Tempest by Kelly Meding Page B

floating around in Aaron’s subconscious from when Aaron took over Miguel’s body, had been fluent in Spanish. This gave an extra authentic edge to Aaron’s performance and a good excuse to talk as little as possible. He gave Simon a polite half bow, but didn’t shake his hand.
    I gotta admit, the subtle exchange impressed me. Simon had made it a point to avoid touching Aaron since discovering what he was, and not just because he didn’t want his face borrowed. Simon was telepathic, and with line-of-sight contact, he could get into your mind and manipulate your thoughts and actions. I bet the melting pot of identities that was Aaron’s brain was a scary mess no sane telepath would really want to visit.
    “How was your flight?” Simon asked.
    “Quiet,” I replied. “This our ride?”
    “Yes. We can stop by my place first to drop off your bags, and then head over to Ellis Island to get started.”
    “Sounds good.”
    A somber man in the uniform of a corrections officer started up the engine as soon as we got inside the car, his attention firmly on the road, not on his passengers. He drove without getting any orders from Simon, so this was either a consistent arrangement, or he’d gotten our itinerary ahead of time. My money was on the latter.
    Simon lived in Jersey City, in an old part once known as Communipaw. Once a moderately historical area, it was now a prison town. Most of the people who resided there worked for the prison, or worked in a job that supported the prison and its employees. The driver pulled up to a three-story house on Communipaw Avenue, nestled between a redbrick industrial building and a smaller garage-type shack. None of the three buildings looked occupied, and ours was the only car on the street.
    The old house had iron bars over every one of the windows and the front door—to keep intruders out, or to keep Simon in?
    “The middle floor is mine,” Simon said as he led us up a steep, narrow flight of stairs.
    Aaron followed behind him, while I brought up the rear, my bag slung over one shoulder. The stairs were clean, the walls freshly painted, and the faint sounds of music drifted from somewhere in the building. At the first landing, Simon used a key to open the only door, which led us into a short hallway with two more doors. The door on the left was open, and the music was coming out of it. The right door was locked, and Simon reached past Aaron to hand me a key.
    “That’s the empty apartment you two can use,” Simon said, pointing at the closed door. “I put two air mattresses and some blankets in there. I’m sorry it’s not furnished beyond the bare essentials.”
    “Don’t worry about it,” I said. “It’s not like we expected anyone to cough up a five-star hotel stay while we’re here.”
    “Daddy?” A familiar child’s voice shouted the question. Then the music went silent, and small feet pounded across the floor toward us.
    Simon’s face lit up in a broad, genuine smile, and he turned to catch Caleb as the gangly boy launched himself at Simon like they’d been apart for weeks. Caleb clung to his father like a spider monkey, all thin arms and legs, and laughed like they’d just shared a funny joke.
    “I’m only home for a few minutes,” Simon said. “Remember I said we’re having guests for a couple of days?”
    “Uh-huh.” Caleb nodded solemnly as he eyeballed me and Aaron. He had Simon’s nose, but everything else about the boy was from his mother—whose name we’d never confirmed, but had narrowed down based on the fact that Caleb was half Chinese, and so was only one female ex-Bane. He’d been through all kinds of hell from the day he was born (under God knows what conditions) and spent the next five years living in squalor, his existence undetected by the prison guards, only to have a psychotic murderer invade his brain for a few minutes last January.
    It was amazing he could still seem so . . . adjusted.
    Oh yeah, he also once stopped a bullet