“Mom?”

Bridget sat down and took his hands in hers. “Last night, Andy, when you were touching the wall, what did you do?”

“I fixed the pipe.” He searched his parents’ faces. “Didn’t I?”

“Mr. Crowley cut a hole in the wall to look at it. The pipe did break there. At least . . .” Bridget stopped and looked helplessly at Ron.

His father crouched down beside him. “How did you fix the pipe, boy?”

“I felt it through the wall,” Drew said, trying to put the strange feelings into words. “The metal. I could feel where it was broken. Then my head got hot, and the heat went down my arm and into the wall. It made the pipe go back together.”

“You felt the metal.”

Drew nodded. “It feels funny. Like . . .” He paused to search for the right comparison. “Christmas morning.”

“Does it now?” Ron fished a handful of change out of his pocket and put it in Drew’s hand. “Can you show me with this what you did to the metal?”

Drew frowned at the coins. He couldn’t feel the dimes or the nickels or quarters. “Not with all of them.” He picked out five pennies and handed the rest back to Ron. Then he concentrated, bringing back the warm feeling in his head as he held his hand open.

The pennies began to dance a little, which made him smile, and then he made them stand on end and roll in a circle. He spun the pennies faster, pouring more of the heat into them, and they began to stretch and melt into each other.

“Dear God in Heaven,” he heard his mother whisper.

Drew felt proud. He made the pennies join together into a solid ring, and then pulled back some of the heat so it wouldn’t burn his hand. When the copper stopped spinning, it was a perfect circle, the same size as the pretty bracelets his mom liked to wear.

It was cool to see what he couldn’t last night, not with the wall in the way. He looked up at his dad. “That’s what I did, kind of. Is it okay?”

His mom’s fingers trembled as she took the bracelet. “It’s only a little warm.” She handed it to Ron, and then covered her face and began to sob.

“Mom?” Drew threw his arms around her. “I’m sorry. I won’t do it again.”

“No, darling. It’s all right. You didn’t do anything wrong.” She choked back her sobs and wiped her face quickly before she rubbed her hands over his arms. “It was just . . . a surprise, sweetheart. But a good one.”

Drew wasn’t so sure about that. The only time he’d seen his mother cry that hard was the day he’d woken up in the hospital.

“Andrew.” His father looked stern now. “Does anyone else know you can do this thing? Have you told your friends at school?”

“No, sir. Just you and Mom.”

“Good.” His gruff voice sounded less strained now.

“Now listen to me, boy. We can’t be telling people outside our family about this, ah, thing you do.”

He almost asked why, and then he considered what he could do. No one that he knew could make metal dance. Well, there was Magneto in the X-Men comics, but he was a villain. Drew could never be a bad guy. He squinted up at his father. “I’m kind of like a superhero, aren’t I? That’s why we have to keep it secret?”

His parents exchanged another long look before his father said, “Yes, Andrew. That’s why.”

Bridget squeezed his hands in hers. “You have to be careful with this, darling. Being able to make the metal dance is fun, I’m sure, but metal can be hard and sharp, and you could hurt yourself. Your friends, your teachers, or even me and your dad. Do you understand me?”

On some level Drew knew that metal would never hurt him, but his mother was right—he might accidentally burn someone when he made it hot, or cut them when he made it into different shapes. “Yes, ma’am.”

She kissed his forehead. “Now I think we need to go to Haskin’s Ice Cream Shop and have some hot fudge sundaes. I know I do, very badly.”

From that day on, Drew never had cause to regret revealing his ability to his parents. It didn’t change their feelings toward him, and if anything made them all closer. Over the years his father worked with him on learning the extent of his ability and what he could do with it, and in the process taught Drew more about copper, its properties and uses, than the average metallurgist knew.

Although she didn’t tell him until he’d graduated college, from that day on his mother quietly began trying to find his birth records and through them his biological parents. She and Ron had adopted him as a baby through a placement program run by their church, but there were almost no records of Drew’s birth aside from a hastily written police report about an older, unidentified man bringing him to an emergency room shortly after his birth and abandoning him there.

“It’s as if you just appeared out of nowhere,” Bridget said sadly. “Your mother was probably his daughter or granddaughter, and gave birth at home. At least he took you where you’d be safe and cared for.”

Thanks to the love of his parents, Drew had always lived comfortably with his ability. Even after learning of how he and the other Takyn had been meddled with, knowing what some of the other Takyn could do made him feel as if he’d gotten the kind end of the DNA swizzle stick. One of his oldest friends among the Takyn, a man he knew as Paracelsus, was plagued with visions of the past, often so real that more than once they had almost destroyed his mind. His newest friend, Jessa Bellamy, could see the darkest secrets in anyone’s soul just by touching them.

And then there was Rowan.

As he thought of her, Drew settled down at his computer to pull up the tracking program he’d initiated on Rowan. She didn’t know that before they had parted ways in Savannah, he had planted a GPS locator on her bike. Matthias, a former Roman soldier who had survived two thousand years of accidental burial in ice, and the oldest of the Takyn, hadn’t asked him to do it, but at the time Drew had thought it would be a good idea to keep tabs on Miss Independence. When he told Matthias about it, the older man had agreed it was a smart move.

Drew had followed her progress as she rode from Savannah toward Boston, where she had found a job working for another of their Takyn friends. The signal told him only where she was, not what she was doing, but it comforted Drew to know. Rowan might be tough as nails, but she was also young and on her own—and hurting.

Jessa had confirmed his suspicions. “I think Rowan left us because she was in love with Matthias. It would have been hard for her to stay and watch me with him, especially now with the baby coming.”

“How is Maximus Junior?” Drew asked.

“At the moment, trying to kick a hole through my spleen,” she said wryly. “But that’s better than the morning sickness. Listen, Drew, I know Rowan is proud and needs to go it alone and all, but she’s still so young. If she calls you—”

“I’ll talk to her,” he assured her. “Don’t worry. With some time and distance, I’m sure she’ll get over it.”

Tonight he expected her to be through New York City and well into Connecticut, but the signal track still showed her at the border between New Jersey and New York City.

“What are you doing, stopping for an egg cream?” he murmured as he zoomed in and watched the tiny bright light move across the Hudson. “You should have moved out here with me, girl. I’d have taught you to surf.” Just as soon as he learned.

Drew picked up his cordless and dialed the number to Matthias’s farm in Tennessee. Jessa answered, and after exchanging pleasantries put Matthias on the phone.

“Are you well?” was the older man’s first question.

“Well and truly bored. I haven’t been able to hack through GenHance’s new security measures. I think I taught my staff a little too well,” he said, referring to his old job working as chief of the technical department. “Any word from Rowan?”

“She has not called us. You?”

“No, but I’m looking at her right now. She’s screwing around somewhere in New York City.” He frowned as the signal fluttered, and then winked out. “Shit.” He attacked the keyboard, trying to boost the signal. No light. “She just disappeared off the radar.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means the locator isn’t putting out a signal anymore. Maybe she found it and tossed it in the river. I’d better give her a call. Hold on.” Drew picked up his disposable mobile phone, dialed Rowan’s number, and put it on speaker.

“This is not me,” Rowan’s voice said. “This is computerized bullshit pretending to be me. Leave a name and number at the tone, or this is all you’ll ever listen to.”

“Ro, it’s David. Give me a call back right away.” He switched off the mobile and spoke into the cordless. “Her phone is going straight to voice mail.”

“She may be angry about finding the locator.”

“Yeah.” Drew frowned at the screen map. “That’s probably it. I’ll wait for her to call.”

Rowan never slept well the first night in a new place, but for once her periodic insomnia didn’t keep her watching infomercials until dawn. She didn’t even bother to turn on the small television in the apartment Dansant was letting her use, but went into the bedroom, unfolded the long black futon, and flopped down on it to judge the fit. Most day-beds and singles were too short for her long frame, but this one was an oversized full with a decent mattress. The last thing she remembered doing was looking up at the beaded honey pine ceiling, and thinking it was a lot newer than the oak and cherry checkerwork parquet floor.

Then nothing. Just sweet, endless, dreamless sleep.

She opened her eyes to the same ceiling, and lay there for a time, letting the sunlight from the three old casement windows play over her. From the strength and position of the sun she judged it to be early afternoon, which meant she’d slept six or seven hours straight. She had plenty of time before her first shift started at six.