by K. C. Archer
“They’ll what? Welcome a prodigal student with open arms? Of course they will. And frankly, it’ll be hours before anyone notices you’re gone. That’s why I’m here and why Jeremy’s making himself useful somewhere else on campus.”
Jeremy was on Angel Island. “Where—”
“Teddy?” Clint asked. “Is that you?”
Relief surged through her. She’d never been so glad to hear Clint’s voice.
Clint stood just inches away, on the other side of the tent wall. Before she could cry out for help, Brett jerked her roughly against him. Quietly, he intoned, “Say one word and you’ll go first.” He lifted his gun, pressed the barrel against her cheek.
Dara’s warning snapped into place. The tent. The ceremony. The crowd. The figure wasn’t Yates. It was Brett.
Brett tightened his grip on his gun. Flicked off the safety. Then, to Teddy’s horror, he turned the gun and aimed it directly at the tent wall, exactly where Clint stood, completely unaware of the danger he faced.
Teddy sucked in a breath, striving to calm her wildly beating heart. She’d trained for situations like this. She knew what to do. What she had to do. She concentrated on the film deck in her mind, the feeling of the metal reels in her hand.
Brett pulled the trigger. A puff of smoke accompanied the bullet as it left the barrel of the gun.
There was no clear vision because the future wasn’t fixed. Because Teddy was there, too, and she had a chance to change the outcome.
Slowly, slowly. Slow everything down. I am a being of a simultaneous universe.
She watched a breeze cradle a leaf, slowing its descent to the point where it appeared frozen in midair. An ant, crawling over a discarded crust of bread, slowed to the point where any movement it made was virtually undetectable.
Teddy watched the bullet as it sliced through the air. She focused on extending her astral self toward the piece of deadly metal as if she could knock the bullet off course. Panic gripped her, and she felt the film reels speed up. She was losing her grip on time. The bullet was hurtling toward Clint’s chest. It was two feet away, now one.
With all the energy she had left, she reached out her astral hand and felt her fingers touch hot metal. Horror gripped her as she heard Clint give a grunt of pain. His body fell against the wall of the tent, then collapsed on the ground. Then the reels, and time, spun out of her control.
Teddy jerked free of Brett’s grasp as the sound of the gun blast caused chaos to erupt around them. Dimly, she was aware of screaming, running, crashing glass as guests overturned trays and tables in their rush to flee.
She threw herself against the tent wall, and landed on the ground beside Clint. The bullet had missed his heart but hit his shoulder. Still, he was alive. Brett hadn’t killed him.
“Stop him,” Clint said, breathing hard. “Don’t let him leave the island.”
Teddy felt the brush of cold steel against her palm and looked down to see Clint pushing his gun at her. “Go, Teddy. Now.”
Teddy grabbed the gun and ran.
* * *
All around her, the reception dissolved into mayhem. Boyd stood at the center of it all, issuing orders.
Brett had said that Jeremy was here. If Jeremy had come to Angel Island, he’d come by boat. And Teddy knew exactly where that boat was docked. Spying Jillian, she yelled out, “Jeremy’s boat! Get help and meet me there!”
Jillian nodded and took off in the opposite direction.
Unwilling to waste the seconds it would take to wait for her friends, Teddy raced past Harris Hall, then past the infirmary. She hurled herself over a low stone wall, stumbling, sliding, plunging down the steep incline that led to the jogging path. She edged toward a cliff that towered above the cove.
Jeremy’s speedboat bobbed on the incoming tide. But the boat itself was empty.
Clint’s gun still clenched in one hand, Teddy braced her hands on her knees and gulped in air as she considered her options.
It was a sharp descent—almost vertical—from her current position to the cove. A bit farther along the path was a switchback trail leading down to the water, but that took—
She heard the sound of pounding feet and skittering pebbles. She turned to level her weapon directly at Brett’s chest as he came barreling around the corner, his own gun loose by his side.
“Drop your weapon,” she ordered.
“What the—”
“Drop your weapon now!” She clicked off the safety and tightened her grip. Her hands were slick with blood and sweat, but they didn’t shake. The tension of her finger against the trigger was whisper-thin.
Moving with exaggerated care, Brett extended his arms from his sides, palms facing Teddy, and let the gun slip from his hand.
“Kick it toward me,” she said.
He did. Keeping her gaze fixed on Brett, she gave it another kick, sending it skidding behind her.
“It doesn’t have to be this way, Teddy.” Jeremy. He walked, unarmed, to stand next to Brett.
She was outnumbered, even if armed. Her advantage was so slight as to be almost nonexistent. Teddy was poised over a cliff with her gun pointed at Brett and Jeremy, but she had no way to subdue either of them. The only thing she could do now was stall until Jillian, Pyro, and Dara arrived.
“What are you doing, Jeremy?” she asked, buying time.
He gestured to the space between them. “We shouldn’t be enemies. We’re working toward the same goal. We both want to use our psychic gifts to keep people safe.”
“Safe?” Teddy’s anger flared. She couldn’t help but think of Molly’s safety. He hadn’t protected her.
“Yes, Teddy. We keep this country safe. We think big-picture. Yates was a traitor. I had to do everything I could to make sure he stayed in prison. He abandoned the cause.”
She thought about the surveillance video she’d seen. A man had been murdered on a busy city sidewalk, without a trial, without a judge, without a jury. “You’re talking about assassinations.”
Jeremy shook his head. “You don’t understand. Yates let personal feelings get in the way.”
“What about Molly? You didn’t have personal feelings for her?”
At that Jeremy ducked his chin, avoiding Teddy’s eyes. “I recruited her myself,” Jeremy said. “But her loyalty wavered. I had to intervene. I meant to destroy the laptop. I thought she’d drop it. Not . . . ”
“We helped Molly,” Brett said, picking up where Jeremy left off. “She hated sensing people’s emotions all the time. Made her feel crazy as a bullbat. The Patriot Corps fixed her up. And in return—”
Jeremy shot Brett a glance, silencing him.
“You helped Molly?”
Molly was working with Jeremy?
Teddy ran over the events in her head: the hacking of Eversley’s computer at Halloween; the attack in the warehouse. Teddy felt like she’d been blindsided. Of course Molly was a member of the Patriot Corps. Her behavior had always been erratic. Irregular. Like she was hiding something. “Is that why she came back from winter break so altered? Did your group do something to her? Experiment on her? Like they did on psychics in Sector Three? Was that before or after you made her attack me in the warehouse?”
Teddy heard a noise from behind her. Jillian.
Thank God.
But then a burst of searing pain shot through the base of her skull as something rock-hard slammed against her head. Teddy fell forward, landing on her hands and knees. Clint’s gun, knocked from her grip, skittered across the rocky ledge.
Pinpricks of light danced in front of her eyes. She gritted her teeth, determined to hold on to consciousness.
“Stay down,” a female voice ordered. Not Jillian.
Teddy blinked. Christine Federico swam into focus, her toned arms flexed, Clint’s gun now firmly in her grip.
Whitfield Institute’s two missing recruits were missing no longer. Teddy tried to gather the strength to telekinetically rip the gun from Christine’s grip, but the a
ttempt was futile. After bending the bullet, she barely had enough energy to move her physical body, let alone her astral one.
Teddy tried to stand, but Christine swung the barrel of the gun directly at her. “I said, don’t move.” Her finger found the trigger. “We’re wasting time.”
Jeremy stepped between them. “No,” he said. “We have orders to protect her. Marysue—”
Teddy’s head snapped up at the mention of her mother’s name. Everything Yates had promised her. “How do you know my mother?”
“Your mother’s with us, Teddy,” Jeremy said. “Do you know what I would give for more time with my mother? Anything.” He bent down on the ground so he was eye-level with her. “If you join us, you could see her again. If you only knew what we could do together. If you only knew your potential.”
Her potential. For recruitment. She was the third name on that list. Brett. Christine. And Teddy. Three children of psychics, experimented on at Sector Three.
Before he could continue, she saw a burst of light from the corner of her eye. Suddenly, the scrub brush beside her was on fire. Jeremy stood and spun right, looking for the source of the attack. As he did, a seagull swooped down, diving at Christine’s head.
My friends, Teddy thought through the pain. They’re here.
“Hands where I can see them,” Nick said.
From behind her, Teddy felt another burst of heat as Pyro launched another attack of fire at Jeremy. Then Jeremy leaped off the cliff into the churning waters below, followed by Christine and Brett. Pyro sprinted down the trail after them, but the boat’s motor roared to life before he could reach them.
Nick helped Teddy to her feet but said nothing. Teddy wanted to thank him, but he turned back to campus, presumably to repair the damage of their misguided heroics before she could.
From the top of the cliff, Teddy, Jillian, and Dara watched the boat peel away, waves in its wake.
They’d gotten away.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
JUST AFTER DAYBREAK, THE COAST Guard spotted Jeremy Lee’s abandoned speedboat drifting near Alcatraz Island. No sign of Jeremy, Brett, or Christine. Still no word from Molly.
Those facts weighed on Teddy’s mind as she made her way back to UCSF—the same hospital that had treated Molly—on her way to visit Clint. But nothing weighed as heavily on her mind as the opportunity she had lost: to find her mother. Yates knew where she was. Jeremy knew, too. Both had vanished. If Teddy wanted to look for her, she wouldn’t have any idea where to start. And she had the feeling that the organization her mother was somehow involved with knew how to hide people and keep them hidden.
Teddy knocked on Clint’s door and stepped inside only to pull up short at the sight of Rosemary Boyd standing by his bedside.
The sergeant acknowledged Teddy’s presence with a brisk nod, and Teddy waited for her to say something about what had happened the day before, maybe even praise her for saving Clint’s life. But she simply grumbled something about the inefficiency of the hospital staff, and Teddy understood that it was as close as Boyd could come to expressing affection for a colleague.
Clint turned his head toward Teddy. “I’m glad you came.” Their eyes met and held. What had passed between them couldn’t be fixed with four words. Or a single look. But it was a start.
Boyd said nothing, in fact had turned her back on them to stare out the window. It was as if she sensed an emotional moment was transpiring in her presence, and it was too much for her to bear.
To Teddy’s relief, Clint didn’t look too worse for the wear. His left shoulder was bandaged, and his other arm was hooked up to a blood pressure cuff. An IV needle was threaded into his wrist. But other than that, he appeared fine. Terrifying to think how close he’d come to dying. Dara’s vision could have proved correct. The idea that Teddy had saved Clint’s life—by using her astral telekinetic ability, no less—was overwhelming. She still hadn’t fully processed it.
“You’re going to be okay, huh?” she asked.
Clint attempted a shrug, then grimaced. “I might not be able to toss a football for a while,” he said. “But my shoulder will be fine.”
“You did good, Cannon,” Boyd said, as she turned back from the window. “Stuck to your training.”
Teddy looked at her. Was she getting a compliment from Boyd? “Training?”
“That’s what we learn to do in law enforcement and in the military. Protect and serve. We obviously trained you right. Something clicked into place for you to step up to save Corbett.” She set a meaningful stare on Teddy. “You weren’t just looking out for yourself in that tent, Cannon.”
Boyd turned to go. Teddy braced herself for another slap on the back as Boyd passed her. But instead, Boyd just squeezed Teddy’s shoulder. Teddy wasn’t sure whether she preferred Boyd’s praise or punishment. The door clicked behind her.
“Any news from Molly?” Teddy asked.
Clint shifted, adjusting his position on the pillows behind him. “We have no idea where she is.”
“But you think she’s with”—Teddy paused, struggling to remember what Brett had called it—“the Patriot Corps?”
Clint nodded. “We don’t think she went voluntarily.”
At the end, Molly had fought against the Patriot Corps’s interests; otherwise, she wouldn’t have sent the file to Teddy. Just in case. Just in case they tried to kill her? Teddy felt sick. “I can’t help feeling responsible,” she said. “I knew something was off all year.”
“I missed it, too,” Clint said. He sighed. “I think Molly was trying to protect you. Wanted to save you from them in the end. But Jeremy had other ideas.”
Teddy’s heart broke a little more as she thought about how far Molly had gone to protect her, when she had failed so badly to protect Molly.
“It’s just a theory,” Clint continued, “but it adds up.”
“And now she’s gone and I’m still here,” Teddy said.
“We’ll find her,” Clint said. “She’s not lost forever.”
“Not like you thought my mother was,” Teddy said.
“If Marysue is alive,” Clint said, “we’ll find her. I promise.”
There was a knock at the door. “Not interrupting a Hallmark moment, am I?” Nick slipped into the room, looking more handsome than ever in a charcoal gray suit.
“It’s fine,” Teddy said. “I was just leaving.” She’d been avoiding him since he’d shown up with the rest of the Misfits on the cliff’s edge. With any luck, she wouldn’t see him again until next year. She offered Clint a quick smile and squeezed his arm.
Clint winced. “That would have been a Hallmark moment, Teddy, if you’d gone for my uninjured arm.”
“Sorry,” Teddy said. She grabbed her leather jacket and moved to the door.
“I’ll walk you out,” Nick said. “Just in case.”
“I’m a big girl. I’ll be fine.”
She left the room and made her way down the hospital corridor only to have Nick follow. “Teddy, wait.”
She spun around. “What do you want? Another apology? You’ve made it clear you don’t want to hear it. So—”
“No. I don’t want another apology.”
She shook her head. “Look, let’s just forget about everything, okay? Pretend like it never happened. Next year it’ll be like a fresh start. Deal?” She stuck out her hand to shake.
“I’d like that.”
When she looked at him, she wanted to believe him. With every fiber of her being she resisted the urge to read his mind.
He took her hand in his. Rough fingertips grazed her skin. His eyes locked on hers. “Nick Stavros, FBI. Some people know me as just plain ol’ Nick.” He smiled, revealing that dimple.
She wanted things to be different. She wanted to be different. But she wasn’t. She was just herself. She cleared her throat. “Theodora Cannon. Stanford dropout, former gambling addict, current student at the Whitfield Institute for Law Enforcement Training and Development. Once owed over a quarter m
illion dollars to a Russian loan shark. Astral telepath and telekinetic. Misfit. I used to live in my parents’ garage in Las Vegas. My birth parents were psychics, and the government experimented on them and killed my father. My mother is still alive but may be working for a vigilante political psychic assassination squad. Some people call me Teddy for short. But those who know me really well call me TeAnne.”
* * *
Later that night on Angel Island, Teddy sat with her friends at the Cantina, waiting for the last ferry to take them to San Francisco. From there, they’d all enjoy a little time off until returning to school the following year. Soon, with some help, Teddy would try to unlock the puzzle of the Patriot Corps. She would try to figure out how to find Molly and her mother. But for now, all she wanted to do was knock back a cold beer on a warm summer night with three friends who had taught her that even misfits have a place.
“Excuse me.” A guy with a red baseball came up to their table. “Are you Teddy?”
“What’s it to you?” Pyro asked, laughing, taking a swig of his beer.
“Some guy asked me to give you this,” he said, handing Teddy a folded piece of white paper.
“What guy?” Dara said.
The stranger shrugged and returned to the bar.
Teddy opened the crisp white paper, folded neatly in half. Inside, the writing was blocky, bold, large. Scrawled across the page in thick black ink:
I always keep my word.
See you soon, Theodora.
Until then.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
K.C. ARCHER is a pseudonym. School for Psychics is the first book in a new stay-up-all-night series.
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