Animator’s Palate was cleverly divided into a dozen smaller areas almost like rooms, each with several large hi-def televisions mounted on the walls. The televisions were the only source of light: they were like windows into the sea around the ship; blue bubbling water with schools of animated fish and the giant sea turtle “dude,” Crush, swimming about.
The three sat at a table relatively near the side door.
Finn and Amanda said with their eyes what both of them had wanted to hear: they’d missed each other. Finn felt like he could breathe again. He drank in a deep lungful of air and felt stress dissipate. Amanda didn’t show anything more—just that one look, but she couldn’t take it back!
“This is Mattie Weaver,” Amanda’s hologram said.
“You know her?” Finn asked.
“We’re friends from Baltimore,” Mattie said, extending her hand to Finn. They shook.
“A Fairlie?”
Mattie nodded.
“Jess and I asked her to be on the ship. To help you guys out.”
Finn looked at the two girls. “You know each other,” he repeated, feeling stupid for having done so.
“When Jess and I realized we could only be here as…this…” Amanda said, indicating her hologram, “we thought—”
“How is she?” Finn interrupted.
“Is something wrong?” Mattie asked Amanda.
“An accident,” Amanda said. “We haven’t much time; let’s keep to the point.”
“Which is?” Finn found himself pulled to the action in the television screens. The peacefulness there belied his internal tension.
“I’ve been…watching you all,” Mattie said. “As Jess and Mandy asked. Trying to help where I could.”
“The journal. And the note.” He considered the various times she’d been spotted. “But how could you possibly… Do you realize we thought you might be an Overtaker?”
“We asked her to stay in the background,” said Amanda. “We didn’t want any chance of her being associated with you, with the Keepers. She’s of more value to us all that way. The only reason we’re even meeting tonight is because…because…” Amanda’s hologram seemed about to cry; Finn wasn’t sure that was even possible.
“How much do you know about Baltimore?” the girl asked him.
“The Fairlies? A little, I guess. Not much.”
“How much of what you do know do you believe?”
“Let me put it this way: a couple of years ago I would have thought Amanda and Jess were psycho. Seriously damaged goods. But, you might say circumstances have changed. For me, I’m talking about. For the other DHI models. Meaning that there isn’t much that can shock me anymore, not that I would dare try to explain any of this to a normal friend”—he thought of Dillard Cole—“for fear someone would have me locked up. But the Fairlies? Honestly? You guys are way easier to believe than most of the stuff we see. Some kids born with weird powers or whatever you want to call it? Seriously? I mean, I had to read about the Salem witch trials in middle school. Am I supposed to freak if some girl can move a book across a desk without touching it? I don’t think so!”
“Do you know the word empathy?” Mattie asked.
“Like sympathy. Sure.”
“Not exactly.”
“Feeling bad for someone.”
“Actually, it’s feeling the same. An ability to share a feeling with someone. Like something you have in common.”
“I guess I don’t get what you’re saying.”
“By now, half the U.S. military is probably looking for me,” Mattie said, “because they don’t get it either. But they’d like to understand it better.”
“You’re empathetic?” He heard her masking her concern with humor, and was reminded once again about all the risks everyone was taking.
“I am.”
“I’m sorry…I get the empathy part…but what’s it mean, exactly?”
“You know fortune tellers?”
“They’re all crazy ladies.”
“Most. Nearly all. But not absolutely all.”
Crush, the turtle, stopped and stared at them through the fish tank of flat panel displays. Something about that bothered Finn. Come on. He couldn’t believe he was getting bad feelings about an animated turtle. He was really tired. Maybeck’s illness and the fight with the Evil Queen had exhausted him.
“What’s one of the first things a fortune teller does with a client?” Mattie sat forward, her eyes fixed intensely on Finn.
“How would I know? I’ve never been.”