The hideout felt different with nine people in it.
Not crowded exactly. The house had enough space for all of them, rooms that had sat empty since they first arrived now occupied, bags in corners, an extra chair pulled up to the kitchen table, the bathroom schedule negotiated with the particular diplomacy of people who had not grown up sharing space and were learning how in real time.
It felt fuller.
That was the word. Fuller in the way that a thing is fuller when it has more of what it was always supposed to contain.
Samantha had taken the room at the end of the hall, the one with the window that faced the open sky, which nobody had suggested and nobody had argued with because it was obviously correct. Engel had taken the room beside hers, and on the first night Katherine had heard them talking through the wall, low and unhurried, the sound of two people recalibrating to each other in a new space after a long time of having only one space between them.
Jasper had taken the room across from Carlyle.
On the first morning Katherine had passed Carlyle's open door and found the two of them sitting on opposite beds with Carlyle's collection of languages spread between them in the form of various books and Jasper looking at a Latin text with the expression of someone deeply curious about something they had not expected to be curious about, and Carlyle explaining something with the animated focus he got when someone was genuinely interested in what he knew, which was Carlyle's favorite thing in the world.
She had kept walking and smiled to herself.
Grace had taken the room beside Dean's, which had not been planned but which felt right in the way that things feel right when they are the natural result of a history that doesn't need to be explained. On the first evening Katherine had heard them in the kitchen after everyone else had gone to bed, two voices talking quietly for a long time, the sound of years being carefully sorted through.
The first full day back Thomas called everyone into the living room.
Not for a meeting exactly. More for a reckoning. He stood in the center of the room and looked at the assembled group, all of them, the original ones and the new ones both, and did the thing he did when he was about to say something that required everyone's full attention, which was to say nothing for a moment first and let the room settle into itself.
"We have been moving for weeks," he said. "Finding people, traveling, convincing, establishing trust. All of that was necessary and all of it was right." He looked at Samantha and then at Jasper. "And now we have two more chosen ones in this house and that means we have two more people who need to understand how to use what they have in a fight." He looked at Tierney. "We start tomorrow."
"Tonight," Katherine said.
Thomas looked at her.
"We start tonight," Katherine said. "Not a full session. Just introductions. Let them see what everyone can do and let everyone see what they can do." She looked at Samantha and then at Jasper. "We've been building something here for months. They need to feel part of it as fast as possible. Not tomorrow. Tonight."
Thomas looked at her for a moment.
Then he looked at Tierney.
Tierney had the expression she got when Katherine said something she had already thought herself and was pleased to hear out loud.
"Tonight," Tierney agreed.
The basement had not changed but it felt different with the new configuration of people in it. The familiar arrangement of dummies and weapons racks and the open floor where they had drilled for months now held two people who had never stood in it before, and the group arranged itself around them with the natural ease of people showing someone else their home.
Samantha stood near the center of the floor and looked around the basement with her clear blue eyes taking everything in, unhurried, the way she looked at everything.
Jasper stood beside her and was very still in the particular way he was still, which Katherine was already learning meant he was paying attention to more layers of the room than most people could access.
"Okay," Thomas said. "Same as it was for the rest of you at the beginning. Show us what you have. Don't think too hard about it. Just let it come."
Samantha looked at him.
"Just let it come," she said.
"Yes."
She looked at the space in front of her.
And then the air in the basement moved.
Not the way air moves when a window is open or a fan is running. This was deliberate and alive, a current that came from nowhere visible and went nowhere specific, moving through the room with a will of its own, lifting hair and rippling clothing and making the candles on the shelf gutter sideways. It built slowly at first and then faster, circling the room in a pattern that had no logical source, and at the center of it Samantha stood completely still with her eyes closed and her hair moving in every direction at once.
Niall's bow materialized an arrow on instinct and then he looked at it and put it away.
"Wow," Kristen said.
The wind settled slowly, coming down from its peak like a breath being let out, until the basement was still again and Samantha opened her eyes and looked at Thomas.
"Like that?" she asked.
"Exactly like that," Thomas said.
He looked at Jasper.
Jasper looked at the floor for a moment. Then he looked up.
"Mine is harder to show," he said. "It doesn't move things. It doesn't make weather." He paused. "It does other things."
"Show us what you're comfortable showing," Katherine said.
Jasper nodded. He looked at the far corner of the basement, the dark one behind the weapons rack, and he was quiet for a moment in a way that was different from his regular quiet, more focused, more directed, like a person turning a specific frequency dial to a specific station.
The temperature in the corner dropped.
Noticeably, suddenly, a cold that had nothing to do with the season, the specific cold of something that existed between states, between warm and not, between present and gone.
And then in the corner, just barely, just at the edge of visible, there was a quality of light that was not light, a luminescence that came from nothing in the room and illuminated nothing outside itself, existing for exactly three seconds before Jasper looked away and it dissolved.
The temperature returned.
Nobody spoke for a moment.
Courtney was looking at the corner with an expression that was completely open, not frightened, not unsettled, just genuinely and deeply present with what she had just seen.
"That's remarkable," she said quietly.
Jasper looked at her with the expression of someone who had expected a different reaction and was recalibrating to this one.
"Thank you," he said. And the two words came out slightly unsteady in the way of someone who had not had much practice receiving that particular response.
Courtney smiled at him.
Niall leaned toward Kristen and said very quietly, "I like him."
"Obviously," Kristen murmured back.
Thomas looked at both of them and then at the room.
"Good," he said. "That's what we needed to see." He moved to the weapons rack and looked at Samantha. "Now let's see if you can channel that wind into something that will stop a suit."
Samantha looked at the weapons rack.
Then she looked at the air around her hands, feeling for something, the same way Katherine felt for her power, the internal conversation between a person and what lived in them.
The air around her fingers stirred.
"Okay," she said, mostly to herself.
"Okay," Thomas agreed.
And they got to work.