The Thought Readers (Mind Dimensions #1)(45)

*



“Okay,” I tell Julia when I’m out. “I think I have something to convince you. She wanted to sleep with him.” I point at Caleb. I stress the word ‘she’ too much, and Julia smiles at my discomfort.

“You men and your homophobia,” she says, walking over to Caleb.

In a moment, Caleb’s double appears, the animated version of him looking at Julia curiously.

“He says that Stacy was interested in you,” Julia tells him.

“That’s his proof?” Caleb says, grinning from ear to ear. “That sounds more like an educated guess to me.”

“Right, because every woman wants you?” Julia says sarcastically.

“You tell me.”

“Not if you were the last man on the planet,” Julia retorts sharply.

“Louis the XIII Cognac,” I say, tired of their back-and-forth. “Three hundred dollars for a shot; vodka shots; turning the girl down. Any of that ring a bell?”

Caleb’s face turns serious. “I do remember that now,” he says, frowning at me. “But it doesn’t make sense. It was months ago.”

He stares at me intently, like he’s seeing me for the first time. Julia is also staring. Then they exchange meaningful looks.

“Okay, Darren,” Julia says, looking back at me. “You have to be one of us.”

She walks toward herself and touches the frozen Julia’s cheek.

The world comes to life again.

Julia looks from me to Eugene, then back to me, waiting for Stacy to leave the room. When the bartender is finally outside, the short guy who went to get her closes the door.

“Darren’s one of us,” Julia says. “I can vouch for that. He’s not Pusher scum.”

Everyone seems to relax. There had been tension up to this point, but that tension is gone now. They really dislike Pushers over here. Given what Pushers did to Eugene’s family, and what I suspect they did to my own parents, I can’t really blame them.

“That still doesn’t explain what that half-blood degenerate is doing here,” Sam—Caleb’s annoying doppelganger—says. A few people nod their heads and murmur their agreement.

“Watch it, Sam. Eugene is my personal friend,” Julia says, staring the guy down. Sam sneers, but keeps quiet. When Julia turns away, however, the look he gives Eugene is even more hostile than before.

“My sister has been taken,” Eugene explains, ignoring Sam. “And I think Pushers are behind it.”

This last statement gets everyone’s attention, even the * Sam’s.

“Why would Pushers be after Mira?” Caleb says, his eyes narrowing. It sounds like he knows her.

“They’re not after her—they’re after me,” Eugene explains.

“Is this a continuation of that story you told me about your parents?” Julia asks.

Sam scoffs. “You mean that crazy conspiracy theory—”

“Shut it, Sam,” Caleb cuts him off. “Let’s get the facts without needless commentary.”

I can tell Sam is dying to talk back, but decides not to. I guess that means Caleb outranks him or something.

“Please start from the beginning,” Julia says to Eugene. “Tell everyone what you told me.”

Looks like I was right earlier. There’s definitely some kind of history between her and Eugene.

“I believe,” Eugene says, giving Sam a hard look, “that my parents were killed because Pushers were trying to kill my father and me.”

“Why would they want to do that?” Caleb asks.

“Because of my father’s research. He was working on some things they would’ve found unnatural,” Eugene says, and there’s anger in his voice. “He was trying to figure out how Reading and Splitting into the Mind Dimension work in the brain.”

The room grows tense again.

“That kind of research is forbidden,” Sam says harshly, frowning.

“It’s not forbidden,” Julia corrects him. Like Caleb, she seems to have some authority around here. “As long as the research is never published and is only discussed with peers who are Readers themselves.”

“My father was very discreet. Very few people knew what he was working on,” Eugene confirms. “I believe something about his research made Pushers think that Readers would gain a big advantage if he succeeded.”

“And would we?” an older woman asks. She’s been quiet up until now, but from the way everyone looks at her, I can tell she’s important.

“I’m not really sure,” Eugene says. “I don’t know the practical applications of what he was doing—but I imagine so. Any good science has real-world benefits.”

“Eugene is more interested in theory, Mom,” Julia tells the older woman. “He’s above politics.”

“So they’re trying to kill you because you inherited the same research your dad was doing?” I decide to butt in.

Everyone looks at me with surprise. They probably assume I already know what’s going on since I came with Eugene.

“Exactly,” Eugene says. “When I used that first test on you to see if you were a Reader, I did it using the method Dad developed back in Russia. The fact that they tried to kill me today is extra evidence he was killed over his work. They missed killing me that day. I was shopping for groceries.” He stops and takes a deep breath. “For those of you who don’t know, my parents were murdered when their car exploded right in front of our house. My sister was coming back from school—she saw the whole thing.”