by B. T. Alive
My mouth literally hung open.
“Summer?” Tina said.
“Magical power,” I murmured. “Oh my gosh…” Tingles of realization were rippling down my skin. “How did I not see this?”
“See what?”
“I forgot to tell you this,” I said. “When I went to see Priscilla, she had these pills. On the counter.”
“Okay…?”
“She was in her chair, and the counter was across the room,” I said. “I stepped out for maybe two seconds, and then I walked back in and the pills were in her lap.”
Tina’s brows hunched close… then her eyes went wide.
“You’re sure?” she said. Her voice was low. Was she… scared? “It was that fast?”
“Absolutely!” I said. “She hadn’t moved, she couldn’t have. You saw her legs. She was sitting right there the whole time… because she got the pills with telekinesis.”
Tina stared. She was turning pale.
“What’s wrong?” I said. “It’s a thing, right? Just one more psychic power? Didn’t you say you have a relative with telekinesis?”
“Not a nice relative,” she said softly.
“Neither is Priscilla! Don’t you get it? She called the chef out of the kitchen on purpose. She wanted him out of the kitchen so she could use the poison herself.”
“If that’s true—”
“What do you mean if? It’s the only possible explanation!” I said. “I might even have felt it… I was standing right there in the hallway, and I got this weird faint prickle, like a tiny jolt, emanating from the kitchen.”
“How faint?” Tina said. “I get those too sometimes, but they’re totally unreliable. It could mean anything—”
“But she could have been doing it right then, Tina! While everyone was watching her argue with the chef, Priscilla was lifting the vial through the empty kitchen and dumping it on Nyle’s plate.”
“We would have seen it,” Tina said stubbornly. “It would have had to fly across the whole dining room. Which would be crazy hard—”
“No, you’re forgetting,” I said. “All she’d have had to do was sneak down the night before and hide the vial in the kitchen. She’d only need to move it a few feet, and no one would ever see.”
“But—”
“Tina! Face it! There’s no other option!” I said. “Priscilla Pritchett has telekinesis, and she used it to kill her own grandson.”
The words hung in the small hall, like the crack of a judge’s gavel.
At last Tina spoke.
“If that’s true,” she said quietly, “how can we ever prove it?”
Chapter 35
It didn’t take long for me to remember Grandma’s camera.
“You want to hide a security camera in Priscilla’s room?” Tina demanded. “That’s so creepy!”
“It won’t take long,” I said. “I couldn’t even get out the door before she lifted something. We just need to catch her on camera. Once.”
Tina frowned and paced in the tiny bright hallway, passing the bare doors with their pretty painted flowers. “This sounds super illegal,” she said.
“So’s poisoning your grandson!” I said.
She quit pacing, and then rubbed her forehead and ran her hands through her thick hair. “Shouldn’t we ask Grandma?”
“Are you kidding? Forgiveness is way better than permission.”
“Not with Grandma.”
“Tina, listen. We’ll give it a half hour, tops. If nothing happens, we quit watching and no one has to know. But what if we do catch her? We can show it to Grandma, the sheriff… we could save Mercedes’ life.”
“You think Priscilla tried to kill her too?”
“Who else?” I said. “She’s got telekinesis. Who knows what she’ll throw next?”
“If she’s really powerful enough to lift that pot…” Tina crossed her arms in a tight self-hug. She shook her head.
“What? Is that bad?” I said.
“It’s… unusual.”
“Like, you’d rather we were sending in a SWAT team?”
She nodded.
I shrugged. “Who needs a SWAT team? We’re an empath and a… um…”
“Disruptor,” she said, automatically.
“Disruptor?” I frowned. “That’s what you guys call it?”
“It’s just a technical term—”
“Is it super common?”
“Oh no, not at all,” she said. “We were kind of surprised that one had been sent to get you.”
“What?” I demanded. “That creep who killed my plant? And tried to give me cancer? That was… that’s me?”
Cold dread iced my chest. Whole new vistas of horror were opening for my future.
“Summer! No!” Tina said. “It’s not like that. It’s… it’s all how you use it.”
“But it could be? I could do that?”
“Forget it.” Tina took a step back toward the main hallway. “Come on. Let’s get this over with.”
I walked with her, and we headed for Grandma’s office, where the indoor security camera was still in storage, unopened in its box. I could tell she really didn’t want to talk about this “Disruptor” thing, so I let it drop. For the moment.
But there was no way I would just live with my possible future as a carcinogenic plant assassin. Words were going to be spoken. And soon.
But first we had to install hidden surveillance on a nonagenarian Jedi on the Dark Side of the Force. Just another day in Wonder Springs.
The plan was simple. First, Tina would sneak into the office and nab the camera from a closet. Then, Tina would check in on Priscilla. If luck was with us, she’d be out, and we could get in and get out in a few minutes. Once the camera was set up, we could watch the stream with a special app for it on Tina’s phone. (A phone which I would be very careful not to touch.)
The app could record, too. So the minute we caught Priscilla moving anything through the air, we’d have proof. Solid proof.
It wouldn’t hold up in a court of law, but that was fine. All it had to do was convince the sheriff. I wasn’t thrilled with him knowing I had done anything illegal, but Tina was positive that the man wouldn’t even think to give us trouble; he’d be glad that, for once, someone else had done the line-crossing in pursuit of justice. And once Sheriff Jake got obsessed with the actual killer… we could all finally relax.
That was the plan.
At first, our luck held. Grandma’s office was clear, and Tina nabbed the package with ease and we climbed up to her room. Getting it all set up was a struggle, but after several failed attempts, and some existential questions about whether the writers of instruction manuals are actually human, we finally got the feed showing on Tina’s phone.
(And by “we”, I mean “Tina”, since I couldn’t risk frying our only tech. At least the manual was paper.)
The feed image was grainy and blocky, but as Tina swept the tiny camera around her tower room, you could clearly pick out the details on her screen. This thing might really work.
Then we snuck down to Priscilla’s room. For once, my bulky purse came in useful; it had ample room to stash the camera out of sight. (Although, since I couldn’t risk touching and frying the camera, this did mean that Tina got an actual glimpse of the inside of my purse.)
At Priscilla’s door, Tina gave a soft knock. No answer. The door was locked, so she keyed her way in. The wide curtains were drawn, and the spacious room was dark and empty…
…or not. In the easy chair, in the shadows, sat Priscilla.
We both froze.
Then, in the silence, above the jackhammer of my heart, I detected another sound. Breathing, rhythmic and slow.
“She’s asleep,” I whispered.
Tina nodded. And we both crept forward like Jack to the sleeping giant.
I couldn’t touch either the camera or Tina’s phone, so I felt frustrated and helpless as she fiddled with the tech.
“Could you put the camera here?” I whispered, pointing
to the corner where the waist-high paneling made a slight ledge.
Tina shook her head. “Too small. It might fall,” she whispered.
“Can’t you stick it?” I whispered. “Didn’t the package have some adhesive?”
She literally recoiled, her face open in frank horror. “Can you imagine what Grandma would say?” she hissed. “This wallpaper is older than the Civil War!”
“I’m trying to prevent a murder.”
“So am I!”
We kept hunting, while Priscilla stirred and snored. Her sleep seemed fitful.
“Come on, come on,” I urged. “She’s not going to last forever.”
“Don’t be stressed,” she whispered, as she tried to prop the little camera on the dresser beside an ancient TV. “When you’re stressed, I’m stressed.”
Since the suite was posh, the TV was huge… for the mid-90s. No flat screen here; the dresser had been pulled forward from the wall so that the massive cathode-ray casing could hang off the back.
“Just stick it to the TV,” I hissed. “Or is that also a national treasure?”
She stuck out her tongue in a silent raspberry, but she reached in the box for the little white strip. When the camera was attached, she brought up the feed on her phone… and gasped.
“It’s too dark,” she whispered.
“She’ll turn on the light eventually,” I whispered.
“I thought you said we’d only do this for a half hour!”
I smothered a frustrated groan, then slipped to the window.
“Wait, don’t!” Tina whispered.
But I eased the curtains open, letting in the light.
Priscilla startled and stirred. I froze, holding my breath.
Then her face relaxed, and she settled back to sleep. Slowly, I opened the curtains all the way. I crossed back to Tina and leaned beside her to check the feed on her phone.
“Perfect, that looks great,” I whispered. “Anything she moves, it’ll fly across the screen.”
“Yeah,” Tina said. She smiled. “We did it.”
“What on earth are you doing?” demanded Priscilla Pritchett.
Her bulging glare pinned us both.
I could have tried to explain. Maybe.
But without thinking, I lunged and zapped her.
This jolt was the worst ever. The pain seared completely up my arm to my shoulder. It was so bad that I stumbled back and tripped into the TV.
“Summer!” Tina shrieked. “She’s hurt!”
“And I’m not?” I growled. But I forced myself to focus.
Priscilla was slumped in her chair, her head hanging to one side. She looked confused, and she was muttering. Dread prickled in my gut.
“Should we call someone?” Tina said.
“She’ll be fine!” I snapped. I was feeling scared and guilty, but there was also some legitimate peevage—had Tina really not noticed my body slam? Did she think I liked to fake all this pain? “She’s breathing,” I said. “Talking, too.”
“She looks delirious.”
“She’s just confused! In fact…” I drew close to the trembling ancient woman. “Mrs. Pritchett?” Her head jerked, and her bleary, bloodshot eyes locked with mine. “Mrs. Pritchett,” I demanded, “how long have you been able to move things with your mind?”
The bleary eyes went wide.
“Summer?” Tina hissed behind me.
“You’re recording, right?” I snapped. “We can just do this now.”
“But—”
“Mrs. Pritchett,” I said again. “When did you first use telekinesis?”
Priscilla’s head was still bobbing, uncertain. But her eyes went narrow.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she rasped.
“Tina!” I said. “What’s she feeling?”
“Summer, don’t. The camera—”
“You can feel that she’s lying! Right?”
“I don’t know!”
“Why not?”
“I wasn’t paying attention—” Tina said.
“What kind of empath—”
Priscilla croaked, “Empath?”
“Damn it,” I groaned. I grit my teeth and clamped a hand on Priscilla’s sagging forearm.
This time I made myself watch. Her head threw back, and her swollen legs kicked out and slammed my shins. This hurt, but I didn’t notice it much, since my whole arm was on fire.
“Summer, stop!” Tina yelled. “You’re hurting her!”
“She’s a freaking murderer!” I yelled back. “She tried to frame me! She nearly bashed my head in with a tree!”
“I know! But we don’t use this stuff to hurt people! We can’t!”
“People like you never had to hurt anyone.”
Tina gaped. Like I’d spoken some curse that could never be unsaid.
“Now,” I said. “Pay attention this time!”
“No,” she said, and her voice was iron. “I’m leaving.”
She strode for the door.
But I lunged up and grabbed her by the back of the shirt. The movement sent fresh pain shooting up my wounded arm.
Tina gasped and gripped her own arm in the same place, right where I was hurting, and then she whirled on me, bewildered and furious.
“Just one more minute,” I pleaded. Still gripping her shirt, I craned back toward Mrs. Pritchett. “Did you use your mind powers to poison Nyle?” I barked. “Did you?”
Priscilla’s head was shaking hard now, losing control. But she clamped her lips tight shut.
“Why are you doing this?” Tina said.
“You’re not the one in line for prison,” I panted. “I won’t get another chance. If the camera doesn’t work, at least Grandma might listen to you. Can’t you tell what this woman’s feeling?”
“All I can feel is your hate.”
She looked so accusing, so judgmental, that part of me wanted to scratch her perfect face.
But maybe she also looked frightened, and sad. And another part of me thought, What the hell am I doing?
I released her shirt and took a step back.
“Camera?” Priscilla croaked. “What camera?”
Damn.
“Summer, please—” Tina gasped.
But I touched Priscilla’s skin for a third time.
I hadn’t done three zaps so near to each other for a long, long time. The pain was stunning. Imagine your leg falling asleep, with “pins and needles”, except it’s your entire body… and you start thrashing, hard, because you’re also drowning. I would much rather have done that.
Then I saw Priscilla, and I forgot the pain.
Because she went still, and her eyes rolled up until they were only bloodshot white. She looked dead.
And I passed out.
Chapter 36
I woke up to Cade.
He was leaning over me, his eyes soft and kind, with the low golden sun kissing his cheek.
Our eyes met. That touch, at least, I was allowed. In that moment, I could even believe he was touching back.
Then Tina leaned in.
“Summer!” she cried. “You’re okay!”
Cade broke contact and leaned back, looking awkward. Whatever, dude. Why was he crouching? Was I on the floor?
“What happened?” I asked Tina. “Where are we?”
“Downstairs. In a linen closet,” she said, and as I glanced around the tiny room, we were indeed shelved in by neatly folded sheets. This being the Inn, even the closet smelled of lavender, and the window was a circle of golden stained glass. Is that why the light in here was golden? Maybe it wasn’t as late in the day yet as I’d thought.
Either way, Cade certainly looked good in gold.
“We would have carried you to the couch in the front office,” Tina said, “but if there were guests at the desk, you know—”
“Carried?” I said. “You carried me?”
“Not me. When you fainted—”
“I didn’t faint—”
“When you
shocked yourself into oblivion,” Tina said, “I was stuck there in Priscilla’s room with two people unconscious. I tried to wake you up, and then I tried to drag you out, but it was super awkward and I was afraid I might accidentally touch your skin, so I texted Cade.”
I covered my face.
“Don’t worry,” Cade put in. “I used a thick blanket.”
Mortified, I looked down and realized I was still partly wrapped in a bedspread. Lying on the floor.
Had Cade really carried me all the way downstairs? The thought made me flush… of course I’d had to go and be unconscious right then. Not that he cared either way.
“I wore long sleeves, see?” he said, holding up his flannel arms. “Just in case.”
“Great,” I said.
“Oh, and here’s your purse,” Tina said brightly, dropping it onto the floor beside me with a massive thunk. “And I popped up to your room real quick to make sure you’d fed Mr. Charm—”
“What about Priscilla?” I cut in. “What happened to her?”
Tina frowned. “She still hasn’t woken up.”
“What? How long has it been?”
She checked her phone. “At least half an hour.”
“Oh my gosh!” I lurched to sit up, then swayed as dizziness hit. I almost grabbed at Cade’s safely sleeved forearm to steady myself, but at the last millisecond I held back. Maybe to punish myself. “Tina, that’s never happened before. We’ve got to get a doctor—”
“Relax, hon. We already did,” Tina said. “We were worried about you too, but you were breathing and seemed okay, and by the way, do you have a primary care physician? Because how does that work with the Touch thing?”
“Not. Very. Well,” I snapped, as a fresh hot flush of embarrassment flooded my cheeks. Maybe Cade wouldn’t notice if I didn’t look at him. Sure, that is totally how it works. “What about Priscilla?” I said. “What are they doing?”
“Not sure,” Tina said. “The family’s debating whether to take her to our local hospital or risk a transport back to ‘real’ doctors.”
“We can’t let her go!” I said.
Tina’s face hardened.
I held up my hands, placating. “Look, I know I was way out of line. I’m really sorry.”
Tina arched an eyebrow.
Sometimes I hate empathy.
“I’m sorry intellectually,” I clarified. “Which counts for something. But I feel like Priscilla is a creepy old killer, with telekinetic powers, and if we let them fly her out of here, someone else will die.”