Intuition (23 page)

“I do. It's just . . .” My mind leaps back months, back to when things were normal and my biggest concern was what to play at the next concert. I exhale. “That was the song I was working on with my partner before the accident. Before . . . all of this started.” That was a lifetime ago.

Drew's concern gives way to a smile. “It's one of my favorite contemporary pieces.”

“Mine too.”

He reaches over and grabs my chair, turning it to face the wall. “There,” he says softly, sitting back down at the keyboard. “Don't play it for me. Or the people out there in the studio. Play it for the wall.” He strikes the first note. “Play it for you.”

“I can't.”

“How do you know?” Drew closes his eyes and plays the introduction while I stand there, not moving except for a slight swaying to the music that I can't control. When he gets to my part of the piece, it feels hollow and empty without the cello, like a dance partner who's all alone in the spotlight. He pauses and then starts over, the notes of the introduction filling the room, and my fingers itch to follow along, to balance out the soft, high notes of the piano with the mellow, rich sounds of the cello strings.

I sit down and pick up the cello, thinking that I'm just going to follow along in my head, show my fingers where they should go and what they should do. Which is why I'm as surprised as he must be when the first notes reverberate out of the cello and into the air. I face the wall and close my eyes, feeling nothing but the strings under my fingertips and the waves of music as
the cello notes wind and twist with the delicate sounds of the piano. It's like being in another world as the music surrounds us in the tiny room, softening the hard corners and weaving together the fabric of the song, strong and solid, while at the same time so fragile that it disappears through your fingers like the smallest puff of smoke.

Too quickly the song ends, and tears are falling from my eyes onto the dark wood of the cello. I wipe them away, but I can feel Drew watching me.

“Right,” he says, and I can hear the emotion in his voice as he clears his throat. “We're going to miss you on Friday.”

I feel the air pressure change as he opens the practice-room door, and by the time I turn to look, the hallway is empty and Drew is gone.

The rest of the morning is torture, and I can barely focus on anything until I'm standing outside of Rayne's room. They moved her out of ICU and onto a regular floor, and my prayers are answered when I push open the door and see that the bed next to hers is empty. I need to tell her what's going on before she starts having memories, and I need to do it in private.

“Rayne?” I call, knocking on the door frame.

“Hey! Get in here!” she calls from the other side of the curtain. Her voice is raw from the ventilator, but otherwise she sounds almost back to normal.

“How are you?” I squeal, bending into her outstretched arms as she squeezes my neck tight. The Akhet vibrations I'm getting from her are unmistakable, and relief rushes in. Despite everything I'd insisted to Janine, there was still a nagging corner of doubt that I might have been wrong.

“SO much better!” she says. “My circulation is still funny, so they've still got me hooked up to some drugs, but that's nothing compared to how it was.”

“You're right,” I say, pulling the chair in the corner up to her bed. “Because it was bad.”

Rayne's face gets serious, and I can hear the noises from the hallway in the silence between us. “You have to tell me everything. Griffon was here with Peter, but he's being weird. He keeps staring at me and touching me on the arm, but he won't tell me anything, even though I know he had a lot to do with fixing this mess.”

“Hang on,” I say, and get up to close the door. I sit back down and look at her face. She looks the same, open and trusting, but I know everything has totally changed. Janine said not to tell anyone, but Rayne isn't just anyone. She's the pin on which everything else pivots. There's no other option, so I tell her everything. Everything except the fact that Veronique's crazy plan worked. Everything except the fact that she's now Akhet.

Rayne doesn't say much until I'm done, just nodding her head here and there, like pieces of a puzzle are falling into place. “So Veronique's actually dead?” she asks with tears in her eyes.

“Yes,” I say, finding that I feel surprisingly unemotional as I describe what happened and the news reports that followed later that night. At one point I had so much hatred for her that all I wanted was to see her dead, but now I just feel empty. “Don't waste a tear on her, though. She almost killed you.”

“I know,” Rayne sniffs. “But she didn't mean it. She only did it because she loved Alessandra and thought there might be one last way to be with her again.”

Alessandra.
I have to find out if Veronique was right. I lean toward Rayne. “There is something else,” I say. I try to think back to the day at the slide when Griffon told me about being Akhet and what he said. But I was ready for it then, ready for some sort of explanation about what had been happening to me. Rayne doesn't have a clue. “Have you noticed anything different lately? Has anything changed?”

Rayne is about to answer when we hear footsteps in the hall.

“Hey there! So good to see you!” Rayne's mom says, pushing the door open and setting a bag down on the tray at the foot of the bed. “I brought Rayne some food from El Balazo, but there's plenty to share. What are you two all huddled up about?”

“Nothing,” I say, sitting back in my chair. Rayne looks at me with a question in her eyes. “We can talk about it later, it's no big deal.” In a way, this is better, because once I tell Rayne, it can't be undone. Her world is going to change soon enough—I might as well let her have a little more normal.

I didn't know this many people could fit into Janine's office.

That's my first thought as I open the door to find it full of adults I don't recognize. “Sorry!” I say, glancing at the clock. I'm sure she said to come at two, but a faculty meeting must have run over or something. I start to back out the door when Janine stops me.

“Cole, come in! We were waiting for you.”

I pause. That doesn't exactly give me a good feeling. “You were?”

“Yes. Sit down.” Janine indicates an empty chair over by the sofa. Her face is impassive, and I'm getting nothing from her movements about why I'm here. This must be what a trip to the principal's office feels like.

As I walk into the room I spot Griffon, and the familiar jolt runs through me. I keep thinking it's going to get better, but it
doesn't—that combination of longing and loss hits me every time. He's not sitting down, but leaning against the windowsill in the far corner looking tense, like he might get up and leave any minute.

I take my seat and decide not to offer up any guesses about what's going on here. There's the guy Christophe who was at Griffon's house that day, along with Janine's friend Sue and two other men that I don't recognize. Giselle is nowhere in sight.

“We've been discussing the situation with Veronique and Rayne,” Janine says. “And the others felt that it was time to bring you into our little group. See if there are ways you can help us out.”

“Okay,” I say, in my best noncommittal voice.

The Asian guy with long, dark hair leans forward. “We heard you were invited to a Khered gathering.”

I see Griffon flinch, and Janine tilts her head in irritation. “Tetsuro! Seriously.” She turns to me. “Sometimes even centuries of living can't force some people to learn manners. Or patience.”

I start to rise out of my chair when I realize what he just said. “You mean Drew's party? You've been
watching
me?” I suddenly feel creeped out as I look around. How did they do it? I didn't tell anyone about the invitation.

Janine puts her hands out and tries to calm me down. “It's okay. Just a little harmless poking around—nobody has a hidden camera on you, I swear. Things are just a little tense right now, and it's best to keep tabs on everyone's whereabouts.”

I sit back and fold my arms across my chest. “I don't like anyone poking around in my business.”

“We're sorry. It's as much to keep you safe as anything.”

Suddenly I get what Griffon was saying about time. It feels like in one split second I don't belong to myself anymore. That whatever I do is part of something bigger. I look at him, but he won't meet my eyes.

“Let me make some introductions,” Janine says. “You've already heard from Tetsuro. He and Christophe have been working on fuel cell technology in Switzerland with Griffon, but just transferred down to South Bay. This is Eric.” A blond guy with glasses gives a little wave from the sofa. “And you've met Sue.”

Sue smiles at me. “What Tetsuro was trying not-so-tactfully to say is that your new connections in certain Khered circles, along with what we know are impressive developing empath skills, could be the perfect combination to help us with some research.”

And then I get it. They don't have any idea who trashed the lab or who killed Veronique. Despite Janine's assurances, they've come up empty, and somehow they think that I can help. “You want me to spy on Drew and his friends?”

“ ‘Spy' seems a little heavy-handed,” Christophe offers. “We prefer to look at it as observing with a goal.”

I stare at him. “Call it whatever you want, I'm not sure I can spy on anyone, or that it's going to help you at all.”

Janine leans forward. “Griffon says that when you connected with Rayne, you were able to go much deeper than before.” She watches my face, gauging my reaction to her words. “That you were able to actually see images rather than just feel emotions.”

I nod. “I did. For a few seconds. But I have no idea how. And it made me feel really sick.” I can see an exchange of glances around the room.

“Telempathy is a skill that so far exists only in legends and rumors,” Sue says. “To be able to master it would be something immensely valuable to the Sekhem.”

I remember the feeling of weakness and nausea after I made contact with Rayne. “I'm not in a big hurry to try it again.”

Sue holds up both hands in a gesture of surrender. “No one is asking you to,” she says. “None of us expect you to go that deeply at the Khered gathering. Just poke around a little, see if you can get any information from casual contact with the other guests. We need to find out who did this, and every minute that goes by puts everyone in more and more danger,” Sue says. Her mouth is set into a grim line, and I can feel the intensity in her gaze. “Anything you can give us is valuable at this point.”

“But they killed Veronique,” I say. “So she won't be able to do something like this again. The worst of it's over, right?”

I see wary glances flit across the room. “Not exactly,” Janine says.

Christophe clears his throat. “We have reason to believe that they didn't go to the lab looking for Veronique. Someone got word of what she had been working on and went to get the formula. Veronique was just collateral damage.”

“When we searched the lab after the break-in,” Sue says, “we found evidence that files and samples had been taken. Which ordinarily wouldn't be of too much concern; ergot fungus in its standard form isn't going to do much damage. Even if it were
spread as an epidemic, once it's identified, it's fairly easily treated, as you've been able to see. But Veronique was able to somehow synthesize a totally unknown form of ergot, one that has the capabilities of transforming the very essence of a person. As you've discovered, Veronique's research did what nobody through time has been able to do—to create an Akhet from an ordinary Khem.”

“But how is that a threat?” I ask. “I suppose I get why some people would choose to be Akhet—the kind of immortality it brings. But I don't see the harm.”

Janine smiles. “And I love that you don't see it.”

“The harm is that the people who now have this knowledge in their possession aren't good people,” Sue says. “And if you give the formula to the worst of the worst Khem, you can create a group of Akhet who exist not to help the world, but to destroy it in pursuit of their own fortune and power. A group who will get stronger and smarter with each passing lifetime, who will use that immortality to take risks like the world has never seen before.”

Janine leans forward. “Worse than any single rogue Akhet out to settle a score.” I can tell by the way she's looking at me that she's thinking of Veronique. “Imagine a Kim Jong-un or a Charles Manson who was given the formula. Think about what they could do with Akhet abilities and memory.” She's silent for a moment. “Now think about hundreds of them. Thousands of them. Think about what that could do to the balance of world power in a very short time. Think of how much money that knowledge would be worth.”

I'm silent. In a few sentences, this has gone from being
something personal with Rayne to having implications far beyond this lifetime. “So what can I do?”

“We think that there were Akhet involved, either people who knew Veronique or who heard about her work through others,” Janine says. “And we think it's someone with ties to San Francisco, because they were able to get to the lab quickly and seem to know the area.”

“And you think that Khered are immoral enough to pull off something like this?”

I see glances shift around the room again. “Not all Khered,” Eric volunteers. “But the perpetrators are more likely to be Khered than Sekhem.”

“But what would they be doing at Drew's party?”

“From what we can tell, it's going to be one of the largest gatherings of Khered in recent weeks,” Sue says. “Not just local Khered, but Akhet from all over the world. And our intelligence has picked up a lot more activity in and around the city in the past few days.”