The Astral Traveler's Daughter

by K. C. Archer

  The thought of traveling to a war zone didn’t appeal to her, either. But Miles deserved to know what had happened to his father. And if she could help someone find closure, she was going to do it. She wrapped her hand around the cold metal. Take me to Afghanistan, she commanded, as Clint had taught her. Take me to Miles’s father. Take me to the day he died.

  Nothing happened. She slowed her breathing even more. Repeated her commands. Rubbed at the dog tags. She tried again and again, trying to pull her astral self from her body. But it was no use, and at last, she gave up. Marysue’s necklace, it seemed, was her only conduit across time and space. Frustrated, Teddy threw the key chain toward the desk.

  “I have to do everything around here, don’t I?” Dara snatched it out of the air with a one-handed catch. She wrapped her fingers around the dog tags and closed her eyes.

  Teddy waited for several long, pulsing moments. When Dara finally opened her eyes, she looked stricken.

  “What is it?” Teddy said. “What did you see?”

  “A lot of death. Dozens of men. A few women. An explosion. A lot of it’s fuzzy, but there’s one thing I can tell you for sure.” She paused to hold up the tags. “Whoever was wearing these tags didn’t kill himself. He died trying to save the others. And Teddy?”

  “What?”

  “I think he was psychic.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  THE NEXT MORNING WAS CLEAR but cold. At breakfast, Teddy looked out the window and saw a picture postcard of winter beauty, complete with delicately pointed icicles hanging from the house’s eaves. Pretty from the warmth of the kitchen nook, but she had no desire to venture outside on such a frigid day.

  Until Miles stepped into the kitchen and announced that he was heading into Tahoe City to do some last-minute Christmas shopping. “Anybody want to come?” he asked.

  It wasn’t a matter of want to. It was a matter of have to. No matter how much the three of them were acting like friends, they weren’t. Teddy and Dara were his security detail. The two of them shared a look. Teddy didn’t need to sync up with Dara to know her thoughts. Her head tilt seemed to say, You do it—you said you wanted to talk to him, anyway.

  Right. Miles’s father, the highly decorated marine, had been psychic, at least according to Dara. It made sense. Why else would Hollis Whitfield be interested in founding a school for psychics? The disturbing part was that he’d never told Miles. Of course, Teddy couldn’t be the one to tell him—not without exposing herself, the school, everything. But she could tell Miles some of it. She owed him that much, at least. She went upstairs to bundle up.

  A short while later, she and Miles headed out to his Land Rover. Miles wore a down coat and had an olive-green canvas satchel slung across his body.

  “My meds,” he said with a shrug when he saw Teddy looking at it. “Just in case.” He tossed her the car keys. “You mind driving?”

  “Sounds good to me.” She gave him back the key chain with his father’s dog tags, as if they were making an even exchange.

  She pulled out of the driveway and onto the tree-lined roadway. When Teddy was younger, the car had been where she and her mom had their most serious heart-to-hearts, and where she’d broached difficult subjects. Like the time she’d cut school in eighth grade and thought she could get away with it, or the trouble she had gotten into at Stanford just before they kicked her out. Teddy recently saw an article advising parents to use car rides for exactly these kind of talks, since it could be easier to cover tough emotional terrain when you weren’t eye-to-eye. She doubted her mother had read any studies on this—she just had good instincts.

  “So?” Miles asked after she turned onto Highway 28. “Did you find anything out?”

  And there it was.

  “Actually, I have some good news,” she said. “You were right about your father. He didn’t commit suicide. He actually died saving his fellow soldiers. A bomber entered the base. Your father stopped him.”

  The last part was deductive reasoning, stitching together Dara’s vision with an archived Wall Street Journal article and some internet forums Teddy had burrowed into.

  Miles went quiet. He stared out the window as he absorbed the news. She watched his jaw tighten. Saw the cords in his neck stretch. Teddy wanted to reach out to him but resisted the impulse. The moment felt intensely private, and she wasn’t sure her touch would be welcome. She waited, giving him time.

  He slammed the dashboard with his hand, hitting it so hard that Teddy’s own hand stung in response. “I knew it. I just knew it.”

  “I think you can feel proud of him,” she said. Teddy wondered if she could have done what Miles’s father had. Sacrificed herself for so many.

  “Anything else I should know?”

  Of course there was. But there was so little she could actually tell.

  Another long pause before Miles asked, “Was all this on the internet? Could you send me a link?”

  Teddy let out a breath. She had been expecting this question and was prepared with a plausible lie. “Sorry. A lot of it came from confidential files.”

  They drove in silence, and Teddy watched the landscape start to repopulate as they got closer to town. When she couldn’t bear it any longer, she started asking him stupid questions about Tahoe—what his favorite stores were, where he liked to eat. She could tell he was distracted, but he played along, directing Teddy to a parking space on Lake Boulevard, where they got out of the car. She pulled her knitted hat over her ears and turned her collar up against the chill. He hesitated beside the car. She sensed him processing the news, storing it someplace stoic. He wasn’t ready to move forward yet. But he could pretend for now.

  He pulled off his glasses to wipe the lenses, and she was struck again by the deep blue of his irises. He really was attractive, there was no denying it. How bright he seemed to shine sometimes. It caught her off guard.

  He transferred his attention to Teddy. Before putting his glasses back on, he held her gaze. The timing was all wrong. Maybe if things were different. She was his security detail. And there was Pyro, and she wasn’t ready to throw away whatever they had.

  “I promised my grandfather I’d pick up a gift for his assistant,” he said, pointing toward the street and releasing her from his gaze. He led her toward a high-end jewelry boutique. “Then we’ll grab a bite somewhere.” When they reached the store, he said, “You know, you don’t have to stick to me like glue. I know my grandfather worries, but I’m capable of handling myself.”

  “Of course.”

  “What I’m saying is, if you want to run your own errands and meet me back here, that’s fine.”

  Miles didn’t want her breathing down his neck. He wasn’t a child, and he didn’t need a babysitter. She got it. Teddy glanced around, taking in the bright holiday decor and Tudor-style storefronts. No threats that she could see. Just upscale shoppers and drivers in expensive SUVs jockeying for parking spaces, caught up in the last-minute rush for gifts.

  “Sure,” she said. “We can do that.”

  But when he went into the store, Teddy didn’t feel right abandoning her charge. She was on the job; no matter what Miles said, she was supposed to watch him. She peered in the window to make sure everything looked okay. The store had a guard positioned by the door. There were three employees, and three customers besides Miles, all of them focused intently on the shiny merchandise. Miles scanned the displays for several minutes before asking a saleswoman to show him something. He took off his satchel and laid it on the counter as he inspected a man’s watch.

  It all looked perfectly benign. Teddy turned her back on the store and surveilled the street like a bona fide Secret Service agent. After a few minutes of just standing there, she was so cold that she thought she might fulfill her mother’s prophecy of making a face that would freeze that way forever. She pulled her scarf up around her face and breathed into it. A chic woman wearing an expensive black wool hat and matching coat strode past her into the store.

  Tedd
y glanced across the street to where a line of massive icicles hung from an awning. To Teddy, they looked like missiles ready to launch. But shoppers passed beneath them with indifference, so she shrugged off her concern.

  Until she saw a male figure in the shadows beneath them. Yates? No, she decided. It couldn’t be. He was too large. But maybe his heavy coat was playing tricks with her perception. Then the man quickly turned down a side street.

  Teddy’s pulse shot up. If it was Yates, she couldn’t let him get away.

  First, though, she glanced back into the jewelry store to make sure Miles was okay. He was still studying watches. Only now, to Teddy’s astonishment, the woman in the black hat was inching closer to his satchel. She laid a gloved hand on it and slid it beneath her coat in one swift, practiced motion. A thief.

  Teddy glanced back to where she had seen the male figure only seconds ago. Gone. In the jewelry store, the woman was moving toward the door. Teddy burst inside and ran at the woman, grabbing her arm. The woman released an outraged cry and pulled back. Just as Teddy tightened her grip, a massive weight crashed against her side and knocked her to the floor. The security guard, tackling her rather than the would-be thief. Teddy watched in helpless frustration as the woman slipped out of the store.

  “What the hell?” Miles said, pulling the guard off her.

  “Your satchel,” Teddy gasped, drawing herself up. “She tried to steal it.”

  Miles’s eyes went dark with fury as he looked from his satchel, which now lay on the floor near Teddy, to the door. Teddy followed his gaze as he clocked the woman dashing across the street toward an alleyway between stores, where a car was waiting for her. Just as she approached it, a massive icicle—two feet long and as pointed as a dagger—broke free from the awning and sliced through the air. The woman was just quick enough to avoid it. It crashed to the pavement, missing her by a whisper.

  Teddy shot out of the store and stared after her, shock rendering her temporarily frozen. Their tussle had knocked the woman’s hat from her head. She had white-blond hair.

  “That woman was batshit crazy,” Miles said, coming out to stand beside her.

  “I’m not so sure,” Teddy countered. The car vanished around the corner before she could track the plate.

  “Why would someone want to steal a canvas bag when they could make off with a twenty-thousand-dollar watch just as easily?”

  She turned to look at him. His eyes were bright, and he was breathing hard from the excitement. But there was something else. Something Teddy recognized. A peculiar buzz of energy stirring the air around him. Whatever he had in that bag was more valuable than any Rolex. “Let me see it,” she said.

  He shrugged, unfastened the buckles, and flipped open the satchel. “Nothing to see. Just my medication. Which reminds me.” Miles paused, rubbing his head. “I should take another dose soon.”

  Inside were three wrapped syringes. Teddy pulled one of them out and studied the wrapper. Saw the Hyle Pharmaceuticals logo. The drug name Xantal was next to the words NOT FOR RESALE. And under that, layered between scientific gobbledygook in print so fine Teddy would have missed it entirely had she not been looking for it, was the in-house name of the drug.

  X-498.

  The drug that Hyle Pharmaceuticals had engineered for psychic experimentation.

  Miles Whitfield was the test subject.

  Horror raced through her as the pieces came together. Miles had some kind of telekinetic power. Something he couldn’t control and wasn’t even aware of. That accounted for the violent mood swings, the migraines, the gaps in his memory. That was why the tree branch had snapped when he was angry. Why the icicle had fallen and nearly killed the blond woman.

  Like Teddy throughout her childhood, Miles was having his psychic powers repressed by drugs. Only, in his case, it was intentional.

  She steered Miles back to the car. “We’re going,” she said. She started the car and cranked up the heat, but nothing could ease the chill that ran through her.

  “Wait, I have to—” he started. “And you just got tackled by a giant. Are you okay?”

  Teddy swallowed. What could she tell him? All of it, she supposed. About himself. About the school. About his grandfather’s involvement. But that was a huge step. And before she went there, she needed answers.

  “You’re going to have to trust me,” she said. “I’ll tell you everything, I promise. But for now, don’t take any more of those injections. And whatever you do, don’t let anyone get hold of them.” She’d never thought she’d feed anyone—let alone someone she liked—the kind of crap she was always hearing from Clint and Yates. But here she was, giving Miles just enough information to keep him in line.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  ONCE THEY WERE BACK AT the house, Teddy went straight to Dara’s guest suite.

  “Good, you’re back,” Dara said. She’d been sitting at a desk, a laptop borrowed from Hollis Whitfield open beside her, but the moment Teddy entered the room, she spun around to face her. When Teddy opened her mouth to fill her in on what had happened in the shopping district, Dara stopped her.

  “Me first,” she said. “I put in a call to Clint. Talked to him about Hollis Whitfield’s son. Long story short, Clint thinks the guy was probably an ergokinetic.”

  “Ergokinetic?”

  “Yeah. Someone who has the ability to manipulate energy. Like hold it in, store it, then release it. It’s a rare psychic skill and, according to Clint, almost impossible to manage. Most ergokinetics are unstable—his word, not mine. The fact that they have so much raw power coursing through them at all times makes them prone to dramatic mood swings and violent fits of temper.”

  Teddy nodded. “How does the ability manifest?”

  “That’s where it gets dangerous. Ergokinetics are naturally drawn to ordnance work. Obviously, the preferred way to deal with a bomb is to disarm it. But say you can’t. You get there too late or you trigger a land mine. An ergokinetic can absorb a bomb’s energy. Save the lives of everyone around him.”

  Teddy thought about the stunning array of medals pinned to Julian Whitfield’s chest.

  “The problem is,” Dara continued, “ergokinetics can’t do it for long. There’s only so much energy they can absorb. Ultimately, they burn out. Or if they absorb a charge large enough? Or don’t know how to properly release it? The energy gets to be too much, and they can’t control it. Then . . .” She paused. “Energy only has one place to go.” Her mouth twisted in a grim line.

  “Let me get this straight,” Teddy said. She kept hoping Dara would interrupt again, just so she didn’t have to say the next part. But this time, Dara kept quiet. “You think that Julian Whitfield turned into a human bomb.”

  Dara nodded.

  Teddy sank into a chair. Slipped off her coat and hat and tossed them aside. “Well,” she said, “I have news for you, too. Miles is the Hyle test subject.”

  Dara’s jaw dropped. Her eyes grew wide. Teddy was glad her friend was sitting down. If she hadn’t been, she might have toppled over. “Holy shit.” Dara thought for a moment. Her eyes shot back and forth, silently calculating. “Miles inherited his father’s ability, didn’t he?”

  Teddy ran through recent events: the tree branch yesterday, the icicle this morning. Miles must have absorbed the energy of the IED at Whitfield’s party. He’d been releasing bursts of it ever since—but only when provoked. “But I don’t think Miles is aware what he’s doing.”

  Dara slumped back against her chair as though Teddy had shoved her. “Holy shit,” she repeated.

  Whitfield knew, Teddy thought, doing a little calculating of her own. That’s why he paled when he’d learned how close Miles had been to the bomb, especially when Teddy and Kate had puzzled over why the device hadn’t exploded. Miles had saved their lives, at a cost to his own.

  Dara shook her head as though to clear it. “Whitfield developed X-498 to repress Miles’s ergokinetic ability. That’s what this is about.”

  “Xantal,�
� Teddy corrected. But yeah, that was essentially correct. “We’ve got to talk to him, get him to shut down production. Now.”

  “You’re in luck. The house manager knocked on my door a couple hours ago. Apparently, Hollis himself is on his way. He decided he wanted to spend Christmas Eve here. He might even be here already.”

  Some luck. Teddy would have preferred to postpone the confrontation, as well as her report of the afternoon’s events. Give herself a little time to think things through. But if Hollis Whitfield was there, she had no excuse to put it off. She rose and moved to the door. “Miles went to his room to lie down. Keep an eye on him, will you? I’ll be back.”

  “Teddy,” Dara said, hesitation in her voice. “Are you sure about this? If his ability is as unpredictable as Clint believes—if Whitfield is doing all this because of what happened to Miles’s dad—maybe Miles really needs the medication.”

  “Shouldn’t that be up to Miles?”

  Their eyes met. What if the drug had been available to Molly? Dara said, “Think about it. Whatever Eversley—or the PC—was up to, they didn’t have this kind of study . . .”

  She trailed off, looking miserable, and Teddy understood. Molly was constantly on Dara’s mind. Teddy suspected that she ran through every scenario again and again, wondering what she could have done differently to help their friend. “Dara, this isn’t about Molly.”

  “Point is, let’s not rush into anything with Miles. Once he knows, there’s no going back.”

  Teddy hesitated at the doorway. She ran her hand along the exquisite wooden paneling. Lovely but cold. She’d heard that wood was supposed to feel warm. It didn’t, not here. Something about this house filled her with a vague sense of icy dread. Despite the grandeur, she’d felt this way ever since she stepped inside the lodge. She couldn’t blame the blanket of snow that coated the grounds or a draft that slipped beneath the doors. This was something else. A dull foreboding, constant as a toothache, that left her perpetually chilled.