Secret Keepers

Chapter 26

   Time seemed to pause. My brain quit working. Everything went silent. I opened my mouth to speak, but my vocal cords had stopped functioning too. I shook my head and somehow managed to speak one word.

   "What?!"

   He sighed and flopped back in the chair. "I'm telepathic. I can read minds and help bring memories back. Don't ask me how, but I've been able to do it since before I was born."

   I stared at him and then gasped. "Can you bring back a memory for me?"

   He gazed off at a painting to the side. "Well I already have. I was the one you spoke to when you were little. Along with telepathy I have short bursts of prophetic visions in my sleep. I've dreamt about you a lot. It started as seeing you as a little girl. Then I started seeing you as a teenager kissing and doing other physical activity with Cutter."

   I narrowed my eyes. "You saw all that?"

   "Not all of it. Don't worry. Just short little visions that I've attempted to forget. But then, as of late, I've been seeing you here in the castle, but you were wearing an almost royal looking gown. It was only one dream, but it's making me curious."

   I shook my head. "That's not possible. I'm not a royal so they wouldn't  just let me wear clothes like that. But can I please ask you a question? One I've been meaning to ask for a long time."

   "Greenwich? Yeah. I've heard you thinking about it a lot. I guess I can tell you. Tracker thinks it's bad, but it actually isn't as bad as he says."

   I cocked my head at him. "So you must know everything there is to know about the guys, huh?"

   He nodded and sighed. "Yeah. And sadly that's why I'm so quiet. I don't wanna let them know. Rage dreams about his mother as an angel and it makes him wake up crying. Runner's been crying a little bit lately about his sister. Slice draws naked women when he's stressed and it  become a bad habit. Tracker scrapes the faces off of gold coins to shun his rich history. And Cutter gave himself his name from the fact he sliced his wrists when he was a teenager. And you. You hide in quiet rooms when you feel you need to think."

   I looked away and he nodded. "Yeah. You don't know how often I accidentally tune in because you're thinking so loud."

   I sighed. "Greenwich?"

   "Oh right. Well other than you, only one person ever knew about my powers. That was one of my favorite prostitutes, Mary. I didn't want a girlfriend if I could help it so I just stuck to whores. It was easier to get over every morning. Mary knew I was telepathic and she loved to think as loud as she could to try and turn me on with her thoughts. It usually worked. But one night a group of beered up fishermen who were supposed to be returning to their boat decided to go upstairs and burst in on a random room. Our room."

   He sighed and shook his head. "It's not very pleasant being intruded on by a group of sweaty fishermen who smelled exactly like their line of work, but using telekinetic abilities, I made them think we were hallucinations and that they thought they were nuts. But one of them happened to get curious and he ran up, grabbing Mary's hair. They realized it was a lie I'd made them think and so they tried to attack us. They managed to get Mary away from me, but I was forced to threaten them with my powers. The couple of them trying to fight me were terrified of the supernatural so when started speaking inside their heads, they ran for the hills."

   He paused one more time and I saw a little sadness come to his eyes. "When I turned around, Mary was dead. They'd killed her in their angered state. I was angry with them and so I threaten to drive them insane with their own thoughts if they didn't leave the country as soon as possible. So they fled and I was forced into hiding lest word get out about the telekinetic fifteen year old playing with whores in Greenwich."

   He shrugged and I sighed. "I'm so sorry. It seems like everyone has had some sort of dark thing happen to them involving the death of someone in their life. At least you've had Slice."

   He nodded and smiled. "Its weird. I actually remember using my powers before I was even born. I would communicate with Slice in the womb and we'd communicate back and forth in a mental language. I even spoke to my mother once. It panicked her a little, but she blamed her lack of sleep. So I quit talking to her like that. It was neat though, talking in the womb. Like I was truly alive before I'd been born."

   I smiled and sighed, looking off elsewhere. "I have another question. You called me a ahadow when I was little. Then was it you who named me? Not Cutter?"

   He shrugged. "Well I came up with it, but he thinks he came up with it because when he was thinking of names, I was constantly using my powers to make him think of Shadow."

   "Oh okay. One more question. What do the others think of me? Honestly."

   He focused all of a sudden on the rug on the floor, his eyes getting a far away glazed look in them. "Slice sees you as a best friend he can talk to. Rage views you as a mother. Tracker sees you as being a friendlier addition to the team. And Runner sees you as a replacement for his little sister."

   It took a few minutes for this all to sink in. I closed my eyes and decided I'd only ask one more question. "Okay. Last one. If I was six when you first saw me, Cutter couldn't have been older than sixteen. But I know that he ran from home at age fifteen. How is that possible? It sounds like you guys did your job for many years."

   He shook his head and stared off at a stained glass window. "You know yourself that you can have a lot of experiences in a short time frame. He did that job for only six months at most. Rage, the last one to join, only did it for about three."

   I scoffed and stood up, angrily kicking a chair off to the side. "I'm just so frustrated! None of this ever adds up to me! It feels like there's a whole other dimension to all of this that I still don't know about!"

   Dagger stared solemnly at the floor. "That's because there is. The other dimension has to do with the king, the noblemen, and Tracker's inheritance."