The guard was singing John Lennon’s “Imagine” in his head, and thinking of a woman he had made love to that morning with that song playing in the background.
I really don’t need to hear this, Mark thought, stopping. The two guards who flanked him stopped with him, looking curiously at him. “Just a sec,” Mark said, and shoved the song out of his mind.
Water. Water on rock.
There, blessed silence.
“Sorry. Crowded in here.” He scratched his goatee.
The guard with the song looked at his partner, who only shrugged. They continued on, walking into a one-way glass-enclosed room. The two guards waited outside.
Mark opened the door and walked in. Five people were in the room. Two were from the DA’s office. Two women from the FBSA were there, dressed in tailored suits. One didn’t look happy. The other one did, smiling at Mark.
“Eule,” she said, pronouncing it correctly as “Eu-lah.” “I’m glad you could make it.”
Eule looked around the room. Seated at the table, a file in front of him, was–
“Attorney Thomas Mahoney,” Eule said.
Mahoney looked up at Eule. “How the hell–”
“I’m a telepath.”
Mahoney frowned and looked at the smiling woman, no longer smiling. “I don’t like this idea of telepaths looking through my client’s head.”
“Your client’s memory was locked. Eule specializes in breaking coded memories.”
Mahoney sat back. “She has more than cooperated here.” He gave the two people from the DA a glare.
“We understand that,” said the male from the DA’s office, who was really concentrating on getting some steak tips for lunch. Eule smiled to himself and glanced at the woman, who was thinking about the pile of work on her desk.
The smiling FBSA officer was named Roslyn Wedge, fully human and thinking that maybe she should call her daughter after this to make sure she wasn’t eating the ice cream stash, because this interview was going to be a doozy.
The other one that wasn’t happy was also a telepath, Louise Ferrill, who was the one who had first tried to get into the perpetrator’s head. He didn’t even dare skim her mind, not yet. With help from his present lover, he was learning how to read body language better. He could tell by her stance – arms folded, scowl on her face – that she wouldn’t be happy if he did skip around in her head.
The door opened and a wisp of a girl walked in, dressed in prison orange. She stood as tall as Eule, but her brown hair was cropped short and spiky, hi-lighted blond at the tips. Her dark brown eyes scoped the room, looking like a tough girl, passing over the men and studying the women intently. “Back for another try, huh?” she leered at Louise, and plopped herself into the chair next to her attorney.
“We brought big guns this time,” said Roslyn. “This is Eule.”
Eule inclined his head. “Good afternoon, Ms. Thyme. Or would you rather be called Marilyn? Or Jennifer?”
The girl quickly hid her look of shock with defiant laughter. “Oh, you’re good. What am I thinking now?”
“About how you think the DA bitch would look naked.”
Again, she laughed, and most of them flushed red as expected. Eule pronounced it without any emotion, as just facts, keeping his eyes on Thyme.
“I’m not sure if they want the details,” Eule said, as if answering a question in Thyme’s head. He glanced up at Wedge. “When would you like me to start?”
“Whenever you’re both ready,” said Wedge, glancing at Louise. Louise nodded – her hero name was Noesis – and stepped forward. She put her hands on Thyme’s shoulders. Eule just slipped into a trance.
He felt Noesis’ presence, and knew she was there to verify what was going on, so he didn’t feel threatenend. His owl-self came forward through the link, into Thyme – Jennifer Barwick’s – mindscape. It was full of lush greenery, populated by unicorns and leprechauns. Really. Really?
The owl tore through the tapestry and went past this to the emo club that it hid. This was more like it, with loud music and puslating, hypnotic lights.
Show me where the locked memory is, he asked Noesis.
Noesis seemed to oversee it all, her presence thick like a heavy blanket atop the scene. Not very subtle, he thought, as the owl was shoved at a black door with a red handle. He tried to open it – the owl’s claws could grab a hold of it, but, as he expected, it was locked.
He began to steadily, slowly, tear apart the wood around the door handle to get at the mechanism inside. Then the doorframe. At the same time, his mind stretched out through Barwick’s experience, searching for memories. He found a man–
who locked the memory–
who used an amulet–
who was a mage–
who was in shadow–
who knew her boyfriend, Perry–
and Perry didn’t know any of this–
the purpose was–
to set a bomb–
or four. Or five–
at the storming of–
Bastille.
The door clicked open, and the memory flooded out. But something was wrong; the room started to tip. People fell sideways, falling over without a sound, their faces going white and their blood flowing all over the floor. Eule flew back from the memory, heading back the way he came in, seeing that the tunnel, the link, was getting smaller and smaller. He made himself smaller and smaller and pulled himself out, dragging most of the memory with him.
He blinked and was back to himself. Everyone was gathered where Thyme had been sitting, though she and Louise were now on the floor. The door flew open and three medical people came running in, one carrying a defibrilator with them.
Eule watched dispassionately as they were able to revive her, though she stared up at the ceiling looking at nothing. Noesis did also. The medical people chased everyone else out of the room as they got an ambulance. “What the hell happened?” Mahoney glared at Eule.
Eule stated calmly, “After I unlocked the memory, it was booby-trapped to kill her. Noesis had gone too far in. She is locked in Thyme’s mind with her.”
“Can’t you get her out?” Wedge asked.
“Not without killing Thyme or both of them.”
Mahoney stormed, “So she’s what, a vegetable?”
Eule said, “Seems that way, doesn’t it?”
Mahoney pointed at Eule. “This is your fault!”
Eule was calm. “A word was used to unlock it. She would have been dead after performing what she was ordered to do anyway.”
“And what was that?”
“To bomb the Temple Sinai in Pittsburgh.”
“Pittsburgh?” Mahoney looked around. “Why the hell would someone want to send someone from Chicago to Pittsburgh?”
“I couldn’t get at that memory.” He turned to two DA’s. “It’s a mage, a friend of her boyfriend’s.”
“We have the boyfriend in custody,” said the male DA. “We’ll ask him.”
Two gurneys took the two women out. Eule put a hand on Wedge’s arm to stop her before she followed the gurney holding Noesis. “One or both may suddenly wake up. Noesis may find her way out.”
Wedge nodded. “I’ll call you. I guess you can go back home.”
“I will, thanks.”
Eule went back outside to his rental. He flipped open his phone and hit the speed dial. “Hey, Mark.”
“Hi, Gary.” Eule caught himself smiling, thinking of his police-officer boyfriend in his uniform. “Whatcha up to?”
“Oh, a detail. But you could peek in my head if you wanted to.”
Eule chuckled, as this was a running joke. He’d only attached himself to one man, Russ – Solar Battery – and after they broke up he slowly took out the hooks from their minds. It caused him and Russ a few headaches, but it was better this way, so he didn’t have to feel Russ’ emotions. All that was left was a tenable tether that would register extreme pain. Eule didn’t hate Russ, but he no longer loved him, either. He wasn’t sure anymore if he did, or if it was a crush.
“I know you won’t,” Gary said also with a chuckle. “When’re you coming home?”
“I’m heading to the airport now. I’ll call you when I get a flight.”
“Okay. Hope it’s tonight, Owlboy.”
“I’ll try for it, anyway. See you later.”
Eule sighed and hung up. The man was a dark Italian stallion that he stayed with sometimes back home in Detroit. He’d thought about moving in, but balked most times it was mentioned. He got into the car and drove to the airport, with the nagging feeling that he was leaving something behind.