Chapter Ten
CHAPTER TEN
Ten Signs Your Date Might Secretly Be an Empath
1. They wear gloves indoors (although bear in mind that it IS a chilly December).
2. They pass on the hard drinks but can’t get enough sugar.
3. They listen when you talk about your feelings. (Okay, yes, all your dates should be doing this but you know they don’t.)
—EXCERPT FROM AN ONLINE LISTICLE
The steak house in the Leviathan Hotel’s lobby, the Ranch, was all dark woods and glass, more reminiscent of a wine cellar underground than anywhere outside. A tasteful sign had been set up in a glass stand at the front: Welcome to our AMI guests! Join us in the Live Oak Room.
As Gretel and Alex waited for the hostess to return, he pointed up above the sign. “We’re on camera.”
A small black circle with a red dot was set into the ceiling. Gretel grinned. “Should we pose?”
“Great idea,” Alex said, like he thought that was funny. They put their heads together and looked up at the security camera, waving.
A woman cleared her throat. Gretel turned back to see the hostess watching with a very blank expression. Gretel should have been embarrassed, but being around Alex made her want to drop her masks and just be who she was for once: an obsessive oddball who’d quit regular journalism to run one of the country’s biggest empath blogs. Why did she try so hard to seem like a normal person?
“We’re here for the AMI party,” Gretel said.
“Follow me,” the hostess said.
They were led to a side room with a private bar, where about twenty of Beau’s AMI cohorts were already standing in tight knots around the small space. The waiter came by with a tray of champagne. Gretel grabbed one of the flutes and used the distraction to lead Alex over to the wall. “My dad is a huge talker and bragger,” she said in a low voice. “We just need to get him going.”
Alex nodded. “Who’s the cop?” he asked.
Gretel followed his subtle gesture to the bar. The police officer who’d been at the AMI meeting on Friday was here again. “Officer Stensby,” said Gretel. “He’s started coming to all kinds of AMI events. My dad loves it; he’s always bragging about all the cops and military types who join AMI.”
She sipped the champagne, bubbles tickling her lips. Not everyone in America got to feel safer around the police; some people had to worry about the cops even when they were just living their lives and not breaking any laws. Just one more thing she couldn’t help but notice these days.
She watched her dad move through the room, shaking hands. When he reached the closest group, she darted forward. “Dad.”
Beau blinked in surprise. “Gretel? I wasn’t expecting you here.” He eyed Alex with a confused stare. “Or to bring a date.”
“Alex is a journalism major at Rainier, interning at the Emerald City Tribune ,” Gretel lied easily. Her dad didn’t have much respect for bloggers, no matter how successful Eyes on Empaths was; he’d be more open if Alex met his standards for real reporter. “He’s doing a piece on that break-in at Stone Solutions last month.”
“That’s right, sir,” Alex said earnestly, Southern accent in full effect. “How the heck did an empath get in? Stone Solutions must have state-of-the-art security.”
“It certainly does,” Beau said, chest puffed out.
Alex tilted his head, like he’d heard a sound no one else had. “I heard their only security used to be access cards. But after November’s break-in, they must have realized that cards are too easily stolen, right?”
“Absolutely,” Beau said. “They’ve gone to biometric security everywhere. After November, it was top priority to upgrade everything.”
Alex nodded slowly, head still tilted like he could hear something more than Beau’s voice. “What did they do for Mr. Stone’s office? I heard he was hospitalized somewhere secret; did they still get his fingerprints or retina scan?”
Beau cleared his throat. “Of course they did.” His gaze went past them, to another knot of people. “AMI has our conference coming up on Monday and I see our marketing head. Excuse me.”
“But, Dad—” Gretel started.
“It’s okay,” Alex said, under his breath. “I got what I needed.”
“You sure?” she said, also quiet.
“Definitely.” Alex’s lips curled in a tiny smile. “Your dad should work on his poker face, though. Those lies were probably obvious to the whole room.”
Gretel hadn’t picked up on any lies. Alex was so perceptive. “To great stories, in that case,” she said, clinking her champagne flute against his soda.
“Hey, aren’t you Mr. Macy’s daughter? The one who runs Eyes on Empaths for him?”
Gretel looked over to see Officer Stensby approaching, holding his whiskey, several inches taller than both her and Alex. “Not for him,” she said coolly.
“That’s Gretel’s blog,” Alex said, just as coolly.
Stensby looked down his nose at him. “I didn’t catch your name.”
“I’m Gretel’s date,” Alex said. “Mr. Date, if you’re the formal type,” he added, which made Gretel snort behind her champagne. He gestured to an unimpressed Stensby’s glass. “Guess you’re not on duty tonight.”
“It’s nonalcoholic,” said Stensby, with a note of defensiveness.
Please. Gretel could smell the whiskey from here.
Alex had tilted his head again, in that listening way. “So what are you doing here then?”
“Police business isn’t exactly your business, is it?” Stensby said, more sharply.
“If you say so.” Alex seemed completely unintimidated by the much bigger Stensby. “We should talk more later tonight.”
For some reason, the tone of Alex’s voice made Gretel shiver.
It was fully dark when Reece finally made it to the southern end of Seattle and took an exit for Kent.
After Stensby had bailed from the doughnut shop, Reece had taken the rest of his bagel back to the car and checked his phone to discover he’d missed three calls and four texts from Grayson.
Can you talk right now?
A little later:
Call me when you get this.
Later still:
I need you to trust me: go straight to McFeely’s as soon as you see this. Once you get there, STAY there. I’m sending you their temporary address. Mr. Lane is expecting you.
And, sugar, if I ever get your auto-response when I’m trying to reach you again, I’m gonna give Eyes on Empaths an exclusive interview and tell everyone you’re an unsafe driver.
That was frankly diabolical. But it would be nice to see Dominique “Diesel” Lane, the gentle giant bouncer at McFeely’s, and Reece did trust Grayson—maybe only Grayson, these days, because as much as he loved Jamey, he didn’t trust her to stop him if it became necessary, not the way he trusted Grayson would. And so Reece followed the request and headed to the address Grayson had given him for the temporary location of McFeely’s.
He navigated through Kent, past local restaurants and grocery shops to a set of streets that felt more industrial, with parking lots of eighteen-wheelers, a tall contraption that might have been a concrete mixer, and short, wide warehouses with no windows. But as he approached the address Grayson had given him, cars began to line the curb again, and Reece had to park two streets over.
The address turned out to be a warehouse, which looked like every other windowless and unadorned warehouse in the area. But as he approached the door, it was opened before he could knock by a white man with a goatee, almost as tall as Diesel with a thick, strong build, like a teddy bear who could plow through a brick wall. He was wearing black slacks, a black T-shirt, and, inexplicably, a pair of black bunny ears on his bald head. “You Reece?”
Reece nodded warily.
The bouncer held the door open and muffled bass spilled out. “Diesel told me to keep an eye out for you. Come on in.”
Reece stepped through the doors into a different world—warm and inviting, with colorful lights set into the ceiling above a carpeted hall and a roped-off line of well-dressed people chattering excitedly with each other. The bass grew louder as Reece followed the bouncer toward the pair of double doors at the far end of the hall.
The doors suddenly swung open, letting the music out into the hall. “Hey, kiddo, you made it.”
Reece found himself breaking into a real smile to match Diesel’s. He didn’t meet many friendly faces these days; it was as welcome as a warm house on a winter day. “Hey yourself,” he said to Diesel, raising his voice over the music. “Do you know why Agent Grayson wanted me to come here?”
“Does he ever explain himself to anyone?” Diesel said wryly.
He was also wearing a pair of bunny ears. Reece furrowed his brow, but before he could ask, Diesel was pointing to the crates that had been stacked to form a makeshift bar on the other side of the room. “Ben’s on tonight too, if you want to say hi.”
Reece carefully threaded his way through the crowd, dodging to avoid any contact with the tipsy people dancing and gesturing. Ben Castillo, the bartender Reece had met in November, was mixing something in shiny cups while a woman with pink hair and tattoos covering her bare shoulders worked the cash register. They were both in gloves—and also bunny ears.
Reece leaned on the bar, which seemed to be made of spare wood, like someone had been about to build a deck and topped off the crates to form a bar instead. “Ben!”
Ben glanced his way and broke into a smile, waving.
And for all that Reece hated this entire business model, this was apparently the one place in Seattle he could go right now and be welcomed so easily and genuinely it made his throat tight. No, the people here weren’t empaths in the paranormal way, but you didn’t need paranormal abilities to be kind and empathetic, and in that way, people like Ben and Diesel were more exceptional than Reece was. No wonder business was booming.
Ben set the drink on the bar in front of a man in a suit and tie, and then he was making his way to Reece. He put his arms on the bar in a mirror of Reece and then leaned forward, his complicated hair falling over his brown eyes. “Hey, stranger. You want your Shirley Temple?”
Reece really did.
A few minutes later, Ben was putting Reece’s drink in front of him. “Is your hot and scary boyfriend here too?”
“My what ?” Reece said incredulously. “Are you talking about Agent Grayson?”
“How many hot and scary boyfriends do you have?”
Ben had dark circles under his eyes like Grayson, like Reece himself, and there was a tension in his shoulders that hadn’t been there the last time they talked. But then, on that terrible night back in November, Ben had been the one to find the body of Stone Solutions’ head of IT dead in the McFeely’s server room, and Reece knew now it had been an empath behind everything, who’d put this sweet, friendly bartender through something like that.
“What’s with the ears?” Reece asked, instead of fighting Ben about Grayson.
Ben touched the headband with bunny ears. “We’re all wearing them the first week in the new place, as a tribute. It’s heartbreaking, what happened to Bunny; she was a sweetheart and we miss her.”
Not a lie. Reece bit his lip. Jamey had told him there’d been more casualties when Cora’s thralls attacked the club, but she hadn’t given him details about who had died. Bunny must have been one of the employees. She wasn’t just a part of the death toll to people who cared about her; Ben’s pain was real.
“I’m sorry,” Reece said. “That whole night—I’m just really sorry.” He leaned forward on the bar. “Are you okay? You found a body—I can’t, I can’t even—I’m so sorry.”
“It was bad,” Ben admitted. “But I’ll get through it. Therapy, sleep meds, that kind of thing. That night shook the whole place up, but we’re a pretty tight-knit group and we’re helping each other.”
An empath could have helped too. Could have helped sort through the overwhelming jumble of feelings that accompanied tragedies, or help them through the darkness of grief to find the light, to unbury the good feelings they couldn’t find on their own anymore.
Or at least, an empath who wasn’t Reece could have helped. Because the last person Reece had touched had almost died and he had no right to get his empathy anywhere near anyone. Possibly ever again.
“Good,” Reece said, throat tight again. “I’m glad you have each other.”
Ben reached down under the bar and then came back up a moment later. “You want a pair? All the empaths have them—you should too.”
He held out a black headband with bunny ears.
And Reece could have protested that everyone in here was faking it for tips. That he was the only actual empath now, in Seattle.
But he hadn’t realized just how much he missed Cora, and how very alone he was. How nice it felt to have Ben include him with complete sincerity.
So Reece shut his mouth and took the ears.
“Ben!”
Ben glanced down the bar. “I gotta help Ink,” he said ruefully. “But call me sometime, okay? I’m not trying to piss off your boyfriend—we can just be friends.”
“Grayson’s not my—”
Ben had already disappeared.
Reece sighed and slid the ears onto his head. Imagine Ben actually thinking Grayson was his boyfriend.
He pulled out his phone and turned on the screen, and his new background lit up with Grayson’s smoking hot gym selfie.
Wild, the ideas people came up with.
Like many hotels, the Leviathan had restrooms on the first floor, practically hidden from the lobby down a corridor past the elevator. The men’s room was empty as Officer Stensby slipped through the door.
He leaned against the sink and pulled out his phone. The screen was blurry; he probably should have stopped a few whiskeys ago. But it didn’t matter; if the deposits were in his bank account, then he was done promising Beau Macy he’d be at all the upcoming AMI events; he was withdrawing all of it and buying a one-way ticket to Puerto Vallarta.
The door suddenly opened. He looked up from his phone to see that short guy who’d come to the dinner with Gretel Macy, the one with the annoying Texas drawl— Alex , he’d heard Gretel call him.
“Hi, officer,” Alex said. “I was hoping I’d catch you alone.”
Stensby narrowed his eyes. This kid was bold, shoulders straight and chin up, like he had all the right in the world to follow a cop into the men’s room. “What do you want?”
Alex stuck out a foot, hooking the garbage can. “I thought we could chat.”
Stensby shoved the phone into his pocket. “Not interested.” Wait—was Alex now wedging the garbage can under the handle? So the door couldn’t be opened from outside? “What the hell are you doing?”
“I have this thing.” Alex kicked the garbage can into place, his gaze never leaving Stensby. “I don’t like liars.”
Stensby was rapidly going from irritated to pissed, a buzz to his anger that must have come from the whiskey. “I don’t know who you think you are or what you think you’re doing,” he said, starting forward, “but I don’t appreciate being cornered.”
“Your rage has a hair trigger, what a shock,” Alex said dryly. “To be fair, being around AMI this evening hasn’t been great for my temper either, but that just makes it even easier to light you up.”
The fuck was this kid talking about? Stensby’s anger was rippling over him, clouding his vision alongside the whiskey. “I don’t have time for this.” A moment later, he had Alex backed against the wall. “You’re about to catch a lot more heat than you bargained for.”
“I’m afraid you have it backwards, officer.” Alex put his hand on Stensby’s bare arm.
And the world began to dissolve, leaving only Alex.
“Now, see, Gretel I couldn’t thrall,” Alex said, as the rage began to shift, replaced by a deep-set ache to serve and please, to devote himself to Alex, that was spreading through Stensby’s chest. “I needed her to be able to use her brain. But you seem like the type who traded rational, nuanced thinking for fear and rage long ago, so no need to spare your intelligence, or lack thereof. How about you tell me what you’re doing here?”
Stensby was going to tell him everything . “I’ve got this buddy who’s been in AMI a long time, and for ages he’s been telling me these theories about how dangerous empaths are, like how they can read your mind and shit.”
“Always with the mind reading,” Alex said, with a shake of his head. “For the record, we can’t do that, though we don’t need your thoughts when we have your emotions. But go on.”
Of course Stensby would go on. He’d go on for hours, if that was what Alex wanted. “I never liked empaths, but I figured if they were actually dangerous, the government would do something, right? We sure as hell wouldn’t have had that nervous, useless empath consultant right there on the police force. Or so I thought, until the Hathaway murder.”
Stensby shook his head. He’d been so naive. “We got called to Stone Solutions. I was one of the first on the scene, and I saw our supposedly harmless empath consultant on his knees next to Cedrick Stone’s unconscious body. He didn’t look like an annoying, barely functional pacifist on that roof; he looked guilty as fuck. But we were ordered to just...let him go.”
Stensby was angry all over again. “They said Cedrick Stone was responsible for that senator’s death, but he was covered in blood on that roof, and the papers say he’s been in the hospital ever since. Reece is clearly a lot more dangerous than we were told, and they let him work with the cops . I said fuck that and started going to AMI meetings. I started listening to Keith. But then last week, Keith comes to me and says he heard from someone higher than AMI. And he says they’re going to do something about empaths—they just need recruits. And that I could help.”
Alex’s eyes were fixed on his. “Recruits for what?”
“I don’t know and I didn’t bother to find out,” Stensby said. “Keith put me in touch with someone who offered me a pile of money to get Jamey out of town and I saw my ticket out of all of this empath crap.”
“Who’s Jamey?”
“Detective St. James,” said Stensby. “Reece’s sister. She was a detective on the force. And see, I’m not stupid. I know an anonymous benefactor isn’t just going to pay me to distract Jamey, they’re going to want more, and if I say no, then I’m going to have a little accident somewhere, someday. Dirty money always comes with strings, and that’s why I’m going to Mexico tonight, before those strings attach. But I had to do something about Reece before I left, because if half of what Keith says is true, then the whole city is in danger.”
Alex tilted his head. “What did you do to this other empath?”
“Car sabotage,” Stensby said proudly. “Nothing that could be traced back to me.”
“I see.” Alex took his hand off of Stensby. “I’m going to need your phone.”
“I will give you anything you want,” Stensby promised, handing over the phone.
“Yeah,” said Alex, narrowing his eyes. “You will.”