More of the sky was orange now, though a washed-out tint which looked almost gray. The clouds were sparse and far between, so it would be a cold day, but likely not rain too terribly much.

Quentin remained relaxed on the surface, but beneath it he still bore that anger from his nightmare. It wouldn’t go away, and while it lacked heat, he wasn’t sure he liked the frost it was now coated with. The ability to focus during a stressful situation was not unwelcome, but at what cost?

His own grandfather was petrified of him, scared so stiff that he refused to utter a single word.

But then that same man was willing to kill Quentin. Had already tried to do so.

Quentin pursed his lips, then used his gift to draw one of the shotguns up alongside himself. His hands remained in his lap as he broke the barrel and ejected both unspent cartridges.

Hastings’ eyes followed them as they bounced off the rug.

“I shall unload another,” Quentin murmured, “If you will answer a question.”

Hastings rocked his jaw as he looked up to Quentin. “That leaves you with seven questions,” he said.

“I can count.”

“And if I lie?”

Quentin shrugged and waved his fingers to dismiss the notion. “Why would you? It serves no benefit. In fact I would posit that it runs the risk of angering me further, and I’m already…” He paused. “Quite angry.”

Hastings swept his white hair back from his face and glanced out of the window. “You are too much like your father,” he spat.

“It seems that becoming a little more like him gets results, does it not?” Quentin idly rolled the shotgun cartridges in wide circles across the floor. “You are doubtless having your people contact the police already, so let’s crack on, hm? I imagine all the way out here we’re a good ten minutes from the nearest station.” He fixed Hastings with a glare and allowed the cartridges to roll to a halt of their own accord. “Where is Frederick?”

“How should I bloody know?” Hastings shifted in his chair. “If you’re going to waste your questions like that, boy, we won’t be here much longer.”

“You know,” Quentin murmured, “because he called you by phone.”

Hastings frowned at him. “So?”

“There is a marvelous thing. It’s called caller display. What happens is it shows you the bloody number you are being called from, right there on your phone.” Quentin curled his lip as he raised the next of the shotguns. “And you are telepathic. So you have access to the memories of your switchboard operators, you have the ability to find out where Frederick’s call originated. Therefore you do know where Frederick is.”

He didn’t break the barrel.

Hastings’ sweat began to trickle down past his eyebrows. “Didn’t they used to call you Thickie Icky?” he grunted.

“They were wrong,” Quentin said. “Now, I shall ask again. Where is Frederick?”

Hastings all but snarled at him. “London.”

He inclined his head. The shotgun ejected its cartridges, and Quentin set it down beside the other unloaded weapon. “There. Isn’t this more pleasant when you co-operate?” He waved his fingers toward a third gun and took aim with it floating a foot from his right shoulder. “Tell me what he is capable of. I want a full list of any abilities he may or may not have inherited from Mother.”

Hastings’ throat dipped as he swallowed. “And if Margaret could see you now?” he rasped.

“If she could see you?” Quentin countered. “Allow me to explain something to you. Frederick has kidnapped the man that I love, and has made it clear that the longer it takes me to track him down the worse off Laurence will be. Every second’s delay that you cause is an additional second of torment for Laurence to endure. I do not care what lies Frederick has told you. This is nothing more than Father’s ongoing insistence that I return home, and he has resorted to force at last. Every ability you possess, Frederick is using against Laurence. So I will use every ability that I possess to get to him as quickly as I possibly can.” He raised his chin and glared coldly down his nose at his own grandfather. “Now, tell me.”

Hastings’ eyes slowly widened as Quentin spoke. “You’ve turned out a poofter, have you? No wonder Hieronymus is pissed off.”

Quentin glanced to the shotgun and dipped it toward Hastings’ knees. “Which of your legs would you say is your least favorite?”

“He should be able to read and project thoughts,” Hastings hissed as the sweat trickled into his eyes. He wiped at it frantically with the back of one trembling hand, then blinked several times. “Take control over the senses, implant or remove memories, project illusions.” He waved the hand weakly. “As with people, so with animals. Even insects. Anything with a mind is his to command. Except the d'Arcy's. They took care to breed in resistance the moment they realized our potential.”

Quentin ejected the third pair of cartridges. “Breed in? What do you mean?”

Hastings licked his lips as he watched the gun lower safely to the floor. “Don’t be absurd. You know…” He tailed off, then shook his head. “Where do you think our abilities come from, Quentin?”

Quentin eyed the array of shotguns and debated whether rising to Hastings’ bait was worth the potential loss of a question.

Was the answer at all relevant to finding and rescuing Laurence?

No.

No, the answer could not influence the outcome in any way. Not that Quentin could perceive, anyway. It was another distraction.

“What is the range on these telepathic abilities?”

It was Hastings’ turn to look to the guns. Counting them, most likely, to see how much longer he needed to hold Quentin’s attention. “There is no range,” he finally said. “Especially not once a target mind is familiar to us.”

Quentin unloaded the next pair of shells as he nodded. “Then if Freddy is immune to your telepathy, you can find Laurence directly.”

Hastings grit his teeth and raised his head.

“You can,” Quentin mused. “Do so.”

“I’ve never been in his mind. I would need some sort of connection to him to find him.”

“Such as?”

Hastings shrugged. “A phone call, or perhaps to see him on live television. Even then it would be strenuous. The boy is a stranger to me.”

Quentin laced his fingers together and slowly popped his knuckles, one after the other. Then he rose from his chair and wandered toward the fireplace. “I did not kill her,” he said quietly. “I believe my father did that. If you choose to stick to Frederick’s lie above my own truth then there is little I can do about it. But if you honestly believe that I would kill anyone, let alone my own mother, when Frederick is the one actively torturing an innocent man right now, then we are done here. I presume that you are hardly about to inform the police that either you or I possess any form of psychic ability, correct?”

Hastings risked standing. He moved slowly, his hands in plain sight, palms toward Quentin. “It is in nobody’s interest for them to find out the existence of such things,” he muttered.

He nodded to himself. “You have attempted to kill me,” he said, his voice even and soft. “I have not attempted to kill you. As I see it, therefore, you owe me a debt.”

“The bloody bare-faced cheek-” Hastings spluttered.

“Quiet.” Quentin glanced sharply toward Hastings. “I never came here to hurt you, let alone to kill you, and yet you were willing to murder your own grandson in cold blood on the basis of a phone call. You are not immune to his gifts, are you? Not in the way that he is to yours.”

Hastings opened his mouth, but no sound emerged. His eyes widened slowly. “No,” he breathed. “We have learned to protect our minds from intrusion.”

“But it requires your participation,” Quentin suggested. “What if he breached your defenses while you slept? Or even simply overpowered you and then made you forget that he had?” He gestured to the remaining guns to unload them all at once. “You were willing to kill me, Grandfather. We may have had our differences, our upsets. I walked out, ran away, and left my whole life behind. But that is no reason to try to kill me, is it?”

His grandfather swayed slightly. “You came to kill me,” he said, uncertainty creeping in.

Quentin lifted an eyebrow, then glanced toward the window as the flash of blue lights began to bounce across the grounds. “I need to find Laurence,” he murmured as he returned his eyes to Hastings. “Without him, I cannot ever uncover the truth of Mother’s death. He can see the past. He can get to the bottom of it once and for all if we can save him from Freddy. But if I cannot, if Freddy does irrecoverable harm, I will hold you responsible.”

“That’s hardly rational!”

“Do I strike you as a rational man?” Quentin arched his brow higher, then stepped toward Hastings, drawing fire from the fireplace along with him. He balled it around his fists, allowed it to dance up his arms and fan out at his sides. “If I gave you that impression, I apologize.”

Hastings shrank back, raising his hands to protect his face. “Quentin, stop! For the love of God, stop!”

Quentin halted, then dismissed the fire. It burned itself out in a second. He blinked at the sight of his grandfather cowering like a beaten dog.

He had done this.

Nobody else.

The anger wasn’t going away. It was embedded in him, turning his blood to ice. His mind was clear. For perhaps the first time in his life he hadn’t had to struggle for control, to keep himself level-headed or composed. Everything slotted into place so that he was able to take action, think things through, reach sound conclusions, all without becoming the center of a tornado or blacking out.

And the result of this clarity was a terrified old man who Quentin had once loved.

“I’m leaving,” he said. He felt distant, but not the same sort of distance that he might usually feel in a stressful situation. Now he felt distant from himself, as though he had become something new. A butterfly of horror born of a chrysalis of rage.

He turned on his heel and left the room, heading toward the rear of the house. If the police arrived at the front he should be able to slip away through the gardens with a significant head start. He shattered the lock on one of the doors between him and his freedom, then shouldered it open and slipped away into the brightening dawn.

Not once did he look back.