Deja Who (Insighter #1)(32)

“I’d like to have just one conversation with you that isn’t surreal,” she grumped. Then, “Apples? Like . . .” She glanced down at herself. “Crab apples?”

“No, more like Golden Delicious. Or Honeycrisp. You’re a hammerhead shark with luscious Honeycrisp boobs, God, you are soooo hot.”

Leah, meanwhile, had started laughing so hard she had to lean against the door. She’d self-consciously crossed her arms across her chest, which only drew his attention to the Honeycrisp goodies. She saw him looking and laughed harder, finally staggering away from the door. She reached for him, curled a hand around the nape of his neck, and drew him in for a kiss on the corner of his mouth. “Oh, Archer,” she managed between snorts. “Never, ever change.”

“I want to see you tomorrow,” he said, sticking his hands in his pockets so he wouldn’t grab her, toss her on the couch, and go bobbing for apples. “And the day after. And the day after-after.”

“Fine. I’m too tired and emotionally traumatized and giddy to say no to you. Honeycrisp apples. Christ.” She went back to the door, opened it, and headed out into the night. “Yes, all right. I’ll see you tomorrow. Assuming, of course, I don’t get murdered tonight.”

“Don’t you dare,” he said, appalled. “That’ll screw up all my plans for you.” He heard how that sounded and groaned inwardly, but luckily Leah just found it funnier. Even after the door was closed behind her, he could still hear her giggles. It was a sound he planned on hearing, off and on, for the rest of his life.

“Aw, nuts,” he said to the air. “We didn’t set up a time or anything.”

Details. He’d see her again. She ought to count on it, since he was.





TWENTY


Another thing Leah liked about Archer: he never looked at her like he was expecting something. With anyone else, if they said or did something even slightly off, they’d look at her with that expectant “go on, Insight me, tell me why I’m like this” expression. It was, she decided long ago, like people who walked up to doctors in social situations and demanded a (free) diagnosis on the spot.

My arm hurts when I do like this.

So don’t do that.

I’m scared of heights. How come?

Because you live in a penthouse you cannot afford? Go away.

Her rather abrupt thought segue had been brought about by her newest patient, a referral from her colleague.

“I was only clinically dead for three and a half minutes,” Chart #2256 was bitching. “And look! I’m back. Everything’s fine. I’m fine. You’re making way too much fuss here.”

“Five minutes,” she corrected in an even tone. His chart was on the desk, closed. She knew the contents. “I cannot believe you simply went ahead and discounted all my warnings.”

#2256 speared her with a level look. “First off, my past lives are my own business.”

Do not smile. But what a delightful attitude. Do not smile.

“Second,” he continued when she didn’t smile, “what? I’m supposed to believe you were sooo motivated by concern for my well-being? It’s just CYA for you.”

“I was motivated by concern for you.” Or at least concern for her license. No, #2256’s well-being was also a consideration. The man was the poster child for “my way or the highway,” and Leah could not help liking him. “I warned you to leave Insighting to pros.” She had. “I warned you there was an excellent chance of brain damage.” There was. “I warned you that you might die.” He had! For several minutes.

“You said Rain Down has caused a lot of flatlines, which isn’t necessarily the same thing.” #2256 shrugged. “I wanted to see for myself. I’m not comfortable putting all that control in someone else’s hands.”

“And yet, here you are.”

“Yeah, and we’ve been over this. The only reason I even came to your clinic is because I lost another job and my wife drew a line in the sand. It’s not personal, Ms. Nazir. I don’t even trust my own mother.”

“We have that in common.” Reindyne was a hypnotic used exclusively for one purpose: it was often necessary to bring a patient back to revisit past lives. What made it so effective also provided enormous potential for misuse. Without an Insighter and a controlled setting, users could get lost in their past lives. “Nothing like all your past orgasms raining down on you,” a user once pointed out, except all your past disasters did, too, and your past deaths. Every one of them. At once. People could drown in their minds. People had drowned.

For herself, Leah could control seeing past lives, but it had taken years of training and practice. When she was little, other lives would just spill over her. Swamp her. Sometimes that meant a three-day migraine; other times it was a seizure. Her mother figure had not been pleased.

“I wanted to see for myself,” #2256 continued, scowling. “Frankly, I wasn’t sure how necessary you were to the process.”

“How about now?” she asked dryly.

His pale blue eyes met her stare straight on. He was a small man, not much over five-three, but had presence and a gaze it was difficult to look away from. “I’m here, aren’t I?”

“Mmmm.”

Once upon a time, #2256 was an escaped slave named Henry Brown. In 1849, understandably fed up with the institution of slavery, Henry escaped the Virginia plantation where he was considered property and mailed himself to freedom. A fellow slave who was a fair carpenter made a three-by-two-foot wooden crate for the five-foot-eight Henry, who somehow managed to cram his two hundred pounds in it. Two friends took him to the post office, where Henry had himself marked Dry Goods and mailed express. He was in Philadelphia the next day, proving once and for all to the good people at FedEx that there is no excuse for anything not to arrive overnight in the twenty-first century.