my vision much harder than Chris’s and it seemed to weigh more, as well. They were both easily the most powerful artifacts I’d ever handled.
I tried my Sight again and was able to hold the view a bit longer before I had to look away.
“It’s humming away. Actually, they both are, but Toni’s feels different.”
“The purple man comes out of it,” Toni said from her nest between Caeco and me.
“The purple man?” I asked her.
“Yeah, he looks like a purple Mr. Chris and he protects me. Pushed the agent men right out the door, then he sliced all their stuff in half.”
“Really? Government agent men?” I asked, lifting my eyes to Gina and Roy for confirmation.
“Secret Service. Said they had orders to place her in protective custody. Damnedest thing I ever saw. They just got pressed right out the door, fell down the front steps, and piled up in the street. They came back a few minutes later in force, only the necklace chopped all their gear—guns, radios, vests, battering rams, even their SWAT truck—right in half,” Roy said.
“Selective response to a threat. I don’t know you all that well, Chris, but that sounds a little like something you might do,” I said.
He nodded. “If I could figure out how to do it. It’s within the realm of my abilities, but I’d have to experiment quite a bit to do all that in one aura blast,” he said.
“So not only does it copy your style, it does it in a very sophisticated manner,” I mused. “I don’t see anything wrong with it. It weighs a bit more than your necklace, Chris, but that’s not surprising, as it’s imbued with a portion of your aura and a good deal of power that Aunt Ash put into it. I think it’s okay.” Then I handed Chris’s back to him and carefully draped the other over Toni’s neck.
The three adults looked at me, then each other, before they all cautiously relaxed.
“Okay, great,” Chris said, standing up. The rest of us followed suit, leaving Toni on the couch with a slight frown.
“Thank you for checking it out, Declan,” Gina said, looking relieved. Roy nodded and shook my hand again.
“No problem. In fact, since I’ll be living just upstairs, I’ll take a glance at it from time to time and make sure it’s up to specs,” I volunteered.
“That would be great,” Chris said. Gina nodded before glancing at the clock on the cable box by the television.
“Oh, it’s bedtime for one of us,” she said, looking at Toni.
“Only if ‘Sos comes with me,” the girl in question said, crossing her arms.
At the sound of his name, the big wolf came up off the ground and shoved between Caeco and me to snuffle her into a giggling fit.
“That’s fine, dear. Why don’t you say goodnight to Declan and Caeco and Mr. Chris,” Gina said.
We accepted hugs and cheek kisses, then Chris plucked her off the ground and put her on Awasos’s back and she rode the beast down the hall, presumably toward her bedroom.
Roy thanked us both, then followed his steed-riding daughter out of the room.
“Thank you, and I want you both to promise to come to me with any problems or concerns as this whole academy thing unfolds, okay?” Gina asked. We agreed and after another round of hugs, she went to oversee the bedtime preparations.
Chris waited till she was out of the room and down the hall before turning back to us.
“Listen, a couple of other things,” he said. “First, I meant what I said about you kids not being obligated to come work with Tanya and me or the feds. But I’ll tell you right now, you two already have a standing offer from us for almost any kind of job you could want. I’m really, really serious about that. We could use you both on the team. And even if you don’t want to sign up, I already have a paying mini-job for you. It’s a small assignment that you can do while going to school.”
I looked at Caeco, then back to him. “Chris, you’re already paying our way through college. What do you need? We’ll handle it.”
He looked at us both a little intensely, then nodded. Turning to a travel bag on the floor, he pulled out a silvery-looking collar-like thing.
“This isn’t an exact copy, but I’m told it operates the same way. See, when we got grabbed by Oracle, they fitted collars like these on us, only they were all