“Am I,” Eerie said slowly, searching for words, “in trouble?”
“That would be the gist of it, yes,” Gaul said patiently. “Quite a bit.”
He gave her a minute to let the news sink in. Eerie said nothing, a vacant smile on her face, her head cocked to the side and her eyes focused on nothing that he could see. The silence stretched out longer than he thought that he could stand.
“I don’t want to be,” Eerie concluded.
“Ah. Yes,” Gaul agreed slowly. “Yes, I would imagine so.”
Again, the silence stretched out until Gaul felt practically compelled to cough.
“Uh, I’m — I’m sorry?” Eerie said hopefully, her hands clasped between her knees. “For whatever?”
“You can’t rectify this situation simply by apologizing, Eerie. In this particular case, it might be more appropriate to…” Gaul trailed off when he realized that Eerie had her hand held up politely above her head, waiting to be called on as if she were in a classroom. “Yes, Eerie?”
“I am very sorry,” Eerie said firmly. “A lot sorrier than before.”
“Yes,” Gaul said, coughing. “I do understand. However, I think that…”
“Eerie,” Rebecca cut in, leaning over Gaul’s shoulder, from where she perched on top of one of his filing cabinets. “Why San Francisco?”
Gaul had to combat the urge to bury his head in his hands, to shout at either of the infuriating women who had occupied his office and turned this conversation into a farce, but he did not. Not the least because he was not entirely sure what he wanted to do about Eerie in the first place. If Rebecca had any kind of solution, it was worth tolerating her interruptions.
“You don’t like San Francisco?”
Eerie rubbed her temples and looked puzzled.
“No, why did you want to go to San Francisco?”
“Oh. I wanted to shop, and then to go dancing.”
“Right, but couldn’t you do that anywhere?” Rebecca persisted. “Why there specifically?”
“In San Francisco,” Eerie confided, “no one cares how I look, no matter where I go.”
“I see,” Rebecca said patiently. Gaul didn’t see at all, but he passed on speaking. He could feel the Ether ripple as Rebecca reached for Eerie, empathically, the probe both subtle and profound. His interest perked up — his understanding had always been that empathy worked poorly on changelings, due to their alien consciousness and neural chemistry. “Why did you want to bring Alex, Eerie?”
To his surprise, Eerie looked away suddenly.
“I, uh, I wanted to go dancing,” Eerie said evasively, scuffing her sneakers on the wooden floor of Gaul’s office. “You know. With him. But it didn’t work out.”
“You mean because the Weir…”
Eerie shook her head, and then was forced to push her unruly blue hair back behind her ears.
“No, because he wouldn’t dance,” Eerie said, pouting. “It’s hard. Alex is scared of lots and lots of things. He got two beds.”
“He what?” Gaul asked, trying very hard to follow along.
“At the hotel,” Eerie said, shrugging. “He didn’t even ask me first.”
“Really? Wow,” Rebecca said earnestly, looking mortified. “That’s pretty lame.”
“Rebecca!” Gaul snapped.
“Right, sorry,” Rebecca said, shaking her head and returning to the task. “Eerie, why did you ask Anastasia for help?”
“Oh. Easy one,” Eerie said, seeming pleased. “She said to.”
“She told you to ask her for help?”
“Yes.”
If Rebecca was trying to draw her out, it didn’t work. Eerie just waited patiently, tapping one foot alternately against the ground and her chair leg. Gaul poured himself a glass from the carafe of water his secretary had left on the desk to have something to do while Rebecca frowned furiously, trying to work something out.
“Why? Why would she do something like that?” Rebecca wondered.
“Ask her,” Eerie suggested. “When I want to know something, that’s what I do.”
Rebecca looked at Eerie hard, but she didn’t flinch. Gaul could feel the power in the room, every atom in the air energized, attracting and repelling in a frenzy of ozone and negatively charged ions. He couldn’t tell if it affected Eerie at all. Her eyes remained blank, wet and dilated, and her body language placid to the point of being slack.
“Eerie, I have to ask. Did you know that Alex was coming here? Before he actually showed up?”
“I heard stories,” she said, nodding in confirmation.
“No… before that. Before anyone had heard of Alex here at the Academy. You knew about him, didn’t you?” Rebecca said, leaning forward, so caught up that she hadn’t even touched the cigarette that burned in the ashtray that Gaul kept specifically for her. There was no one else, after all, that he would have tolerated smoking in his office.
Eerie looked away again. Gaul and Rebecca exchanged glances. This, he thought, sipping his water, was something.
“I don’t have to talk about it,” Eerie said, the music disappearing from her voice abruptly, which was instead flat and miserable.
“How did you know that, Eerie? Precognition?” Rebecca pressed on. “Was that how you knew about Alex?”
“I don’t have to talk about it and I don’t want to talk about it,” Eerie said, suddenly animated. Gaul blinked hard, trying to clear his vision, but it looked the same no matter what he did — around the changeling, and the air seemed filled with translucent golden motes, moving in lazy, counter-clockwise circles, trailing golden dust behind them that slowly dissipated into thin air. Despite Rebecca’s cigarette, he could smell a distinct odor of sandalwood. “And if you don’t stop leaning on me, Rebecca, then I am going to have to leave, and I am going to cry, and then I am going to complain, because you cannot do this to me, because I am not the same as you, and because I have always done my best, since I was little, and because you don’t have a right to try and peak inside my head, and it is wrong that you are trying to make me okay with telling you things that I am not okay with telling you, and it is wrong because there are two of you and I am all alone, and I am trying to make friends because you told me that I had to make friends, and now that I am trying you are angry with me, and this is not fair and — ”
Gaul stood up and clapped his hands together. Both women snapped their attention to him, and after a moment, the charged atmosphere receded, both of them returning to their respective corners.
“Enough. Rebecca, Eerie is right. She has made the request, and she does have a right to her privacy. There will be no further attempts to influence you, Eerie.”
“But it isn’t right that she — oh. Uh,” Eerie hesitated, flustered. “Well, good then. Can I go now?”
“No, Eerie,” Gaul said gently. “You are still very much in trouble.”
“Oh.” She hesitated, tugging at the hem of her skirt the same way she had when she was a child. “I’d rather not be, if that’s okay.”
Gaul sighed deeply; wishing that a deity he didn’t believe in would note his suffering and take appropriate action to alleviate it. Possibly via lightning. However, nothing happened, so he was left to muddle along in his own way.
“Eerie, would you mind waiting outside with Mrs. Barrett until I call you? Rebecca and I have some things we need to talk about…”
“Yes, please,” Eerie said eagerly, jumping from her chair and heading for the door.
He waited until she was out of the room before he turned to Rebecca, which gave him time to get his temper under control. Gaul wasn’t opposed to his subordinates showing initiative — as long as they were successful.
“I am your boss,” he reminded her sternly. “You are supposed to ask me before you do crazy things.”
“Sorry,” Rebecca said, realizing her cigarette had burnt to ash in the tray and lighting a fresh one. “I blew it. I thought I could influence her, maybe figure out whether she was telling the truth. I had no idea she would be able to sense it, I thought I had that whole part of her brain shut down. Fuck, Gaul, what does that kid use for a mind? I can’t begin to describe what it is like in there. Poor thing.”
“Hold off on Eerie for a moment,” Gaul said, wishing that he didn’t have to discuss this, but circumstances were what they would be. He had seen the situation coming this morning, in the shower, but that didn’t make the reality of it any more pleasant. He preferred not to get involved in the personal lives of his subordinates, but sometimes, the barrier between personal and professional inevitably became altogether too thin for his tastes. “What exactly is going on with you?”
If Rebecca’s surprise wasn’t genuine, then he was no judge of her emotions at all. She looked bowled over by the change in direction the conversation had taken.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean what you just attempted with our resident Changeling, or the stunt you pulled with Alex in front of Gerald Windsor a few months ago — yes, of course, he told me about it. In addition, three days ago, you attempted to erase the part of my memory that tracks your sick days. You have accrued a hefty deficit, I might add.”
Rebecca swore profusely and then kicked one of his filing cabinets, paining him. She didn’t seem to notice or care about his disapproval, but eventually her histrionics became hysterics, and she laughed herself back down.
“I’m sorry, guilty as charged,” Rebecca admitted, wiping her eyes. “I got a swelled head. Started messing around in Alistair’s backyard. No need to ask, boss, I swear off unauthorized telepathy in the future.”
“Did you really think I would let it drop that easily? I see patterns, Rebecca, the overall fabric of events; you know that. Do I need to spell things out for you? How many times have you had individual sessions with Alex?”
“Once a week for the last couple months,” Rebecca said, fidgeting and tapping her cigarette against the desk more than was necessary. “Once a week, when he first came here. The kid is all kinds of fucked up, Gaul. Keeping him functioning is half of my job around here.”
“Then the scope of your responsibilities has diminished greatly. How often do you use his catalytic abilities? How often is the feedback effect part of the therapy?”
“Every time,” Rebecca admitted hollowly, then added in an even quieter voice. “Pretty much.”
“Then I think it is safe to assume your protocols have grown more powerful with each session. You were always an amazing empath, Rebecca, but you were never much of a telepath. Disappearing? Probing a Changeling? Tampering with your boss’s mind, when your boss is a precognitive, and knew about your plan a week before you decided to put into action? None of that is normal behavior for you. The increase in your abilities doesn’t completely fade when you break contact, does it?”
Rebecca smoked quietly for a moment, assessing.
“The immediate boost drops off pretty fast. However, a subtle, lasting effect persists for days. At first, I didn’t even really notice it. And there is… something else.”
“Yes?”
“I figured it out a week or two after the first time we did a session. The more I operate a protocol under Alex’s influence, even one beyond the normal limits of my ability, the greater chance that I will be able to use it later, on my own,” Rebecca admitted with the air of one confessing a sin. “I wanted to tell you. But…”
“I understand the telepathy, now,” Gaul said dryly. “But you were right. This needs to be kept quiet. From Mitsuru Aoki above all. You are clear on this, right?”
Rebecca nodded, obviously feeling guilty. Gaul pushed aside his malaise with effort.
“How many times have they come into contact?”
“Only once, on that first night. They’ve interacted since, of course, because she’s running Alex through the Program, but his protocol hasn’t been involved.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m fairly sure,” Rebecca hedged, biting her lip.
“I want to be certain. Have Mitsuru in for a session as soon as possible. Pull her from the Program, and try to limit her contact with Alex Warner. Have Alistair shift her back into the field rotation, full-time, and monitor Mitsuru yourself for any changes in behavior or ability, anything to indicate that she might have been affected.”
“We are short-handed already,” Rebecca protested. “Who’s going to run the Program? Me? Alex won’t ever trust me again if I even show my face near that building. Michael? You know he objects to the entire idea on,” Rebecca gestured, making a vague, indecipherable figure in the air with her cigarette, “moral grounds, or whatever. Moreover, Alice is still up there in her diary room. You don’t even have enough field agents.”
Gaul tried to imagine how she had possibly drawn something resembling ‘moral grounds’ in the air, but the idea made his head hurt, so he stopped trying. He turned his mind back to more practical matters.
“I’m promoting Margot Feld to provisional status. She’ll be an Auditor in three months, maybe less. Her combat potential is staggering.”
Rebecca started swearing, and he briefly worried that she was going to kick his file cabinets again, but she restrained herself this time.
“Gaul, Margot hasn’t even completed the Academy yet…”
“A formality. Michael is already using her as a student teacher. The rest she can pick up as she goes.”
“A lot of people get killed out there, before they can figure it out. Nevertheless, it’s your call. Are you sure you can get the votes from the Committee?”
Gaul nodded, feeling a twinge of discomfort.
“I’m certain of it. Anastasia Martynova will support her promotion. She will bring the Black Sun in line. Her candidacy should pass easily.”
“I bet Anastasia will support her — you know she’s had her hooks in Margot for years now. That vampire is as close as you can get to recruiting a Black Sun member in good standing into the Auditors. But you know that, so I’m going to assume you also know what you are doing.”
“Don’t I always?”
“Sometimes. What about the Program? We’ll need a new instructor.”
“We can have Alice do it, at least for the time being. She needs something to do. And she could run the Program in her sleep.”
“Gaul! She’s barely even recovered physically! I’m not sure she’s ready for this sort of thing yet…”
“We don’t have the luxury of waiting for Alice to feel better. We need to accelerate the process. Working with the students will help her. Nothing like a return to where she started to jog the memory, eh?”
“Cut the crap. You don’t know where Alice started anymore than I do. Moreover, you know she’s unstable right now. So, why do this?”
Gaul tossed his pen down in frustration, and then they both froze and stared at it, the only concrete evidence of him losing his temper. He didn’t really know what to make of it, except that it had been an exceptionally long day, in what seemed like a whole lifetime of long days.
“Manpower, Rebecca, what do you think? On a good day, I have three Auditors available for fieldwork, since I need you here. The job was difficult enough when I had six,” he said, speaking deliberately. For some reason, it felt important that Rebecca understand him. “I need the bodies, Rebecca. I need soldiers.”
“And you still think I should be here?”
“I think you are the only reason this school doesn’t fall apart. Moreover, I need Alex Warner combat-ready as soon as possible, and I need him to turn out like Alice Gallow, not like Mitsuru Aoki. I’ve already arranged for the appropriate training for Alex, but I need him to stay in one piece during the process. In lieu of better options, you are the woman for the job,” Gaul explained, seeing no use in sugarcoating. “Though I have to admit that it was interesting, watching you in the field again. Time and working with children have done nothing to mellow you, I see.”
“Triage is bloody work,” Rebecca said, stubbing out her cigarette. “To the issue at hand. What about Eerie?”
“Well, I was thinking of suspending her, but since she lives at the Academy, I suppose that field study would be a more appropriate — what? What is it?”
Rebecca looked at him, eyes wide.
“I’m serious… what about Eerie? Where is she?”
“I sent her outside to wait with Mrs. Bennett. What do you mean?”
Rebecca opened the door to the outer office, spoke a few cheerful, urgent words to his secretary (who, for no reason he could understand, took Rebecca’s side in everything), then thanked her, and returned, looking glum.
“Eerie told her we were finished, and that she had to go back to class,” Rebecca said, clearly exasperated. “She left as soon as we sent her out there. Obviously, she figured out what was going on. You, on the other hand, are a terrible precognitive.”
“Why would she do that? And where would she go?”
“I don’t know. Use that fancy computer in your brain,” Rebecca said without a trace of humor in her voice. “Check today’s lecture schedule. Where is Alex right now? And please tell me that he’s in class…”
Gaul reached without moving, taking hold of the Etheric Uplink that followed him everywhere he went, a lattice of information, a psychic fishhook embedded in his brain. The data he wanted spilled out from the Academy servers like waking to a bright light, his mind flinching reflexively at the flood of data.
“Alex used his keycard fifteen minutes ago at the main gym,” Gaul said woodenly, his voice simply another tool to be manipulated, rather than an organ operated by instinct. Speaking was always challenging when he was a node on the Etheric Network. “Conditioning, per his normal schedule. Michael should have finished his rounds two-and-a-half minutes ago.”
“She probably knows where to find him,” Rebecca said, reaching for her black bomber jacket and shrugging it on. “That is probably where they started from. If Alex’s uses his card, think in my direction. Actually, do that if Vivik or Anastasia or… I don’t fucking know, you’re the genius. Tell me relevant things as you learn them.”
“What is it that Eerie is doing?”
“Seeing the future isn’t everything, I suppose. Sometimes it’s better to look back. Eerie is doing what I would have done in her situation, when I was about her age. She’s looking for the person that she knows we’re going to prevent her from seeing, for as long as she can get away with it,” Rebecca said, smoothing her hair back in the mirror he kept near the door as a courtesy. “Read my file if you don’t believe me. There is a disciplinary note. I pulled something like this my first year. I’m going to find her before she manages to do… well, pretty much anything she tries.”
Uncharacteristically, curiosity got the better of him.
“What did you do back then?”
Rebecca paused, made another vague gesture, then blushed and looked away.
“I’m going to do my job. Be ready to turn in a more credible performance as the Bad Cop when I bring them back, okay? Read the damn file if you really want to know.”
Rebecca opened the door, stepped halfway into the hall.
“And then don’t ever, ever mention it. To me or anyone else.”
She slammed the door. Gaul turned off the lights in the office, so he could fully appreciate his headache. Already, in the back of the marvelous machine that his multitasking mind was, a new Bad Cop routine was formulating. His face muscles twitched, approximating a grimace, while he searched the Etheric Network for Rebecca Levy’s disciplinary file.