Vacant

by Alex Hughes

  “I don’t like liars,” Tommy said.

  “You don’t like a lot of people, then,” I said. I’d spent years in the interrogation room separating out truth from lies; even the innocent people lied about something under that kind of pressure. The trick was to figure out what the lie was and why they were doing it. Why in hell were those witnesses lying against Cherabino? It made no sense. It got them nowhere.

  “Do you really talk to so many people? Like in the movies? You’re a police officer, right?”

  I got the last of the water in without burning myself and opened the box of dried soup. I threw it in, most of it ending up in the pot and not on the stove. I should probably have had a bigger reaction to him reading me—he seemed awfully consistent for someone his age—but I’d just spent a bunch of time at the Guild. He was doing surface thoughts only, what the Guild considered public space, and if I kept a lid on the worst of what was going through my head, that was okay. But I had to be careful.

  “Can you do all the stuff telepaths do on TV?”

  “What?” I turned around, stirring the soup. “What was the question?” He asked a lot of questions, but I guessed that was okay. Questions were better than terror, and at least they meant I knew where he was.

  “Like disappear, and make people do things, and lift things with your mind, and make people see things that aren’t there. And make fire. The fire part was cool.” His mind, now that I was paying attention, flashed a B-movie version of a pyrokinetic holding fire in his hand. “If I’m really going to be a telepath, can I make fire too?” He was thinking the kids at school who made fun of him would run from fire, and it would make them like him.

  “Um, I can’t make fire—except with a match—and I doubt you’ll be able to either,” I said. “That’s a pyro, and the Ability is pretty rare. And the disappearing part is usually a teleporter. I know some of them, but that doesn’t mean I can do it. I have to walk everywhere, but then again that keeps you in shape. Honestly? Right now you’re probably not going to be able to do much but see what people are thinking sometimes, and that’s not going to be super stable. Give it a year or two, though, and you’ll be able to train and get more control. If you have one of the secondary Abilities, either you’ll discover it on your own or it will come out in training.” I considered testing him, or doing a deep-scan to determine, but with the strange connection that had established itself earlier, I wasn’t sure I could control the situation well enough. The only other person around his age I’d ever spent any time with was Jacob, and thus far Tommy hadn’t reacted at all the same way.

  “Who’s Jacob?” the kid asked.

  “My . . . the woman I’m dating and work with, her nephew,” I said awkwardly. “Girlfriend” didn’t seem quite right in context, too small and too large a term for the present discussion, but we weren’t quite police partners anymore either. Even though I missed her input on this case and her presence. I took a breath. “Anyway, he has a health issue and a very strong Ability that’s pretty stable right now. He’s getting training, but he’s ready for it too. You’ll get there, and honestly, you’ll probably do better in the Guild system when they come around recruiting. The Guild’s not a bad life, not if you’re one of them.”

  He thought about that. “Will I still get to see my mom?”

  “You’ll spend a couple of weeks with her three times a year. More if there’s a good reason and you go through the approval process.” I stirred the soup again, looked at the clock, and called it done. I located the bowls in an upper cabinet. “If you’ll remind me later, I’ll teach you how to separate yourself from other people’s thoughts. It takes a little bit to get good at, but that way school won’t be so loud and distracting.” And I might get away with more worries in front of him if he could shield better.

  I missed Cherabino. I really did, but I pushed that to the back of my head and focused on the soup. And Tommy.

  He blinked at me.

  “Really,” I said. Then handed him the bowl of soup. “Now eat up.”

  He watched me over the rim of his bowl while he ate.

  * * *

  “Ward.” Jarrod stuck his head in the kitchen.

  I looked up from the donuts we’d found for dessert. “Yes?”

  “Ward’s a funny name,” Tommy observed. If that was the worst he was saying about me, it was a good day.

  Jarrod ignored him. “We need your talents in the main room for a moment.”

  “You going to be okay on your own?” I asked Tommy. “You won’t go wandering off?” Suddenly even being a few feet from him seemed dangerous. That vision was coming whether I liked it or not.

  “Don’t be stupid,” he said.

  “Um, okay.” I looked at Jarrod, who then turned around and left, a clear expectation that I’d follow. Reluctantly, glancing back at Tommy, I did, but I kept mental tabs on him. I’d know if he moved a foot.

  There was a card table set up in the corner of the main room, one of those supermaterial tables that would fold up into the size of a pack of cards and then fold out into a lightweight table with a nice pattern of cracks on the top (and hinges on the bottom) to make it look decorative. Of course the lightweight table would hold up the weight of a small car without buckling, so as expensive as it was, it was a good choice for them. Normally people would put a tablecloth over it to make the surface more even, but Jarrod hadn’t. With all the electronic equipment he’d set up on another, similar table next to it, perhaps he hadn’t had the time. It seemed like they should be watching the electronics more closely, more carefully. Dangerous stuff there—nothing rated for a civilian—and they were treating it casually, like it didn’t matter. This bothered me. Didn’t they know how dangerous computers could be after the Tech Wars? Weren’t they worried a supervirus would attack their equipment and destroy everything?

  Mendez stood next to Jarrod, a thick sheaf of papers in hand. She set them down on the table, starting to fan them out over its surface. I forced myself to calm down. Being a bundle of nerves and worry wasn’t going to help anyone.

  “What’s going on?” I asked. Why had they asked me here, away from Tommy?

  “We just got the judge’s letters back from the local crime lab,” Mendez said. “Analysis of the physicals will take another few hours, but I thought we’d give you a look.”

  “What?” I walked closer to the table.

  The letters overlapped like the blades of a folding fan, a few faceup, the rest spread out with edges showing only. Some of the letters were handwritten, others typed, but the ones on the stack to the right, the ones that bothered me, looked like something you’d see in a movie. Large and mostly brightly colored letters cut out of magazines and newspapers spelled out things like YOU KNOW WHAT YOU HAVE TO DO, and LET HIM GO OR IT’S OVER. A shiver went up my spine.

  “The newspaper letters look ominous,” I said. Like the kind of thing a movie villain sent, right before somebody died. If the judge had been getting these for weeks and months . . . I understood then on a deep level why she’d hired the bodyguards.

  Who, now that I thought about it, were dead or severely injured. This wasn’t a safe job I’d taken on. This wasn’t a safe job at all.

  Jarrod moved next to me. “The lab says those are more recent, and created by only one person or a single group working together. The rest are from several individuals over a matter of years. Please take a look.”

  I swallowed. “Can I touch the letters?”

  “Go ahead.”

  I picked up one, looked at it sideways in the light. The magazine and newspaper letters weren’t attached with glue; they weren’t rippled enough. I poked one of the cutout squares. It was solidly connected to the lined notebook paper page, like the two materials had fused. “Paper-weld bonder?” I asked. “Those are usually owned by businesses, not individuals, because of the cost, right?” Maybe we could find him that way, and ta
ke the danger out of the situation before it escalated. Nothing would make me happier.

  “Yes,” Jarrod said slowly.

  “We can probably track those and get an idea of who’s sending them. Legwork, but I don’t mind calling around.” I’d do the most menial tasks if it would keep Tommy safe without me having to go toe-to-toe with Sibley like I did in that vision.

  Mendez looked at me in surprise. “Aren’t you going to read the letters?”

  I looked at her, confused. I was new here and clearly wasn’t doing what they expected, though what they expected wasn’t clear. It didn’t hurt anything to read the things out loud. “You aren’t listening. Do the thing or I will destroy—”

  “No,” Jarrod said. “That’s not what she meant.”

  Mendez frowned at me. “Read them. Like, read them.”

  “Ruth could get a vibe off an object and tell us more about who it belonged to,” Jarrod said. “I take it that’s not part of your skill set.”

  I blinked at him. “No . . . not really. Um, I can try to do something like that, but even when that works, it’s not usually paper for me. Especially if it’s been handled a lot by other people, there’s usually nothing left in Mindspace. But—” I forestalled an objection. “Really I will try.”

  The note in my hand felt like nothing, a completely neutral object with no emotion to it at all. I picked up another sheet, the YOU KNOW WHAT YOU HAVE TO DO missive, in the hopes that this one would be better. The letters looked darker, more crooked, and it looked angry and disturbing and urgently wrong. But in my hand, in Mindspace, in any way I could think to look at it, even this one was just paper. I didn’t have a clairvoyant gift, even though perhaps Ruth had had a slight one. I couldn’t see anything. The man—or woman, I supposed—who’d created this had probably spent less than an hour with it, and while I could imagine a disgust and threat coming from them, that was all it was, an imagination.

  I shook my head and put the paper down. “I assume Ruth had a clairvoyant gift, but it’s not something I have. It’s just an object to me.” The only times I got anything from an object was if it was with its owner for years upon years of constant use, and even then I didn’t get a lot of information. I didn’t understand clairvoyants, not at all. Their gifts didn’t seem to obey the laws of Mindspace physics, at least not easily.

  “You’re getting nothing?” Jarrod asked.

  “No. If it was there at one point, it’s worn off by now.” I made a frustrated sound. “Look, you bring me to a crime scene, a place where somebody had an altercation or a death in the last few days, I’m your guy. I’ll get you several layers of information on what happened. But I need a place. The place. Most telepaths do, to be honest.”

  “Oh.” Mendez’s mind leaked dull frustration, mixed with embarrassment turned to anger.

  Now I was embarrassed too and worried I wasn’t doing what I needed to do.

  Jarrod shifted, his spine going a little straighter. “It’s good to know limitations. It’s getting late. Why don’t you make sure Tommy is settled and feeling okay?”

  “I can be a help to you,” I said, wanting to believe it, needing to believe it. “I’m good at my job with the police, which is a hell of a lot of investigation and no bodyguarding at all.” I’d proven myself there. Cherabino—and Michael, and Branen, though he protested otherwise—had seen me in action. They’d seen me be successful. I worried that these guys wouldn’t. And even the last people to see me successful hadn’t given me a full-time job.

  I wished Cherabino was here. She’d know what to do.

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” Jarrod said, but his voice was flat and I couldn’t tell whether I’d pissed him off or not.

  So I did the thing they expected me to do. “I’ll check on Tommy now,” I said.

  “You do that.”

  Mendez poked at the letters, a mix of emotions in her. Death threats had a weight to them in her mind, I thought as I left. I wondered what that was about.

  And I wondered, all over again, if Cherabino was okay. She had to keep her job. Witnesses and politics and everything else, she just had to keep her job. It was who she was.

  CHAPTER 9

  Tommy came up to me a while later. I was seated in a low oddly shaped chair near the back of the house, close enough to the hallway to get to Tommy if needed, having pulled a reading lamp down to a pad of paper to work on my report after I’d called Cherabino’s house and she hadn’t picked up. I felt him approaching, but as his mind didn’t seem agitated, I kept working. Working kept me from worrying.

  He stood there in front of me for a while.

  I kept working.

  He continued to stare.

  I finally put the paper and pencil down on the ground. “Something I can do for you, Tommy?”

  “You’re a telepath.” His face was scrunched up.

  “Yes.”

  “And you say I’m going to be a telepath.”

  “Um, yes.” I wasn’t sure where this was going.

  “You said you could teach me.” He stood straight, waiting, like obviously I was going to teach him right now on one prompt.

  I stood up. Actually I might. I liked the calm pushy Tommy, and I’d been a teacher—for older kids—for a number of years. I wasn’t familiar with teaching anyone his age the basics, but considering the situation, having him with more skills would only help us. And it might get my mind off things, which I needed very much right now. I kept seeing the vision, and my death, and Cherabino’s job, on the line, none of which were probably like I worried they were. No, taking some time to teach Tommy, to do something I was good at, would only help me. And him, hopefully.

  “What do you want to learn?”

  He frowned deeper, then gave it up. “I don’t know. What is there to learn? I’ve never been a telepath before.”

  I laughed.

  “What?”

  “Just the way you said that was funny to me. I’d be happy to teach you. We should probably start at the beginning.” I tried to remember what the beginning was. It had been a very long time since I’d either learned or taught that beginning.

  He stood there expectantly.

  “Why don’t we move to the kitchen where there’re stools enough for both of us?” I asked to buy time.

  He turned around and went in that direction. No lack of action in this kid; it was corralling the action into something useful that was going to take all the effort.

  I turned around and switched off the reading light. Then I found Jarrod’s gaze to make sure he’d paid attention. He’d been sitting well across the open room, working on his own set of paperwork, and his head was up now, and he nodded. He didn’t seem pissed at me, which was good, but I knew I hadn’t helped all that much with the investigation, not yet.

  I followed Tommy into the kitchen. Of the whole ridiculously designed house, I liked this kitchen the best. They’d put in simple cabinets and kept the original trim on the top of the room, and a butcher-block counter. Small lights illuminated the area this late, small lights that felt soothing.

  Tommy turned on the overhead light, and it got a lot brighter.

  My ideas got a lot brighter too as I joined him on the stool next to him. He was waiting patiently as I managed to focus.

  “Let’s start with the basics. Imagine your mind is a house,” I said. “Like this one. In fact, if you like this one, you can picture this one.”

  “I liked our last house better,” he said.

  “Great, picture that one,” I said, feeling my way through the analogy. “Or your dream house. There are a couple of stories, lots of rooms, and doors between some of the rooms. You get to walk anywhere in your house you like, and you get to invite people to visit you, but you also get to close off some of the rooms and not let people into them. There’s a main floor, where you have your kitchen and your living area, an
d it’s a good space for people to walk about. You have stairs up to the top floor, where you keep the stuff that’s personal, that’s just for you.”

  “That sounds . . .” Tommy trailed off.

  I felt his spot of loneliness. Sometimes his mom left him in his room, “space just for him,” and left him alone for hours.

  I felt for him. I really did. I felt my own loneliness too, and my guilt at not being there for Cherabino when her world was falling apart. I took a breath and continued on with the lesson, because if I stopped, I probably wouldn’t pick it up again, as much as we had going on. And it wasn’t a bad time for lessons, and it wasn’t a bad time to earn Tommy’s trust. “The house is everything you need it to be, when you need it to be that,” I said. “That’s the great part about this mind-house. Let’s say upstairs is for you, is yours. You can have as many ideas and things in your head to keep you company as you like. Sometimes you might even invite somebody very special to some of those rooms. But they’re yours and you get to decide what happens to them. You might have a dog up there to bark and play with toys if you want, for example. But you don’t invite people in, not upstairs.”

  He thought about that. He’d always wanted a dog.

  I thought about mentioning the basement of the house, something you generally did with someone older. The basement was where you kept the horrors, the secrets, the things you didn’t want with you but couldn’t let go. But Tommy was likely too young.

  Of course he’d heard part of that, and was thinking his mom had a basement. A big basement.

  Hmm. I couldn’t go rummaging for more information right now—it wasn’t ethical, especially in a teaching situation—but I’d ask him about it later.

  “Let’s start with something simple,” I said. “Most people when they’re your age or they’re just starting out, their house is leaky.” I held up a hand at his protest and offered a strong mental image. “The walls have big holes in them, so the air comes and goes and all the weather comes into the house whether it’s good weather or bad.”