by K. C. Archer
She corrected herself immediately. Not once in their brief encounter had she felt threatened by Clint. Sure, she’d been creeped out when he put a hex—or whatever that was—on Sergei and the others, but she’d believed him when he’d said he wasn’t going to hurt her. Actually, there was something about him that made her feel protected. And, she might as well admit this, if only to herself: she was intrigued. As she watched the road, Teddy realized she hadn’t given him her address. “At the next light, you’ll need to make a left—”
“I know where you live,” he said.
“Of course you do. Let me guess—you read my mind.”
“No, I read your file.”
Her brows shot up. “I have a file?”
“You were banned from every casino on the Strip. Of course you have a file. What I found interesting was that you never got caught cheating.”
“Goddamn right. Because I didn’t.”
“The casinos thought you did. So many players complained about you that the casinos assumed you’d developed a new system for doing so.”
“Whatever happened to innocent until proven guilty?”
“It’s private property. They can ban anyone they want,” he said. “The point is that’s why you caught my eye. It’s not unusual for untrained psychics to get into trouble. But you’ve been keeping a low profile lately. Avoiding your Serbian friend, maybe?”
“I had things under control,” Teddy said. “Until you showed up.”
Clint ignored Teddy’s jab. “I really should have found you after you got kicked out of Stanford.”
Teddy’s body tensed. Stanford. The day she’d opened the big envelope had been one of the happiest in Teddy’s life. But that hadn’t lasted long. “I still don’t buy this whole psychic nonsense.”
“I’m going to have to prove it again, aren’t I?” Clint said.
Does this guy really think I’m going to fall for that David Blaine crap?
“David Blaine’s a hack,” he said. “And he’s a stage magician, not a psychic.”
“I—,” Teddy started. “I don’t know who you think you are, but you can’t just go around butting in on private conversations in people’s heads.”
“You’re the one who wanted proof.”
He had her there. “Okay,” she said. “I’ll play along. If there really are psychics, why would they even bother to go to school? Why wouldn’t they just play the lottery and get rich?”
“Fair question. Let me ask you one. Why play poker? Why not the lottery? Or the slot machines?”
Because she couldn’t predict numbers out of thin air. But she could read people. At Stanford, all she’d had to do was have a quick conversation with the quarterback before kickoff to know how to bet. Despite his bravado, when she’d felt that familiar anxiety, she’d known the quarterback was lying and that his game would be off.
“You’ll find that psychics aren’t that easy to read,” Clint said. “You’ll have to break down a few walls before you know if they’re telling the truth.” He smiled. A warmer smile than she had expected from him.
So he knew that she couldn’t use her lie-detector skills on him. Interesting. “Just on you or on all psychics?”
“I have extra defenses in place. But our brains are wired differently. You’ll find that you can’t read us as easily as you do your opponents at a poker table.” Keeping one hand on the wheel, he dug inside the glove compartment and retrieved a glossy brochure. The cover featured an impressive-looking redbrick building situated on a craggy rock overlooking the sea. Whitfield Institute for Law Enforcement Training and Development, the caption read. Did he think a slick brochure was going to impress her? Or did he just want to convince her the place was real?
He shook his head. “I get it. Back when I was approached, I was every bit as stubborn as you. Maybe more.”
“You went to Whitfield?”
“It wasn’t around then, but someplace like it, yeah.” He tapped the brochure. “The point is, we don’t just train people to work with local law enforcement, although obviously, that’s the route I took. We place students with Homeland Security, FBI, CIA, private security details, the military, customs . . . you name it. And they go on to do important work.”
The car slowed, then came to a stop. Clint shifted into park. She looked up, startled to find they’d already arrived at her parents’ tidy suburban home. A knot formed in her stomach. What was she going to tell her parents? Sergei would stop at nothing to get his money. She had screwed up before—not just by getting kicked out of school but by pissing off bosses at crappy waitressing jobs, getting evicted from lousy apartment after lousy apartment, and more—but nothing compared to this. They’d have to take out another mortgage on the house.
She turned to thank Clint for the ride and found him studying the house with an odd expression. “They were good to you? The people who raised you?”
The people who raised me? They’re my parents. She hoped he wasn’t going to start asking whether she had ever tried to track down her birth parents and their families. Besides that assignment for Mrs. Gilbert’s class, she hadn’t asked any more questions. She didn’t need to know. She had made a policy early in life of not wanting anyone who didn’t want her in return: boys, Stanford, families . . .
“Yeah,” she said. “It’s not their fault I’m running from a loan shark.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“They were better than I deserved.”
He nodded, seemingly satisfied. “Speaking of your parents: the school is top-secret. You can’t tell them about it.”
“What am I supposed to say? I’m moving to San Francisco to join a commune?”
Clint smiled. “The cover most students use is training for a classified government job.”
“Convenient,” Teddy said. She gathered her purse and opened the passenger door. “Thanks for your help tonight. It’s been . . . interesting.”
Clint reached over and put his hand on the door, stopping Teddy from getting out of the car. “The next time something like tonight happens, I won’t be there to bail you out.”
She stiffened, imagining herself in a prison uniform, her parents renting an apartment on Balzar Avenue with bars on the windows. “Yeah. I got it.”
“The world needs people like us to show up, Teddy.” He handed her the brochure. “There’s a plane ticket in there. Flight leaves this morning at seven for San Francisco. I suggest you be on it.”
“As in seven a.m. today? As in five hours from now?”
“I tried to approach you earlier, Teddy. But you were hiding in your parents’ garage.”
Teddy rolled her eyes. “It’s not a garage, it’s an apart—”
“I told you there was one last move. Not Sergei, not jail, but school. If you choose to attend Whitfield, we’ll take care of your debts and make sure Sergei stays away from your parents.” He held her gaze for a moment longer, then shrugged. “Think of this as a scholarship offer. You give us four years, we’ll take care of everything else.”
Teddy walked away from the car, wondering if he was telling the truth. She made it two feet before she had to ask him what had been nagging her since they left the casino. “Earlier tonight,” she said, “what happened in the casino. You . . . you told them to do that, right? Sergei and the pit boss. You told them to just turn around and walk away?”
“Told them?” He arched a single brow. “Did you hear me say anything?”
“You know.” Feeling foolish, she tapped her temple. “With your mind.”
He held her gaze. “If you really want an answer, come to Whitfield.”
With that, he drove away. Teddy stood on the curb, watching his taillights disappear around the corner. She loitered a moment longer, hoping there would be something, some sign, to help her make this decision. The cops pounding on the door. One of Sergei’s men driving past her house. Clint waiting by the curb to take her to the airport. But there was nothing. Just the warm desert air, accompanied
by the sound of real crickets. All that was left was her—her and her thoughts.
CHAPTER FOUR
TEDDY WALKED AROUND HER PARENTS’ house to the two-door (detached) garage. And just like that, ten yards later, she was home. As she fumbled with her keys, she remembered the day her dad had installed a real door with a real lock—his effort to make her feel like a real grown-up—instead of what she actually was: a twenty-four-year-old woman who lived in her parents’ two-door (detached) garage.
She unlocked the door and walked into the remodeled space, which now held a separate living and sleeping area, with a small kitchenette tucked into the corner. It was nicer than some of the dumps Teddy had lived in. And the rent was very affordable.
She tossed the Whitfield brochure on her desk. Why does that name sound familiar?
She needed a long, cold shower. Then she needed pancakes. When she was a kid, her dad had cooked pancakes every Sunday morning while her mom slept in. The tradition had continued into her teens. Teddy and her dad discussed only the most important topics over pancakes—football, heist movies, disappointments and heartbreaks, adoption, epilepsy. Pancakes made everything better.
She stripped out of her costume, kicking it all into a corner.
As she showered, she thought about what Clint had said. If she were psychic, wouldn’t she have been able to predict her debacle at Stanford? Sergei? Avoid this whole mess in the first place?
Breakfast wouldn’t help answer that question. Exhausted, she slipped into bed, hoping that by morning she’d have a plan. And that maybe by tomorrow night she’d be laughing at the idea of a school for crime-fighting psychics. Oh, she’d laugh right up until Sergei tracked her down. She didn’t have to be psychic to know that whatever he was going to do to her would be bad.
One last move.
She grabbed the brochure and her laptop from her desk and carried both to her bed. She settled her computer across her lap and typed Whitfield Institute into the search box.
The school popped up immediately. Lots of photos of building exteriors, of students sitting in classrooms. It was all stock-photo stuff, except none of the students or teachers faced the camera; the photos showed only the backs of their heads. It felt as though the webpage were a mock-up, details to be filled in later. Next she Googled Clint. Now, this was a little more interesting. Apparently, Clint Corbett wasn’t just any cop. He was a Good Cop. Article after article featured his fancy cop certificates, shiny cop medals, and earnest cop plaques for solving cases that other cops believed were unsolvable. The Whitfield Institute wasn’t mentioned by name.
Curious, she dug a little further and found a YouTube video with footage dated 1982. Apparently, Clint had played football for USC. Not surprising, given his build. She started the video: “Corbett jumps the route and intercepts the pass!” the sports announcer shouted. “Thirty, twenty, ten. Touchdown, USC! Corbett does it again! It’s like he can read the quarterback’s mind! Don’t know how he does it!”
Teddy smiled. “He’s psychic, dummies.”
Her plane tickets checked out, too. Round-trip, leaving San Francisco at seven a.m., with the return date left open.
Teddy set her laptop aside. She drew her legs up and wrapped her arms around them, resting her chin atop her knees. Minutes ago, she’d been exhausted, but now sleep seemed impossible.
The idea of starting over in San Francisco was becoming more appealing by the second. The few friends she had left in Las Vegas from high school were busy “adulting”—going to brunch, having babies, buying sensible sedans, being normal with their jobs, partners, and families. And that left her even further out than she had been in school.
Teddy’s medication sat on her bedside table. She glanced at it but didn’t move to open the bottle. What if Clint was right? What if she wasn’t epileptic but overstimulated? Because—and here was a terrifying admission—he had described exactly what her seizures felt like. Not a misfiring of neurons but a sensory overload.
Psychic.
Even though the medication made her feel as dull as a rock, some essential part of her continued to rebel against it. Against everything. She could not settle into the life her friends had embraced. Deep down, she knew she could never be happy like that. Maybe that was why she seemed to sabotage every attempt at a normal life. Getting expelled from Stanford. Leaving one job after another. Failing at relationships. Racking up insane gambling debts. The depths to which she was sinking kept getting lower and lower. She looked at the ridiculous costume piled in the corner and shuddered. If she hadn’t already hated herself, she did now. Nothing like stealing from your parents to make you feel like the worst sort of person.
At least Whitfield Institute offered a possibility that she might finally be able to turn her life around. Fool’s gold, knowing her luck, but a possibility was better than nothing. Something had to change—and if she was honest with herself, she knew that something was her. Clint’s words came back to her now: The world needs people like us to show up, Teddy.
She saw a light turn on in the main house and wondered if her dad was awake. Lately, she’d been coming home to find him puttering around the house, fixing a broken lamp, flipping through the pages of some American history book. Teddy knew it would be so easy to walk over, to strike up a conversation, to mix the batter for pancakes. It would be harder to tell him about the money she owed, about Sergei, about Clint and the school in California. Her dad would listen with his usual measured care before launching into the “I’m disappointed in you” speech. He’d tell her to do what she thought was right. But if she told him all of that, she’d have to also tell him that she’d stolen from him. And she wasn’t ready to own up to that.
Teddy must have drifted off to sleep, for she woke abruptly, feeling dazed and disoriented. The wispy remnants of a familiar dream stayed with her—an image of a young woman standing before a yellow house, a cottage, really, beckoning her inside. A soft lullaby had drifted through the air.
Teddy rolled over. Her bedside clock read five-thirty. She shook her head clear of the dream and leaped out of bed. When she’d fallen asleep, she hadn’t been sure what she would do about Clint’s offer. But now she knew this really was her last move. She could show up. She was going to Whitfield.
Teddy pulled out her phone and summoned a Lyft. She gathered her makeup and toiletries and dumped them in a bag. She threw her clothes into a suitcase. She paused only long enough to stuff her costume and padding in a trash bag; she’d toss that out herself.
Finally, she placed her official Whitfield Institute letter of admission (personally addressed to Theodora Cannon—a thorough, if presumptuous, touch on Clint’s part—and stuffed inside the pamphlet along with her plane ticket) on the kitchen table, where her parents would find it, along with a handwritten note. The letter didn’t mention psychic stuff, so Teddy felt like she wasn’t breaking any rules by sharing it with them.
Mom and Dad,
Didn’t want to mention this until I knew, but look—I got in! I’m giving school another try. Heading out this morning. I’ll call as soon as I can.
Outside, the Lyft driver gave a quick honk, and she paused, thinking back to Clint’s insistence that the world needed people like him. She corrected herself. Like us.
Until now, she had thought of herself as someone who needed people, not someone who other people needed. But for a brief moment she let that idea carry her away. She knew she wasn’t Wonder Woman or Superman or anything, but maybe she could learn to make a difference, in a small way. She reread her note and added a quick postscript: Next time I come home, you’ll be proud of me.
CHAPTER FIVE
TEDDY DODGED BETWEEN GROUPS OF tourists who filled the bustling San Francisco pier. Ignoring the shops hawking cable car ornaments, Golden Gate snow globes, and T-shirts proclaiming the wearer had just escaped from Alcatraz, she made a beeline for the nearest coffee shop. She’d dozed a little on the plane, but it had been a short flight. She’d barely closed her eyes before to
uching down at SFO.
She ordered a triple mocha espresso, hoping the combination of caffeine and sugar would knock the sluggishness from her brain and eliminate her headache. It wasn’t bad yet, just a dull pain behind her right eye: her body’s normal way of reminding her that she hadn’t taken her meds in over twenty-four hours. Only this time she’d deliberately forgotten to take them. All based on a highly nonmedical diagnosis from a cop who didn’t even know her.
You’re not epileptic, Teddy. You’re psychic.
She touched the small bottle of pills tucked inside her jacket pocket, just in case. She felt more herself today, off her medication and in her own clothes—multiple ear piercings, leggings, combat boots, leather jacket.
There was a blast of a boat horn, a final call for anyone who wanted to board the ferry to Angel Island. Last night—wait, was it really just earlier this morning?—when Clint had told her the school was in San Francisco, she’d assumed he meant in San Francisco. Not on some tiny offshore island, little more than a pencil speck on a map of Northern California. But there had been a ferry pass clipped to her plane ticket, and so here she was.
Teddy capped her coffee and raced down Pier 41 to the dock where the ferry waited. Well, she ran as fast as she could, given that she was dragging her suitcase, carry-on duffel, and purse, along with the steaming mocha, all while dodging tourists. She was the last to board before the crew hauled in the carpeted plank and pulled away from the wharf. She dumped her gear at her feet against the rail. As the boat’s engines hummed, she watched the city skyline recede. She hadn’t been to San Francisco since her disastrous stint at Stanford.
“It’s pretty, isn’t it?”
Teddy turned to see a young woman in her early twenties standing beside her. She was small—elfin, almost. In fact, Teddy thought it looked like this girl might have spent more time reading The Lord of the Rings under her bedcovers than walking outside in the sun. Dark circles shadowed her eyes.
