Shift: A Novel

looking to relieve their loneliness for an hour or an evening.” She drank from her glass as though as it were water and she’d just wandered in from the desert. When only the ice and lime remained, she set it back down on the table and signaled to the waiter for another. “Did I leave anything out?”

Morganthau was silent. Naz couldn’t tell how much of this he’d already known, but she could feel the effect her rendering had had on him. His grin faded, his eyes softened, and he’d begun compulsively straightening his silverware like a drill sergeant worrying a troop of raw recruits. Pity exuded from him like cheap cologne. A tepid feeling to be sure, but Naz knew how quickly its warmth could grow into a full-fledged fire. And, try as she might to resist this warmth, she could already feel the heat in her own body, the need to validate this man’s compassion, to be worthy of it. She thought about driving her knife into her chest but couldn’t, because she knew how much it would hurt the boy sitting across from her, and because the white silk blouse she was wearing was her last clean shirt.

“Actually,” Agent Morganthau said finally, “I wanted to talk to you about MIT.”

Naz squinted. “MIT?”

“You participated in a pair of studies …”

“I know what I did at MIT. What I want to know is why you care what I did at MIT.”

Morganthau recoiled from the tone of Naz’s voice.

“Perhaps I should step back a moment. I’m not here to hurt you, or punish you, or anything like that. To the contrary. I was assigned to look after you. Your father performed a valuable service for the Company, and it is my duty—my honor, I should say—to see that that debt is repaid.”

Only someone as young and naive as the boy across from her could have made such a speech, and it was precisely that youth and naivete that made it ridiculous.

“I can look after myself very well, thank you.”

“Pardon me for being blunt, Miss Haverman, but you’re an alcoholic and a prostitute. If that’s what you call looking after yourself, I’d hate to see what you call neglect.”

In answer, Naz turned her wrists upward, nudged the watch on the left and the bracelet on the right to reveal the thin pale scars beneath. She held them in the light for a moment, then turned them down again.

“By my own standards,” she said quietly, “I’m doing great.”

She saw his fingers tremble, felt him fight the urge to take her hand. It was too easy to imagine him sweeping her up in his arms, pressing her cheek against his hard flat chest and wrapping his strong arms around her. She could feel herself wanting this to happen, yet knew that in an hour or six, when she had given him more than he’d have ever dreamed of asking for, the urge to protect her would fade away, replaced by disgust.

But right now there was just the heat.

“I’m just curious,” Morganthau said huskily. “You seem to hate psychologists and hospitals and every other institution devoted to emotional and physical caretaking. So what made you volunteer for three different studies testing—what was the term? ‘psychic aptitude’?—over the course of six months?”

Naz shrugged. “They paid.”

“Ten dollars for a full day’s work. I would think a woman of your beauty makes more than that on a single date.”

Now it was Naz’s turn to blush. “I have no doubt you know exactly how much I charge. You seem to know everything else about me.”

“Actually, I don’t. And”—Morganthau raised his voice to speak over her—“I’d rather not. I find it tragic that any woman should have to resort to those means to support herself, but for a lady of your character, it’s maddening. I want to find every man who ever took advantage of you and cut his heart out.”

They didn’t take advantage of me, Naz thought. I took advantage of them. Or I took advantage of myself—it amounts to the same thing. But she didn’t say it aloud.

“I was curious,” she said instead, aware that it was the same word he’d used. “Dr. Calloway told me it was all in my head. My empathy. My inability to screen out others’ feelings. He meant that I was making it up, but I found myself wondering: what if it is in my head? Not in the way Calloway meant. What if there’s a biological or genetic or, I don’t know, magical cause for this torture I’ve had to endure every minute of every day of my whole life? These waves of emotion washing over me every time I come within ten feet of someone—love and hate, fear, anger, lust, greed, all pressing down on me the way raindrops fall on other people. At least then I’d have an explanation for what I’ve done, what I’ve felt. And, who knows, maybe a cure, as well.”

“But the studies you participated in were testing for a different kind of psychic ability, weren’t they? Telepathy, prognostication, and remote viewing. None of these is exactly the condition you describe. Anyone can see that you’re special, Naz. Anyone.”

Naz could feel the desperation beginning to grow in him. The need to convince himself—to convince her—that he could help her. No, she told herself. She didn’t feel it. She heard it in his voice, saw it in his hands, his eyes. The cues were physical, not mental.

“I’m sorry to disappoint you, but my results actually fell below statistical norms. Dr. Calloway was right. It is all in my head. The only emotions I feel are my own. And they are terrible, Agent Morganthau. Terrible.”

His hand moved toward hers, but just then the waiter arrived with a second round of drinks. By the time the waiter left, Morganthau had regained some of his composure.

“It’s funny. I initially thought of approaching you with this idea because I deduced from your file that you had some interest in the paranormal. I wouldn’t have guessed that your motivation was so …”

“Weird?” Naz said. She too had calmed slightly. All hail the great god gin.

“I was going to say ‘normal,’ actually,” Morganthau said. “I mean, it makes more sense to me when a person for whom all the usual channels of aid have failed turns to superstition. It’s when rational people get interested in this stuff that I get confused.”