Last to Rise(29)

They may have made me a little sharp though – that or the lack of sleep; or Perak’s plan, which was bound to involve me hurting myself; or perhaps it was just my natural charm. “What the fuck are you so happy about?”



Even that couldn’t dim his stupid smile. He cocked his head, made to twist a finger in its socket – all the better to peer inside my head – but my glare stopped him. In the end he grinned his monkey grin, shrugged and said, “And who twisted your nipples today?”



He was such a dick, but my peeved anger evaporated. “No one, that’s the problem.”



Another boom-shudder rattled the door, but couldn’t rattle his laugh. I’d never really heard him laugh before, not like that, like he was happy, and the last of my resentment vanished.



While we were waiting for Jake to come back, or at least for Pasha to be able to hear what she’d seen, Perak had asked us to concentrate our efforts on Allit. Being able to see the future had to be an advantage somehow, but he needed to learn to focus, to decipher what he was seeing, and not drive himself doolally while he was doing it.



So Pasha and I spent a less heavy-minded hour watching Allit go through his paces, twisting a finger then lifting small objects about an inch off my desk, floating them across and getting them to land gently on the blotter among my doodles. Doodles that, when Allit saw them, made him blush redder than brick.



After those few small exercises, we started on what we needed.



“OK,” Pasha said. “We’re going to start small, and I’m going to watch where you are, where you go in your head, all right? We know where Jake is, sort of. See if you can find her. If a focus helps. If not, just show me what you can see.”



Allit nodded, his face screwed up, half scared shitless, half determined to prove he could do this, and twisted a finger. It came out of its socket with a pop that seemed very loud, and his face lost everything but a grimace of pain.



I felt left out, to be honest, with Allit concentrating on what his head was showing him and Pasha keeping an eye on that. Nothing really happened for a minute or two except Allit went red in the face and Pasha put an encouraging hand on his shoulder.



A sudden gasp – not from Allit, which I was expecting, but from Pasha. His dark face drained of all colour until he looked as grey as the mush we’d had for breakfast and he stepped back from Allit.



“What?”



“I – wait, wait a minute.”



Pasha took a few deep breaths and shut his eyes against what he’d seen. Allit came back from wherever he’d been, looking embarrassed and scared. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to, I’m sorry.”



“It’s all right,” Pasha managed. “But I’m not sure what it means. Not what I think, I hope.”



“Is someone going to tell me?” I asked. “Or do I have to guess? Allit, what did you see?”



Allit tried to pull himself together, but he looked pretty shaky. “I saw Jake.”



“Well then, that’s good? Right?” I looked at Pasha’s stricken face. “Right?”



“Dench had her,” Pasha said in a whisper, but some colour had come back to his face. “He caught her and he was about to – But he hasn’t caught her. I can hear her right now, I shot off a question and she’s telling me not to be so stupid, of course she’s fine, she’s having a damned ball. I think she’s even hoping to run into a Storad or two, just for practice.”



My heart had almost stopped at the first part, and I could only imagine what that had done to Pasha. The relief at the second part made me giddy and the third made my heart falter again.



Pasha sat down and ran a relieved hand through his mess of hair. “Allit saw her in a death match – you remember the one you watched, against the Storad? Just a glimpse of her there, like he did the first time. That was his focus. And he saw her in the tunnel too, that one was clear as anything, in the tunnel like I know she is in right now with half of Perak’s guard with her. Safe. Well, safe for now anyway. Only Allit saw her with Dench too, in the Storad camp, I’m sure of it. He was going to —” Pasha shook his head as though trying to shake out the memory. “Never mind, she’s not there. It was, I don’t know, sort of fuzzy compared to the others.”



“Like it was less real,” Allit said. “And behind it I could see something else – see Jake somewhere else at the same time. It was like a possibility, in my head.” He struggled to say more, but in the end gave up – it was all too new for him. I remembered how that felt.