Crosstalk (63 page)

C.B. stared at her incredulously. “Suki? Grapevine girl? You're kidding, right?”

“That's not an answer,” she said.

“You're right. No, it's not Suki. She's not a telepath, natural or otherwise. She's just incredibly nosy. And no, she's not Apple's spy either. You'll never guess who that is.”

“Who?”

“Ethel Godwin.”

“Ethel
Godwin
? Trent's
secretary
?”

“The very same.”

“But Trent said she was the soul of discretion. And completely loyal.”

“She is. To Apple. And she's already told them all about your EEDs and the Hermes Project and Trent's telling Hamilton there'd been a revolutionary breakthrough, so it'll be easy to convince them the direct communication phone's real.”

“But how—?” she began, and then realized C.B. was simply creating another diversion to keep from telling her who'd helped him. “If it's not Suki, then who is it?” she demanded. “And don't say you can't tell me, because I'm not leaving this lab until you do.”

“Fine,” he said, throwing up his hands in surrender. “But not here.”

“What do you mean, not here? The door's locked, there's no coverage, nobody can hear us—”

“That's what you think,” he said. “Go into your safe room. She won't be able to hear us in there.”

“If this is another one of your diversions—”

“It's not. Go.”

Briddey went, shutting and barring the door behind her and then stopping to stare at the courtyard. It had been miraculously restored to its before-the-flood state, the water and the streaks of soot gone, the blue door shining with fresh paint and the flowers blooming again.

She hurried over to the adobe wall C.B.'d scaled before. She looked up at the top of it, waiting in dread for him to clamber over and tell her who was helping him block the voices. “She,” he'd said.

It
is
Suki,
she thought, or some other girlfriend who he didn't want to have find out he'd been talking to Briddey—

“True,” C.B. said from behind her. “In fact, she'll kill me if she finds out I told you.”

Briddey turned. C.B. was standing by the bench. “She swore me to silence,” he said. “On the holy blood of Saint Patrick and all the saints of Ireland.”

“All the…?” Briddey said, and sat down hard on the bench. “Are you telling me it's Aunt
Oona
?”

“Yep,” he said, and Briddey knew she should be feeling shock at the news that her great-aunt was telepathic and dismay that she'd been eavesdropping on everything for who knew how long. And fury at C.B. for keeping that from her and, worse, putting her through the hell of thinking she'd destroyed the telepathy and ruined his life. But all she felt was relief that he didn't have a girlfriend.

“Of course I don't have a girlfriend. How could you even think that?” He frowned. “Maybe Maeve was right and I should have—” He stopped himself.

“Should have what?” Briddey asked.

“Nothing. Yes, it's Oona. And she made me swear I wouldn't tell you, so you can't say a word about this. Or even think about it.”

“But I don't understand. How—?”

“What do you mean, how? Telepathy obviously runs in the family.”

“But then why aren't Mary Clare and Kathleen telepathic, too?”

“Mary Clare is. Since the day she gave birth to Maeve. Oona's been blocking her to protect Maeve, or as she says, ‘to keep the poor wee bairn from being smothered in her cradle.' ”

“And Kathleen?”

“Is apparently a late bloomer like you and your great-aunt. Oona didn't start hearing voices till she was forty, and your mother didn't till—”

“My
mother
?”

“Yep. Her telepathy wasn't triggered till she was thirty, and neither were any of your ancestors' ‘psychic spirit gifts,' which is why Oona didn't recognize the signs that it was happening to Maeve. And by the time she figured it out, I'd already intervened.”

“But…,” Briddey said, still trying to take this all in. “Why didn't they tell—?”

“For the same reason I didn't.”

It can get you burned at the stake,
Briddey thought.

“Exactly,” C.B. said. “And remember, Oona was forty when hers started, by which time she'd had a lot of years to observe the human race in action. She's got an even lower opinion of humanity than I do.” He grinned at Briddey. “She was also old enough to remember Bridey Murphy, so she knew exactly what would happen if people found out she was a telepath.”

“So she kept it a secret like you did,” Briddey said, and then realized that wasn't quite true. “Does this mean her premonitions are
real
?”

“No. I told you, clairvoyance doesn't exist. But ‘the Sight' is a lot safer to talk about than hearing voices, especially if you're, as Oona puts it, ‘an auld, lone spinster' who's just the sort of person everyone's inclined to think is a wee bit touched in the head anyway.
And
if you're from Ireland, where people have a reputation for believing in second sight and presentiments.”

“So you're saying it was all a cover for her telepathy—the shawls and the crubeens and that awful Maureen O'Hara accent?”

“Aye, lass. 'Tis all a diversionary tactic. And it works great. It had me fooled. I'd never have pegged her for a telepath if she hadn't told me. And I couldn't tell you because—”

“She swore you to secrecy.”

“Yes, and because Trent and Lyzandra could both hear your thoughts, and we couldn't be sure we could block them a hundred percent, so you
had
to think the cascade was destroying the telepathy.”

Which Briddey could understand. Any inkling that they were being blocked, or that the telepathy still existed, would have sabotaged the entire plan.

“Oona wouldn't have told me she was a telepath either if she hadn't had to. She'd overheard me talking to Maeve and knew I was helping her understand what was happening to her, but she wasn't sure I knew how to build defenses.”

That day at Commspan,
Briddey thought, when Aunt Oona had supposedly gone down to the lab to thank him for helping Maeve with her project.

“She had to find out whether she could trust me to protect Maeve from the voices,” C.B. said, “or if she was going to have to pitch in.”

Which would have meant Maeve finding out that Aunt Oona was telepathic.

“Yeah, and Oona wasn't sure how she'd take it—you know how Maeve feels about being spied on. She was afraid Maeve might reject her help, and the voices would overwhelm her. So we agreed I'd do it, and she'd provide backup if I needed it.”

“And she did,” Briddey said. “You enlisted her help with blocking Lyzandra and Trent.”

“Wrong. I didn't want to risk Verrick and Trent finding out about her either. And besides, I didn't see how one additional person blocking the voices was going to help. I wasn't lying about how much energy it takes to block that many people nonstop, and Oona already had her hands full blocking Mary Clare.”

“But if you didn't enlist her help, then how—?”

“She took it upon herself to start blocking. Without telling me.”

“And that's why you looked so stunned,” Briddey said, suddenly understanding. “Why you looked like you had no idea what was happening.”

“Right,” C.B. said. “I didn't. Which turned out to be an advantage. My reaction not only convinced you, it convinced Lyzandra. And Verrick.”

“And you've been…what? Doing alternating shifts with Aunt Oona?”

“Along with the rest of the Daughters of Ireland.”

“The Daughters—?”

C.B. nodded. “Which she didn't see fit to fill me in on either—another reason I thought the deluge was what was shutting the telepathy down. It was the only explanation I could think of. But it turns out the Daughters is an undercover organization/support group/outreach society for telepaths like Oona—”

“And all that Irish poetry reading and step-dancing and matchmaking is just a
diversionary
tactic?”

“Some of it is. And some of it's recruitment. If my mother hadn't taken my stepdad's name, I've no doubt they'd have found me and invited me to a meeting long ago. And some of it—the most important part—is the Irish version of the Reading Room, with them reciting ‘The Harp that Once Through Tara's Halls' and ‘The Lake Isle of Innisfree' and reading
Finnegan's Wake,
which may well be the best screening device ever written.”

“And that's who's been blocking the voices? The Daughters of Ireland?”

“And
their
daughters. And sons. Including my chief competition, Sean O'Reilly, who, in addition to having very little hair and living with his mother, can block up to six people at once.”

“And all of them are on board with this? They're willing to give up being telepathic, too?”

He nodded. “They know it's the only answer. They've all been blocking twenty-four/seven, and they're really good, but even with them calling in the reserves, they're fully aware that they can't block the voices forever. And they know what'll happen if they don't.”

“But for now they're doing alternating shifts with you?” Briddey asked, trying to understand how all this worked.

“Yeah, though actually they've been doing the lion's share of the blocking so I could work on the jammer. And Oona's been blocking you and Maeve. She told me she didn't trust me not to break down and tell you everything, especially on the three
A.M
. shift.” He smiled ruefully at her. “She was probably right.”

So he hadn't been there listening to her pour her heart out about him, thank goodness. On the other hand—oh, God!—Aunt Oona had been.

“That's the other reason she swore me to secrecy,” C.B. said. “She knows how you feel about the family constantly barging in and not respecting your privacy, so she didn't want you knowing that she could read your mind.”

And that she's been doing it for years
. That was why she'd been so against her dating Trent. She'd been listening to him just like C.B. had, and knew what he was up to. She'd just been trying to protect her.

“She doesn't want the rest of the family knowing about her telepathy either,” C.B. was saying. “She doesn't want them to think she's been meddling.”

“You mean, she doesn't want us to
know
she has been.”

“True,” C.B. said. “But you still can't tell them. And you
really
can't tell Maeve.”

Tell me what?
Maeve's voice cut in.
That you guys lied about the telepathy being gone?
she said, outraged, and Briddey could almost see her standing there with her hands on her hips, looking daggers at them.
You were blocking me the whole time, weren't you? I
knew
it!

“How long have you been listening to us?” C.B. demanded.

Oh, don't ask that,
Briddey thought.
That'll just make her determined to find out what we were talking about
. “What I want to know,” she said aloud, “is what you're doing here, Maeve. This is my safe room, and we are having a private conversation.”

I didn't
know
it was private, okay? You should have put a sign on the door or something. And besides, I didn't even know you could
have
conversations. You told me that big mob of voices destroyed the telepathy. But it didn't, did it? You guys just put up a really good barricade.

“Yes,” C.B. said. “How did you get through it?”

Maeve ignored that.
I want to know why you blocked me.

“Because C.B. had to convince Dr. Verrick and Trent that the telepathy had shut down completely,” Briddey said.

But if you wanted to do that, how come you didn't ask
me
?
Maeve asked.
I'm way better than Aunt Briddey at blocking. I know all kinds of things we—

“No,” C.B. said. “Absolutely not. I told you, we can't risk anyone finding out about you. You aren't to say or do
anything
. Including talking to us like this. If what we're saying should happen to leak—”

It won't,
Maeve said confidently.
We're in Aunt Briddey's safe room, and I've got the drawbridge up and like fifteen firewalls. And a zombie horde. You know, like the one in
Zombiegeddon.

“I don't care,” C.B. said. “I don't want you eavesdropping
or
talking. You've got to act like you think the voices are gone till I get
my
zombie horde done.”

What
zombie horde?
she asked.
Oh, you mean the jammer? I know all about that
.

“How?” C.B. and Briddey said in unison.

I can read your minds, remember?

Briddey thought,
And the first thing that's going to pop into C.B.'s is “Oh, my God, she'll find out about Aunt Oona.”
“I'm glad you know about the jammer,” she said, to keep Maeve from hearing C.B. “Then he doesn't have to explain it to you.”

Yes, he does. Why are you going to shut down all the telepathy? Nobody'll be able to talk to each other.

“It was the only way we could keep people from doing bad things with it,” C.B. said.

No, it isn't.

And now we'll be subjected to what someone in
Guys and Zombies
or
Beauty and the Beast
did to save the day,
Briddey thought. “We will discuss this later,” she said. “Now go.”

Why?
Maeve said suspiciously.
So you guys can talk about
more
secret stuff?

“Yes,” C.B. said.