“Explain that to the cornfields in Iowa.”
“The ones that are growing crops a mere eight months later?” Alex rolled his eyes. “Get back to me when you’ve actually seen an eldritch being, okay?”
Maybe Bryce was getting old because suffering through bickering before coffee was worse than pulling archive duty three months in a row. He wiped his hand across his face. “Take a moment.”
Celia crossed her arms over her chest and sat back in her seat. She sucked in a loud breath. “Just because I’m not some wonder kid psychic doesn’t mean I’m less of an agent than you.”
“Stop. Both of you,” Bryce said. Pressure built in his ears, like a headache coming on from a storm. He really needed that cup of coffee.
“I think the fact that I’ve been dealing with this shit a lot longer than you makes me more of an agent than you,” Alex snapped.
If his agents wouldn’t stop, Bryce was going to volunteer his team for a month of archival duty. Or, better yet, they’d investigate every single story that came through Celia’s podcast, whether it was obviously false or not.
Anger and annoyance were rising through him fast. A littletoofast. Damn it. Bryce closed his eyes and pictured the green mountain forests he used to see every summer in Gatlinburg. That one week of peace running through trails with his parents and brothers.
The pressure on his ears grew, and it was coming from outside of him. A high-pitched whine set Bryce’s teeth on edge and shattered the calm he was working so hard to build. Mental walls brought low, every ounce of anger weighted him down to the bottom of a pool of exhaustion. He couldn’t swim back against that.
Alex and Celia were still arguing. Their voices were louder, deafening in the reverb of the quiet coffee shop. A speaker popped. Bile worked its way up Bryce’s throat and he swallowed the rage back down. Violent impulses pushed their way to the forefront of his mental landscape.
One of the baristas scowled and turned on his coworker, starting a fight over a spot on the counter. The artist with the sketchpad held his head in his hands. If Bryce didn’t do something, then the feedback loop running rampant would further affect everyone in the coffee shop.
“Alexander,” Bryce said with authority.
Alex blinked as if dazed, then closed his eyes and took a few deep breaths. He was shaking, but the pressure lessened. Whatever was infecting the coffee shop had gotten to Alex, and natural talent that he was, turned him into a catalyst. He was an empath, and a tele-empath, able to transmit emotions as well as pick them up.
Bryce should have picked up on the signs earlier. Before guilt could replace the anger, Bryce shoved his feelings into a box and dumped them into the back of his mental attic. Alex needed as much calm as possible to keep from getting worked up again. Bryce took a moment to check on their fellow coffee shop patrons, but the few shifting moods were swiftly moving back to calm. The others hadn’t reacted.
Unfortunately, Bryce couldn’t celebrate that either. People ignored weird shit going on in front of them, but this level of willful ignorance took it to unhealthy heights. Either stranger crap had happened recently, or extreme indifference was the only way not to succumb.
“I think your contact is right,” Bryce said. “Something’s not right.”
“That’s what he kept saying,” Celia said.
“Any signs of paranoia or obsession?” Bryce asked.
“I tried to vet him, but he gave me a fake name. Ephraim O’Shay. I could only find the most basic social media presence for him. A whopping ten photos on Facebook and more shares than real posts. No Twitter. No Instagram, but then I’m not really surprised about that.”
Bryce picked up a paper outlining expenses for a building project. “What does he do? Where’d he get this information?”
“I didn’t ask. I was doing what you said and trying to dissuade him with indifference,” Celia said.
Of course, one of the times his teammates took a lesson to heart, he needed them to have done the opposite.
“Hey.” Alex held out his hand. “Let me borrow your phone.”
Not taking his eyes off the documents, Bryce handed his phone over to Alex. Psychic energy could disrupt and destroy electronics. The coffee shop speaker was only the most recent casualty in the long, long list of objects that quit working around Alex. Vibration, magnetism, and energy interference all came into play, and basically ensured anything electronic in Alex’s possession had a limited life span. A smart phone in his constant possession was next to useless in a month. Between Alex and monsters, Bryce had to replace his at least twice a year.
But a preoccupied Alex was less likely to cause problems. Bryce had a few games and some meditation apps for the sole purpose of keeping him occupied.
Alex took the phone and soon grinned at whatever he was doing.
“It didn’t work, by the way,” Celia said.
Bryce set down the financial report. “What didn’t?”
“Trying to throw O’Shay off the scent. He seems determined to find answers. I asked him to keep me in the loop. I may have promised to do the same for him.”
“You know you can’t do that,” Bryce drawled.
