Gone

powers, Caine had insisted on keeping her close. To Diana, she remained a disturbing mystery. Her eyes seemed always to be looking at something far away. She rebuffed attempts at conversation. Not angrily, not like she was upset by any of them, more like she was in a completely different place, worrying, reflecting, seeing something completely different.
    There was a shadow over Lana. A hollowness in her eyes.
    Caine paced back and forth, from the open kitchen area into the family room, back and forth, back and forth. He had started biting his thumb again in that stupid way he had. He stopped and threw up his hands and asked Diana, “Where is he? Where is Bug?”
    Bug was one of the freaks who had signed up with Caine right at the start. Long before the FAYZ, back when Caine was first discovering his powers, learning to control them and learning to recognize others like himself. In those days it was all about getting control of the school environment: Coates had never been a nice place. Half the kids in the school were one kind of bully or another. Caine had just been determined to be the head bully, the bully who could not be bullied himself.
    Bug had always been a little creep in Diana’s eyes. He didn’t rise to the level of a true bully, he was closer to being a Howard-like creature, a bootlick, a toady. He was just ten years old, a nose-picking gross-out artist. But then his power manifested one day when Frederico threatened to kick his butt. Bug, in terror, had disappeared.
    Only he didn’t really disappear, it was more that he seemed to blend in, like a chameleon. You could still see him if you knew he was there. But his skin and even his clothes would take on the protective coloration of whatever was behind him, like a mirror that reflected his background. The result could be pretty creepy. Bug standing in front of a cactus would seem to be green with needles poking out.
    “You know Bug,” Diana said. “He’ll show up to get his strokes. Unless Sam or one of his people spotted him.”
    At that moment the front door opened and closed. Something moved that was hard to see, hard to make sense of, like a wave in the wallpaper.
    “Here’s Bug now,” Diana announced.
    Caine leaped at him. “What did you see?”
    Bug shut down the camouflage and emerged clearly, a short, brown-haired, buck-toothed kid with a freckled nose. “I saw a lot. Sam is in town, right across from the day care. He doesn’t look like he’s doing anything.”
    “What do you mean he’s not doing anything?”
    “I mean, he’s standing there eating Mickey D’s.”
    Caine stared. “What?”
    “He’s eating. Fries. I guess he’s hungry.”
    “Does he know Drake and Pack Leader have the littles?”
    Bug shrugged. “I guess so.”
    “And he’s just standing there?”
    “What did you expect him to do?” Diana demanded. “He knows we’ve got the kids. He’s waiting to hear what we want.”
    Caine bit savagely at his thumb. “He’s up to something. Heprobably figures we have a way to watch him. So he’s making sure we see him. Meanwhile, he’s up to something.”
    “What can he do? Drake and the coyotes are in there with the kids. He has no choice. He has to do whatever you tell him to do.”
    Caine wasn’t convinced. “He’s up to something.”
    Lana stirred herself, looked at Caine, seeming to hear him for the first time.
    “What?” Diana asked her.
    “Nothing,” Lana said. She patted her omnipresent dog. “Nothing at all.”
    “I need to go do this now,” Caine said.
    “The plan was to wait till we were close to the birthday hour. That way he loses no matter what.”
    “You think he can take me, don’t you?”
    “I think he’s had a couple of days to prepare,” Diana said. “And he’s got more people. And some of his people, especially the freaks from Coates, really, really want you dead.” She stepped closer to him, right up in his face. “Every step of the way, Caine, you listen to me, then you do exactly what I’ve told you not to do. I told you to let the freaks go who didn’t want to play along. But no, you had to listen to Drake’s paranoid advice. I told you to go into Perdido Beach and make a quick deal for food. You have to go try and take over. Now you’re going to do whatever you want, and you’ll probably end up screwing things up.”
    “Your faith in me is touching,” Caine said.
    “You’re smart. You’re charming. You have all this power.But your ego is out of