.” Again, the look over the edge of the coffee cup.
“Ah, so you remember Ian now?”
“Not much.” The same shrug. “Mostly just images. Gair says he’ll fill in the gaps when I’m ready. But he says I’m not ready yet.” Her last words were all teenager, full of sarcasm and resentment.
“So back to the reason why I wanted to talk to all three—”
“I told you.” Kaleigh interrupted her resentfully as she sat back to allow the waitress to set down a plate with a toasted English muffin on it. “They had stuff.”
“I need you to tell me who your friends are at school.” Fia pulled a legal pad and pen from her laptop bag. Mary Ann left a plate beside her with a turkey club, chips, and a pickle. “Tell me about your human friends at school.”
Kaleigh rolled her eyes, sitting back on the booth’s bench. “I don’t have friends. You know what weirdos everyone thinks we are? There’s just Maria and Katy.”
“Okay, then. Tell me the names of your human acquaintances. I’ve already got Derek Neuman’s name. And let’s see—the two friends I’ve met are John Wright and…Michael Poors.” Kaleigh remained silent so Fia went on. “I ran the boys’ records. They’ve all been arrested. Once for a B and E. That’s breaking and entering. And John Wright has a DWI on his record.”
“So? The football team was messing with the soccer team so the soccer team got them back. It’s not like they robbed banks or something.”
Fia flipped the page back on the legal pad. Honestly, the charges didn’t really mean anything in FBI terms. The B and E had involved stealing a chair from another student’s house, some schoolkid prank, as Kaleigh had suggested. And the DWI was, unfortunately, a frequent event in a county with little for teens to do and no public transportation.
“Another interesting tidbit,” Fia continued, “is that your boyfriend apparently lied to you. He did just have his birthday, but he’s eighteen. Not sixteen. And according to the high school admin office, he dropped out last year. Only the other two boys are students. Which means you were telling a little fib, as well. You don’t go to school with Derek.”
Fia glanced up at Kaleigh. To her surprise, the teen’s eyes were full of tears.
“We broke up,” she blurted out. “He’s not my boyfriend anymore.”
Fia waited.
“I found out he was screwing this slut in my biology class and when I asked him about it, he said if I wasn’t giving him any, he had a right to get it somewhere else.” She sniffed and wiped her nose with the sleeve of her sweatshirt. “So I broke up with him. Last week.”
Fia’s heart went out to Kaleigh. Her first broken heart. At least the first she knew of. “I’m sorry,” she said quietly.
“Are you?” Kaleigh looked up through teary eyes, then down again, into her coffee cup. “You wanted me to break up with him anyway. Everyone wanted us to break up. Now you have your way. I’m not seeing him anymore. Never. He’s a jerk and an ass. Katy and Maria broke up with John and Mike, too. They were all jerks.”
Fia wanted to smile, albeit sadly. “This probably isn’t terribly comforting right now, but in a couple of years, Rob will—”
“Rob is like old and toothless.”
This time Fia smiled. “I know. He is now. And I know you can’t remember, but he won’t be that way much longer. And after he dies, after he’s reborn—”
“Are we done here?” Kaleigh pushed her untouched muffin toward the middle of the table. “Because if we are, I have geometry homework and a stupid project on Bosnia to do for social studies.”
Fia looked down at her notes. “When did you say you broke up with Derek?”
“Last week.” She stared at the table. “Like…more than a week ago.”
“And before you broke up with him, I don’t suppose you ever had any conversations…about the sept.”
“You think I’m stupid?” Kaleigh snapped, rubbing her eyes with her sleeve.
“No, I don’t think you’re stupid. Just young.” Fia inhaled. Exhaled. “So you don’t care if I go by his house? Talk to him? Maybe his dad?”
“Could you arrest him, instead?” Kaleigh
