“Ohmygod—I hate you.” I wanted to strangle him. Maybe throw him against the floor and flip the drawers over on him just out of spite. I removed the thought from my head in case my powers wanted to try that out.
He glanced at the open drawer before turning back to me. “It’s good to know you don’t really mean that.” A grin pressed into his cheeks. “Okay, so they’ve upped the ante because you’re not as valuable anymore. I get it. But that doesn’t prove they have your mom.”
“Then, they know where she is,” Kurt concluded.
“Or who has her.” Keeping it on speakerphone, I dropped my cell on the bed and smoothed my hands across my hair. I needed to pace, I needed to think.
“The only way to find her is to confront them,” Howard said.
“No,” Kurt yelled. “Whether Phae likes it or not, she’s not going anywhere near those people. If I have to fly up there and sit on you, I will.”
“Hold on, Surrogate Big Daddy. For once, I agree with you. Well...maybe it’s the second time.” Howard glanced at me, rubbing his hands together as he spoke. “They have to be watching the house, otherwise they would’ve stormed it by now. My guess is they know how secure the system really is. Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean they won’t figure it out.”
“I feel like we’re doing nothing when the obvious is right in our face.” I stopped pacing and started for the door. “If they have mom or know where she is, then we need to bring the fight to them to get her back.”
“No.” Howard leaped off the bed and grabbed my arm. “These people don’t want to talk. They want you and Nadia. I won’t let that happen. Besides, I have a better idea.” He walked around me and into the hall.
I grabbed my phone and followed him.
Howard went down the stairs and hurried into the kitchen where Connie was peeking out of the blinds. Sean was still at the counter with his hands folded together and his head hung low.
“We need a favor,” Howard said, addressing Sean. “Natalie is a psych major, right?”
“Yeah.” Sean nodded. “She’s working on her masters. So?”
“Call her. We’re going to need her help.”
Chapter Twenty-four
Come morning, I didn’t want to go to my grandfather’s 8:00 AM class, but at this point, I would do anything to find my mom. So, I sat in the back of the large lecture hall where Howard explained how the Froude Number worked with moving streams before turning to specific energy flow equations for open-channel flows. All of the graphs and diagrams hurt my brain, so I tuned him out by trying to catch up on my own homework remotely.
A text message came to my phone a few minutes before class was about to end. It was Natalie. She wanted me to meet her at the top of the lecture hall when the class ended. Ten minutes later, everyone gathered their things and filed out right past us.
“Dr. Copely said he can meet you guys around noon if that’s okay.” Natalie kept her composure, but there was something in her darting eyes that said she wanted out of this. She handed me a folder. “I’m not sure what he can do. Laws are different from state to state, so he might not be able to go through the right channels to get the information you need.”
“The wrong channels are fine, too.” I half-smiled, hoping she would do the same.
She remained impassive. “Anyway, I’ll meet you guys at the entrance of the psych department in an hour. I hope you know what you’re doing.”
“That makes two of us. Thanks for your help, by the way.”
“Don’t mention it. Seriously. Don’t mention it. To anyone. I was thinking about going into the psychiatric field, so I’m a little worried about how all of this might jeopardize that. Parapsychology is treated more like pseudoscience. Just check out those articles I gave you.”
“If last night was any indication, it needs to stay that way.”
She met my gaze, holding it for a few seconds as she took a deep breath and relaxed. She nodded once and left.
When I opened the folder, it was a bunch of articles about studies done in parapsychology by various institutes throughout the world. Many of them also debunked what those people could do, too. They called them charlatans and experts in reading body language. Fast talkers who tried to say the right things to build confidence in those who listened and then how it was up to the person receiving the information to validate what they said subconsciously. All of it went back to a strong desire to make sense out of something that didn’t have any. Boy if these people only lived in my world, they would run away screaming.
One of the articles contained information about Cornerstone University and how they used their parapsychology department to debunk the charlatans. Strange. I knew that was a major at the university, but that wasn’t exactly what I expected. A college built for the purpose of educating the supernaturally inclined, only to discredit them?
“My class is that interesting, huh?” Howard slipped his glasses off his face and placed them in his jacket pocket. “What’s all that stuff?”
“Natalie dropped it by.” I continued going through the information about Cornerstone. “She probably didn’t want to send it in electronic form in case an email or something got traced back to her.”
“I can understand that.” He leaned against a metal railing and held out his hand to me. “Can I see it?”
I gave it to him with the article about Cornerstone on the top. “That’s where I got early acceptance and where I’m taking my language classes part-time now.”
“You mean that elusive school that doesn’t have a lot of information about it?”
I sighed. “You don’t think someone there had anything to do with all of this, do you?”
“Sweety, with everything I’ve seen so far, nothing would surprise me. Although, I think it’s a little counterintuitive to invalidate the world that you work for. But then again, what better way to hide in the general population than to feed into what they believe?”
Cornerstone had the power, the reach, the ability, and could even stash my mom away on campus, depending upon how high up this went. Still, the university had a seventy-percent acceptance rate when it came to kids coming from hub schools. Unless you had less than a C-average, the hubs funneled us seniors toward them.
I needed to talk to Savoy about those other students who were just as powerful as me and had disappeared without a trace. Perhaps they disappeared into Cornerstone’s corridors. But that was something that Jayden was more equipped to handle, since she had done some of the work already.
I texted her.
#
After Howard’s Mechanical Engineering Design class ended with forces acting upon gears and equations scribbled across the whiteboard, he packed up his laptop and we headed to the psychology department. Natalie met us as planned.
Dr. Wes Copely looked to be in his forties and came across as very friendly. He had dark hair and a neatly trimmed beard, but it was his piercing blue eyes that made me pause. He shook both our hands and offered us a seat in a room where he had just finished handing out assignments to his graduate class.
“I’m not sure how I can help, Dr. Thorne.” Smiling, Copley crossed his arms. “If your daughter-in-law is in a mental institution in North Carolina, their laws are different than ours in Ohio. The best I can do is—”
“That’s not exactly what we’re looking for.” Howard glanced at me before he went into more detail. “My daughter-in-law is a special case, but in many ways, you can’t even begin to imagine. That might also make her easier to find because she requires special handling.”
“I’m not sure I follow. Most psychiatric facilities are more than capable of dealing with pretty much all mental illnesses. Schizophrenia is no exception.”
“This might be.” Howard motioned to me. “Show him.”
“Huh? Show him what? It doesn’t work on cue, you know.”
“You’re nervous, aren’t you? Scared that we’ll never find your mom again? Scared that Nadia might be taken away. Don’t forget
. We left her at the house with Connie for a reason. But that doesn’t mean she’s in less danger. They could snap her up in a second and you’d never see her again. We’re down to the wire, Phaedra, so the sooner you get this over with, the better.”
“Get what over with?” While nervousness stepped up a notch inside me, I knew what he was trying to do. That was the problem. He was trying to get a rise out of me and it wouldn’t work as long as I was aware of it.
“Maybe this will help.” Natalie pulled a gun she had hidden under the files she had been carrying all this time. She placed the tip to the back of Howard’s head.
Dr. Copely jumped. “Natalie! What the hell are you doing? Are you insane?”
“Shut up, doc. We’re all going for a ride. After all, Crothers isn’t stupid enough to go through this without sending Plan B. I’m Plan B, by the way. The only thing missing is Nadia, but not even a security system like yours can keep us from getting what we want.”
Was this trick serious? As much as I tried to read her face, I couldn’t. I wasn’t good with interpreting body language. The way she smirked her eyes seemed more like glass that walled off the windows into her soul. Did I want to risk it? The steel gun with light glistening off the shiny barrel seemed real enough. than any emotion Was all that talk just that? Talk? Damn these people. Why couldn’t they leave us alone? Damn them to hell!
A pop shattered the glass along the outside windows. Several desks and chairs trembled before rising off the floor and hovering in the air as if waiting to be thrown.
“Ohmygod.” Copely stepped back and bumped the back of his head into a chair. His hand shook as he stared around the room. “What’s going on? How...how...?”
“Step away from my grandfather, Natalie.” I scowled at her. “I don’t know what’s going to happen, but it won’t turn out well for any of us.”
Glass shattered from an interrogation window at the back of the room, spraying shards toward all of us. Howard tackled me to the floor and covered my head. The desks and chairs crashed down into heaps of tangled metal and laminated tops. An electrical charge went through the projector rattling from the ceiling until it snapped off. Sparks and smoke flew from the dangling piece of equipment. Natalie jumped to her feet, pushed through the carnage and started fanning smoke away from the fire alarm.
“You okay,” Howard asked, his face somewhat strained.
“Yeah.” I nodded.
“Good. Because I think you got me in the arm.” Howard rolled away from me and rested against a toppled desk.
“Oh my god.” I rushed to him, wanting to take out the two-inch blade of glass that stuck out the side of his right bicep.
“Don’t touch it.” Copely pulled out a handkerchief and pressed it around the blade.
“I’m so sorry,” I said, trembling. “I didn’t mean to hurt you. My powers just—” I started cursing. Of all the people I never wanted to harm, he was near the top of the list, right above Kurt. Son of a…!
Howard showed me nothing but kindness all this time and this was how I showed my gratitude? By hurting the ones I loved? Perhaps I was better off turning myself over to Crothers. At least they would get what they deserved.
The tangled desks and chairs trembled. I closed my eyes to pull it in, but I couldn’t. None of this would’ve happened if it weren’t for Natalie. I turned my focus to her.
“Natalie,” Howard warned. “Get out of there. She’s gunning for you.”
“Oh no.” Natalie dove to the floor and covered her head and cried, “I give up! I give up! Please please please, don’t hurt me.”
Everything inside me wanted to do just that. Crush her into a puddle of nothingness. Destroy her and send a message back to Crothers to leave me alone and never go near my family again.
“Uh oh.” Howard dove for me again, this time, covering my eyes with his hands. “Don’t do it, baby. Please, don’t. This was all my idea. It was the only way to show Dr. Copely what you and your mom could do was real. Natalie was just helping me out. She had a feeling it might take something extreme to get you to reveal your powers.”
“Wait. What?” All of my emotions deflated. I wasn’t sure what to think or do anymore. How could he…? “You staged this?”
“Yeah, well...everything up to the point where I got stabbed. I was hoping we could prevent that part. By the way, don’t tell Connie about this or my taking the gun from the house. She might finish what you started.” He paused. “You okay over there, doc?”
A gasp from his last known location was the only thing I heard.
#
I peeked around the edge of the blindfold. Natalie was tending to my grandfather’s injuries while Copely had his laptop open on his desk. He had me sitting nearby while he conducted some research.
“So this runs in your family?” he asked. “The schizophrenia and psychokinesis?”
“More or less,” I replied. “Not everyone has both and those who have one or both aren’t as strong as my mother and me.”
“But you don’t have schizophrenia, right?”
“Not yet.” At this point, I wasn’t sure if it would ever happen. The voices should’ve started by now, but the only voice in my head was my own. While that would be one less thing to worry about, my powers made up for it tenfold.
He paused before pulling the blindfold down from my eyes. He half-smiled. “Do you understand why this thing works?”
I shook my head. “Not really. But I know it works on animals. Most people can’t get close enough to me to put one on.”
“I can see why.” He finished untying the blindfold and placing it on the desk. “Once you take away the stuff that scares you, you don’t fear it anymore. When you see your powers in action, they scare you, right?”
“Of course. They scared you, too if I’m not mistaken.”
He chuckled. “True. But they’re not mine to control. They’re yours.”
“My control is hit or miss at best. And when it’s a hit, it hits hard enough to leave scars.”
“But if you manifest them, then you can unmanifest them. You need to learn how to not fear them. Relax enough so you can manipulate the energy around them. Or even better, just cut them off when they get away from you.”
“That’s easier said than done.” Half-smiling, I crossed my arms.
“I want you to try something.” He picked up a pencil and held it between us. “Before you do anything, I want you to take a deep, cleansing breath. Close your eyes if it helps. But when you breathe in, I want you to be aware of what’s going on inside your body. Think about that breath. Or if it helps, picture a white screen in your mind. I want you to move closer to it until it fills your mind’s eye completely. All you see is whiteness surrounding you. Hold on to the whiteness no matter what.”
This was nuts, but I was willing to try anything at this point. I did as he said, closed my eyes and steadied my breathing. It wouldn’t be the first time I did this to calm my nerves. Instead of a big white screen though, I thought about the things that made me happy like being at the beach with my family. The big white screen was just boring. But trying to get it to fill my mind was harder than I thought. The edges that seemed to keep folding up. So, I tried moving closer to it.
“Whoa,” Howard said.
I opened my eyes. The pencil that Copely held was levitating. The more I became aware of it, the more it wobbled. I tried closing my eyes and imagining that screen again, but I couldn’t. I peeked again and the pencil flew up to the ceiling and slammed into the tile at an angle.
Relieved, Copely laughed. “I was scared to death you’d stab me in the eye with that thing.”
I lowered my head as my cheeks flushed with heat.
“That was pretty good,” he said. “All I did was introduce you to a meditation technique. There are a bunch of them and they’ve been proven to help people with stress. But I have a feeling yoga or tai chi might suit you better. Your powers are physical, so maybe you need something physical. Biofeedback wouldn
’t be a bad idea either.”
“Hold on.” Howard stood and pulled his jacket over his bandaged arm. “You think with some serious training, she might be able to control this thing and not bring the roof crashing down on our heads?” He glanced at me, slightly wincing. “No offense, hon.”
“None taken.” I half-smiled back.
He hesitated. “To be honest, I don’t know what to think. My training has always involved things that were tangible. Things that have a reason behind them. If I had to guess, it’s like your body produces energy in a way that allows you to manipulate the energy of things around you.”
“You think all of this is energy on a molecular level?”
He nodded. “I think you can back me up on this, but everything on this planet is subjected to gravity unless you can somehow overcome it. Phaedra is able to stretch her senses across gravitational fields like a conduit. But instead of carefully placing chess pieces on a board, it comes out like a geyser. Of course...” He turned back to his laptop and pulled something up. “...all of that is speculation. I would never know for sure what causes your powers to do what they do without tests. And if you’ll allow me to be downright frank, I’m scared to touch you with even a tongue depressor.”
I chuckled.
“But to answer the question that brought you all here, I’ve looked up a few facilities that might be able to handle a situation like yours. There isn’t a lot, but in North Carolina, you have the Rhine Institute and the Babcock Center for Pseudoscience Research.”
“Rhine is or was associated with Duke University, isn’t it?” Natalie joined us at the desk.
“It is,” I replied. “I know because I tried to do my own research into my powers and I came up with that place, too. Babcock is at Cornerstone, but I didn’t know that until I read those articles you gave me. I never had a reason to venture on that side of the campus.”
“You're both correct.” Dr. Copley clicked around on the computer and brought up a picture of the building. “Babcock was stripped of the last parts of its name in the 1970s and 80’s due to too much attention in the media about the paranormal. You can thank the influx of horror movies like The Amityville Horror and Poltergeist for that. Anyway, they didn’t want the attention, so they changed the name to something less innocuous. Their job is still to debunk all forms of parapsychology, though.”
Silent Scream (Bittersweet Series, Book 2) Page 20