by Henry Vogel
I shut my eyes, afraid to watch Michelle’s face as she absorbed my words.
“Michelle, I… I’m psychic.” Her body stiffened. “I’m not a very strong psychic. I can only sense close family members when they’re nearby and I can do some other little stuff. But I can always sense my parents.”
There. I’d shared my secret. It was time to discover if I was an idiot or not.
Seconds as long as hours passed in silence before Michelle spoke. “Can you read my thoughts?”
“No, I’m not a telepath. I can sense a person’s emotions, but only if the emotions are strong and I’m touching the person. The more intimate the contact, the better my read is.” A memory rose, unbidden. “You know, I never doubted my parents’ love because I felt waves of it every time we hugged.”
“Can you read me, Matt?”
I opened my eyes. “Do you want me to try?”
Michelle nodded so I put her hand against my cheek and held it there. I calmed my mind, pushing distracting images out of the way and concentrating on Michelle. The gang members faded away. Jonas faded away. Finally, even my agreement to postpone the search for my parents faded away. The feel of Michelle’s hand on my cheek possessed my conscious mind. My psychic power rose and read her strongest emotion.
Fear.
I rolled off the couch onto the floor, where I curled up in a ball of absolute misery. I’d lost the chance to search for my parents and terrified the girl I’d loved ever since I first met her.
“Matt?” Michelle sounded concerned. Was she worried I’d picked up some deep secret or something?
With a thump, Michelle dropped to the floor next to me. Her hands tried to take mine but I yanked them away.
“What’s wrong, Matt? Why are you acting this way?”
“Isn’t it obvious? I don’t want to inflict myself on you, Michelle.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Oh, come on! I told you I only read strong emotions. Did you think I wouldn’t pick up that emotion?”
“Which emotion, Matt?”
“I know you’re scared of me, Michelle. You broadcast fear loud and clear.”
Michelle blew out her breath in exasperation. “Matthew Bernard Connaught, sit up and look at me.”
Her tone of voice reminded me so much of my mother that I found myself obeying without conscious thought. Her blue eyes burned with an intensity I’d never seen before.
“You said intimate contact makes someone easier for you to read?”
“Yes.”
Michelle drew me close and kissed me—and I’m not talking about a simple peck on the lips. The kiss was long and sensuous and exactly the kind of kiss I’d always fantasized having with her. Her lips parted and her tongue flicked against mine. I pulled her to me, one hand on the small of her back, the other behind her head.
Michelle broke our lip lock, but stayed close enough that her lips brushed mine when she spoke. “Read me now.”
Then her lips met mine again and drew me back into my fantasy kiss. I felt Michelle’s body moving against mine. I tasted her lips. I smelled her perfume. I heard her panting breath. She consumed my senses, driving everything else from my mind. And, just like that, her strongest emotions blazed forth with a brilliance I’d never experienced before.
Michelle wasn’t afraid of me. She was afraid for me. I broke the kiss and stared at her in wonder.
“Did you get it yet, Matt?”
“I couldn’t miss it. God, I am such an idiot.”
Michelle giggled. “Yeah, but most guys are. Um, is that all you read?”
“No.” I felt her stiffen again. “How long have you been in love with me?”
“A couple of years. I-” Her voice caught and she ducked her head, unwilling to meet my gaze.
“Amateur.”
Michelle raised her head and met my eyes with hers. “What does that mean?”
“I’ve been in love with you since the sixth grade.”
“You’re making that up.”
“Oh yeah? Now you read me.” I resumed kissing her.
Much later, Michelle laid her head on my shoulder, her breath tickling my neck.
“Okay, Matt, I believe you.”
“I guess this means you’re not going to file a psychic incident report and collect the big reward Psi Corps offers for discovering a rogue psychic?”
“Don’t tell me you were worried about that.”
“Nah. Not even before that kiss. You’ve never been that kind of girl.”
“You figured that out, did you?”
“All by myself.”
Michelle ruffled my hair. “Good. Because now I need you to tell me everything you can about your psychic abilities.”
“Sure, but do I have to do that now?”
“Absolutely. I can’t make plans if I don’t know what I’m dealing with.”
“Plans for what, Michelle?”
“Rescuing your parents, of course.”
CHAPTER FOUR
The Search Begins
Now it was my turn to pull back and catch Michelle’s eyes. I didn’t need psychic abilities to read her determination.
“There’s nothing I would rather do right now than fly off in this spaceship and search for my parents. But an hour ago, I told Jonas I would put it off for at least seven years. I can’t risk people’s lives over that. Not your father’s. Not yours.” I kissed Michelle gently. “Especially not yours.”
“That’s very gallant, Matt. Stupid, but gallant.”
“Uh, what?”
“I’ve had lots of training dealing with threats, Matt. Real training, not the pulled-punches kind of stuff most people get. Do you think Daddy would have added me to your bodyguard detail if I couldn’t hack it?”
Jonas had fired more than one bodyguard for inattention on duty, poor decision-making, or poor combat techniques. The man would never risk Michelle or me if he didn’t know his daughter was up to the task. I shook my head.
“I can’t match strength with a man my own size, much less one a lot larger than me, but I do know how to beat them. I fight to win and that means I fight dirty.” Michelle’s expression flowed from intense to innocent, from simple to sultry. Then she pulled her shoulders back, thrusting her breasts out in the way guys always notice. “And I use every single weapon at my disposal to distract my opponents and make them underestimate me.
“Daddy started training me to handle myself long before he ever started working for your father. You might have to save my ass someday, but it will be because of something we’ve gotten into together. I’m not some fairy tale princess, so don’t start treating me like one.”
“As you command, Your Highness.”
“Good. Don't forget that.”
“I won’t—but it doesn’t change what I told Jonas. He’s off arranging for me to assign control of my inheritance to my uncle. You understand my motivations, now, but no one else does.”
“And you can’t risk telling anyone for fear they’ll report you to Psi Corps. That would be the perfect way for your enemies to get rid of you, too. You disappear into the Corps and their lives return to normal.” Michelle sat back, looking thoughtful. “If you told Daddy, he would understand what drives you, but he would still try to stop you from acting on it.”
“And that puts me right back where we were an hour ago, except you know my secret. I need money to fund a full-scale search but, this time tomorrow, I won’t control very much of my own money.”
“Maybe… There’s something niggling in the back of my mind, Matt.” Michelle cocked her head. “Tell me more about your psychic ability.”
“There’s nothing to tell that you haven’t already seen. I’ve never felt emotions as strongly as I did earlier tonight.” I ran my hands through her hair. “Of course, I’ve never been touched quite so intimately, before.”
“No, not that ability. You also said you can feel your parents wherever they are.”
“Yeah. They have a presen
ce in my mind. Aunt Tess is there, too, though her presence is weaker and I can only pick her up when she’s nearby. It’s the same with my grandparents. I can’t pick up my cousins unless I’m in the same room with them and concentrate really hard.”
Michelle bit her lower lip, something she did when puzzling through a problem.
“Matt, I want to try something. Please just go along with me, don’t think, just do what comes naturally.”
“I’ll try.”
“No, don’t try. Feel. ‘Trying’ could screw this up.”
Michelle cut off any reply by kissing me. As before, it was a long, sensuous kiss straight from my fantasies. Even if I’d wanted to think or try, I couldn’t have. Conscious thought fled and I reveled in the feelings of the moment. Michelle’s kisses roamed all over my face as her fingers combed through my hair. She even nibbled playfully on my ear.
“Point to your parents.”
Michelle’s whisper didn’t register in my conscious mind. I didn’t even realize she’d spoken until my arm shot up and out. Michelle clapped her hands together and shrieked with joy.
“It worked!”
My arm still pointing off into space, I said, “Obviously, I’m missing something here. What worked?”
“You’re pointing toward your parents.”
“Yeah, and probably a trillion other beings. And it’s not like a pointing arm is a precision instrument. Even a tiny discrepancy in direction becomes huge when you’re measuring distance in light years.”
“I know all that, Matt. We took the same classes, remember? And I was always better at geometry than you were. We’ll need more measurements than this one, but if we can get three or four more, we can triangulate on a star chart and narrow the search down to one or two star systems.”
“And then I could use my ability to guide us to my parents.” It was my turn to pull Michelle into a deep kiss. “You are the smartest, most beautiful, most wonderful, most amazing girl ever. God, I love you!”
“I love you too,” Michelle laughed. “And, as much fun as it is making out with you, hadn’t we better get started making preparations for the search?”
“Why? Once we tell people-” Comprehension dawned on me. “We can’t tell anyone because then we’d have to explain how I was guiding the search.”
Michelle nodded. “There’s one more reason we need to keep this a secret. Whoever is trying to stop you from liquidating your inheritance might be the person behind your parents’ disappearance.”
That thought hadn’t occurred to me.
“You’re saying I’m on my own.”
“No, Matt, I’m saying we are on our own. And we need to get started before you sign any legal papers.”
“What about Jonas? He’ll be worried sick about us.”
“Daddy and I have ways of leaving messages for each other. He won’t understand why I’m doing this and he’ll worry, but at least he’ll know what we’re doing.”
“Money is going to be tight. Spaceships are expensive to run and I only have access to my trust fund dividends right now.”
“I’ve got some money, too. Daddy made sure I banked most of my bodyguard salary. And if the money runs out, we’ll just have to find some way to get more.”
The next five hours passed in a blur of activity. I fueled the ship, restocked provisions, and filed a flight plan for a simple run around the solar system. We wouldn’t follow it for long, but the plan would get us off the planet. When accompanied by bodyguards, I took similar flights all the time. I had Michelle guarding me, so Jonas shouldn’t think twice about it when space control informed him of the filing. At the last moment, Michelle and I transferred all of the money in our bank accounts onto a few credit sticks.
Then it was time to go. I lifted off, soaring through the brightening morning sky and into space. At long last, the search for my parents was on.
An hour into our flight, Michelle took time to compose a message for Jonas.
“Daddy setup a bunch of different message drops so I can send and receive messages without using a comm, since those are so easy to intercept.”
“Don’t you use encrypted comms? I mean, even I have one of them to use for sensitive calls.”
“Of course we have encrypted comms, Matt, but how many girls use an encrypted comm to call their father?”
“I’m guessing not a lot?”
Michelle shook her head. “You’re pretty clueless when it comes to girls, aren’t you?”
“In my own defense, I have had my eye on one girl in particular for about as long as I’ve been interested in girls in general.”
“Oh, really? What do you call that little thing you had with Jayna two years ago?”
“An attempt to make you jealous and get you to pay attention to me.”
Michelle stopped composing and looked up from her pad. “Seriously?”
“Yes.”
“Well, it worked. I was thrilled when she broke up with you after two weeks.”
I barked a humorless laugh. “Jayna didn’t break up with me. She just picked a different target.”
“I’m sure you’re going to explain what you mean by that.”
“Jayna isn’t as good at cloaking her emotions as you, Michelle. A week into our relationship, she held my hand as we walked to a class. While she smiled and giggled and chattered about how wonderful I was, her real emotion was greed tinged with desperation. She wasn’t interested in me at all. My money was a different matter entirely.”
Michelle nodded slowly. “If she could make you fall in love with her and then stick with you long enough to get married, she’d be rich beyond her wildest dreams. But I know Jayna and that kind of delayed gratification, much less long term planning, just isn’t in her nature.”
“And it wasn’t her plan then, either. I did a little research that evening and found out her father was nearly bankrupt and decided to use his best remaining asset to restore the family fortune. Actually, Jonas is the one who found out that last part and the rest of the plan. I just told him I’d caught Jayna looking at me oddly and he took it from there.”
“Daddy never told me about that. What was Jayna’s plan?”
“To get pregnant and use the baby to extort a big payday from my family. Allegations of date rape were a possibility, along with child support payments and anything else Jayna’s family lawyers could come up with.”
“God, it must have hurt to be seen as nothing more than a big wallet.”
I sighed. “It did, though I took perverse pleasure in appearing blind to Jayna’s attempts to seduce me.”
“So that’s why Jayna started the rumors that you were gay.”
Michelle’s words triggered a connection. “Were you the one who started the counter rumor?”
“That a couple of the maids in your house were tutoring you in the ways of love? Absolutely.”
“Thanks, though I felt bad for the maids’ reputations when I first heard the rumor. When I apologized to them about the rumors, they just laughed and told me not to worry about it.”
“Oh, they already knew, Matt. Daddy asked their permission before I started the rumor. Jayna treated them like she did everyone else—with condescension—so they were happy to help.”
“Why didn’t you ever tell me how you felt? Just a few hours ago, Jonas said it would be useful for you to be my girlfriend, that you’d have an excuse to be with me wherever I went. Why not do that throughout school?”
“Daddy did ask me to do that after the Jayna incident. Keep the other girls at bay and all that.”
“Why didn’t you go along with it? You know it would have worked.”
“It would have—right up until you found out I was one of your bodyguards. You’d have assumed it was just business for me and I’d have lost you forever.”
“No I wouldn’t. Not after we kissed. I’d have read your true emotions.”
“Yeah, well, I didn’t know you were psychic, did I?”
“Oh. Good point.”
“Now, let me finish this note to Daddy. We’re going to have to break from the flight plan soon and I want the message in place when we do.”
Michelle let me read the note before she sent it.
Dear Daddy, My new boyfriend asked me to come along on a trip. Remember that gift he wanted to go looking for? I’m going to help him find it. I’ll see you when we get back. Hugs to Mom and don’t worry.
“Nice work, Michelle. This won’t make sense to anyone who wasn’t part of our conversation last night.”
“There’s a bit more to it than that. The last sentence is code asking him to cover for your absence.”
“Just mine? What about you?”
“I’m not supposed to inherit billions of credits late this afternoon. No one is going to think twice if I’m out of sight for a while.”
Ten minutes later, I broke from my flight plan and flew for the nearest wormhole.
“Daddy’s response just arrived, but keep your mind on piloting. We can discuss it once we’ve entered the wormhole.”
Then the wormhole opened before us and the solar system I called home vanished.
Michelle gasped at the sudden transition from normal space to whatever it was that formed the inside of a wormhole. One second, the view port showed deep blackness interspersed with tiny sparks of light. The next second, gray nothingness cloaked our ship.
“That’s just creepy, Matt. It’s like we’re encased in the thickest fog ever seen. God only knows what strange and monstrous things lurk just beyond our sight.”
She shuddered. Ever the caring young man, I put an arm around Michelle and pulled her close.
“It’s just the inside of a wormhole. You get used to it after a while.”
“Have you never wondered if anything else was inside the wormhole with you? Wondered if maybe something within the wormhole was behind ship disappearances?”
“I don’t know. Maybe I did when I was little. If so, I was too young to remember it.” I shrugged. “I think there would be more wormhole disappearances if something living inside the wormhole was behind them.”
Michelle gave a second shudder. “Maybe it doesn’t get hungry very often…”