“Doyle, Collin Doyle.”
“What time should I meet you here?” she asked.
“I can pick you up.”
“What time should I meet you here?” she repeated.
He got the hint, “Seven thirty? I’ll make reservations for eight.”
“Seven thirty it is, then,” she said, turning to the sideboard to fill her plate, then turned back. “Just in case I’m not the only date you’ve made for Saturday night, perhaps you should consult your schedule to make sure you’re not double or triple booked. I’ll check back with you before I leave this morning, okay?”
His face turned red and several people laughed.
“I should warn you about Collin,” Callie murmured.
“A bad boy?” Brenna asked.
“Not a bad boy, incredibly dedicated, organized and responsible, actually. He just has a thing for the ladies. Lots of ladies,” Callie responded.
“Oh, I can see that,” Brenna said with a soft smile, “but I haven’t had a date in over a year. If he wants to take me out, I’m going to take advantage of it.” Callie’s eyebrows shot up, but Brenna wasn’t sure why.
She joined Callie at the table and found herself sitting across from Collin.
“So, Miss Morgan, are you visiting?” he asked.
“No, I live here in Baltimore,” she answered.
He looked puzzled. “I’m surprised we’ve never met before.”
“I guess we travel in different circles,” she said, getting increasingly irritated as his gaze seemed never to rise to her face. She wondered if he knew the color of her eyes.
“What do you do here?”
“I’ve been going to college.”
“Oh, what do you study, Miss Morgan?”
“Currently I’m studying the effects of visual stimuli on the limbic system of young males,” she replied dryly. “And it’s Dr. Morgan.”
Callie choked and spewed coffee across the table. Coughing, she managed to gasp, “I’m going to stop drinking when you’re around.”
Collin, helping to blot up coffee with his napkin, said, “I have the feeling I’m missing the joke.”
Callie and Brenna laughed. “The limbic system is implicated in sexual arousal,” Callie said, shooting him a wicked grin.
He blushed, eyes running over Brenna who was leaning over the table using her napkin to blot up Callie’s coffee. His eyes seemed locked on her breasts.
“Mr. Doyle?” Brenna said.
“Yes?”
She pointed to her face. “I’m up here.”
His face flared bright red. The people around them, especially the women, laughed.
“I hope we don’t spend dinner with you talking to my chest,” she smiled sweetly. “You have no idea how much that would piss me off.”
After breakfast, Callie handed her a roller suitcase. “Your mother’s clothes are in there, along with what you wore yesterday. Take them, they’re yours.” She smiled. “There’s a car outside to take you home, and they’ll take you from there to work if you need them to. May I have your address and phone number?”
Brenna wrote down the information on the proffered tablet, and exchanged it for a sheet of paper dense with addresses and phone numbers.
“We’re here for you, Brenna, in any way that you might need us. Your mother was my closest friend. I hope we can be friends, also.”
Brenna reached out and pulled the older woman into a hug. “Thank you.”
~~~
On Saturday, Brenna showed up at the Clan compound at six-thirty wearing a blue blouse of her mother’s that matched her eyes. She was shown to Callie’s bedroom suite.
“Hi, a little early for your date, aren’t you?” Callie greeted her.
“Yes, a bit, but I wanted a chance to talk with you or Seamus. They said he isn’t home.”
“Father is in West Virginia. He really doesn’t like cities. So, how can I help you?”
“I just sort of wanted to talk, to ask some questions. About what I am. What it means.”
Callie’s heart melted. The girl looked so lost and miserable. “Would you like some tea?”
Brenna nodded. “Yes, that would be nice.”
Callie led her downstairs to a pleasant sitting room and offered her a chair, then sat across from her.
“I guess we unloaded a lot of information on you the other night,” she started.
“Yes,” Brenna responded, “and I’m not even sure what a lot of it means. You use words that I understand, but I’m not sure we’re using them the same way. I don’t have the context.”
Brenna looked puzzled and said, “You just ordered tea for us, didn’t you?” Callie nodded. “How did you do that? I know there were conversations going on all around me at breakfast the other morning, people talking about me, but I might as well be, as you say, head blind. I wasn’t a part of things, didn’t know how to be. I could see the smiles, the hidden laughter at Collin and me, but …,” she trailed off.
Callie gave her an understanding smile. “I’m sure we’re not going to be able to get to all your questions this evening, or even this month. What are you doing tomorrow? Can you come for dinner about one? Then we can spend the afternoon together.”
“Sure. Thank you,” Brenna said, her face relaxing.
“First question. What’s bothering you the most?”
“What is a gift? You seemed to group gifts and talents and powers and, well, it’s all a jumble. I don’t understand any of it,” Brenna said.
“A Gift, the way we use it, capital G. There are twenty-five identified Gifts. Basically they are a combination of Talents, capital T, that can be thought of as both distinct and interacting abilities.
“For instance, the O’Neill Gift, which you obviously have, is named due to its manifestation and heritage from the O’Neill clan in Northern Ireland. Your mother had it, and her mother’s maiden name was O’Neill. It’s a complex and rare Talent that provides the telepath who has it with stronger, deeper shields than most telepaths normally have.”
“Yeah, my mother taught me to shield when I was very young, and I’ve played with it, and discovered some things she didn’t teach me.”
“Now,” Callie said, “as to your concerns about the conversations you missed the other morning. When telepaths are by themselves, they usually drop their first shield and allow their surface thoughts to be read. That also allows mental conversation. You can also communicate privately with another person using what we call a spear thought, aimed directly at that person. But that’s impossible when an O’Neill is locked down as tightly as you are. Nothing out, nothing in. If you keep your shields this tight all the time, you might as well be head blind. That’s why you don’t hear any of the mental chatter that’s going on in this house.”
“But,” Brenna fidgeted, obviously uncomfortable, “doesn’t that get awfully noisy?”
“Try dropping your first level shield,” Callie advised, “and see what happens. It only covers surface thoughts, and you can filter what goes to that level. You’ll still have your privacy.”
Brenna did as she said, and immediately her head was filled with dozens of people’s thoughts. “Oh, Jesus,” she moaned. It was enough to drive a person crazy.
Callie’s eyes widened, alarmed at her reaction. “May I see?”
At Brenna’s nod, Callie entered her mind, and was almost overwhelmed by the chaos she found there.
“Oh Jesus, is right. Don’t you know how to filter that?”
“Filter?”
“By the Goddess,” Callie breathed, “no wonder you’re locked down so tight. Come into my mind, let me show you.”
Cautiously, Brenna entered Callie’s mind and found that while she could still feel all the people in the house, as well as those on the street outside, everything was muted, like listening to a stream from a distance. Callie homed in on one person, then another, and Brenna could hear their thoughts, but then Callie backed away from them and their minds became muted.
<
br /> “Oh, I see.” Brenna said excitedly. “Wow, that’s really neat.”
She tentatively started setting filters the way Callie had shown her, and the chaos retreated to a dull roar, and then to a quiet murmur.
“Oh, God, that’s great.” she said.
And now I can speak with you mind-to-mind.
Brenna jumped in her seat.
No, I’m not in your mind, just speaking to you. I don’t have to go into your mind to talk to you as long as you’re not blocking me. Try it.
Like this? Brenna asked.
Yes, just exactly like that. Now, come back in, and I’ll show you how to send a spear thought. Okay? Collin, when you’re ready, Brenna is with me in the small sitting room near the kitchen.
Thanks, Callie. I’ll be there in about 10 minutes. Collin replied.
“Brenna, I wish you could see your face,” Callie laughed. “As for what all your Gifts are, you won’t finish mentally developing until you’re in your mid-thirties. Until then, we won’t really know everything you can do and how much power you have.”
There was a knock on the door, and Collin entered.
“My, you look pretty. Ready to go to dinner?” he greeted her.
So do you, she was careful to shield the thought. He had obviously made an attempt to control his unruly, collar-length brown hair but had lost the battle.
“Have a good time,” Callie said with a smile, picking up the tea tray and leaving the room.
Collin escorted her out the back to a small, blue sports car and held the door for her.
“Pretty nice,” she told him when he settled into the driver’s seat. “I guess they pay cook’s helpers pretty good here.”
She was surprised at his laugh. “You don’t know how close you just came to hitting the truth,” he said. Chuckling, he drove out of the compound toward the harbor.
“So what do you do?” she asked.
“The O’Donnell Group is a multi-billion dollar privately held company with its fingers in a lot of pies. I’m the Director of Security.” He smiled at her. “But my mother is the head cook at Seamus’ manor house in the country.”
Brenna’s face grew warm. “I really didn’t mean anything by that,” she said. “There’s nothing wrong with being a cook.”
“No, there’s not, and no offense taken. She’s damn good at it, and makes as much as some fancy Washington chefs. But my first job was helping in the kitchen,” he smiled.
“I worked as a short-order cook for a while when I was an undergrad,” Brenna said, “but when I turned twenty-one waitressing paid a lot better.”
“Good tips?” he said as he pulled up to a red light.
She smiled at him. “Can you keep a secret?” He nodded. “I used to buy blouses that were a size too small to wear to work.”
He roared with laughter. “And you gave me such a hard time for looking at your chest,” he said chuckling.
“You didn’t look like the type who would leave a good tip,” she said in a mock-haughty manner, raising her chin and flipping her hair.
He laughed again. “I guess I have a lot of work to do to correct a first impression.”
“Mr. Doyle, I’m a very open-minded woman, and I’m willing to give you a chance to do just that,” she said with a smile.
The restaurant overlooked the water on the south side of the Inner Harbor. The dining room curved to match the shoreline, and their table gave them an incredible view of the harbor and downtown. She could see their view of the approaching sunset would be spectacular.
Collin ordered an appetizer for them to share and a bottle of wine. Brenna stared at the prices on the menu. She quickly scanned for the cheapest items, but they were still beyond what she was used to paying.
“Brenna,” Collin said in a kindly tone, “order what you like. Just don’t look at the prices, okay?”
She looked up sharply.
“I remember how broke I was as a student,” he said, “and even if you shield your thoughts, you don’t do a good job of keeping them off your face.”
“Oh. It is a bit out of my normal price range,” she said. “But I’ll be making a lot more in the fall when I start teaching.” A dish of sea scallops with imperial crab caught her eye and just reading the description made her mouth water. “Ah, hell, if this is going to be an apology, I guess I should let you apologize good, huh?”
He laughed. “It will be a much more pleasant evening if you enjoy yourself, don’t you think?”
The food was excellent, the wine was far better than anything she’d ever had, and he ordered a second bottle. She told him about growing up in and out of foster homes, and he told her about his early life on the O’Donnell family estate hidden in the mountains of West Virginia.
When they left the restaurant, they walked along the harbor and when he offered his arm she took it. Who would have thought this would be the most romantic night of my life, she thought. As an experiment, she lowered her first shield after carefully constructing the filters as Callie had showed her, and tried to let him sense how she felt.
His face jerked toward her and he smiled. So you’re enjoying yourself?
Yes, very much. Thank you for a very lovely evening. Apology accepted. She stood on her tiptoes and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek.
He drove her home and double-parked in front of her house. Jumping out, he held the car door for her, and escorted her the few steps to her door. She unlocked it, then turned to him. He put his arms around her waist and bent to kiss her, but she leaned into him, her forehead resting on his chest.
“I had a wonderful time tonight, Collin. Thank you for inviting me.”
He stroked the side of her face, putting his hand under her chin to lift her face, but she shook him off.
“I like you, Collin, but I’m not a play thing. I don’t just fall into bed with men. I don’t have very much experience with them, and most of it was very disappointing.”
“I would like to see you again,” he said, stroking her hair.
“I’d like that,” she replied. “But, Collin, I don’t need fancy dinners, as nice as tonight has been. If you want to impress me, be yourself, be honest with me, show me respect.” She smiled up at him. “I may not be easy, but I am cheap.”
She stepped back, turned to go inside.
“When I said you’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen, I was being honest,” he said.
“I think you’re very pretty, too, but you have to want more than you can see, Collin. Good night.”
She went into her bedroom, carefully hung her mother’s clothes in the closet, then brushed her teeth and hair and went to bed with her vibrator. It was an extremely unsatisfying ending to the evening.
~~~
Chapter 1-3
I have an idea that the phrase "weaker sex" was coined by some woman to disarm some man she was preparing to overwhelm. - Ogden Nash
Callie walked into the dining room for breakfast and found Collin sitting there staring off into space.
“Have a good time last night?” she asked.
He looked at her, taking a moment to bring her into focus.
“Yeah, had a great time.” he smiled. “She’s a hell of a woman.”
“You were in rather early last night, for you.”
“Christ, Callie, she’s so messed up over sex and yet she’s really not a prude. Put me off over and over but told me she was attracted to me. I’m as messed up this morning as she is.”
“Go on.”
“Her stepmother was a witch, evidently, a Bible-thumping Catholic. She graduated with her PhD two years faster than anyone has ever done out of that program. I kidded her about being a Type-A personality, and, serious as a judge, she said, ‘I’ve never been satisfied with A’s.’ She did that and worked full time all through college.”
“She didn’t tell me that.”
“Yeah. Lab assistant, GTA, worked in the financial aid office, cocktail waitress, spent a year cleaning toilets at the s
tudent center. Said the best part about turning twenty-one was she could get a job that didn’t involve cleaning toilets. Jesus, what a woman.”
Callie studied him for a moment, “If I didn’t know you better, I’d think you were falling.”
He put his face down on the table. “Madly, head-over-heels infatuated down to my toenails.” He raised his head, looking at her with unfocused eyes. “Callie, it’s not just the way she looks, it’s not just lust, she’s the most fantastic person I’ve ever met. God help me. I would drink her bath water. I would crawl over broken glass for her smile.” He pursed his mouth, “Don’t just sit there and laugh. Shoot me, put me out of her misery. Damn.”
He sighed. “She’s a Kashani, isn’t she?”
Callie just looked at him.
“You know, don’t you? Her mother was. She has all the physical attributes. And last night she was flirting with me, you know, trying to talk me into agreeing to be one of her research subjects, and she gave me a pheromone blast. Jesus, I almost took her right then on the table. I called her on it, said it wasn’t cool, and she didn’t have a clue what I was talking about. She doesn’t know, does she? Doesn’t know what she is?”
She didn’t answer.
He put his head down on the table again. “I am so fucked.”
~~~
Brenna came to the house around noon. Jared let her in and was surprised when she gave him a hug. “It’s good to see you,” she said with a smile. “How’s my favorite cousin?”
“I’m your favorite?”
“You’re the only one I’ve met, so you’ve got exclusive rights,” she told him gaily, wandering off down the hall to find Callie.
Callie? I’m here. She sent.
Brenna, come up to the third floor, remember the room you stayed in?
I’ll be right up.
The door was open, and Callie was sitting at the table next to the window. “I like the view from this room,” she said.
Brenna sat and Callie poured her some tea, then handed her a sheet of paper with printing on both sides. The Telepathic Gifts were listed along with their descriptions.
“We have identified twenty-five Gifts. Some people only have one, Telepathy, while some have as many as fifteen. A person’s Gifts and the mix of them determines how much power someone has and the interactions between them can affect the way they manifest.”
The Telepathic Clans Omnibus Page 3
