Earth Witches Aren't Easy Read online

  The elaborate layout of our placement about the room was not lost on me. Lit by two sets of track lighting, darkness and gloom filled the room. One light focused on me—with Billy and Jack edged in shadows—and the other focused on Mr. Devoid.

  “As I was saying,” Mr. Devoid continued. “We felt it best to

  extend the invitation anonymously, and the director agreed with our assessment. You would not be quite so approachable outside of a certain set of circumstances.”

  “Perhaps a hospital bed with me recovering from several knife perforations to my stomach and lower intestine would be a more suitable venue?” I adopted his peculiar brand of political politeness.

  “Ms. Monroe, I must apologize for that unfortunate incident.”

  Unfortunate incident. Unfortunate! If it were physically possible for blood to boil while one was still alive, my ears would be whistling like a teakettle.

  “The division was just being formed at the time. As I am sure, you are well aware, psychic ability is not considered a quantifiable skill. The incident you survived marked you as unique amongst Oakes’ victims, and the Bureau’s manhunt was increasing in scope and intensity. With each passing day, your memories gained in their value to the investigation. Normal interview techniques were inadequate in such a situation.”

  “But picking my brain wasn’t?” I allowed anger to thread its way lightly through the words, perfuming them with just the barest hint of threat. I possessed two real talents, first and foremost my bond to the Earth. Second, but not to be discounted, was the power of the Voice.

  “Ms. Monroe,” a new voice intruded into the conversation. The female chose to stand furthest back in the shadows of the room beyond Mr. Devoid. Jack jerked and Billy sucked in a noisy breath. She surprised them…

  Now isn’t that just interesting?

  “We regret that most unfortunate incident.” The woman stepped more clearly into the light, and while her voice didn’t ring any bells, her face certainly did. My stomach clenched.

  “Colleen Masters.” I abandoned the politeness for the cold comfort of dislike.

  “I’m flattered you remember, Ms. Monroe.” The amber haired woman inclined her head in gratitude. She appeared meticulous as always, not a hair out of place or a wrinkle to betray any hint of how long she’d been dressed in the silk pantsuit that most likely carried a designer label. She was to class and elegance what I was to dirt and mud.

  I hate this bitch.

  “You’re still the most grounded person I have ever encountered.” Colleen smiled, though the expression didn’t dare cross the plateau of her regal features to mar the quiet pools of her eyes. “Ten years after we first met, and while I know my skills have improved, I still can’t read you.”

  “Pity.” My voice dripped sarcasm.

  “Luckily, your mannerisms betray what your mind will not reveal.”

  “Excuse me.” Jack took a step forward, shaking off Billy’s attempt to restrain him. “What the hell is going on?”

  “Agent Harker, if you will allow us a few moments, I’m sure everything will be revealed.” Colleen directed her cool gaze toward Jack. “This is a matter, however, between Ms. Monroe and us.”

  “Correction,” Jack growled. “This matter concerns all of us. I have no idea what kind of shindig you people thought you were pulling down here, but no way in hell are you all ganging up on Chance.” Jack’s outrage soothed the anxiety flaming in my stomach.

  “We have the director’s authority to conduct this interview, Agent Harker. You are here as a courtesy only. If you cannot restrain yourself, you will be removed.”

  “Back off, Colleen.” Anxiety became anger in a flash of an instant. Bitch did not just threaten Jack. “And stop playing the high and mighty, coming down off the hill to pick on the peons.” I hated the sanctimonious, holier-than-thou attitude this woman accessorized herself with, like it was Prada.

  “Do you really know her?” Jack turned to look at me, his gaze searching.

  “I met Masters back in college when we were being recruited.” I ignored her laser stare. “She’s part of the Bureau’s specialty squad. They’d heard rumors about my grandmother and me, and she was sent to investigate and to recruit me, especially because I was already leaning toward a career in forensic psychology.”

  “You never told me about this.” If he was hurt, Jack kept it to himself. I really need a button to warn others of my champion people skills, keeping secrets and wounding friends.

  “Because I thought she was a freak.” I flicked my gaze back toward the Ice Queen and Mr. Devoid. “I couldn’t stand her creepy probing, not to mention the lack of protocol. She’ll scan people just because she can, not because it’s necessary.”

  “Actually,” Colleen countered calmly, resting a hand on the table in a relaxed pose. “At the time, it was extremely necessary. You were an unknown quantity with a power we’d yet to catalog in the growing array of special abilities that was then just being developed.”

  “What?” Jack demanded, his eyes going to each face present in the room.

  “Fifteen years ago, the director authorized Project Aegis,” Billy spoke quietly from behind us. Jack’s gaze focused on Billy, but his body posture shifted him imperceptibly closer to me. He wasn’t immune to the levels of anxiety rolling off me. I didn’t look away from Colleen. I just didn’t trust her. “Project Aegis was given the mandate of locating, training, and recruiting verifiable psychics who manifested quantifiable skills. Colleen Masters was one of the first recruits.”

  “And I’m now director of operations for Project Aegis. Mr. Callanport,” she inclined her head toward Mr. Devoid, “is a field operative and designated precog. He can usually verify psychics before we ever need to approach them.”

  I was tempted to turn to see Jack’s expression, but I wasn’t willing to give Colleen any openings. Billy’s explanation, albeit succinct, wasn’t the entire story of Project Aegis. They recruited psychics of all levels, skills and talents. They augmented them, made use of them and, on occasion, burned them out. Not everyone was interested in that line of work, and there were a few unproven cases where I suspected something untoward had happened, because psychics I knew of in the community vanished after being approached by an Aegis representative.

  “So you people tried to recruit Chance?” Jack clarified, disbelief strongly underlying his tone.

  “Operative phrase in your question, Agent Harker, is tried to recruit. Now if you do not mind, you can be apprised of the details later, but for the time being we wish to return to the interview at

  hand.”

  Jack bristled at her utter dismissal. That didn’t surprise me. Colleen liked control. She liked to measure it, rein it in and strangle it if necessary. She did not like too many questions or resistance to her methods. I was pretty sure I was going to piss her off royally.

  “Ms. Monroe, would you like to take a seat?”

  “No I wouldn’t.” I worked to keep an impassive expression on my face, but it was a real effort when every instinct I had told me to get the hell out of there or rip her face off. Either reaction would satisfy the fury clawing up my insides.

  “Very well.” Colleen took a seat next to Mr. Devoid. She flipped open a large binder. “Ms. Monroe, when you were interviewed following your attack, you claimed you’d never seen Randall Oakes before.”

  “I didn’t claim, I stipulated.”

  “All right. You stipulated you had never encountered the suspect Randall Oakes before.”

  “That is correct.”

  “You were, however, able to recall his facial features with nearly photographic clarity and provided us with a fairly accurate sketch.”

  “That is correct.”

  “Was that a result of some talent?”

  “Trauma induced hysterical recall?” I suggested blithely. I began to pick flecks of mud off my shirt, shilling them at the carpet one after another, giving the task the appearance of my concentration.

 
“I’ll take that as a no.”

  “You take that any way you want to.”

  “Ms. Monroe, when you were given photographs of Randall Oakes to verify, you stated at the time of identification you were positive the man in the photograph was indeed your assailant.”

  “Correct.”

  “You were stabbed four times.”

  “Correct.”

  “You stated you ran from Oakes before he attacked you.”

  “Correct.” Bored with the mud on my shirt, I checked Jack’s for flecks of mud, lint or whatever else I could feign attention in. I caught myself before I tried to soothe away the thunderous frown chiseling his features into a mask of scary. I want Jack pissed on my behalf.

  “Why?”

  “What the hell is this?” Jack leapt into the conversation. “Billy repeated the initial interview already, and we have her verified statements and signed reports on file. What the hell are you interrogating her for?”

  “Agent Harker, I suggest you control yourself or leave. I will make it an order if I have to.” Colleen pinned her iron gaze to Jack and tapped one well-manicured nail against the report she consulted.

  “I don’t take orders…” Jack’s bitter response cut off as Billy pulled him back a step and hissed something in his ear. I couldn’t hear what they said, but I had a good idea. I could add her arrogant manner of treating Jack badly to my list of Colleen Masters transgressions.

  “Now,” she continued as though not interrupted. “As I was saying, you stated you ran from Randall Oakes prior to the assault.”

  “Correct.”

  “Then I will repeat the question. Why?”

  “Because he gave me the creeps.” I watched her studying me.

  “There was no sense of warning or foreboding?”

  “Gut instinct. He had creep written all over him. Dangerous, creepy creep.” I started to pace back into the shadows and roam the room, but Jack’s posture suggested that might be a bad for his peace of mind if I got out of reach. I kept myself planted where I was instead, letting out the yawn that was building up inside with aggravating slowness.

  “Dangerous, creepy creep,” Colleen repeated. “So, you ran because your instincts indicated the situation in which you were engaged, this half-hearted conversation, was dangerous.”

  “Correct.”

  “How long after you were stabbed before Oakes departed the scene?”

  “A few seconds. I didn’t really have a good look at my watch.”

  “You noted you heard a car start up, you heard the sound of

  the engine engaging and the headlights sweeping over you before it pulled away.”

  “Correct.”

  “Oakes accosted you, attacked you, stabbed you and then left you, alive, before fleeing the scene.”

  “I think he walked, but otherwise, that’s about the gist of it.” Cold, hard pragmatic facts. I could do this. I could talk about this without reliving it, despite the insistent flashes of his face that appeared to dazzle my vision, or the hot pain marking my stomach where the scars lined the surface of the tissue and punctured far more deeply than the flesh.

  I inhaled through my nose, exhaled through my mouth and kept my breathing slow, steady and regulated. I was not going to burst into horrible sweats and suffer the anxiety that discussing this attack often brought on.

  “He walked?”

  “He walked.”

  “How do you know he walked?” Blood-sucking tick, gorging herself on the details, prodding me for an emotional reaction. I don’t think she planned to stop until I was in tears.

  “Because I didn’t hear him running.” I didn’t recall ever hearing his feet slap the pavement as though fleeing the scene. He strolled away, satisfied his work was complete.

  “But you were still alive.” Colleen made a point of checking the report, as though she needed some verification that I was indeed alive when Oakes completed his assault.

  “Yes, I think that was the whole point.”

  “The whole point?”

  “Oakes didn’t stay for the finale. The majority of his victims died on bleed out.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I read the newspaper reports released following his death on Flight Eleven Thirty-Four.”

  “Alleged death.”

  I sighed inwardly and began counting my breaths again. The back of my shirt slowly started to adhere to the skin, and I was grateful I’d washed up before walking into this ambush, otherwise my body odor alone might frighten the meeting to a halt.

  “Fine. I read it in the papers following his alleged death.”

  “Why did you follow the facts so closely?”

  “Because I lived with the knowledge he might come back every night of that following year until his death.”

  “Are you worried about it now?”

  “That he will come after me?” I shrugged, striking her nonchalance squarely with a two-by-four of false indifference. “I can’t control what he does or doesn’t do. Eight years ago I was a terrified victim.”

  “Which leads one to presume you are no longer a victim?” Shavings of Colleen’s icy remoteness leached away.

  “No,” Sweat dribbled down my back, musky in the cool room. “I’m nobody’s victim.”

  “She means it.” Callanport interjected and, where before he’d seemed completely devoid of emotion, now his expression filled with a kind of regretful sadness. “She isn’t a victim. She has no intentions of being one either.”

  “I thought you couldn’t read me?” I shuffled my choice of words, aware enough of my own hesitation to try to keep it out of my immediate response.

  “I can’t. But I know if someone’s telling the truth or not. I can read the meanings in your words.”

  “You’re an asshole.”

  “You believe that, too.” He gave me another small, regretful smile. “And for that I am deeply sorry. I never meant to upset you in the hospital. I was genuinely trying to help.”

  Okay, so it was juvenile. But after everything I’d been through, a few regretful expressions and the faint show of compassion wasn’t going to score points with me.

  “Is this interview over?” I avoided discussing anything further about the attack or the rest that Callanport brought up.

  “Except for one matter.” There was no mistaking the mixture of compassion and conviction in Colleen’s tone and posture. “I would like you to seriously consider the offer we made you several years ago. You’d be an excellent asset to our team.”

  Bitch, please. “That’s it?”

  “That’s it.”

  “Great.” I nodded, turned on my heel, pushed past Billy to

  yank open the door, and escape the nest of the interrogators. I didn’t have to look back to know Jack was right behind me, his longer legs eating up the distance my fast strides were trying to put between us.

  Neither one of us said a word as I fled the building. I didn’t say anything until we reached the car.

  “Chance?”

  “Jack, please just take me home.”

  “We…”

  “I know. We need to talk. I owe you a hell of a lot for going toe to toe with the lions in there, but I need a bit of time first. And I need to go home. Please?” I am not going to throw up. I am not going to throw up.

  He let it go and we both climbed into the car. Frankly, I’m pretty sure I wasn’t the only one getting the hell out of there. It took several minutes before the tingling sensation of their constant searches, probes and touches left me and I knew we were far enough away Masters’ lapdogs couldn’t find me anymore.

  They’d need line of sight to try that trick again, and I would be damned if I’d ever give them that opportunity.

  Thirteen

  We remained silent for the majority of the ride home. Anger, hot and violent, coursed through me. I knew if I concentrated on it long enough, I could give rise to more than one expletive, but I shut them out. I tried to focus my attention out the wind
ow. The landscape, littered by numerous buildings, offered a small measure of comfort. I closed my eyes.

  I needed to shut out the memories the meeting dredged up, to swallow the anger, and let it go. Ranting and raving wouldn’t do me any good, and the further away from Masters, Callanport, and their hellish reminders, the better. I knew the growing sensation of relief would disappear if I forced myself to deal with those people again. Luckily, my training asserted itself.

  Another perk to being a hedge witch was the ability to shuffle pain and anger away to a place where it could cool and settle like magma after it flushed hot and violent from the Earth. Magma destroyed everything in its path, but as it cooled and the ash settled, verdant Earth sprang forth. My anger channeled equally well. My demons wrestled, I stole a glance at Jack. His continued silence wouldn’t last. Jack diverted to a Starbucks, as if to tell me we needed to talk.

  He waited in the car, brooding, while I went inside and ordered mocha for me and a grande non-fat latte with two pumps of cinnamon for him. At least my order didn’t require a litany, or two repeats for the server to get it right. His gaze followed me inside the store. I don’t think he would have let me go alone if he couldn’t see me. Our gazes locked briefly on my way back to the car. He dropped his eyes first, studying the steering wheel when I slid back into the car. I thought he’d pull back into traffic, but instead we just sat there, engine idling.

  “Jack...”

  “I need you to be honest with me, Chance.” He cut off my placation before it began. I gnawed at my lower lip, leaned toward my cup and took a long swig of mocha. He was furious. The lack of emotion in his words, combined with the way he avoided my gaze clear indicators of his anger with me for keeping secrets. He was disappointed. I’m not sure which bothered me more.

  “Jack, I haven’t lied to you.”

  “You haven’t told me all the truth, either.” He scowled while fishing out his smokes, then obligatorily offering me one, which I refused.