by Krysta Scott
Despite the macabre tongue and cheek shtick Parker was laying on him, Garrett had no doubt that Parker blamed his parents and anyone else in the way of his finger for his situation. “I’m aware. But that doesn’t explain leaving bruises on your daughter.”
“What do you know about it?” Parker pushed off the chair and paced waving his arms emphatically. “They took everything. Everything. They should have listened to him.”
“Now, Parker…” Carolyn Hanover began more edge to her voice than before. Garrett waved off her intrusion with his hand.
“What are you talking about?”
“The man who came to help.”
“Parker, you can’t…” Lars Hanover had finally decided to pay attention but Garrett wasn’t about to allow him to silence his son. Not when Garrett was finally getting somewhere.
“Will you two quit interrupting?” He glared at Parker’s parents. They flinched. Satisfied there would be no more intrusions, Garrett turned back to Parker. “A Guild member?”
“Yeah. He told them I was very powerful and would like to train me. But they wouldn’t let him.”
“Was his name Songe?” A tinge of dread pricked the back of his neck.
“That was the name.”
Parker never stopped moving batting at the air as if an unseen force blocked his progress. Given the level his agitation had risen at the mention of his non-caster status, Garrett wondered if what his parents had done might be the crux of the problem. Even if he couldn’t use the rationale, Parker had been excommunicated. Denied his birthright. He stood without a people. He was alone. Even worse, his wife and his daughter didn’t share in his situation. Lesser emotions than envy compelled people to act violently. Garrett sighed. It wasn’t enough. “I’m sorry you were neutralized but I need you to focus on the present. Maybe it shouldn’t have happened but it did. You can’t rewrite history.”
Parker clasped his hands together cocking his head in Garrett’s direction. “That’s where you’re wrong.” Parker snorted. The amused superior glint was back. “She already has.”
Garrett straightened his tie and readjusted his seat. “Who has?”
Parker sat down in his seat a sly grin spread across his features. He drummed his fingers on the mahogany coffee table watching Garrett observe him. Parker was again in control of his feelings. A man who had all the answers addressing someone no more significant than an ant. “You haven’t figured it out?”
“No.” Garrett frowned as an uneasy feeling crept upon him. Parker said nothing. He was waiting him out. A technique Garrett had often used in deposition to get the deponent to divulge more than he should. He loosened his tie surprised at how effective this strategy was. Comprehension dawned. When he spoke it was in a whisper. “Nikki.”
“That’s right, you have no idea how useful she has been to me.”
Garrett rubbed his forehead taking in the offered information. Just what exactly was he talking about? The only thing Nikki had done was keep Parker out of jail. A boon to his client, to be sure. But not enough to inspire this kind of gloating. Garrett was sure Nikki hadn’t crossed that far over the line. Not what Parker desired above all, anyway. Unlocking a sanitized mind was next to impossible. Re-establishing Parker’s power would require traveling back to when his mind had been stripped. No caster had that ability. The mocking words of Songe returned. Nikki can. Garrett was beginning to believe it.
“She didn’t change that much.” No matter what Parker thought Nikki had accomplished, he was still facing divorce and child abuse charges. Parker just quirked a brow and stalked off.
“Well, I guess that’s it.” Garrett made a motion that ended up a half shrug. Carolyn Hanover flinched so slightly, he would’ve missed it had he not been looking. Determined to keep this interview calm until he could ferret out the information he truly sought, he decided to contain his focus on the child abuse charge. “I’m attempting to find a good defense tactic. Since Parker wasn’t unable to give me any insight into his demise, is there any explanation you can give me?”
“No.” Lars ground out. “He blames us but he’s a bad seed if there ever was one.”
Garrett turned to Lars. Apparently the man could find his voice outside of his son’s presence. “He blames you because you made him an isolate.”
“He never could handle consequences. Always was a pampered child.” Carolyn Hanover wrung her hands not quite meeting Garrett’s gaze. “That is our fault, but we had no choice. We had to make him an isolate.”
“Yeah, that boy never conformed to the teachings of the Guild.” Lars looked at the floor, shoulders slumped. “He was always breaking the rules, messing with his classmates’ heads.”
“Now, Lars, he didn’t do anything other kids hadn’t tried.” Carolyn scolded her husband. Yet her hands never stopped moving. She didn’t meet her husband’s eyes either. “But,” she turned to Garrett, tears collecting on her lashes. “We had to isolate him. He wouldn’t conform.”
“That’s why we said we isolated him,” Lars said. “No need to get into that, though.”
Garrett’s skin tingled with promise. More half-truths were forthcoming. It seemed everyone, including his mother, held back something crucial. What happened to the Guild’s motto, ‘revelation with truth and light.’? No one seemed to be following those words. Instead, his people had turned into sniveling sewage rats, skulking around, hiding important details. Behaving ashamed of who they were or, more aptly, who they had become.
“Yes, Lars, it’s time.” Carolyn fixed her husband with a stare that never wavered despite his intense glare. “He’s our attorney. He needs to know.”
Lars fidgeted, focusing his attention back to the floor. “Fine.”
Garrett looked to Carolyn for the answers. “Why did you strip him if his abilities?”
“Because left alone, he would have destroyed us all.”
“No need to be so dramatic.” Lars held up his hands to stop her diatribe. “The truth is, we don’t know if he would have hurt any of us.” He looked up at Garrett. “He manifested an ability that concerned his mother and me.”
“What ability?” Garrett wasn’t sure what these people were driving at. Besides the Shadow Dancer, there couldn’t be another legend of an ability larger than the one they all shared as a culture.
“He could push,” Carolyn said.
“Push?”
“Yeah. Push. You know, when someone influences another with a push of his mind.”
“How is that different from the rest of us?” Isn’t that what they all did? Get into people’s minds and influence their choices and decisions. They’d all done that at one time or another.
“Because,” Mrs. Hanover said. “He could do it while he was awake.”
****
Outside her grandfather’s residence, Nikki rang the doorbell twice. She leaned against the pillar waiting impatiently. Too much had happened since learning she was the Shadow Dancer. Not that she truly knew what that meant. She hoped she was doing everything she possibly could to help the Hanover’s. After her review of the case file, she wasn’t certain she was making any difference at all. The divorce was back on file. An emergency order gave Parker supervised visitation because Lori had a black eye. At a loss of how to help this family, there was only one person to which she could turn. Her grandfather finally opened the door after the third ring.
“Hello, Nikki.” He smiled his ‘trust me’ smile. “This seems to be my day for visitors.”
“I have a question for you.”
“Just one?” The amusement in his voice permeated the atmosphere, lightening her dark mood.
“How far back can I go to influence a person’s choices and decisions?”
“You get right to the point, don’t you?” He chuckled, throwing the door wide open. “You better come inside.”
She followed him down a long corridor, dogging his heals like a blue healer. “I don’t see the sense in wasting time.”
“A good quality
to have.” After a deep breath, he situated himself in a lazy chair. “The short answer is, I’m not sure.”
“What’s the long answer?” Nikki watched several emotions cross his face, ranging from skepticism to elation.
“It has been theorized for decades that our kind can do more than a simple tweaking of outcomes within our subject’s mind.” He placed his hands on the armrests and leaned back with a smug glint in his eyes. “But it has long since been abandoned as practical.”
“Why?”
“Because, the Guild is afraid the consequences of having a person who can reach back into someone’s mind and change events of the past.”
He paused never taking his gaze from her.
Silence invaded the room, descending like an oppressive cloud. It dawned on her that grandfather thought he might be looking at that kind of person. Someone who was feared because of her abilities. What did it matter if she could solve her current problem? If she could change events of the past, then she could make the Hanovers behave differently and Lori wouldn’t have to endure a flaky mom and an abusive dad. And if she could go back far enough, she could make both parents healthy. Allow Lori to grow up as all children deserved. “Well, what if the results of the change were a good thing?”
“I’m not sure they care.”
Her brain flitted in a million different directions. “If it were possible, how would one go about accomplishing it?”
“I’m not going to say this is possible.” Songe shook a paternal warning finger at her but didn’t disguise the triumphant gleam in his eyes. His expression radiated the arrogant satisfaction of an adolescent who had just discovered his science project had won the Nobel Prize. He blurted out the next words. “But it would require going deeper into the mind than anyone has gone before. Such a person would have to be able, not only to access childhood memories, but change what the participants remember.”
“Has anyone ever tried to do this?”
“No. No one to my knowledge has ever been able to accomplish that task.” Disappointment shadowed his face. “We can view past events to garner understanding of a participant’s development, but no one has been actually able to adjust their memory for a different outcome outside a forty-eight hour window.”
Nikki was disheartened with these words. If she couldn’t change what a person perceived how she could change their outlook on the world? She needed to be able to access and change those memories in order to alter events.
Wait. Hadn’t she made Parker change his decision about beating his wife? Her shoulders slumped. But it didn’t seem to make any difference. A divorce was still pending and Lori had been injured. Maybe she imagined the effect she had on Parker’s mind. “I’m not sure but I think I might have already done that.”
Songe leaned forward. “What do you mean?”
“Last night. I went into Parker’s mind. To when he decided to beat his wife.”
Songe narrowed his eyes. “And did it make a difference?”
“Not really. They’re still getting a divorce and Parker hit his daughter.”
Songe stroked his chin. She waited, surprised her little foray interested him so much. She assumed all casters could do what she had. The possibility they couldn’t filled her with tingles of excitement. If he took her activities this seriously, maybe she could make a difference.
“It appears you may not have gone far enough in time. We have to think of a better test.”
“Like what?”
“Go back in, change a critical childhood event. We’ll see the results the next day.”
****
That night, Nikki prepared for bed, clutching Parker’s teddy bear. Her senses tingled at the thought of seeing Garrett again. She gritted her teeth in a vain attempt to dampen the anticipation. Her heart and mind were divided. She pushed away the notion of resolving it for now, willing sleep. She scanned her mind checking the doors to her private psyche, making sure they remained locked to any intruders. A small assessment assured her. She could vacate it and go to work.
She relaxed and slipped through the constraints of her earthly body. Instinct thrust her into the slipstream, straight into Parker’s psyche.
The moment she stood on the precipice of his mind, the more uncertain she was that she had entered the right one. The terrain spanning before her was not the one she had seen the night before. Although the doors were still disorganized, they were misshapen and bent. Some rippled and phased almost transparent. Barely there. Others leaned in a distorted back bend until they almost touched the ground. Some twisted, overlapping with others braided, interweaving into each other.
A slight tremor shifted the ground beneath her feet, the pounding insistent until the doors rattled and shook. An edge on one of the woven doors snapped off with a loud crack. Soon all the doors vibrated, their forms contorting until they splintered into a thousand pieces. The remains bounced and skittered across the surface, growing smaller until they dwindled into nothing.
Then darkness. Nikki crawled through the eerie black fog. Every nerve ending tingled on edge. It felt as though something slimy had crawled up her back and wouldn’t leave. She shuddered as a gooey shroud took hold. She pulled her hair over her shoulder but her vision didn’t improve.
This has to be dream. Parker’s mind didn’t look this way last night. What had changed? There was no place on earth as muggy and desecrated as this wasteland. Then, again, there was the problem of how his mind had changed in the first place. What was a gray blank slate yesterday was dank, dark, and blanketed with fury, hatred.
Nikki straightened her back and ignored the slippery eel like thing squirming along her torso. She squinted. A brown spark flashed in the distance. A small narrow opening in the fluttering ebony veil. A minute tear caught in the wind. She headed toward it. Pushing back the veil she spotted a golden light pulsating in the distance. It glittered with a million fingers flaring in all directions. Taunting her need to step through, she crossed over the threshold of yesterday. It wasn’t much of an improvement. Murky clouds surrounded narrow brown crystalline threads that pulsed with intermittent light. She inched around them heading further into the web.
“Where are you going?”
A whisper wrapped around her heart, soft, kind and gentle.
Nikki looked up. She could see nothing but darkness behind her.
“To the light,” she said to the air.
“You can’t go there.”
“I have to. There is no other way out.” Nikki felt a tug within her. A warning. A gentle nudge compelling her to pay attention to the voice. But her feet kept moving toward the opening. She had to get there. She had to cross over. An internal compass guided her. She had no choice but to follow.
“Go back,” the whisper persisted.
Nikki looked around her but saw only the formless empty void. There was no sign of any other presence, yet she knew he was there, stalking every footstep, monitoring every breath. “Okay that’s enough. Show yourself.”
Why was this intrusive voice interfering with her affairs? For that matter, why did she care so much? It wasn’t like it mattered in the grand scheme of things. But it did. That was the problem. It mattered a lot. Ever since she entered this strange realm, a need gnawed at her to stop a monster.
Ahead of her another figure appeared dressed in a crisp white shirt and jeans his features concealed in shadows. The head turned in her direction. “You shouldn’t go walking around in a mind this dangerous, Nikki.”
Nikki froze. “Garrett?”
She frowned as she neared the form in front of her. His voice sounded familiar but it was garbled and distant. The lack of clarity made it hard to pinpoint but there weren’t that many people she had met in this strange new world. Her heart pounded in her ears the same time her expectations fell. He was here to stop her.
She rushed the intruding form. In a flash, she stood before him. She swiped out her hand and a spark of light illuminated his face. Shocked brown eyes stared back unde
r strong bushy eyebrows and immaculately groomed hair. Garret’s mouth appeared twisted in pain. It was almost comical.
“What are you doing here, fancy pants?”
“Protecting my client. You shouldn’t be here.”
“Whatever, Garrett.” She threw her hands in the air and stalked away, stilling her racing heart. “This isn’t the type of situation covered by our legal ethics. I don’t know why you should have anything to say about it.”
“You don’t know what you are doing. Look at what one trip into Parker’s mind has done. You’ve caused this destruction. You need to stop now. Let me fix this.”
The edge in his voice stopped her. She had disappointed him, but much worse was the flood of shame rising to her cheeks. His fingers curled around the light extinguishing it, hiding his expression.
“How are you going to do that? Sanitize his mind like his parent’s did. Admit it, you don’t know what’s going on any more than I do. At least I’m trying to make things better.” Knowing she provoked his anger didn’t stop the torrent of words. She was sick of his meddling superiority. A surge of power from the dark places in her mind took hold urging her onward. It was imperative she erase his presence so she could quell the sense of humiliation threatening her from the edge of reason. Pulling assurance from every instinct she shooed him with her hand. “If you aren’t going to help you need to step out of my way.”
Garrett vanished. That was easy. Still she couldn’t shake the strange feeling something important had happened. The rush of power coursing through her body made her dizzy. She was sure no other caster could erase another from a mind. It was one of those pesky rules of the Guild’s checks and balances. Rules that didn’t apply to her.
Charged with the fuel of righteous power, she almost didn’t notice as a foreign thought invaded her mind. It was full of arrogance, vengeance, and venom. It slithered through her brain leaving ice trails in its path.
Kill the Bitch. It screamed.