Live and Let Psi Read online

  I carefully examined the path that Mrs. LaReau had been dragged along. The grass was thick, and as I brushed my foot through it, I noticed a glint of gold. Reaching down, I retrieved a small key. My first impression was that it had belonged to an old cabinet or trunk. It resembled a skeleton key, a plain circle at the top of a plain shaft, and three plain teeth poking out at the bottom. Then I noticed that the circle had a very worn engraving. The letters N and L were barely readable. Norma LaReau’s initials? I decided I should scan it.

  Scanning is a skill that all Psi Fighters are taught, and one that I was actually pretty decent at. I could extract thought fragments from handwritten notes and sense what the person who wrote it was thinking and feeling. I was good at it, but I didn’t like it. When you scan a memory, it feels like you have become that person. If the memories are nasty, extracting them is like squishing a big hairy spider with your bare feet. Very yucktastic.

  I closed the key in my gauntleted hand and pulled at it with my mind.

  Nothing.

  I rubbed it between my fingers, rolling it over and over, concentrating deeply.

  Still nothing.

  I relaxed and cleared my head, ready to try one more time, when the image of small wooden shelves flashed into my mind, like post office boxes, and a hand, feeling for something.

  Then nothing.

  Apparently that was all I was going to get. I put the key into my belt, wondering what to do next.

  Mrs. Simmons must have believed I would find something here, but she didn’t say what. I turned toward the straw-covered grave, put my hands on my hips, and sighed. Some hunter I turned out to be. Like a shot, a frightening thought went through my mind. Even though Mrs. LaReau wasn’t in that grave, her memories might be, released into the earth when she died. Visions of zombie arms forcing themselves out from the loose earth almost stopped me, but I ignored them and knelt down at the foot of the grave.

  I placed my palms against the straw and concentrated. My heart instantly raged with unwanted hatred, and I knew that the powerful memories forcing themselves into my mind belonged to Norma LaReau. I shuddered as I became a withered old woman, talking to myself in my mind as if telling a story to a roomful of children.

  When I was young, Robert entered my house in the same manner all the children did. Willingly. Toys, candy, gum; easy lures to acquire, impossible to trace. I followed him in, smiling as he reached for the bowl of treats.

  He ate one and said, I feel funny, ma’am. He always called me ma’am.

  I told him the doctor would see him.

  The doctor had entered my house in the same manner all his kind did. Masked—at my insistence. I had no interest in what he looked like. That was the nature of my business.

  The boy’s name is Robert Elon, I told him. He comes from a happy family. The man turned his funny mask toward little Robert and reached out to him. Robert stared, his eyes glazed.

  He is filled with hatred and anger, the masked man said, but it is buried deep. I will teach him to unearth it.

  That was so long ago. Now that I am old, pain explodes daily inside my head. A blinding light and remorse, sobbing, heart-wracking anguish for what I have done…decades of penitence. I am ready. I made fresh eggs for Norman. They are his favorite. One final act of deceit, and I can rest. Robert has agreed to meet me. In his foolish arrogance, he suspects nothing. I recognized him behind his mask. It was a hideous thing. Hello Robert, I said. Hello ma’am, he said back. He told me I had been a bad girl. I told him it was true. I was ready to die for what I had done, but he was coming with me. He laughed. My last act may have been my cruelest. I told Robert that Camelot is no longer hidden. He said he knew about my key, and took it from me. I told him it was too late. A blast of pain…the soft cool ground against my face…the welcome release of death and all the painful memories leaving me, spilling into the earth. I am avenged. Almira has agreed. And so has Ruth Draudimon.

  I pulled away from the grave and pushed Norma LaReau’s memories from my head. That had been awful. I stood up, shaken, nauseated. Note to self: if extracting memories from a note is like squishing a big hairy spider with bare feet, extracting them from a raw grave is like biting into something you think is an unpeeled kiwi fruit and realizing that said spider has crawled into your mouth. Bleh!

  I had just seen Nicolaitan’s face. And learned his real name. I had my man—if only I could age the memory forty or fifty years. And Mason’s mom was definitely alive. But what was her connection to Norma LaReau?

  I shuddered and took off toward Nat Greene. I had to get back to the Academy with this news.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Close Encounter of the Worst Kind

  As I neared Nathanael Greene’s statue, a chill shot through me. There was no moon to cast shadows across Sinclair Park. There were no stars. The sky was pitch black. Normally, that didn’t scare me, but at that moment it did. I had the intense feeling I was being watched.

  I didn’t see anyone. Didn’t even sense anyone. But the feeling was unmistakable. I had an uncontrollable desire to escape up Commander Nat’s butt hatch, but now that was totally out of the question. If someone was spying on me, I would give away a secret entrance. That is something no Psi Fighter would ever do.

  Nathanael Greene’s statue, posed like an archangel in the dark night, pointed across the grove to the cemetery. Great. Now all I needed was some fog and a werewolf. Without thinking, I followed the statue’s arm with my eyes. There in the distance, I saw him. A Knight.

  I moved slowly away from the statue, my eyes never leaving him.

  “Zoom,” I whispered into my mask. Instantly, the landscape grew large. The Knight seemed to be searching for something.

  This was bad. The smart thing to do would have been to go into Shimmer and slip away unnoticed. Unfortunately, my brain had switched into stupid mode. I had to see what the Knight was doing. Then I decided that Andy would kill me if I botched another mission, so I called him.

  “Quick question,” I said when Andy picked up. “How many transports do you have?”

  “You took the Andymobile.” Andy’s annoyed voice came across my mask’s receiver. “I should have known not to leave the keys lying around.”

  “It doesn’t have keys.”

  “Don’t change the subject. What sort of damage have you done to my baby?”

  “None. At all.” I decided not to mention the near miss. “I’m just wondering if I can get a ride. See, there’s sort of a Walpurgis Knight between me and Nat Greene’s secret entrance. I can’t get to the Andymobile, and I don’t want to walk home.”

  “I’m on my way,” Andy said. “Don’t do anything stupid.”

  “Define stupid.”

  Andy grunted and hung up on me. No sense of humor.

  The Knight had never left my sight while I was talking to Andy. He was lurking in the cemetery near the place where Mrs. LaReau had been murdered. He hadn’t seen me yet, and I was determined to keep it that way.

  “Shimmer,” I said into my mask. Using all my powers of stealth, I stole quietly toward him, like a lioness stalking a gazelle. Each step brought me closer, until I was near enough to hear him breathe. I slid behind a large sarcophagus and remained perfectly still. His back was toward me, but his cloak and armor seemed familiar. I immediately thought of arrogant, stuffy Scallion, but dismissed that notion quickly. This Knight was singing a twisted version of an Elvis Presley classic to himself.

  “Memories, pressed between the pages of my mind. Memories, wiping out your family’s blood line…”

  Just as I realized that being there was a huge mistake, the Knight stopped singing and turned toward me.

  Nicolaitan.

  “Come out, come out, wherever you are,” he whispered, moving his red eyes side to side as though trying to pinpoint my location. “Haven’t you learned yet that I am impossible to surprise?”

  I didn’t move a muscle. I didn’t even breathe. Probably because I was frozen in fear.


  “Maybe you could help me,” Nicolaitan said, no longer whispering. “I am searching for something I lost yesterday, and I think I dropped it right in this very spot.”

  I decided it would be smart to back away very slowly and quietly to avoid detection. But first, I had to get hold of myself. I was more terrified than I had ever been in my life. My pounding heart and shallow breathing would soon result in passing out—a very uncool thing for a crime fighter to do.

  “It is important that I find it,” Nicolaitan continued, his bloodshot eyes still searching. “Okay, I’ll tell you what it is. It’s a key. To information that could sully my impeccable reputation. All lies, of course, but still…”

  I remembered Andy’s warning about controlling my emotions. I took a slow, deep breath, cleared my mind, and placed my hand on the barrel of my Amplifier. Just in case.

  Nicolaitan crossed his arms, then uncrossed them and held his gauntleted hands wide. “Look, I know you’re a Psi Fighter. I hate to admit it, but nobody else is talented enough to get this close to me and live. I know, I shouldn’t say nice things about my sworn enemy, but I like to give credit where it’s due. Now, be a good little doobie and show yourself.”

  I felt his influence reaching out, trying to take hold of me like he had the police officers. Shield, I thought, and instantly blocked my mind.

  Nicolaitan clapped his hands and spun on one foot, laughing like a hyena. “Oh, you’re good! Shut me right out, so you did. I am impressed. Sadly, I’m a busy man. I can’t play this game all day. Show yourself. You know you want to. Show yourself…or I will leave. Just like that. Poof, gone! Three seconds.”

  No way was I falling for that.

  He held up three fingers. “Three.”

  Keep counting, bozoid. I’m not dumb enough to take you on alone.

  “Two.” He dropped a finger.

  Anyway, I had a ton of homework.

  “One.”

  And two tests in the morning.

  “Bye-bye!” He dropped his hand, turned, and threw his cloak around himself.

  “Last time we met, you were looking for somebody,” I said quietly in my best electronically altered femme fatale voice. “Now it’s something. I’m seeing a pattern here. You have a habit of losing things.”

  Nicolaitan unwrapped himself from his cloak and smiled in my direction. “You’ve come back for me. I knew you would.”

  I felt safe enough with the sarcophagus between us to keep talking. “You seemed lonely. It was the least I could do.”

  “Will you show me your face, Psi Fighter?”

  “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.” Oops. Bad word choice.

  “Silly girl,” Nicolaitan said. “I already know who you are. You are the Psi person I met the other evening, the one who tried to make me believe she’s not the Morgan girl. You failed terribly, by the way, but I completely respect the effort. Electronics mask your voice, not your emotions. I read emotions like the written word. I taste them. I smell them. I’d know yours anywhere. You are the wonderful girl I so sweetly asked to join me. Tell me, where is your big, crabby friend?”

  “Flatterer. The only reason you know who I am is because I told you. Are you so certain I’m this Morgan girl?” I came out of Shimmer but stayed behind the sarcophagus.

  “There you are.” Nicolaitan clapped his hands. “Okay, a deal’s a deal. I’ll go first.” He reached up and grasped his mask at the jaw. “Are you sure you want to see this? They tell me it’s not for the weak of stomach.”

  “Go for it,” I said.

  In one smooth motion, he peeled his mask off, exposing a ruggedly handsome cross between Harrison Ford and Harry Styles.

  Impressive ruse. Using gorgeous men forty years apart to figure out how old I was.

  “The stories don’t do you justice,” I said. “I knew you were striking, but never knew what the word meant until now. My turn.” I pulled back my hood, exposing my full mask, with its childlike eyes, angelic hair, and awestruck mouth.

  “You’re a blonde,” Nicolaitan said. “I would have guessed redhead.”

  “They say we have more fun,” I said, pulling my hood back up.

  “I like this game.” Nicolaitan’s face reverted back to rotting flesh. “Neither of us knows anything more about the other, but somehow, I feel so much closer to you.”

  “I have that effect on people.”

  He took a step toward me. “Tell me your name.”

  That sent major chills down my spine. Even though he knew I was the Morgan girl, I knew better than to actually admit it. “I am the friend of bears and the guest of eagles. I am Ring Winner and Luck Wearer, and I am Barrel Rider.”

  “You have nice manners for a thief and a liar,” Nicolaitan said, obviously pleased. “I think I like you. You put me in the same category as the noble dragon? Most Psi Fighters are not as respectful as you. It’s true, we are like dragons—never tell us your name!”

  I was becoming really uncomfortable. Nicolaitan’s influence was hard to keep out. A sudden desire to rush forward and tell him everything threatened to seize hold of me, but I forced it down.

  “Now, back to your question. No, I have not found the Morgan girl. But I meant what I said. Give her to me, and I will become the Psi Fighter’s greatest ally.”

  I clapped my hands to my cheeks. “What does she have that I don’t? I’m jealous.”

  “Are you, now?” Nicolaitan put his hands on his hips and danced a little two-step. “You aren’t going to give her to me, are you?”

  “She’s too skinny. Why do you want someone like that?”

  “We have unfinished business.” Nicolaitan shrugged. “I’ll hate myself in the morning, but is there anything I can do for you before I murder you? And I say that with genuine affection. I’ve never met anyone like you. Still, I have priorities.”

  I stepped out from behind the sarcophagus, hoping a show of trust would buy me some time until Andy showed up. It was all I could do to keep my emotions under control. “You Knights are fickle. First you want me to join you, then you want to murder me. How is a girl supposed to make up her mind about you? The last Knight I ran into was the same way. Is it true that Egon Demiurge wasn’t your Apprentice? Because if he was, you really ought to get better help.”

  “You don’t fear me,” Nicolaitan said, stopping in his tracks. “I like that. So, I don’t mind telling you that Egon served his purpose.”

  “Which was to find the Morgan girl. Am I right?”

  Nicolaitan laughed. “Yes.”

  “I don’t think you’re being honest with me. One of your minions told me Egon was a diversion. He said your eyes are still on the high school.”

  Nicolaitan folded his hands together and smiled, his teeth stark white against the rotting flesh of his lips. “I adore the way you did not say my high school. I don’t think you’re being honest with me, either. Are you trying to make me believe that you are anything but a child?”

  “A gentleman never asks a lady her age,” I said as though offended. “And I adore the way you avoided my question. So, let me ask one more. Why do you degrade yourself by breaking into places and robbing them? That is so unworthy of a man of your passions.”

  Nicolaitan laughed like a jackal. “I would never stoop so low as common burglary. I know everything about the robberies that have dishonored my Knights. We have Whisperers, too, but they are not like yours. My Malice Mongers lurk behind every drip, drip, drip of a leaking faucet. They listen all coiled up in a silent radio. They watch, poised to sting, at every Internet posting. I know everything. The man you seek is a rogue Psi Fighter.”

  I laughed, hoping it was the right response. “Maybe it’s a rogue Knight.”

  “Never,” Nicolaitan said. “They know the penalty for treachery.”

  “I thought treachery is what you teach them,” I said softly.

  “I do,” Nicolaitan said. “But not against me.”

  “There in five,” I heard across my mask’s radio
. Andy. I hoped he meant five seconds, because I was jumping out of my skin.

  “We really have to do this again,” I said. “Have your people call my people.”

  I whispered, “Shimmer,” into my mask, disappeared, and took off through the woods, hoping that no Avada Kedavra spells were being flung at me, ducking and weaving as though my life depended on it.

  It probably did.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Teacher Down

  I really hoped that Andy understood he was picking me up at the mausoleum where I was stationed for my first mission to take down Norman LaReau, otherwise I was in deep doo-doo.

  Sinclair Park was spooky on a normal day, but after meeting Nicolaitan face-to-face all by myself, I had never been so terrified. I ran as fast as my feet would carry me toward what I hoped-beyond-hope was the safe section of the cemetery. Not that any person in her right mind would believe a cemetery has a safe section—that would bring into question everything we’ve been taught as children about vampires.

  I stopped running about fifty yards from the mausoleum, wondering why Andy wasn’t sitting there patiently waiting for me. Not only was he not waiting, he was nowhere to be seen. Andor Manchild was not doing my panic attack any favors.

  “Where are you?” I screamed into my mask’s radio.

  Just as I was about to explode from panic, a soundless Andymobile ripped across the cemetery, skidding to a halt right in front of me.

  Andy’s mask smiled at me from the driver’s seat. “You rang?”

  I tumbled into the passenger seat and slapped my hand onto the electrode plates lining the armrest, leaning forward and willing the transport to speed away to safety. Nothing happened.

  “Go!” I yelled.

  Then it hit me. “Hey, where did you get this? I left it in the tunnel under Nat Greene.”

  “In the tunnel under Nat Greene,” Andy said, and we shot off into the darkness. “You look scared out of your wits.”

  “That’s because I am,” I said.