Free Trolls in the Hamptons by Celia Jerome Page B

their clans. The same with the Royces, the Harmons, and the other connected families who married second or third cousins, or in-laws to relatives by marriage. They bred well and often, widening the gene pool.”
    Grant continued, and I was interested despite myself to hear that, with vast wealth, the Royce tribe started a foundation to keep track of their heritage. They knew little of genetics, at first, of course, but they did everything they could to nurture the “gift.” The institute was a way to foster the shards of magic wherever they found it, according to Grant, while keeping their members safe from harm. Which meant secret. They taught the students how to control their talents, and how to assimilate themselves in society.
    â€œThat’s why they wished every child from your home-town, which their descendants had settled, to come to them for training, for shelter, and for testing, to keep the records straight and complete. A different form of your No Child Left Behind program. Yes, they do encourage selective breeding, to wed power to power and widen the gene pool. No one is ever forced or coerced, but psychics seem drawn to others like them. At Royce proximity takes over, matches are made; new talents are given birth to. You are the result of one such union.”
    â€œWhich was wretched for both of my parents.”
    â€œLove matches the world over end in divorce. No one promised happily ever after, only similar understandings and possibly exceptional children, like you.”
    â€œI do not see where I am anything special. And I do not believe I was preordained to be a . . . whatever you called me. I think the students at the school are brain-washed, that’s all.”
    â€œBut the institute does much more than study genetics of the original families. Students from around the world come, anyone who appears able to foretell the future, read minds, control the weather, cure by touch. Swamis, shamans, witch doctors, fakirs, dowsers, you name it. Some of them would be hated in their own milieus, the way the half-breeds were despised and feared before the worlds split. People tend to distrust what they cannot understand.”
    Like I did not trust him, not at all. But I listened.
    â€œPsychics, though, can accept one another and work together. Great things have come from the institute’s laboratories. We haven’t lost a ship to the Bermuda Triangle in decades. The Loch Ness monster has been shrunk to manageable size for photo ops. Two asteroids have been moved before they posed danger to the planet. The lines between our world and the other have been kept impenetrable. Except now the labs have sensed a disturbance, centering around you.”
    â€œAll I did was write a story about a troll!”
    â€œYou visualized him. Perhaps from reversion memory. Perhaps he called to your subconscious mind. You never went to the village school and you never came to England to have your potential assessed. The deans are not certain what you can do. They have strict codes about not interfering unless the subject is a danger to him or herself, or the group, or the world.”
    Just what I needed, someone else telling me I was not living up to expectations. Once again, Grant was insinuating I was a loose cannon, a single-handed wrecking ball. Well, screw him. Not literally, of course.
    I fetched the last of the wine. I needed it, even if it gave me a headache. And how long could Susan and Van sit with Mrs. Abbottini anyway? Didn’t old ladies and cops and chemo patients need their rest?
    Grant turned down a glass, making me feel scuzzy for wanting a drink. I took one sip and set it aside. “It’s growing late,” I hinted.
    He ignored the hint. “Do you recall a few years back when a young woman from Paumanok Harbor got pregnant?”
    â€œWhich one? Paumanok girls get knocked up regularly.” Which was another reason I didn’t have high regard for the place where