Katherine sipped her wine. “Oh no, I was far too interested in observing this interaction.”
Megan was all smiles, her previous irritation with Toni seeming to melt away at the woman’s willing appearance on Katherine’s deck. “See? Three of us now. There’s something special about three.”
“Don’t get excited, Atlanta.” Toni set down the bottle of red. “This is from my cousin’s winery, but I didn’t just bring it because I got it for free. It’s actually good.”
“Your cousin has a winery?” Megan’s eyes lit up. “That’s so cool.”
“If you can think of a job on the Central Coast, from winemaker to electrician to marine biologist, I can almost promise I have a cousin doing it.”
“Big family?”
“I have forty-two first cousins,” Toni said. “And almost all of them have reproduced, so you can imagine.”
“How about you?” Katherine said. “You don’t have children?”
Toni shrugged. “I never found the right guy. Just didn’t happen.”
Megan said, “You don’t need a man to be a mama. Not these days.”
“Uh, you do in my family.” Toni shook her head. “I would shrivel up and die from the lecture my mother would give me if I got pregnant without being married.”
“Fair enough,” Katherine said. “So now that we’re all speaking to each other, what do we think happened two weeks ago? And what do you think we should do about all this… psychic stuff?”
“I don’t have an answer for the first question,” Megan said. “But check this out.” She reached out her hand and her wineglass scooted an inch to the left. “I’ve been reading all this stuff about energy and channeling and—”
“Oh yeah.” Toni reached into her pocket and brought out a corkscrew. “I’m definitely going to need alcohol for this conversation.”
Chapter 11
“So the thing with Justin McCabe might not be isolated?” Megan asked. “How are you going to find out if this boy was in this study you’re talking about?”
“I haven’t figured that part out yet,” Katherine said. “There’s no way to do it that I can think of. Not legally anyway. I don’t even know if they’d tell the police if they asked.”
“I can’t lie,” Toni said. “What happened at the gym was awful and if that kid had something done to him, that’s not right. But I’m more worried about my sudden, massive mood swings because I do not want to live with this the rest of my life. Tell me more about these women in Glimmer Lake.”
“They were like us,” Katherine said. “Three ordinary people who nearly died and something about that triggered psychic powers.”
“But their powers are different than ours?” Megan asked.
“There are some similarities. Monica contacted me initially because she has visions and wanted to understand more about timelines from a scientific perspective. I couldn’t really help her much. And her visions are completely different than mine.”
“How long ago was it?” Toni said. “How long did they last?”
“Uh…” Katherine twisted the stem of her wineglass. “They had the accident over three years ago.”
Toni’s eyes went wide. “And they still have powers?”
“I’m afraid… Yes. They still have powers. This could be permanent.”
Toni’s face went pale. “Fuck.”
“I thought wrinkles were going to be the biggest adjustment to middle age,” Megan quipped. “At least I don’t see ghosts.” She visibly shuddered. “I would not be able to handle that.”
“I second that shit,” Toni said. “Feeling other people’s emotions is bad enough.” She leaned her elbows on the table. “There has to be a way to get rid of this.”
Katherine decided it was time to pour another round of wine. The sun had started to creep below the horizon, but the fog hadn’t come in, meaning the ocean and sky were layered in deep and vibrant blue, purple, and pink.
“The human mind is remarkably flexible,” she said. “Even well into our later years. It can learn all sorts of new skills if it has to. Think about older people who have strokes and learn how to do complex tasks like speaking again. A sudden development of mental ability brought on by prospective trauma is hardly out of the scope of the possible.”
“Just putting this out there,” Toni said. “But I’m barely forty-one. I hardly think I qualify for a midlife crisis yet. All my grandmas are still living in their nineties. I’m not even halfway there.”
Megan gave her a smile and clinked the edge of her wineglass to Toni’s. “Give your joints and chin hair three years and get back to us.” She looked to Katherine. “So the girls up in the mountains are a medium, a seer, and a telekinetic?” She frowned. “Or maybe a psychometric. I need to look that up.” She grabbed her phone and unlocked it.
“Seers? Psychometrics?” Toni shook her head. “Are we for real right now? This is like movie stuff. Book stuff. Not real life.”
Megan looked up. “You mean you have psychic powers and you’re still a skeptic?”
“I’d consider myself as skeptical as they come,” Katherine said. “But I had no way of knowing that man would pull out a gun. I just saw it. If you have any reason to think I might have discovered his plot another way, I’d love to hear it.”
Megan was still scrolling through her phone, worrying her lower lip red from her teeth.
Toni continued, “I’m just saying that sometimes we pick up on stuff that we don’t even realize if we’re observant. Call them vibes if you want, but they’re normal human instincts, not magic. Maybe that’s what you felt and your mind just made a leap.”
Megan was still looking at her phone, but she piped up. “Doesn’t explain how I could move stuff with my mind.”
“Toni, for future reference,” Katherine said, “you should know that I very often do not pick up on social cues at all. Even when they’re very obvious. It took me four months to figure out my husband was
