Chapter Five
CHAPTER FIVE
...welcome back to Fiction with Feelings , the only podcast that focuses on empath-approved reads. Our panelists are here today with an exclusive early look at A Study in Sentiment , the historical thriller that reimagines the mysteries of Sherlock Holmes if empaths had emerged in the 1880s...
—EXCERPT FROM THE EPISODE 79 TRANSCRIPT
Grayson opened his eyes at six thirty a.m. to a world made of white: white hotel walls, white hotel sheets, white snow outside a window with white curtains.
His dreams, on the other hand, had been gray. It was all he ever dreamed of anymore.
The hotel bathroom was closet-sized, the showerhead not much more than chin-height. He had to duck to rinse shampoo from his hair, but the pressure was good, and the hot water relaxed his shoulder, which was still a bit stiff in mornings from the bullet wound he’d taken from that FBI agent at the Seattle marina. It was healing well and quickly, though; soon all he’d have was the scar where his chest and shoulder met.
A scar Reece could obviously never see. The less he thought about that night and the mess that had followed on the Stone Solutions rooftop in the morning, the better. Empaths had no business being exposed to that much violence; Grayson knew that all too well. That was how they ended up corrupted, like Cora Falcon. Like his brother.
Reece wasn’t corrupted, but he was in a liminal state that made him dangerous to everyone in Seattle. And Seattle was dangerous for Reece right back: AMI was always there, but now Director Traynor and Vivian Marist were too. If those two ever discovered the truth, it wouldn’t matter that Reece was still a pacifist, or that Cedrick Stone was responsible for his liminal state; they’d send Reece straight to Victor Nichols at Polaris, the corrupted empath prison.
Grayson needed to be here in Vermont, to solve this empath’s murder, but it left Reece vulnerable to all the wolves circling empaths. The Dead Man could hit back where an empath wouldn’t, but Grayson couldn’t fight by text.
After the shower, Grayson shaved in front of the mirror, one of Reece’s texts rising up from his memories.
I mean, you do date or whatever, right?
That one had been a funny text. No, the Dead Man didn’t date .
But that hadn’t been the whole question, had it?
Grayson tilted his head to glide the razor over his jaw. Bodies were also funny. You could be sitting on a chair, minding your own business, and then if someone came along and tapped your knee just right, your whole leg would jerk, all on its own, no thoughts or feelings needed.
Once upon a time, he might have looked at a person and thought I want to be with them because they make me happy . He didn’t think things like that anymore, but if someone hit him just right, his body still jerked. Still sat up and took notice and wanted .
And Reece? Hit exactly right.
Grayson had, at first, done a good job of ignoring it. Sure, Reece was cute—really fucking cute, all overgrown dark hair, giant brown eyes, and fiery personality. He’d been cute glaring at Grayson from the other side of a table in the Seattle Police Department and still cute running his motor mouth in the Smart car.
Didn’t matter. Lots of people were attractive, and the Dead Man was there to do a job. Reece was a potential suspect.
Then Reece had seen a book about torture in an office at Stone Solutions and been thrown into a panic attack. No one knew the exact parameters of corrupting an empath—maybe it could happen from a graphic enough book, or maybe not—but Reece had been hyperventilating and Grayson had intervened, gotten down in front of him and tried to bring him back.
Miraculously, it had worked, and Reece had stayed with him, had calmed down and even been able to laugh. And for a moment in that office they’d been so close they could have touched, empath body heat radiating off of Reece like a micro furnace, their eyes locked together, his smaller frame fitting perfectly into the space made by Grayson’s body.
Grayson rarely got that close to anyone anymore, unless handcuffs and an arrest were involved. And it had gotten a lot harder for Grayson to ignore his attraction after that.
But it still didn’t matter. Just because your body wanted something didn’t mean you could or should have it. Grayson didn’t chase his body’s desires, because the Dead Man didn’t have time for anything but work. That work was protecting the world from corrupted empaths, and nowhere in his job description was there room for anything else— especially where an empath was concerned. Grayson had to be ready to stop empaths if the corruption set in.
Not to mention there was never going to be a chance Reece would be interested. Grayson was as repulsive as a rotting corpse to empaths: a face they couldn’t bear to see; a voice that made them sick; a touch so rejected it knocked them out.
An empath would never be interested in the Dead Man, and good thing too, because he didn’t have any business climbing in bed with one.
He looked himself in the eyes in the mirror.
No business. None whatsoever.
The hotel lobby had a breakfast buffet, about half the tables full. A woman with a messy topknot and pink pajama pants side-eyed Grayson as he grabbed three plastic-wrapped hard-boiled eggs and a yogurt before filling a paper coffee cup, skipping the half-and-half and instead adding milk from the cereal station. As he headed out to the rental car, his phone rang with a call from Dr. Easterby.
“You’re already awake?” he asked, as he answered. Wasn’t even five a.m. yet on the West Coast. “You got an early flight?”
She made a sound of affirmation. “Jamey’s on her way. Got your coffee?”
Grayson sipped the weak, lukewarm drink. “Supposedly.”
“Hotel coffee is never up to Cuban or Lebanese standards. Our mothers would have been disappointed,” she said. “And I need you to ask for more blood tests for the murdered empath.”
“Whichever ones you want. Any particular reason?”
“I looked at the pictures you sent over. Her eyes are as bloodshot as a case of conjunctivitis,” said Easterby. “Empaths don’t do drugs on their own. I want to know if someone slipped her something before they bashed her over the head.”
“I’ll make sure they work up a panel, if they haven’t.” Grayson had to use a little extra force to get the icy car door to open. “But then that begs the question—why drug an empath before you kill them? They’re not gonna fight back or even defend themselves.”
“Because you’re afraid of empaths,” Easterby said bitterly. “The kind of creep who not only murders an empath but takes the time to position her corpse to make her gloves obvious.” Her voice dropped a little lower. “You’re going to get the bastard who hurt this empath, right?”
A memory flickered like a movie projected on a distant screen: an underground bunker, people screaming, fire everywhere.
Grayson, in the center of the room, a Magnum .44 in hand and nothing in his heart.
He blinked and the memory was gone. “It’s what the Dead Man does.” He hesitated, then said, “I realize I’m the last person on this planet to advise anyone on feelings. But don’t push yourself too hard here.”
Easterby’s voice was quiet. “You know I can’t promise that, Evan.”
After they hung up, Grayson sat in the SUV as the windshield defrosted, flicking through his phone. Gretel Macy had put up something new on the Eyes on Empaths blog the night before, a few dry paragraphs on AMI president Beau Macy’s remarks at Stone Solutions’ headquarters. AMI membership was skyrocketing on the West Coast; an empath had been murdered on the East Coast. Tensions around the empaths were higher than ever, the empath agencies tightening the leashes while people like Cedrick Stone ran secret experiments and tried to justify it as necessary to protect non-empaths.
And in the middle of it all were the pacifist empaths, who kept getting hurt.
One thing was certain: the Dead Man’s complicated job wasn’t getting easier anytime soon.
It was still the predawn dark of a winter morning as Jamey turned down an unassuming Capitol Hill street, her GPS landing her in front of a redbrick building with stairs leading up to the front door. Small businesses lined the other side of the street: a teahouse, a combination books-and-gifts shop, a fashion boutique.
She pulled Liam’s Corolla to the curb. She’d given her previous Charger back to the Seattle Police Department but hadn’t replaced it yet. At least she wasn’t borrowing Reece’s little Smart car, where her head came close enough to the roof that speed bumps became a hazard to her skull and the keys would only be handed over with an unsubtle list of safe driving rules.
She put the car in Park, idling in front of the redbrick building. Leaving the force had been the right decision, but what did she do now? For as long as she could remember, she’d wanted her job to involve protecting other people. She’d become a detective like her dad so she could stop murderers; transitioning to private investigator sounded like she’d spend too much time snooping on people having affairs.
There was, however, a different job out there. And if she was being honest with herself, she couldn’t seem to stop thinking about joining whatever Grayson’s Vanguards were.
But she was never, ever going to trust Evan Grayson.
She glanced out the windshield just as the door at the top of the stairs opened and a pretty woman stepped out, dressed in blue jeans and a pink puffy coat with a bright purple scarf and matching weekender bag on her shoulder. Her deep brown hair was swept up in a ponytail and her coffee-colored eyes were framed by thick black glasses like Liam’s, and she was waving at Jamey with a big smile.
Aisha Easterby, on the other hand, Jamey did trust. Maybe it was working a case together, maybe it was having Aisha’s help when Jamey was teetering on the brink of madness, but somewhere along the line on that wild November night, they’d become friends.
“I think this is the first time I’ve seen you out of a lab coat.” A light but cold rain fell on Jamey’s hair and neck as she got out of the car, opening the backseat door and holding out a hand for Aisha’s bag. “Did you coordinate this outfit with the bisexual flag on purpose?”
Aisha passed the bag to Jamey to put on the seat. “That depends.”
“On?”
“Who’s asking and if she’s cute.”
Jamey grinned. They got in the front and she started heading back to the interstate. “What’s the emergency that’s got you hopping a flight to Ottawa, anyway?” she asked, as she waited at a stop sign for a couple to push their stroller through the crosswalk.
“Stone Solutions has a couple Canadian offices. I’m going to dig into some things,” Aisha said. “It’s really good to see you, by the way. You were way too close to the end of the road last time we talked. But you look so great now.” She winced. “In a friend way, not a hitting-on-you way—not that I’m saying you don’t look good enough to hit on,” she hurriedly added. “I just—yeah.” She winced again. “Have I mentioned most of my coworkers are corpses and I’m not very good with the living?”
Jamey snorted. “My brother can’t keep his mouth shut for anything; I’m immune to social awkwardness at this point.” She glanced at Aisha out of the corner of her eye. “You didn’t say what you’re digging into.”
Aisha’s mood instantly sobered. “Someone bashed a French Canadian empath over the head and left her body posed in a Vermont park.”
Jamey’s eyes widened.
“Grayson goes any time a crime involves empaths, doesn’t trust anyone else to handle it,” Aisha added. “They always assume empaths are the villains, you know? But Grayson knows it’s more complicated than that.”
The rain was still dotting the windshield; if the temperature dropped another degree or two, they’d get snow. Jamey turned the wipers on. “Cora Falcon was responsible for a lot of deaths.”
“ Corrupted Cora Falcon was responsible,” Aisha said. “You and I both know that if Cedrick Stone and his cronies had just left her and her fiancé alone, they’d be wedding planning and caring for veterans, not locked away in British Columbia and six feet under, respectively.”
If Stone would have just left empaths alone, Reece wouldn’t have been put into his liminal state between pacifist and corrupted empath either. “Any update on Stone?” Jamey said neutrally, like she didn’t have a personal vendetta against the man.
Aisha shook her head. “He’s still comatose. The president of Stone Solutions Canada is running things for now. I don’t think Grayson is putting much trust in her either, though, and I’m guessing the feeling is mutual.” Aisha had unwound the scarf from her neck as the car warmed, revealing the edge of a thin scar that twisted close to her jugular vein, the one that looked like it came from a knife. Jamey had never asked how she got it, or gotten the story of how a sweet, bubbly doctor had ended up working with the Dead Man. But Aisha was so firmly on the empaths’ side that Jamey couldn’t help but wonder if there’d been an empath in her life, once upon a time.
And then if something had happened to them that brought the Dead Man calling.
She didn’t voice the thoughts out loud, instead saying, “I’ll be honest, I don’t know how you work with Grayson or trust him.”
“I don’t trust him at all,” Aisha said, surprising her. “He’s dangerous, and he’s absolutely ruthless. He’ll tell you himself never to trust him. On his advice, I’m prepared that one day he might be my enemy.”
Jamey thought that over as they passed downtown, the high-rises on the right jutting up above the highway.
“Grayson isn’t my boss. I have never needed to trust or take orders from him.” Aisha had pulled off her gloves and had her phone out. “He and I both want to protect people from corrupted empaths, and to protect empaths from the people who want to corrupt them. Everyone else who knows the truth stops after part one.”
“So it’s just you and Grayson?” Jamey said skeptically. “Because I had assumed someone else sent Reece those new gloves in November. Unless glove-making is your hobby?”
Aisha shook her head. “It’s not just us; there are others. But their names aren’t mine to share.” She glanced over at Jamey. “For what it’s worth, they know Grayson is different, and would understand that you’re different in the same way. You wouldn’t ever have to cover up all the amazing things you can do the way you had to hide with the SPD.”
Point to the Vanguards; Jamey could barely imagine not having to constantly check herself. Did Grayson’s trusted circle know why he was the way he was? Did they know that Jamey’s empath brother had changed her the same way Grayson’s brother had changed him?
Jamey hadn’t told Reece that truth yet. She needed to stop putting that off. He wasn’t going to take it well, but he deserved to know; it would be a terrible secret to keep from him.
The exit sign for Sea-Tac was just up ahead. “Grayson still arrested Reece twice,” Jamey said. “I haven’t made up my mind about working with him. But if you want some backup on this murder in Burlington, I’m in.”
Aisha’s smile grew. “I’ll take it,” she said, and Jamey found herself grudgingly smiling back.
Grayson arrived at the Burlington police station just after eight a.m. The Empath Initiative had prepared them for Grayson’s arrival and he was taken to wait in a small side room.
He left the door open, keeping an ear on the activity around the station as he scrolled through his phone. There was an email from Marist—she’d apparently finally gotten records from the French Canadians and sent over everything about the murdered empath. One Marie Pelletier, age thirty-two, a librarian at a local branch in Montreal. Single with no children; her friends and roommate had been contacted to learn her last known location.
There were pictures of her, probably taken from her social media accounts. Empaths were just as diverse as all of humanity, but Ms. Pelletier had dark brown hair and big brown eyes, just like Cora Falcon. Just like Reece.
Footsteps echoed in the hallway, approaching, accompanied by the sound of wheels on linoleum. Grayson lowered his phone as two officers came in, a short woman with an accordion folder and a man pushing a small cart with two shelves. They introduced themselves as Officers Maguire and Fortin.
“Everything we recovered from the body and the scene is on the cart,” Officer Maguire said. She held out the folder. “These are the pictures of the scene. We’re still waiting on lab results for soil and blood.”
“Thank you, ma’am.” Grayson took the folder. “We’re gonna need samples sent to the Empath Initiative as well.”
“We’re on it,” Officer Fortin promised. “You need anything, you just ask.”
They left Grayson alone in the room, and he began to methodically work his way through Marie Pelletier’s possessions. There was a winter coat, a scarf and hat set—no matching gloves, obviously, since she’d been wearing the empath ones. The hat was torn in the back, and everything was splattered with blood. There was also a small canvas satchel, which hadn’t held a wallet or phone but did have lip balm, a few nice pens, and a paperback novel with a crisp, new spine. He examined the book, but there was no receipt within it, and the novel itself looked to be some kind of sweet, cozy romance, exactly the kind you’d expect an empath to have.
There were no rings or bracelets, but they weren’t very convenient for empaths, with the gloves. No earrings either, but piercings and tattoos tended to be a mixed bag—empaths could tolerate their own pain, but not the sight of it happening to others, so you’d never find one in a tattoo or piercing parlor. The only jewelry was a gold necklace with a small heart pendant. Grayson turned the pendant over and ran his thumb over the engraved 3:16 on the back.
He moved on to the empath gloves, laying them out palms up. No bloodstains, but if she’d died quickly enough, she wouldn’t have had time to touch the wound on the back of her head. No dirt stains either. There’d been snow on the ground, maybe enough that the gloves hadn’t touched grass or mud.
He turned the cuffs down to show the serial numbers. As Marist had said, they were faded to the point they were impossible to read in places. American empaths would never have gloves long enough to fade like this; they got new pairs every year. But then, too many Americans were also paranoid, and the public needed reassurance that the empaths were wearing the very latest anti-empathy technology, even if there were no upgrades some years. The wastefulness had been a heated point of contention with the empaths until Stone Solutions had promised to upcycle the old ones.
Marist had said these gloves were linked to a shipment to Toronto two years ago. Except the rest of the gloves were in perfect condition—not only clean, but no noticeable wear and tear like you’d expect from an item worn daily for two years. Maybe Marist had the shipment number wrong. It wasn’t like you could see the whole serial number.
He took pictures and sent them to a heavily protected contact in Portland who specialized in empath-related research and development. Grayson added a note with it: How old do these look to you?
He picked up the right glove to better see the fading on the serial number. Most folks didn’t realize that empath gloves had a faint metallic scent from the heavy metal threads woven in—it wasn’t a strong enough scent to be picked up by normal people, but Grayson’s sensitive nose always caught it. As he breathed in the faint, penny-like scent, however, he picked up a hint of something else from the inside of the glove—sharp and medicinal, reminiscent of hospitals and rubbing alcohol.
The footsteps came down the hall again, and Officer Maguire knocked on the door before opening it. “The witnesses are here,” she said. “Whenever you’re ready.”
“Thank you, ma’am.” Grayson gestured at the gloves. “Were these cleaned?”
“Absolutely not.” She looked bewildered by the question. “The evidence has been left as intact as possible.”
Interesting. He snapped a couple more pictures, then followed Officer Maguire deeper into the station.
The witnesses were a pair of women who’d arrived together, marathoners who’d been at the park to get a run in before the snowstorm hit. They’d just returned to their car in the parking lot when a man had staggered out from the tree line.
Grayson questioned them separately, but they told a similar story: the man hadn’t talked or made any noise, but he was bleeding profusely. They both had assumed he had a head wound, but when Grayson carefully pressed, both admitted they hadn’t seen a cut, just blood all over the man’s face.
The women had called to him, but the blood-covered man had ignored them, scrambling into a car and driving off. The women had immediately called the police, who arrived fifteen minutes later and found the body.
After the interviews, Grayson sat in the quiet room for a moment, thinking.
An unresponsive man with a bloody face could have been an empath’s thrall, bleeding from the eyes. Could Marie Pelletier have been corrupted and somehow her thrall had turned on her and murdered her? Grayson had never seen or heard of that happening. And yes, Reece had taught him that the Dead Man didn’t know everything about empaths, but a thrall’s devotion was absolute; hard to believe anything could ever make one turn on their empath maker.
There were many others in the field who might hypothesize that the corrupted empath was a second empath, who’d sent a thrall after Ms. Pelletier.
But Grayson had been building a private theory over the last several months, and he didn’t think he believed there was a second empath either.
He finally left the station with more questions than answers, but maybe the morgue would hold another clue.
It didn’t matter how many times Gretel explained to her dad that Eyes on Empaths was an independent blog; Beau still expected her to show up and help when American Minds Intact hosted an event. Which meant she was on her parents’ couch way too early on a Saturday morning, supposedly reviewing the privacy conference’s registration list but actually secretly working on her latest blog post on her phone, when she heard Beau on his own phone in the dining room.
“I always have a minute for you,” Beau was saying.
He had a tendency to orate like he was at a podium, even on the phone. Gretel kept an eye on her phone and the article from yesterday’s local Burlington paper, about a woman’s body discovered in a park just outside the city—edited an hour after it had gone up, maybe to remove any reference to the victim being an empath?—as she reached into her bag for her headphones.
“Naturally I continue to be devastated by what happened to Hannah,” Beau said dramatically. “And of course, I would never call it a boon, but yes, we’ve certainly been making friends since her death.”
Gretel paused.
“Obviously more senators signing onto her bill,” Beau went on, “and AMI has enrolled record numbers the past three weeks with no sign of slowing.”
He seemed to listen for a moment, then chuckled. “Yes, well, as Cedrick Stone was fond of saying, the best defense is a good offense . AMI has always agreed. As you know, several of our local members are active or retired from duty, and we’re up to four officers in the Seattle chapter now.”
Gretel straightened, leaving her headphones untouched.
“Mind you, even with police members on our books, I haven’t been able to get a decent account of whatever happened to Cedrick on that roof,” said Beau. “We’ve filed five public records requests but every document we get back is redacted to the point of useless. I don’t suppose there’s anything you can do about that?”
Gretel strained her ears.
“Ah well. It was a long shot, but I always have to ask,” Beau said ruefully. “Of course I can get you an AMI member list.”
He was moving into his office now, his voice quieting. Beau had always spouted off the lines about AMI needing a good offense, needing to take the fight to the empaths, and that had seemed logical enough. Except now, Gretel had seen for herself what happened when people took a fight to an empath: Reece Davies had paranormal abilities and he’d still let three guards at Stone Solutions rough him up instead of fighting back.
Her gaze went back to her phone and the article. This empath found murdered in the park would also have been a pacifist, like Reece. These were people who wouldn’t even defend themselves because they were afraid to hurt you—what kind of offense did you really need?
A multibillion-dollar one, apparently, judging from the size of and funding behind Stone Solutions.
Her phone vibrated in her hand.
Alex: Hey, genius.
Alex: What are the chances I could buy you brunch tomorrow so we could chat about blogs and empaths and AMI?
She broke into a smile. It was from the cute blogger she’d met at the AMI meeting the night before, Alex. He’d only given her his first name, and she’d forgotten to ask for a last, too distracted by the Southern accent and hazel eyes and the rare pleasure of meeting someone who seemed genuinely interested in her work.
Gretel: Ten a.m.?