by Jody Wallace
“What if I say no? You’ve already admitted these people are out there watching us.”
“You aren’t going to say no.”
How could he be so sure? In case he hadn’t noticed, my natural inclination was to say no to anything he asked. “We’ll come back to that, “ I said. “What if I say yes?”
“Then I can be specific, but there are conditions.”
I didn’t like the Jaws tuba beginning to toll in my head. Where had I encountered this need to know spiel before? Several months ago. When I’d been introduced to the supra community, Yuri had said, “We’ll tell you, but first sign this confidentiality agreement.”
However, I didn’t doubt Beau, not for a minute. According to Lou, Herman and Rachel, he was supposed to have been a permanent burnout, like me. Hell, they’d wanted him to be a coma. Yet he’d regrouped after a week, a much shorter time frame than the natural recovery process. I suspected he’d even remembered what happened in Atlanta.
He knew something the rest of us didn’t, and he’d managed to hide it from me for months when I’d had my ability.
“No one at work seemed to notice when you got your groove back. Why is that?”
“I’ve always been a quick healer.” He smiled without teeth.
Yeah, right. “And you can fix me?”
“Yes.”
“Won’t people get suspicious?” Yet not even I had wondered about his recovery after my initial surprise. In fact, when I’d been bemoaning my fate the past two weeks, I hadn’t given a single thought to the fact Beau had recovered his full abilities.
“Only I know your condition is permanent at this juncture.”
“But everyone knows Herman’s machine—”
“I made sure your true condition was up in the air.”
I had a non-supra feeling he was lying about something through his straight, white teeth. People usually were. Damn, I wished I could be myself again. “If your miracle cure involves detoxing with cabbage juice, count me out.”
“Nothing that simple, I’m afraid.”
Conditions and consequences. I’d been juggling both since the day I found out I could see lies. What was another layer to add to everything else? “Tell me about these overseers. You’re saying there’s a secret society within the supra community—which is, by the way, a secret society?”
He gazed at me without reacting.
I ticced the secrets off on my fingers. “Is there another secret society within that secret society, and then another within that one, and then another and another, until you get down to the secret society of a single person who knows all? That would be the Highlander, of course.”
“There can be more than one,” he said mildly. “It’s less complicated than most governments.”
“We’re not running a country,” I pointed out. “We’re running businesses.”
“But we do have secrets. Do you think it’s easy making sure nobody finds out about us? Do you think all people with suprasenses are content to remain hidden, that everything Lou Lampey worried about is exaggerated?”
Although his tones were dispassionate, he did seem to believe his statements. “You’re starting to sound like Lou yourself,” I commented uneasily. Not that the same things hadn’t crossed my mind.
“I’m no vigilante,” Beau said. “I just have no interest in coming out of the closet. Do you really think a bunch of people out to make a buck, especially at the expense of others like themselves, could maintain the cover up of the eon?”
I thought about Yuri and Al, the other big companies, the little companies, the Registry. How they operated, how they handled themselves and their employees—how they located and handled new supras. How quickly they’d converged to sort through the Lampey incident. How it was the computer age, the Twitter age, the cell phone camera age.
Yet suprasensors were the opposite of public domain. There were more rumors about captive aliens at Area 51, Bigfoot, and NSA-style government agencies than thousands of humans with paranormal powers coexisting peacefully with the masses and helping them sort through their corporate restructuring issues. For a large fee, of course.
“Actually, yes I do.”
“Good,” he said. “You’re supposed to have faith in the current system. If Lou had taken a moment to consider how many crimes occur but suprasensors never quite go over the line, we might have avoided a lot of unpleasantness.”
He called it unpleasantness, but he was the one who’d bounced back after his brain wash like Fruit of the Loom underpants. “Is your real name Duncan MacLeod?”
“Do I look Scottish?”
How should I know? He could be as much of a mutt as I was. “Do you call yourself Watchers, and are you a Council? Do you all wear special rings?”
“Cleo, this is not a game.”
I’d had it up to my hairline with secrets and lies. I’d agreed to Yuri’s plan when I’d hired on in return that I be off the hook when it was over. It was over. Or it should have been over, but here was Beau Walker offering it back to me on an ambiguous platter.
Did I want my life to be defined by espionage plots? Sneaking around? Lying to my friends? Maybe if Beau got fed up with me, he’d stomp off and leave me with no choice but normalcy.
“Order of the Phoenix?” I suggested. “The Trust No Ones? The League of Extraordinary Suprasensors?”
“Sometimes I want to muzzle you.”
Since he didn’t look like he was going to try it, I said, “Get in line.”
“I’ve been in line a while.” Beau uncrossed his arms, shifting toward me. He took me by the shoulders. “Quit wasting time. Tell me yes so we can get on with it.”
“Um.” We were going to do it now? His palms heated my skin through my stained up T-shirt. “No.”
His brow furrowed. “You’re saying no?”
“I can’t, Beau.” I wriggled backwards, and he dropped his hands. Something warm and fuzzy and feline twined around my ankles. The cats must have finished the pizza crust. “Getting into another situation where I have to spy on people—well, look how it worked out the first time. You said yourself I’m not internal affairs material. Don’t you understand?”
“Sometimes there really is a greater good, Cleo.”
It was hard to imagine Mr. Surly as a do-gooder. Not that I viewed him as evil, but he was no angel of mercy. “That may be true, but face it, I stink at this stuff. I’m better off normal.”
“Change your mind,” he said.
“Isn’t that supposed to be, if I change my mind?”
“No, I want you to change it now so I can heal you.”
“Hey,” I said, “you and I are the only ones who realize I’ll never get better. Heal me anyway. I won’t stop you.” I swept out my arms in a grand gesture that whacked the ice cream box to the floor, where Boris started lapping up the melted vanilla.
Beau narrowed his eyes and watched me. “What happened to you isn’t fair.”
“Life,” I said, watching the cat instead of the man, “isn’t fair.”
Never had been, never would be. But now that I was normal, now that I’d never know when people were lying, maybe my contentment meter would rise.
Or bottom out.
When Beau didn’t respond, I glanced up at him. His speculative expression unnerved me, so I said, “Nobody’s comfortable with a person they can’t lie to. Isn’t it a relief that I lost that skill?” Samantha seemed to revel in it. I suspected half the stuff she told me now was lies.
Which wasn’t anything new, come to think of it.
“Not really,” he said.
“Only because you Watchers want to use me.”
“Not really,” he said again. “They don’t think you’re very good at it, either.”
“Is that true?” Blast my missing pieces! Norm conversations sucked the bag even more than when I’d been able to see lies.
He barked out a sudden laugh. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”
Yes. Yes, I would. But how bad
would I like to know? How bad did I want all my pieces back?
Bad.
“I want to be myself again. My version of normal. My head is a wasteland, and my heart... This sounds stupid, but my heart is broken. But I don’t want to be a spy. It’s not worth it.”
He closed his eyes. “Oh, Cleo. The things I do.”
“You don’t do anything,” I said, though obviously it wasn’t true.
“They owe me,” he mused. “But can I trust them?”
“I could tell you that if I were myself,” I grumbled.
He opened his eyes and held out a hand. This time, I took it. “Let’s do something about that, then. I’d hate to lose you.”
I had no idea how he meant that, but when he told me to get cleaned up, that we were going to see a man about a dog, I trusted him.
Even though I was a cat person.
~ * ~
“They” were a bunch of suprasensors with unknown abilities, but who, combined, could repair the damage Herman’s machine had done. I think “they” might have been triplets. I had no suprasenses—at the time—but I did have ears, and even norms can overhear loud stage whispers.
I mean, really, who were they trying to fool, a child? I wasn’t a child, I was an adult with many years of experience finding out things nobody wanted me to know.
There was a long drive, a dark room to protect everyone’s privacy and a lot of hands involved, but not like that, thank you very much. Then I passed out, but it was more like a wave of exhaustion, not a wave of brain zapping pain caused by some evil, amped up pest control device.
I woke up in my apartment. I wasn’t alone.
“How many fingers am I holding up?” Beau asked. He sat in a chair beside my bed, reading a book. He wasn’t holding up his hand, much less any fingers.
“None.” I rubbed my eyes. “What happened?”
“Nothing,” he lied, his mask as dark as his nubby dreadlocks. “Nothing you’re going to tell anybody about, anyway.”
And then we both smiled.
~ * ~
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About the Author
Jody Wallace grew up in the South in a very rural area. She went to school a long time and ended up with a Master's Degree in Creative Writing. Her resume includes college English instructor, technical documents editor, market analyst, web designer, and general, all around pain in the butt. She resides in Tennessee with one husband, two children, two cats, and a lot of junk. In fact, she has always lived with cats, and they have always been mean.
To discover other books by Ms. Wallace, visit her website at http://www.jodywallace.com. You can also find her at Twitter: https://twitter.com/jodywallace and Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JodyWallaceAuthor. To discover meankitties, visit the cat’s website at http://www.meankitty.com.
About Meankitty Publishing (MKP)
Meankitty Publishing is the self-publishing “arm” of author Jody Wallace. MKP is not taking submissions, and it is not a formal company. It is merely a label that amuses the author, and Meankitty, very much. The list of all MKP releases and version information is at www.meankittypublishing.com.
Look for these other ebook titles from Jody Wallace:
Contemporary & Erotic Romance
“Birthday” in Secrets 17 (w/a Ellie Marvel)
Claustrophobic Christmas (w/a Ellie Marvel)
Kiss the Bride
“Strip-O-Gram”
What She Deserves (w/a Ellie Marvel)
Fantasy, SF and Paranormal Romance
Angeli (coming 2014)
“Cooley’s Panther” (Felidae series 1)
“Heat” in Secrets 22 (w/a Ellie Marvel)
Liam’s Gold
Megan’s Choice (w/a Ellie Marvel)
One Thousand Kisses (Realm series 2)
Pack and Coven
A Spell for Susannah
Stalking Evan (Felidae series 2)
Survival of the Fairest (Realm series 1)
Tangible
Witch Interrupted (coming 2014)
“A Wintertide Spell”
Light SF/F and Urban Fantasy
“Field Trip”
A Mage by Any Other Name
The Whole Truth
YA
“The Worst Christmas”
WTF
“Whatsoever He Might Kind of Want or Desire”