by K. C. Archer
Molly gave Teddy a look. Teddy guessed even Molly wasn’t thrilled to be her partner.
Dunn distributed packs of playing cards. Excellent. This she could do. She tore the plastic off the package and shuffled the cards, the weight of the deck beautifully familiar, the cards themselves slick in her hands. She alternated her fancy shuffle with pivot cuts, her hands flying around the deck. That was when Ben Tucker spoke: “Where did you learn to do that?”
When Teddy looked up, she noticed half the class staring at her. She shrugged, self-conscious. These people didn’t need to know about her past. “Some of us didn’t spend our teenage years hanging out at the mall,” she said.
“Let’s just get this over with,” Molly said, as if about to get a cavity filled.
I don’t suck. You suck.
Teddy put the deck on the table. “After you.”
Molly nodded and picked up the cards. “I’ll project.”
“Remember,” Dunn announced from the front of the room, “get on the same channel. Imagine the walkie-talkie in your mind. Sync up your breathing and connect consciousnesses before you begin. Physical contact helps to start.”
Teddy reached out her hand to Molly. “Should we pick a channel for our psychic radio?” Teddy asked.
“Sure,” Molly said, taking Teddy’s hand. “How about three?”
In her head, Teddy closed her eyes, imagining a set of old yellow walkie-talkies that her dad had bought her when they’d gone camping on her ninth birthday. She wondered where the walkie-talkies were now—probably somewhere in the basement. In her mind, she turned the dial to the number 3, trying to sync to Molly’s breathing.
Teddy opened her eyes as Molly slipped a card from the middle of the deck, looked at it, set it facedown, and then stared, wide-eyed, at Teddy. But Teddy didn’t hear anything. Not even static. Ben Tucker, another telepath, was the first to successfully receive a communication. All around, Teddy heard other classmates naming cards, followed by whoops. A familiar feeling of defeat rose within her. The same feeling she’d gotten when she’d lost big at poker, when she’d been fired from another crappy job, when she’d called her parents to tell them she was coming home from Stanford. But Teddy closed her eyes again, determined.
She gave up on the walkie-talkie idea. Instead, she pretended she was at a poker table. That Molly was an opponent across from her. She reached out to Molly’s mind, hoping to see the card. She’d landed on something the first day they’d met; maybe she could again. But instead, when she reached out to Molly’s mind, her mouth went dry and her skin grew hot. She saw a wall of gold . . . or was it sand? Teddy imagined brushing against it, feeling the coarse grains between her fingertips. She imagined the strongest wind scattering the sand, blasting it apart; she saw the wall—a dune, really—crumble before her. Then:
Whoa.
Beyond the wall, emerging from the inky darkness in her mind’s eye, she saw the card.
Four of clubs.
Her palms were sweaty—no, she was sweaty everywhere, hair plastered to her forehead. Something clicked, and that old plugged-in feeling she had chased at the poker table gripped her. It felt like she’d stuck her finger in an electrical socket. She could see every card held by every student in the room.
Ace of diamonds, three of hearts, six of clubs, jack of spades, queen of hearts.
She felt a jolt before the cards faded away, and she was bombarded by new images. She saw Pyro in the cop car, the night his partner was shot, crying. She saw Jeremy Lee on the morning of 9/11, trying to call his mother on the phone. She saw Molly hacking in to the CIA mainframe. These were memories, she realized. There were more of them, ones she couldn’t comprehend, couldn’t place. Ava shoplifting from an expensive department store. Liz taking steroids before a competition. Molly—
Like a computer losing power, her mind’s eye went dark. And then everything else did, too.
* * *
Teddy blinked and looked at the ceiling, confused about how she had ended up on the floor. The last thing she remembered was that she was in class, sitting with Molly . . .
Oh, God.
Teddy sat up quickly only to find Molly also sprawled across the floor. In fact, everyone seemed to be rubbing their foreheads, dazed. And then everyone turned toward her. Before she could think of what to say or do, the room tilted sideways. Her stomach heaved, brilliant white lights exploded before her eyes, and excruciating pain reverberated through her skull.
Oh, God, not now. Please not now.
She knew the symptoms. She was about to have a seizure. She was epileptic, after all.
She stumbled to her feet and lurched toward the door. She barely made it into the hallway, the hum of voices growing louder behind her, when Dunn grabbed her elbow. “Teddy, are you all right?” he asked, his brow furrowed.
She managed a nod. If she could just get to her room, there was a chance she wouldn’t—
“That was an incredible display of astral telepathy,” he said. “I haven’t seen anything like that in years.”
Teddy clutched the wall. “I didn’t mean to.”
“Clint mentioned, but . . .” His words swam together; he was speaking gibberish now. Teddy gave another nod. When she moved her head, the edges of her vision began to blur; the hallway was tunneling before her.
This is really going to hurt.
And then everything went dark again.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
TEDDY OPENED HER EYES. SHE was lying down, tucked into a bed that wasn’t hers. The room, with its pale blue walls and flimsy white curtains, wasn’t hers, either. A glance out the window revealed the bright afternoon sun. She blinked, confusion giving way to worry. It didn’t matter whose bed she was in. She had to get up. She was late for Seership.
“You’re awake.” Molly stood at the door to the room. “Feeling okay?”
Whenever Teddy had a seizure, there were gaps of unaccounted time. It took a few minutes for her brain to put together the pieces now: she’d already been to class. The events of hours earlier slammed into her. Professor Dunn’s lecture, Dara and Ava arguing, Kate goading Teddy on, a deck of cards.
An entire classroom of people had seen her stagger into the hall and pass out. Teddy’s head throbbed. She was embarrassed. She tried to avoid Molly’s gaze and focused on the items mounted on the wall just to her right: hypodermic needle container, emergency call button, blood pressure cuff.
“I’m at the infirmary?”
“It was quite a fall,” Molly said, stepping closer.
“How bad was the seizure?” Teddy asked.
“Seizure?” Molly’s brows drew together. She came to a stop beside Teddy’s bed.
“I—” Teddy began, then she stopped, trying to remember. She recalled a pounding headache, the flashing lights, the dizzying disorientation—everything that indicated a seizure was imminent. “Tell me what happened.”
“We were practicing telepathy,” Molly said. “Things got . . . strange.” She shifted uncomfortably, as if unsure whether she should reveal the rest.
“We’re at a school for psychics; everything is strange,” Teddy said.
Molly let out a breath. “You didn’t just receive the thought I projected—you went into everyone’s heads. Just jumped right in. It’s kind of a faux pas among psychics, actually. They have a line about it in the Code of Ethics. You should have heard Liz Cook go on about it.”
“Am I in trouble?” Teddy asked. She immediately thought of Clint and his warnings, of Boyd and her obvious desire to see Teddy out of school for any minor infraction.
Molly looked confused. “Trouble? Are you kidding me? Everyone thought you were amazing—well, except Liz. Dunn said there’s a name for what you did. It’s called—”
“Astral telepathy. Clint told me when I took my exam,” Teddy said.
“Why didn’t you tell anyone?”
Teddy shrugged. She’d done it only the one time. “I have no control over it, Molly. Part of me isn’t fu
lly convinced I’m not epileptic.”
“Dunn said that wasn’t a seizure. It’s just what happens when you’re psychically overstimulated. Your body shuts down. Something like that used to happen to me, too.” Teddy thought she saw Molly shudder. “We all react to our abilities in different ways.”
Teddy stared at the ceiling as she tried to process what Molly had said. Even though Clint had told her the same thing months ago, she found it hard to let go of the past. Especially after what appeared to have been a seizure. For as long as she could remember, she had thought she was the victim of shitty brain chemistry and neurons that randomly and repeatedly misfired. Five-five, dark hair, pale blue eyes, epileptic.
Because for those few brief seconds, when she’d slammed through the mental barriers that separated her from her classmates, Teddy hadn’t felt like a victim. Instead, she’d felt completely in control. And even more than that—she had felt powerful. Well, until she’d passed out. So why had it taken her so long to believe that maybe something wasn’t wrong with her but right?
It was the same feeling she had when she was riding high at a poker table. When she knew that the player across the table was bluffing. When she could see the unseen. It wasn’t the risk she liked, it was the certainty. She shivered as the realization began to form in her mind that what she loved best about poker hadn’t made her a gambler at all but, at heart, a psychic.
Teddy blinked away tears. Her throat squeezed shut and her breath caught. She was too overwhelmed to hide her feelings anymore.
“I’m happy for you,” Molly said.
Teddy turned, stunned to see the tears she’d struggled to hold back also brimming in Molly’s eyes.
“Empath, remember?” Molly pointed to her temple. “I can feel what you’re feeling. Not that I want to. I don’t. I really, really don’t. I just can’t help it sometimes.”
“I feel . . .” Teddy struggled to catalog the emotions careening within her: anger, fear, joy, sadness, and something else, something more important than all the others. “Relief.”
“No kidding.” Molly gave a choked laugh. “So knock it off, all right?”
The two were quiet for a minute.
“Did I miss anything important in class after”—Teddy gestured to her head—“you know?”
“No, you pretty much caused a standstill. Especially after you discovered that Liz used steroids.”
“I said that out loud?” Teddy groaned. “I don’t remember doing that.” She tried to recall the information she had gleaned while inside her classmates’ minds, but it was fragments, too jumbled to make sense of.
“Remember any other juicy tidbits about the Alphas?” Molly winked.
Teddy tilted her head. As she looked at Molly, a memory came flooding back. Well, not a memory but a feeling. The last psychic impression, before contact had been broken, had been with Molly. Molly, upset—or had she been frightened? She definitely hadn’t wanted Teddy in her mind: that, Teddy was sure of. She remembered brushing up against a wall, like in Clint’s mind. Clint’s wall had been steel; Molly’s . . . was it sand?
Molly shifted in her seat. Teddy had to remind herself that Molly couldn’t read her thoughts, just her emotions. Teddy rubbed her forehead. “It’s kind of been a long day,” she said.
Molly looked tired, too. Teddy guessed her own emotional whirlwind had taken a toll on Molly. Teddy smiled, trying to change the subject. “I’ll let you know if anything comes to me later.”
Molly was about to say something when she was interrupted by a series of coughs at the door. Jeremy, deliberately trying to get their attention. “I thought I would bring Teddy notes from the Forensics class she missed,” he said. “I was looking for you, Molly, since you skipped, too.”
“I was going to find you later, but I wanted to check on Teddy first,” Molly said. They were turning into that couple—the kind who couldn’t be out of each other’s sight longer than ten minutes. Considering Molly’s empathic abilities, codependency seemed both annoying and unhealthy.
Teddy slid her legs off the bed. She was ready to get out of this place. “How’d I get to the clinic, anyway?”
“Pyro brought you,” Jeremy said, stepping into the room.
Teddy had been avoiding him since their night together. “What do you mean?” she asked. “Like on a stretcher?”
“The whole class followed you out to the hall. Total mayhem. Even Dunn couldn’t get it under control. So Pyro basically just told everyone to back off, then picked you up and carried you in here,” Jeremy said.
Teddy, who’d been poking around under the cot for her boots, straightened and looked at Jeremy. “He did?” Her lips twitched and threatened to curl into an idiotic grin.
Molly flushed bright red. “You’re forgetting the empath thing,” she said.
Teddy blushed, too.
“Should I also be blushing?” Jeremy asked, handing Teddy the boot she hadn’t managed to find.
As Teddy tied her laces, Jeremy subjected them to a brief forensics lecture, warning them that they had a quiz the next day. Speaking with clinical precision, Jeremy explained rigor mortis, or how the stiffness of a corpse could help determine the time of death; algor mortis, how the body’s temperature helped pinpoint the time of death; and livor mortis, how the settling of the blood helped to determine the position of a body at death.
In short: decomposing bodies? Really effective mood killer.
Jeremy’s recap was interrupted by Nurse Bell at the door. “Professor Corbett wants to see Ms. Cannon. You’re fine to get up and walk around now.” She nodded toward Molly and Jeremy. “So that means visiting time’s over.”
“You think Liz’s already reported me?” Teddy said, only half joking. Being called to Clint’s office wasn’t part of her kick-ass-at-school-until-exams plan.
“It’s highly probable,” Jeremy said.
“Jeremy,” Molly said. “That’s not funny.”
Part of Teddy wanted to ask Molly and Jeremy to stay. But she’d broken the rules. Again. Now she’d have to face Clint . . . and the consequences.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
WHEN TEDDY REACHED CLINT’S OFFICE in Fort McDowell, she hesitated. Should she knock? Wait until he called?
“You can come in, Teddy,” he said.
How does he always know what I’m thinking—
“If your thoughts weren’t so loud, I might not have such an easy time hearing them.”
He was sitting in a chair by the window, wearing an old police academy sweatshirt and reading glasses. The gym-professor look seemed at odds with the array of psychic bric-a-brac that lined the crowded office.
“Heard you had quite a morning,” he said, putting down a file. He gestured to the wooden chair in front of his desk, so Teddy sat. She was definitely in trouble.
“Did Liz talk to you?” she asked.
“Ms. Cook gave me quite an earful.”
“I didn’t mean to”—Teddy threw her arms up—“do that astral telepathy thing.”
They looked at each other a moment longer, before Clint cracked a grin. “I heard it was awesome.”
Relief surged again in Teddy’s chest—that new, welcome feeling—and she couldn’t help smiling, too.
“Ms. Cook and Professor Dunn told me their versions of events. I’d like to hear yours.” Clint leaned back in his chair. “Tell me as much as you can remember. What you felt, what you did, what you saw.”
Teddy shifted. “It just sort of . . . happened.”
Clint leaned forward until his elbows rested on his desk. “Close your eyes and try to put yourself back there in your mind. Sometimes it helps to repeat actions that occurred the first time. What were you doing when you started?”
Teddy thought a moment. “Shuffling cards.”
Clint opened a drawer and handed her a worn pack. Teddy began shuffling the deck, the action so familiar that it allowed her to relax. She recalled her frustration as she’d tried to connect with Molly using Dunn’s walkie-
talkie exercise. How she’d doubled down, and something had clicked into place. And then she could see everything. Not just playing cards but thoughts, feelings, memories, secrets. Then the connection had broken and she’d collapsed.
“Why do you think the connection broke?” Clint asked, leaning forward.
“I felt,” Teddy began, remembering the grit of sand underneath her fingers, packed and rough, “a wall.” She scanned Clint’s face for a sign of encouragement. “It sounds stupid, but I brushed up against a wall made of sand.” She cut the deck and shuffled and then repeated the process. “You have a wall, too, I think, but it feels different. Smooth, cold, like steel.” When her words ran dry, she looked up to find Clint watching her.
“I hoped that, given the opportunity, you’d be able to unlock your potential here at Whitfield.” His choice of words struck Teddy as odd. Almost parental. Of course, he had personally recruited her and fought Boyd to ensure her place at Whitfield.
His forehead creased. “It must have been Ms. Quinn’s wall that broke the connection. Interesting. I didn’t know she had gotten that far in her defense training.” Clint walked over to a small chalkboard in the corner of his office. He was in teacher mode. “The kind of psychic ability I think of myself an expert in is mental influence—I can manipulate others through psychic communication.”
So that’s what he did in Vegas.
“Yes, that’s what I did to your pursuers in Vegas,” he said without turning around. Teddy gritted her teeth. She didn’t like that he could read her thoughts so easily.
“If you want to keep me out, you better pay attention.” Clint drew some circles and arrows on the board. “The theory behind astral telepathy is based on what you’re learning with Dunn. Tin cans. You and your classmates are practicing sending messages down a shared cord. Except astral telepathy works more like . . .” He paused, searching for the metaphor. “Free Wi-Fi. Like you’re a hub that other networks hook up to wirelessly and automatically. You can go into others’ minds without agreeing to use a cord. Until you run into a firewall.” He drew a horizontal line between the two circles, cutting them off. “Trained psychics—meaning those trained in mental defense—will all have some sort of firewall blocking you from entrance.” Clint continued to add to the diagram, wrapped up in his own train of thought.
