by Alex Hughes
I’m watching you, he mouthed.
I nodded as cheerfully as I could manage. Of course he was. Why not? Half the damn universe was watching me already. What was one more? But I went down to the interview rooms early, at least twenty minutes early, so he’d see me do it. He still gave me half his workload, in a bitter fit, and called me names. It hurt. It did; my armadillo-armored soul was wearing thin today, so even a grouchy bastard like Clark was getting to me.
Bellury drove me home, very late, after I’d effectively worked a whole extra shift. A whole extra shift, with no pay, while Clark went home early feeling smug. I could have applied for overtime after the fact—but the department was running short of funds and I didn’t get to see the money anyway. Instead, Bellury and I went out for a halfway decent steak dinner at an all-night diner (his wife was visiting a relative; he was glad for the company), me promising to pay him back for the whole amount via the accountants, and him dropping me off with equanimity on the doorstop of my building. I was tired, bone tired.
I exited the stairs and limped all the way down the narrow apartment hallway, noting two of the overhead lightbulbs were burned out again. There were odd shadows along the doors. I reached the end of the hallway and my own plain door marked 42, the last lightbulb in the row flickering like it was about to die.
My keys were in my hand, the real steak sitting heavy in my gut, when I tripped over the squishy shadow on my doorstop. I hit the doorframe hard with my forehead.
What . . . ?
I looked down. Crouched to get a better look. My eyes wouldn’t focus in the flickering light, wouldn’t make sense of it.
Fur. Two lumps of fur covered in tacky reddish brown, covered from top to bottom. I swallowed. Animals? Dead animals?
But no smell, the logical, crime scene part of my brain said. And I took another breath. Paint. The smell of drying paint.
I opened myself up to Mindspace, slowly, cautiously, with shields ready to cascade at the least provocation. Empty. The closest minds were my neighbors, quiet and miserable in their small apartments around me, and Mrs. Doberman above, actually awake and conscious for once. No one in the hall. And when I went deeper, only a cold, small whiff of what might have been anger. Whoever had left whatever that was had been here only a few minutes, and the object hadn’t been handled enough or with enough emotion to matter.
I got back up and opened the door of my apartment, turning on the light.
The plain blue welcome mat had a smear of drying red on it, red that extended onto the furry thing, the furry brown thing with a round body and red-spattered arms and legs. A teddy bear head lay on its side a few inches away, stuffing coming out of it like cotton snow.
There was a decapitated teddy bear on my doorstop. A teddy bear covered in red paint like blood, blood that dripped from the severed neck down the round, plush body and onto my welcome mat.
A teddy bear, a dead teddy bear, with no explanation, with no note, with no more than a lingering angry whiff of Mindspace left on it. Blank. Blank and dead, its one remaining eye staring up at me.
My back was suddenly against the wall of the hallway, without any memory of how I’d gotten there. My heart beat a hundred miles an hour.
Don’t be stupid, I told myself. It’s a stuffed toy. A macabre joke. A stupid prank by somebody’s kid in the building. Teddy bears were not the Guild’s style, and I couldn’t imagine a world in which the FBI did this to job candidates they were about to reject. I told myself it was a prank, just a prank.
But it took me ten minutes to stop looking around in Mindspace, ten minutes to calm down enough to go back in the apartment, ten minutes before my hands would even hold a cigarette, they were shaking so badly.
I smoked and told myself this was a stupid prank and probably not even specifically against me. For all I knew, everybody in the building had had a teddy bear on their doorstop this morning, and I was just the last one home. But I couldn’t shake the thought the strangler, the man we were chasing, had seen us poking around in his financials and decided to send me a message. But why me? It didn’t make any sense. Andrew, or Cherabino, was a far better target.
I got two heavy trash bags and folded the thing up in them, fingers protected by plastic, and took it out to the dumpster behind the apartment. The moon was out, the pollution thick, as I threw the dead bear into the garbage. The moon was out, like a sentinel over a fallen battlefield.
It took me fifteen minutes to scrub the paint out of my mat with a bristled brush, to erase the thing like it had never existed. Fifteen minutes crouched over the mat while my mind patrolled the hall in Mindspace and I tried to lose the feeling that somebody was watching me.
I locked the door, all three locks, and pulled the ratty couch over in front of it. Then I stared at a forensics textbook for at least an hour before I could sleep, my head going up at every small, normal noise, every fluctuation in Mindspace.
I hardly slept.
CHAPTER 12
By the next morning I’d decided I couldn’t report it. I looked bad enough as it was, and a teddy bear and paint weren’t going to impress anyone else with my competence. So I sat on the thought and tried to get calm.
I was kidding myself; with as little sleep as I’d gotten, with my brain still limping along, with my roiling upset and legitimate fear about the future, the telepathy was falling apart. I was seeing the light flashes on the edge of my vision again, hearing whispers across the room, and watching Mindspace fade in and out in a constant movement threatening to give me seasickness.
I was better, my brain healing on schedule. I’d even gotten stray thoughts from the cops yesterday. But I couldn’t not sleep, clearly. My system wouldn’t take it. So, like a stupid kindergartener, I caught a nap in the crash room over lunch, and woke up feeling considerably better.
That early afternoon, like that morning, was spent taking out my anger on suspects. I even got a confession.
At three o’clock, though, Cherabino drove me to meet her nephew.
She was very quiet, and she drove sedately down Clairmont, but her mind crawled with worry and anxious thoughts, their stingers pushing into her like angry wasps.
“I’ll be on my best behavior, I promise.” I was dealing with my own angry wasps, but it wasn’t a lie. The nap had done me good; I’d be able to keep it together. “I won’t offend anyone this time.”
“It’s not that,” she said, but I could feel the lie. She blew out a long line of air. “It’s just . . .”
“What?”
“Jacob is medically fragile, okay? You didn’t lie to me earlier when you said you didn’t have a cold, did you?”
I frowned, trying to work that one out. “I’m not sick.”
“You sneezed before we got in the car.” Her voice was accusatory.
“I’m allergic to pollution.” And God knew there was plenty of pollution in the police parking lot, open to the regular air, off a major road in the center of Decatur. Even here, with more trees around, replants and twisted survivors of the Tech Wars, even here the pollution was bad.
“Is your snot clear?”
“What?”
“When you blow your nose, is your snot clear or colored, like white or yellow? Answer the damn question. It’s the most reliable way to know if you have a cold.”
“Um, what if I didn’t look?”
“Damn it, Adam.” She took a breath.
“You’re seriously angry with me because I didn’t look at my snot? You have to give me warning for this sort of thing, Cherabino.” If she wanted reports on my bodily fluids, well . . . my mind promptly told me the rest of the universe already got reports on my urine on a regular basis. Oddly, I was amused. “Calm down, okay? It will be okay. I took a shower and everything. We sprayed me down with disinfectant. It’s fine.”
She blew out a breath, and made an irritated sound.
The closer we got—down North Decatur Road with huge twisted trees on every side, trees centuries old and still standin
g, road thick and pitted from their roots underneath—oddly, the closer we got, the more Cherabino tensed up.
And the more I did too.
* * *
Cherabino’s sister’s house wasn’t far from Emory University, in one of the most beautiful areas of metro Atlanta, trees and low stone buildings on every side, old stately houses that cost millions. Despite appearances and prices, though, this area was innately more dangerous than Decatur proper, from the closeness of the CDC. No less than three plagues had gotten away from them during the Tech Wars, when even their technology turned against them. The Black Plague had fizzled; most of the rich houses surrounding held well-fed individuals with good immune systems. But cholera, and Ebola . . . well, it wasn’t just the Tech that had killed the world in the Tech Wars.
Cherabino pulled into a long driveway, turning off the car. Through the window I could see a manicured lawn of short purple-tinged grass, and huge bushes with purple flowers standing against a huge three-story monstrosity of old brick and Southern-style columns, the small porch in the front more for decoration than use. As she parked the car, I wondered how the flowers survived this late in the season, especially in the high levels of pollution.
A housefly flying around settled on one of the flowers and I had my answer. The flower snapped shut like a Venus flytrap, and the fly’s frantic struggles moved the flower less and less until it was still. At least three other flowers in the long line of bushes were shut, and another was slowly opening as I watched, getting ready for its next round of prey. I noticed then the centers of the flowers were almost black, and shiny.
I swallowed, and got out of the car.
Cherabino picked up a vacuum-sealed robot toy from the back of her car, visibly braced herself, and started walking up the brick walkway to the door. She batted away one of the flowers without comment, but her disquiet let me know she wasn’t any happier with them than I was.
A woman opened the door seconds after Cherabino’s knock. The woman was tall and pleasantly plump, with a red-cheeked healthiness and a ready smile that put you at ease at once. This made me distrust her.
But she hugged Cherabino, a full-on hug, like she was glad to see her. She even turned to me with the same intention.
“Ah, no.” I stepped back.
She frowned.
“Telepath,” I said as sheepishly as I could manage. “Remember, that’s why you wanted me to come visit.”
“Oh, that’s right,” the sister said, seeming to settle down with an explanation. “I’m Nicole. I’ve got a ham on to cook. You do eat pork?” She paused, as if the answer to this question was far more important than the hug.
“Yes, ma’am.”
She smiled and held open the door for me. Clearly now I was in. Southern families, got to love them.
* * *
Jacob was in the living room, sitting on a small chair just his size. He was small for his age, and very thin, with big eyes and a smile that lit up when he saw us coming. His thick dark hair was the exact shade of Cherabino’s, and the smile was all his mother’s.
He also had a presence, a slight but real presence in Mindspace, a childlike mind with some definite Ability. The question was, what was that Ability? I’d done my research before I’d come and thought it through. I’d try to find out what he could do without hurting either one of us. I walled away my own worries and anger and fear. With the nap, I had the control to do what I needed to do—if I was careful.
Jacob stood up, still behind the low, padded coffee table, and Nicole went over to sit down on the floor where she could be right next to him.
“Hello,” he said.
“Hello. My name is Adam.” I thought better of his mother, seeing her join him on the floor. When she looked up, she thought loudly, hoping I would hear, that she wouldn’t interfere. Whatever I needed to do to help Jacob, I should go ahead and do. She wasn’t going to get offended like her grandmother had.
I nodded at her, acknowledging the thought. Cherabino sat down on the sofa and put her hand on her sister’s shoulder in support.
“Do you know who I am?” I asked Jacob. I kept my mind calm, still, and dropped my shields slowly so he’d see I was sincere. That is, if he was equipped to read me. Odds were he was an empath at best.
I waited for him to answer the question on his own.
“You’re Aunt Isa’s partner, sort of,” Jacob said seriously. “You can read minds. What’s an empath?”
I took a breath. Okay. I kept my mind open, deliberately open, and ruthlessly eliminated stray thoughts. “An empath is a person who can feel other people’s emotions. Usually the closer he is to the person or the more he touches skin—say, holding the person’s hand—the stronger he can feel the emotions. Sometimes, if the empath is strong, he has a hard time telling which emotions are his and which are the other person’s.” I paused. “Do you ever have trouble telling which feelings are yours and which are other people’s?”
“Sometimes.” Jacob turned to look at his mom, who was suddenly worried. “Don’t be sad, Mom. Adam is going to help me.”
He moved around the coffee table and looked up at me—way up. He was a little over four feet tall, and I was a few inches shy of six feet. I saw myself through his eyes—short hair, long, friendly face, as tall as his mom but not his dad, and calm. Very calm, where most people in his life had thoughts like bees, constantly buzzing around.
I sat down on the carpeted floor, ignoring the sofa, because that was what he wanted. He sat down too.
Well, we already knew he could do a passive read, so I’d skip that part.
“I’m going to ask you some things. And get you to try to do some things. Sometimes I’ll ask you in your mind.” In here, I said.
He blinked, startled. “Okay . . .” His voice trailed off, not sure what to think of this, but he wasn’t afraid.
“And sometimes I’ll ask you out loud. If you can’t do something, it’s fine. I can’t do everything either, but when I ask I want you to try. Honest try. Not showing off or pushing anything that hurts.”
“Okay,” Jacob said. His legs crossed in what looked like a meditation yoga pose, with the boneless comfort of a child.
I looked around the room, posh designer-chosen furniture in muted colors, expensive real paintings on the wall, an upright piano on the opposite end of the room. And a small desk, antique looking, in the corner. The only thing that didn’t match was the smaller chair, a chair that had a specialty-shaped pillow and a row of buttons on the side. That chair, I was betting, was newer than the rest, specifically for Jacob.
What do I have in my pocket? I kept my shields down and put the information out on the front of my mind, waiting. I felt him poke around and finally grasp it.
“A candle.”
“Good. What color?”
“White.” He smiled like this was a great game. “Am I right?”
I fished in my pocket for a small votive candle I’d brought with me, pulling it out along with a couple of quarters. I set the quarters down on the plush tan carpet, and handed the candle to Jacob.
It was a perfectly normal votive candle, small, with a preburned black wick and mass-produced plain white soy wax in a shallow metal round cup. “You were right.”
He smiled.
I calmed my mind and focused on confidence. “Tell the candle to light.”
Jacob looked at me, then the candle.
“Honest try.”
“Okay. . . .” He frowned at the thing. Light, I heard with intensity.
Of course, the candle just sat there.
I forced down a laugh. “That’s how I’d do it. No, the little atoms in the wick there. Tell them to move faster, to get hot, really hot. So hot they burst into flame.”
He looked at me with skepticism.
“I shouldn’t have laughed. Honest try. It’s not something I can do, but if you can, it should come easily.” The candle was already set to burn, the wick lit once already. It should light when Jacob told it to,
I said in my mind. I reached back for confidence and found it through will and necessity.
Jacob frowned at the candle for at least a minute, his brow pulling down.
Right before he got a headache, I stopped him. “Good.” I held out my hand as if to get the candle back from him. Put the candle on the floor, I thought, with a small push to take the thought out into Mindspace but not fully in his head. I went back to confidence.
He put the votive on the floor and shifted to his knees.
“Very good. Now, can you ask your aunt to hand you that pillow?”
Next to Cherabino on the sofa was one of those silly pillows that only existed for decoration, round and embroidered with goldish thread, with a ridiculous pale blue bow.
He turned, and started to ask.
“Wait just a second.” I looked Cherabino directly in the eye.
You’ll need to lower your shields, I told her through the Link, which wouldn’t be overheard. Think of the bricks you build falling down and disappearing. Be as calm and accepting of him as possible, okay? He might be clumsy.
She swallowed, and with visible bravery took the bricks down. I waited, patiently, projecting confidence for Jacob.
“Okay. We’re ready. Ask her with your mind, like this.”
I reached out over Mindspace—not the Link—and said, clearly and distinctly, as publicly as possible, Don’t give him the pillow until you hear it in your head.
Cherabino nodded, braced and ready.
A long minute passed.
Jacob turned back to me. “I asked her, honest.”
“No big deal,” I said, trying for confidence rather than the relief I felt. He was weak enough to get out of the Guild if he wanted. Strong enough for parlor tricks, but weak enough for freedom. It was the best-case scenario for us. “It’s a fact, normal people are harder to read. Their waves in Mindspace are smaller and harder to see. And projecting loud enough so they can hear you is really tough.” I held out my hand, and Cherabino gave me the pillow. I put it on the plush tan carpet between us. “Now.” Can you lift the pillow without using your hands? Up in the air. If it’s too heavy, you can move just the quarters next to it.
