"Because," Jahir said. "I am making tea, and you are making cookies."
"I am?" Vasiht'h placed his messenger bag down by the door, wary.
"You are. Come by, I have it set out for you."
There were times when Vasiht'h's body language reminded Jahir strongly of great cats; his lower body, while patterned like some other creature's, had much more in common with a pard's than it did with anything less powerful. The way his roommate was stalking toward the kitchen was one of those moments. The Glaseah rounded the corner of the island and squinted at the mise en place. "Okay. What's gone wrong."
"It's not so much wrong as that we will be receiving a guest tomorrow," Jahir said.
"And this guest is..."
"Verelna."
Vasiht'h stopped short. "Esna Verelna? As in our client from the student clinic?"
Jahir pressed a cup of tea on him, forcing his roommate to do something with his hands besides clench them. "The same. I had a message from her earlier. She found my address and asked for an appointment, as we are not otherwise available this week."
"What?"
"Drink," Jahir said firmly, and was gratified when Vasiht'h did so despite the turbulence in the mindline. To diffuse some of the hostility brewing in his roommate's head, he said, "Was it all right that I said she might come?"
"What? Of course! Though..." Vasiht'h put the tea down and grimaced. "Is it allowed for us to do that? Do you know? Can we practice after hours? Without supervision?"
"I don't know," Jahir replied, grave. He offered the spatula to Vasiht'h, who took it absently and started bouncing it against his palm. "Do you recall anything from the explanation they gave us at the beginning of the semester?"
"I don't, no," Vasiht'h said. "I guess I could ask Professor Palland..."
"But?" Jahir said, feeling the hesitation as a queasiness.
"But what if he says no?" Vasiht'h said. He took the jar of more-almond butter, which Jahir had left open, and started scooping some of it into the mixing bowl. "Obviously, she wouldn't have gone through the trouble of finding you if she hadn't really wanted to see us. Our personal codes aren't listed through the student clinic, and yours in particular... I don't know how you do it, but it's slippery as fish in water. You'd think 'search for the call code of the only Eldritch on Seersana' would be a pretty simple task, but half the time you don't turn up."
Unlike Vasiht'h, he knew there were censors prowling the Alliance's databases, cleaning up any references to him or the few others who'd ventured off-world. They were more dedicated in their destruction of things like medical data than they were with call codes; their sweeps were probably wiping his location rather than the actual ability to contact him. No doubt the Asanii had assumed he'd be easier to locate for the same reason Vasiht'h had mentioned... but to pin him down, she would have had to keep trying until she caught one of the references before it was swept.
She had been trying. Very hard. Since nothing in their contact with her had suggested a lack of intelligence or subtlety, as tacit as that communication had been, he suspected that choosing to send the message to him rather than to his far easier to find friend was her way of telling them that the appointment mattered.
All he said, though, was, "I agree with you that it's important to her. It is why I told her she might come. Do you think if we told Palland he might find some reason we should avoid it? Liability, or an academic issue?"
"It's better to ask forgiveness than get permission," Vasiht'h said. His thoughts were smoothing out now that he was paying attention to the process of baking. Satisfied, Jahir withdrew to a stool to let him work. "We can always say it was just a visit."
"Would that not be a lie?"
"I don't know," Vasih'th said. "Given that Ravanelle hasn't so much as said a word to us about how we're doing... for all we know, she doesn't think of our methods as therapy at all. But you know what bothers me?"
"What?"
Vasiht'h pointed the spatula at him. "That she scheduled us off this week. Did we have appointments booked that she canceled?"
"I don't know," Jahir said. "Perhaps we should ask Esna when she arrives."
"Perhaps we should," Vasiht'h said, and turned his full attention to the cookie dough.
The following morning, Esna arrived on their doorstep, her hands in her pockets and her head dipped, and it was strange to see her without the bag she took to school. Jahir let her in and said, "Alet."
She smiled at him, one of her brief, butterfly smiles.
"We have a couch set up," he continued. "Would you like something to drink? A tisane?"
"A cookie?" Vasiht'h called from the kitchen.
That made her look up; that he could see her pupils dilate made him realize she had light eyes. Grey, flecked with blue. She'd so rarely met their gazes without tears that he hadn't noted their color. "A... cookie?"
"More-almond," Jahir said.
"More-almond!" A long pause. He thought she was working through the notion of using something so expensive to make cookies. Then she smiled, and this time the smile was complicated, plucking at one corner of her mouth and leaving the other hesitant, unturned. This smile stayed for longer than a few heartbeats, and he glimpsed the personality beneath the constant grief. "Ah... all right."
So she sat on the couch and had a cookie and an herbal infusion, something mild, and then she curled up under one of their blankets and slept. After a while, she smiled in her sleep. The complicated smile, the one that stayed for longer than a heartbeat.
"Do you think we should try now?" Vasiht'h asked, low. "With the dreams."
"No," Jahir said. "No, what she needs is presence. And here she doesn't have to touch us to know we are nigh. Also, your cookies are magic."
Vasiht'h, who'd been following along without much attention, started at the last sentence. He peered up at Jahir, then chuckled. "Maybe we should make it part of our therapeutic interventions from now on."
They let her sleep herself out. When she woke, she rubbed her eyes and thanked them, quiet, gathered herself to go. At the door, she said, "I'll tell the others." And then she was gone, walking down the sidewalk and leaving them staring after her.
"That implies she talks to people," Vasiht'h said, hesitant.
"Or that she knows our client list and is willing to do them a good turn," Jahir said. "I... think we should be prepared."
They received their first request that evening, and another three the following day. Vasiht'h handled the scheduling, slotting the appointments around their existing classes and leaving the last two for the first day of the break, since the students weren't leaving town. After they'd sent the final one away, Vasiht'h flopped his upper body on the couch and sighed. "All right, well... if we're going to be damned, at least we'll be damned for going all out. Right?"
"Do you know what I think?" Jahir said.
"What?" Vasiht'h answered, reply muffled by his arms.
"I think we need a vacation."
Vasiht'h lifted his head, not trusting the sudden innocence in the mindline. It looked like a field of nodding buttercups. Smelled like spring and sunlight. He half expected some sort of fairy to come traipsing through it in a moment.
"So I have taken the liberty of arranging one."
"You... did what?" Vasiht'h said. "Without me noticing?"
"You have been very busy," was the sage reply.
Vasiht'h narrowed his eyes. "You realize this means we can hide things from one another."
He'd expected unease or hurt or anger. To have Jahir laugh... he wasn't sure whether to be exasperated or relieved. "Oh, arii. Of course we can. A mind is a complicated thing. More complicated than its surface thoughts, its reactions to the moment. You have hidden things from me before—"
"I have..." Vasiht'h stopped and flipped his ears back. "Okay, well, only the whole thing about you and your problem with thinking you're frail."
"Which you hid until you judged it the right time to prod me, and it was," Jahir said. "And I thank you for tha
t." He leaned back, one arm over the back of the couch and his legs stretched in front of him. "You would know if I was hiding something significant. I would know that in you as well. But we can't know one another in entirety."
"We're just going to come closer than most people," Vasiht'h said. "All right. I can see that." He tilted his head. "You've been thinking about this."
"It is what we're doing, in part, with the clients."
"Clients or patients?" Vasiht'h wondered. "The student clinic calls them patients."
"'Patients' implies disease. The people who come to see us aren't sick. To suggest it is to inculcate that belief." Jahir smiled, a little. "You have just seen what that did to me, and I didn't even realize I had internalized that belief until you dragged it out into the light." He shook his head. "I am halfway through a historical perspectives class in the pharmaceutical track. It has been... enlightening."
Vasiht'h lifted his brows and let his curiosity tug at the mindline until Jahir glanced at him and repeated, "The mind is a complicated thing."
There was something lurking under there, so Vasiht'h tugged a little more until the Eldritch narrowed his eyes. "You will tip me over."
"So tell me."
"And you worried that we could hide aught from one another?"
"Tell me," Vasiht'h said, grinning this time.
"I have been doing a little research on the side on klaidopin—that is the technical name for—"
"Wet," Vasiht'h finished, the fur on his spine fluffing up. He didn't ask why; that was obvious. "Have you learned anything worth knowing?" he asked instead.
"Only how little the Alliance still understands," Jahir said. "In a way, it is comforting to know that as advanced as you are, there are things you have yet to explain or explore."
"I never worry about that," Vasiht'h said. "I don't think we'll ever know anything. Which reminds me. Vacation?"
"You took me to the sea on Selnor," Jahir said. "I have arranged for us to go to the sea on Seersana."
The mindline twinkled: lights in fog. People's voices. Laughter. Vasiht'h frowned, puzzled. "I can't tell if that's a party or a lighthouse."
"It is a party in a lighthouse," Jahir said. "A lighthouse converted into a bed and breakfast, and I have invited the quadmates."
Vasiht'h covered his face to keep the snickers from escaping, and failed. "I can't believe you hid that from me."
"Because it's a bad idea?" Jahir asked, a touch of anxiety in the words.
"Because Brett can't keep a secret to save his life!"
"Ah!" Jahir said, smug. "Well. Now you know where half your cookies went."
Chapter 31
The vacation was everything Jahir had hoped when he'd arranged it: a moody locale, cool and humid and mysterious, complete with a tower perched on a rocky crag and a path down to a pebbled beach with the bones of a shipwreck perched on it like the wooden spars of a sea creature's ribcage. From the merry sparkle in their innkeepers' eyes, they were used to indulging the over-active imaginations of their visitors, and even hosted several gatherings where they told quite convincing ghost stories, all of them improved by their nautical setting. During the day, they hiked along the beach, picking up pretty stones, having picnics on likely-looking buttes with commanding views of a gray and unknowable ocean; at night, they retired to the lighthouse for warm drinks, or followed tour guides with honest-to-goodness fire torches into the dark to good sites for bonfires. On the final night, at the bonfire their hosts had built on the beach near enough for the sea's hissing approach to threaten it, they spotted a giant fin breaching the water, catching highlights off the fire, a fin so monstrous several people in the gathering shrieked. In the morning, a group of divers and one Naysha joined them at the water's edge to demonstrate how the trick had been done; it amused Jahir that on a world where technology could have been used to project a solidigraphic image of just about anything imaginable, people were still making things like this work with props.
"It would be easy to do it with the projectors," the innkeeper had said while he was downstairs with his bag, waiting for Vasiht'h to join him. "The fun is making it work without all the fancy gadgets."
On the way home, Vasiht'h said to him, "You're crazy. And that was fun."
Jahir grinned.
They returned to their studies, their practicum, their carefully balanced schedule of nights with their friends or out to concerts, lunches with their respective advisors, mornings with the girls at the hospital. It was a busy life, but Vasiht'h observed the contentment in the mindline and was pleased. Even better, Ravanelle said nothing to them about their clandestine meetings with the students outside the clinic; either she hadn't found out or she didn't care, but either option worked for him.
Two weeks after the holiday, their hungry Seersa patient surprised them by declaring, "I've taken up sports."
"You've done what?" Vasiht'h asked, surprised.
The foxine started laughing. "You should see your faces. Well, your face, Vasiht'h." He nodded to Jahir. "I have a harder time reading yours, but I assume you're both surprised... otherwise, you—" pointing at Vasiht'h, "would be a little less obvious about it."
Now they were both interested, and Ravanelle's ears had twitched toward the patient as well.
"Could you explain that?" Jahir asked.
"Oh, I don't know how to say it?" He shook his head. "It's like you're emotional sinks for one another. If one of you's not something, then more of the thing the first person is can drain into it, and it sort of equalizes? That's my guess."
He and Jahir exchanged glances. /Well,/ Vasiht'h said dryly. /I guess it's not just our body language while chatting that we have to watch./
/Control over one's deportment is not necessarily a good thing./
That with such irony that it tasted like metal filings, but Vasiht'h didn't begrudge the Eldritch it after his experiences with Professor Sheldan and that Seersa's beliefs on how control of one's body language somehow transformed a person into a liar or a manipulator or Goddess knew what.
"So, sports," Jahir said.
"Yes," their patient said, satisfied. "I've never felt comfortable doing that before. Now, I enjoy it. I'm playing soccer. Running. Can you imagine? And I don't go in for the adjustments anymore."
"So... you're not overeating," Vasiht'h guessed, careful.
"Not anymore." He grinned. "It's like all my pantries filled up. Or maybe like I expect them to be full? I don't crave anymore. I feel... I don't know. Relaxed. Did you two do all that while I was sleeping? Pretty incredible." He pursed his lips. "I guess I could relapse. I don't feel like I will. Are you worried?"
To admit that they were as mystified as to the mechanism of their success was probably not a good idea. Vasiht'h said, "Are you?"
"Nah." The Seersa grinned. "I think I'm fine." He leaned forward suddenly, one elbow on his knee, a rakish pose that fairly shouted his confidence. "Say, I don't suppose you'd be willing to see my mother? She's got the same issues. You know. Maybe you can make her picnic lunches."
"I... ah... don't know what the policy is on non-students using the student clinic," Vasiht'h said.
"Figures. Well, when you're in practice, I'll look you up." He rose. "Thanks for everything."
"Our pleasure," Vasiht'h said for them both.
After the Seersa left, he glanced over at Ravanelle to see if she would say anything, but she was reading her data tablet. When she looked up and caught him staring, she said, "Next patient's in ten minutes."
"Is that common?" Vasiht'h said, deciding to brazen it out. "Complete cures like that. A remission of psychological sickness."
She returned her attention to her tablet. "It happens."
/How can she be so opaque when she was so open when we first met her?/ Vasiht'h asked, his frustration making the words burn in the mindline.
/I wonder,/ Jahir murmured.
/Wonder what??/
But Jahir wouldn't say.
So he took his concerns to Pallan
d, if the rant he delivered in his major professor's office could be dignified with any description as civilized as that. He finished his tirade by saying, "She's trying to sabotage our practicum. I'm sure of it!"
Palland cupped his mug in both hands and leaned back in his chair, brows lifted. "Because she cut your schedule a week prior to the break? Are you sure she really wasn't just trying to give you some time off? Maybe she thinks what you're doing takes a lot out of you."
"Do you think it takes a lot out of me?" Vasiht'h demanded, flattening his ears.
Palland's eyes dropped to his student's feet, flowed back up to his face. His regard was so thoughtful that Vasiht'h sat back, chastened. He was about to apologize when the Seersa said, "No. Actually, I'd say the opposite. I think for the first time you're doing something you love, something you're good at... and it's energizing you."
Vasiht'h's mouth dropped open.
"Having said that," Palland said, setting his mug on his desk, "I'm not the one on site, alet. She has to have a better idea of how this is going than I do."
"But telling all our clients we weren't available—"
"She may be testing you," Palland said. "She may be resorting to testing you in the only way she can, lacking any real insight into your methods."
"By badgering us?" Vasiht'h said, irritated.
"By measuring the responses of your students." Palland said. "Seeing if they're willing to switch to a different therapist. Students who visit the clinic are used to being rotated around if they're going to stick it out for longer than a semester."
"But why in the middle of the semester?" Vasiht'h asked. When Palland pushed a cup over to him, he watched his professor fill it and dutifully took a sip, letting it calm him. Some kind of tea. Hibiscus? No, but floral. He thought Jahir would find it cloying, wondered if that affected his reaction to it, couldn't tell. "Aren't they supposed to fill out evaluations by the end of the semester anyway? Why is she probing in the middle of the semester?"
"Because she needs to have some idea of how things are going before it's all over," Palland said dryly. "Alet... aren't you being a little hard on her?"
Mindline (The Dreamhealers 2) Page 29
