“Not formally. It’s a bit of a side interest. I haven’t really looked into it in years. I’ve been really busy with other things.”
“So between you, the gun-moving gal, and the lady who calmed the guy down, I think you and I have the most similar talent,” Monica said. “And my visions sound very different than yours.”
“Yours was interesting.” Val was speaking. “It was so immediate. It seems like it would be really easy to doubt yourself.”
“I had the same thought,” Katherine said. “It would have been so easy to imagine that I was suffering from anxiety or had an overactive imagination.”
“Why didn’t you think that?” Robin asked.
She tried to recall the moments in the gym before everything had broken loose. “I just… knew. I could hear the screams. I smelled the gunpowder, and it was almost as if I could feel glass shards cutting me. In the moment, I knew absolutely that it would happen if I did nothing.”
“So you tackled him,” Val said. “Fucking badass, Katherine.”
“Cover your ears, Monica.” Robin continued, “I have to agree. Fucking badass.”
Katherine stuffed some cheese in her mouth and swallowed. “Okay, but what do I do? This is not normal. Is it going to happen again? Is it a onetime thing?”
“There’s no way of knowing,” Val said. “You just have to wait and see. Maybe you’ll get lucky and it’ll only happen once.”
“I’m not sure there’s much you can do,” Monica said. “All our abilities were triggered by the same incident. It’s been three years and they haven’t gone away yet.”
“What incident?”
“Robin’s car went into the lake,” Val said. “We almost drowned.”
“RIP faithful Subaru,” Robin said. “I still miss you.”
“So you had a near-death experience,” she said. “And three years later… still psychic?”
“Yep,” Monica said. “I thought I’d just get hot flashes in my forties, not visions.”
Did an averted mass shooting count as a near-death experience?
Probably. Probably it did.
This wasn’t good.
“I wish I could tell you that the visions probably won’t happen again,” Monica said, “but I found them to come more regularly the longer I had the ability.”
“Like… every day?”
“Oh, nothing close to that. I’m not like Val.”
“I wear gloves,” Val said. “All the time. And I take antianxiety medications. They dull my senses just enough that I don’t usually have an immediate reaction to everything.”
“I have social anxiety and I’m medicated,” Katherine said. “Do you think that might stop more visions?”
“Were you taking your medication when you had the vision?”
Damn it. Of course she was. She never missed a dose. “Yes.”
All three women seemed to hem and haw. Several comforting mutters were audible.
“I think you’ll just have to wait and see,” Monica said.
“What should I do about Megan and Toni?” Katherine asked. “Should I try to get in touch with them? Ask them if they’ve ever experienced this kind of thing before?”
“If it was the first time they genuinely ever feared for their life, it may be new for them too,” Robin said. “I’d at least try to contact them and see if they’d be willing to talk to you. Then you wouldn’t be alone.”
“Do your families know?” Katherine tried to imagine telling Baxter. He would immediately suspect a brain tumor.
“My husband knows, but I didn’t tell him right away,” Robin said.
“My boyfriend knows,” Val said. “He actually suspected before I told him. He’s a sheriff, and he worked with a psychic when he was down in Southern California. The real kind.”
“Right.” She was having a hard time taking everything in, but it did feel good to talk about it. It made her feel a little less on edge. “Monica, how about you?”
“My husband passed before it happened, but I have a boyfriend now, and he knows.” Monica laughed a little. “He didn’t exactly react well at first, but he’s come around now.”
“How did you convince him?”
“I helped him stop a string of serial arsons.”
“Oh right. That’s good. Not the arson, but the… stopping the arson.” Was that an empty wineglass in front of her? Not anymore, it wasn’t. Katherine refilled her glass.
“You sound stressed,” Robin said. “I think the important thing is to make some kind of connection with Megan and Toni. Even if you don’t become friends, having someone who understands what you’re going through is really important. Megan, at least, sounds like she’d be open to talking again.”
Megan seemed like a social person who would text Katherine on her phone and want to meet for lunch or have brunch or go shopping for purses together. In short, all the social things that Katherine avoided.
Then again, Megan was also likely as confused as she was, only she didn’t have three nice psychics in Glimmer Lake giving her advice.
“I’ll call her,” Katherine said. “I think she’ll be willing to talk.”
Chapter 6
Katherine got ready for work on Monday with her head full of questions and her body full of aches. She’d once taken a tumble down a steep hill on a ten-kilometer trail race when she was thirty-two.
Her body was definitely reminding her that was fifteen years ago.
“Are you sure you’re ready for work?” Baxter frowned at her over his teacup. “You experienced something traumatic four days ago.”
“What else am I going to do?” Katherine nibbled along the edge of her bagel, wishing she’d spread more cream cheese. “Sit around here and think about how much my knee hurts? Work is better. I can sit for my lecture today if I need to. I only have one class, and if I don’t make my office hours today, I’ll just have to make them up later.”
Why had she been so skimpy with the cream cheese on her bagel? Life was too short for skimping on cream cheese. Tomorrow she’d lay it on.
Baxter reached for the french press and refilled her coffee cup. “What about the Fred lab?”
“I don’t think they need me this week at all actually.”
The Fred lab was the university’s affectionate term for the research project Katherine was attached to, studying the neural pathways of cephalopods as a starting point for smart prosthetics in humans.
She hadn’t planned on studying octopus neural networks with two biomedical engineers, a marine biologist, and a neuropsychologist, but a consult had led to a fascination and an inevitable affection for the project’s mascot, Fred, a large Pacific red octopus that lived at the center.
Fred wasn’t a research subject—they had four smaller octopi that were the test subjects—but he was the unofficial mascot of their odd group, and the five scientists and the dozen or so graduate students working there were constantly devising new games to keep Fred amused.