They were in the Alps again and he looked around the room.
“Why here?” he had asked the first time he’d seen the space and Remy had smiled.
“This house belonged to her first teacher,” he’d replied. “It seems only fitting.”
John looked at the comfortable timber furniture, the fireplace with its banked embers, and the picture window that displayed the vast expanse of the mountains and the secluded dell in which they’d trained the day before.
“Who was she?” he asked and Remy frowned.
“Stephanie, of course. Who else?”
“No, the teacher.”
Remy’s face lightened. “His name was BURT. He discovered her talent and nurtured it. This was one of his favorite sites for contemplation.”
Looking at the view spread before him, he could understand why. Now, he glanced at the furniture, the rug on the floor, and the kitchen beyond an island bench.
“Perhaps we’d better take this outside,” he suggested. “I wouldn’t want to damage anything—”
The world twisted and he closed his eyes involuntarily When he opened them, he stood in a courtyard hemmed in by sandstone walls. Four stone archways led out in four different directions and the floor was covered by sand-colored pavers.
“Is this better?” the AI asked, and he was glad when a small round metal table and two metal garden chairs vanished from view.
“Is this somewhere else her teacher used to like?” John asked.
His guide smiled. “Yes, but there is very little you can harm here.”
Wanta make a bet? he thought but didn’t say it. He only hoped he was right.
“Where do you want me to begin?” he asked.
“What’s the first thing you ever remember doing?”
John blushed. “It’s embarrassing.”
“Try me,” Remy encouraged.
“We’d have to kiss and I wouldn’t be comfortable.”
“You could simply imagine it,” the AI suggested. “The nanites will recreate the event you picture in your mind and I will be able to observe it.”
He shook his head with a small frown. “I’m not even sure what it looked like from the outside.”
“Simply imagine the event and how it felt and ask your power to repeat what it did. Between what the nanites show me and how your power manifests in the virtual, I will be able to see what happened.”
“You have to understand, I was very young—” His voice took on a desperate edge.
“How young?” Remy asked, and he got the impression the AI was giving him time to get used to the idea and think of how to get his power to comply.
“F…fourteen.”
“Ah…” His companion’s voice said he’d guessed what was bothering him already and his next words confirmed it. “It was your first kiss?”
John’s face burned and he was sure he’d turned a spectacular shade of scarlet.
“Yes,” he admitted.
“What was her name?”
“Luiza,” he said with a soft sigh.
“And where is she now?”
The heat faded and bleakness edged his reply. “I don’t know. She was taken in a Regime raid when her choir was touring the South Pacific.”
“At fourteen?”
“It was a school activity.”
“Did any of the choir return?”
He shook his head. “Twenty-four girls went on that trip and none of them came back.”
“And was she a witch like yourself?”
“A witch? Oh…you mean a Talent?” He shrugged. “If she was she never told me.”
An odd stab of hurt arrived with the thought she should have and he pushed it aside, but Remy intervened.
“And you never told her.”
“No. So…are you ready?”
“For a boy’s most embarrassing moment?” the AI asked, amusement in his voice. “Sure, show me what kind of a mess you made of your first kiss.”
John stared at him, his mouth agape. “It wasn’t a mess.”
“Show me anyway,” Remy ordered.
With a shrug that pretended unconcern, he closed his eyes and recalled the moment. They’d gone to watch the fireworks on New Year’s Eve and chosen a secluded position away from the crowd. It wasn’t quite out of sight, out of mind, but it was close enough to not matter.
Luiza had snuggled against him and they’d both oohed and aahed as the first spectacular array erupted. She’d turned her face to his and smiled with excitement. Their eyes had met and he’d smiled in return, and the excitement faded to something more tentative.
She’d rested a hand on his cheek and he’d bent to kiss her, stroked his hand over her hair, and stopped it to cup the back of her head. Their lips had met and…well, there’d been sparks.
He’d jerked away and she’d looked at him in surprise before she rubbed her mouth.
“Wow! That’s a lot of static,” she’d said and he’d agreed numbly.
“I’m sorry,” he’d muttered, and she’d wound an arm around his waist and leaned her head against his shoulder.
“You have nothing to be sorry about,” she’d told him, and they watched the rest of the display in happy silence.
It had still taken him several minutes before he’d dared to put his arm around her. While it had been a relief when no more sparks had flown, he’d known then that he was doomed.
Once the Regime discovered what he was, they’d take him away. That was when he’d decided he wouldn’t let them find out. He would keep his Talent a secret and live a normal life with a girlfriend, school, and an everyday job.
He recalled thinking it would be easy.
Remy’s voice broke into his thoughts and drove the memory away.
“Are you sure all that was you?”
“All what?” he asked, and the AI showed him.
John stared at the image. “Are you sure that’s what it looked like?”
“As sure as I can be,” his companion replied. “Remember, you asked your power to replicate what magic happened that night. Did you think to ask it to keep that magic to only your own?”
John groaned. He hadn’t because he’d simply assumed that any magic that occurred was his alone. If it hadn’t been, it added a dimension to the past he would have to come to terms with.
“Play it again.”
This time, he managed to study the scene with some semblance of detachment. “How did no-one see us?”
“How do you know they didn’t?” Remy asked.
“Well, we weren’t arrested,” he quipped. “That has to be the clincher, right?”
“Or they weren’t sure enough to make a positive identification,” Remy pointed out. “The fireworks didn’t stop so you could kiss, did they?”
That much was true.
“And there was a storm.”
“That was miles away,” John protested. “It didn’t come anywhere near where we were.”
“It was sufficiently close that someone might have seen enough of it in the background to doubt what they saw. Did you notice any surveillance afterward?”
John thought hard but shook his head. The only thing he’d noticed was that Luiza was happy to sit with him at lunch and catch the same bus after school. Then she’d gone on that trip.