by Page Turner
No, she had not been told.
And that was half the problem.
Karen ran over all of this in her mind as she lay with Viv in the dark. She considered doing as she always did, changing the subject, letting the matter slide, moving on with her life.
It was an attractive option.
There was a reason she’d done it over and over again, after all. It was the path of least resistance. Least short-term resistance anyway.
Drop it and walk away. Let the charge of the moment fade. Hope that it wouldn’t be a live wire later when circumstance forced her to pick it up again.
But Karen was finding that instead of the charge dissipating and leaving the matter that the topic remained just as charged every time it came up.
And a deep resentment was starting to form within her. One whose potential power frightened her.
Karen felt the stirrings of it burn within her, even as she stared at Viv’s face, at her ever-changing eyes, a sight that she considered one of the most beautiful in the world. If she could feel fury looking at the face of her lover, especially as she could empathically sense that her lover was actively projecting adoration and admiration her way, Karen reasoned, then things were out of control.
Karen swallowed.
“I’m sick of it, Viv,” Karen said.
Viv didn’t say anything. Karen felt something like shame mixed with anxiety emanating off Viv.
“I’m sick of being treated like I’m something lesser than you. Like my powers are no good. Like they’re not important. You’ve known me for long enough that there’s no excuse.”
Viv swallowed. Karen felt the same mix washing over her. Shame and anxiety.
Good, Karen thought. It’s about time she felt it, too.
Karen felt a little ugly thinking like that, but she continued anyway.
“Do you know what it’s like coming into a situation like this?” Karen asked.
“Like what?” Viv said.
“Where two people have been together for years, and you’re the new person in their lives.”
Viv shook her head no. “Never,” she said.
“Well, it shows,” Karen said. “You don’t know what it’s like to come into a household where two people have already built up a life together. One full of memories, traditions, private jokes, routines. You don’t know what it’s like to try to find your footing in all of that. To try all the while not to upset secret taboos. It’s like… moving into a minefield and being asked to join a group dance. One you don’t know the steps to.”
Viv nodded. “That had to be hard.”
“Hard isn’t even the Cliff Notes version,” Karen said. “I wish I could go back sometimes, to when we first got together. And just tell you to knock it off. Demand that I be more included. Demand that you try to make me feel welcome, safe.” She sighed. “But I didn’t have a leg to stand on then. I showed up on the doorstep in the middle of the night like a box of abandoned kittens.”
“You were just as cute,” Viv offered.
Karen smiled at the compliment, in spite of herself. She willed herself not to, so she wouldn’t get sidetracked.
“I was the third wheel,” Karen said. “Do you know what it’s like to be the third wheel?”
“You know,” Viv said. “That I do understand.”
Karen cocked her head.
“Love was always Mom’s favorite,” Viv offered.
Karen nodded. “There’s a reason you moved out, isn’t there? There’s a reason that you don’t live with her anymore, being offered off to eligible bachelors, trying to improve your mother’s social standing like Love, right?”
Viv nodded. “Yeah. It kills me that I’ve made you feel that way.”
“Made’s a little strong. You don’t have those kinds of powers. You can’t make me feel anything,” Karen said, and Viv laughed. “But yeah. You need to stop it. Stop second guessing me. You need to make more of an effort. “
Viv nodded. “Do you want to know where I was coming from?” she asked.
“Trust me, I do,” Karen said. “I’m feeling what you’re feeling right now.” Remorse. Sadness.
“Well, you know my emotional process, but not my reasoning,” Viv said.
“Emotions are more honest,” Karen offered.
“Emotions are more automatic,” Viv countered. “Aren’t we more than our gut impulses?”
“Perhaps,” Karen said. “But we don’t ever really escape them completely, do we?”
Viv didn’t answer that. Instead, she explained. “It isn’t about my confidence in your abilities – or lack of it,” Viv said.
“Then what is it then? What else could it possibly be?” Karen asked.
“…I’m worried about what other people will think,” Viv said.
“You? Caring what other people think?” Karen said, laughing. But she could tell by Viv’s emotional pattern that she meant it. That she was being sincere.
“I’m in love with you, Karen,” Viv said. “Have been for a long time.”
Karen smiled.
“I know what that means. Is love basically bias? Yes. Yes, it is. But does that bias leak over into my professional life? That’s what I’m worried about. Or at least worried that other people will be worried about. And you know what bias does to psychic powers.”
“It scrambles the signal,” Karen said.
Viv nodded.
“Let me get this straight,” Karen said, “You’re worried that people will think you’re biased and nepotistic because you hired your girlfriend to work with you.”
“Something like that,” Viv said.
“And you didn’t worry about this with Penny?” Karen asked.
“Oh, I did,” Viv said. “You weren’t around for that. Ask Penny about it sometime, when she’s not out being a cat burglar or whatever the heck she’s up to.”
“Raving at a graveyard?” Karen said.
“A rave yard, you mean,” Viv joked.
Karen laughed. “That was such a Penny joke,” she said.
“Spend enough time with someone…” Viv said, letting her voice trail off and smiling.
Karen smiled back.
“Anyway, I second guessed Penny just as hard. Hell, I wasn’t even sure she really saw spirits until about a year after she took the comprehensive perceptive battery,” Viv admitted.
“Really?”
Viv nodded. “I mean, I knew that’s what she thought. But I also thought it was just as likely that she was having visual hallucinations and good at lying about it. Making up elaborate reasoning to explain it.”
Karen boggled at this. “Wait, wait, you thought Penny was psychotic and a liar, and you still dated her?”
Viv nodded.
“Why?” Karen said.
“Because there’s more to a person than their mental illness,” Viv said. “And if she were going to lie about something, coming up with a narrative to explain her madness was about the most practical, least unethical lie I can think of.”
“Huh,” Karen said.
“After all,” Viv said. “It’s not like my mother hasn’t done the same thing.”
“True,” Karen said. “But did you really want to marry a woman like your mother?”
“No,” Viv said. “Of course not. Well, not in certain ways. A person can have something in common with someone you despise and still be quite lovable.”
“Tell that to transference,” Karen said.
Viv laughed. “Empaths have such a hard time of it, don’t they? At least cancel culture is reacting to something. Throwing the baby out with the bathwater sometimes, sure. But empaths have to go even further. They have to precancel people not because they’ve done anything but simply because they remind them of people who have done things.”
Karen shrugged. “I’d
change it if I could.”
“Nah,” Viv said. “Don’t change a damn thing. I like you the way you are. If you started ‘fixing’ things, who knows what would break in response? There’s nothing wrong with you. And besides, it’s a miracle you’re even here… after all you’ve been through.”
“The same could be said for you, Viv,” Karen offered.
Viv’s eyes reminded Karen of liquid mercury as they shifted silver. Viv smiled.
It was a beautiful smile, Karen noted, leaning forward and covering it with her own.
“It all started with the python thing,” Penny said, when she finally had gathered herself enough to speak again.
“I take it that you and Viv still aren’t talking about that,” Kip replied.
Penny shook her head. “I don’t blame her for not believing me. I probably wouldn’t have believed me if I were in her shoes… Her thought was that I was reading too much Harry Potter, thinking I could speak Parseltongue, and I guess I was really into those books back then, but…”
“But the python really spoke to you, didn’t it?” Kip said.
Penny nodded. “It sounds crazy, I know.”
“Not to me,” Kip said.
“Well you’re dead,” Penny replied.
“True,” Kip said. “But that’s not why. The truth is, little one, I’ve known you for years, and I’ve never known you to lie… about anything.”
Penny hesitated at this, the way a person who is committed to telling the truth will when scanning their memory for times when they were arguably deceptive. Typically, there are no outright falsehoods in there. Maybe an omission or two out of tact. Or a time when they could have spoken up and corrected the record but either lost their opportunity to do so or chose not to (for whatever reason).
“Everyone lies,” she said.
“Very good, little one,” Kip replied. “But you lie the least of all the mortals I’ve encountered.”
“Have you encountered many mortals then?” Penny asked.
Kip chuckled, the way he always did when she asked him a question he didn’t want to answer. “Enough,” he replied.
“That doesn’t answer my question,” Penny replied.
“I know,” Kip said.
“I think the hardest part of it all,” Penny continued, “is that I couldn’t tell Viv the whole story.”
“Because that would involve telling her about your other name,” Kip said.
Penny nodded.
“That would involve telling her about your other life,” Kip said.
“Well, I don’t know about that,” Penny said. “I don’t really know all about my other life. Not really.”
“You could though,” Kip said. “All you have to do is ask.”
Penny sighed. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned from talking to you over the years, Kip, it’s that I shouldn’t ask questions I don’t want the answers to.”
“Fair,” he said with a little laugh.
“Once you learn things, you can’t un-learn them. Once you know things, you can’t un-know them.”
Kip nodded. “Once you hear things, you can’t un-hear them.”
“Exactly,” Penny said.
“Okay, little one,” Kip said. “I can keep a secret. Or twelve.”
“Although…” Penny said.
Kip sat up straighter at this.
“I’m sick of feeling like I’m standing outside of everything,” Penny said. “Like there’s this grand secret that everyone else knows, and I’m the only one left in the dark. Like a private joke told at my expense.”
“That’s understandable,” Kip said. “Although it’s not everyone. Mostly it’s just the dead who know.”
“And that shapeshifter Change Patterson. If that’s who he really was. What kind of shapeshifter is named Change?” said Penny.
“At the very least, it’s truth in advertising,” Kip replied. “Change is what you get with a shapeshifter, especially one who’s been around as long as he has, who’s seen the things he’s seen, who knows as many people… and non-people… that he knows. I’m surprised to see he’s freelancing though, enough to be making up business cards. Last I knew, he was an errand boy for the Macombers.”
“The Macombers?” Penny asked.
Kip nodded. “They all have fixers, the Families,” he offered. “People hired to hide secrets or make problems go away. I imagine that’s how he knows who you are. People who do that kind of job learn a lot of things a person isn’t supposed to know. Especially one who can transform himself to blend in anywhere.”
“I guess that’s fair,” Penny said. “But it’s not just him either, who knows my name. It was also that lady at the Warrens of Persephone today. She was alive. Viv and Karen could see her just fine,” Penny said.
“All that means is that she has been talking to the dead, and they’ve let her in on who you are,” Kip replied. “I assure you – your name is really only widely known among the dead. They’re the only ones who really know who you are. That you aren’t who you tell other people you are.”
“That’s why they seek me out, isn’t it?” Penny said.
Kip nodded. “It’s related.”
“But what about that python? Why a snake?” Penny said. She was simply wondering aloud, didn’t really mean to ask him. But she’d said it before she was aware. And Kip was ready to answer.
“I’d blame your father for that one,” Kip replied.
“My father?” Penny said.
“Do you really want to know, little one?” Kip asked.
“Would you want to know if our positions were reversed?” Penny countered.
“I’m not sure,” he replied.
“Why not?” Penny said.
“You’ve built up a good little life here, little one. A cozy existence in the land of the living. The dead make some colorful cameos in all of it, sure. But for the most part, you’re making your own way. Solving crimes. You’ve fallen in love not once but twice. With two very remarkable women,” Kip said.
“And the secrets you know could change all of that?” Penny asked.
Kip nodded. “There would be no going back. No un-knowing. No un-hearing. No un-seeing.”
“Oh Kip,” Penny cried, “why does life have to be so damn hard?”
“Little one,” Kip replied, “the afterlife is no picnic either.”
Penny crept back into the house just before the sun started to come up. Karen by this time was out cold. Viv, however, heard Penny close the door behind her. The floorboards on the first floor creaked as Penny worked her way into the kitchen, even though she made sure to kick off her shoes and traverse the house in stocking feet.
Viv heard the coffeemaker springing to life. An ancient model, one that Penny had rescued from the front lawn of a neighbor who had moved without warning. One day the neighbors were in the house, the next they were gone, most of their belongings pitched unceremoniously in front of the vacant home.
By the time Penny had happened upon the welter of possessions, all the choice items had already been carried off.
But she was taken with the well-worn Mr. Coffee unit. It had a bulky square silhouette you didn’t find much outside of the 80s. The years had sepia tinged the plastic base to a shade that matched her nostalgic recollections of commercials from the era.
It was precisely the kind of machine to drink coffee from when she was the age to be forbidden from doing so, told that it was far too adult for her.
That alone made the act magical.
Viv lay completely still in bed, imagining Penny rifling through someone else’s trash. Viv didn’t have to think too hard about it, as she had a ready archive of still shots of Penny doing just that, looking for a bargain somewhere lowbrow and potentially un-hygienic.
You had to hand it to her, Viv thought, Penny was mak
ing the most of a psychic detective’s salary. Or the three that they collectively lived on.
After what the State charged them for licensing, registration fees, taxes, and provision for public safety (the result of public referendums declaring that psychic powers were potentially dangerous to the broader population and required extra services to offset that risk), there was very little left. As Green Stars, they had been provided public housing, and with Martin’s help and the sway of three stellar employment records, they’d secured a much-coveted single-family home and use of a company car.
Their grocery budget was laughable. They qualified for rations provided biweekly, ones you couldn’t exactly call food but would keep them from keeling over dead on duty.
Coffee was a luxury. As was tea. As was anything palatable, really.
They made it work though, between Penny’s dumpster diving and the active informal bartering system between intuitives.
Just barely though. Despite being at the upper echelon of the psychic workforce, poverty was always just at their backs.
That was why they normally worked seven days a week. Any less, and it was back to rations. Not having watertight shoes. Playing games with the utility companies that resulted in the electricity and water going out at random times.
But things were good today. It had been a good month. Penny started to make pancakes.
Between the smell of the brewing coffee and the pancakes, Karen began to stir. With her eyes still half closed, she got up and walked downstairs.
Just like those old coffee commercials, Viv thought. Raising the whole house from a dead sleep by brewing a pot.
Viv thought about following her, but instead lay there a moment, listening carefully.
She could almost see them in her mind’s eye – Penny and Karen exchanging hellos. Penny would look impeccable, despite being out who-knows-where until all hours of the night. She’d avoid the question of where if Karen asked – but Karen probably wouldn’t ask. Because Karen knew better.
Karen would grab the giant chipped mug with the chibi-style panda on it. Because it was her favorite mug. She’d pour black coffee into it and take a sip from the mug, wincing.