Sunshine

“Some power residue from your experience at the lake?” she said. I didn’t like having her so up on my history. I wondered what else she knew. “Yes, I agree that that is the most likely. But it is the first such incident I’m aware of in any of our records”—did this mean she was interested enough to have had research done on it?—“and I would like to know as much about it as possible. SOF is always interested in unusual and unique cases. We have to be.” She smiled. I saw it out of the corner of my eye. It wasn’t that she didn’t mean it, exactly. It was that it was an official lubricant-on-the-sticky-gears-of-community smile. It suited her aura of poisonous gases. A toxic oil slick on the sea of society. I didn’t like the smile. I found Pat’s single-minded commitment to the total annihilation of vampires a little inopportune but I believed he was one of the good guys. I didn’t believe she was.

I didn’t smile back. I tried to look too beat up from what had happened to be able to smile. I wasn’t. What I was was too beat up to make myself smile when I didn’t want to.

“I assume that tonight’s misguided attempt at a connection was also based on some faulty reading of that same residue?”

The tone of her voice could have made cinnamon rolls unroll, cakes fall, and Bitter Chocolate Death melt. I hoped cravenly that she was talking to Pat.

Pat said, “There’s a precedent. Milenkovic—”

“You’ll have to do better than that, Agent Velasquez,” interrupted the goddess. “Milenkovic was a senile old woman.”

Pat took a deep breath. “Ma’am, Milenkovic’s field notes clearly record—”

Jesse was arguing with the guys at the backup combox. I wanted to hear what was going on there but I didn’t want to appear interested in anything while the goddess was still staring at me. I didn’t think she was listening to Pat’s dogged description of poor Milenkovic’s misfortunes. I concentrated on looking stunned and blank. And maybe stupid. I was a marginal high school grad who baked bread for a living. Intellect was not a big feature. Hold that thought. Behind the blank look I was testing the memory of what had happened while I was plugged in. Had I found anything, or had I been repelled before I could make a fix? I wasn’t going to stand up and make a directional cast as I had done the last time in this office, not with the goddess watching. But it felt a little…directional. And I was afraid if I didn’t try it soon I might lose it, if there was anything to lose.

Aimil moved into my line of vision. She was looking at me too, but her look said, Can I help?

I stood up slowly. I felt shaky anyway, but I made myself look shakier yet. Aimil rushed to take my elbow. As I moved, I felt it…

Yes. I’d found something. And I hadn’t lost it yet.

I think Aimil felt the shiver run through me, and she probably guessed why. “Rae’s pretty knocked around,” Aimil said, and I recognized her placate-the-inquisitor voice: one of the area library bosses got that voice, and when she was in residence at Aimil’s branch library Aimil found special projects across town to attend to. “May I take her home?”

“Tell me, Rae,” said the goddess. “Do you think you discovered anything useful this evening?”

“I don’t know,” I said carefully. “It was over pretty suddenly, and now I have a terrific headache.”

“Usually,” said the goddess, “the sooner the interview after the experience, the more information is obtained.”

I tried to look as if I would like to be cooperative. “I’m sorry,” I said. “It was like I was falling into chaos, and then I went over backward in the chair and the combox exploded.”

The goddess’ radar was telling her I was holding something back. With a great effort I raised my eyes again and met hers. There was no way I was going to try to read any shadows on her face: it was as much as I could do to look at her at all. What the hell was this? Some kind of wild personal warding system? I’d never met anything like it.

We stared at each other. She wasn’t my boss—and she wasn’t a vampire—and life with my mother had taught me not to intimidate easily, although this last took some effort, and my head was spinning even worse than…Uh. What? She was trolling me…

This was strictly illegal: a violation of my personal rights, and anything an illegal fishing expedition found was automatically forfeit too, in theory, but once you know something you know it, don’t you? There is a license you can get to do a mind search under certain circumstances but there is a list of prior requirements as long as the global council’s charter—besides that, you need to be a magic handler particularly talented in etherfo interchange—and in practice there are only a few specialist cops and specialist lawyers who get one. And likely some SOFs: but if the goddess had the license, she was misusing it now.