Devour

Chapter 4 - Emma

By the time we get to Bucknell we are all hot, thirsty, and quite tired. The boys are ready to strip off their jackets. Our dad is carrying Nel, whose legs got tired a half an hour ago. Miss Cora, of course, carried water for us, but by now we just want to rest and drink in the shade. Our dad directs us to a tree in the middle of town where some benches are.

It's a weekday, so the streets are decently quiet. Only a few shoppers hurry along with their purchases in big paper bags or cloth ones from home. Most everyone glances our way at least in morbid curiosity. Some openly dislike us and don't think we ought to be out. Some are just curious as to what we look like these days, how happy we seem that sort of thing. No one approaches.

Patch and Nel wave cheekily at anyone who stares too long. Dax does nothing, just sitting looking at his hands. Jules holds his football and accepts the water that Miss Cora is distributing to us.

"Feeling better?" our dad asks which is polite because he typically knows how we feel. We all nod. Despite our typical exuberance at the prospect of getting to go to town now that we're here and people are staring at us we are much more subdued and inclined to be obedient.

"Nellie, Em, no telepathy till I tell you we're clear, all right? Stand next to me as well. Now and then people will get wise to it and they don't typically react well," our dad says, "Patch, Dax, stand behind your sisters, you're bigger and people are more likely to be intimidated by you."

"I can't do anything," Patch says.

"But you're always looking like you can and that's all that counts. Jules, while the girls and I are chatting with them wander around a little bit not too far but enough to get them distracted," our dad says, "Now, they've always been polite to us before but they typically aren't fond of telepaths. At most I'd expect one of them to try to smack one of you which you can easily dodge."

"Permission to break fingers?" Nel asks, bouncing.

"Permission completely granted----only if someone tries to touch you though," he says, standing up unsteadily.

"I'll act like I'm watching Jules ineffectively," Miss Cora says.

"All right, move out," our dad says, holding out a hand to help Jules up.

"We've got this," Patch whispers to me, conspiratorially.

"I'd like to know why they called us in," I mutter.

Me too our dad says, in my head alone I suspect.

"We'll find out, at least you will," Dax says.

Bucknell constabulary is in a small building, and probably hasn't changed all that much in the last hundred or so years. It's damp, and a bit cold, lit by florescent lights not too recently installed. There are only three policemen on duty. Every one of them jumps a bit at our entrance.

Nobody in the lock up. Nobody here to question?

"You don't have anyone here for me to question," our dad says, frowning a little.

"No---no----Ms. Brightfield we requested one----" they always address Miss Cora first.

"Yeah, well, you got six they're a bit of a package what would you like our help with?" Miss Cora asks.

"A missing kid?" our dad asks, frowning more like he does when he's searching hard through their minds.

Girls, find out anything I think we're being played.

"Yes----a teenager. Originally the reports were that this girl might've gotten kidnapped. But now the parents say she probably ran away with her boyfriend, he's missing as well," the first policeman who was at the front desk says, haltingly, unsure of who to look at because he doesn't want to talk to us but our dad is scaring him;  he's new here but he knows telepaths who were burned like that in a rash of attacks in London about ten years ago; he was only a boy but he read it in the papers about the mutants who had been interrogating torturing more like prisoners of war had that done to them by anit-war anti mutant groups, and this one looks mad fucked up but he's still alive and glaring at everyone in the room.