Miriya, Page 2

CHAPTER TWO

  When the first scalding mouthful of coffee slid down her throat, Miriya Templeton was still not entirely sure she was fully awake. She wrapped her fingers around the mug to warm them as she stared blearily at the crowd bustling past the coffee shop in Harvard Square.

  She allowed her mind to drift, to listen to the quiet flutter of passing thoughts preoccupied with daily toil—uncompleted homework, an upcoming exam, approaching work deadlines, conflicting job schedules, unpaid rent, a dirty kitchen, a traitorous girlfriend, an unreliable babysitter, a failing marriage, gossipy roommates, an overdue oil change, and inevitably, the general crappiness of the weather.

  Miriya sighed. It just went to show that telepathic eavesdropping rarely paid off. The thoughts of others were, as a rule, boring, and worse, depressing. Occasionally, she picked up a gem, but she had to hunt for it, usually by sitting in graduate-level classes—undergraduates were almost always more preoccupied with finding the next party than delving into the secrets of the universe—or, when she had the time to make her way down to D.C., wandering the halls of Congress and listening to the thoughts of members of the House Committee of Ways and Means.

  The last tip she picked up had made her several hundred thousand dollars richer. It paid, in cash, for her Cambridge condominium as well as her sporty red coupe, and freed her from the burden of keeping men company—men whose only two claims for her attention were wealth and a weak mind. Her telepathic capabilities had kept those dates short and devoid of sex while rich, literally, in outcomes.

  Ever since she found a way to keep her income flowing, she no longer had to trouble herself with dull dates and the occasional irate wife or girlfriend, leaving her an abundance of time to do precisely nothing.

  Miriya stared at her untouched croissant. Now that she had everything she needed, she was no longer certain what she wanted.

  Well, until she figured it out, she had her routine to keep her busy. She reached for the backpack nestled at her feet and pulled out her electronic tablet to check the class schedules for the day. Miriya glanced at her watch. Classics 407: Violence and Sacrifice in Ancient Greece sounded decidedly irrelevant, which made for perfect cocktail-party-chatter material. The class started at 11 a.m. She would have just enough time to make it across the Harvard campus.

  She poured her remaining coffee into the thermos flask, slid her backpack over her shoulders, and started on her trek to the next class.

  Something brushed against her mind—an almost tangible touch. She jerked to a stop and looked sharply over her shoulder. The crowd flowed around her, the endless babble of their inane thoughts fading into white noise as she tried to zero in on the sensation of another mind, as honed as her own.

  Elusive, it remained out of reach—a hint of a shadow rather than actual darkness. Had she only imagined it?

  Frowning, she pushed to a brisk walk. Her eyes stayed focus on the path ahead, but her mind swept out. Once or twice, she brushed against that something, but each time, it retreated.

  She threw out a thought. Quit playing with me.

  She could have sworn she heard a chuckle—a warm male voice, rich with good humor rather than malice.

  It did not say anything else.

  Her ratty sweatshirt and faded denim jeans helped her blend into the ranks of shabbily dressed graduate students as she walked into the classics class and took a seat at the back of the room. With an affected air of boredom, she pulled her computer notebook from her backpack and opened it, ostensibly to take notes.

  In fact, her notebook provided a barrier, more psychological than physical, but it helped discourage the curiosity and interest of others and saved her from the trouble of exerting her telepathic powers to change minds.

  On her part, Miriya tried not to stand out. She had pulled her blond hair into a messy ponytail and kept her makeup to a minimum. At twenty-three, she looked like a perfectly ordinary graduate student.

  Except that someone apparently knew she was not.

  The professor, an elderly gentleman with a thick French accent, scanned the room. His eyes lingered briefly on Miriya. Confusion furrowed his brow.

  I’ve always been here, Miriya prompted. You’ve seen me before.

  A faint shrug lifted the professor’s shoulders. His attention moved on.

  Miriya did not release her contact with the professor’s mind. If that presence had followed her into the class, surely the professor would notice it too. Only once did the professor falter in his appraisal of the students in his class. His hesitation lasted only for a moment. Something flickered in his mind, perhaps a telepathic prompt, though not from her.

  Miriya traced the professor’s gaze to a young man, skinny and bespectacled, wearing a crimson Harvard sweater that, now that Miriya was paying attention, seemed brand new. His prominent Adam’s apple bobbed in his scrawny throat, but he appeared at ease and otherwise preoccupied with his electronic tablet.

  He did not look dangerous, but then again, neither did she.

  Carefully, she reached out with her mind.

  Instead of the sensation of wading through Jell-O—there was, unfortunately, no elegant way of describing the sensation of connecting with an unshielded mind—her mind touched a rock-solid surface, rough-hewn like cavern walls, impenetrable.

  Miriya sucked in a deep breath.

  He was a telepath, and a strong one too.

  She closed her computer and was about to shove it into her backpack when she heard his voice. Aww, don’t run away. You picked this class. The least you could do is have the spine to sit through his boring lecture.

  Boring?

  Why couldn’t you choose something else, like Art in Pornography or something along those lines?

  You must have mistaken Harvard University for the indie art studio around the corner.

  He chortled. Possibly, yes.

  He fell silent when the professor began his lecture. Miriya tried to focus, but it was difficult to drag her attention away from the precise and honed mind just several feet away from her.

  She was surrounded by intelligent, even brilliant people, but psychic ability allowed the mind to play in an entirely different dimension, inaccessible by most.

  Despite the Genetic Revolution that transformed the world nearly thirty years prior, change and acceptance had been slow in coming. Psychic-level mutations were rare; powerful psychic-level mutations even more so. As a result, alpha mutants were regarded with a great deal of wariness, even fear, and subject to a significant amount of regulation and monitoring from the Mutant Affairs Council.

  Miriya had absolutely no intention of getting sucked into that hellhole.

  The young man’s voice cut into her thoughts. Unreal. He actually believes the crap he’s spouting, about the similarities between Dionysus and Jesus.

  To her shame, Miriya realized that he had been paying attention to the lecture and she had not. She fumbled for a response. It’s…uh…the symbolism of it.

  No one should have to stretch the truth that far to make the symbolism work.

  Symbolism is art, after all. I would have thought you’d be into it.

  He laughed. Art is supposed to stimulate the senses. I still think that the Art in Pornography class would have been more—

  You said stimulating, not titillating.

  Hey, if it can be both, why not?

  Miriya did not reply, even though he did make her laugh. She did, however, spare him a quick glance. He continued to stare studiously at his tablet, but the corners of his mouth tugged into a faint smile.

  Miriya drew in an unsteady breath of air, but her racing heartbeat refused to settle down. The psychic connection was intoxicating. It was more than the conversation; she had other stimulating—at that word, her lips twitched in an effort to suppress a smile—verbal conversations with her Harvard and MIT classmates too. The mental touch made all the difference, a deeper and far more intimate level of connection than most people ever understood or enjoyed. It offered her glimpses
into the workings of a person’s mind, and insight behind the facades and mirrors that frequently obscured true personality.

  When the mind touched back, the connection was electric.

  Rarely had she enjoyed two-way psychic intimacy. She was much too skittish for it. Besides, most of the people capable of it were alpha mutants, usually telepaths, and a great majority of them worked for the government.

  A shiver twitched down her spine. Her fondness for the government could be rated somewhere between a colonoscopy and a rectal exam.

  Miriya had few doubts as to whom he worked for. She would have to put some space, physical and mental, between her and that man. She did not know if her psychic shields were any more formidable than his were. They were likely far more crude, but they protected her from direct telepathic manipulation.

  As soon as the class ended, she slipped her computer into her backpack and walked out of the classroom. He made no apparent move to follow her, but Miriya was not taking any chances. The corridors were packed with students, but the crowds cleared as she stepped outside. A brisk breeze tugged at her ponytail as the narrow confines of the buildings opened into wide grassy quadrangles. From late spring through early fall, the lush lawns served as a central gathering place, where students playing Frisbee tried not to trip over others lounging on the grass. The quads were also channels of transportation, their crisscrossing paths connecting the buildings around the perimeter.

  Miriya’s pace was quick, though no faster than that of the other students around her, scurrying to make it to their next class on time or to grab lunch at the student union before all the tables were taken. She returned to her condominium complex, two blocks away from Harvard, but instead of taking the elevator to the twenty-fifth floor, she went to the garage in the basement.

  She dug her car keys out of her pocket and pressed on the remote control. Her firecracker red Audi coupe beeped. Her heartbeat was still racing faster than normal and her pulse was erratic, but her hand was steady on the wheel as she accelerated out of the garage and headed toward Boston.

  Physical distance would help steady her nerves, as would comfort food.

  Bistro Du Midi was crowded on a Friday afternoon, but a telepathic prompt secured her a prime spot near the unlit fireplace. She studied the menu delivered by Fred, a waiter whose steady smile and charming patter belied his emotional heartbreak over a lost custody battle. Miriya stifled a sigh. We hide so much pain behind our smiles. She looked up at him. “I’ll have the shellfish bouillabaisse.”

  “Very good. And wine with your meal?”

  “Isn’t it a little too early for wine?”

  His smile flashed. “It’s five o’clock somewhere in the world.”

  “A Riesling, not too sweet.”

  “I have just the perfect one for you. I’ll be right back with your bread basket.”

  Miriya stared at his retreating back. He seemed like a sweet man, and from the fractured slideshow of his memories, his wife was a first-class bitch. Miriya did not know which was worse—not knowing others’ thoughts and their inevitable heartaches, or not being able to do anything about it.

  Beep beep! The now-familiar male voice broke into her thoughts.

  Miriya jolted upright. You!

  Why did you skedaddle? I’m sitting in a philosophy class now. You are missing a stimulating discussion on the differences between happiness and joy.

  She could not help responding in a similarly humorous vein. Stimulating or titillating?

  He chuckled. I swear I am falling in love with you.

  Your standards are quite dismal. You don’t even know my name.

  Of course, I do, Maria Durand, or do you prefer Miriya Templeton these days?

  She froze. I… Even her mental voice quavered. I don’t go by that name anymore.

  Of course not. Maria Durand was something of a scoundrel, even by the low standards of the Louisiana bayou where she came from. Miriya Templeton, on the other hand—

  You didn’t pull that information out of my head. You’re working for the government, aren’t you? What kind of files do they have on me?

  Wouldn’t you like to know?

  Why did they send you?

  To offer you a job.

  Miriya snorted. I don’t need a job, and even if I did need one, I wouldn’t work for a horde of lying and abusive monsters, who cower behind their taxpayer-sponsored jobs—

  Aww, come on now. Horde is a little strong. I grant there are a few bad eggs in the carton, but we’re not all awful. How about a tiny few?

  Tiny would be more appropriate for the size of their—

  Now that’s just cruel. His mental voice caught on a chuckle. And to be fair, you haven’t seen all of our—

  What do you want, whatever-your-name-is?

  Jake Hansen, at your service, ma’am. Alpha telepath and telekinetic. I’m an enforcer with the Mutant Affairs Council. Like I said, I’m just here to offer you a job.

  The aw-shucks country boy routine isn’t going to work on me.

  Technically, I’m from Colorado, which means I’m not a country boy.

  What was it about his breezy conversation that made her want to keep talking to him when she knew she should be cutting it off? I told you, I don’t need a job.

  His tone altered, became serious. The Mutant Affairs Council knows what you’ve been up to, Miriya. It wouldn’t be too hard to bring forward charges of illegal psychic manipulation—

  Miriya’s chin tilted up, a physical reaction to a mental conversation. How would that be any different from what the telepaths in the council do?

  That’s precisely the point, Miriya. They’re with the council. They’re acting on behalf of the council.

  Doing what?

  Jake hesitated for an instant. When he spoke again, there was laughter in his voice. Wouldn’t you like to know?