Silence by Michelle Sagara Page B

like procrastinators everywhere, she knew that tidying stil counted as work, so she could both fail to do homework and feel that she’d accomplished something.
    But when the doorbel rang, Mercy came down the stairs to answer, and she paid for the pizza and carried it into the kitchen.
    She looked tired but slightly determined, and she had that smile on her face. “I’m sorry, Em,” she said. “I’m not sure what got into me there. Things are stressful at work.”
    Emma accepted this. She usualy asked what was causing the stress, but she didn’t actualy enjoy listening to her mother lie, so she kept the question to herself and nodded instead. She also got plates, napkins and cups, because her mother didn’t like drinking out of cans.
    They took these to the living room, while Petal walked between them. The pizza box was suspended in the air above him, of course. He was too wel trained to try to eat from the box when they put it down on the table in the den. He was not, however, too wel trained to sit in front of it and beg, and he had the usual moist puppy eyes, even at the age of nine.
    Emma fed him her crusts.
    He jumped up on the couch beside her and wedged himself between the armrest and her arm, which meant, realy, between the armrest and half her lap; she had to eat over his head.
    Her mother didn’t like to eat while the television was on, but even she could take only so much awkward silence before she surrendered and picked up the remote. They channel surfed their way through dinner.
    Eric stood in the graveyard, beneath the same dark wilow that he’d leaned against for half of the previous night. He carried no obvious weapons, and he hadn’t bothered to wear any of the less obvious protections because he didn’t expect to need them.
    He wanted to need them. He wanted to need them right now, in this place, but what he wanted didn’t matter; almost never had.
    The graveyard was silent. The distant sound of cars didn’t change that; they blurred into the background. His night vision was good; it had always been good. But he stared at nothing for long stretches. Once or twice he turned and punched the tree to bleed off his growing frustration.
    Not Emma, he thought bitterly.
    Emma.
    He tensed.
    I have never been mistaken before. I am not mistaken now. She approached, emerging from a forest of headstones.
    She is powerful, Eric.
    “You’ve got to be wrong,” he told her, grim and quiet. He expected an argument, was surprised when it failed to come.
    I will…leave it up to you, she said at last. I will not call the
    I will…leave it up to you, she said at last. I will not call the others yet.
    “Why?”
    Because she is different, to my eyes, and I have reasons to doubt that feeling. You know why.
    Eric swalowed and turned his attention back to a graveyard that remained empty for the rest of the night.
    EMMA WOKE UP ON FRIDAY MORNING, which had the advantage of being formal day at school. This meant, among other things, that she didn’t realy have to work out what she was going to wear; she was going to wear a plaid skirt, a blazer, and a white shirt. Ties were optional if you weren’t male, although most of the girls wore the non-stupid thin leather ones. They often wore makeup on Fridays as wel, because, face it, there often wore makeup on Fridays as wel, because, face it, there weren’t too many other things you could wear to set yourself apart.
    Emma, for instance, didn’t wear earrings. Watching a toddler grab a dangling hoop and rip through the earlobe—literaly—of a friend in grade seven had cured her of the growing desire to ever have her ears pierced. Admittedly, this was viewed as a bit strange, but they were her ears, and she wanted to keep them attached to the rest of her face.
    She did spend more time in the bathroom on Fridays, which was worked into what passed for an early morning schedule in the Hal household, partly because her mother did everything she could to stay in bed until