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Caine shot a look at Virtue, wondering if there was any way all of that amounted to a compliment. Probably not. From Diana it would have been a perfect blend of snark and admiration, but Virtue seemed to have decided at some point to take his name seriously. The kid had no sense of humor that Caine could detect. He was a straight arrow. It was baffling.
“If I’m so ruthless, how come I don’t walk down to the barrier and start slamming kids into the ground until they obey me?”
Virtue shrugged. “Because your birth mother or your adoptive parents might be out there watching?”
Caine bit at his thumbnail, a nervous habit when he was feeling thwarted.
“Also TV cameras,” Virtue went on.
“Sam fried Penny’s body in front of his—our—mother,” Caine said, just to argue.
Virtue said nothing.
“What?” Caine demanded.
“Well . . . Sam is stronger than you are,” Virtue said.
Caine considered throwing Virtue into the wreckage of the church. It would be satisfying. But if he did that, it would upset Virtue’s brother Sanjit, and Sanjit and Lana were close, and the last thing Caine needed was trouble with Lana, the Healer. She had saved his life, and despite the fact that he was mostly incapable of gratitude, it wasn’t wise to pick a fight with the closest thing they had to a doctor.
“We have visitors,” Virtue said. Caine heard it, too: a car’s engine. With gas as rare as food it was very unusual to hear an engine running.
A white van drove slowly—as slowly as only an inexperienced and frightened driver could go—down San Pablo Avenue. It came to a stop at a distance, and Caine found himself hoping it was trouble. Trouble he could handle. A fight would be a wonderful relief from the tedium.
Out stepped Edilio, and a second later, Sam.
So. Maybe it was a fight. Hah!
But Edilio was walking ahead with Sam hanging back and looking unusually reticent, even a bit abashed. Then Toto, the weird kid with the Spider-Man fixation, climbed out.
“We’re not here for trouble,” Edilio said, holding up his hand and crushing Caine’s hopes.
“True,” Toto affirmed.
Caine sighed. “Well, that’s just great. Okay. Choo, go grab a couple of chairs.”
“Caine,” Sam said, and nodded.
“Sam. What do you want here? Is the surf up?”
Sam nodded to Edilio. “This is his party.”
When the chairs came, they sat down around the large but rather forlorn desk. There was no chair for Toto. Caine didn’t care.
“I’d offer you milk and cookies, but we seem to be out,” Caine said. He put his feet up on the desk just to remind them who was boss here.
“It’s true. He has no milk. Or cookies.” Toto.
Edilio got right to it. “We can’t have this. We need to get food production back up. We need to think through how to deal with the lookers. We need rules and organization.”
“Yeah, brilliant,” Caine said. “I wish I’d thought of that. Choo, make a note: need people to get back to work. That’s genius. That’s what you came to say? Are you asking me to go down there and start smacking kids around?”
Edilio pretended not to notice the sarcasm. “No. In fact, I don’t think you can help, Caine. No one trusts you. No one will follow you.”
“That’s the truth,” Toto said. Then, in response to Caine’s withering glare, he added, “Spidey.”
“Oh, I see,” Caine said. “No one trusts me, but they will follow Saint Sammy here. Well, not to be impolite but—”
Caine’s hand came up fast, and the telekinetic punch hit Sam right in the chest. Sam went flying. In fact he flew straight backward through the air. Ten feet. At least—maybe even a dozen feet. And when he hit, he landed on his butt, and the momentum carried him into a backward roll.
