“Yes,” she said.
“Violated nearly every line of Whitfield’s Code of Ethics,” he continued.
Teddy felt like she was a teenager again, being grilled for breaking curfew.
“Well?” he asked. “What do you have to say for yourself?”
“Am I grounded?”
Clint didn’t smile. “Sit down,” he said, gesturing to a chair on the opposite side of the table where he and Boyd sat. “Let’s get this over with.”
Teddy’s old self threatened to make an appearance. She wanted to knock the chair over and tell Clint to go to hell. But Whitfield was her last move. She lowered herself into a chair.
“Whitfield policies mandate two instructors observe psychic-ability exams to document the events that transpire during these sessions,” Clint said. “Normally, Professor Dunn would be here, but he’s teaching a class this morning. Sergeant Boyd agreed to fill in.” He shuffled a stack of papers. “We’ll begin with a simple color wheel,” he said. “Are you familiar with how this works?”
She shook her head.
“Then let me start with the basics. Psychics—all psychics, no matter how their ability manifests—connect to the world differently than other people. Psychics are able to glean information or manipulate the energy of a person or an object in a way that others find impossible. In short, they sense the insensible and know the unknowable. To accomplish this, psychics rely on their extrasensory perception, or ESP.”
She must have made a face at the cliché, for Clint continued, “Don’t be put off by the phrase, Teddy. ESP simply means gaining information beyond the basic five physical senses. Are you with me so far?”
Teddy nodded, though her thoughts were still muddled.
Clint gestured to a color chart attached to a spinning wheel—the sort of wheel employed by game-show hosts to award prizes. “This is our first test,” he said. “I want to see if you can pick up psychic impressions. At the poker table, you could tell when people were lying, but can you learn to ascertain what people are thinking? It’s quite simple. Out of your line of vision, I spin this wheel”—the wheel made a clicking sound as it spun, eventually stopping on yellow—“and when it lands, I will mentally project the color I’m seeing to you. All you have to do is say that color aloud.”
Teddy put her fingers to her temple “I’m getting yellow here . . .”
“You already know how I feel about comedy, Cannon,” Boyd said.
Clint set up a white partition screen to divide Teddy’s side of the table from his own. She could see their faces but nothing else. The wheel was hidden from her view.
Game on.
She imagined she was in Vegas, back at the poker table. It was as if she could feel the felt beneath her fingers. She listened for every click of the wheel like she listened for every shuffle of the cards. All she had to do was guess a color. It was just odds in the end, right? She lived on odds. She listened as the wheel spun, slowed, and stopped. She waited for a color to appear in her mind’s eye.
But there was nothing. No color at all.
“Black,” she guessed.
Clint made a mark on a form and spun the wheel again. She shut out everything else, the wheezy sound of Boyd’s breathing, the smell of Clint’s aftershave, the hum of the air conditioner, everything except the click of the wheel.
“Blue?” she said.
Clint spun again and again. Teddy could tell from Boyd’s face that she wasn’t getting any of the answers right. After the last spin, Teddy asked for some water, and Clint pointed to a pitcher on a counter across the room. Teddy poured herself a glass and gulped it down. With her back to Clint and Boyd, she closed her eyes, desperate to regain her composure.
“You all right?” Clint asked.
She faked a smile. “Absolutely. I’m having a great time.”
“Let’s move on,” Clint said. He put away the color wheel and showed her a deck of flash cards. “These are called Zener cards,” he said. “Named after a pioneer in the field of psychic research. Each card features a geometric shape on the reverse. I’ll put up the partition and shuffle the cards. Sergeant Boyd will flip over a card one at a time. You name the geometric shape I’m seeing. Got it?”
Teddy took a fortifying breath. She didn’t think it was possible to concentrate any harder. Her head was pounding, her mouth dry. Still, she guessed card after card.
Boyd stood abruptly, giving the hem of her boxy jacket a tug. “I think that’s all we need to see, recruit.”
“Very impressive,” Clint said.
Boyd spun around. “Excuse me? We’ve seen nothing to indicate—”
“Exactly. She got every single question wrong. Fantastically so. That’s actually difficult to do. I’ve never seen anyone get everything wrong.”
“Does that mean anything?” Teddy asked.
Clint leaned back in his seat. “You tell me.”
“I’m sorry, Corbett, but Ms. Cannon shows absolutely no sign of any psychic ability whatsoever. I think we can safely say she failed the exam.”
“She didn’t fail. Well, technically, she failed,” Clint said. “But that doesn’t mean she failed.”
Boyd sighed and folded her arms.
Clint ignored her. “Teddy,” he said, “what were you focusing on during the tests?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, where was your mind during the first two tests?”
Teddy bit her tongue. “On the wheel. And the deck.”
“That’s what I thought.” He smiled.
“I don’t know why you’re smiling when you just said you’ve never seen a recruit perform so badly on an exam,” Boyd said.
“Teddy,” Clint said. “Why do you play poker and not slot machines?”
It took Teddy a second to put it together. And then she felt like an idiot. She took a sip of water from the glass next to her.
“Do you want to tell the sergeant or should I?” Clint asked.
“I read people,” Teddy said. “Not wheels or cards.”
“Exactly,” Clint said. “She shut me out so completely by focusing on the testing devices that she effectively blocked any psychic communication between us. Meaning
