Bishop looked at her.
She nodded. “He’s been in and out the last couple of weeks, while you were on the St. Louis case. Still closed down tight as a drum, but I think he’s getting restless. I heard he’s run the trainee course several times, and he’s been at the shooting range half a dozen times. So, though he hasn’t gone anywhere near his desk, he’s been . . . around. Just about every day. Making small talk, which we both know is hardly his way. This thing could be what it takes to bring him off official leave and back to the unit. Because if this is . . . as bad as we saw, then we may need a Guardian in the worst way, an experienced Watcher. Especially given who’s been . . . summoned. And always assuming they answer the summons.”
She had placed her legal pad on the table before them when she’d joined him, and now she pushed it toward him a few inches. On the pad were written—rather shakily, with her normally clear handwriting showing severe stress—three names: Olivia Castle, Logan Alexander, and Reno Bellman.
Bishop barely glanced at the names, for the moment far more concerned about his wife.
It hit you harder than it did me, beloved.
I wonder why.
My guess would be your connection with Bonnie. Your instinct is always to reach out and protect her, especially when something unusual and potentially threatening happens. It’s instinct, deeper than thought. That moment of reaching out left you vulnerable to the sheer power of . . . whatever this is.
Bonnie was Miranda’s younger sister, currently on track to graduate early from the University of Virginia, where she lived on campus with her longtime boyfriend, Seth, who was in medical school there. And though both Miranda and Bishop did everything they could to provide a normal life for her and keep her far from the difficult and dangerous life’s work they had chosen, Bonnie was a born medium-healer, exceptionally powerful, and she possessed a very strong psychic connection to her sister, something not uncommon among blood siblings, especially in a family that had produced psychics for generations.
And most especially when they had only had each other for too many years after their family had been devastated.
She’s safe, I feel that. Not among the summoned, thank God.
And I believe I know why. We’ll find out soon enough about our own people, but my guess is that psychics with specific individual abilities were summoned with, perhaps, some others with similar abilities not summoned because they’re intended to be held in reserve.
In case the first line of defense fails?
If this warning is due to some kind of attack or something we’ve never before dealt with, yes. We won’t know until everyone checks in or is located, but . . .
“I think most of them will at least call in,” he said out loud. “Especially if they experienced some version of what we saw and felt.” Bishop pushed the legal pad on the table in front of him toward her until it touched hers. On his legal pad were written the names Sully Maitland, Victoria Stark, and Dalton Davenport.
Leaning an elbow on the table as she absently rubbed the back of her neck, Miranda studied the names on his legal pad. “Not the same names I got, but all of them are high on the ‘maybe one day’ list, some for years. People you’ve kept a close eye on. And the abilities of these six run the gamut and then some. But why untrained people, lacking experience as well as unwilling, or unable, for one reason or another, to be feds, cops, or other kinds of investigators?”
“There’s always a reason,” Bishop noted.
“If we can only figure it out. Or if they can.” Her gaze was still on the legal pads. “Medium, telekinetic, seer and clairvoyant, empath— Did we ever come up with a definition for Victoria’s ability?”
“No,” Bishop replied, adding rather cryptically, “and I’m still not convinced she has only the one.”
“I remember she refused to be tested.”
“Repeatedly. And since she has exceptionally strong shields, none of us could read her. Those shields could help protect her. But we can have no idea of her control, or how her ability could change in the field.”
“That’s true of all of them, really.”
Bishop nodded slowly. “We always gain the best and most useful information on most psychics involved during multiple investigations over time. But these psychics haven’t been tested in the field; they’ve been tested in trying to live ordinary lives, which was all most of them could cope with, and even that gave most of them problems. With the possible exceptions of Reno and Sully, I wouldn’t say any of them lives normal lives. But . . . in the field on this, it could all be so much worse for them . . . The situation is already radically different from anything we’ve encountered, and we barely know anything about it at this point, nothing about what’s going on or could be starting in Prosperity. How to fight it, what the cost could be. We can’t predict anything unless there’s another vision, can’t extrapolate from data because we don’t really have any.”
Miranda knew her husband too well not to know that he was deeply troubled by this unprecedented situation and the extreme, if undefined, threat they both knew it represented, but she also knew that only time and a successful resolution to . . . whatever this was . . . could really ease his mind.
Assuming a successful resolution could be achieved.
Calm, she said, “I have a hunch we’ll have a lot more data once our people and the others begin checking in.” She kept her eyes on the legal pad, adding, “And rounding out the list is a telepath. When was the last time you talked to Dalton?”
“Six months ago.”
“How was he holding up?”
Bishop made a sound that wasn’t quite a laugh. “Not at all happy to hear from me. He was still living in Alaska. About as far away from people as he could get without going out into the wilderness and totally off the grid. And wary as he is, he doesn’t want to be that alone.”
“So not quite ready to sacrifice civilization,” she noted.
“No. He has ties whether he’s willing to admit it, ties he isn’t able to completely sever, and he’s holding on to the phone when he could have tossed it, so not willing to disappear.”
“But you’re sure he was summoned? Like these others?”
“I’m sure he got the call, just like you’re sure the people on your list got the call. Just not entirely sure if he’ll answer it with anything but a grim no, at least initially. He spent most of the twenty-five years since he was a kid medicated to the gills, institutionalized, thinking, if he was able to think clearly at all, that he was crazy, and listening to doctors telling him almost daily that he was delusional. It really is amazing that he emerged from that sane.”
“I know you hoped Diana could reach him, since she’s the only one in the unit with a past similar to his.”
“Similar,” Bishop said, “but not the same. Diana’s mediumistic instincts kept themselves alive and functional at a subconscious level from her childhood on in spite of all the meds and so-called therapy, and her father’s determination to fix her—or just control her. And she wasn’t institutionalized.”
Miranda said, “You’re right. It’s almost impossible to imagine how Dalton came through that sane.”
“I’m not at all sure he believes he’s sane.”
“Well . . . neither did Diana. For a long time.”
“Yes. And she wasn’t locked away completely from anything like a normal life, or surrounded by people with real, serious mental illnesses for years on end. At least her father never subjected her to that.”