Crosstalk

  “There’s someone at the door.”

  —Walk, Don’t Run

  There should have been a wooden back to the cupboard and, behind it, the adobe wall of the courtyard, but there wasn’t. There was a white plastic wall with a control panel at waist height. C.B. pressed a button, and a door irised open.

  “Blast door,” C.B. said, standing back so Briddey could precede him. “Sorry. Relic from my Star Wars phase.” He stepped through after her, and the door whooshed shut, leaving them in a torchlit stone passage with an arched wooden door at the end. “And my Hunchback of Notre Dame phase.”

  “I thought you told me it was a maximum-security prison,” Briddey said as they started down the passage.

  “My perimeter is.”

  It’s no use running away, Maeve said. I’ll just find you.

  “You were right. Telepathy is a terrible idea,” Briddey said.

  C.B. grinned, unlocked the wooden door with a huge iron key, hustled her through it, relocked the door from the other side, and led her down a corridor with a tile floor. And a wheelchair and an IV-stand. “We’re in the hospital?” Briddey said.

  “Yep.”

  “But you hate hospitals.”

  “We won’t be here long,” he said, hurrying her along the corridor past her room.

  Come on, where are you guys going? Maeve called.

  “Death Valley,” C.B. said.

  “Where are we going?” Briddey whispered.

  “My safe room,” he said, pushing the door open onto the stairwell she’d taken refuge in that first night.

  “This is your safe room?” Briddey asked as they clattered down the stairs.

  “No,” he said, hurrying across the landing where she’d sat and on down the steps to a door marked SECOND FLOOR, which opened not onto another hospital corridor, but into a different stairway.

  “You built all these layers of defenses to keep the voices out?” Briddey said, following him down it.

  “No. Remember, I was figuring it out as I went, so some parts of this were just early attempts. And a lot of it,” he said, indicating the stairwell they were in, which she now saw was the one that led down to his lab at Commspan, “is here for frequency hopping, to keep the voices from finding out where you are. I intended to teach you how to do this at the deli while we had breakfast, but then we were rudely interrupted.”

  He hustled her down the last few steps, through the door to the sub-basement, and over to the elevator. “Right now,” he said, pushing the UP button, “we’re using it to keep a certain small child from finding us.” And it must have been working because there was no outraged I am not a small child! from Maeve.

  The elevator dinged, and they stepped through the opening door into the hallway they’d sneaked along after the library closed. Halfway down it, he said, “Hang on,” and darted into the staff lounge. The half-eaten birthday cake and the donations jar were still on the table. C.B. began opening drawers and rummaging through them.

  “What are you looking for?” Briddey whispered.

  “These,” he said, holding up a roll of Scotch tape and a flashlight. He stuck them in his pocket, grabbed a sheet of paper off the counter, scrawled something on it with a marker, dropped the iron key in the donations jar, grabbed the key to the Carnegie Room and Briddey’s hand, switched off the light, and hurried her along the darkened hallway to the stairway that should have led up to the Carnegie Room. But it didn’t. It led to Commspan’s parking garage. And no wonder she hadn’t been able to read his mind. Nobody could find their way through this maze of defenses.

  “Yeah, well, that’s not the only reason,” C.B. said, racing her along the rows of cars, their steps echoing, toward the door.

  “What’s the other one?”

  “I’ll tell you when we get there.”

  “Get where?” she asked as he pushed through the doorway. Into the stacks. And apparently she’d been wrong about nobody being able to follow them through the maze, because before they were halfway along the row of books, Maeve called, Come on, you guys! Tell me where you’re going.

  “Havana,” C.B. said, opening the door to the stairs, pulling Briddey through, and shutting it behind them.

  They were in the lobby of the theater.

  This is no fair! Maeve wailed as C.B. raced Briddey across the lobby, and it seemed to Briddey that Maeve’s voice was growing fainter as they went.

  They ran up the carpeted stairs to the theater doors and through them—to the stairway that led to the Carnegie Room. He bent to unlock the door.

  His safe room’s the Carnegie Room, she thought, touched. If this is the Carnegie Room.

  It was. As they ran up the narrow stairs and through the oak doorway, she could see the fireplace and the bookshelves and the table, on it a box of Lucky Char—

  You might as well give up, Maeve said. You can’t get away from me.

  “Oh, for the love of Mike!” C.B. said, pushing Briddey into the room and dropping to his knees in front of the card file. “I don’t believe this. Nobody’s ever been able to find my safe room, not even your intrepid aunt. ‘Poor wee bairn,’ my foot.”

  He pushed the Persian carpet back from the floorboards. “Come on.” He pulled up a square section of the polished wood floor, dropped down into the dark hole it exposed, and extended a hand to Briddey.

  She clambered down to him, he pulled the trapdoor shut, and they hurried along what might have been the street in front of her apartment, though it was too dark to tell. “Where are we going?” she asked.

  “Inner sanctum,” he whispered. “Where even Maeve won’t be able to find us. I hope.”

  He rushed her around the corner and up another dark street to the library’s front door. “We need to hurry. Here,” he said, handing her the flashlight and taping up the sheet of paper he’d brought from the staff lounge. It read, KEEP OUT! THIS MEANS YOU, MAEVE! I MEAN IT!

  He took the flashlight back from Briddey and opened the door. Onto pitch darkness. “In. Hurry,” he whispered, stepping inside after her and pulling the door shut. “Come on.” He fumbled for her hand and led her into the impenetrable darkness.

  “Where are we?” she asked. “The Black Hole of Calcutta?”

  “No,” he said, finally stopping.

  “What happened to the flashlight?”

  “It’s right here. But before I turn it on, there’s some stuff I need to tell you.”

  “You do have X-ray vision,” she said.

  “No. I’m serious, Briddey. The reason I’ve been able to read your mind and you couldn’t read mine wasn’t just my safe room. I’ve been intentionally blocking you because—”

  “Because you were afraid I’d hear you thinking about Trent and find out what a creep he was being, and you didn’t want me to be hurt. I know.”

  “That was part of it—”

  “Plus, I was hearing the voices, and you didn’t think I could handle the idea of hearing any more thoughts than I was already. And then Trent showed up, and you didn’t dare send any thoughts because he might hear them.”

  “True, but that’s not the only reason I blocked you. You know how I said it was just as well that the telepathy wouldn’t be around anymore? Well, I meant it. It—” He stopped, took a deep breath, and started again. “Remember what I said about things having unintended consequences? Well, it turns out telepathy’s no exception. You know how that first night in the hospital you—”

  Here you are, Maeve’s voice said from the darkness beside them. I told you I’d find you! I can’t believe you guys tried to ditch me.

  “ ‘Tried’ being the operative word,” C.B. said. “How did you get in here?”

  Are you kidding? It was easy.

  “Yes, well, then it should be easy to get out,” C.B. said. “I told you I needed to talk to your Aunt Briddey alone.”

  You mean you guys still didn’t have sex? Did you at least kiss her?

  “That is none of your business,” Briddey said. “Kissing
is a private—”

  No it’s not, Maeve said. It’s not even PG. They kiss in The Twelve Dancing Princesses and Frozen and Enchant—

  “I don’t care!” C.B. shouted. “Go away!”

  “Let me handle this,” Briddey interjected. “Go away,” she said quietly, “or I’ll tell your mother you watched Zombie Girls Gone Wild.”

  You wouldn’t dare!

  “And Zombie Terror and World War Z,” Briddey went on ruthlessly. “And Saw Reborn: Revenge of the Zombie Torturers.”

  I did not! Maeve said indignantly.

  “I know that,” Briddey said, “and you know that, but your mother doesn’t, and who do you think she’s going to believe? Now, are you going?”

  Yes, Maeve said grudgingly. I hate grown-ups! and they heard the door slam.

  “Is she gon—?” Briddey began, and heard the door open.

  Not that you care, but I fixed your stupid jammer! Maeve said, and slammed the door again.

  “What do you mean, you fixed it?” C.B. shouted. “Maeve, come back here!”

  I thought you told me to go away. Make up your minds.

  “What do you mean you fixed the jammer?”

  I mean, I fixed it. I made it so we could still talk to each other.

  “You did what?” C.B. said, sounding like he wanted to throttle her. “Maeve, I swear, if you’ve jeopardized—”

  I didn’t. The feedback loop will still shut down Trent and Lyzandra and all the other people so they’ll think it’s gone and they won’t be able to do anything bad with it. It just won’t shut down us.

  “Us?” C.B. said. “You mean full telepaths?” and Briddey remembered that Maeve didn’t know about Aunt Oona and the Daughters of Ireland, and then hastily quashed that thought so Maeve wouldn’t hear it.

  Apparently she didn’t, because she said, Yeah. You and me and Briddey. Don’t worry. I got rid of the bad parts and just kept the nice stuff.

  “What do you mean the bad parts?” C.B. demanded.

  You know, the scary voices. I shut them down and made it so they can’t ever come back, but I kept everything else. It’s okay. Nobody else’ll know about it. They won’t even know it exists.

  “And how exactly did you do this?”

  I took the stuff you did and put it behind a firewall and then disabled…I’m not sure I can explain it to you. It’s kind of complicated. But don’t worry, it works really good, she said, and was gone.

  C.B. didn’t try to call her back. “Oh, my God,” he said. “If she’s been fooling around with the program and messed it up…come on!” He grabbed Briddey’s hand and started back through the blackness toward the door.

  “We don’t have to go back through the whole maze, do we?” she asked, trying to keep up with him.

  “No, of course not. You do know we’ve been in my lab the entire time, right?”

  “Yes,” she said, though that wasn’t strictly true—the illusion had been so complete. And still was. When they reached the door and C.B. opened it onto his lab, she blinked against the sudden light, and it took her a minute to adjust to the idea that she was actually standing by the lab table, looking down at the smartphone/jammer, not walking through the doorway from his inner sanctum.

  It was a minute that cost her. During it, C.B. had shut the door behind them, and it had returned to being the wall with the pinup of Hedy Lamarr on it, which meant she’d missed her chance to see what his inner sanctum had been.

  C.B. had already dived for his laptop and was typing madly, his face intent on the screen. Lines of code scrolled by, and he checked them with his finger as they did, frowning, and then began typing again.

  “Did she mess it up?” Briddey asked anxiously.

  “I don’t know,” C.B. said, drawing his finger along a string of numbers. “I can’t figure out what she’s done here. She’s altered the code—” And beside Briddey on the lab table, the phone he’d stolen from Suki rang. “Can you get that?” he asked, his eyes still on the laptop screen.

  Briddey nodded and picked it up, thinking, I thought he turned the cellphone jammer back on.

  “He did,” Maeve’s voice said from the phone. “I figured out a way to bypass it.”

  And apparently a way to get Suki’s number. “Maeve,” Briddey said warningly, “I told you—”

  “You said to go away. You didn’t say I couldn’t call you on the phone,” Maeve said with maddening logic. “I need to talk to C.B. and tell him I didn’t mess up his stupid code. I fixed it. The way he was doing it, it would have taken forever, and we wouldn’t have been able to talk to each other anymore, so I—”

  C.B. grabbed the phone from Briddey. “Tell me exactly what you did to the program,” he said, cradling the phone against his shoulder and typing again. “Um-hmm…um-hmm…how did you…? Wow! I never thought of that. What about…? Um-hmm…okay.” He ended the call, stared intently at the screen for several more minutes, and then straightened.

  “Well?” Briddey asked C.B. “Did she fix the code?”

  “No, she wrote a whole new program,” he said, looking bemused, “which is, as far as I can tell, a vast improvement on mine. And, as near as I can tell, it does exactly what she said it does. It eliminates the voices but lets full telepaths go on talking to one another and shuts down the signals completely for everybody else.” He frowned.

  “But that’s good, isn’t it?” Briddey asked. “It means you won’t have to give up being telepathic?” And I won’t have ruined your life.

  “Yeah, it’s good. It’s great,” he said, though he didn’t look like it was.

  “What’s wrong?” Briddey asked. “Do her changes mean it’ll take you longer than two days to finish the jammer?”

  “No. She’s already started it. It’s been running since five minutes after we took off for my safe room.”

  “But how could…she wasn’t even here.”

  “She did it on her laptop and sent it to my computer. At least that’s what she said—and let’s hope she’s telling the truth, because otherwise I was wrong and telekinesis does exist.”

  Which was a very scary thought, especially in Maeve’s hands, but it was impossible to feel worried about that, or about anything. The jammer was up and running, and telepathy had officially vanished off the world’s radar. Neither she nor Maeve nor Commspan’s customers would ever be in danger from the voices again. Telepathy would return to the realm of crackpot internet theories and sci-fi movies, and telepaths would find themselves free from the voices and able to go to movies and malls and kosher delis even when they were full of people. And Aunt Oona and the rest of the Daughters of Ireland could stop blocking and go back to matchmaking and forcing their nieces’ daughters to take Irish dancing lessons.

  And C.B. won’t have to face being interrogated and tested and forced to provide information to anyone, Briddey thought happily. Or be burned at the stake. He’s safe, and our problems are over.

  “I wish,” he said. “There’s still Maeve. And—”

  “Sooner or later she’ll figure out how you did the blocking, and once she does, it’s just a matter of time till she realizes Aunt Oona’s telepathic—or worse, that Mary Clare is—and she’ll completely freak out.”

  “Yeah, well, she’s not the only one who may be freaking out,” C.B. muttered. He looked seriously at Briddey. “Remember in the hospital when you were trying to figure out why we’d hooked up, and you said the connection might be due to crosstalk?”

  “You told me it wasn’t.”

  “It wasn’t,” he said, “but—”

  Suki’s phone rang, and Briddey snatched it up. “Maeve, I thought I told you not to call again.”

  “I know, but I have something to tell you.”

  “What?” Briddey said tightly. “And make it snappy.”

  “Okay, don’t get mad. I thought you’d be done kissing by now.”

  We haven’t even gotten started, Briddey thought, thanks to you. “What is it you needed to tell me?”


  “It’s about Aunt Oona.”

  Oh, no. Don’t tell me Maeve’s found out about her.

  “She wants to know if you can come to dinner tomorrow night. To celebrate Kathleen’s engagement.”

  “Engagement?” Briddey said bewilderedly. “She got engaged to the Lattes’n’Luv guy? I thought he was already engaged.”

  “Not to him,” Maeve said. “To Sean O’Reilly.”

  “Sean O’Reilly?” Briddey repeated, and turned to look in astonishment at C.B. “The fine Irish lad Aunt Oona was trying to hook me up with?”

  “Yeah, only he’s not really a lad. He’s kind of old. And bald. Aunt Oona and Kathleen went to this Hibernian Heritage thing they were working on, and he was there, and I don’t know what happened—”

  I’ll bet I do, C.B. said. And I’ll bet you and Maeve aren’t the only Flannigans whose telepathic abilities have been triggered recently.

  And if Kathleen’s had been, and Sean O’Reilly had had to rescue her and teach her how to put up defenses…

  “Anyway, they’re engaged,” Maeve was saying. “Mom’s having a fit. She says nobody can fall in love that fast, but I think they can.”

  So do I, Briddey thought, smiling at C.B.

  “I mean, Rapunzel and Flynn Rider fell in love in two days, and in The Zombie Princess Diaries, Xander fell in love with Allison in like five minutes, but that’s because there’s not much time when there are zombies chasing you.”

  No, there isn’t.

  “So anyway, Aunt Oona’s having everybody over,” Maeve said. “She’s making corned beef and cabbage, and she said to ask you. She said you don’t have to come if you don’t want to.”

  “Of course I want to come,” Briddey said. “Tell her I’ll bring a loaf of soda bread. And crubeens.”

  “You can bring C.B., too, if you want,” Maeve said. “I already asked Aunt Oona.”

  “I don’t know,” Briddey said, looking doubtfully at him.

  “I’d love to come,” he said.

  Are you sure? You’ve already been through one interrogation—

  “No, I already made it so it won’t be,” Maeve said. “When Aunt Oona told me to ask you, I said, ‘Can I invite C.B. because he helped with my science project?’ and she said yes, so she thinks that’s why he’s coming, and that way nobody’ll ask you since when are you dating and what happened to Trent and are you getting married.”