Spoonbenders

That simple request turned into an attempted kidnapping by a pedophile—at least, that’s what it looked like at first. Starting sometime when he was four years old, and repeating at frequent intervals, his mother had described exactly how it would go down: a windowless van would pull up alongside him, and a strange man would lean out and offer to show him something really neat. Maybe it would be a puppy. Or a Game Boy. And what was Matty supposed to do? Run, of course. Run away and find Mom.

Now that it was finally happening, though, Matty found himself rooted to the hot sidewalk, the cold milk jug sweating in his hand. The predator, an old black man with white hair, had leaned out of his driver’s-side window of a silver van and said, “Hey, Matty. Got a second?”

And what did Matty do? Smile uncertainly and say, “Uh…”

“Destin Smalls would like to talk to you.”

Smalls? The guy who’d been on the phone with Grandpa Teddy?

“He’s a friend of your grandfather’s. And your grandmother, Maureen.”

No puppy. Just a phenomenally intriguing teaser. Still, a cue to run. Instead, Matty waited as the man stepped out and walked around the front of the silver van. He moved stiffly, as if he had a bad hip. Then he waved for Matty to follow.

Matty obeyed. It seemed rude not to. “I considered her a friend, too,” the driver said and held out a hand. “Clifford Turner. It was an honor to serve with her.”

Serve with her? Holy cow, Matty thought. The government stuff. It was all real.

Cliff pulled back the van’s side door, which had the effect of a magician pulling back a curtain to reveal…a huge white man in a blue suit, crammed into the far captain’s seat.

“Matt. Pleased to meet you in person. I’m Agent Destin Smalls.” His voice was low and confident. And he’d called him Matt. He gestured to the empty seat next to him. “Come on in. It’s air-conditioned.”

Okay, that was straight out of the pedophile playbook. “I have milk,” Matty said.

“I see that.”

“I mean, my family’s waiting for me,” Matty said. “They’ll come looking for me.”

“This won’t take a minute. I just wanted to introduce myself.”

Matty looked at Cliff. “It’ll be fine,” the man said. “I promise.”

Matty climbed in and set the milk jug on the carpeted floor. Cliff shut the door from the outside, sealing them in.

The back of the van, behind the seats, was mostly dark, but blinked and hummed with electrical equipment. The air-conditioning (which did feel nice) was probably necessary to keep all those machines running.

Smalls saw him looking. “That’s high-tech stuff. Advanced telemetry.”

“What’s it do?”

“It helps us find gifted individuals, Matt. People like…”

Matty tried to keep his face from spasming.

“…your grandmother.”

“Oh really?” Matty said. The words came out an octave higher than he intended.

“Indeed. How much has your grandfather told you? Did you know that Maureen Telemachus was the most important operative we had during the Cold War?”

Classic Cold War, Frankie had said. High-stakes ops.

“Cuba? Maureen was there,” Smalls said. “The Straits of Gibraltar? She told us what happened when the USS Scorpion exploded and died. These were tense times. Both sides so terrified of each other, we were in very real danger of the world ending. Our job—your grandmother’s job—was to find out where the Russians were keeping their missiles and keep our eyes on them. The worst-case scenario was if the enemy believed they could launch with impunity.”

Matty didn’t know what to say, so he said, “Wow.” He was pretty sure this was the most important conversation of his life and didn’t want it to grind to a halt just because he didn’t understand most of what Agent Smalls was telling him. He knew about the Cuban Missile Crisis, but the rest of it was a mystery.

“Indeed. And the Communists had their own psi-war program as well. We were constantly on guard against psychic incursion.”

“So, Grandma Mo and the Russians, did they, like, fight it out?” Matty asked.

“Fight?”

“Psychically,” Matty said. “Like, on the astral plane.”

“Where did you get that from? Comic books?”

“No,” Matty said defensively. If his mom were here, she’d know he was lying. Psychic duels were straight out of the X-Men.

“You’re not far wrong. The gifted can sense each other. In fact, Cliff out there? He’s detected spikes of activity in this area.”

Matty felt his heart thump in his chest. Cliff detected him? Matty lost track of the conversation; his panic deafened him. Did they know what he’d been up to with Uncle Frankie? Would they turn him in to the cops?

Smalls, though, had continued to talk. “You must know your family is special,” he said in a confiding tone. “Not just your grandmother. Your uncles, Buddy and Frankie, used to have abilities. Your mother, too.”

Matty played dumb. “That was just an act. A stage show. They got debunked.”