“He had two modes,” Garrett went on, his tone uncaring. “Content or insane. He expected my approval for the nasty things he had done, and if I didn’t show approval, he threatened to break me in half. He would rage that I wasn’t worth keeping alive.”

Garrett waved in an offhand gesture of dismissal.

That offhand attitude must be a means of self-protection. Ariock had seen Thomas act the same way. And Cherise, for that matter. Garrett was doing everything possible to signal that he was beyond the pain, and that his childhood no longer affected him. He was trying to convince himself.

“What was your original last name?” Ariock asked, probing to learn how much Garrett had rejected from his original identity. “It wasn’t Stead. Was it?”

“What does it matter?” Garrett said. “The name was fake. We were Torth. We didn’t have birth certificates.”

Ariock nodded acceptance of that bit of their family history. Names were changeable, anyway. His own name was a whim; a combination of syllables his mother had liked, plus the made-up last name created by Garrett and passed down through three more generations.

Thomas, too, had a whim of a name. He had been discovered on Liberty Hill Road, by a doctor named Thomas.

Jonathan and Thomas. Both mind readers. Both mistreated or discarded by their parents.

Both unable to walk in childhood?

“Yup.” Garrett laughed without humor. “I have more in common with the boy than you thought.”

“Then you should have more sympathy for him,” Ariock said.

Garrett answered with a hard, flat stare. “I have sympathy for the boy’s physical condition. But he is a billion times more capable than I was at that age. He isn’t a victim. I was. There is a world of difference between him and me.”

Ariock decided to back away from comparisons to Thomas, which might trigger Garrett’s complicated feelings about mind readers. Another question troubled him. “Your father,” he said, “expected you—a toddler—to approve of rape and murder?”

“He expected me to be a Torth,” Garrett said.

That simple statement was enough for Ariock to piece together the motives of that long-dead renegade Servant of All. He must have missed the Megacosm. The only possible audience he had was his toddler son. Jonathan was supposed to stand in for an audience of emotionless sycophants.

Ariock pictured the helpless little kid cowering in a drafty attic, unloved and despised, yet kept like a pet. Jonathan must have lived in dread of hearing his father’s footsteps coming up the attic stairs.

Paradoxically, though, he must have felt pressure and obligation towards pleasing his father. He had been utterly reliant on that father.

Until he grew a bit older.

Until he started ghosting.

Then he had spied on other families, and he had learned that love existed, and that happiness was possible.

Maybe, at that point, young Jonathan had quit pretending to like his father’s heinous acts. He had become rebellious.

“What happened to Anna?” Ariock wanted to know. “Was she able to smuggle you away?”

Garrett spoke with wounded slowness. “The problem was that my father could read minds. As soon as she thought up a concrete plan, the clock would be ticking. She would need to leave before he could get close enough to scan her thoughts. I told her that. She didn’t fully understand what my father could do, but I told her.”

There were traces of long-ago desperation in Garrett’s tone. Love, too.

“I helped her plan,” Garrett went on. “She served him his meals, so he would read her mind if she tried to poison him. Her best chance of survival was just to run. I told her to leave me behind. I couldn’t travel, even on horseback.”

“Horseback?”

“My father owned a horse.” Garrett saw Ariock’s look of surprise, and elaborated. “Automobiles weren’t very widespread then. We didn’t own a car. The road was dirt and mud, anyway.”

Ariock remembered that his great-grandfather was quite a lot older than an ordinary geriatric human. The automobile must have been a recent invention when he was six years old.

“I told her she should jump on the horse, but only if she could do so without catching his attention,” Garrett went on. “Otherwise she would need to run on foot through the woods. She would need to take an unplanned route. Be unpredictable. Otherwise he would track her down. He hunted down dozens of women by figuring which ways they would try to escape. It was practically a sport for him. That’s part of the reason he kept a horse.”

“You tried to save her.” Ariock said warmly. Garrett Dovanack might have rough edges, but a good person was encased within his layers of defensiveness.

Garrett hunched his shoulders. “I wasn’t very effective. I was too weak to do anything useful. I couldn’t create a big enough distraction for her to get to safety.”

“But you tried,” Ariock said. It would have been a deadly risk.

“I knocked over my candle,” Garrett said. “I tried to set the house on fire. In my imagination, a fire would give her enough time to get to civilization—and then return with an angry mob. I wanted the town constable to arrest my father. Or better yet, kill him.”

Judging by the wistful hoarseness of Garrett’s voice, that wish had not come to pass.

“The candle didn’t work?” Ariock asked gently.

Garrett shook his head. “The flame just flickered out.”

“What happened to Anna?”

“She ran down the hill and through the woods.” Garrett indicated the motion with his hand. “She got a good head start. Better than any of his other victims. My father didn’t even realize she was gone until twenty or thirty minutes after she was out the door.”

Ariock wondered how the monster had kept watch over his victims.

“He used to hobble his victims,” Garrett answered the unasked question. “With chains. But he had grown lax about it. Mostly, he used psychological terror. He threatened torture. He threatened to murder their families. That sort of thing.”

As if that sort of thing was no big deal.

“Anna was terrified that he would murder her parents and sister if she ever escaped,” Garrett went on. “That worked on other women, because they thought my father was a demon. He kept them in a state of fear. They could only guess what he was capable of.”

But Anna was different, Ariock realized. Because she had dared to talk with young Jonathan instead of treating him like a detestable monster, she had learned exactly what powers his father had.

Garrett nodded in confirmation. “I told Anna that my father had never followed through on threats to families. I assured her that her parents and sister would be safe. My father kept a low profile. I didn’t understand why at the time, but it’s obvious, now. He was living illegally on Earth. He didn’t want Torth agents on Earth to suspect that a rogue Servant of All was enjoying himself in middle America.” Garrett shivered. “I didn’t know, at the time, that there were things even my father was terrified of.”

The Torth Empire was certainly something to fear.

“So Anna took the risk,” Ariock prompted. “How did your father find out she was gone?”

Garrett curled inward. He looked miserable, and Ariock knew the answer, even before he responded.

“He treated Anna like a slave,” Garrett said. “He trained her to respond to hand gestures. She was supposed to wait on him, hand and foot. Any time she was gone for longer than ten minutes or so, he grew suspicious. When it was a half an hour? I heard his footsteps coming up the stairs, and I knew what to expect. So I ghosted.”

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Young Jonathan had avoided an interrogation by abandoning his own body. He had left himself completely vulnerable.

“He figured it out,” Garrett said, “when he saw my empty shell of a body, and Anna nowhere in sight. He raged. But he didn’t want his victim to escape. So instead of hurting me right then, he rushed downstairs and outside.”

Ariock thought that it should have been impossible for the monster to track Anna, since she’d already been running for half an hour.

“I followed him in ghost form,” Garrett said. “Part of the problem for Anna was that it was the tail end of the Victorian era. She wore a long skirt. It was night, which would help her stay hidden, but the downside was that she had to pick her way over tree branches and through underbrush.”

“She couldn’t go fast,” Ariock realized.

“Right,” Garrett said. “And my father was on a horse. Even if Anna had set the animal free, he was well trained. He would have gone right back home.”

“Your father could ride through woods?” Ariock didn’t know much about horseback riding, but he figured horses needed open space, or at least a trail.

“He didn’t need to,” Garrett said. “Mind readers can check the perceptions of any animals they pass. He could also use the perceptions of his horse, and horses see well at night. He might have been in a blind rage, but he knew those woods very well. He kept his senses open.”

“Oh,” Ariock said.

“Eventually,” Garrett said, “he heard her.”

Young Jonathan had been nothing but a spectator. A silent, helpless ghost.

“Exactly.” Garrett cupped his temples, hiding from long-ago trauma. “All I could do was watch. I had already left my body so often that day, I was close to depletion. I knew that if I spent my energy watching, I would have no way to escape my body later on. My father would be able to torture me and I would not be able to escape, mentally. But I felt so anxious for Anna, I watched anyway. I didn’t care if I died watching.”

Ariock was familiar with the dangerous strain of clairvoyance. No matter where he went in ghost form, his mind remained tethered to his distant body. A few seconds was doable. After a minute or so, he felt like a rubber-band pulled taut. If he kept at it for five or six minutes, he would feel half-crazed, as if oxygen deprived.

His limit seemed to be about eight minutes. If he pushed himself to his absolute limit, he would crash violently back into his own body, unable to stop it from happening.

Then he needed recovery time. He had to reorient his thoughts, catch his breath, regain his equilibrium.

Although Ariock ghosted many times per day—usually for no more than a minute, along memorized routes—he was aware of his own exceptional fortitude. Most Yeresunsa lacked the raw strength to ghost again and again. A half-starved neglected child, such as Jonathan had been, would easily run a risk of depletion.

“What did you see?” Ariock asked.

Garrett hesitated. And Ariock knew that whatever had happened next, it was not something that could be stated casually. It was pivotal.

“He was going to intercept her.” Garrett’s voice was tense, nearly washed out by the crash of water on the rocks below. “There was a cliff where Anna would have no choice but to emerge by the road, and he could catch her there. I figured she would end up just like all the other girls and women—the ‘mothers’ who were never motherly.” Garrett clenched his fists, acting on long-ago fury. “He thought he was so special. For all I knew, he was the Devil, like my other mothers had said. The dead ones. He had luck like the Devil. He always won. He made cruelty look easy. He pretended it was natural. Like it was his right.”

The repressed rage in Garrett made his voice stilted and thick.

“I went in front of his horse,” Garrett said. “I had never teleported. Didn’t know it was possible. But I was so desperate to be heard, to be seen—to put a stop to it—reality folded, and I pulled myself into the foggy night, to that location. And I was screaming. I screamed louder than I ever had in my life.”

Ariock felt the impact of that long-ago shock.

“My sudden appearance spooked his horse,” Garrett said. “I teleported right in front of it, screaming like a banshee. The horse reared up. The ground was all mud and fallen leaves. And my father tumbled off, right over the cliff.”

Ariock caught his breath.

Garrett had claimed that he had killed his father when he was six years old. It seemed he really had.

“He died slowly,” Garrett said with savage relish. “He hit rocks on his way down, and by the time he fell into the ravine, his legs were broken. He died of exposure and thirst. No one found him in time.”

Of course, young Jonathan had known where his father was the whole time. He must have felt safe with Anna Stead, or whomever she sent to rescue him.

He had probably ghosted to his dying father multiple times, just to make sure he would not recover. He might have ghosted to peer at the decomposing corpse. The skeleton. How many times?

“I visited his corpse every day.” Garrett spoke without a shred of remorse. “I watched vultures pick apart his face, and coyotes gnaw at his bones. I saw him disappear into the earth. Meanwhile, I gained enough strength to walk. I went to a school with other boys and girls my age.”

“You got adopted?” Ariock asked.

“The Steads took me in,” Garrett said with a warmth that could only be gratitude. “There wasn’t much paperwork in those days. No social security cards, no child protective services. It was either them or an orphanage. Anna convinced her parents that I deserved a good home.”

Ariock thought of Thomas, adopted by Vy’s mother.

“I didn’t want anyone deciding I was a demon,” Garrett said. “So I begged Anna to say nothing of my weirdnesses. My powers, I mean.”

That must be why Garrett had developed the habit of pretending to be “normal,” or not a mind reader. He had been doing that ever since he was old enough to comprehend things. He must have tried his best to set various fake mothers at ease.

“I did my best,” Garrett agreed. “Only Anna knew. And in time, we revealed the truth to her little sister, Julia.”

Ariock folded his legs. He could fill in the rest of the story. Jonathan had taken the surname of his adoptive family. He’d grown up.

He had actually married his adoptive sister, Julia, which was a little weird. But times were different then.

He’d gotten her pregnant.

Gotten himself abducted by the Torth Empire.

Then he had faked his death, and gone home again. He had changed his name and identity to Garrett Olmstead Dovanack. His wife had become Sarah instead of Julia.

They had moved elsewhere. To New Hampshire. Their daughter was born. The Dovanack family was established.

“Anna was murdered by a Torth agent,” Garrett said.

Ariock looked at him.

“Julia and I eloped. Her family didn’t approve, obviously. So we moved out. We were vagabonds, moving from city to city, and at the time, I had no idea that Torth agents were hunting me.” He sounded mournful. “The Torth had heard rumors of a ‘psychic wonder child,’ thanks to my flamboyant public shows. I busked for a living. They suspected I might be the offspring of a renegade Torth. They just needed to meet me, to make sure. So they tracked down my family—the Stead family, I mean—and ascertained the truth about me, from Anna’s mind. Then they murdered her.”

Ariock swallowed over an ache in his throat. Anna, he realized now, was also a part of his family. Not only was she Garrett’s adoptive sister; she would have been Ariock’s great-great aunt. She was his blood relative through Julia, aka Sarah Dovanack.

“When we heard,” Garrett said, “we were shocked. But we assumed a random thug had murdered Anna. We had no idea the Torth existed.”

Ariock wondered what, exactly, the child had soaked up from his Torth father. Hadn’t he glimpsed otherworldly cities in his father’s memories?

“I had vague notions,” Garrett admitted. “I knew my father came from somewhere strange and alien—but I figured that must be Hell. I assumed my father was a demon. I would be safe, I figured, as long as I stayed good, and didn’t commit any heinous acts of depravity.”

Ariock supposed those were reasonable assumptions.

“I was a little wary, going to Anna’s funeral,” Garrett admitted. “I did think it was strange. Who would want to hurt her? I couldn’t imagine anyone who would murder her. But by that point, I could turn ocean tides and stir up a tornado, and I was really eager to destroy her murderer. I was on the hunt.”

By then, Jonathan Stead had been a teenager with secret storm-bringer powers. He must have been cocky.

And utterly clueless about the rest of the galaxy.

“Exactly.” Garrett’s tone turned bitter with regret. “I could handle tough guys in a back alley, so I made the mistake of assuming I could handle anything.”

He fell silent.

Ariock was silent with the old man. Together, they allowed the crashing waves to substitute for words, for a while.

Ariock pondered the contrasts in Garrett’s family, and in Garrett himself. Strong and weak. Cruel and kind. Perpetrator and victim.

Garrett was a study in extremes. Like the weather, he blew fierce or he had a genial cheerfulness.

Ariock supposed that the same could be said about himself. He, too, was familiar with extremes. He had spent years feeling like a windblown leaf, without control over his outward appearance. He had believed that he was just a burden. He had been a plaything for the amusement of a silent audience.

And then? Immense power.

But he could never forget how it felt to be helpless.

He looked at Garrett, and saw the cringing child, still alive within the grizzled old warrior.

Was it any wonder Garrett was so infuriated by people who abused their power? Jonathan Stead had been subjected to abuse which few people could imagine. He had been forced to watch the tortured death of his own mother—and then all the not-quite-mothers who followed.

Young children learned by emulating people whom they spent a lot of time with. They adapted themselves to role models.

Ariock remembered his own favorite role model. Even though he had trouble remembering specifics about the way his father looked, he remembered kindnesses. He remembered feeling proud to have such a perceptive dad, with such a keen sense of fairness, and so much consideration for people who were less fortunate than himself. It had seemed to him that no other adult was quite as special, kind, wise, and strong. He had wanted to be just like that man, when he grew up.

What role models had Jonathan Stead had?

The adults in his life had either been utterly helpless or very powerful. There were victims. And there was the perpetrator.

Which sort of adult had he aspired to be?

It was obvious. Jonathan Stead had seized power. Instead of dying in his father’s care, he had escaped that abusive household. Now he was powerful.

And merciless. And cruel.

No doubt he told himself that his cruelty was justice. He enacted violence only against Torth. Against the Devil. Every time he destroyed a heartless mind reader, he was protecting Julia and Anna. He was avenging his mother. He was living his greatest childhood fantasy.

No wonder it was vital to him. No wonder he derived so much savage pleasure from destroying Torth.

Knowing helped.

Ariock could not hate a survivor of unimaginably traumatic abuse. Garrett had remade himself using the only tools available to him. He was forged in hatred, not in love. Even so, he had cobbled together a good life for himself. That was no easy feat. It required grit.

Perhaps Garrett would never dust off his grit and became kindhearted. But he was who he was.

And that was okay.

Ariock would set boundaries, when necessary, to protect Thomas and other friends. Otherwise? He gave Garrett a nod of respect. He would remember the fact that his great-grandfather had been a hero, once upon a time.

He would remember the family members who were no longer around to speak for themselves, or to speak in favor of the boy who had protected them.