by Anise Eden
“ParaTrain.”
I blinked, then blinked again. “What?”
“I’m thinking of calling it ParaTrain, a paranormal skills training program.”
I grimaced. “ParaTrain?”
Ben’s brows knit together. “You don’t like it?”
“It just sounds a little…military, don’t you think?”
He appeared confused as to why that should surprise me. He had a point. But I refused to be derailed by some side conversation about what they named their program. “What I’m saying is that if we like each other, don’t you think it’s a little silly to let some policy dictate our, you know…behavior?”
“Cate,” he said in a rough whisper. He stepped forward and held his hand out to me. I took it, and he helped me out of the chair. As we stood there facing one another, Ben brought his hand up to my chin. His eyes flashed gold like the Vegas strip. For a moment, I felt certain he was going to kiss me. My heart stumbled.
“Yes?”
“First of all,” he murmured, “we don’t actually have a policy on this, since it’s never come up before. But while I find your argument very compelling, you’re more vulnerable than you know, and I’m—” He screwed his eyes shut. “Look, you can ask anybody. I’m no good at this kind of thing. I don’t trust myself not to do anything that might hurt you, or interfere with your training in some way. And that’s a risk I’m not willing to take.”
Had he just said no? I jerked my chin away from his hand. “Did you seriously just give me the ‘It’s not you, it’s me’ speech?”
His face contorted with confusion. “The what?”
Pain and humiliation sliced through me. Fortunately, they were easily funneled into anger. I put my hands on his chest and shoved him back against the desk. “If you don’t feel the same way, just say so! Don’t pretend you’re some white knight trying to ride in and protect me! And for God’s sake, don’t make up some story about how you’re bad at this kind of thing—”
Ben froze, as though he were watching a train wreck happening in slow motion and there was no way to stop it. His words tumbled out. “But I am bad at it! I didn’t make up—what story? And I never said I didn’t feel—”
There was a knock on the office door. “Ben?”
It was Vani’s voice. I walked over to the bookshelves, turning my back to the door.
“What is it?” Ben barked.
Vani took his words as an invitation to enter. “Oh, sorry. I didn’t realize I was interrupting—”
“It’s okay, Vani.” I heard Ben take a deep breath and exhale slowly. “What do you need?”
“Nothing important really. Hi, Cate!”
I turned toward her just enough to give her a wave and a half smile.
“Just a question about Rockville. It can wait, though. Again, sorry for barging in.” She quickly slid out the door, closing it behind her before Ben could reply.
My whole body stiffened as Ben walked up behind me. “Cate, please, I’m sorry. I told you I’m bad at this. Obviously I’m doing this wrong.”
I whipped around to face him. “Oh, don’t worry,” I snapped. “There’s no right way to reject someone.”
To my surprise, instead of retreating, Ben took another step toward me. I backed up to find myself pressed against the bookshelf. He was standing close enough that his scent surrounded me, filling my senses. Ben reached out as though to touch my arm, my cheek, my hair—but stopped about an inch away each time. Finally, his wandering hand grabbed onto the shelf beside my head. “Cate.”
Once our eyes met, his gaze had me pinioned. In an instant, the portal between us opened, and the rush of his emotions poured into me. The intense tenderness he felt toward me made my whole body go weak, while the force of his desire was so strong that it held me upright. Stunned, I tried to control my ragged breathing.
He searched my eyes like a dog on the hunt. “Has a portal opened between us yet?”
I managed a small nod.
His voice rumbled. “Can you feel what I’m feeling, then, or do you need me to tell you?”
My voice came out in a squeak. “I can feel it.”
“Good.” He kept his eyes locked on mine for a few more moments. My face grew more and more flushed as my breathing grew shallow. Afraid that I might faint, I pulled together every thread of willpower within me and forced the portal to close. I gasped with relief and struggled to remain standing.
Ben quickly grasped the situation. With one hand holding my elbow and the other pressed against the small of my back, he helped me back to my chair. As I tried to breathe normally, he went to get a cup of water from the lounge. I gulped it down while he watched.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“Mm-hmm,” I said, testing my voice. It seemed to be working. Ben took his seat behind the desk.
I coughed and forced myself to speak. “So…what happens now?”
Ben leaned back, clasping his hands behind his neck and appearing to consult the ceiling. “I don’t know,” he said, as though speaking to himself. “I’ve never been in this situation before.”
“We’re both in the situation,” I reminded him. I knew how I wanted to proceed, but I figured that Ben would be more likely to go along with a plan that he came up with himself. “How do you usually find your way through new territory?”
He blew out a hard breath, then rocked forward and leaned his elbows on his desk. “Well, normally I take a wait-and-see approach.”
Of course he does, I thought.
“And as regards clinic-related questions, I consult with our medical director.”
He hadn’t actually just said—? Mouth agape, I asked, “You mean, you want to talk to your mother about this?”
“Now that you mention it, that’s not a bad idea,” he said. “I trust her to evaluate the situation objectively—whether there would be a chance of a relationship between us harming you in any way, or interfering with your training. And whether I’d be violating any ethical boundaries, of course.”
I gritted my teeth. “I wasn’t actually suggesting—”
“Oh, I know, but you helped guide me to my own solution. You’re a very good therapist.” His lips swung into a teasing smile.
The glare I gave him could have stopped a meteor. “Don’t I have any say in the matter?”
“No.”
“Why not?” I snipped. “Because you’re my superior?”
That caught him off-guard. He skewered me with an incisive look. “How much of that conversation did you hear?”
But there was no way I was laying down my trump card. I just shrugged and pulled at an imaginary thread on the hem of my shirt.
“Hmm.” He tapped his pen on the desk. “Your eyes turned grey again, by the way,” he said, “over by the bookshelf. I think I’m starting to see a pattern here.”
Damn him, I thought as I started to blush again. I tossed my hands in the air. “Fine!” I blasted. “Talk to your mother if it’ll make you feel better.”
“Thanks. I will.” He stood, slapping his palms on the desk. “Now that we’ve got that settled, can I get you something else to drink?”
Chapter Twenty-One
I took Ben up on his offer and asked him to make me a cup of tea, hoping for a few moments alone. I paced around his office, looking at but not really seeing his books, the window, the pictures on the wall. Ben’s feelings for me were much more powerful than I had anticipated. I still didn’t know how to handle that revelation—or the fact that as his emotions flowed into me through the portal, my own feelings rose to meet his, answering with the same level of intensity. Whatever was happening between us might be a new situation for him, but it was an entirely new universe for me.
I couldn’t keep thinking about that, though. I only had a few minutes to pull myself together before he returned. Besides, Ben had made it perfectly clear that our relationship was not going to change unless his mother gave us the go-ahead. Incredulous about that aspect of things, I flop
ped down in my chair and rubbed my face with my hands, trying to even out the blood flow. At least I’d expended some of my nervous energy. I forced myself to focus on something else.
So the MacGregors wanted to keep me in the program, but I had to follow Ben’s instructions from there on out. I knew that shouldn’t have bothered me so much, but the idea of obeying orders—especially his, for some reason—really rankled me. It was a relief to know that the rest of the group didn’t want to tar and feather me, at least, so I’d have some chance of repairing those relationships. And Ben was going to Rockville that afternoon. That would give me a little space in which to think things through.
As I tidied my braid, something that had been lingering in the back of my mind worked its way forward. Ben came back into the office with a mug for me and a bottle of water.
“Thank you.” Once he was comfortable behind the desk, I took a sip of tea and asked, “Hey, what did your mother mean earlier when she said I’d be ‘an asset to your team’?”
Ben stiffened. “That’s a discussion for later.”
My curiosity was officially piqued. “Why later? Why not now?”
The telltale muscle in his jaw twitched. “She spoke prematurely. Do us both a favor and forget she said anything.”
I gave him my best “you have got to be kidding” look. “Surely by now, you know that I’m not going to be put off with a ridiculous non-answer like that.”
“We’ll talk about it when the time is right.”
“But she’s the one who brought it up!”
“Well, she shouldn’t have.”
“Fine then! Don’t tell me. But you can’t seriously expect me to be okay with the fact that you’re keeping a secret that obviously has something to do with me!”
“I’m not keeping a secret,” he said as though the idea were absurd. “I’m just waiting for the appropriate time to discuss it.”
I imagined flying Ben in a helicopter over the mouth of an active volcano, then dangling him over the churning lava below. “If you don’t explain what your mother was talking about right now, I’m going to call over to her private practice office and ask her myself.”
Ben rubbed his forehead. “You’re really not going to let this go, are you?”
I glared at him.
He closed his eyes, looking as though he were deep in meditation. Finally he looked up. “All right. I’ll tell you, but I’m warning you right now, you’re not going to like it.”
“I don’t care.”
“Fine, but I have two conditions.”
“Which are?”
He held up one finger. “You have to promise to hear me out.” Then he held up finger number two. “And you have to promise not to overreact.”
Oh god, this must be serious, I thought. I have to know now. Pushing aside a creeping feeling of trepidation, I nodded.
“Okay then.” He clasped his hands on the desk. “The reason my mother said you would make a great asset to our team is that it has been our intention all along to recruit you to work for us.”
“To recruit me?” I leaned forward to make sure I was hearing him correctly.
“It was Dr. Nelson’s idea,” Ben explained. “As you know, he referred you to us because he’s familiar with our program. He knows all about sensitives and the dangers they can face. Even before your mother passed away and things took a downhill turn, Dr. Nelson saw the signs that you were an empath in trouble—how unusually in tune you were with everyone, how overwhelmed you were after a day at work, and how your clients kept getting better while you appeared to be feeling worse. Obviously, we agreed to help. But over the past few months…Let’s just say Dr. Nelson thought you might benefit from being involved with us over the long term, so the subject of recruitment came up.”
“Oh.” I was touched that Dr. Nelson had been so concerned about me. However, it was disconcerting that they’d been having all of these conversations about me behind my back. And there was something else that bothered me. “So this is some kind of charity hire? You want me to work here as a favor to Dr. Nelson because he’s a friend of yours?”
“No, of course not.” Ben pushed a hand through his hair. “It just turned out that by coincidence, we were looking for an empath.”
“What? Why?”
“We wanted to be able to offer to our clients empath healing. It’s an effective, efficient tool for dealing with emotional and psychological wounds. Also, it’s important to my mother’s research that all categories of paranormal gifts be represented on our staff. Otherwise, her study would be incomplete.”
“So since you couldn’t find anyone who could levitate a pencil or bend spoons with their mind, you needed an empath to slot into the psychokinesis category.”
As his eyebrow arched dangerously, Ben replied, “I wouldn’t have put it quite like that.”
“It’s true, then,” I said with grim satisfaction. But after a moment, confusion set in. “Wait a minute, though. There must be other empaths running around who already know what they’re doing. Why bother with me, someone you have to train from scratch?”
“We did consider others,” Ben acknowledged, “but none of their gifts were as strong as yours. For example, the ability to open portals is quite rare, and almost always comes with strong empath healing abilities, as you have demonstrated. Also, just as the other staff members bring added value in addition to their paranormal gifts, my mother wanted to find an empath who could be an asset to our clinic in multiple ways. When Dr. Nelson told her about your therapeutic skills, she was intrigued. We don’t have anyone with the training to help clients manage the mental health aspects of their healing, which in some cases are quite significant.”
That didn’t make any sense. “What about your mother?”
“She’s very busy between her research and her private practice.”
Something still wasn’t adding up. “I don’t get it,” I wondered aloud. “There must be a lot of empaths who go into mental health. And maybe it’s rare to be able to open portals, but you and Vani have been telling me that I shouldn’t do too much of that, anyway.” Then it dawned on me: Dr. MacGregor was interested in the Bronze Age tribal mythology. “Oooh!” My hands flew up. “You were missing both an empath and a Caledonian, and bringing me on board kills two birds with one stone! Is that it?”
Ben reminded me of one of those giant heads on Easter Island—stoic, stony, and expressionless. “I won’t lie to you. My mother believed that adding a Caledonian would be beneficial to our group.”
“Ah-hah!” Gratification surged through me. “So I was right in Vani’s class when I said that with me here, you’d have a complete set. And everyone clammed up because you weren’t ready to talk to me about it yet! I knew something else was going on in there.”
“Yes, you were right.” But the strain on Ben’s face told me that he was still holding something back.
I was almost afraid to ask. “There’s more, isn’t there?”
Ben nodded, but didn’t say anything.
“Well?”
With an air of weariness, Ben continued. “Kai claims that a few weeks ago, the spirit of my father came to him and foretold the arrival of a Caledonian empath. His spirit allegedly said that it was of critical importance that once you arrived, we convinced you to stay. He said you’d be in danger without us, and that we needed you to make our group whole—something about having to fight a rising darkness in the near future.” He rubbed his forehead. “I know how crazy that sounds, but if Kai is to be believed, it was the first time my father’s spirit has appeared since his death. As you can imagine, my mother was very compelled by his message.”
So that’s what Kai had been talking about, that day I overheard their conversation in the lounge: “We can’t lose her…I know what your father told me.” It was all so bizarre, and the part about the rising darkness was downright creepy. Thankfully, Ben’s dry tone told me that he put no stock whatsoever in his father’s advice from beyond the grave. To reassur
e him that we were both on the same page on that, at least, I said, “That is supremely weird, Ben.”
He nodded. “I know. I’m sorry. I don’t even know what to say about that, or the Caledonian thing. The point is that there are multiple reasons we want you to come to work for us. Admittedly, some of them are weird, but hopefully the others make sense to you.”
I paused to consider his offer. In spite of the superstitious beliefs some of them held, I liked everyone at the MacGregor Group so far, and I was definitely interested in Dr. MacGregor’s research. It was certainly a unique opportunity, and I could easily see myself working there a few evenings and weekends. The idea was even kind of exciting, and it wasn’t like I had a life outside of work anyway. And—bonus—it would mean more time with Ben, who for some reason looked positively grim.
“For a recruiter, you don’t seem very enthusiastic about this idea,” I observed. “Is that because of your dad’s…involvement?”
“No, it’s nothing to do with that,” he said, harshly dismissive.
After everything he’d told me, I couldn’t imagine what additional bombs Ben might still have to drop. “What is it then? Do I have to take a blood oath? Get a Caledonian tribal tattoo?”
“Hear me out, Cate,” he said, his face a somber mask. “I told you, you’re not going to like this.”
Bracing myself, I sat back, folded my arms, and listened.
He paused, and I could tell that he was bracing himself, too. “You have to leave your job at Dr. Nelson’s clinic.”
I leaned forward, squinting. “What?”
“You can’t go back to being a psychotherapist.”
I definitely couldn’t have heard him correctly. “Wait, what? You said everybody here works part-time. They have other jobs, or they’re in school.”
