The boys dug through the closet and found a set of clothes that fit fairly well. They washed up and opened the door of their room to go to dinner. However they quickly remembered that they did not know where the dining room was.
They stepped out into the hallway from which they came and could hear a few voices off in a certain direction and decided to follow the source. The two boys walked slowly as they both took in their new surroundings and tried to follow the noises. They passed what looked like a classroom, a personal study, a fitness room filled with unorthodox objects, and a kitchen before they came to what had to be the dining room.
“Did you guys get settled in?” greeted Mary warmly as the boys stood at the doorway of the dining room.
“Yeah, our bedroom is awesome,” Peter answered enthusiastically.
“Candles work alright?” HP asked sarcastically.
Mary turned to HP with a confused look. He returned a look that the boys had been acting mischievously. Mary turned back to the boys and squinted her eyes as if she were in deep thought, “Did you guys bond?”
The two just nodded in sync.
“Great. It’s a good thing you two work well together already.”
“Boys please be seated and we’ll get started with dinner,” requested Fr. Maven.
The boys took seats in two open chairs next to one another. Peter looked across the table and saw his sister Margaret in a high chair in between Mary and Gwen. Mary was happily spoon feeding Margaret and upon his entry gave Peter an expression of ‘how great is this?’ in reference to her she-can’t-freeze-it-if-she-can’t-touch-it approach, and wasn’t sure how he felt about that.
“In the name of the Father,” Fr. Maven began as he touched his forehead. Everyone at the table joined in, “the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Bless us oh Lord, and these thy gifts, which we are able to receive. From Thy bounty, through Christ, oh Lord. Amen.”
Dinner began and consisted of huge community bowls of food to be shared in the center of the table. The food variety was good, and the quality was great. Bruce began eating rapidly and silently. Peter noticed Mary had fixed a plate for Gwen from which she was feeding her. He got up and walked to the other side of the table and began cutting up his sister’s food into smaller pieces, all while giving Mary the evil eye which she never noticed.
After the meal was officially in swing Fr. Maven got up and walked over to a table off in the periphery of the room and opened a bottle of wine. He then proceeded to go around the room and filled up each wine glass, of which each person had one in front of them.
“I say a toast is in order.” He grabbed his wine glass and stood up, “A toast to the first new set of students in…” he turned to the older students.
Mary inserted, “Almost fourteen years.”
“…the first in fourteen years. I, as do the older students, know well that it is tremendously difficult to be suddenly removed from your normal surrounding and asked to join a group that you have never heard of, full of people you have never met, and to train tirelessly to take on a mission that you do not understand. However, I am very convinced that each of us has been given gifts by God. The giving of these gifts is as much grace as it is a tasking. The Lord didn’t choose to give us gifts that He did not give to others so that we could hide and remain unfound. He did so because he knew that each one of us would have the strength, mindfulness and faith to use our specific gifts for good.
With that being said, I toast the new members and their selfless decision to leave their regular lives and to join a world that is abnormal and unknown by most. You have made an admirable choice, and I am grateful to have each of you.” He raised his glass in the direction of the new students. The new students raised their glasses in response, “To the freshman,” he said in closing.
The others held up their glasses for the toast, “To the freshmen.”
They continued to feast and drink a bit before Gwen broke the silence, “Father, may I ask a question?”
“Of course Guinevere. What is it?”
“In your toast you say we are the first new students in fourteen years,” she stated open-endedly.
“That is correct,” Fr. Maven responded.
“Well,” Gwen paused a bit and turned to the older students, “When were each of you found? How old were you I mean?”
“What are your powers?”asked Peter excitedly.
The three students remained silent and stared at their plates for a moment. Then they looked over at Fr. Maven with looks of ‘do you want to tell the story?’
Fr. Maven placed his utensils down and cleaned his hands on his napkin as he finished his bite. He placed his napkin on the table, scooted his chair back a tad from the table, grabbed his wine and then sat back and crossed his legs placing his right ankle on his left knee and began, “As Mary mentioned, this school was founded approximately fourteen years ago. However, the full story started a few years before that. I had moved from my small hometown to the city and shortly after began encountering a string of strange peculiarities with myself and my body. There were displays of physics which no human should be able to produce; scientifically speaking.
I think one of the first times, even before moving to the city as an adult, that I can recall where I am almost positive it was a gift like you all have been given was at a time where my family and I went to the beach. I don’t remember most of it, but based on what my family told me, they couldn’t find me on the beach for a long enough time where my parents became very worried. They got the life guards, they called the police, and right at the police were about to begin their dog-led manhunt a life guard who was out in the ocean searching yelled that I had been found.
As my mother retells it, it had been so long and the life guard was out so far from the shore that to have found me at that point could only mean I had died. The lifeguard paddled my body in.
As he met us at the shore he pulled my unconscious body off his board and with a look on his face of pure distress said, ‘He’s alive.’
One of the police officers in charge said, ‘What?!’ as he couldn’t believe that an unconscious child who had been floating out at sea could possibly be alive, ‘You found a pulse?’
‘He’s breathing,’ the life guard answered.
‘How is that possible?’
‘I don’t know. After I thought I saw him I paddled over for a good five minutes and when I found him he was floating face down. He has a good size laceration on the back of his head. I think he was knocked out,’ the life guard told.
‘And when you got him out he started breathing on his own?’
‘He was breathing when I found him,’ the lifeguard replied. The police squinted in confusion at what he was hearing. He clarified, ‘When I found him face down in the water, he was still breathing.’
My mother remembers the mixture of feelings she had at the moment where she was both eternally grateful for me still being alive, but distraught as she understood the impossibility of how I was still alive.
‘How did you know he was breathing? The motion of the water could appear like breathing,’ the cop said trying to make sense of things.
‘He was breathing when I got him. I’m sure of it. He was breathing really heavy like he was out of breath. When I got him up on the board and flipped him over water came pouring out of his mouth and nose with every breath. He didn’t miss a beat.’
Then, what has always made me wonder, my mom says the lifeguard turned to her and with a tone of seriousness in his voice asked, ‘Has your son ever displayed special abilities?’ My mom cocked her head and just looked at him as she didn’t understand the questions. The lifeguard expanded, ‘Has he, or can he, do anything that other kids his age… or anybody can’t do?’
‘What do you mean?’ My mom asked more confused.
‘Has your son ever breathed under water before today?’
‘Ehhhh, no. That’s not possible,’ mom replied.
‘Has he ever done anything that would be considered a super human power?’
My mom, the cops, and everyone else stared at the lifeguard, who was still extremely anxious, in silence not answering. ‘Okay, ma’am. You need to trust me. I need to do something to you son to ensure he is going to be okay.’
‘What? What do you have to do?’
The lifeguard looked over at the cops and asked, ‘You need to help me hold him upside down by his legs.’
More silent awkward stares. You need to trust me, please. The lifeguard then lifted my legs off the sand and pretty much put them into the cops’ hands, and they lifted me up dangling me by my ankles. To most everyone’s surprise about a half gallon of water poured out of my mouth in spurts with each breath.
This ended. The lifeguard told them to put me down, and then turned to my mom saying ‘your son should be fine, but I’m just not sure. I have to leave now and you’ll need to watch him closely for the next week or two. Check his temperature; check his breathing, and when he comes to, ask him if this has ever happened before. And he left. This was good advice however, as I ended up with pneumonia shortly thereafter.”
The young students around the table looked at the priest intently.
“Like I said, I am almost certain that had to be the gift I was given.
The first time that I’m absolutely sure I was using my gift, was a time later when I was living in the city and I walked into a bank. As I entered I was met with a much higher amount of noise than normal. The patrons of the bank were all talking very loudly. I stood in line looking around a little bit trying to figure out just why people were talking so loud. Every single conversation in the bank was loud enough for me to hear. I even began to overhear a customer and bank teller hold a discussion that seemed like they were divulging a little bit too much. Then I heard the teller clearly recite the ladies account number as she typed it into her computer.
This all was very disconcerting to me as it made no sense that every single conversation was so loud especially in a bank. Then I saw a woman turn to a friend, cover her mouth with her hand, and lean over to her friend getting really close to her ear in what I expected to be a whisper. Then she said loud and clear, “check out that guy over there.” The friend responded in an equally loud tone, “huh?” and leaned in closer. The first woman reiterated at the same level, “That guy over there. Look,” and she motioned in a direction.
I couldn’t help but look for the man she was referring to. I easily located him as he was actually looking quite odd not standing in line and looking around shiftily at the tellers or customers in line. Right as I laid eyes on him a pair of security guards approached him and one of them grabbed the man by his collar with both hands and tried to pull him down to the ground in what seemed like an excessively aggressive act by the guard on a man who technically was not doing anything wrong I thought.
The man began to yell at the guards to let him go, and all the loud conversations in the bank ceased and the room quieted. Then slowly I heard and saw several people, just like the other ladies, lean in for what looked like a private conversation and proceed to speak very loudly and clearly commenting on the scuffle. It was so abnormal that if there wasn’t an ongoing act of violence I would have thought I was on some kind of hidden camera show.
The man being assaulted was now off his feet and on the floor completely subdued by both the guards. He continued to struggle and then stopped and said at the top of his lungs, “I know what you did with my money. I know what you’re doing with all our money you fucking crook!”
Pretty much everyone in the bank turned to look in the direction of the person the man was yelling at. I did as well and saw a well dressed man in a suit standing behind the counter looking back at the subdued man with a look of distaste.
Several more conversations happened as people spoke loudly asking things like ‘Who is that?’, ‘Is that the bank manager’, and one person said, ‘That’s Mustafa Khan the bank chairman. He’s on the board of governors.’
The powerful name fit the image of the man I thought. He looked like someone you wouldn’t want to offend. Then, a colleague next to him leaned in, covered his mouth and said loud and clear, “Do you think he knows?”
“Yes,” Mr. Khan answered.
His colleague then asked, “Get rid of him?”
“Yes.”
I was floored. I looked around at the other customers in the bank and no one reacted as if they heard the two discuss murder.
Right then the subdued man began violent failing, trying to lash out and break free from the grasp of the guards. He yelled out, “Get the fuck off of me!! They’re gonna kill me!! Did anyone hear what he just said?! He said to get rid of me!
In his struggle he somehow shifted and our eyes met. He looked at me and I nodded slightly, and in a fear driven attempt to whisper as softly as I could I said, “I heard it too.”
The man stopped struggling immediately, and said, “You can hear it too. You can hear them all too!”
The guards looked up at me as if I was a culprit, and right then the man swung and hit one of the guards in the face with a solid strike which sent him to the floor. In the subsequent movement the man flung his leg up and kicked the other guard slamming his shin right into the man’s nose causing blood to burst out.
He rolled, got to his feet, looked at me briefly and took off running at full speed out of the bank. The guard who received the punch got up, and turned to Mr. Khan. Mr. Khan gave a very serious nod, and the guard pulled his partner up and ran out of the bank. They both stopped right after they got out of the door, and yelled “Freeze!! Bank robber!! Everyone down!!” and one of them raised their gun.
The conversation noise picked up again in the bank as people made comments on how intense the situation was. Then I heard the fleeing man, as clear as day, repeat in a very distressed tone, “No, no, no, no…”
It sounded like he was still right outside the door and he must have been held up at gun point by the guards. I left the teller line along with others and moved so I could see out the door. It was then that I noticed that the guards had their aim out in the street and I did not see the running man, however I still heard him, ‘No, no, no.”
Then I heard one of the guards say, “Khan gave the green light. Quick, do it.”
BANG.
The guard shot. At that moment I ceased hearing the man, as well as all of the conversations that were presently going on. It’s like everyone decided to stop talking loudly. I immediately had a feeling of wanting to leave the bank, so I left. I then saw the man dead on the ground. Halfway down the block.
This was when I realized there was something different about me than other humans. I didn’t quite know exactly what though. I continued to experience events like this such as my skin changing to inhuman color. One night while walking through a somewhat rough part of the city I noticed a cloud of smoke collect around my ankles covering me up to my knees, and it followed me tightly as I walked. One time I was deeply concentrating on a sculpture in a galleria and it turned to dust right in front of me. Finally I witnessed myself becoming completely transparent, almost invisible, repeatedly whenever I was home in my apartment at the time. Most of the other experiences were one time things, but this one happened over and over almost every time I was home, and it only happened when I was in or near my apartment.
This was all new and confusing to me so I had no idea where to go. I decided then to go to a church and consult a priest. I did so, and divulged all of my secrets to the priest who clearly did not believing me. I asked for him to come to my apartment to see if I could show him the transparency. He declined. I told him I would provide dinner and wine. He accepted.
We didn’t make it to dinner, but once I showed my transparency he needed wine. He asked to use my phone and I said yes. He walked over, pulled out a small black book, and thumbed to a page before dialing the number. “Yes, is Fr. Augustine there?” he asked. “Yes, thank you.” He waited for about two minutes, then, “Hello Enoch, this is Gino. Yeah. Sorry, I must get to the point. Are you still involved with that thing at the Vatican? The society, yes. I think you need to come over to a parishioner’s house to see something. No, I’m not going to talk about it. Please just come quickly.”
The priest, Fr. Augustine, made it over in a relatively short amount of time. He was an older priest, but had a strong vibrancy about him. He wore thin framed glasses which gave him a scholarly look. He held out his hand in a greeting, and in return I held out my transparent arm. He froze for a moment, then he grabbed my arm and inspected it. The very next thing he asked me was, “Do you have a job?”
“Yes sir,” I replied.
“Can you quit immediately or do you have to give notice?”
It was then that I knew things were serious, and also that I had made the right decision to speak to the church. I left my job in the next few days, and went to Rome with Fr. Augustine. I was introduced to Pope John Paul II and it was he who introduced me to the Gunpowder Society, which was described by him as a group who was tasked with fighting an unknown, unseen and unimaginable enemy.
He continued to explain that because I had super human ability, even though I didn’t understand them, he wanted me to lead the Gunpowder Society. He said that I was not the only one the church was aware of that had these special gifts. He also told me that the emergence of these powers was a new discovery and more and more cases had been reported in the last year or so at the time. The church, and especially the Society, was determined to find as many of these people and to first protect them from the public who would without a doubt want to control them, and secondly they hoped they would convince them to willingly join the Society and the fight.
I understood the importance of what they were doing, and the fact that there were more and more people like me being reported every day I felt both interested to find more like me and obligated to help those like me. I agreed, and just like being deputizing on the spot, I was immediately ordained as a priest.’
Not too long after taking the helm of the group I was told to meet my first set of fellow gifted people, who were three young children; two American born, and one from Germany.”
With the mention that one of them was German the new students looked around. Haze raised his hand claiming he was the German.
“All of the children had been identified as having displayed inhuman powers in public and were thought to be a potential danger to society and to them, however their powers were not known. I was to meet them, question them, and ideally learn each of their powers as deeply as I could and assess whether any of them might be a good candidate to join the Society when they became young adults.
That was naive in hindsight.
Anyway, a meeting with the children was being setup at a church. For some reason I felt more comfortable holding the meeting in privacy and told the church office that I would setup a meeting place that was known only to me, and that there would be no exception to that requirement. I’m still not sure if that was a good decision or a bad one.
I decided to speak with a friend of mine who was a restaurateur and owned a place down on 42nd street, and asked if I could use his restaurant after closing time as a favor. He was a faithful parishioner and agreed immediately. He asked if I could tell him why it had to be afterhours, and I answered because it was meant to be secret. He smiled at the answer and he didn’t press on with the questioning however he did tell me that there was a loaded firearm in the standing desk in the corner where he would balance the books after hours before depositing the money in the ATM.
I laughed and asked him if his place had ever been robbed before and he said no. I then thanked him for letting me know about the firearm as the only people I’d be meeting with were children and I’d be sure to keep them and their curiosity away from the desk. He nodded and jokingly mentioned that the gun had a safety on it, but the beer taps did not.
The night came and I did meet the children at the church, but drove them myself to my friend’s restaurant. I remember to this day what they were wearing. The two boys were looking quite handsome in suits, with HP in a three-piece, and Mary in a Marian blue dress with a small white pinafore in front looking like Alice from Wonderland. She was darling. As we drove they all got acquainted on the way with Mary controlling the conversation as she was apparently the talkative one.
I had bought candy and soda beforehand and I had ordered a couple of pizzas to be delivered while we were there, but the pizza man was tardy and I proved weak as I let the children dive into the soda and candy.
I watched them joyfully as they tore into the candy and soda packing themselves full of what I like to call kid drugs. I thought to myself, these children are so normal.
I started an introductory conversation having the kids introduce themselves and tell them a little bit about where they came from and what they liked. This was very superficial, and we didn’t get too far into the conversation when I vaguely heard a man’s voice reciting the address of the building outside, and saying ‘this is it.’
‘I think the pizza is here,’ I said to the kids. We all looked down at the aftermath of candy and soda consumption and began to laugh.
As the children were laughing I heard the man again say, ‘this is the place. I can hear kids inside.’
With that I froze. I felt a thick anxiety fall over me as I apparently had regained the super-hearing that I had in the bank, as well as the notion that there were men outside who knew that there were children inside when nobody should have known. Additionally, once I heard the last comment from the man outside Mary turned to me and froze starring at me in contemplation.
Then the voice from outside said, ‘Remember first things first. Figure out who the healer is.’ Mary and I remained starring at each other. Then the voice said, ‘Then kill him.’ Mary’s eyes widened, and then I knew she had heard the voice too. The two boys noticed nothing and were unaware. She then seemed to shake off the look of fear and starred into my eyes with a deep concentration.
The voice outside counted down, “One… two…” Mary was still starring at me in total concentration, ‘three!’
The door was kicked open, scaring the two boys and me thoroughly, but Mary remained concentrated on my eyes.
Haze and HP, who were completely unaware of the men outside yelled and spun around. In through the door ran three men dressed in body armor, full helmets covering them from the neck up, and holding automatics. One of them yelled freeze, and the voice coming through the helmet had a Darth Vader tone to it.
I reactively stood up and took a step towards the men. In a sweeping motion the one closest to me lifted his rifle and slammed the butt of the gun straight into my forehead making me at first see stars, and then see blood. Mary screamed and I fell back into the chair I had arisen from.
One of the men asked, ‘Which one of you is the healer?’
They were met with silence. Now in a yell with gun waving, “Which one of you is the healer?”
In unison HP answered, ‘me’ and Haze answered ‘I am.’
The man who was speaking looked back and forth at the two boys and then at Mary. He paused contemplating something. Mary yelled out, ‘No!!!!’, and the man turned to Haze and pulled the trigger shooting him through the chest.
I yelled and stooped down to aid Haze. He had blood flowing from his chest and his back, and was dying quickly. The attacking men turned to HP and began questioning him, but I turned to Haze.
Haze was looking back at me in astonishment. A very different expression than I expected. Haze asked in a shaky raspy voice, ‘You.’
‘What lad?’ I asked in as much of a comforting voice that I could muster at the time.
‘You are healing me,’ said Haze in a stronger German accent than he has now.
‘I’m not. You must be healing yourself. I need to be healed by you,’ I replied.
‘I can’t heal myself.’ Haze replied.
‘I need to be healed by you,’ I said as I lightly felt for the wound on my head.
“Your head vound ist gone,” he said.
I was confused at what the young boy was saying in his broken English and wiped my forehead. I pulled by hand away and there was no wound and not a drop of blood when I looked. I looked at it in amazement. Haze grabbed my hand and put it back on his chest.
‘Let it be so now; it ist right for you to heal me now so that ve can make things right here,’ the boy commanded.
I noticed his wound was smaller, and I even began to see it close up. I stared watching the process. I looked up at Haze, and he motioned towards the others with his eyes. I turned and saw them questioning HP, and asked, ‘What do you want?!’
‘The priest is a healer!’ came one of the men’s voices mechanically through his helmet.
‘No, the kid is healing himself,’ another said.
Mary turned to the man who last talked and starred at him with the same concentration that she did me earlier. In the next moment she turned toward the table and grabbed HP and Haze by the wrist and froze. This caught the attacking men off guard and they stood in a confused manner for a few seconds trying to figure out what was going on.
Then all in one motion HP stood up, grabbed his chair by the back, and swung around in a circular motion hitting the man closest to him as hard as he possibly could with the chair breaking it completely and sending the man staggering against the bar.
At the same time Mary leapt from the table and began running towards the front door of the restaurant as fast as she could.
The man who had shot Haze raised his gun in the direction of the Mary. Haze stood up and grabbed the gun by the barrel and wrenched it upwards pointing it towards its holder. They struggled a bit, and I reached over and pulled the trigger and shot the man upwards through the chin and into his helmet, killing him and he proceeded to fall to the floor.
Then I saw HP take a step in the direction of the man he had struck who was now leaning up against the bar. The man fired a shot into HP’s stomach, but this did not stop him. Unchanged from his original plan HP grabbed the knife that was on his place setting and as he got to the man he shoved the knife through the front side of the man’s throat.
I was so shocked and amazed by how unstoppable HP was that I didn’t notice the final man start running. He passed HP before any of us could grab him. In what felt like slow motion I turned in the direction the man was running and realized he was chasing Mary. She had made it to the front of the restaurant, and I felt she might have time to make it out the front door straight in front of her, but my hopes were crushed when she pivoted right, her feet slid on the hard wood until she slammed up against the wall next to the door and jumped behind a table to the right of the entrance effectively cornering herself.
I yelled out in despair with the realization that this young girl I just met would either be killed right in front of me, or kidnapped by someone intent on doing worse. I could not see Mary behind the table as it was tall and obstructive in sight. The chasing man got to the table, reached down, and presumably grabbed her. He then looked up and put his aim on us and told us that if we moved he’d kill her.
He turned to look at the front door, and then took a step back. His arm went taught as Mary was fighting his pull, and he had to give her an extra tug to get her from out behind the table. He reached down and grabbed a handful of her hair and pulled her up to her feet. She closed her eyes in pain, but didn’t make a noise.
He then placed the barrel of the gun against her head and slowly backed up towards the door reassuring us that he would kill her if we moved. He made it to the door, let go of her hair, and reached behind him for the door handle. He opened the door enough to prop it open with his back foot and then grabbed Mary by the hair again.
He was slowly backing through the doorway when I noticed Mary’s hand was underneath her pinafore. The man was through the doorway, but Mary was not yet. She pulled her hand out from underneath her pinafore and in her grip was a pistol. It was the loaded firearm my friend the restaurant owner had told me about. I had completely forgotten about it and had no idea how she had found it.
Then I thought to myself, the safety must be on. This girl doesn’t know the safety is on. I repeated in my mind, what seemed like a hundred times, ‘please let the safety be off. Please let the safety be off.’
Mary and I starred at each other one last time as she passed through the door way, and I saw her click the safety off. It was at that point that I realized Mary was telepathic.
The front door closed. There was a large semi-translucent window on the door, and through it we saw a flash accompanied by a gun shot. We all froze and held out breathes. Then the noise of body armor hitting the ground was heard, and we saw and heard the same flash and noise repeat three times back-to-back.
We all ran for the door. HP got there first and threw it open. Mary stood there crying, still holding the gun and covered in blood; the attacker dead at her feet. I wrapped my arms around her and cried along with her.
I turned to HP and began to say, ‘Haze you need to heal Logan quickly. He’s been… shot…’
I looked at HP and to my astonishment saw a hole in his shirt, but not in his stomach anymore. I then realized why both the boys had claimed to be the healer. They both were. Haze had the gift to heal others, and HP had the gift to heal himself.
Most importantly, I finally realized what my gift was. I was able to use the gifts of those around me when they were close by.”
Gwen, Peter, and Bruce had been listening with looks of awe as Fr. Maven told his story.
Peter added, “That was how you were able to heal Haze’s chest wound, and your own head wound.”
“Correct young Peter,” Fr. Maven acknowledged.
“And you didn’t have super-hearing. You heard the men outside because you were using Mary’s telepathy to read their minds when they were talking,” added Gwen.
Fr. Maven smiled and nodded.
“And you read Fr. Maven’s memory and that’s how you knew about the gun,” Bruce also chimed in.
More silence as everyone thought about the facts.
“But what were you doing when you grabbed their wrists?” asked Gwen.
“She was telling them her plan,” interjected Bruce. They turned to him, and he turned to Mary, “You can’t talk to people telepathically unless you’re touching them.”
Mary nodded with a forced smile, “Once the man said that Haze was healing his own wound, he thought to himself that he should shoot him in the head to prevent him from healing,” she said. “I read that thought and I had to act.”
Silence took the room. The new students let the story settle in and the older students remained effected by reliving it.
“So, it was the man in the bank who was shot,” Peter asked in the form of a statement.
“Yep,” Fr. Maven said with a smile.
“And the lifeguard,” Peter finished.
“That’s my guess as well,” Fr. Maven answered.
Fr. Maven smiled at Peter’s intellect and perceptiveness. Peter received the acknowledgement in the priest’s expression. They both took a sip of wine.
“So then why did you experience so many different powers when you were in the city before you joined the society?” asked Gwen.
“It is proof, Guinevere, that people like us... people with gifts,” Fr. Maven said stoically, “walk among us everywhere.”