Book One

by K. C. Archer

  A flash of something metallic caught Teddy’s eye. Pausing, she peered over the rocky ledge to the sea below. Half-hidden by the jutting cliff was a sleek speedboat bobbing on the incoming tide. Someone stood on the stern, cleaning the motor, an assortment of tools spread at his feet. She took a step closer and realized it was Jeremy. So that was where he stashed his boat. If not for that flash, she would have walked right by and never seen it. She carefully maneuvered down the ledge, settling atop a rock to watch Jeremy work. He was methodical, carefully arranging each tool.

  He looked up. “Ah,” he said. “Hello.”

  “Nice boat,” she said.

  He grimaced. “I know I’m not supposed to have one. Because of the rules about leaving the island. But my family lives in San Francisco, and it’s nice to visit them. Well, not my family. My dad and my stepmom. So maybe you wouldn’t say anything about the boat?”

  “What boat?”

  He swung around and pointed. “That boat right—” He paused. “Oh.”

  Not thirty minutes ago, she was trying to convince Clint she could toe the line. And here she was, already breaking another school rule.

  “I can give you a ride back to San Francisco if you want,” Jeremy said.

  “What? Why?”

  “You look unhappy. I assumed you failed your test.”

  “As a matter of fact, I passed.”

  Jeremy raised his eyebrows. “You did?”

  “You don’t need to look so surprised.”

  He shrugged. “Most people celebrate when they pass. You look like you’re ready to check out.”

  She imagined speeding off with Jeremy in his boat. Maybe she’d walk from the pier to some little shop and get a job in San Francisco, then find a room in some apartment with a bunch of grungy twenty-two-year-olds fresh out of college.

  “Can I ask you something?” she said.

  He shrugged. “Sure.”

  “Why are you here?”

  “Because I want to serve my country.”

  He said it so quickly that it took her aback. She wanted to say: “You seem so sure.” Instead she said: “You sound like Boyd.”

  Teddy could imagine how Boyd would react to hearing that she had left. So damn smug. That alone was almost enough to make her want to stay.

  “I want to put my talents to use,” he said. “And what could be a better than keeping us safe?” He fiddled with the lid of his toolbox. “My mom was in Tower Two. As a psychometrist, I could have seen something. I should have studied the clues.” He said this with the same flat emotion with which he had offered Teddy a ride back to the mainland. With the same emotion she imagined one would say “I like tuna fish sandwiches” or “It’s cold outside today.”

  “I don’t believe,” he said, pausing as if considering his words carefully, “that the future is set in stone. I don’t believe that we aren’t supposed to change it. We wouldn’t have these gifts otherwise.”

  Teddy thought about that as she rattled the bottle of pills in her pocket. She had talents, too. She didn’t have any idea how they could be put to good use, but the thought of finding out, the possibility of sharing Jeremy’s certainty . . . She realized that Jeremy Lee had inspired her. Him, of all people.

  “But like I said,” Jeremy added, “if you want a ride back to the main—”

  “No,” she said, swallowing hard. “I want to stay.”

  “You mean right here?” he asked, pointing down at the slab of rock she was standing on, overlooking the water.

  “No,” she said, laughing. “Here.” She spread her arms toward the campus. Clint had made it clear that if she wanted to succeed at Whitfield, she had to be all in. Teddy reached into her pocket, took out the bottle of pills, and flung it as hard as she could out into the water.

  “What was that?” Jeremy asked.

  Teddy dusted her hands. “Old habits,” she said, and she didn’t look back.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  TEDDY AND FIRST DAYS OF school didn’t really, well, mix. Think oil and water, toothpaste and orange juice, Taylor and Katy. On her first day of kindergarten, Teddy punched her teacher in the face. On her first day of high school, she got drunk after fifth period and threw up on the bus ride home. On her first day of Stanford, she placed her first bet before her first class, screwing up everything before a professor could even call her name from the roster. On first days, that feeling of anxiety plagued her. When people tried their best to fit it, they always lied.

  On the first official day of classes at the Whitfield Institute for Law Enforcement Training and Development, Teddy was determined to break the pattern. She woke up early. She showered. She put on a clean shirt. She ate breakfast (if you could call chia seeds breakfast; really, weren’t they tadpole eggs?). And then she followed the rest of the first-year students to Fort McDowell for her first class, Introduction to Seership.

  Ivy had taken over most of the stucco facade, and red bricks lined the roofs. It seemed strange that a subject as unconventional as seership would take place in a building with such a regimented history.

  Next to her, Jillian shivered. “This place gives me bad vibes.”

  “Ghosts?” Teddy asked.

  Jillian nodded. “Something.”

  Teddy turned to see writing on a wall plaque outside the entrance. She ran her hand over the embossed metal.

  IN RECOGNITION

  OF THOSE WHO PASSED THROUGH ANGEL ISLAND AND WERE NOT WELCOMED,

  OF THOSE WHO WERE TURNED AWAY,

  OF THOSE WHO WERE TREATED UNFAIRLY BECAUSE THEY WERE DIFFERENT,

  AND BECAUSE THOSE DIFFERENCES WERE FEARED.

  MAY WE REMEMBER THAT IT IS OUR DIFFERENCES THAT MAKE US STRONGER.

  ANGEL ISLAND, 1910–1954

  From behind her, Dara said, “Angel Island was the Ellis Island of the West. Mostly Chinese, Japanese, and Korean immigrants came through here. During World War Two, it was basically an internment camp. In the fifties, California voted to make it into a park.” She nodded to Jillian. “No wonder it gives Ms. Medium the creeps.” Dara wrinkled her nose. “Though I thought she could only talk to animals?”

  Teddy guessed none of them knew the extent of their powers—at least not yet.

  She turned back to the plaque. The American government had turned on its own citizens. She technically would be working for the government one day; what if she disagreed with their policies? Would she still have to serve, as she had promised Clint?

  *  *  *

  Those questions stayed with her as she took her seat and waited for Professor Dunn. And waited. He entered the classroom—his T-shirt today listed the dates of AC/DC’s 1980 Back in Black tour—and launched into his lecture without introduction.

  “You may think,” he said, “because you’re here to study seership, that I’m about touchy-feely mumbo-jumbo. But you would be wrong.” His harsh words were at odds with his laid-back appearance. Teddy bit her lip in an effort not to laugh. She kept her eyes on Dunn, refusing to look at Jillian, who would be crestfallen. Jillian loved mumbo-jumbo.

  Dunn continued, “We’re going to be approaching the art of parapsychology through science. Because this is a science.” He began to walk through the aisles, looking at each of the recruits. “Without a foundation in the science of psychic ability, there’s no way to expand on the power you already have. And if you don’t expand that power, you will fail your midyear exam in December. And if you fail, you’re out.”

  Besides her knack of guessing when people were lying, which seemed to be irrelevant when dealing with psychics, Teddy had only once demonstrated any psychic ability—the day before, with Clint. She looked around the room, trying not to feel like an imposter. She would have to figure it out before that exam.

  You’re not dressed in a fat suit and a wig, pretending to be someone else. This is the real you. You belong in this room.

  Dunn went on, “Psychics see, smell, touch, feel, taste, sense, know what is unknown. And that is the definition of s
eership: seeing the unseeable—not with our eyes but with our minds. Only then will we know the unknowable. That practice begins with meditation—”

  There was an audible groan from the back of the class. “I thought you said we weren’t doing any hippie-dippie crap?” Zac Rogers yelled out.

  “What makes you think that changing your neurochemical makeup is ‘hippie-dippie’? The more focused your brain, the more focused your psychic ability. I have degrees in astrophysics and neurochemistry from Berkeley. I spent a decade in India studying with a swami. I use both Eastern and Western science in this classroom. That’s how we get the full picture on what it means to be psychic.”

  “But what about the cool stuff?” Zac said. “You know, like mental attacks?”

  “That’s a very specific—and advanced—type of telepathic communication. And there’s no way to master that until you master the basics of telepathy. And you can’t master the basics of telepathy until you master meditation.”

  Dara asked what a mental attack was, exactly, and Dunn looked thoughtful. “We’re getting ahead of ourselves, but it’s when one mind breaches another mind through uninvited mental connection.”

  Teddy thought back to the casino. Was that what Clint had done to Sergei and the guards? They hadn’t seemed like they were under attack. They didn’t resist. They didn’t struggle. They had just done what Clint had wanted them to do.

  “Today we’re talking about the brain and its structure.” Dunn walked back to the front of the classroom and pulled down a large-scale diagram of the human brain. “You’re going to become very familiar with this over the next month.”

  After class, Teddy wished that the rest of the time had been as exciting as Zac’s interruption. Instead, she had a notebook full of brain facts to memorize and an hour of meditation homework. On top of that, Dunn had instructed the first-years to recount their dreams to their roommates each morning, then record them for future analysis of precognition and premonition.

  Teddy looked to an equally befuddled Jillian as they exited Dunn’s classroom. “Not what you expected, either, huh?” she said.

  Jillian shook her head.

  The two began to walk toward Harris Hall for lunch. A thought had been nagging at Teddy all morning: she hadn’t spoken to her parents. After every bad first day, her parents had been there to talk. Even though there was a no-tech-on-campus rule, she had heard there were phones in the office available for students to use. As they passed the main office in Fort McDowell, Teddy told Jillian to go on ahead.

  The woman who sat behind the front desk looked as old as the fort itself. Teddy cleared her throat. “Excuse me?”

  “Yes?” the woman said.

  “I heard there were phones in the office available to make personal calls?”

  “Do you have a phone card?”

  Teddy shook her head.

  The woman sighed and slid a piece of plastic across to Teddy. “This should have ten minutes left on it. Phones are the second door on your left. Buy a phone card next time you’re in town.”

  Teddy opened the door and took a seat at one of the phone booths. Luckily, no one else was in the room. She hadn’t used a pay phone since maybe . . . ever? She punched in the digits on the card and then dialed the familiar numbers of her parents’ home line. It was early in the afternoon, and her mom was sure to be home.

  The phone rang once, twice, and then after the third ring, her mom’s voice came on: “Hello?”

  “Mom?”

  “Oh, Teddy! Is that you? We were so worried. We didn’t know . . . You left a note, but . . . Oh, sweetie.”

  “Mom, I’m fine.” There was something about those words that made the events of the last two days feel very, very real. She had followed a stranger across the country to study at a school for psychics—because she was psychic. What was more, she had learned there was a possibility that her birth parents had been psychic, too.

  Her mom sounded relieved. “So how is it, this new school?”

  “Good.” Teddy wanted to ask about her birth parents, but she’d been through it before—her mother and father didn’t know much. The story was always the same: car crash. And every time Teddy brought it up, she knew it hurt them. So she just told her mom some meaningless nonsense about liking her instructors.

  “You have a real opportunity there, Teddy.”

  “I know,” Teddy said, trying not to roll her eyes. She knew her mother would somehow sense the action even through the phone.

  “Teddy—” her mom began, but their conversation was interrupted by a beep, signaling that the phone card was running out of time.

  “Gotta go, Mom.”

  “One last thing,” her mom said. “We only get so many chances in life. Stanford was a chance. This is another. Learn from your mistakes. Don’t make the same one twice.”

  Through the window, Teddy saw Pyro wave. Was last night a mistake, too? In that moment, she decided her life would be all about studying until the midyear exam. She would do everything in her power to succeed at Whitfield. To not blow this last chance.

  “I won’t, Mom.” She hoped she wouldn’t.

  “Okay, good. I love you.”

  The line went dead; she’d run out of time. But Teddy still said “I love you, too,” before hanging up.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  TEDDY TRIED TO KEEP HER promise to focus on schoolwork. The early days of October brought damp fog and lower temperatures to the island, and the daily grind of classes became routine. Meditation. Theory. Forensics and Police Procedure. Trips to the shooting range. Self-defense. No lecture elicited the same thrill as Professor Dunn’s first one. Teddy had forgone other thrills as well—namely, a certain bad boy with tattoos and a talent for setting school linens on fire. December, and with it the midyear exam, loomed.

  The first-year recruits sat on yoga mats in the Seership classroom, waiting for Dunn to show up—late, as usual. Teddy clicked her pen again and again. “How can a guy who’s supposed to be in a constant state of Zen always be late?” she said to Jillian.

  “I think he’s brilliant,” said Ava, who was sitting behind them.

  “You know you don’t have to kiss the professor’s ass when he’s not in the room, right?” Dara said.

  Ava flipped her hair over her shoulder. “Whatever.”

  When Dunn finally walked into the room, he dropped his backpack on his desk and began without preamble. “Last class, we discussed how the pineal gland is believed to be the seat of psychic power.”

  On the wall behind him were two diagrams, one of the brain and the other a picture of a human body with the location of chakras, which apparently weren’t touchy-feely mumbo-jumbo. “Consider this location from a metaphysical as well as a scientific approach: the pineal gland is controlled by the sixth chakra, which, as you know, is considered the chakra that rules extrasensory power.” Dunn looked around the room.

  Jillian, Dara, and even Pyro swore they could feel a tingling in each chakra when they focused their mind. Teddy had yet to experience anything, but she was operating on fake it till you make it.

  “If you’ve all been meditating regularly, putting theory to practice should be an easy transition,” Dunn said.

  There was a stir in the classroom. At last! They were finally going to do something psychic. Teddy just hoped she wouldn’t embarrass herself.

  Dunn went to the chalkboard. He drew two circles and then connected them with a line. “Physical telepathy—the ability for two minds to consciously and deliberately send and receive messages. Think of it like two tin cans connected by a string. One person sends a message down a channel for the other to receive. In this instance, brain waves act like sound waves.”

  Teddy leaned forward. Telepathy. This was supposedly her jam, although she hadn’t yet told any of the other Misfits. Her psychic ability wasn’t flashy: she couldn’t start fires, or predict a death, or talk to animals. She sometimes felt like the remedial student in a class of overachievers, especially here
, in Seership. All she had was her instincts. Now she could finally prove why she deserved to be at Whitfield.

  Dunn continued, “As you know, I am opposed to judgments of any kind. We are all on different spiritual journeys, and one path is as valid as another. However, the purpose of Whitfield Institute is to train students to utilize their psychic ability in a position that serves the greater good. To that end, the ability to communicate telepathically will play a crucial role in your future careers. You will be tested on this skill in your midyear exam. Those of you who fail will be asked to leave.”

  She couldn’t fail.

  Dunn assigned each of them a partner for the first exercise. Teddy was hoping for Jillian or Dara or Molly or even Pyro, despite the obvious distraction.

  “Cannon, you’re with . . .” Dunn scanned the room. “Molly Quinn.”

  “Thank God,” muttered Kate Atkins.

  Teddy was about to take umbrage on Molly’s behalf. After all, Molly was a little quiet, but she wasn’t bad. Then Teddy realized Kate was talking about her.

  “You have a problem with me?” Teddy said to her. Teddy had yet to see Kate crack a smile.

  “I like working with people who have some sense of discipline,” Kate said, her eyes moving from Teddy’s leather jacket to her badass boots.

  “And I like working with people who don’t have a stick up their—”

  “Each team will receive a deck of playing cards,” Dunn said. “One student will select a card at random and act as the projector, then use telepathy to communicate that information to their partner, the receiver.

  “There are many different ways to perform this task, but here at Whitfield, we begin with auditory telepathy. I want you all to imagine that you and your partner have walkie-talkies inside your head and you have to tune in to the same channel in order to hear each other. Agree on a number, visualize it in your mind. The key here is to use your breathing and meditation to sync to that channel and to your partner’s consciousness.” He paused, gazing about the room. “This exercise requires a complete state of mutual trust and respect. Active emotional vulnerability coupled with firm belief in your partner’s psychic talent. There’s no way to communicate without it.”