“Shanti and Seymour will be relieved to hear this news. I’ll get them back to you tomorrow. The next day at the latest.”
“What’s wrong with today?”
“We’re investigating an important IIC lead. A guy who was part of the company at the start, but who has carefully separated himself from Brutran and the others.”
“I’m surprised she let any of her key people go.”
“When she could just kill them, yeah, I know what you mean. It’s odd. But let us finish investigating this guy. We think he has the answer to many interesting secrets.”
“Is he willing to share them with you?”
“That’s just it, he’s a great guy. He has heart. You can’t imagine he would have anything to do with Brutran.”
“Be careful, Teri. It might be a trap.”
“I will.” I pause. “Hey, have you heard from your mother yet?”
He hesitates. “No.”
“But you’ve tried to contact her?”
“Yes. I told you we haven’t spoken in ages. I would have been surprised if she’d gotten back to me right away.”
He’s lying, I can tell. I can hear the disappointment in his voice. He fears his mother is avoiding him, or worse, that she’s dead. I know nothing about their relationship. Perhaps I can spray more of Yaksha’s pages with my blood and see if I can find any hidden messages that talk about Umara and Matt.
“Where are you?” Matt asks.
“Santa Cruz. You?”
“The East Coast. I’d rather not be more specific right now. Tell me what you learned from Professor Sharp.”
“Let me tell you tonight, after we finish questioning his student. To me, they’re two sides of the same coin. We’ll have a much better idea of the IIC when we’re done.”
“Whatever you discover, I still think it’s a mistake to go to the IIC for help.”
“I understand. You have a rare insight into how evil they are. Like Sita, you’re one of the few people who has lived through an Array attack.”
He is silent a long time. “Why do you bring that up now?”
“I know it upset you. It would upset anyone to have their mind ripped away from them.”
“Yeah,” he says softly.
“But there is one thing I don’t understand about what happened that morning up on the mountain. I’ve been talking to Seymour and he said that Sita believed the IIC needed a sample of her blood to turn the Array against her. How did they get a sample of your blood?”
“No one connected to the IIC has my blood.”
“They must have it. Seymour said—”
“I don’t care what he said. From the time I was young, my mother and father taught me to guard my blood carefully. In the last few years, since the IIC came into existence, I’ve never let anyone close enough to me that they could have gotten even a microscopic amount of my blood.”
“Then the Array shouldn’t have worked on you.”
“Sita had a theory the IIC needed her blood in order for it to work. She was obviously mistaken. I know you idolized her, Teri, but she wasn’t always right.”
“I know.” He’s wrong. They must have his blood.
“However their Array works, the IIC are monsters. We can’t go to them with our hat in our hand. Chances are they’ll cut our hand off.”
“I don’t totally disagree. Professor Sharp made it clear Brutran’s a witch. It’s just an option. Let’s not close any doors until we know what’s behind them all.”
Once again he takes a long time to respond.
“You’re beginning to sound like Sita.”
I fight not to freeze up. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“Seriously, Charlie has got to see Shanti and Seymour immediately. He’s confident he can get rid of their symptoms. You know how much is riding on this vaccine.”
“If we don’t fly out tomorrow, maybe you can fly here.”
“I already have Charlie set up in a temporary lab. I don’t want to take him away from his work, not even for an hour. The fate of the world might rest with that guy.”
“That’s a scary thought.”
“I trust him. I know he helped the Telar create the virus, but he’s working himself to death to make this right.”
“Tell him we’re all rooting for him.”
“I will.” He pauses. “I miss you.”
“I miss you.”
“Do you?”
“Of course, silly. How can you ask that?”
“You’re a vampire now. You’ve gone through a major change. Your feelings toward everything must have changed.”
“They have. Except when it comes to you. My love for you will never change.”
He draws in a deep breath. “That’s nice to hear. Will you call soon?”
“Of course. Take care, Matt. Watch out for the Telar.”
“Watch out for the IIC. You’re poking your heads in their backyard, questioning these people. Make no mistake, Brutran’s going to hear about it. My advice to you is, finish questioning this guy as fast as you can and charter a plane and fly into New York tonight.”
I tell him I’ll consider his suggestion. When I put down the phone I discover my heart’s pounding. The strain of talking to him and keeping up the facade is immense. I can’t maintain it forever. A single mistake and it could all be over. He’s faster and more powerful than lightning. In his rage, he could snap my neck before I saw him coming.
ELEVEN
It takes until after lunch to get Freddy settled in one place so we can talk to him. I suppose we can’t complain. We have dropped in on Mary and Freddy without warning. They have fed us and given us a place to sleep for the night. When they go shopping for fresh produce at an organic market, on the other side of town, all we can do is wait.
I convey Matt’s news to the others, and suddenly Seymour and Shanti are more interested in Charlie and his research than the IIC. I guess I’d feel the same way if a plague of black blisters kept reappearing on my body and itching like crazy. I give Shanti a double dose of the vaccine we have and her symptoms improve but don’t vanish.
Finally, Freddy is all ours. The group, Mary included, squeezes into the cramped living room to hear the parts of the IIC’s birth that Professor Sharp was too frightened to tell us about. It’s probably a good thing Mary’s present. Freddy, looking nervous, downs three beers before he even starts.
I just want to get him talking. There’s no way I’m going to start with the Cradle. I can be patient, if the need is there. By the time I’m done with Freddy, I’ll know everything he knows.
“Mary says you’re super psychic,” I say. “That you tested better than anyone Professor Sharp had ever met before. Is that true?”
Sitting on the floor next to Mary and me, Freddy stares at his bottle of beer, takes a sip, and then nods. “That’s how I met the man. He was always canvassing the campus for people to volunteer for his experiments. One day I decided to give it a try. I remember it vividly because he scheduled me for an odd hour—from twelve at night to one in the morning. Cindy was there. She sat across from me in a small room. She’d pick up a card, stare at it for thirty seconds, then set it down and wait fifteen seconds before picking up another card. I can’t say she was totally professional. She winked at me a few times during the test. She was so damn pretty, it was hard to focus on the cards. But I guess I did great. When the hour was up Professor Sharp burst in the room and shook my hand. I thought it was a weird thing for a professor to do. He said he wanted to congratulate me, that I’d gotten sixty-five correct hits out of seventy-five cards.”
“That’s better than eighty percent,” I say. “Were you able to keep up that average?”
“That’s the first thing Sharp wanted to find out. He had me come back the next day and tested me all over again, this time using two hundred and fifty cards. I didn’t mind, the research was funded by the university and they paid us five dollars for every hour we sat in one of his chairs. I made twenty bucks that second day. Back then, that was a lot of money. I don’t know who the tester was, except it wasn’t Cindy. But I remember I scored around seventy-five percent and the professor said I could be the next Uri Geller.”
“Who’s that?” Shanti asks.
“A famous psychic from the seventies,” Freddy says. “He was supposed to be able to bend spoons with his mind. A lot of people said he was a fake, a smooth stage magician. But there were many scientists who believed he was genuine. I don’t know, our paths never crossed. I had my hands full with Professor Sharp. I was close to finishing my undergraduate degree in chemistry. I was thinking about becoming a doctor. But Sharp told me it would be a waste of my talents. He wanted me to get a master’s in parapsychology, in a program he was starting up. I told him no but when he came back to me with a full scholarship—that included room and board—it was hard to refuse.”