by Tina Gower
Lipski holds up a sugar packet and a honey packet. She tilts her head toward the honey and he tears it open and squishes it in, then stirs.
Becker holds out his hand and Lipski slides it to him, like a practiced pass between quarterback and receiver. Becker sets the tea in front of her with a small grin.
Alana aims all her focus on those first few sips.
So Becker and Lipski decided to play the good cop, which is great, because I’m about to go bad cop on her. I open my mouth to start the questions when Becker clears his throat and sets a hand on mine. I stare at the rough skin on his knuckles.
Ms. Morrison’s lip trembles, her mouth opens and a sob escapes. “I’m sorry. It’s been an emotional few days.”
Becker nods. “I’m sure it has.”
She wipes her eyes. Lipski makes a point of staring at Becker’s hand on mine, and when I look up, he raises an eyebrow.
Not now Lipski.
Becker slides his hand from mine. “Take your time.”
There’s a tissue box at the edge of the metal table. He grabs it and holds it for her to snatch and wipe her eyes.
I clench my fist and prop myself at the edge of my molded plastic chair. My list of questions burns a hole in my forehead.
“I lied,” she says. “I knew I had a death prediction.”
My head snaps up. I didn’t expect her to admit it.
“Why did you lie?” I ask.
“When I ran back after hearing the limb fall, my head was spinning. I thought there would be more, you know? That more limbs would fall. I knew the day and approximate time. The notice had told me that much, and with such a high probability…” She fiddles with the buttons on her coat. “I’m a planner so all my things were already in order. It’s a shame my prediction only came a few hours before. I wished for more time.”
“You called your mom and sister,” Becker says with a soothing richness to his tone.
She eases at his voice. Her shoulders drop, and she doesn’t acknowledge it, only the affirmative in her eyes and the slight bob of her head tell us what we want to know.
“Did you hire someone? Contact anyone? Did your parents or sister fight the news?” I’m firing questions at her and she flinches at each one like it’s a punch.
Lipski holds his palm out to shush me. I close my mouth, glaring at him.
“What? No.” She knits her eyebrows. “We all said our goodbyes. We’re all very accepting of the oracles and their place. My uncle is an oracle and our family has some Fae blood. We value what little magic is left in the world.”
Fae blood. High probability of some psychic tendencies. At one time Liza conscripted others like Alana to build her own net. She used those crude predictions to go after our oracles.
“Did anyone contact you? Threaten you?” I slow my questions down, forcing myself to speak slower and appear more compassionate. “Imply that you might be able to bend the prediction if you followed their instructions?”
She straightens, her eyes wide. “No. None of that.”
Becker squeezes my hand under the table. I’d forgotten that I was only a spectator in the questioning. Becker and Lipski have the reins.
“Then why lie?” Lipski asks.
“I thought it would be easier.” Her gaze bounces from each of us, examining who her allies are. She spends the least amount of time on me. “I knew I’d be under scrutiny, so I followed my normal routine. Didn’t try to avoid it. Didn’t lock myself up. I figured it would be the way I’d go. Have an aneurism and my parents would find me like that. Isn’t that how high probabilities work? Screwed no matter what I do?”
Lipski affirms her question with a nod.
She continues. “I just thought being out in the open would be best. I didn’t want to cause trouble.” She laces her fingers together and the gesture is like she’s pleading with us. “Was it my Fae blood? Do you think that could have done it?”
Becker and I glance at each other. His blink and shift away from meeting the woman’s gaze, his slight tightening around his mouth tell me what I want to know.
He doesn’t smell any magic on her. With the amount of Fae in her blood, her family wouldn’t have had any real magic in centuries. Most Fae magic users had become extinct, killed off by fearful humans, wars amongst each other, and so diluted from pairing with humans no inherited magic remained. It was extremely unlikely her bloodline had hidden powers. But people liked to hope and hold on to their heritage. If she’d been actively practicing she might have woken up some distant DNA, but Becker would have sensed it on her.
It’s not adding up. If she had been more fully blooded Fae then the chance occurrence would have been much more likely. She’d have used her Fae abilities to protect herself from the prediction. The oracle’s ability to see the event so clearly would have been attributed to the lack of time between event and occurrence. My six percent would make common sense. A six percent chance as long as Alana had received her prediction in time.
But also, if she’d had magic in her blood it would have naturally decreased her odds and it would have shown up while I ran the numbers for her chances. I would have placed her somewhere in the seventies, which is a rough guess without plugging it into the formula.
Alana looks at Becker and Lipski, hopeful. “It was the Fae blood? Do you think?” she repeats the question from before as though our silence offers another explanation that she’s not as comfortable with—that her luck could still run out.
Becker offers her a small tilt of his lips. His half-smile that indicates he’s about to lie. “You never know.” Then he opens the door for her as she leaves. Lipski guides her to the elevators.
“Well?” I ask when she’s gone.
“She’s clean.”
“Damn. I thought so.” I slide the chair back and prop my foot on top. “We’ve got a girl who didn’t die, but was willing. A bus driver who didn’t stop at his stop for no reason we can figure, only that he’s lying.”
I lower my head to my hands. “That’s it then.” None of the leads indicate foul play, only point to a freak prediction, unless we get a more obvious clue. “Unless we dig a little deeper and figure out what the driver is hiding, I’m going to have to accept I was wrong.”
Becker shifts his feet in place as though he’s unsure of what he should do. The look of frustration on his face says if it weren’t for all the potential witnesses behind the glass he’d have scooped me up into a full body hug already.
My cell phone rings. “My boss. I’d better take it.”
Becker steps out of the room a little too quickly for my ego to bear and I answer the phone. “Yeah?”
“Why do I have an extension for that chance prediction in my inbox?” Gretchen’s voice is singsongy with a hint of edge. My extension is like a tilted picture frame to her. She always wants everything lined up. We’re similar in this need.
“I’m still investigating—”
She cuts me off. “Investigations are to benefit us when we get it wrong, so we don’t make the same mistake again. I’ve got a lot of predictions today; I need my actuaries on call in the office. The schedule states that this Sunday is your turn. The government doesn’t like surprises. Note the mistakes and move on.”
“That’s just it,” I say. “I don’t see the mistake. I think the prediction’s been tampered with.”
There’s a long pause. So far in my first several weeks I’ve solved two cases that went deeper than the surface. “I like that you’ve got grit, Hale. That you have a need to give over a hundred percent for every case that you’ve been assigned. You’ve convinced me that you can deliver on quality.”
I wait for the “but,” except it doesn’t come. “Does that mean you’re going to let me move forward? I’m sure this has been tampered with. I just need to move past the primary investigation protocol.” We’d interview the prime key witness and victims. If I had a wider net to cast, this case would fall open. It had to.
“We only have access to primar
y information. It would be impossible to untangle a tampered prediction and really know if you had the right threads—”
“I’ve got Lipski and Becker—”
“There are still too many variables.” She breathes deep, pauses. “Look, we’re always in danger of losing funding after a probability assignment goes wrong. We need you meeting your usual weekly quota and assuring management that this was just a minor hiccup.”
“Then we appease them with a preliminary report and I’ll meet my usual quota for the week. I promise I won’t take longer than this week if I keep running into dead ends.”
Gretchen sighs, but it’s a good sigh, one that says she’s going to allow me to keep moving forward. “I don’t want to stifle you, Kate. I don’t like holding my actuaries back when they show promise.”
Her words bring an instant smile to my face. “You won’t regret this—”
“But…”
I knew it was coming.
“I want you working on those on-call predictions in an hour and that preliminary report filed by the end of the day.”
I glance at the clock. The more unexplained leads I have, the more likely the incomplete report won’t get questioned. It’s late morning and if I work all night, I might be able to squeeze it in before midnight.
“And by end of the day I mean five o’clock. Along with your quota. Don’t let Miles take up your slack on Monday.”
Damn. I massage my forehead. I know I’ve already pushed it, so I don’t ask for more. “All right. I’ll have it to you by the end of the day. I’ll be back in the office first thing on Monday.” And I’d have to work triple time to make up for the lost hours I’ll need to work the case during the week.
Becker taps on the window and motions for me to come into the main room. I look out to where he’s gesturing and see a sensitive standing silent, his fingers steepled, and his eyes fixed blankly straight ahead. He looks like the same one at the investigation site yesterday, but I’m not sure.
“Gretchen, I’ve gotta go. I’ll be in soon.”
I hang up before I hear her full good-bye and jog over to the sensitive. Becker is talking with him and I’m curious what this sensitive has to do with our investigation beyond his involvement yesterday.
Becker moves to include me in the small circle. “Kate, this is Orland Chandler. Kate Hale is the actuary investigating the chance probability. I’m assisting since this case has reached above her jurisdiction.”
I bow to the sensitive. “Hello, Mr. Chandler.”
He’s definitely the one who was at the event site yesterday morning. A member of the Brotherhood of the Vates. The rope that ties his robes together has a knot representing each oracle under his care. Orland Chandler has five knots.
Orland bows to me. “An honor.”
The chatter in the office dies down. I’m suddenly aware of every paper shuffle, every murmur, and every keyboard tap. It’s rare to see a Brotherhood or Sisterhood member outside of the few times a year we receive chance predictions. Not much else would pull them from their dedication to their oracles. Other oracle houses had a rotating staff of sensitives, but when a Brother or Sister took on a house, they moved in and it became a full-time devotion. I’ve never heard of one seeking an actuary regarding an investigation.
The sensitive seems aware of the attention he’s gained and walks to the interrogation room. His robes don’t move, so it looks like he floats along the Berber carpet.
He turns when Becker closes the door. “That will be all, Officer.”
Becker shakes his head. “This is my case. Anything you say is my business.” He jerks his chin toward me. “And where she goes I go.”
The way Becker explains it, the statements are linked in a professional relationship only, but the tone in his voice alludes otherwise. One of the side effects of pack bonding is aggression and wolves getting territorial and possessive of their pack mates. Or at least it’s a Becker-specific side effect.
The Brother gives Becker a once-over. His eyes sharpen as though he’s tuned in to this important detail.
The man turns back to me. “It seems we have a problem, Actuary.”
Becker clears his throat, a phlegmy choke close to a growl. “Her name is Kate.”
Chandler focuses on Becker. “Stand down, Officer. I didn’t mean to offend.” He smiles, and his features warm, looking harmless. “It’s a pleasure to see a nearly full-blooded werewolf kin with your keen senses integrated so well into society. I’d love to have seen a werewolf change at the full moon. They say it was a glorious sight.” His grin quivers around the edges, like he’s thought of something sad. “We all fall into the melting pot at some time, don’t we?”
Becker’s fists clench and every muscle tenses.
I don’t think Mr. Chandler meant to be patronizing, certainly not in his tone, but Becker doesn’t discuss his heritage well in mixed company.
I discreetly step in front of Becker and I change the subject, listing off the progress we’ve made and the clues we’ve found.
“This is a problem.” Chandler does the floating walk thing to the corner of the room, strokes one finger down his beard. “The oracles are never wrong.”
“I have years of statistics that show differently.” I cross my arms. “And this case has proven at least two wrong.”
There’s a long silence where we stare each other down.
Becker places his hand on my shoulder and nudges me aside. “Mr. Chandler, I’m unsure of what you’re contributing to this investigation. Did you come here to threaten my actuary assigned to the case? Assure that she’d mark this one down as her mistake?”
Orland, and I’ve come to think of him by his first name because it brings him to my level, isn’t supernatural. He’s human. He’s just a human who has a touch of natural psychic ability that can be measured on a simple scale. He’s not better than me. He may speak for his oracle, but he’s not the oracle. And his behavior made me even more determined to interview her.
Orland seems to think about Becker’s question as though there’s a trick answer. “I’ve made no threats to the assigned actu—” Becker’s jaw hardens and Orland cuts off what he was about to say. “I mean, Ms. Hale.”
Becker takes one half step toward Orland, his fingers curled into claws, his expression one I usually see on boxers the second before they deliver a knock-out blow.
My hand on Becker’s arm stops him from doing something that will get him suspended.
I shoot Orland with a you’re-lucky-to-be-still-alive face. “Then why are you here?”
“The anger you have is because you feel that if the oracle is right then you are the one who must be wrong.” He waits for us both to acknowledge this truth. Neither of us moves a muscle to rush to affirm his assessment, but he continues anyway. “This is not the case. There can be infinite shades to any answer.”
Becker grits his teeth. I can hear him grind them from behind me. He must have one heck of a dentist bill. “This is bullshit,” he says to me under his breath.
I suspect Orland heard it, but he continues unfazed.
“The senstives’ main concern is to watch, care, and protect the oracles, so they can expend all their energy on predictions. What you’re telling me is that someone may be deliberately interfering. We shouldn’t argue on the different sides of a coin. We must accept that we’re the same coin.”
Orland gives me a headache. Not the magic-induced kind of headache, but just plain annoyance.
I massage my temples with my knuckles. “Are you trying to say that by me marking this case as a chance occurrence I’ll prove to you we’re on the same side? Then we what? We find who’s messing with the predictions together?”
“Our oracles have become targets. I can’t let that continue. However, I also can’t allow this case to remain open as a beacon to call our enemies.”
Becker tilts his head and squints. “I’m not exactly sure what you’re asking for, Mr. Chandler.”
“I’m aware t
hat you’re pursuing this case as a tampered prediction. I’m asking that we let this case slide. It’s better for everyone involved.”
I frown. “Except me.”
Orland gives me that parent look. The one that says let-your-brother-pull-your-hair-if-it-keeps-him-quiet. “The good of the many, Actuary.”
Becker stiffens. He gives me a look like he’s asking permission to throw the guy out.
Orland’s self-righteous smile is so confident it takes all my power to not slap it off. “This is the good of the many. It’s just which ‘many’ we’re arguing over.”
“We are on unchartered territory here. We’re risking unleashing the Outlier Prophecies—the end of times.”
I frown. There it is again. The Outlier Prophecies. Liza had mentioned it as the motivation and inspiration behind her attack. Yin had worried about it—that the mix-up in the soul-mate data was being used as evidence on nutter sites that the Outlier Prophecies were real. And now Orland. Although, a Vate would concern himself with a data set of prophecies that had oracle religious undertones.
The interview room door opens and the loud murmurs and conversations filter into the small space. Another officer whispers into Becker’s ear and both men excuse themselves. Becker pins me with a look and he props the door open. He jerks his chin to Orland, his eyelashes lower to me, and then he turns to the group of officers. It’s strange how I can pick up his body language. He doesn’t like Orland, but he doesn’t believe he will harm me. Annoy me? Definitely.
From the window I can see him whisper something to Lipski, who takes up guard position just outside of the interview room, but he makes it look like he’s doing some important job at the desk near the door. I watch Becker from across the room, discussing something with a group of officers, his shoulders tense.
“You care about him.” Chandler’s words bring me back to the conversation.
I blink, slinking into the chair. When did the conversation shift to my feelings for Becker? “Yeah. He’s a friend.”
I tuck a lock of hair that escaped from my ponytail behind my ear. As a sensitive, Orland could read my body language, not as well as Becker, but enough to understand to leave me the fuck alone. I kept my gaze out the window, letting him know I didn’t have a desire for small talk while we waited for Becker to return. Although I’d love to have a reason to try the one-two-break-your-nose palm strike Becker has me practice several times a night.
