Just as Teddy closed the faculty file, she noticed another one on the desktop marked FIRST-YEARS: MEDICAL REPORTS. She opened it and saw a list of her classmates’ names, including her own.
She couldn’t resist clicking on her own name. Teddy opened the folder and clicked the first file. Lab tests. DNA samples. She couldn’t decipher most of it. She scrolled through to the bottom to see if Eversley had written some kind of note or summary. She heard footsteps down the hall, Molly’s voice at the door: “Someone’s coming.”
“One second.” This was important. More important than finding out about Nick. There! At the top of the page: FINDINGS.
“Teddy, now.” Molly was shutting down her computer.
Teddy scanned the page: Evidence suggests that there are both maternal and paternal DNA markers present in subject’s makeup—
Then the screen went blank.
“Hey!” Teddy said.
Molly hit a button and powered it back up. Then performed a command. “I’m deleting your history. We have to go.”
Teddy pushed away from the desk and followed Molly from the room, her head reeling.
Maternal and paternal markers. Psychic markers? Eversley said that they hadn’t hadn’t proved the existence of such things.
Pyro grabbed Teddy at the door. “You okay?” he asked.
“Yeah,” Teddy said. “Just got some news from home. Need a minute to digest.”
Teddy looked around the room. Dara was waiting by the door. Molly was packing up her hard drive. “Where’s Jeremy?”
“Bathroom,” Dara said, shrugging on her fur coat. “Let’s go. This place gives me the creeps at night.”
Teddy turned to Molly. “I thought you said that we had to leave? That someone was coming?”
“We do,” Molly said, zipping her bag closed. “But I’m not responsible for Jeremy’s bladder.”
They heard a noise—a slam, followed by a lock clicking shut. Molly put her finger to her lips.
“Do you think someone else is in the building?” Dara asked. “We can still get out of here before—”
“I gave Jeremy the key,” Molly said. “We’re waiting for him. We can’t lock up without him.”
“And we don’t leave anyone behind,” Pyro said.
Steps in the hallway, getting closer, then Jeremy’s even voice: “Ready?”
“You know you scared the crap out of us, right?” Teddy said. “What is with everybody tonight?” Her nerves were on edge. She just wanted to get out of here. “Come on, if we hurry, we’ll make it in time for best costume.”
“I hardly think you’ll win, Teddy,” Jeremy said. “Your costume is not very original.”
Teddy snorted. “Look who’s talking.”
“Please,” Molly said. “Enough.” She stopped Jeremy as he was locking the door. “Got everything?” Jeremy put the lab keys in his doctor’s bag, adjusted his stethoscope, and nodded.
The group walked back across the meditation lawn.
“That was risky,” Teddy said to Pyro.
“It was worth catching up with my partner’s family.” Pyro looked down. “His kids got so big.”
“I thought you were just checking sports scores.”
Pyro shrugged, avoiding Teddy’s eyes.
She didn’t want to press him for more, but this was rare—Pyro being Lucas, the cop who watched his partner give up everything for the job, for him. She reached out to touch his arm, then caught herself. She couldn’t lead him on. “You wanna talk about it?”
He shook his head. “I just want to forget about it.” He walked on without her.
She was reeling, too. Teddy leaned against the cool stucco of the dining hall facade, where she was shrouded in darkness, invisible. She looked up into the clear San Francisco sky. What she’d read in her file. Maternal and paternal psychic markers. Both her parents were psychic, too. It changed everything she knew about herself, her life.
And then she saw Nick passing beneath the lamppost on the corner of the path. Instead of feeling lost or confused or sad, she felt anger. He’d tricked her. And lied about it. “Hey!” she said, shoving him. In a split second, he’d pinned her against a tree. “Stop! It’s only me,” she said.
Nick let out a breath and released her. “Next time you do that to a federal agent, you might get your head blown off.”
“FBI,” she said. “I should have known.”
“What are you doing here?” he asked.
“I go to school here, remember? You tricked me into it.”
He folded his arms. “I was just doing my job.”
“I assume that’s what you were doing the other night at the Cantina, too, huh?”
“Yeah. New assignment.”
“As what? Barfly?”
“FBI liaison. And teacher.”
She stared at him, her poker face revealing nothing. She couldn’t let him know that she already had that information. “Why you?” she asked.
“Because I’m good.”
“How good?”
“Good enough to know that you and your friends just sneaked into an office where you didn’t belong.”
Teddy kept her expression even as she tried to figure out her next move. “If you’re that good, you’d know that half the campus sneaks into that office.”
“But they don’t get caught.”
She swallowed hard. She couldn’t risk getting into trouble. Not when she had so much more to learn. About being psychic. About her birth parents. She looked back at Nick. She could play this. Find another move. Like she always did. “When do you start? Your first day as a Whitfield teacher, I mean.”
“I don’t start until next semester.”
“So, technically, you don’t have to report me. You don’t really work here yet.” Teddy reached out and put a hand on his arm. He looked at her hand and then back at her. “Technically—” he began.
“I’d consider us even,” she said.
“Even?” he asked.
“For Vegas,” she said. “It was a dirty trick. For both you and Clint.”
“Okay,” he said, as if it were no big deal.
Teddy blinked, surprised. “Okay?”
“I won’t report you,” he said. “But not because I regret what happened in Vegas.” He took her hand off his arm and started to walk away.
“Why, then?” she called.
“Read my mind,” he said, and disappeared into Harris Hall.
Teddy followed a few minutes later. “There you are,”
