Crosstalk

Which gave her plenty of time in between telling Trent, “Square, circle, circle, wavy lines,” to try to remember why the name Sedona had rung a bell. Had Mary Clare mentioned it in regard to one of the hundreds of things she was worried about? The online money-laundering syndicate, maybe? Or hantavirus? Or maybe someone at work had talked about someone going there on vacation?

  No, because she hadn’t known it was in Arizona till Dr. Verrick said that was where he’d been, and besides, she had a feeling she’d read it somewhere, not heard it. Where? Online? In an email?

  Briddey frowned, trying to place it, and then remembered she needed to maintain a poker face. Hopefully Dr. Verrick would think she was frowning in concentration.

  If he was even watching her. When he’d given her the instructions, he’d still sounded both distracted and bored. And impatient. Like he’s waiting for something to happen, and this test is just to pass the time till it does. But then why do the test?

  Maybe what he’s waiting for is some sign that we’re actually telepathic, and if that’s the case, it’s doubly important that he doesn’t get it, she thought, and focused on looking at a sequence of stars, wavy lines, and squares, and telling Trent, “Cross, circle, circle, cross.”

  When the buzzer sounded on the last card, the assistant with the ponytail reappeared to take the deck. As soon as she left, Dr. Verrick’s voice came through the headphones, saying, “This time you’re going to receive images from Mr. Worth. Do you know what to do?”

  “Yes,” Briddey said, picking up her pencil.

  “Good. When the red light comes on, Mr. Worth will begin sending.”

  The light blinked on. Square, she thought. Star, Trent sent. She started to write down “square,” then hesitated. If she was going to get most of these wrong, she needed to look like she was having trouble getting the image. She began to count instead.

  Twenty seconds should be about right, she thought, counting them off, and then: Thirty seconds is far too long for sending these images. Especially with the headphones cutting out all exterior sounds. With them gone, all that was left was Trent’s thoughts: As soon as this round’s over, I’ll tell him he needs to do simultaneous fCAT scans while Briddey and I are sending and receiving so they can pinpoint the location of the telepathic activity. Star. It’s a star, Briddey. Let me know if you’re getting this. Is it coming through? Star.

  “Wavy lines,” Briddey wrote firmly, and waited for the next one, wishing it was possible to block him like she’d accused Sky of doing.

  She could at least tune him out. As soon as he sent her the next word, “circle,” she went into her courtyard, got the radio, brought it over to the bench, and tuned it to static.

  Mistake. With his thoughts not there to act as a screen, she could hear the voices. Her perimeter should be keeping them to a murmur, but it wasn’t, they were too angry and frightened, crying out, It hurts…can’t afford…no insurance…overdose…are you trying to stab me, you goddamned bitch?…considerable damage…so scared…what if it’s cancer?…afraid it’s malignant…on duty since midnight…blood clot…can’t be happening to me! Words of anxiety and terror and despair.

  This is the real reason Sky hates hospitals, she said to herself, and thought of him braving the voices to come to the hospital to get her. Twice. Through flames and suffocating smoke. And she’d been rude to him; she’d told him to go away—

  Stop, she told herself. You aren’t supposed to be thinking about him. And you’ve got more pressing concerns—like writing down answers every thirty seconds—“cross”—and keeping the voices out. And your own thoughts in.

  This would be an excellent time to have those auxiliary defenses, but since Sky hadn’t had time to teach them to her, she’d have to see what she could do about shoring up the ones she already had. Maybe I could add more barricades, she thought, remembering Cindy’s walled gardens and drawbridges and moats.

  No, not a moat. Adding more water to the flood of voices outside the door would weaken her defenses, and a walled garden was out. She would have to venture outside the courtyard to erect it, and the voices were already washing up against the adobe walls: …inoperable…so exhausted…been on my feet forever…six months to live…no! They were growing louder and the waves higher by the minute. Why?

  It isn’t just the hospital, Briddey thought. It’s because I’m focusing all my energy on keeping Trent and Dr. Verrick from hearing what I’m thinking and not on my perimeter.

  She needed to strengthen it, but that meant going outside, too, and the voices sounded like they might crash through any minute. Whatever she did, she’d have to do it from in here. But there wasn’t room for a castle, and she wasn’t sure what zombie gates looked like—or how effective they were against water. What was effective against water?

  Sandbags? That was a possibility. She could pile them against the door…

  But not now. There wasn’t time. Two more answers, and she was going to have to start sending again. Or perhaps Dr. Verrick would conclude there was nothing to see here and send them home.

  He didn’t. His assistant—a different one this time, a middle-aged woman with chestnut hair, in a lab coat and Prada heels and clutching a clipboard to her chest—came in to get Briddey’s answer sheet, saying something Briddey couldn’t hear because of the headphones.

  She took them off. “Excuse me?”

  “I said, ‘Dr. Verrick wants to do another round.’ I’m Liz, by the way. And you’re Ms. Flannigan, right?”

  Briddey nodded.

  “Can I get you anything? Water? Coffee? Juice?”

  “No, thank you. I’m fine.” Did she dare ask for a bathroom break so she could try to find out if Sky had located a recording of Dr. Verrick’s voice? No, better not, at least not till she knew how much Trent was able to hear.

  “You understand the procedure for sending?”

  Briddey nodded again.

  “Can you repeat it back to me, just to make sure?”

  “Of course,” Briddey said, and did.

  “Yes, that’s it exactly,” Liz said, and gave her a new, unopened deck of cards. She told her to wait to open the deck till she’d left the room, and went out.

  Briddey put her headphones back on and then pulled at the cellophane tab. “Are you ready to begin, Ms. Flannigan?” Dr. Verrick asked.

  Briddey put her hands up to her headphones. His voice was different. She could hear excitement in it, and the sense that he was waiting distractedly for something was gone. The scan that can spot telepathy without the subject’s help has arrived, she thought.

  But Sky had assured her there was no such technology, and the only other thing that could have excited Dr. Verrick was their test results. Could Trent have somehow, in spite of her defenses, in spite of her sending false answers, heard what was really on the cards, and Dr. Verrick had decided they were telepathic?

  “Ms. Flannigan?” Dr. Verrick called. “Can you hear me?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Sorry. I’m having trouble opening the deck.” She plucked, she hoped convincingly, at the corners of the cellophane wrap, pulled an end free, opened the deck, and set it down in front of her. “Now I’m ready.”

  “Good. Begin when you hear the buzzer.”

  She did, thinking of a symbol, turning over the card and then sending the symbol she’d thought of to Trent while she thought furiously about what to do. C.B. had told her not to audit Dr. Verrick, but she had to know what he was thinking.

  First, though, she needed to barricade the door to make sure Trent couldn’t hear her. I’ll visualize a pile of sandbags against the door, she thought, then remembered C.B. telling her the more detailed the visualization, the stronger it was, and imagined them next to the gardener’s cupboard instead.

  She took hold of one and dragged it over in front of the door and then went back for the next, saying loudly with each trip, Trent, I’m sending you an image of a circle (or star or wavy line). Can you see it?

  When she had a solid layer piled ag
ainst the door and the wall on either side, she said, I’m sending…image…Trent, and went over to the radio to locate Trent’s station.

  He said from the radio: I didn’t catch that last one.

  I said, it’s a star. Repeat, square, she said, and began looking for Dr. Verrick’s station.

  Did you say square or star? Trent asked.

  I said “stare,” she said to throw him off while she inched the needle up the dial. Repeat, s…She let her voice trail off and began humming tunelessly.

  What? I can’t hear you, Trent said. You need to concentrate.

  I am, she thought, leaning closer to the radio to try to catch the doctor’s voice over Trent’s talking and turning the knob again.

  “Are you able to hear the images she’s sending?” Dr. Verrick asked, his voice emerging from the radio, and in spite of what she’d just heard Trent thinking, he must have said yes, because Dr. Verrick said, “Excellent. Did you write them down?”

  Well, of course he wrote them down, Briddey thought. Isn’t that the point?

  “And her responses to the images sent to her?” Dr. Verrick asked, and Trent must have answered in the affirmative again because Dr. Verrick said, “Circle, star, wavy lines, star,” apparently comparing the lists. “Just as I thought. A hundred percent accuracy.”

  What? Briddey thought. Trent had just said he couldn’t hear her.

  She tuned quickly back to Trent’s frequency to hear his response to that, but she was too late. Trent was saying, “…buzzer sounded. Send the next one.”

  She flipped back to Dr. Verrick. “…obviously trying to keep the extent of her telepathic ability from us. Have you been able to pick up anything else?”

  She flipped back to Trent, too quickly, overshot the frequency, then had to fiddle with the knob to bring it in again—too late.

  I need to be able to listen to both of them at the same time, Briddey thought. Maybe if she visualized two radios—

  “You don’t have to do that,” Maeve said, appearing at her elbow in a Rapunzel dress and tiara. “All you need to do is—”

  “What are you doing here?” Briddey said. “Sky told you to stay in your safe room. Trent will hear you!”

  “No, he won’t. I told you, I’ve got tons of defenses. If you want to hear who the person’s talking to, you just turn the tuning knob to the person’s frequency and then tap this.” “This” was the volume knob. “Then you can hear both of them. I don’t know why you did a radio, though. It would have been way easier to do a phone and just click on group chat and then—”

  “Go home!” Briddey said desperately. “If they find out about you—”

  “They won’t. I’ve got like sixteen layers of defenses. Not like this place.” She looked doubtfully around at the courtyard. “I could help you imagine a forest of brambles or something.”

  “No. Go. Now, before Trent hears you talking.”

  “I could help. I know lots of stuff. C.B. taught me—”

  “I don’t care. I need you to go inside your castle and stay there, no matter what happens.”

  “Even if—”

  “No exceptions. Now go, or I’ll tell Sky.”

  “Who’s Sky? Is that like a code name for—?”

  “Yes,” Briddey said. “Go.”

  “What’s my code name? I think it should be—”

  “Now!”

  “Okay, fine,” Maeve said disgustedly. “I was just trying to help.” She disappeared, only to pop back in a moment later. “I forgot to tell you, it only works if you’ve heard the person’s voice before,” and vanished again.

  Please, please, please don’t let Trent have heard any of that, Briddey thought, and dialed the tuning knob back to Trent.

  “What’s wrong?” his voice issued from the radio. “Why isn’t she sending? I haven’t gotten anything the last two times.”

  Briddey hastily turned over a card. It had a cross on it. Wavy lines, she thought at him.

  “Wavy lines,” Trent said, “finally!” He began fussing over whether it was the tenth or eleventh word. Cindy must have been right about him not being able to hear her, thank goodness. But just in case, Briddey tuned to Dr. Verrick.

  “What else did you hear?” he asked.

  There was a pause, during which Briddey cursed herself for not tapping on the volume knob like Maeve had said. “And you didn’t hear anyone else?” he asked.

  Briddey tapped frantically at the knob, afraid she’d miss the crucial part of Trent’s answer, and then thought she must have done it wrong because there was silence. “Curse you, Cin—” she began, reaching for the tuning knob. And heard a female voice say, “No, but she’s definitely sending him incorrect answers.”

  The assistant, Liz. But how could—?

  She has auburn hair, Briddey thought. That’s why she made me go through all the steps of the Zener test again for her, because she needed to hear my voice so she could separate it from the others.

  She must be one of Dr. Verrick’s patients who’d become telepathic, too, when she had the EED. That explained why Dr. Verrick had had the testing rooms and the Zener cards all ready, and why he’d come back when Trent phoned him and then seemed so uninterested in what he had to say and in the tests. He hadn’t needed them. Liz could tell him whether they were telepathic or not. He must have been waiting for her to get to the hospital.

  Trent had thought he’d been using Dr. Verrick to get his phone, but the reverse was true. Dr. Verrick had been using Trent to get to her. That’s why he suggested the possibility of hearing voices to me that day at his office, she thought, and why he moved our surgery up. Because I was a redhead, and he thinks that’s what’s causing this. And Liz’s being one of his patients hopefully meant he thought the EED was the trigger for the telepathy.

  “Do you think she’s sending the incorrect answers consciously?” Dr. Verrick said from the radio. “Or could it be a problem with her connection?”

  “I’ll need to hear more of her responses to be certain,” Liz said, “but I sense she’s doing it deliberately.”

  “But why?” Dr. Verrick asked. “She and Mr. Worth contacted me to tell me they were communicating.”

  “Perhaps her psychic gift frightens her,” Liz said, “or perhaps…could she have made psychic contact with someone else, too?”

  “It’s possible, I suppose,” Dr. Verrick said, “but—”

  “If the person she’s communing with is a man, she might be afraid Mr. Worth would be jealous. Don’t you tell your patients they have to be emotionally bonded to connect?”

  Your patients? That meant Liz wasn’t one. Then who is she?

  “I’m sensing a feeling of spiritual strife from her,” Liz said. “Her chakras are closed, and her aura is emanating emotional conflict.”

  Aura? Briddey thought. Chakras? Who is this? And knew, the memory that had been just out of reach before, slotting neatly into place. The ad Kathleen had emailed her, for the psychic who claimed she could put couples in touch with each other’s souls. Lyzandra. At the Spa of the Spirit. In Sedona, Arizona.

  “Those who have courage to love should have courage to suffer.”

  —ANTHONY TROLLOPE, The Bertrams

  But C.B. said psychics weren’t telepathic, Briddey thought. He said they were fakes who used mentalist’s tricks and cold reading to make it look like they could read minds.

  Yet Lyzandra was saying, her voice coming confidently from the radio, “I haven’t heard anyone else’s voice yet, but a short while ago I lost the connection for nearly five minutes, and at the end of the disruption, I heard her think, ‘Please don’t let Trent have heard that.’ ”

  Briddey leaned close to the radio, listening. “And when I was in the testing room with her,” Lyzandra was saying, “I caught something about her wondering if she dared call someone.”

  Oh, my God, Briddey thought, trying not to panic. My safe room’s not strong enough to keep her out. I’ve got to tell Sky.

  But that was th
e worst thing she could possibly do. If Lyzandra heard her talking to him—

  Briddey, C.B. called. I’ve got to talk to you. It’s ur—

  No! Briddey flung herself at the courtyard’s blue door, pushing with all her might against it. Night Fighter to Dawn Patrol! Maintain radio silence! she called urgently, but he wasn’t listening.

  I did some research on Sedona, C.B. said. It’s a big mecca for—

  We are under attack, Dawn Patrol! Repeat, we are under attack! she cried, trying to think of a way to warn him that Lyzandra was listening without giving his presence away.

  “The Highwayman,” she thought, and began reciting the part of the poem where Bess, the landlord’s daughter, had shot herself to warn her lover of the soldiers, praying C.B. would get the message.

  And either he did or he gave up trying to get her to answer, because he retreated. Briddey jammed the bar more firmly into its brackets, made sure the latch was in place, and still reciting “The Highwayman,” ran across to the sandbags. She had to make the courtyard stronger to keep Lyzandra out. She started dragging the sandbags over to the door one by one and piling them in front of it.

  “She’s stopped sending the symbols and seems to be reciting something,” Lyzandra said from the radio, and Briddey remembered that she was supposed to be transmitting the pictures on the Zener cards.

  Circle, she thought, heaving a sandbag into place. Square. Wavy lines. Cross.

  The bags were impossibly heavy and hard to get a grip on. I should have let Maeve imagine that forest of brambles for me, she began, and then stomped firmly on both the name and the thought. If only Sky had had time to teach her those other screening techniques.

  But he taught me some, she thought, and launched into “Ode to Billie Joe” and then the theme from Gilligan’s Island, interspersing the verses with star, wavy lines, blue moons, pink rainbows. Night Fighter calling Dawn Patrol. Zeroes at twelve o’clock. Maintain radio silence. Repeat, maintain radio silence.

  “Are you getting anything?” Dr. Verrick asked.

  “No. Her chakras aren’t open, so what I’m hearing from her spirit-mind voice is very cloudy.”