C3 THREE

Nothing Either Good or Bad

DRAKE

"There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so"

— William Shakespeare, Hamlet

SOME KNOWLEDGE, SOME truths, were best left hidden. Which is why our school had a general library for any student or staff who wanted to read or study, and a private library that only a few of us had access to.

We even had a secret entrance, right out of a movie. One of the books on the top shelf in the general library wasn’t really a book. If you pulled it, that bookshelf swung out, revealing a secret room where the rarest books were kept—books that held dangerous knowledge.

That’s where I was when Father Patrick found me. I had books spread out before me and a notebook filled with quotes, page numbers and references. The books in this room weren’t allowed to be checked out. If you wanted to study them, you had to suffer the cramped space with no windows. Just walls of old, musty books.

An oak table sat in the middle of the room with four chairs. To the right, in front of the section on ancient magicks and rituals, sat a love seat that had seen better days, and on the opposite side of the room an overstuffed chair squatted like an unwelcome relative who refused to leave.

Father Patrick pulled up a chair across the table from me and sat down, his emotions pouring into me—worry, fear, anxiety. “Drake, I’ve been looking for you everywhere.” He looked at the books I’d been studying and frowned, his energy shifting—not to anger, but something close. Frustration, maybe. I was still learning to master my new gifts as an empath and seer, and still adjusting to the loss of my other gifts of mind control and super strength. “Still trying to find out information about your father?” Father Patrick asked.

I sighed, unwilling to get into yet another argument with the old priest about this subject. “Beleth can’t be just a genetic experiment. He unlocked powers in me I never knew I had. It doesn’t make sense." I'd googled Beleth and gotten a bunch of crap on demons, and that didn't make sense either. "And now, with what I’ve seen, I know there’s more in the world than just humans modified with paranormal powers. There are witches and druid shifters and probably a lot more I haven’t even heard of. So, what is he? What is Beleth, and what am I? A demon?"

Father Patrick turned away, ignoring my question. When I thought our conversation was over, he chuckled. "My father was a technician, you know, for a time. Whenever our cat chewed through a wire, he'd always fix it himself, and I watched. I loved watching my dad work. Eventually, he got a job as a policeman, long hours, barely home. I couldn't watch my dad work anymore. He couldn't fix our wires anymore. Didn't have the time." He smiled, as if remembering an old joke. "One day, the cat chewed through the TV cord again. 'I can fix it, Mom,' I said. 'Don't worry about it,' she said, 'I'll call a technician.' But we didn't need a technician. I'd seen my dad fix wires a hundred times. Cut away the damaged area. Remove the insulation. Connect the wires by twisting. While my mom took a bath, I spliced the wires together. They were hard to reach behind the TV, so I pulled them closer, and a numbness bit my arm. I jumped back, clutching my shocked hand. 'Are you okay?' yelled my mother, who had just come down stairs. She hugged me as I cried. 'I just wanted to fix it like Papa,' I said. 'You? What do you know of fixing wires?' she asked. 'I've seen Papa do it a hundred times,' I said through tears. 'So?' she said. 'You don't know enough.' She unplugged the broken wire. 'If this had a higher voltage, you could have died.' I cried harder at that, and my mother took me to bed. And that day I learned that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing."

"Because if you knew nothing about splicing wires, you'd never have tried," I said.

He flexed his hand open and closed. "Incomplete knowledge brings harm."

"So give me more knowledge," I said. "If I know more about what I am, then maybe it could help me control my powers."

Father Patrick sighed. "What I know is very little, and it wouldn't help."

I glared at him, sterner than I could ever remember. "Let me decide that."

Father Patrick wasn’t normally one to keep things from people, particularly when his secretiveness affected them personally, but this was one topic he refused to budge on. “My boy, I have known you most of your life. I’ve watched you become the man you are today, watched you battle your demons and come out stronger. I’ve seen the kind of father you are, the kind of husband you are, and I couldn’t be more proud. Please trust me on this. There’s more to Beleth than you know, and you’re better off not knowing. Until he decides to tell you the whole truth.”

"If he decides."

"And if he doesn't, so be it. In this, he knows better than me."

I opened my mouth to argue, to point out that I was an adult and had a right to make my own decisions, to learn what I wanted, but he held up his hand, his eyes sagging and tired. “Please, can we table this for another time? I came here to talk to you about a pressing matter.”

He told me about the message from the Vatican and the threat to our school. My heart sank. “So we could lose the school? Just like that?”

Father Patrick shrugged. “It all depends on the Church, but yes.”

"I thought you owned this property. This doesn't make any sense."

"I do, in a manner of speaking," he said. "But it's complicated. The short story is, they can and will take this away from us if they choose to."

I closed the book in front of me and crossed my arms, leaning back in my chair. “We could relocate to the property Sam bought in Hawaii.” She’d come into quite an inheritance when she discovered her father had been the man in charge of the Rent-A-Kid school. When he died, all the wealth he’d built up went to her.

“It wouldn’t be big enough for us now, not with the growth we’ve experienced,” he said.

“What about the O’Conners? I could talk to Derek. They have a lot of properties and money.” Derek’s family owned Rose Botanicals and had more money than God, if the news could be believed. I never asked Derek outright how much he was worth—guys just didn’t talk about that kind of stuff—but I knew it was a lot.

“There’s more,” Father Patrick said. “It’s not just the school. I’m still a priest, still under the control of the Vatican. They could reassign me.”

That stopped me short. “Reassign you? They don’t own you. We can’t lose you. You run this place.”

He shook his head. “They own me as much as the military owns a soldier. Plus, relocating these kids after everything they’ve been through would be too much for them. They need stability, a place to call home. I think our best bet is to work with the person they’re sending and see if we can avoid any major upheavals. I’ve already talked with Bernard about it, and he’s in agreement.”

Professor George Bernard Shaw was my best friend Brad’s journalism instructor and had come close to exposing Rent-A-Kid years ago, before they shot him and destroyed the evidence he’d collected. He’d been instrumental in helping us free Sam’s friends and shut down the whole organization at last, and now he helped run this school.

I needed to call Brad and see how he was doing. He’d been traveling the country doing follow-up stories on paranormals for his ever-growing blog.

“Okay,” I nodded. “We’ll just have to make it work when this guy gets here. Though, I’m not sure how the Catholic Church is going to view our way of life.”

Father Patrick chuckled. “Neither am I, my boy. Neither am I.”

Leaving the books on the table, we stood and left the library so I could find Sam and tell her about this. In the hall Curtis ran up to us, his face beaming with joy that I could feel vibrating from him in waves. “Father Patrick, I’m glad I found you. I have a favor to ask.”

An image of the future filled my mind, and I smiled, knowing what he was about to say and happy for him.

“Paul said yes. We’re getting married, and I was wondering if you’d do the ceremony?”

Any other priest would have balked at the thought of marrying two gay men, but I didn’t feel any doubt from Father Patrick as he patted Curtis on the shoulder and smiled. It was one of the reasons we loved him, and one of the reasons I feared this new intrusion from the Church. “Of course, my boy. I’d be delighted. I’m so glad Paul was able to sort through his own fears to make this decision.”

Despite everything happening that could screw things up for everyone I loved, I recognized that we had to seize the little moments of happiness when we could.

Life was too short not to.