More Than an Echo (Echo Branson Series) (34 page)

“Don’t be. Take a deep breath. You’ll be fine.”

I did as he suggested, and threw my shoulders back. “What makes you think she’s one of us?”

“It’s in her eyes. It’s the way she looks at me; like she knows I know, but doesn’t know how to confirm it for me. There’s no trust there like there was with you. This one will be quick to go on the offensive if threatened, so I’ve stepped lightly.”

I nodded. “Good idea.” A sharp screech from my left stopped me in my tracks. God, how I hated being here. It felt like yesterday a fourteen-year-old me walked these haunted hallways empty and alone. “Have they started drugging her?”

“Not yet.”

“How bright is she?”

“From what I can tell...very...but that’s just an old man’s educated guess. Her aunt and uncle brought her in, dropped her off, and haven’t been back. Haven’t called, haven’t done a goddamn thing.”

I looked at my watch. I had a meeting with the task force at two. The sooner I could get out of this place, the better. Every time I came back to the hospital, I got the same cold chills, the same feelings of fear and despair in the pit of my stomach, and when the odors from the ward hit me, I was a frightened  teenager all over again. “Give me the rundown.” I tried shaking off the feelings and focusing on the job at hand.

“No violent tendencies, no history of seizures or depression.”

“Meds?”

“Ritalin at eight. She stopped taking them just before she quit speaking.”

“Depression?”

“Not that we can tell, no. She appears interested in the world around her; she’s just stopped living in it. Aunt says she never interacts with other kids. She just…watches.”

“Sounds familiar, eh, big guy?”

“I don’t think she belongs here one way or the other. We gotta get her out.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

He put his arm around me and hugged me. “By the way...I love that car. The only problem is I keep gettin’ eyeballed by the cops whenever I’m in the bad part of town. Racial profiling and all.”

“I’m really glad you like it. It’s a beautiful car and one you deserve.”

“Here we are. I’ve kept her in her room in case you just want to read her through the window.”

I shook my head. “You say she’s not violent?”

“Not yet.” He sighed. “But you know how that can change at a moment’s notice. You want in there don’t you?”

I stood in front of the door and peered in. “Please.”

“I figured as much. I’ll be right outside. Anything you need?”

“Her name?”

“Cindy.”

Nodding, I opened the door, feeling every ounce of teenage anxiety coming back at me. If it had been scary for a fourteen-year-old, it must be frightening as hell to a ten-year-old.

When I walked in, Cindy was sitting in a chair, her legs dangling. She was wearing red Nike high-tops, jeans and a red WNBA T-shirt. She looked much younger than ten. Maybe it was her long blond hair and big blue eyes, but she seemed swallowed up by the chair.

“Hi,” I said softly, kneeling down in front of her. I was careful to lower my shields very slowly. You never know when a newbie will pick up everything you’re thinking or feeling, so I reinforced my blocks, lowered my shields, and yep, sure enough, little Cindy was one of us. She was trying to block, but was too young and inexperienced to actually succeed. She wasn’t afraid, which surprised me. More...annoyed.

Interesting.

“My name is Echo and I am here to help you. Big George is a really good friend of mine and he asked me to come talk to you. Would you mind that?”

She shook her head, then she turned those big blue eyes toward me and they said more than any words ever could have. I had been very afraid when I was here and I was four years older, but she was not afraid at all. There was also no curiosity, as if she knew exactly who I was and why I was there. Her eyes were clear, focused and undeniably super. It unnerved me.

“I understand you don’t like to talk to people.”

She didn’t take her eyes off mine as she shook her head.

“That’s fair. There aren’t many people worth talking to, huh?”

She surprised me with a wry grin, then shook her head.

“But you
can
talk, can’t you?”

Barely a nod, then she looked away.

“Mind if I have a seat?”

She shook her head. I was picking up a lot of mixed emotions from her. She was nervous, but tentative, and was far calmer than I expected her to be. Truth to tell, she was incredibly composed for a ten-year-old.

“I was in here what I was fourteen.”

She cocked her head and looked at me, one eyebrow raised in question. She believed me and was curious to know more. A good sign.

“Yep, I thought I was going nuts. Loony. Whacko. You see, I can feel people’s emotions. I can feel yours right now, and I know you’re not afraid.”

She slowly shook her head.  No, she was not scared.

“This ability of mine was driving me insane because I didn’t know what was happening to me. I belong to a special group of people with a special gifts. Some of us hear other people’s thoughts, some of us can move objects without touching them. We all feel like we’re going crazy until someone like Big George spots us and offers to help us out. He spotted you and called me to come help you. Do you want my help?”

Her blue eyes seemed to change color as she slowly nodded. She didn’t want my help with her powers. She wanted help getting out of here.

“Fair enough. You know you can trust me, don’t you?”

She blinked a couple of times, nodded again. I read her aura clearly and it indicated trust and acceptance, but something else.
She
was reading
me
, only not in the conventional sense. She was looking for hostility or aggression.

“Good. Because you can. I’m here to help. Now I need to ask you some questions. If you don’t feel like answering you can just nod or shake your head, okay?”

Nod.

“Are you hearing voices?”

Shake.

“Can you move objects without touching them?”

Shake.

“Does it feel like you’re being haunted, you know, like, by a ghost?”

She grinned, and then shook her head. She found that idea amusing.

“I’ll bet you never knew there are some people who can actually talk to the dead. Can you?”

She chuckled. She actually chuckled, and then shook her head.

“Okay, I take it you’re not one of those either.” Leaning closer to her, I grinned.  “Your aunt and uncle brought you here because something happened, right?”

She nodded.

“Something
did
happen?”

Nod.

“Is that why you don’t talk anymore?”

Shrug.

I leaned back. “Hmm...Well, let me ask you this. This food here is a really bad, the company is even worse, the beds are hard and there are crazies everywhere. Would you like to get out of here?”

Her face broke into a song.

“Yeah. I thought you might say that. You know, I had to bust out of here when I was a kid. Sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do to get by in this life. I’m here to help you do that.”

She was still grinning as she nodded.

“Now, I doubt we will have to bust you out, but we will find a way to get you out of here. Sound good?”

Nod.

“But there’s a hitch...well...it’s not really a hitch, but it is the one condition you have to agree to if I’m going to get you out of here. Do you know what a condition is?”

An eye roll typical of most teenagers was my answer. The grin fell from her face and I read distrust and doubt in her.

“There’s a special place and a very special woman who can teach you how to control your powers.” I paused and felt her change instantly. She liked the word powers. “She taught me and many others like me how to control our abilities. Would you like to do that?”

The grin reappeared and she nodded.

“I thought so. I loved it there and learned so much. You can too.”

She cocked her head in a question she didn’t need to ask.

“Why did I leave? We all have to leave once we grow into our skills. But I still visit and it is still my home.” Rising, I extended my hand to her. “Trust me?”

She nodded and put her little hand in mind. It was incredibly warm.

“Good. Now, let me see what I can do about getting you out of here. I promise I won’t leave you in here, but give me some time to make arrangements, okay?”

When I left her room, Big George was just returning with her file in his hands. “I thought you were going to stay by the door.”

“No need. You got to her. I could see that. I take it that means—”

“Yep, but I can’t tell what she is yet. Says she doesn’t hear voices or feel emotions or talks to ghosts. Also says that she doesn’t move things. It’s weird.”

“Mama will know.”

“If we can get her there.”

“That shouldn’t be too hard.” Big George handed me her file. “Brought in by her aunt and uncle because she would no longer talk to them. They just don’t have the time to put into her because they recently had triplets. They don’t really want her back.”

“Then, where are her parents?”

“No clue. They failed to make mention of that in the file, but I think this is worth a try. If we get their okay, it saves us the hassle of getting her out of here under cloak of darkness.”

“Fine. Let’s do it right away. You get her discharge papers, I’ll make the call.”

He nodded.

I left, mentally wiping the heebie jeebies off of me.

When I got to my car, I called Cindy’s aunt and uncle and told them I was in admissions director for a special school in Louisiana. Let’s just say it didn’t take much convincing with crying babies and barking dogs in the background, Cindy’s aunt agreed to talk with Melika to make the necessary arrangements. I think they were thrilled at the prospect of getting rid of a problem child.

That was when I jotted down my notes for my next story. The homeless weren’t the only invisible ones in our society... there were thousands of unwanted, unloved and, yes, invisible children in the United States just waiting to be written about.

After making my notes, I called Melika and told her all I had ascertained from my meeting with Cindy, which wasn’t much. Some spotter I would be.

“You still don’t know what she is?”

 “I couldn’t tell, no.”

“But she
can
talk, right? She is just choosing not to at the moment.”

“Apparently. I don’t know why she doesn’t. I suspect we will know soon enough.”

“Excellent work, my dear. I will call and make the flight arrangements. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your work on this, Echo. I know you have a lot on your plate right now, but you know the importance of time in these matters. I lost a twelve-year-old telepath last week. By the time we got to him, his brains were fried. It breaks my heart every time we lose one.”

“Well, I think we got to this one in time. Let me know what else you need me to do.”

“I will. Again, thank you my dear. Oh...and keep at it with your story. Bishop says you are on the right track. Believe in yourself, my dear. The rest of us do.”

I had two messages beep me as I was talking to Melika. The first one was Luigi, making sure I was okay. The second was from Rupert the necromancer, telling me he was back in town and offering to take me out on his boat for lunch.

I hung up and started to the police station for my meeting with the task force. I was very excited to finally have a place for my voice; to finally have someone take me seriously. This story wasn’t over by a long shot.

“The boys are all aflutter,” Danica said when I arrived bearing lunch.

I’d stopped by and picked up four pepperoni pizzas, and Danica took the boxes from me. “You better feed them
after
they tell you whatever it is that has them all pumped up. Apparently, someone found something useful, but the horrid creatures won’t share it with me. They are enjoying colluding with you.”

We walked briskly down the hall to the Bat Cave. At the door, I stopped,  took a breath, and pushed it open. “Hey boys.”

“Yo, Princess!” Carl said, turning from his laptop, his hair standing on end from running his fingers through it. “It’s about time. We were going nuts over here.” He waved us over.

We all gathered around Carl’s computer. “Okay, whatcha got?”

Pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose, he grabbed the mouse and started closing browser windows. “We dug deep into every word of every line you gave us and you’re gonna want to marry us when we tell you what we found. We struck gold with the word heliotrope.”

On the screen was a flower. “What’s that?”

“A heliotrope.”

“I thought you said it was a stone.”

“It is, but we’re pretty sure he meant the flower.” Carl clicked on another window. Up popped four flowers. “Gotta give Roger his props. He never gave up.”