[Ganzfield 2] Adversary (29 page)

Little good that does me.
I started to cry from the intense waves of mother-love that rolled off her.

Hi, Mom.

She faltered for a moment, frowning. I usually didn’t use telepathy with her. “Oh, honey. How do you feel?”

Not bad. I’ve got a form of aphasia, though. Good thing about the telepathy, huh?
I smiled, trying to make the situation as light as possible.

My mom pulled me into a softly fierce hug. “My brave girl.” As a psychologist, she knew what aphasia was. She held me close, happy I was alive. But she simultaneously mourned the normal life she now felt was lost to me.

Mom, my so-called normal life ended last year
. But a part of me felt the same sense of loss. Before today, I’d always known I had the same option as Dr. Williamson’s niece. Ann had been a minder at Ganzfield until last fall, but she’d chosen to stop taking dodecamine and had gone back to being a “normal” person.

Now, if I went off the meds, I’d be disabled. I’d probably have to go through months of therapy or something just to learn basic communication skills. Would I have to use sign language? Actually, would that get as garbled as spoken language without a functional Broca’s area? I didn’t know. I just knew that “normal” was no longer an option.

My mom frowned. Guilt colored the energy in her mind dark-yellow, which surprised me. I’d been expecting her to be mad at me for doing something reckless and stupid. But no, she felt sick at heart because she’d gone back to work after two days. She’d wanted something to do—something that would distract her. Now she felt a need to prove that she loved me, even if she hadn’t spent every moment by my bedside.

I knew a way to fill that need.

Trevor’s thumb stroked against my knuckles, nervously soothing.
Should I give Maddie and her mom time together? I’m not even sure I can let go of her hand, let alone leave the room.

My mom glanced at Trevor.
I know he wants to be here, but I really wish he’d back off a little. Maddie’s my daughter—my only child—and I almost lost her.

He picked this up from her glances at him and felt torn.

Please, stay. I want you with me, and she’ll want to feed me.

To her I sent,
Mom, I’m starving. I haven’t eaten in days. Is there anything—

No need to finish that thought. My mom lit up at the idea—love through food was her thing. Her mind flashed through the ingredients she knew were in the house. I didn’t want to trouble her, just give her something to do that would make her feel better. Leftover chicken parmagiana? That’d do.

Do you need some time alone with your mom?

Not right now.

I swung my legs over the side of the bed. What I needed right now was to use the bathroom. I suddenly felt Trevor’s invisible hands around my waist.

No.

When you gotta go, you gotta go.

Your leg.

Okay, he had a point. I could tell it wasn’t quite right. It only seemed weakly obedient compared to the other. I tested it, doing a couple of leg lifts. It felt rubbery and I wasn’t sure it would support me.

Please don’t make me use a diaper.
That sounded more pathetic than I’d wanted to.
If you can get me to the bathroom, I’ll be able to handle everything else, okay?

He lifted me in his arms and carried me across the hall. From behind the closed door, he filled the hall with his anxiety. I awkwardly managed to do what I needed to, keeping my weight on my good leg and holding onto the edge of the sink. I washed my hands and brushed my teeth, reveling in the non-fuzzy-mouth feeling that resulted.

I wrapped my arms around Trevor’s neck as he brought me back to bed.
You know I was joking when I said I’d need to come up with a new reason for you to carry me around, right?

His hand lingered on my shoulder then moved to the side of my face.
Oh, my God—I almost lost you!
The overwhelming thought hit him like a tidal wave. His eyes clenched shut against it.

I pulled him close.
I love you. I’m okay.
I repeated it over and over until the wave receded.

“Sorry,” he said aloud. “I just—”

I know.
I felt the part of his exhausted mind that cried out for sleep, but the thought of leaving repelled him. We needed to be with each other.

My mom returned with three plates on a tray. In the kitchen below, Hannah enjoyed a sandwich while she continued to work on her laptop. I felt a warm rush of gratitude when I realized she was online, researching aphasia.

Food.

Food was good. I was quickly full, having eaten less than half of the portion my mother had provided, but Trevor polished off his entire dish of chicken parm as though he hadn’t eaten in days. I switched plates with him when my mom wasn’t looking; it would detract from the love-through-food effect if she saw me give away her offering.

Trevor’s awareness of the world had shrunk to this single room once they’d brought me back. My mom had kept going. Had Cecelia charmed her? Taken away some of her worry and given her extra strength?

Probably
.
Cecelia tried to charm me.

What?
I felt a protective anger well up.

Trevor’s embarrassment ran hot-pink through his mind.
I pinched her larynx as soon as she said my name. Reflex. I realized later that she probably wasn’t trying to do anything harmful.
Cecelia had avoided him after that, though.

My mom filled me in on all that’d happened in the past nine days. “Dr. Williamson and Greg came here; I guess it was a week ago, now. That lawyer, Nick Coleman, got them to drop all of those ridiculous charges. He said the prosecutor’s office had even issued a formal apology.” She paused as she polished off another forkful of chicken. “Dr. Williamson and Cecelia went out to Isaiah Lerner’s house. They released the people there; they’d been held in a charm command to freeze for
days
. Another day or two and they probably would’ve started to die of thirst. That nice Cecelia rechanneled their energies into helping inner-city kids.” My mom smiled. “I really like her. Did you know she wants to be a therapist, too?”

I nodded, eyes wide. My mom now thought Cecelia was
nice
? And I’d always considered her such a good judge of character.

Trevor’s lips twitched but he kept his eyes on his plate.

“You know, the therapeutic potential of a charm voice is really…well…it’s practically limitless. I’ve offered her an internship in my practice, when she’s ready.”

Oh, man. On what planet would my mom bond with Cecelia? Just how long had I been in a coma again?

I really didn’t understand Cecelia. She seemed so negative to me, yet she kept doing good things. Maybe it was just her reaction to me—she hadn’t liked me from the moment we’d first met and, to be honest, I really didn’t like her, either. I guess it didn’t matter, in the long run. She was a fundamentally decent person, even if I personally found her to have a fingernails-on-a-chalkboard personality. Perhaps good personality traits didn’t always go together.

My mom didn’t seem to know the whole story, though. There was no way Dr. Williamson had gone to Peapack out of an altruistic need to help our would-be killers. Hell, some of them had probably been in the silver suits the night of the massacre. I was sure he’d gone looking for proof that Isaiah was really dead.

Crap. Isaiah’s dead, right?

Trevor shook his head. “They didn’t find a body.” Ambivalence twisted within him. He’d wanted to kill the man hurting me, but he didn’t want to be a killer.

Could Rachel—?

My mom’s face fell in sympathy. “She’s having a hard time right now. Grieving. She wouldn’t even let Cecelia help her. With Sean gone, she doesn’t want to feel better. I think she needs time to deal with her loss.”

But this was important! I sat up suddenly. Trevor put a hand on my arm. Strong emotion shorted out Rachel’s ability, and I hurt for her, but more people would feel that same grief and pain if Isaiah came after us again. I rubbed my forehead with both hands, trying to calm the anxiety welling up within me.
So no one knows where Isaiah is now?

“Dr. Williamson told me that Rachel’s vision didn’t get more specific than ‘somewhere in Europe, maybe Switzerland,’” my mom said.

Europe.
Okay, that sounded far enough away for me to relax, at least for the moment.
So death squads aren’t about to break down our doors?

Trevor shook his head. “No death squads.”

Good to know.

Actually, if I’d been successful in burning out Isaiah’s Broca’s area, he was never going to charm again. That was something—it might even have been worth losing my own voice.

Maybe.

I knew I’d keep thinking about what I’d done wrong that day—rehashing it over and over, haunted by the things I could’ve done differently. If only I’d stopped moving when he’d said to freeze! If he’d come through the crowd, mentally sniffing us one by one, I could’ve waited until he was close enough and—

I squeezed my eyes shut. The what-ifs definitely were going to torture me.

Where’s Dr. Williamson now?

“He’s gone back to re-open Ganzfield. He said he was going to stop someplace in Connecticut overnight then take the people who wanted to go up to New Hampshire with him the next morning.”

Did everyone else go with him?

“Everyone except Trevor and Hannah.”

Hannah had stayed. Was she ever planning to go back? I’d ask her later.

Are the others okay? Matilda? Morris?
It hadn’t been for nothing, right? Not if we’d saved them. A lump filled my throat—
Sean...Rachel.

“Matilda is fine. Morris…he was walking normally when they left.”
He seemed traumatized, like he had PTSD. What had those people done to him? What other dangerous things has Maddie been doing? How can I keep my little girl safe? Will she even listen to me anymore?

Crap.
My mom was building up steam for a crusade. I needed to distract her before she decided to lock me in the attic “for my own safety.”

Mom, what time is it? Are your afternoon clients the same ones you cancelled on last week to stay home with me?

My mom frowned.

Trevor’s eyes met mine.
Kinda manipulative, don’t you think?

She’s getting upset. She needs to help people, but I don’t want her focusing that help on me.
I turned to her.
Mom, I’m fine. You can go back to work. I’ll be here when you get home.

“You’ll be okay?”

I smiled and nodded reassuringly, glad my mom wasn’t a telepath. I had an idea, but it would work better if she weren’t in the house.

I pulled Trevor into bed with me as soon as my mom’s car had backed out of the driveway.
Sleep,
I ordered him.

I can’t. I might hurt you.

I shook my head.
Sleep. I’ll wake you when you start to dream.
He was so tired and the weather was too cold and wet for him to be outside. If the sparks could sit watch over each other’s firestarting, I could do this much. I wasn’t tired, which didn’t surprise me. Hadn’t I been sleeping for the past nine days?

Trevor normally would’ve put up more of a fight, but the combination of exhaustion, bad weather, and simply wanting to stay close to me won out. He wrapped one of his long arms around my waist and was asleep in less than a minute.

I picked up the only book within reach—a book Trevor must’ve been reading during his long vigil at my bedside.

Jane Eyre
.

Had he been reading it to me, trying to reach through my unconscious state to connect to me? I smiled. Yeah, that sounded like something he’d do.

Trevor’s face was loose with sleep, the tension of the past days erased. I felt his breathing, even and slow, and a soft smile pulled at my lips. I’d often fantasized about us sleeping in each other’s arms.

I’ll take what I can get.

A scrap of paper marked a place near the end. I opened the book to it, read for a moment, and grinned. It was one of my favorite parts—after Mr. Rochester has been injured and blinded in the fire, when he feels unworthy of Jane, but he’s still so in love with her. He tells her how he’s yearned for her to return to him:

“I pleaded; and the alpha and omega of my heart’s wishes broke involuntarily from my lips in the words—’Jane! Jane! Jane!’”