The Vanishing Stair (Truly Devious #2)(38)

“Recovered from what?”

“Like I told Marge, I got hit with a dose of radiation at the end of my last case. Before you ask, no, I don’t know what kind of radiation. The source was a machine that generated energy through some unknown crystals. Initially my psychic senses were completely iced. For a time I thought I had lost them altogether.”

Ruthlessly, Catalina tried to suppress a rush of sympathy. There was no need to feel sorry for Slater Arganbright. But the thought of what he must have gone through when he woke up to discover that his paranormal senses had been blinded made her shudder.

“That must have been a horrible feeling,” she said. “But obviously you recovered.”

“Maybe. The truth is, I don’t know what the hell is happening to me. I don’t know what I’m becoming. I haven’t admitted this to Victor and Lucas, but given the fact that you and I are going to be in very close contact for the foreseeable future, you have a right to know.”

“What is this truth?”

“I don’t sleep very well these days because I wake up in the middle of the night wondering if I’m becoming one of the psychic monsters that the Foundation hunts.”





CHAPTER 16


Okay,” Catalina said. “I did not see that coming. It certainly will add some spice to our relationship.”

Slater’s eyes tightened at the corners. “You aren’t taking this seriously, are you?”

“I’m pretty good at figuring out what people are about to do next, remember? Not perfect, mind you, but my ability is way above average.”

“So?”

“So I don’t see any signs of instability in your energy field. You’re in full control. And given the nature of my talent, I’ll get some warning if you suddenly do become a psychic vampire or a crazed human monster.”

“If I’m so stable, why do I feel like I’m … changing?”

She shrugged. “Probably because you’re still healing.”

Slater hesitated. “That’s what my uncles tell me.”

She smiled very sweetly. “There you go, then. If you can’t trust the word of the director of the Foundation and his husband, who can you trust?”

“I’m trying to give you a heads-up about a potentially serious complication.”

She stopped smiling and leaned forward slightly. “Here’s the thing, Slater. I don’t have time to take your personal problems seriously. All I care about is finding Olivia. As long as you are helpful in that regard, I don’t give a damn who or what you might turn out to be. Are we clear on that?”

Some of the shadows in his eyes seemed to dissipate.

“Clear,” he said.

She heightened her senses a little and suddenly she understood.

“You told me about that radiation hit you took and your concerns because you were hoping I could tell you what it is that is changing in your aura, didn’t you?” she said.

He sat back, resigned. “It occurred to me that with your talent you might be able to give me some idea of what’s going on.”

“Hey, I’m a fake psychic, remember?”

There was no humor in Slater’s eyes. He was, she realized, very, very serious.

She was not sure why she wanted to reassure him. Maybe she just wanted to assure herself that he was not turning into one of the monsters. As he had said, she was stuck with him for now. She tried to find a way into what had become an extremely delicate conversation.

She leaned across the table again and lowered her voice to barely above a whisper.

“What do you think is happening to your parasenses?” she asked.

“I told you, I don’t know.”

“You may not know the final result, but you must have some feel for what is going on in your energy field. Maybe you’re just more powerful than you used to be. Could be that’s the only thing that’s different—the degree of heat in your aura.”

“I don’t think it’s as simple as that. What I’m going through now reminds me too much of what it was like when my psychic senses first began to develop. I was twelve or thirteen. Remember how it felt?”

She winced. “Don’t remind me. There were times when I would be walking home from school in Fogg Lake and stroll straight into a full-blown hallucination.”

“Try to imagine that experience on steroids. That’s what happened to me after I was hit by that radiation. Except that the hallucinations were a thousand times worse than they were when I was a kid. I thought I really was going mad. My uncles won’t admit it, but I know they wondered the same thing. Fortunately for me they decided to give me some time to recover. But I was a walking disaster. That’s why they had to lock me up for about a month.”

Catalina had been about to drink some more coffee. She shivered and put the cup down instead.

“Being locked up for any length of time would have driven me mad,” she said. “I don’t do well in confined spaces. How did you get through it?”

“At night they laced my food with sedatives in an effort to calm the nightmares, but the drugs never worked for more than a couple hours at a time. They didn’t want to keep me totally sedated, because they were afraid that might make it impossible for me to get control of my senses.”