All Seeing Eye

7

Morning came. That was the best you could say about it. It came. The phone rang twice promptly at seven and then went silent. I didn’t bother to pick it up. There wasn’t anyone I particularly cared to talk to right now, and I doubted whoever was at the other end would take an order for eggs over easy. I swung my legs over the edge of the bed and sat for a moment with aching head in hands. I’d taken the gloves off, all right… for all the good it did. The room was as empty and sterile as the surface of the moon. The cheap furniture was all new, as were the sheets and blanket. The same thin, scratchy wool that I’d slept under at Cane Lake. It made me wonder: Was there, like, one guy who had the market cornered? Was he standing on a street corner hawking his wares? “Institutional blankets! Get your institutional blankets here!” Intimidate children and freeze the asses off adults, what a bargain.

As for the room, I’d gotten exactly jack shit off of it. Even the walls themselves had nothing to tell me. As far as I could tell, I was the first person to have slept here. My buddy Hector Allgood really wasn’t taking any chances. But why? He wanted to use me, use what I could do, yet he was damn sure doing his best to keep me from it. Between trying to puzzle that out and the hangover from trying to suck information out of a place where it simply didn’t exist, the headache was a solid weight behind my eyes. Grimacing, I stood and headed to the bathroom. Maybe I’d luck out and my gracious hosts would’ve left me a bottle of aspirin.

As with the eggs over easy, it just wasn’t happening.

After a quick lukewarm shower-damn military-I dressed in a pair of old jeans and a faded green pullover. I left the black at home. I wasn’t looking to impress anyone here, wasn’t trying to put on a show. As a matter of fact, the less impressive I was, the happier I would be. Hell, if I could get them to buy the fact I was a fake, maybe they’d put my ass on a bus and send me home. Allgood had me backed into a corner thanks to Glory; I had no choice but to cooperate. But there was cooperation, and then there was cooperation. So what if Charlie had passed on a few rumors? Like Hector had said, he hadn’t seen anything firsthand. So then, why couldn’t I be just a con man, one exceptionally lucky and talented con man? Staring at myself in the bathroom mirror as I pulled wet hair back into a ponytail, I gave a snort. What the hell. It couldn’t hurt to try.

When the rattle of a key in a lock came at the door, I was more than ready to go. A concrete shoe box wasn’t my idea of plush accommodations, and I wanted out. Now. There was a chance I could be going somewhere worse, but right then, it didn’t matter. I just wanted out. Sitting at the desk, I straddled the chair, propped an elbow on the back, and rested chin in newly gloved hand. I was casual, relaxed, cool… and the walls were not closing in. Just as they had not been closing in all night. As for the door, the door that was still stubbornly closed, it would open. Any time now. The lock made a grudging, reluctant sound. Yeah, any time. Any goddamn time. The metal slab finally swung open, which was nice. Yeah, very nice. Nice that I didn’t have to get up and give it a vicious kick.

“About time.” I grunted. “You have my paper and Belgian waffles?”

The man in the doorway ignored me, replaced the keys on his belt, and jerked his head toward the hall. “Let’s go.”

It wasn’t Hector, who obviously had better things to do with his time, but the guy was military all the same. And this time, I had a uniform to back it up. Army green. Blackmailing more victims before nine A.M. than most people blackmail all day. Wouldn’t their mamas be proud? Standing, I stretched and then swiveled to reach for my duffel bag. “Leave it,” came the order. With a low forehead, a heavily acne-scarred jaw of pure granite, and the flat black eyes of a cottonmouth, GI Joe made Hector look like a damn teddy bear.

“That mean I’ll be spending another night here in the Taj Mahal?” I asked, not bothering to hide my displeasure.

Cottonmouths aren’t like rattlers. There’s no spine-chilling sound of Satan’s castanets to warn you what’s coming your way. There’s only the bunch and flash of pure muscle before the pain of liquid lightning spreading through your screaming flesh. You might see the cold gleam of the corpse-white that lines its mouth before the fangs bury themselves in you, but often you don’t. It’s simply too goddamn fast. A human cottonmouth wasn’t much different. I’d started to turn away from my bag and back toward Hector’s replacement when the fist hit the side of my neck and jaw. It wasn’t a punch, although it had sucker written all over it. It was a clubbing blow, meant to take me down to the floor. And take me down it did.

I caught myself on my knees and managed to snag the chair with one hand. The combination of the two kept me upright, barely. I shook my head as black spots spread like oil across my vision. My left ear rang unpleasantly as the heat began to spread and my skin began to tingle and tighten. Sucking in a breath, I waited for my vision to clear. As a replacement for caffeine, this was not the morning picker-upper I was looking for, but I had no one to blame but myself. Well, okay, I could blame the subhuman piece of shit in a uniform, too, but there was no getting around the fact that I should’ve been ready for him. Cane Lake had taught me never to turn my back on anyone, especially an employee of our beloved government. Thinking those lessons didn’t apply in the adult world was a mistake I couldn’t afford to make, not again.

“Let’s go, asshole,” was the bored echo.

I had to give him points; he was nothing if not consistent. Counting myself lucky that he hadn’t planted a boot in the small of my back while I was vulnerable, I climbed back to my feet. The dancing black blobs were dissipating almost as quickly as the burning of my face was building. That was going to be a nasty one. Cautiously, I pressed fingers to my jaw and worked it back and forth. Not broken, but chewing wasn’t going to be a friend of mine any time soon. Worse yet, the bastard was wearing gloves-Hector’s doing no doubt. Thanks to the sanctity of the almighty experiment, I hadn’t even gotten the quickest of readings off the punch.

“Good one.” I gave him a grin, hard and bright. It hurt, but damned if I’d let him see that. “You related to my step-daddy?”

I could see the coiling consideration behind the black glass of his dead gaze. Was it worth being a few minutes late to give me another mind-your-manners? In the end, we must have been on a tight schedule, because he took a handful of my shirt and shoved me toward the door. I let him. If Glory hadn’t been an issue, maybe I could’ve given him something to think about. I didn’t delude myself into thinking I could take him in a fair fight. He outweighed me by a good fifty pounds of pure muscle, not to mention that I hadn’t been trained by the Army to kill smart-ass red-haired psychics with my bare hands. Nope, a fair fight was out. But then again, who ever said I fought fair? GI Joe was on my list. It might take me a while to get around to him, but I would.

Grocery lists I lost; my shit list was forever.

Outside and trudging through ankle-deep soup, I ended up three buildings over with a headache, a jaw ache, and an utterly trashed pair of formerly black sneakers. Stained and heavy with good, honest red Georgia mud, they were promptly toed off when I passed through the door. By the time I reached Hector, I was one pissed-off prisoner in socked feet. Cooperate? Right, you son of a bitch. You think I’m psychic? Then you just fucking try to prove it.

The room was big and in some ways the very picture of a lecture hall, or so I imagined. I’d never gone to college. How many times had Boyd sneered at the thought of that? More than I could count. Ending up on my own, I could’ve gone. I had the money eventually, but by that time, I was in my mid-twenties, and those kids… Jesus, they seemed so young. So damn young, like a different species. Dump a sharp-toothed alley cat like me in the midst of those sleek, pampered pets, I couldn’t see it. Maybe once white trash wasn’t always white trash. But a freak is ever a freak, and freaks don’t play well with the normal kiddies. It didn’t make that much of a difference in the end. An undernourished sex life left plenty of time for reading. Who knew blue balls would make for a self-educated man?

Allgood and four technicians in white lab coats were conferring around a table loaded down with machinery, some of which looked oddly familiar. I couldn’t put my finger on what exactly had cranked up that uneasy feeling tickling the back of my brain, but something had. With my less-than-loyal and unmuzzled guard dog at my back, I moved down the shallow tile steps to the front row of seats and sat down. At least there was no fold-out desk or number two pencils. Without looking up, Hector dismissed my new best friend. Seconds later, he straightened, took me in, and ordered dispassionately, “Sergeant, stop.” Only a sergeant? I was surprised that his cream hadn’t risen a little further to the top. An amoral, fun-loving sadist like him should be a general by now.

Suddenly, Hector was looming over me with assessing eyes-Charlie’s eyes-studying my face. “What happened?”

Although the question was directed at me, Sergeant Sunshine decided to provide an answer. “He tried to make a run for it. I had to clock him one.”

“Is that so?” This time, Hector made sure I was involved in the conversation. “Mr. Eye, is that what happened?”

Snorting, I stretched my legs out and raised my eyebrows. “Oh, yeah,” I commented sardonically. “I was halfway over the fence before your boy caught me. I was like a frigging gazelle in that mud.”

“And the hell with your sister,” he said quietly.

I tapped a socked toe against the floor and responded with a yawn that automatically had my hand wanting to cradle my screaming jaw. I fisted it and held back. Never let anyone see a

weakness: Cane Lake 101.

“That’s right. The hell with Glory.”

I didn’t bother to tell the truth; I didn’t bother to lie. Why? What would be the point? What did it matter? It wasn’t up to me who Allgood would believe. People typically made up their minds without any messy facts or, God forbid, the actual truth. Trying to tell my side of it wouldn’t accomplish much more than making my jaw hurt worse.

“I see.” Hector started up the stairs. “Borelli, come with me.”

Allgood wasn’t wearing a uniform, but he obviously ranked higher than the sergeant, as Borelli turned smartly and followed him. It was nearly twenty minutes before Hector returned, alone. He had a bottle of water with him and a small container of Tylenol. He handed them to me, sat in the seat next to mine, and asked, “Do you need medical attention?”

I popped the top on the Tylenol and gave him a curious sideways glance. “No. I’ve had worse. Sergeant Sunshine hits like a girl.”

He looked like he wanted to give a snort of his own, then he offered matter-of-factly, “Well, he’ll have time to grow into a woman now. He’s in lockup, and there his ass will stay until I say differently. I don’t tolerate abuse from my men.”

“Yeah, it’s only the upstanding blackmail you go for.” Ignoring the water, I dry-swallowed a nonrecommended dose of the painkiller. “When do we get this show on the road?”

“And he only punched you the once? What restraint.” He rubbed a hand over a suddenly tired face. Judging by the lines in his face, Hector had skipped more than last night’s sleep. He looked years older than his age, with a weariness that only comes from many sleepless nights. “It won’t be long. Leave your gloves on. I want the results of this experiment to be immaculate. We don’t have time for anything less, not now.” Allgood was wearing a lab coat, too, and I was beginning to think he came by it honestly.

“What are you, Allgood?” I demanded abruptly. “A scientist? A soldier? What the hell are you?”

“Why can’t I be both?” he responded with faint amusement. He stood, fished around in one coat pocket, and tossed me two pudding cups and a plastic spoon. “Here, breakfast. It’s all we have time for.” Then he added with mocking humor, “And it’s soft.”

So much for sympathy. I gave an internal grumble. My stomach echoed that grumble, and I peeled the plastic film from the top of the first cup and went to work. Chocolate caramel. Not bad. By the time I polished both of them off, my “peers” had arrived. In one big group, they must’ve been bused in. Bright-eyed and chipper, I’d have bet they all had more than a pudding cup for breakfast. And if I thought their eyes were bright, I only had to take a good look at their clothes. Jesus Christ. I slumped down lower in the chair.

My people, joy.

Yeah, I’d admit to playing to the crowd. It was part of the gig. But there was a line I drew. These guys played cat’s cradle with that line, and they did it while wearing velvet robes and rhinestone-studded turbans. Although, to be completely honest, there were a few who went in the other direction. They dressed like college professors or Matrix extras. Dark suits, turtlenecks, a discreet diamond-accented watch. Hell, one guy even had a TV show. It was local to New York, but I caught it occasionally on cable and laughed myself sick. New York… Allgood had indeed cast his net far and wide. I wondered what story he’d told them-the same one he’d tried to spin in my office? A nice, safe, academic study of psychic phenomena? Didn’t those guys see the fence, the guards? I snorted into my empty pudding cup. Psychic, my ass. They didn’t even qualify as mildly observant.

“Jackson, sugar, is that you?”

I rolled my eyes upward to see a familiar face. “Madame,” I said easily. “I’m surprised to see you here. Funny how fast five to ten flies.”

The round face hardened as mascara-ringed eyes narrowed to venomous slits. “Always the sweet talker, aren’t you, Eye?”

I raised the unopened water bottle in her direction. “A toast. Accused but never convicted. You give us all something to shoot for, Joyce.”

Joyce Ann Tingle, otherwise known as Madame Maya Eilish, was self-proclaimed queen of Atlanta. Hell, she all but ruled the tristate area. She was as adept at dodging charges as she was at robbing her clients blind. Not content simply to deal the cards or gaze blankly into a crystal ball, she sold spells and curse removals. Two thousand was the going rate for the latter. Pretty good money to wave a chicken feather in your general direction. And then there was the rumor that she’d had a rival’s shop burned down-while he was in it. A canny businesswoman, indeed. A seared lump in the burn unit doesn’t provide much in the way of competition.

With a sweep of silk muumuu, she waddled off and left me to my devices. Here was hoping I had an untorched shop left to go home to… that is, if I survived this. The rest of the “psychics” milled about before finally settling into chairs scattered throughout the room. Before us, they were assembling cubicles; back to back, there were eight total. Apparently, this was going to be the assembly line of paranormal testing. In and out and moving on to the next self-made Nostradamus. And that was precisely how it went. Four at a time, the guinea pigs were shuffled down one at a time to individual carpeted boxes, where whitecoats waited for them in opposite cubicles. The shared wall prevented any visual cues to the psychics, and from the flat drone of the voices asking the questions, audio cues weren’t exactly flying fast and loose, either. With nothing but the backs of interchangeable inquisitioners to look at and unable to make out their low mutter, I let my lids fall and indulged in a short snooze. It didn’t seem long, but when a hand at my shoulder shook me awake, more than two-thirds of the clairvoyant crowd was gone. Lucky them.

“Your turn.”

I looked up at Hector and pasted a grin on my aching face. “Ready to be dazzled?” I hoped it would be by my amazing talent for utter and complete bullshit. Lying to prove I wasn’t psychic-it had to be a first in this group.

Raising eyebrows, he gave the deadpan answer, “Always.” When I was up and moving, he added, “Third cubicle, take a seat.”

As I walked, I pictured how it would go in my head, how I hoped it would. I wasn’t smug or stupid enough to think it was going to be a piece of cake. Allgood was many things, a son of a bitch chief among them, but gullible he was not. I had one chance, and it was a damn slim one. Then I saw what waited for me in the cubicle, and that chance instantly evaporated. The equipment that had looked so familiar

… up close, it clicked. I recognized it from countless TV shows and movies. It was a lie detector. A damn lie detector. I froze with one hand resting on the back of the cheap plastic chair. Was I screwed? Let us count the ways.

“Sit down, Mr. Eye. I’ll hook you up personally.” At my elbow, my own private shark watched with an inscrutable gaze.

Outmaneuvered, I wasn’t used to it, and I didn’t like it. Then again, I doubted Hector much cared what I did or did not like. I felt my eyes go flat and distant, and then… I sat. What else was left to me? I was painted into a corner there was no getting out of. At his order, I took my gloves off while he pulled on his own pair, latex surgical ones. My movement revealed the tattoo on my palm. Allgood noticed it instantly. “Unusual.” He leaned in for a closer look. “Appropriate, though, for the All Seeing Eye.”

It was a tattoo of a wide-open eye taking up nearly the entire surface of the palm. I flexed my hand and said mockingly, “It’s cheaper than a billboard.”

“There’s no denying that. You seem to have advertising down to an art.” He shook his head and Velcroed a probe to my index finger. “Is there a reason it’s blue?”

Yeah, there was a reason. And that very reason meant the question wasn’t my favorite one. It was the kind that Abby had long learned to avoid and that Glory had already lived through the answer to. Tess was gone, but I carried her with me every day, etched on my skin. But I wasn’t hooked up to the polygraph yet, was I? Charlie’s brother could choke on his idle curiosity.

“No. No reason. And also, Hector, none of your goddamn business.”

“Fair enough,” he said, without offense. He looped a blood-pressure cuff around my upper arm and finally finished up with a strap around my chest. Pulse, blood pressure, and respiration, pinned down six ways from Sunday. It was common knowledge that this type of thing wasn’t foolproof, and an amoral bastard like me had no qualms about lying, but I’d seen enough of Allgood already to know he’d make the damn machine all but sit up and sing. Thanks, Glory, I thought with resignation. Now both of us are out of luck.

When Allgood finished with me, he said aloud, “Begin.”

From the other side, my unseen questioner started. He went through a list of basic questions, the usual drill for setting up a baseline of responses, I was guessing. Is your name blah blah? Do you have a sister named… on and on. At least they weren’t too personal. They could’ve been much worse. Hector was bound to know my past. He was a man who did his homework, and it was all in the public domain. Certainly it was to someone as connected as he seemed to be, and maybe to just about anyone else. After all, the shooting had been declared self-defense. It was part of my Child Protective Services record, not a criminal one that would’ve been sealed when I turned eighteen.

And then there were the newspapers. They’d had a field day. It was front-page news: White Trash Massacre! That’d been the local down-home paper. They didn’t hold much to journalistic ethics.

They even took pictures of the bloody porch of the house after the bodies were removed.

Bastards.

When my base reactions were captured, the real questions began. “I’m holding up a card,” came the first. “Is it blue?”

Je-sus. Trapped and subjected to this deadly dull crap. Not a fate worse than death but close. Damn close. “I don’t know,” I said flatly.

“Yes-or-no answers, Mr. Eye,” Allgood corrected firmly at my shoulder.

“It’s not a yes-or-no question,” I shot back, irritated. Too bad it wouldn’t keep on in this vein, but Hector knew about my gloves. Knew about me. He wouldn’t be fooled.

“Then how about we rephrase,” he said, taking over for the moment. “Do you know the color of the card?”

“No.” Smooth and unbroken, the line recorded my truth.

“Would you know the color of any of the cards your tester held up?”

As it stood now? “No.” Indifferently, I ran a short thumbnail along the fake wood beneath my hands.

“Then let’s try something different.” Allgood moved around to the other side of the testing area. When he returned, he had a watch in his hand. It was older, the metal worn and brimming with all sorts of goodies. Fatalistically, I watched as Hector let it fall into the palm of my hand. There was no way out of it now.

“Let’s start with his name.” Folding his arms, he put a foot on the metal frame of my chair and moved it and me a few inches so he could see my face… my eyes. I had the feeling Allgood’s instincts were as reliable as any lie detector. “Is it Marcus?”

And here we were.

“You know what? You have me.” Now, there was a truth you didn’t need a machine to register. He did have me, and I might as well face up to it. Between Glory, the machine, and Hector’s innate savvy, I didn’t have any recourse. No fucking recourse at all. “You own my balls, and there’s not a damn thing I can do about it, so why don’t we speed this up.” I tossed the watch up, caught it, then slapped it down. “His name is Thomas Jerome Hickman. He went to Columbia University. He has a master’s in psychology, a wife named Beverly, a leaky toilet, an overweight cat called Alexander the Great with a leaky bladder to match, a mortgage that is eating him alive, and, oh

…” I smiled, a dark and curdled motion. “He’s wearing a pair of women’s underwear. Yellow panties with pink rosebuds. Big-girl undies, size fourteen. Too much sitting behind a desk, eh, Tommy?”

Hearing the faint sound of choking from behind the partition, it was almost worth it. Yeah, almost.

“Sir.” The voice wasn’t so blandly vanilla now. “That is absolutely not true, I swear. I can show you.” There was more choking, this time more pronounced. “I mean… no. Let me…”

I took pity, more on myself than on the invisible jackass. “Tighty whiteys,” I admitted with a snort. “But the rest is true.”

“It looks like Charlie was right about you.” Hector shook his head ruefully. There was still a healthy dose of skepticism in his eyes, but it was colored by a reluctant amazement. It was one thing to be open-minded, more for your brother than for yourself, but it was another altogether to actually see proof before your eyes. “I should’ve known. Charlie was right about everything.” The cautious wonder disappeared so quickly it should’ve qualified as a magic trick. “Ordinarily.”

And just like that, the almost-human Hector was gone, replaced once again by the embodiment of a true military man. Stiff upper lip, an even stiffer spine, and eyes empty and neutral. “Make yourself comfortable, Mr. Eye. You have a long day ahead of you.”

He wasn’t lying. For hours, I read person after person, all in lab coats and all with the most boring personal objects money could buy. Watches or wedding rings were the usual currency passed my way. Not one yo-yo or good-luck charm or whimsical key chain. Nope, it was a singularly mundane crowd here at Alcatraz. No flash, no pizzazz, no sense of personal style, not an ounce of showmanship. Abby would’ve been appalled and certain it was nothing a few sequins and rhinestones couldn’t have fixed. Sparkling lab coats for one and all. Step right up.

Hopelessly bland my testers may have been, but to give credit where it’s due, they were fairly quick-witted… once they finally got in gear. Almost immediately, they wanted to know why I couldn’t simply read people instead of their belongings. And thanks to the polygraph and the silently looming presence of Allgood, I was forced to admit that I could. Hell, it wouldn’t have made any sense if I couldn’t have. But the difference between reading a person and reading something that belonged to him was the difference between IMAX and a nineteen-inch television. It was simply too much. Coming at you from all sides with a voice louder than an arsonist God at the burning bush. It soaked every molecule, pounded every neuron in your brain. There was no distance, no taking a breather. Every time I took someone’s hand, it was a guaranteed skull-crushing headache and the taste of blood and tin in my mouth. Believe it or not, that wasn’t my idea of a good time.

Not that my new pals would’ve given a shit. So why bother to tell them? Like a trained monkey, I did what I was told. Read objects, read people, and finally laughed grimly when they wanted to know if I could “see” the future, move things with my mind, or, even better, start fires.

“Jesus,” I said with some disdain. “You guys watched too much X-Files in your day. Read too many trashy books. Even I don’t believe in that crap.”

“What about life after death?”

With head resting in my hands and a death grip on my skull, I looked up at Hector’s studiously blank face. Charlie was gone, and I knew what he wanted to hear. Maybe I would’ve been kinder if I weren’t being blackmailed. Maybe I wouldn’t, as I’d faced the truth about Tess long ago. I didn’t know for sure. But I did know that at this moment, I didn’t feel kind. My head hurt, my jaw hurt, I was tired and hungry, and I was mad. Yeah, I was pissed as hell, and that did not lead to the path of gentle kindness.

“Grow up, Hector,” I drawled. “There’s no great beyond. No fluffy clouds and halos. No tunnel with a big family reunion at the end. Not once have I ever picked up anything beyond the death of someone when touching an object. Gone is gone. Dead is dead.” I closed my eyes as the headache swelled, and as I so often did, I saw a lonely pink shoe. The clearest memory of my life, so bright and diamond-sharp that I almost believed I could put out a hand and pick it up. I never tried. I’d already done that once, and from that moment, nothing had ever been completely right or good in my life again.

“Dead is dead,” I repeated with a tightness that thrummed behind my voice like an overly taut guitar string.

I wouldn’t have been too surprised if Allgood had hauled off and popped me one or at the very least walked away. It was his brother I was talking about. Then again, he’d already locked up the one guy who’d beat him to the punch, so to speak. It was my second guess that hit the jackpot. He did walk away, but not before startling me with a hand that rested for the briefest of moments on my shoulder. He knew about Tess and the others. He could guess I’d give anything to believe different… but it wasn’t different. I was literal proof of that.

“Not always,” he countered with a trace of bleakness he either couldn’t hide or didn’t try to. Then he did walk away to herd the last of the “psychics” out. Hours had passed, although it seemed like days, and it didn’t look like anyone else had made the cut. Didn’t I feel special? Shit.

I dropped my gaze back to the desk surface and tried to ignore Hickman’s endless chatter at my elbow. Good old TJ Hickman had finally come from around the partition. And as always, I was dead on the money. If he had worn women’s panties, they would’ve been big-girl for sure. Pear-shaped, stammering, and cheerfully harmless as a puppy, he regarded me with moon-pie eyes. Round and wide, they had the recaptured belief in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and Merlin’s magic all swimming around in there. I’d seen it before. Show people something slightly askew from their normal world, and they’d use it as an excuse to put a bright and shiny glow on their whole damn life. It turned them into kids again. Why, I didn’t know. What kind of miracle was it that I knew his wife made a buckwheat and soy casserole that kept him constipated for days and that he had a box of Twinkies hidden in his garage? Or that his ever-loving mama had sent him to a fat camp every summer he was in high school? Dull, boring, and kind of pitiful, yes. Miracle? No.

“Tylenol,” I muttered between clenched teeth, ruthlessly interrupting his words raining like bright coins.

“Oh. You have a headache?” The stuttering kid on Christmas morning disappeared under the thirty-five-year-old professional. “Is that often a side effect of what you do? How intense a headache do you get? Do you have visual disturbances with them?”

I ignored the questions and repeated with a limp snarl, “Tylenol. I could spell it, but I’d think a guy with a master’s could figure it out on his own.”

The wide mouth snapped shut, and hazel eyes blinked. Nodding, he disappeared in search of the almighty painkiller. Hickman had about as much spine as your average garden slug. Pleasant, good-hearted, but he was there for reasons that trumped his academic background. It was a trait similar in all the lab coats I’d read today. Placid, fearful of authority, and unlikely to stick their noses where they might be chopped off.

In other words, like me, they didn’t know shit.

Division of labor, they called it. I’d picked that out of one of the many brains I’d stirred through. There was an operation already running, Project Summerland. They were to screen for any possible psychic talent for the project, and that was all they knew. Sum total of their nonknowledge. And while some were more curious than others, no one had poked around to see what they could find out. They accepted the sketchy information they were given and did what they were told. Not a single troublemaker in the lot. I’d bet my ass Hector had handpicked every last damn one of them. Of course, this would be the same Hector who hadn’t let me read him as the day had dragged on. Everyone else had been fair game but not Allgood. Not the only person in the room who actually seemed to know what was going on. Wouldn’t want to throw me a crumb, now, would he?

By the time Allgood returned, I was in the process of popping three more painkillers. He glanced at my still-unopened bottle of water. “You are a glutton for punishment, aren’t you?”

“I’m here, aren’t I?” I put the heels of my hands over my eyes and rubbed.

“Yes, and I realize exactly how much choice you’ve had in that.” He looked as tired as I felt. “Come on, Eye. I’ll take you to medical, then to get something to eat.”

I dropped my hands and shook my head. “No. I already said I don’t need a doctor.” And neither did I need to end the day by being poked and prodded by some sadist with icy hands.

“Hickman said you have a headache.” He picked up the bottle of water and rolled it between his hands. “It’s obvious that it’s from what you’ve been doing today.”

“Yeah, couldn’t have been that punch to the jaw,” I said with an antagonistic grunt.

“Very well.” He sighed as he tossed the bottle to a lab coat walking by. “Then you’ll have the EEG and a CAT scan tomorrow. Now, let’s see what fine cuisine they’re serving in the mess.”

I’d imagined the tests would come headache or no. Map the brain, map the ability. Map me. I rubbed my eyes again and rose to my feet. “As long as you don’t make me read the pork and beans,” I grunted as I slipped my gloves back on.

The cafeteria, luckily enough, was in the same building. No slogging through mud was required, which was good, considering I’d long lost track of my shoes. The place was empty except for a few chattering whitecoats and two soldiers off in a corner. It was stuffed cabbage roll night, apparently, and I passed over it in favor of sticky macaroni and cheese, greens, runny instant mashed potatoes, and a glass of chocolate milk. Unfortunately, there was no beer on tap. Just my luck. I was hungry enough that I could actually eat the swill, and I did, shoveling it down with need if not enthusiasm.

“Not a big cabbage roll fan?” Allgood sat down opposite me as the table rocked on one uneven leg from the added weight of his tray.

“Vegetarian,” I said succinctly. The piece of white bread I’d been given on the side was rock-hard, but I slathered it with butter and ate it anyway. It wasn’t any worse than Cane Lake food. Wasn’t any better, either, but it wasn’t worse.

“Does that have anything to do with your…” He fished a small bottle from his pocket, poured a shot of foamy white liquid, and chugged it before finishing. “Talent?”

Quick. Always so quick. Like his brother had been. With the edge of my appetite less sharp, I began to shove piles of food back and forth with my fork. It was an old habit, one that had gotten my ears boxed but good in the Boyd days. After all, one shouldn’t waste the precious food that his lazy ass had nothing to do with putting on the table.

“It’s not like people,” I offered absently. “I don’t get clear memories, just fuzzy flashes. Nuzzling for milk, the falling rain on your back, the smell of wet hay.” I looked away from the ground beef on his plate. “The feel of a steel bolt punching through your skull.”

There was silence, then the sound of porcelain scraping the surface of the table as Allgood pushed his plate away. “What do you sense when you drink that?”

I looked up to see him indicate my glass of milk and almost smiled despite myself. “Warm sun and sweet grass.”

If I had a bad day, which, now that I ran my own life, was a helluva lot less than the old days, I sat on the floor with Houdini, placed a hand on his broad head, and soaked up endless doggy wonder. A full stomach, a well-chewed toy, a soft couch-through a dog’s eyes, that was a true glory that couldn’t be matched, the only heaven in existence. I missed the furball, missed him like crazy. I turned my attention back to my food and quickly cleaned the plate. I didn’t waste any more words on Allgood. He was the reason I was missing my dog, my carefully constructed life.

Either sensing my mood, which wasn’t hard to do, or too tired to make further conversation, he left me alone as I finished eating. Then we were off to retrieve my muddy shoes and make our way back through the swamp to my luxurious suite. If possible, it seemed smaller than it had before. A shoe box to cram me into as if I were a crow with a broken wing.

I just wasn’t sure if I was going to be nursed back to health or buried in the backyard.

“How’s your head?”

I sat on the bed and skinned off my shirt. “Fine,” I said shortly.

“Jaw?”

He did go on and on about the suddenly precarious state of my health. If I was a cat, he’d already be digging a hole in the backyard for my ass.

“You know,” I offered matter-of-factly, “the concern would be a helluva lot more sincere if you weren’t the cause of all this. Wonder what Charlie would say about how you’re treating his old roommate.” I didn’t say “friend.” I wasn’t that much of a hypocrite, not even to drive home the sharpest of points.

And sharp it was. Allgood’s knuckles tightened to the whiteness of bone on the doorknob. “Who knows?” he said in a voice empty and cold. “Perhaps you’ll get to ask him.” The door closed between us, and I was left to ponder the implications of that.

Could be it was the backyard for me after all.