“Her name is Sanje, and I guess she has ways of making Gifts like mine stronger and easier to use.” Just because she’d never heard of anyone who could do that, it didn’t mean that ability didn’t exist, right? And at least one of the Companions seemed to agree. She remembered how Sanje had specifically said “I can work with this” when she’d demonstrated her Gift, so probably Sanje couldn’t work with everything. Maybe she was a kind of Mindhealer. That would make sense. That would make a lot of sense. If you could Heal something, you could probably make it stronger too.

Or maybe it wasn’t a matter of making it stronger, maybe she was just making it easier to use? And it was Abi herself who was going to make it stronger by practicing with it?

And maybe I should stop speculating and just follow her instructions. As long as my Gift gets stronger, more reliable, and easier to use, that’s all that matters. How it gets that way makes no difference.

“Can she do that with us? Make it so we can Farsee other people besides our families?” Tory wanted to know, interrupting her thoughts.

“And just who do you want to spy on, hmm?” she asked. “Little busybody—”

“Anyone Papa wants us to,” came the unexpected answer, as Kee nodded vigorously.

“Well, you’ll have to ask Sanje that yourself,” Abi replied, “Because I don’t know.”

“Can’t you ask?” Kee popped up with. “Then we could listen.”

“No, I won’t,” she replied. “Ask her yourself. If she can, and she wants you to know she can, then she’ll tell you.”

“That’s not fair! She’s helping you and you didn’t ask her to!” Tory protested. Kee looked doubtful.

“No, but that’s because I didn’t have to ask her. Someone else did, someone important, way more important than me. I was ordered to work with her, probably by the same person. And don’t pout,” she added, as Tory looked stormy. “Perry got to go off with Papa and got Larral when he was old enough. Now I’m getting my Gift trained up because I’m old enough. If you two want something done to make your Gifts stronger, you need to talk to Mama and Papa and see what they say.”

“Don’t want to,” Kee said, but in a thoughtful way, not a rebellious one. “Don’t want people to know yet.”

“Well, all right, then. In that case, you’ll just have to accept that the only people you can Farsee are family members.” There. She’d just tied them all up in their own logic and put a neat little bow on top.

Tory made a face. So did Kee, but it wasn’t the same face. It was more like one of surprise. “Abi, c’n I stay here overnight with Tory?”