Wildcard Read Free Page A

mention her name
to anyone. She wrote everything except why, because she had no
answer for that. She couldn’t tell him what blocked their
happiness. She might not want to if she knew; the well might be too
dark. At the end, the most important – “Je t’aime toujours,” I will always love you.
    She had to believe he could stay hidden. He
knew how. Just tap into who he was and combine it with the training
she had given him.
    She ached for more time, longed to see him
grow up. What a beautiful youth he would be, and she couldn’t share
it. They would never meet again.
    She brushed something off his coat. “Let’s
play our game.”
    “Which one?”
    “Crowds. Blend into the crowd. I want to
play it longer this time. More than a few hours. Keep your pack.
Disappear.” She leaned over, lifted his chin with a finger and held
it.
    “Karl, you must disappear.”
    She had been forced to learn psi-techniques
as a child. Though she hated them, she used them on him frequently,
planting knowledge and tactics which his young mind could not
understand, but would be useful later. Now this one: disappear.
    “What?” He didn’t understand. Or he did and
didn’t want to. He wanted to pretend they were just playing one of
their spy games for a little while longer. She let him play because
she needed to pretend, too, just for one moment more.
    “Go, disappear. Into the crowd.”
    She dug her nails into her palm, using pain
to drive against the tears.
    “Where do we meet? When do we meet?”
    She couldn’t lie, couldn’t tell the truth.
“Look in your bag in one hour. There’s a note.”
    He pulled up his shoulders, a little boy who
needed to be a man. “Anything else?”
    “No, little rabbit.” She raised her head,
then exhaled with a steady push to cut the anguish for another
second. She looked back at him, put her hands on his face, and bit
her lip. “There’s nothing else.” She choked the words out.
    “Are you OK, mama?”
    She nodded with a weak smile, and he turned
to walk away.
    “Wait. Come here.” She hugged him, kissed
his head, and held the kiss for a long minute. Thankfully, he
hugged her back and asked no more questions. She spun him around
quickly so that he wouldn’t see the welling in each eye. “Go,” she
said, with a false cheer and a slight push. “Don’t look back.”
    He turned and left, humming, then
disappeared into the crowd.
    “Go, Karl,” she whispered.
musketeer
    Juniper had to die. Difficult, Dartagnan
knew, and unfortunate, but unavoidable. Dartagnan had no reason for
lying to Martha and telling her he was Juniper. He did it on a
whim. It meant nothing to her anyway. He liked the wrongness of it.
Juniper would never have manipulated a human in such a specific
way. Where Juniper operated in power structures; Dartagnan dealt
with individuals. And he desperately wanted to meet them, but he
couldn’t - not yet.
    Dartagnan had many human Named, and
manipulated their lives for the purpose of study and curiosity. He
loved to create heroes, get strange couples together, encourage
people to try things they would not otherwise, sabotage people’s
dreams and watch, then create unexpected opportunities when the
people were at their worst.
    He once tortured a child to death and forced
the parents to watch in separate rooms. He served them coffee and
tea, but would not let them leave the room with a large glass
window looking into the chamber and giant screen televisions
showing the details of the suffering. He studied the parents after
that, recording their divorce in minute detail and biographically
writing their lives. He found it fascinating.
    He actually considered the
Dartagnan aspect, his primary face, to be that of a Romantic. He
loved nature, theoretically. Free expression, high, beautiful
things, the common man, lofty ideals. He strove to master paradox
as part of his persona. And to be more human seeming. He had read
all the books ever written by humans. He wondered if he could