Dream Eyes

need to apologize,” she said briskly. “You aren’t really thinking like the bad guys when you try to get inside their heads.”
    “No?” He sounded amused.
    “No. You’re thinking like a good investigator. You’re doing what you were born to do—hunt bad guys.”
    “Thanks. I’ll cling to that theory. How did Evelyn find her test subjects two years ago?”
    “I see where you’re going here.” Gwen took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “Evelyn had her own counseling records from the time she worked at the Summerlight Academy. They were stored on her computer. Her files would provide a nice, neatly categorized list of people with talents. It’s horrible to think that Sundew is going to stalk some poor innocent crystal tuner and force her to tune his weapon for him.”
    “He’s not going to get the chance to do that because we’re going to stop him,” Judson said.
    “Do you really think we can do that?”
    “Yes,” he said. “I really think we can do it. And soon.”
    The coffee finished brewing, and they drank it in silence for a time. After a while, Gwen lowered her cup.
    “It wouldn’t be all that easy to find them, you know,” she said.
    Judson looked at her. “You’re talking about the talents in the Summerlight files?”
    “Yes. I told you that the one thing most of us learned was how to keep a low profile and pass for normal. The truly dangerous talents really excelled when it came to learning those lessons. But there were also the students who were overwhelmed by the onset of their abilities or too fragile psychologically to handle them. Some of them ended up in institutions. Some ended up on the streets. Some simply disappeared. This Sundew will have his work cut out for him trying to find a crystal tuner in those files.”
    “You’re good at passing for normal,” Judson said. “Why didn’t you go into the mainstream professional world? With your talent you could have done brilliantly. I’ll bet you could easily be pulling in several hundred bucks an hour as a high-end shrink. No one would have to know that it was your psychic talent that made you so good at your work.”
    She smiled faintly. “In other words, you want to know why I bill myself as a low-rent psychic counselor when I could have a string of letters after my name?”
    “For the record, I never used the term
low-rent
.”
    “Right. Well, the answer is twofold. First, it’s hard to outrun your past when that past includes a place like Summerlight.”
    “All you needed was a new identity,” Judson said.
    “It’s true that Nick could have set me up with a false identity, complete with transcripts from some respectable school,” she agreed. “He’s offered to do it on several occasions.”
    “He’s versatile.”
    “Certainly.” She was aware of a flash of genuine pride. “Nick is very talented. And to tell you the truth, I have considered taking him up on his offer from time to time. But I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life pretending to be something or, rather, someone I’m not.”
    “It would have been hard work.”
    “In order to maintain the lie, I would have had to deceive everyone around me twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, year in and year out. I think that would have become intolerable over time.”
    “Sort of like going into the witness protection program,” Judson said.
    “Just imagine not being able to confide the truth about your own past to a close friend or a lover without running the risk of losing the person’s friendship or love. Imagine not being able to trust anyone with the truth about yourself.”
    “My family has been keeping secrets for two generations,” he said. “We expect to have to keep them a while longer.”
    The quiet comment caught her by surprise.
    “Yes,” she said. “You and your family do know what it’s like to keep secrets, don’t you? Those crystals from the Phoenix Mine—”
    “It’s not just about the crystals. Sam is getting married. He and Abby will want children. Both of them have powerful paranormal profiles. We don’t know much about psychic genetics, but it’s a good bet their offspring will be talented, too. We’ll have to protect the kids and help them cope with their psychic sides.”
    “I hadn’t thought about it, but I suppose even a member of the wealthy and powerful Coppersmith family who possesses some talent has to learn to pass for normal.”
    “You do if you want to operate in the normal business