Book One

by K. C. Archer

  “I’ve never seen San Francisco from this vantage point,” Teddy said, looking out over the horizon.

  “You’re on your way to Whitfield, too?” the girl asked.

  Teddy turned to her, wondering if the girl was psychic.

  The girl smiled and tilted her head toward the pile of luggage amassed at Teddy’s feet. “It’s pretty easy to tell who’s planning on staying for months and who’s just day-tripping,” she said, pointing from her own luggage to the other passengers. “I’m Molly Quinn, by the way.”

  Teddy glanced around the deck and saw that Molly was right. Most of the people on board were tourists: couples and families equipped with backpacks, bikes, and water bottles, prepared to explore the island for an hour or two. Only a few had the number of bags that identified them as students.

  “I’m Teddy.”

  Molly wasn’t what Teddy had pictured when she’d imagined the typical Whitfield student. She’d half-expected (all right, dreaded) a group of kids in capes, tarot cards spilling out of their pockets and crystal balls cupped in their hands. But Molly looked normal enough, besides her pallor.

  “What made you decide to come to Whitfield?” Teddy asked.

  Molly looked away, appearing to study the foam churned up in the ferry’s wake. “I didn’t exactly choose to come. It was this or jail. Turns out I’m considered a threat to national security.”

  Teddy laughed, then stopped when she realized it wasn’t meant as a joke. “You? Really?” Teddy thought this woman looked as dangerous as a mouse.

  “Well, I sort of hacked in to the CIA’s mainframe.”

  Teddy did a double take. Molly Quinn didn’t look like a computer hacker. Surely she was bluffing. Teddy braced herself, expecting that anxious feeling to creep through her body as Molly talked, but it never came. She remembered that Clint had said psychics would be harder to read. And then something strange happened: an image appeared before her eyes, just a flash, like a frame from a movie: Molly huddled in front of a computer. The image was gone as quickly as it had arrived. Had she been in Molly’s head? She wanted back in, to see that image again—was it a memory? Dazed, Teddy tried to rejoin the conversation.

  “I wanted to prove myself.” Molly shrugged. Teddy guessed that even mice could chew through the right wires to destroy the system.

  Molly looked Teddy up and down. “Let me guess. Psychometrist?”

  Teddy didn’t know what a psychometrist was.

  Molly continued, “I’m an empath. Do you know what that is?”

  Teddy shook her head.

  “It’s someone who can tune in to the emotions of others, but on an extremely heightened level. I can feel—literally—everything someone else is feeling: pain, grief, joy, boredom. Like right now I can feel that you’re excited but also frustrated—like you can’t get a handle on all the information you’d like. Don’t worry. Lots of students have close to no psychic knowledge when they first arrive.”

  Teddy didn’t like how easily Molly had figured her out. She wasn’t used to talking about her feelings with anyone except her dad, and even then pancakes had to be on the table. So she just smiled and changed the subject. “How does being an empath help you hack in to a computer?”

  “It doesn’t, not really. I have a degree in computer science, so I know my way around tech,” Molly said. “Obviously, that helps. But those upper-level coders, the guys who work for the CIA . . .” She paused, shaking her head. “They’re so proud of all their tricky little bits of code, their so-called impenetrable firewalls. It’s ridiculous how cocky they get. It’s like they leave a trail of fingerprints, and I just follow that inside.”

  While Molly talked, Teddy tried to recall that image of her. But this time nothing happened. Whatever connection there had been was gone.

  Guess there’s a reason psychics go to school.

  “So how’d you get caught?” she asked.

  “Well, I got cocky, too. I left a note. You know, a ‘Hey, if I got in, who else is reading this?’ kind of a thing. They traced the breach back to my laptop. Then these guys from Whitfield showed up.”

  Teddy wondered if she and Molly were more alike than she’d thought. Had all of Whitfield’s students run into trouble before enrolling? She wondered if Whitfield was some sort of academy for wayward psychic millennials. That wasn’t what she’d signed up for.

  Molly looked at Teddy, her expression mirroring Teddy’s own. Then Molly shook it off and gave another smile, gentle but strained. “Don’t worry,” she said. “Whitfield’s actually pretty amazing. I wouldn’t have come back if it hadn’t been.”

  “Come back?”

  “I was here first semester last year, but I took time off to deal with some personal stuff. Luckily, they’re giving me another chance.”

  They both leaned against the railing, watching as a small island, covered by scrubby pine and ringed by steep coastal cliffs, rose dramatically from the center of the bay.

  “That’s home,” Molly said.

  The ferry bumped up against the dock. Passengers milled toward the exit plank, preparing to disembark. When they stepped off the ferry, Teddy was surprised to discover a port large enough to accommodate the ferry and several private boats. A few shops offered the tourist catchalls of water, first-aid kits, sunscreen, hats, and T-shirts, as well as bike, scooter, and kayak rentals. An information booth directed people toward trails and campground sites. Teddy spotted a Cantina serving food and drinks on a dock overlooking the bay. She liked the idea that there was somewhere to get drunk on this island if she needed to self-medicate with a margarita.

  “That’s our ride,” Molly said, pointing to an unmarked tram.

  Teddy picked up her belongings. She followed Molly toward the tram, dumped her things on the back, and then stopped. A group of people had gathered in front of a statuesque woman holding a small black dog. She was beautiful, but everything about her was big: hair, boobs, butt, thighs. She was wearing so much fringe that she looked like a giant lampshade, and she was yelling.

  “Wilson says that cheap dog food you switched to is giving him gas. He should be eating organic. And throw in a probiotic. You should do that, too.” Her fringe swayed as she pointed to a man—the owner, Teddy guessed. “Also, he wants to go back to the dog park,” the woman went on.

  “W-what?” the man said. “No, he can’t. The last time I took him, he got into a fight—”

  “—which wasn’t his fault,” the woman said. “He says the other dog was a total asshole.” She put the dog down. The woman had blond wavy hair that reached the small of her back, which she swooped from shoulder to shoulder when she spoke, as if for emphasis. That, with the fringe and the bracelets, made Teddy wonder if she had taken a wrong turn at the intersection of Haight and Ashbury. Teddy almost laughed. Could this woman actually talk to dogs?

  The dog’s owner didn’t find the woman funny. He tugged the dog in the opposite direction as the dog lurched toward a nearby flock of seabirds.

  Frowning, the woman called out, “Wilson, stop projecting! Those birds did nothing to you!” The gulls circled overhead. “You’re welcome,” she said as they flew away.

  Then she turned to Teddy and introduced herself as Jillian Blustein.

  “Are you like a modern-day Dr. Dolittle?” Teddy said after introducing herself.

  “Well, I also have been dabbling in palmistry,” Jillian said as she grabbed Teddy’s hand and turned it over. “You have a strong life line . . . or laugh line. I can never keep those straight.” She gave a good-natured sigh, as if it didn’t really matter. “But yes, I’m an animal medium.”

  Teddy laughed this time and then regretted it. “Sorry,” she said. “You must get that a lot.”

  Jillian waved it away. “I’m used to it. People have been looking at me funny since I was a kid.” She threw her arms in the air, making the fringe on her jacket wave. “Me. Blending in. You can imagine what a disaster that was?”

  “Never worked for me, either,” Teddy
said.

  “So are you walking or riding?” Jillian asked.

  “What?”

  “To Whitfield. It’s only a mile or so from here.”

  “Sounds like you already know your way around.”

  Jillian shrugged. “I arrived a few hours ago. It’s a nice walk. Come on, I’ll show you.”

  Teddy called out to Molly to ask if she wanted to join them, but she was already settled in on the tram, so Teddy followed Jillian down a well-worn dirt path that curved south away from the docks.

  “What’s your story?” Jillian asked.

  My story? Teddy shrugged.

  “You know, psychically? How you got here?”

  Teddy was so used to keeping her cards close to her vest, so to speak, that her first instinct was to deflect. Instead, she decided to do something she hadn’t done very often, at least with strangers, since that moment when Mrs. Gilbert told her she could just make something up. Teddy told the truth. “I got into a little trouble at the poker tables in Vegas. Clint Corbett sort of bailed me out. He offered me a spot at Whitfield, and I took it.”

  She held her breath, waiting for a response. If Jillian was going to judge her as a lowlife, so be it. She’d pick up her chips and move to another table.

  But Jillian’s eyes grew big. “Clint Corbett personally recruited you?”

  “Is that like a big deal or something?”

  “It is a really big deal,” said a voice behind them. “He’s the dean of students.”

  Teddy swung around to face the man who had just spoken. His black hair sprouted in messy spikes off his head, as though he’d just tumbled out of bed.

  “Do you make a habit of waiting behind trees?” Teddy said.

  His head tilted to one side as he studied her. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you,” he said. “My name is Jeremy Lee. I’m new at Whitfield.”

  “We’re new, too.” Jillian smiled. “I’m an animal medium, by the way. What can you do?”

  “I’m a psychometrist,” Jeremy said. “When I touch objects, I get a sort of flash. Sometimes it’s a glimpse of the future, sometimes it’s a glimpse of the past.”

  Jillian nodded as if she met psychometrists every day. “One time,” she said, “I went on this road trip through Arizona, and I met this woman who could—”

  Teddy tuned out the conversation as their surroundings changed. She had no idea what she was. The whole thing sounded like the beginning of a bad joke: An animal medium and a psychometrist walked into a forest . . .

  The path led through a thicket of trees, and when they emerged, Teddy caught her first glimpse of Whitfield. It sat perched atop a cliff overlooking the bay, its impressive redbrick facade towering over the horizon. Whatever was beyond that facade would change Teddy’s life forever. She stopped.

  “What’s wrong?” Jillian said, turning and seeing Teddy standing alone. If Molly were here, Teddy thought, she would know what Teddy was feeling; she would understand that Teddy felt excited and terrified and sad and happy and a thousand things at once. She thought again about what Clint had said: The world needs people like us to show up.

  Teddy glanced back at the path to the dock. She could turn and run. But then she thought about the note she had left for her parents. She turned the collar of her leather jacket up against the breeze.

  “Nothing,” she said. “I’m coming.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  WHEN THEY REACHED THE TOP of the hill, Teddy paused to look up at the school’s official entrance: a massive iron gate topped with an arch that read Whitfield Institute. That was when she finally put it together—the school was owned by one of those Whitfields. The luxury-resort Whitfields. Why a Whitfield wanted a school for psychics was beyond her.

  The whole setup reminded her of a fancy college—until she noticed the barbed-wire fence in front of the entrance and the accompanying armed guards. That would surely keep any tourists out. Teddy watched as Jillian and Jeremy passed through the security checkpoint. She stepped forward to follow but was stopped by a guard with a clipboard.

  “Name?” he said. The guy was about six-six and looked to be about 250 pounds of solid muscle. The only man she’d met so far was Jeremy, and this guy made Jeremy look like a toothpick.

  “Teddy—I mean, Theodora Cannon.”

  He checked something off in his paperwork. “ID?”

  “I was just wondering where I can find the cabanas,” Teddy said as she handed him her license. “This is, after all, a Whitfield property.” She thought she might be able to get him to crack a smile.

  But he only scrutinized her license and handed it back to her, then flipped to a page on his clipboard, turned it toward her, and pointed to the bottom. “Sign here,” he said, handing her a pen.

  “You mean ‘Sign here, please,’ ” she said.

  He made a slight movement of his head, and the two other guards turned toward her. “Miss, if you don’t sign it—”

  “Okay, okay,” she said. “Just tell me what it is.”

  “It’s a nondisclosure agreement. You’re not permitted to tell anyone what you see, hear, or learn once you pass through these gates.”

  Teddy wanted to ask what would happen if she refused, but she was pretty sure she wouldn’t like the answer. She scribbled her signature. “See you by the pool,” she said, and walked through the gate. She actually wouldn’t mind seeing him by the pool. All that muscle and maybe a pair of tiny European swim trunks. It’s been a long time, okay?

  She was surprised to find herself in a courtyard that could be described as East Coast Ivy League meets Eastern Zen Garden. The brick buildings were shaded by plantings of cedar, yew, and Japanese maples. Across the courtyard, she noted a bamboo pagoda and a fountain, as well as meditation benches. A few low footbridges traversed paths of flat river stone and pools of artfully raked sand.

  If the garden was meant to inspire a sense of tranquility, she had no time to enjoy it. She had fallen farther behind Jillian and Jeremy; she’d totally lost track of Molly. She spotted a few stragglers near a building with Fort McDowell emblazoned on a plaque. She followed them into a large auditorium where thirty or so people were scattered about. She spotted a hot guy slouched in the corner. He was wearing ripped jeans and a white T-shirt with his dark hair covering his eyes. Anywhere else, Teddy would have written him off as a cliché.

  Teddy slipped into a seat as a man moved to the podium. When she turned around, she saw the hot guy staring at her—a look that generated so much heat she felt herself blush. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d blushed. Probably around the last time she wore a training bra.

  “Welcome, first-year students,” the man at the podium said. “My name is Hollis Whitfield.” Teddy would have described him as distinguished. He wore a perfectly tailored navy suit. Not a single silver hair out of place. Definitely one of those Whitfields. “I have led the expansion of my family’s company as president for thirty years. But I am proudest of my philanthropic work, especially here at the Whitfield Institute. I always knew that with the right guidance, men and women of your talents could be our nation’s greatest assets.”

  Teddy wondered about the talents of the hot guy. She hoped he wasn’t a mind reader, though she was sure her thoughts were written plainly enough on her face for all to see.

  “Five years ago,” Whitfield continued, “I had the distinct privilege of becoming a founding member of this institution, working beside representatives from our country’s military and law enforcement personnel. If you’ve made it this far, congratulations. You are now part of an elite group of individuals with talents that the world is only just beginning to recognize, let alone utilize. Before I turn the microphone over to our dean of students, Professor Corbett, I want to say one more thing: today marks your first day of a remarkable journey. We are here to guide you. But you will guide our future.”

  Clint followed Whitfield to the podium. He looked even larger onstage than Teddy remembered. His presence commanded even the mos
t bored-looking students’ attention.

  Clint cleared his throat. “As Hollis mentioned, this is a selective program which trains individuals to serve the highest level of government. The purpose of Whitfield is known only to a select few. We were founded, and continue to be funded, by both the private sector and the U.S. government. We are unlike any other school in the country, maybe in the world. And our sole mission is to train psychics to become successful members of law enforcement, military, and other related fields.

  “You are here to protect your country. In many ways, we are the last line of defense. We’re the ones people call when traditional police work isn’t suited for the job. We’re the ones the military looks to when they need individuals to go not only above and beyond the call of duty but also above and beyond the call of human cognition. We’re here to do what’s right when it’s not only hard but seemingly impossible. I will teach you how in monthly Empathy 101 classes, which will start later in the semester.”

  Teddy couldn’t exactly envision a life in public service. Hell, she’d been a public menace most of her life. She glanced around to see if anyone had stirred, but the students seemed glued to their seats.

  Clint went on, “Before we continue, I want to introduce you to two other individuals who will direct your first-year training: Professor Amar Dunn, who will be teaching Introduction to Seership.” Clint pointed to a man wearing a sport coat over a band T-shirt. The professor waved. “And Sergeant Rosemary Boyd, our military liaison, who will be teaching your tactical training.” A woman with short brown hair stood and nodded. Sergeant Boyd was definitely going to be a pain in the ass: Teddy didn’t have to be psychic to see that coming.

  Teddy let out a breath. This place seemed like it was going to be a lot more work than Clint had let on back in Vegas. She was going to need an extracurricular activity to let off steam. Teddy casually leaned back and turned her head to the right. She saw the hot guy smirk.