Page 138 of The Tribes of Magic
I leaned against the wall for support.
Conner looked at me in confusion. “What’s wrong?”
“Because you gave Dante that truth serum, he thinks our mom loves me more!”
“The truth serum only makes you tell the truth,” Kato pointed out. “It doesn’t change the way you think. Your brother already thought that way.”
“Well, he thought wrong!” Tears welled in my eyes. “Mom loves him just as much as she loves me.”
“I think your brother needs to hear that from her,” Conner said gently.
I sniffled. He was right. I couldn’t fix this. Only Mom could. Once she was back from her work project, we had to talk to her.
Conner approached me cautiously. “Red, are you all right? Areweall right?”
I wiped my wet eyes with the back of my hand. “Only if you promise you won’t do anything like this ever again.”
He winced. “Does it count if we already did something?”
“We?” I looked from Conner to Kato.
“Actually, it was Kato’s idea.” Conner nudged Kato forward. “Tell her.”
Kato suddenly looked very human—and very much like a teenage boy who’d been caught in the act. “Well…” He cleared his throat. “Before the truth serum, Conner and I tried something else on your friends.”
“Actually, that one was all Kato,” Conner said. “No one can manipulate people like Kato.”
I cringed at the wordmanipulate.
“Icharmedthem using Elf magic,” Kato said. “And then I asked them questions about the kidnapped children.”
I felt my eyes go wide.
“Don’t worry. He erased their memories afterwards, so they don’t remember anything,” Conner told me.
I sighed and rubbed my head. “What did you learn?”
“Nothing relevant,” Kato said. “In fact, even less than you found out.”
“So this was all for nothing?”
I realized now that I’d been wrong before. Very wrong. The problem wasn’t that Conner was a bad influence on Kato. The two of them were a bad influence on each other.
“We’re not sure why neither the truth serum nor the charm spell worked,” Kato said.
“Might it be because none of my friends are involved in anything shady?” I suggested.
“It has to be one of them. The things the General knows could only have come from someone close to you. A friend. How else could he know all those things he knows?”
“I don’t know, Conner. Maybeyouguys are the General’s informants.”
Conner snorted. “Because Kato and I are the General’s biggest fans.”
“Yeah, I know.” I heaved a sigh.
“The General sees me as ‘the Tool’, a label I wholeheartedly resent,” Kato said.
“And as for me…well, let me put it this way: if the General were to write an encyclopedia, my picture would be in the section entitled ‘Humanity’s Greatest Threat’.” Conner smirked at me, like he appreciated his nickname as much as Kato resented his.
