Chapter Six
CHAPTER SIX
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Jamey had just gotten home from dropping off Aisha when her phone chirped with an incoming text.
Stensby: Can I talk to you? It’s about empaths.
It was from one of the SPD officers she’d worked with over the years, Jared Stensby. As she closed the front door behind her, she could hear the shower running at the back of the house. Surprising Liam sounded like a much better time than talking to any of the SPD’s officers, but she reluctantly dialed Stensby.
“Jamey.” Stensby sounded relieved. “Thanks for calling. I know you’re not on the force anymore, but I don’t have anyone else I can try for this.”
Jamey frowned. “What’s going on with empaths?” she asked, as she stepped into the kitchen, following her nose to the coffee maker. She and Liam liked the same local roastery and he must have started a pot before getting in the shower. She already loved living with him.
“We got an APB from Port Angeles,” Stensby said. “An empath is missing.”
“Who?” Jamey said. “I’ve never met an empath from Port Angeles.”
“Canadian tourist. Port A PD doesn’t have anyone who knows anything about empaths,” Stensby said, “but with you gone, we don’t either.”
Jamey pulled a mug out of the cabinet. That was true. The only person she would have trusted besides herself on anything empath-related was Josh Taylor, and he’d been another victim of November’s mess. But Aisha was on her way to investigate a Canadian empath’s murder; what were the odds another Canadian empath just happened to be missing in the States?
“For the record, it’s been nuts around here since the Great Empath Shitshow that was the Hathaway murder,” Stensby said. “We get questions every day wanting details about what happened on the roof of Stone Solutions.”
The SPD didn’t know an empath was responsible for Hathaway’s death, but they were aware it hadn’t been a normal case. Jamey’s memories from the roof were blurred, thanks to having Cora Falcon’s empathy in her system at the time, but she knew the SPD had arrived to find Reece kneeling in surrender at Grayson’s feet next to Cedrick Stone’s unconscious, bloody body. It couldn’t have looked good. “And what are you telling them?” she said coolly.
“We have a script we have to stick to.”
“And you’re all sticking to it?” Jamey pressed. “Because no disrespect, but you’ve never really seemed like the type who cared about empaths. I know you never liked Reece.”
“Because your brother is annoying as fuck,” Stensby said bluntly. “But come on, Jamey, I still care about my job . I care about missing people, even if they’re empaths.”
Jamey glanced through the window at her pine trees, a rich deep green against the gray day. “So you want me to go to Port Angeles and look for this empath?”
“You don’t even have to tell local PD you’re there. I can send you everything we have, the name, the last known locations. You can do whatever you want with that information and I can sleep a little easier knowing you’re on the case.”
Jamey lingered at the dining table after hanging up with Stensby, drinking her coffee and tapping out a text. Aisha hadn’t mentioned a second missing empath on the way to the airport. Was the case that fresh? There was no way the SPD could know about a missing empath before Grayson, could they?
She sent the message to Aisha, then glanced out the window again at the cold and wintery landscape. Jamey had been born in Atlanta and made all her earliest memories there, before her dad had died when she was five and her mom had gotten a too-good-to-pass-up job offer and moved them to Seattle.
In her most conspiracy-driven moments, Jamey sometimes wondered at the coincidence: her dad’s sudden passing, her grieving mom lured to Seattle with a dream job, then hooking up with a stranger and just happening to get pregnant with an empath. But back then, Jamey hadn’t been thinking about that. She’d been changing faster and more intensely than other kids, her strength increasing exponentially fast, her nose and ears becoming so sensitive that she spent most evenings in tears at the sheer overwhelm of the world.
They hadn’t known what was happening to her, but Reece’s empathy had also manifested by then, and their mom had accepted her kids were different and done her best to do right by them. Housing had been cheaper then, and their mom had scraped together enough for a fixer-upper bungalow on three peaceful acres of forested land outside of the city. Even all these years later, it was still Jamey’s refuge; a place she never could have afforded on a detective’s salary, the tranquility worth every minute of the commute.
She drummed her fingers on the table. Now she knew why her ears and nose were so sensitive, why she’d had the strength to help renovate the house, even as a preteen.
And Reece still didn’t know he was the reason.
She picked up her phone. If Liam didn’t want to come to Port Angeles, she’d need to borrow the Smart car, and it was better to tell Reece everything this way, actually, where he couldn’t hear it if she lied. Not that she was planning to lie; she just had no intention of telling him both possible explanations. As far as she was concerned, the second one was a fucked-up load of paranoia not worth mentioning.
The phone rang several times before Reece picked up. “Jamey, what the hell,” he said blearily. “Some of us sleep.”
“Not you.”
“There’s nothing wrong with going to bed at one. Two. Four. Whatever. Why did you call?”
“I might need to make a day trip tomorrow,” she said. “Which means I might need to borrow your car.”
“Where are you going?” Reece said. “I’ll highlight all the road hazards for you.”
She pinched the bridge of her nose. Please let Liam want to join her. “I can’t tell you where I’m going.”
“Oh, come on—”
“It’s not the driving lecture.” Mostly not the driving lecture. “It might be case-related.”
“What case?” Reece said. “You’re not on the force anymore. Did you decide to work with Evan? I can make a map for him too; he also needs to practice his cornering.”
“I’m not—wait, what do you mean, also ? No, actually, never mind,” she said. “There’s something else I need to tell you before I go. Something more important than safe driving.”
“What’s more important than safe driving?”
“ This is.”
“Fine.” She heard rustling in the background, sheets moving, maybe. Or maybe he was wearing Grayson’s hoodie again, the one he thought she and Liam hadn’t noticed was essentially Reece’s security blanket. “I should tell you something too. But you first.”
She took a breath through her nose. “You know I’m—not normal. And neither is Agent Grayson. And you know we’re not normal in the same way.”
“I told Evan once that he kind of reminded me of you,” Reece said.
“Yeah, well. I know the reason now.” She bit her lip, then said, “Because of our brothers.”
The other end of the phone went eerily silent.
“It’s not a bad thing,” Jamey said quickly.
“Why do I feel like that’s bullshit?” he said, with an edge. “Are you telling me this over the phone because I would have heard you lie just now?”
She winced. He was so damn intuitive when he wanted to know something. “It’s not bullshit and it’s not a bad thing,” she insisted. “Apparently baby empaths have a lot of love but not much control. The empathy spills over onto their sibling and can impact their limbic and endocrine systems.”
“Like with Cora’s thralls ?” Reece sounded horrified.
“No,” she said. “Totally different. Cora changed them on purpose.”
“But Jamey.” Reece’s voice had gone quieter, hoarser. “Changing people isn’t something empaths do until they become corrupted. How do you know it wasn’t the corruption inside me that changed you? Cora made her thralls to protect herself. What if the corrupted part of me wanted to make you strong because it knows I’m weak?”
Well, shit. Jamey hadn’t been planning to tell him that theory, that most scientists thought the corruption caused the change so the sibling would protect the pacifist empath. Parasitic relationship , Grayson had said the scientists hypothesized, but she was never going to say that word to Reece. “You’re not weak ,” she said. “And the idea that the corruption was behind the change is fucked up. It is fucked up to think a tiny kid could be capable of that, even unconsciously.”
Reece’s voice wasn’t much more than a whisper. “I don’t know what I’m capable of anymore, Jamey.”
“Hey,” she said. “Knock it off. You’re not going to become corrupted. Grayson’s whole job is to stop that from happening, and even if he somehow failed, you’ve got me. I got an hour-long lecture from you because I once went out of turn at a four-way stop sign. If I let you burn down Seattle, you’d never let me hear the end of it.”
“Not funny,” said Reece.
“Kind of funny.”
“...maybe,” he grudgingly admitted. There was a pause, then he said, “But you do need to know that when two cars arrive at a stop sign at the same time, the person on the right—”
“Oh my God, stop . I got my lecture already and we’re not doing it again,” she said. “What was it you wanted to tell me?”
“It’s my email. I keep getting—” Reece seemed to stumble on his words. There was a pause, and then he said, “I, um. I keep getting locked out; you know how bad I am with tech. But it’s fine. I’ll figure it out.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah, yeah,” he said quickly. “I think I just need to reset my password or something.”
“Okay,” she said. “Let me know if I can help.”
“Of course I would let you know if I needed your help with something,” Reece said, still quick. “Have a good trip, and don’t let Liam text and drive. And don’t you text and drive either. And if you have to have music on, keep it at a reasonable volume and—”
“Bye, Reece,” she said pointedly, and hung up.
At the university hospital, Grayson lingered in the parking lot for a moment, checking his messages. EI said the blood tests he had asked for were delayed, but they had the lab’s every assurance that they would be done as soon as possible.
He’d never had any issues with delays before.
Eventually Grayson went into the hospital and followed a petite resident in blue scrubs down to the basement morgue, leaning against the back wall of the elevator so he didn’t loom over her.
“Does the staff who looked at the empath have any thoughts?” Grayson said, as he held the elevator door for her.
The resident glanced up at him. “You read the report, right?”
“I did,” he acknowledged. “But it helps to hear theories.” And it helped him gauge how much the staff might know and how much cover-up was gonna be needed.
He got the door to the morgue for her, and they entered. “Her fingernails are a mess,” she finally said.
Grayson raised his eyebrows.
“I mean, I know empaths say they wear their gloves all the time,” she said, more quickly. “But her nails look all chewed up, like she’s a nail biter, and how could she be biting them if she was wearing her gloves? Are we sure they really wear them all the time?”
An image of Reece rose in Grayson’s mind, curled up on the passenger seat of the truck, bundled in the sweatshirt Grayson had tossed in the backseat long months and miles before. Reece had been chewing on his thumb, because sometimes even empaths who dutifully wore their gloves sought outlets for their anxiety.
Granted, Reece hadn’t been in gloves at that moment, and that particular bout of anxiety was probably because he’d caused a world of trouble that night. He’d been cute in that hoodie, though.
A few minutes later, Grayson had on a pair of latex gloves at least two sizes too small. The resident had wheeled out Marie Pelletier’s body on its stainless steel table, covered to the neck with a sheet. Ms. Pelletier had the brown curls she’d had in her social media pictures, but her features were less recognizable, scraped and bruised, nose maybe broken from a face-first fall.
The resident disappeared into the room’s tiny office as Grayson stepped over to the body and picked up the empath’s left hand. Contrary to AMI’s ramblings, there was nothing you could immediately see with your naked eyes to know an empath’s hand from anyone else’s. They had extra friction ridges, which made ink fingerprints appear smudged and inconclusive. Marist had promised that Stone Solutions Canada had received digital versions of Ms. Pelletier’s for analysis.
The resident had been right, though. Ms. Pelletier’s nails were bitten to the quick.
Grayson lifted her right hand, then hesitated. It was hard to pick out in a hospital morgue that used chemicals to stave off decay, but the scent from the glove was here too.
He bent closer. It was stronger than it had been in the glove and seemed to be coming from the back of her hand.
He glanced up, but the resident had closed the office door, her profile partially visible through the office’s glass window.
He reached for his coat and withdrew his pocket flashlight. Turning so his back blocked his actions, he picked up Ms. Pelletier’s right hand again and flicked on the blue light. It lit up like Christmas: UV marker on the back of her hand. A loop like a messy, lowercase “L” that looked like it had been hastily hand-drawn.
Keeping his back to the room to block the resident’s view, Grayson snapped a couple pictures. It was the kind of thing clubs or events might do, to mark people who were old enough to drink, or who’d already paid and could reenter. He might be able to find the club that marked hands like this.
But Ms. Pelletier would have had to take off her gloves to get this mark, and an empath going without gloves was illegal—illegal in Canada too. An empath wouldn’t do it.
Another memory of Reece came to mind, this time the security footage of him walking bare-handed into Stone Solutions.
Well. Most empaths wouldn’t do it.
Reece skipped his new building’s elevator, bypassing the little lobby on the fourth floor and heading toward the end of the hall instead. He didn’t want to be in a closed-in metal box with other people, didn’t want to meet the eyes of the lobby’s doormen. The fire stairs were a better exit; they didn’t use electricity, they led to the ground floor of the parking garage, and best of all, they were empty.
He made his way to his car and a few minutes later, he was driving south on I-5 without a real destination, one thought overriding everything else.
He’d changed Jamey. He was the reason she was the way she was.
Eventually he took an exit, heading west as he wound his way through some of the towns that scrunched together to fill the corridor between Seattle and Tacoma. The direction was reflex as much as anything else; maybe it was because he’d been raised near the ocean, but when the world stopped making sense, his instincts led him to the water, to watch the endless waves and let them carry the weight of his thoughts.
He ended up at a small park along the sound, where the shore stretched beyond sight in both directions. The tide was out, leaving behind glistening gray rocks under a lighter gray sky. He followed it, leaving the car behind to walk down to the beach, hands stuck deep in the pockets of Grayson’s hoodie. He was mostly alone; just a bird-watcher with binoculars and two sets of parents investigating the tide pools with their toddlers.
He sat down on a mostly dry rock, watching the families for a moment. Jamey had a picture of them on the beach that their mom had taken twenty years ago, when they were six and twelve. Back then, he used to talk to everyone he saw, learning the complexities of emotions the way other kids learned colors; purple was made from red and blue, like hurt might be made of betrayal and loneliness.
Reece would wander too far, and inevitably either tire himself out or piss someone off, and Jamey would show up and rescue him. The picture was of one of the countless piggyback rides she used to give him, because she’d already been as strong as an adult at that point. And that was his fault—he’d been changing her, morphing her into the perfect protector. Had she even wanted to rescue him? Or had he given her no choice, fucked up her instincts along with her strength and senses?
He wanted to believe he would never. But corruption had turned Cora into a killer, and he already knew it was inside him too.
He’d been about to tell Jamey about the emails, but how could he? For fuck’s sake, she’d become a detective so she could protect other people as her job. Had he made her want that? How could he ask her to rescue him yet again when the only reason she might want to was because he’d changed her?
How could he ever ask Grayson for help when Grayson’s brother had done the same thing to him?
He glanced down at the hoodie he was wearing. The one he wore because it made him feel better. That maybe Grayson had only shared with him because his empath brother had made him want to protect empaths.
Reece tightened his jaw and looked out at the ocean. Maybe AMI and Stone Solutions were right. Maybe empaths were too dangerous. Abominations that shouldn’t even exist.
Maybe it was pointless to fight the corruption. Why resist so hard if he’d been evil since he was a kid? He could let go, just let it take over—
His phone pinged.
Reece blinked, his thoughts slipping away like the tide rolling out, and picked up the phone.
Grayson: You ever go to clubs?
Reece blinked at the text.
Reece: Why? You planning an outing for us that doesn’t involve handcuffs?
Grayson: When I get sass instead of answers?
Grayson: No.
Reece cracked a smile.
Reece: I’ve gone. Very occasionally.
Grayson: If the club wants to stamp your hand, what do you do?
Reece: I just have them stamp high up on my arm instead. Obviously empaths don’t take the gloves off in public.
Grayson: Obviously. Except for that one time when you did. And it made the news.
Reece gave the phone a dirty look.
Reece: Did you text just to remind me what a failure of an empath I am?
Grayson: Failure? Care Bear, a pair of gloves isn’t what makes you an empath. Your compassion never got left in the glove box of your Micro Machine and towed to Tacoma.
The knot in Reece’s chest loosened. His gaze lingered on Grayson’s text. Care Bear. Such a ridiculous thing to call an empath when the Dead Man knew better than anyone else exactly how un -caring empaths could become.
And yet. He still used it for Reece, even though he knew Reece’s secrets now.
He looked at the text another moment, then shook himself irritably. Grayson probably used that nickname with all empaths. Nothing more than habit.
A light drizzle was starting. Reece pocketed the phone and stood up from his rock, pulling the hood of Grayson’s sweatshirt up over his hair as he started back to the car.
Aisha sighed and took off her glasses, setting them on the mattress next to her so she could rub at her eyes.
Grayson had forwarded the empath’s name, and Aisha had gone to Stone Solutions Canada’s Ottawa office straight from the airport for a copy of Marie Pelletier’s records. Now she was working on two lap desks on the hotel’s king-size bed, her Stone Solutions laptop on one and her personal laptop on the other, curled up under the covers with her printed pictures and handwritten notes spread out around her on the glaringly white comforter. Night had fallen and the curtains were still open, the window a square of black glass dotted with Ottawa’s city lights.
She let her head fall back against the pillows stacked behind her and stared at the blurry TV, which she’d left soundlessly playing a station that ran old sci-fi movies.
Some creep had smashed an empath over the head and left her dead in a park. Why? Marie had been absolutely harmless, as far as Aisha could tell. The national file kept in Ottawa was slim, but it seemed she’d gone to every appointment Stone Solutions Canada had asked her to and worn gloves without complaint. She’d had one sibling, a sister, and several cousins, but no other empaths in the family.
Grayson had also forwarded Aisha the records from Quebec. Aisha read over Marie’s job history, but again nothing stood out. She’d moved to Montreal from a smaller city for graduate studies at McGill and had been a librarian at the same facility for four years. She fostered cats for an animal shelter and seemed to have spent most of her free time volunteering at food banks and senior citizens’ organizations.
The world was almost certainly worse off for her loss. Why couldn’t people just leave empaths alone?
Aisha put her glasses back on and picked up her phone. Grayson had texted to say he might have a lead on Marie’s location the night before and was checking all the clubs in Burlington. Jamey’s text had asked if she knew anything about another Canadian empath gone missing from Port Angeles.
Aisha had sent the query on to Grayson, but he would have already said something to her if he’d heard anything. Stone Solutions Canada should have already been on top of it, like they were supposed to be with Marie.
She looked at Jamey’s message again and then hit Call. “Hey,” she said, when Jamey picked up. “You hear anything further about the empath in Port Angeles?”
“No.” Jamey didn’t sound happy. “Still waiting on Stensby to send over the details. I’m planning a day trip tomorrow, leaving in the morning with Liam. Any luck in Ottawa?”
“No.” Aisha wasn’t happy either. “But we did finally confirm the murdered empath was from Montreal. I’ll probably head over there tomorrow.”
She glanced at her personal laptop, where Marie’s social media was splashed across the screen. She looked like she’d been a sweetheart, with big brown curls and glasses, smiling at the camera with a cat in her arms.
“Speaking of Canada’s empaths.” Jamey sounded a little more hesitant. “Cedrick Stone had said Cora Falcon was being sent somewhere in British Columbia. Are there any updates on her? I haven’t heard anything since the night we—well, you remember.”
Aisha wasn’t going to forget it. Jamey and Cora had faced each other in November, but they’d been too evenly matched: a corrupted empath versus the natural immunity of an empath’s sibling. Cora had tried to thrall Jamey and ended up knocking herself out; Jamey had teetered between sanity and madness until she’d finally fought off Cora’s empathy.
A lot of people would blame Cora for everything that had happened the night of Senator Hathaway’s death. But Cora had begun that night as a kindhearted therapist before a pair of rich creeps had tortured and murdered her fiancé to create a corrupted empath; Aisha put the lion’s share of the blame on Cedrick Stone’s machinations.
“Obviously it wasn’t a fun night for me, but what happened to Cora and her fiancé was—well.” Jamey sighed. “Just tell me she’s not, like, suffering.”
“She better not be,” Aisha said. “Corrupted empaths are kept at the Polaris Empathic Research Facility in British Columbia. When the Empath Initiative created the role of the Dead Man, Grayson had conditions, and several of them have to do with the living conditions at Polaris. All the rules were being followed last time I checked.”
“You’ve been there?” Jamey said, sounding surprised.
“The visitors’ list is minuscule but Grayson got me on it,” Aisha admitted. “There are only three empaths there—well. Four now, with Cora.”
“And they’re all as dangerous as Cora?”
“Yeah,” Aisha said, more quietly. “But they’ve all been hurt too. I’m not making excuses for their crimes, but none of them corrupted themselves.”
Jamey sighed. “I want to make a crack about what kind of living conditions an empath hunter would insist on for the empaths he hunts. But I’m guessing Grayson actually improved things for the empaths?”
“He definitely did,” Aisha said. “And he’s making Polaris search for a way to reverse the corruption.”
“I thought Grayson believes it’s permanent.”
“Oh, he does. He believes down to his soul that once an empath is corrupted, there’s no going back.” Aisha cleared her throat. “He made that condition for me. Because I want to believe we can get the pacifists back.”
“So do I,” Jamey said firmly.
That made Aisha smile. “You should see how much Victor Nichols, the Polaris director, hates Grayson for coming in and disrupting his kingdom up at Polaris. But Nichols doesn’t have a choice; there’s never been anyone with Grayson’s complete immunity to empaths before. EI and Stone Solutions know he’s unique and they need him.”
“Reece said it was Grayson’s corrupted empath brother who took away his emotions and let him become the Dead Man.” Jamey’s voice had gone—not soft, exactly, but softer, with something like sympathy. “Had EI already created the Dead Man role before that happened?”
“No,” Aisha said, with the same pang she always got when she thought about it. “I don’t know much about what happened to the Grayson brothers beyond it being some bad, twisted shit. But when everything came to light and EI Director Traynor discovered what Grayson had become, he swooped in to capitalize on the opportunity.”
“Like vultures,” Jamey muttered. “But then, as you said: there’s no one else like Grayson. Guess they couldn’t pass that up.”
After they hung up, Aisha tabbed over to another social media account, this time Cora Falcon’s, which hadn’t been updated since that November night. Aisha scrolled through the first few pictures, all of Cora and her fiancé, John. John had been a doctor at a veterans’ hospital, Cora a therapist. They looked so happy together, gazing at each other like they couldn’t believe they’d gotten so lucky.
Aisha ran a hand over the scar on her neck. It was unbelievable luck, to be loved by an empath.
Her gaze lingered on Cora, the obvious adoration for her fiancé in her eyes, the sweet expressions on her pretty face, the way she’d rested her head against John’s as they took another beaming selfie.
Marie Pelletier had been horribly lost and now Cora was a murderer.
“Some of us know you’re a victim too,” Aisha said out loud, to Cora’s picture. “They better be treating you okay out on the North Coast. We’re going to solve this murder, and then afterwards, I’m coming to make sure they are.”