Chapter Thirteen
WE HEADED BACK to the office. All the way there, I ruminated about the interview.
I hadn’t actually thought Zachary Sledge would give me anything…
yet I was peeved that he didn’t. At least I had Jacob to help write up the paperwork.
No doubt he’d even manage to phrase my big, fat “nothing” in a way that made me look half-competent.
At any rate, he’d take more pains than Carl would have taken to paint me in a decent light.
I was fully expecting Jacob to point out that psychic mediums are exceedingly rare, and the majority of my interviews are a bust, and if a van full of pee wasn’t a sign we were dealing with garden-variety paranoia here, nothing was.
But instead, what I got was, “You can handle the report without me, right?”
I blinked. “Yeah.”
“Great. I’ll just head to the yoga room and see how Evelyn’s doing.”
Damn it. We’d talked about this…as much as we could, all things considered. “Don’t go trying to borrow her reading glasses,” I warned him. “It’s not worth anything getting bent out of shape.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it.”
Sure. And I was in line for interviewer of the year.
I fired up my laptop, pulled up the report, and started typing.
But when I got to Sledge’s response to my asking if he slept in the bedroom—where else would I sleep?
—a half dozen good replies sprang to mind.
They always do, well after the fact. Who’s to say he didn’t have a home gym in there?
Or an office? Or a freaking petting zoo, for all anyone knew?
Not that I thought it was likely. Most single people in a one-bedroom apartment would rather not sleep in the living room….
Unless something in that one bedroom was staring at them all night long.
I cranked through the report, probably managing to make myself look even worse than Carl would have. If I gave up now, I could still catch the tail end of lunch, so I shut the laptop with a sigh and headed toward the dining room.
FPMP meals are one of the perks of selling my soul. They’re a bit too healthy for my liking, but scads better than I could come up with if left to my own devices. I expected to find a picked over entree and possibly a salad, but instead discovered Evelyn there, puzzling over a quiche…sans Jacob.
“Broccolini,” she informed me as I eased up beside her. “Asparagus is out of season.”
“How’d you manage to shake my other half?” I asked.
Evelyn winced. “I heard him talking in the hall and slipped out the back of the yoga studio.” So, I wasn’t the only one who’d noticed him coveting the SPECs. “Jacob can be a little…intense.”
True enough.
To take the heat off my husband, I turned the conversation back to the food. “Broccolini’s not so bad, though they could stand to be more liberal with the cheese.”
Evelyn lit up. “I’ve been dreaming about that decadent pizza we had!” Hopefully not because she was burping it up all night long. “There are plenty of artisanal wood-fired pizza shops where I live, but sometimes you just want a big, cheesy, gooey indulgence.”
Our gazes both settled on the last dregs of the quiche. Which was now looking shamefully cheese-deprived.
“There’s a place on Chicago Avenue—” I began.
“I thought you’d never ask.”
River West is a funny mix of upscale and utilitarian, and the pizzeria in question was definitely not in line for a Michelin star. But since I’d introduced Evelyn to the joys of deep-dish, I’d be remiss if I didn’t round out her education with a good, local, tavern-style pizza.
The offerings at Mancini’s were everything deep-dish was not. Thin and crispy and easy to lose count of exactly how many slices you’ve inhaled. Especially because—
“They’re square,” Evelyn remarked when our order came.
“It’s a thing.” Tavern-style pies might be round, but they were sliced on the grid just like any school lunch pizza. “The outside pieces are crunchy and the middle ones are soft.” And I’d ordered us an extra-large so we wouldn’t have to fight over the middles.
How did I know she wasn’t an edge-piece weirdo like Jacob? Kindred spirit, I guess.
There was no obscene wait-time associated with a stuffed pizza, so I didn’t have the luxury of beating around the bush.
I degreased my fingers with a handful of napkin and pulled up Mood Blaster.
“Look, I know the app is a far cry from your original creation, but I just want my alpha waves back. Can you help a guy out?”
“There are other binaural aps, Agent. Scads of them. The main difference with Mood Blaster was that I framed the interface in a way that was more engaging for kids.”
Together, we browsed a few apps and downloaded the most promising alternative. After I blew through all the terms and conditions and accepted them without reading a single word, I scrolled past the instructions, slipped in my earbuds, and called up alpha waves.
A familiar whub-whub-whub sounded. I focused on it. Yeah, I supposed it was the same beat that underlaid my old rocket ship game. But without the music and sound effects—without the game itself to keep my mind busy—it was pretty underwhelming.
“Don’t you have a copy of the old one lying around somewhere?”
“You can’t just drop an unverified app onto a secure device like yours. FPMP’s lockdown would block it before it even installed. I have a prototype version that will run on Windows, but I’m guessing that wouldn’t exactly be convenient.”
Probably not. The odds of me hauling out a laptop, launching a program, and sitting still long enough to “enter a receptive state” hovered somewhere between slim and dream on.
“It’s frustrating,” I said. “Other Psychs have all kinds of tools at their disposal. Not me. I’m so freaking ‘special’ I get to write my own rulebook.
Literally. But it’s like every day I’m breaking through a knee-high snowfall.
For once I’d like to take a breather and walk in someone else’s footsteps. ”
Evelyn leaned in. “We’re still in the early days of Psych,” she said.
“The tech will catch up to you someday. Probably someday soon, given the amount of attention and funding in the field. I’m not the only one making tools that will be a game changer for all of us.
” She meant this—she really did. So much so that her gesticulating hand sent her Pepsi skidding halfway across the table.
She caught it in time, but not without some of it slopping over the side.
She dammed the flood with our napkin pile and then stood up in search of more.
“I mean it,” she said as she went to grab them.
“When tech gets traction, it accelerates. Fast.”
Too bad the progress would come at a cost. Right now, no one really knew how mediums ticked. I wasn’t entirely sure I was ready for my talent to be an open book.
The condiment station was a few yards away at the opposite side of the pizzeria. Not far. But far enough that I didn’t see the shifty guy heading for Evelyn until he was practically on top of her.
I was up and out of my seat and halfway across the floor when the guy said, “Lady—spare some change?”
A pretty common question in the neighborhood, unfortunately.
But they don’t usually get all up in your personal space.
This guy was way too close. A bunch of split-second decisions went down.
No weapon—his hands were empty, so drawing on him wasn’t warranted.
More likely he was trying to intimidate her, maybe snatch her purse.
I used my height, my training, and most of all, my instincts.
And I was shouldering between the two of them so fast he didn’t know what hit him.
“Is there a problem?” My tone was part boredom, part threat.
“No—no problem.” The guy backpedaled a couple of steps, then turned around and power-walked out of the pizzeria.
The whole thing was such a blur, there wasn’t even enough time for Evelyn to be alarmed. “What? Oh my god. What was he—?”
“I didn’t like the look of the guy,” I said simply.
She blanched.
If she weren’t a federal agent, I would have offered more sympathy. But she was National, and if I did, it would only make things awkward. I gestured to the remains of our meal instead. “You want a doggie bag? Breakfast of champions.”
“I’ve had enough to last me a good long while,” Evelyn said. And she wasn’t just talking about the pizza.
We walked back to HQ in silence. The sketchy guy was nowhere to be seen—big surprise. Once they scatter, people like that squeeze through the cracks faster than startled cockroaches.
I was willing to let the sketchy guy incident go, but as we approached the bland FPMP building, Evelyn brought it up. “How did you sense what that man was up to?” she asked. “You’re a medium. As far as I know, that means no precognition, no telepathy.”
I shrugged. “Cop sense. But your empathy didn’t give you any warning?”
“It doesn’t work like that.”
Ah. If only I had a nickel for every time I’d said that…I could fill a sock with them and take a swing at that guy if he decided to come back.
“My empathic sense isn’t something that just registers regardless of whether or not I’m thinking about it, like hearing or sight.
I really need to tune in. It takes focus and time before I get a read off someone.
And even then, it’s pretty open to interpretation.
I might sense that someone is upset, but it doesn’t tell me why.
And usually, the why is the most important part. ”
“Speaking of why….” Even as I seized on the idea, I felt shitty about it.
But it needed to be said. “I know why Jacob’s been hounding you.
He’s got his sights set on your project.
I’m sure plenty of NPs would give their eyeteeth to discover a latent ability.
But Jacob’s a Stiff—and no matter how much he might want talent, no amount of tech can make it happen. ”
Evelyn gave me the most endearingly awkward shy smile. “I thought maybe I was just imagining him hovering.”
“He’s kind of hard to miss.”
“So it’s the SPECs he’s so interested in?”
Sheesh, hopefully she hadn’t interpreted his intensity as flirting.
Though empaths get so little from him, who could say exactly what she was picking up?
“They are awfully cool,” I said. “Who wouldn’t wanna bring out their inner psych with something as easy as slipping on a fancy pair of glasses?
” Especially since they could just fold it up and put it away to shut it off again.
Whoever churned out Auracel would need to diversify.
“But, listen,” I said. “Jacob can be relentless when he’s got his sights set on something, but I’d be grateful if you didn’t encourage him to try out the SPECs.
” Jacob would be the ideal control subject.
And the last thing we needed was some new piece of tech to negate all the testing that had guaranteed Jacob’s Stiffness.
We walked back into the FPMP building together, swiping our badges at the security checkpoint. As the elevator doors closed, guilt gnawed at my insides. Who was I to make this decision for Jacob? My husband was a grown man who could handle himself.
But this wasn’t about Jacob’s competence. This was about protecting him from himself.
We’d both seen firsthand how National operated. TKs were rarer than mediums, and if National knew what he could do, they’d be salivating to make him their guinea pig. By dinnertime, he’d be strapped to a table somewhere, with government scientists poking at his exposed brain.
I couldn’t let that happen.
So, I’d go behind Jacob’s back and lie to Evelyn. I would discourage her from letting him anywhere near those SPECs. Because I’d do whatever it took to keep his ability hidden, even if it meant making choices for him that weren’t mine to make.