by Alex Hughes
Bellury was staring at me. “You have a couple hundred cops in this building who are barely okay with one telepath. Adding in a second is asking for trouble. You’re not going to lie to me, boy, are you?”
“I told you. If it’s not Kara I have no idea what’s going on. I am a telepath. The Guild has jurisdiction over me, over some things, and neither you nor me nor anybody else can change that without an act of Congress. Let’s go figure out what the hell is going on, okay?”
After a moment, he backed down. “Holmes is free.” The smaller conference room, the nicer one.
“Thanks.”
He followed me as I walked down to the official front door, to the pseudo waiting area made up of two beat-up dirty chairs and a dusty fake plant. I was upset and my mind going in circles. This could be related to the FBI call, couldn’t it? To my job being on the line? Kara hadn’t mentioned anything this morning, but there was a hell of a lot of coincidences going on this week.
The man stood as he felt me coming. I shielded reflexively; this guy was no slouch in the telepath department— from the feel of him, almost as strong as me. And from his looks—six foot or more, with the solid, lean muscle you didn’t get from the gym—he wasn’t used to relying solely on his telepathy. He’d be a dangerous one, all the way around. Why was he here?
“Edgar Stone,” he said, with the significant nod the Guild used instead of handshakes. I nodded back, with the same weighted movement.
I introduced myself in turn. “Why are you here exactly, if I may ask?”
Bellury beside me was standing on the balls of his feet, tense like a small dog faced with a larger one in his territory. Determined to defend, determined to fight if necessary, teeth bared in warning, but cautious. Not entirely sure he’d win in a fight. For that matter, neither was I. My mind was in no shape for a fight.
“I’m with Guild Enforcement. I’ve been assigned to look into your case.”
Shit. Double shit. Enforcement was my worst nightmare—my worst. There was no innocent until proven guilty, not in Guild practice, not here. At best this guy would be neutral, neither for nor against me, and all too willing to tip the scales whichever way they went.
Stone was staring at me, trying to judge my expression. I had to say something, and quick. Silence was suspicious; I knew that as an interviewer. Normally at this point in the conversation, politeness dictated you’d say something like “Nice to meet you.” The trouble is, it wasn’t, and he’d probably smell the lie. So I settled on “Nice of you to come to the station.” And I sat on my panic and anger, stuffed it into a box and sat down hard; there was no way in hell I was going to telegraph anything to this guy. Not to Enforcement.
“Not a problem,” Stone replied gravely. A small lie in that one, hardly noticeable in the stream of expected conversation. I didn’t pursue it.
Enforcement was the bogeyman under the bed for every professional telepath—judge, jury, and executioner in one. Terrifying. He could legally kill me in broad daylight in the middle of the street and the Guild would have nothing worse than a PR crisis—Koshna meant, for people like me, one word from Enforcement was all it took.
“There’s a conference room open,” I said, still controlling my emotions hard, shielding up to my gills. Bellury looked back and forth between us, increasingly uncomfortable, while a crowd of cops started to gather around to stare hostilely.
Stone glanced around at the cops around him, coming up on the balls of his own feet. “A conference room sounds like a good idea.”
What in the hell was he doing here? There was nothing in the whole world that would spark suspicion against me faster than a Guild visit—unannounced—at my workplace. They knew the normals didn’t trust them and then they go and pull a stunt like this, something that looks like conspiracy and worse.
But maybe that was the point. Maybe they were trying to get me fired.
On that fun thought, I walked him to the conference room.
* * *
Bellury wanted to sit in on the meeting—well, of course he did. He was my babysitter, and if there was ever a time for babysitting, this would be it.
It looked awfully suspicious, I got that.
“Go on,” I told Stone, and stood closer to Bellury. I glanced around the open hallway, just to be sure no one was overhearing.
“You told me you weren’t working for the Guild.” Bellury frowned at me.
I unclenched my fists by sheer willpower. Yeah, this looked bad. And yeah, with Clark probably starting rumors and calling the FBI on me, it looked worse. That didn’t mean I had to like it. “We’ve been through this. The Guild kicked me out. With extreme prejudice. And I’m not going back. That was a lifetime ago and honestly I don’t like them very much for it. But. No matter what the movies say—no matter what Clark says—the Guild isn’t on some big crusade to take over the world. Furthermore, if they were, I wouldn’t help them. I’m not stealing secrets for the mother ship. I’m not reporting back on your every mood, or Paulsen’s, or anyone else’s. I’m exactly the guy you already know about. The one you give the drug test to every week, and the one who interviews suspects for a living. That’s it. Yeah, I can read minds, but so what? I’ve read your mind and you’re still you and your secrets are still secret. I don’t know what’s going on, but whatever it is doesn’t change crap. In fact, they’re probably doing this to stir up drama and get me fired in the first place. That would be like them.”
“Fine,” Bellury said. “I still have to be there. It’s my job.”
I took a breath, closed my hand. Tried to be reasonable. “He’s a Guild heavy hitter. Enforcement doesn’t have the same sense of ethics the rest of us have. It’s not a good idea. Likely he’d just wipe your memory anyway.”
Bellury’s eyebrows came down, and a huffy betrayal emanated. “And you’d just stand back?”
I tried to figure out how to explain it without lying or admitting I was at less than full strength. While still making my loyalties absolutely clear. “If I tried to stop him, there would be a mind-fight in the middle of the department. He’s certainly better trained in offensive stuff, has fewer ethical limitations, and he’s way more in practice. I don’t really want to go to that fight and I don’t want to put the department in danger.” Even at full strength I wouldn’t want that fight without a lot of warning, planning, and the advantage of surprise.
The first glimmer of an idea was brewing in my brain. I knew if I’d just give it a moment . . .
The small muscles in Bellury’s face were tense, every one. “I’m going to Paulsen.”
“I understand.” Good. I’d have backup in ten minutes, fifteen if she was in the middle of things. “You do that,” I said significantly.
His eyes narrowed and he started thinking. “I think I will.”
Somewhere in my gut, one small tension relaxed. Stone couldn’t kill me, not today, not without a fuss going all the way back to the Guild upper echelons. Paulsen wouldn’t let him.
As long as I had this job anyway.
* * *
I shut the door to the empty conference room with a click. Stone was standing in front of a murder board somebody hadn’t bothered to clean up, the book the things belonged in sitting next to it on the table. The board was covered in cruel, disturbing pictures, what someone who called himself human had done to a child—a child who was now dead, her intestines leaking out into the blood-soaked dirt. I looked away, by now knowing other people’s cases would haunt me too much if I didn’t. I got enough flashes and photos in my head by accident without going looking for more, and a telepath’s mind was never truly private. But Stone kept looking.
“Have they caught the guy?” he asked finally.
“It’s not my case. It’s not Cherabino’s case either. I wouldn’t know. Probably it wouldn’t be on the board if they had.”
I racked my brain, trying to figure out why he was here, who’d sent him. Damn it, if Kara had known about this . . . A sinking feeling hit me and I
wondered if my phone call to her was what had started this whole damn thing. Why hadn’t she said something?
Stone stood there for another long moment, shielded to the hilt—but I could see his hand clenched, knuckles white. “At the Guild, he would already be dead.”
“I know,” I said, and oddly, I felt a little less afraid, like I was suddenly dealing with another cop. A cop with a lot of power, a cop with tools and procedures the guys here would envy—or hate—but a kind of cop nonetheless.
“Let’s talk.” I found a seat at the table and relaxed my body language.
He sat too, looking disturbed. If the pictures distracted him, well, I hadn’t planned it, but it was more than welcome.
“I’m guessing the Guild doesn’t like how I handled the Bradley situation,” I said. Cops usually liked it when you cut through the bullshit so they didn’t have to. “That’s stupid. No matter how it looked in the papers, the Guild got one of its bad apples exposed to the light—and stopped. Without any secrets being exposed, no matter how close it got. I’ve fulfilled my obligations, more than fulfilled my promises, and I’m not sure why anyone has a problem.”
Stone blinked, surprise floating off him. “That’s not exactly why I’m here.”
“Why are you here?”
He was shielding so hard he was a shiny mirror in Mindspace, reflecting the surroundings. But I was an interrogator, and he didn’t guard his face nearly as well. He was rethinking his approach, and probably considering whether to lie to me. It’s not like I hadn’t seen that face a hundred times from suspects.
He cleared his throat. “Well, you’ve attracted the wrong kind of attention. When the Guild kicked you out, it was assumed you would eventually die. Or at least serve as a good example of what happens when you fall from grace at the Guild.”
“Thanks a lot.”
“Or the thought was, if you did manage to pull yourself together, you’d come back. With the situation with Bradley, especially when he wasn’t able to be revived. . . . Well, the case attracted the attention of certain high-ranking members of the Guild.”
“Well, I’m not dead.” Though I had no illusions: nine out of ten guys with the kind of scars on their arms I had ended up dead. From dirty needles, ODs, fights, or worse. I’d been lucky, and I knew it. But it was still awfully cynical to assume I’d die in a gutter. “And honestly, why would I come back? The Guild kicked me out, literally stripped me of all of my credentials, and told me I was an embarrassment to everyone who’d ever trained me. I’d be an idiot to go back. And I’m not an idiot, Stone.”
“You’re a Level Eight telepath.” He leaned forward. Suddenly I felt the threat of him, in my hindbrain where the survivor-creature lived. It said, Back up, back up slowly.
I barreled in anyway. “I’m also a damn ethical telepath.” I was now anyway. The years on the street had nothing to do with anything. “I’ve kept the Guild’s secrets. All of them.”
“You didn’t keep Bradley a secret.” Stone raised a hand to fend off objections. “Bradley was a low-down, stupid, destructive, crazy son of a bitch who deserved whatever came to him. But you got the normals involved to do our job for us.”
“I thought this wasn’t about Bradley.”
“It’s about you.”
I paused, and when he didn’t speak: “What do you want from me?”
“We want you to come back to the Guild.”
I thought about it, teetering on the edge of consideration. If I lost my job here, I might not have another choice. “I’d get a teaching job again?” I probably couldn’t teach the advanced courses anymore; I’d burned out an essential part of my mind, was still recovering, and hell, I was out of practice. But the basic stuff . . . Well, if the choices were that or a mind-wipe, maybe teaching wouldn’t be so bad. Kara was still there, after all. There had to still be some good there.
“No,” Stone said. “No. We’ll find you something more suited to your position.” The clear, half-projected subtext on the sentence was that neither one of us thought I was a good influence on children, now did we? I should be grateful for whatever low-status job they’d hand out.
The cynicism—and the pain—returned to my soul like a barreling train. “Yeah, how it’s going to be, isn’t it? I suppose you’re holding my freedom—and my life—hostage until I do whatever it is you want.” Like everyone else was these days, damn it. If the vision hadn’t put the stamp on it, I’d walk away.
“You’re not interested in returning to the Guild?”
“Is that seriously why you’re here?”
He pursed his lips. “Well, no. My supervisors had hoped—”
“Your supervisors are delusional.” I was being reckless, tugging at the tail of the tiger, but I now expected Paulsen at any moment.
Stone blinked. “Well, they can be sometimes, I suppose.” He cleared his throat. “I’ll cut to the chase. I’m supposed to determine if you’re a threat to the Guild and our way of life. There aren’t many independents out there, and you, unlike most of the others, have decided to make a spectacle of yourself.”
“So I was supposed to let Bradley murder at will?”
“You were supposed to let the professionals handle it, or, at worst, fade quietly into the background. It’s traditional, when someone leaves the Guild, for them to stay quietly in the background. You’re not doing that.”
Screw traditional. I was a Level Eight, and no one’s plaything. “Bradley was weeks ago. Why come now?” Had they waited deliberately for me to be understrength? If so, why not earlier, when the telepathy was out completely?
“It’s really not my problem when the higher-ups decide to do things.”
I waited.
“If you’ll consent to a tag on your mind and occasional monitoring, I’ll walk away.“
“No. Hell no. I’ve done nothing wrong, and I’m not consenting to a tag.” There was no way in hell I was going to let him stick a piece of his mind to mine so he could find me anywhere and read me any time he felt like it. I wasn’t a prisoner.
“It’s in your best interests to cooperate with Enforcement,” Stone said.
Just then Paulsen showed up, the conference room door kicking open with such force it smashed against the wall with a bang.
“You are not invited into my station,” Paulsen said, cutting off any further conversation.
Stone didn’t seem impressed. He left, but I got the impression it was more out of courtesy than any real need.
“This isn’t over,” he said.
“Who was that?” Paulsen asked me. “And why the hell is the Guild traipsing into police territory without even a phone call? What the hell are you up to?”
I turned, burning with anger and resentment at this whole situation—and Kara for not telling me. “The damn Guild is trying to intimidate me into going back. Or tag me like a damn animal to be checked up on whenever you want. I’m not going, and I’m not doing it. I’ve been straight with you—had no warning of this, I swear. But he’s not going to settle. He’s going to go up the chain of command and try to put the pressure on until he gets what he wants. At least that’s what I think he’ll do next,” I said. “Given you’ll notice if I end up missing or dead. That is, I assume you’ll care if I turn up missing or dead.”
Paulsen frowned. “You told me when you signed on that the Guild didn’t care what you did anymore.”
“Well, apparently they do now.” I waited for her to fire me, to tell me this was just too damn much trouble for someone already on the edge.
Bellury and Paulsen exchanged a look, and then she met my eyes. “As long as you work here, I’m not putting up with anyone coming in off the street trying to intimidate my people. But you should be aware. The Guild has a lot of power, I have only so much coin to spend on this kind of nonsense, and you’re nearly on the chopping block as it is. I’m going to be watching you. And Bellury is going to be haunting practically your every step and checking up on you regularly. You will not be getting anyt
hing over on me, am I clear? If I find your loyalties have shifted, you can and will be out on the street faster than you can read the thought. Understood?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Good.” She stalked out.
I spent the next hour trying not to explain who and what Enforcement was to Bellury—and why a visit from them had made my knees shake. By the end, I still think he was convinced I wasn’t telling the whole truth.
Normals didn’t trust telepaths. It was a fact of life. And any credit I had ever earned in trust, day after day, was disappearing like a fleck of sand in the tide.
CHAPTER 10
The weekend passed all too quickly, as Swartz had me in meeting after meeting, service project after service project. For once, I was happy to go along and not think. With my world falling apart—and me unable to do anything about it at that moment—I needed all the distraction I could get.
Monday morning, I came out of the coffee closet with donut in hand.
“Why aren’t you dressed?” Cherabino’s voice came at me, stern and unforgiving.
I looked down. Yes, I had pants. A shirt. Even shoes. I turned. “What the hell are you talking about?”
She had on a plain black knee-length dress and pointy shoes. Panty hose and makeup even, makeup almost heavy enough to cover the circles under her eyes. “The funeral. The Hamilton funeral. I told you twice. We’re going to be late if you don’t get something decent on soon.”
“We never talked about this, I swear to you.” I blew out a breath. I had thought the memory lapses and the attention problems were going away, but apparently not. “How much time do I have?” Funerals supposedly were great for clues; a lot of people showed up you wouldn’t ordinarily see. It would be worth going, if I could make it.
“Two minutes. Literally. If you miss that you can drive down with Michael—I need to be there for enough of the visitation I can tell if anyone sneaks out.”
