I barked into the phone, pushing the stray murmurings aside. “Go on.”
Simon paused for just long enough that I knew he was trying to handle me delicately. “Cas, speaking of people’s psychological variances, you know what you’re dealing with equates to a chronic mental health condition. If you need to—”
“Not now,” I said. I needed to finish this conversation and get back to the car. “Keep going. About Oscar. He doesn’t have powers?”
“No,” Simon answered. “He just has—I don’t know how to describe it. A very forgettable face.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.” Either Oscar was manipulating us or someone else was; this couldn’t be something hard-coded.
“Very forgettable,” Simon said.
Or, wait. What if it was exactly something hard-coded … “Supernaturally forgettable?”
His tone went neutral and careful. “I’m not sure I know what that word means.”
“Cut the crap.”
“I think it’s more what you would call ‘low probability,’” he said. “If I’m using such a phrase correctly.”
I got what he meant, and it made me mad that I got it. Simon didn’t get to use the terms I would use.
“You mean, it’s something that would never happen ever but is still technically possible,” I said. “It’s possible he was born this way.”
“Possible, but—I’m not sure if he would have survived this long if he had been. Although there’s also the chance his face changed enough in puberty that he was able to interact more normally as a child, but still, it’s so … specific.”
I had the spooky feeling that even if humans multiplied wildly until the universe ended, Simon was saying there was basically a zero chance someone like Oscar would’ve ever been born.
“So you’re saying someone made him into this,” I said.
“I think it’s likely. If so, he probably had some psychological issues before that, but they’re many times worse now.”
Which confirmed I’d made the right decision in not being willing to use Rio to help with the questioning. Though when I went back and asked myself if I would willingly sacrifice Arthur to those principles—
“I promise I’ll keep at it,” said Simon quickly. Even through a phone conversation he’d probably caught wind of my thoughts, the fucker. He cleared his throat. “Do you want to talk about the creature?”
“Only if you can tell me how to fight something like that.”
“I … without knowing how it triggers such an extreme panic response, I’m not sure. But if you find out more, I may be able to help.”
Fat lot of good you are, I wanted to say, but it was so demonstrably untrue even I would have felt stupid. The man from the lawn oozed through my memory again—and then, startlingly, the image of him sitting on a low cement wall, drink in hand and laughing. And I was laughing with him, looking up to him with the warmth of a pupil for her favorite mentor or teacher …
“There’s some connection,” I said hoarsely to Simon. “The doctor at the clinic, Eva Teplova, and—other things. I can feel a—there’s some connection, to Pithica, or—” I coughed, biting down on telling him more. Too risky that he would hear me start to slide—he could get it from Rio later. I needed to keep showcasing my sane side around Simon, or he’d never tell me anything. “And now this Oscar guy is tangled up in it all too. So, if this is Pithica, they’re, what? Putting a spell on him to make it so—”
“It doesn’t work like that,” Simon said. “It’s not magic. If this is … one of us … it’s someone from Halberd, not Pithica.”
Halberd …
We are the halberd against the gathering storm, chanted a long-dead memory. I tried to slap it away. What did that even mean? It was gibberish. I needed to focus—
The night around me fuzzed in and out for a moment, like reality was a badly tuned television set.
“Cas.” Simon’s voice cut through the static in my brain. “Cas, are you with me?”
“Yeah.” Protectors of the species. No—its new definition. I shook my head hard. “What’s the, um. What’s the difference?”
“Cas, I don’t know if I should—”
“Tell me what you can,” I said. “Please.”
Simon was silent for a moment. Whether he was startled by hearing sincerity instead of rudeness from me for once, or he could just tell how desperately I needed the information … I forced myself to let my words hang in the air and to allow him to think.
“I’ll try to limit it to information that won’t, um, be a trigger for your memories,” he said