Mind Blind Short Story: Busted

It was not a dark and stormy night. The weather was, in fact, surprisingly temperate for late-October Chicago at a balmy seventy degrees Fahrenheit (fifty given windchill). For Nicholas Wiseman and his too-short miniskirt, this was a blessing. Not that he wasn’t willing to brave the frozen wastes in fishnets for the sake of Sohvi’s Halloween party, but the tissue-thin habit of his sexy nun costume wasn’t particularly warm. He glanced over at Grayson, whose own costume of Robin Hood was considerably less revealing (although, much to Gray’s chagrin, the tights which Nick had lent him left little to the imagination).

“How do you think Button is holding up?” Nick asked for what must’ve been the twentieth time in the twelve minutes must’ve been since they’d departed his condo.

Gray pulled at the hem of his tunic awkwardly before giving up. “Your sibling is eighteen, Nick,” he said. “They’ll survive a night without you.”

“I know that,” Nick claimed, knowing no such thing. “But maybe I should’ve stayed home with them.”

“They told you to get lost,” Gray reminded him. “Button didn’t want to ruin your night with their cold—they know how much you love Halloween. The best thing for recovery is rest, and they can’t do that with you hovering over their shoulder and force-feeding them soup.”

Nick sighed. Logically, he could acknowledge that Grayson was right, and he had made three different types of soup in case Button got hungry, so it wasn’t as if they’d starve in his absence. Even so, it was difficult not to worry when his every instinct took one look at his stuffy-nosed and soar-throated sibling and screamed to summon five independent doctors just to make extra-extra sure that they were okay.

“Are you sure that this is Sohvi’s address?” Gray asked, coming to a stop in front of a dilapidated townhouse.

Its appearance had to be a façade for the festivities; Sohvi was too fastidious to live in a house with peeling paint and a decaying porch. He double checked the address on his phone. Maybe she’d rented the place for the party?

“2446 Darrow Street,” Nick said. “This is the place.”

“It doesn’t look like anyone is inside.” Gray gestured to a dark window on the second floor, cracks spiderwebbing out from its center.

“Well, Sohvi isn’t the type to play a prank,” Nick said with false confidence. Maybe this was the universe’s way of telling him that he should’ve stayed home with Button? “Let’s go.”

Nick became increasingly certain that this was the right place as they walked towards the door. The fenced in front garden was tiny but meticulously cared for—who else but Sohvi would be able to coax so many flowers to bloom out of season? Granted, the only plants which Nick recognized were the purple and white hyacinths, and those only because Hyacinth was his middle name. He did know that they usually blossomed in spring, however.

Gray’s knuckles rapped on the front door.

“It’s open!” Sohvi’s voice called out from within the house.

At her greeting, a tightness in Nick’s chest eased. Not that he was in anyway afraid of abandoned houses. He wasn’t. But he was already feeling anxious because of Button’s cold, and the last thing he needed was to relive The Shining.

Gray tugged down the hem of his tunic again before opening the door. Nick’s first impression of Sohvi’s foyer was that she needed to hire a housecleaner: particles of dust drifted in the hazy light of a dozen half-melted candles, and there was a stale smell in the air of mothballs and something pungent that Nick couldn’t quite place but reminded him vaguely of durian.

“We’re all upstairs!” Sohvi’s voice called as one of the candles sputtered out.

Nick closed the door before the wind extinguished the other candles. He must not have done it quickly enough, however, because two more snuffed dark. Then two more, even though the door was shut.

“Drafty in here,” Gray observed as all but one of the remaining candles died.

Nick squinted. Given that only one candle remained, it was too dark to see anything. Impulsively, he reached out with his mind, double checking that Sohvi was upstairs, only for his thoughts to brush against . . . nothing.

No one else was in the house.

“Something’s wrong,” he told Gray, who was holding up the sole surviving light like a beacon as he squinted up the wooden stairwell.

“What do you mean?” Gray asked.

Nick flicked his fingers downward in the UCRT sign that meant “building is vacant.”

“Are you guys coming up or what?” Sohvi’s voice demanded from above. “Come on, you’ve got to see Kim’s costume!”

That confirmed it. There was no way in hell that Ambrose Killjoy Kim would ever dress up for Halloween. Motioning for Grayson to keep watch, Nick closed his eyes and reached out.

The second floor was, as Nick suspected, abandoned. Nick had seen plenty of unoccupied spaces via his telemetry—half his job was psychic scouting suspicious locations that turned out to be dead ends—but there was vacant and then there was empty. The second floor was the latter: there were no guests, no party decorations . . . not even a single piece of furniture. Only decaying floorboards and the same half-shattered window that Grayson had pointed out from outside.

Nicholas Wiseman was not a superstitious man. Not that he was close-minded, he just wasn’t a true believer. He may have only recently taken over as Justice, but he’d been an AMO long enough to know exactly what this was. He opened his eyes to see Gray staring at him with concern (although it was difficult to discern his friend’s expression in the dim light). Nick tapped his temple—once, twice—and Gray nodded agreement and opened his mind. Not that Nick could read any of his friend’s thoughts (at least, not without trying), but Gray’s guard lowered enough that they could communicate and Nick could be sure that no other Ment was listening in.

We’re dealing with someone capable of creating auditory hallucinations, Nick thought to Grayson. Someone powerful enough to make ME hear things so at least a Ten.

I figured something was going on, Gray thought back. Are you sure that they’re not on the premises? Because they seem to know that—

“Hurry up before we run out of beer!” Sohvi’s voice screeched from above.

Gray glanced at Nick, waiting for him to lay out a plan. That was how they worked: Nick coming up with the ideas and Grayson either approving or rejecting them depending upon how reckless he deemed Nick’s approach.

Crack.

Nick looked down to where the floorboard had suddenly buckled beneath his feet. Well, that was new.

“It’s just like Wiseman to be late,” Kim’s grumpy voice drifted down from the stairwell.

Clearly, whoever he and Gray were up against wanted them to go upstairs. Screw that. Nick wasn’t oppositional defiant, but he was too smart (or at least, too well-trained) to obligingly trapse into what was clearly a trap. Even if a tiny part of him was curious what would happen if he Leeroy Jenkins-ed the second floor.

Let’s head out and regroup, he thought to Gray. We need to make sure that Sohvi is okay.

Ambrose as well, Gray thought.

Nick grabbed the door handle. It didn’t budge.

Your turn, Fortitude.

Gray jiggled the knob, frowned, then placed his splayed-out palm against the door. His frowned deepened.

“Something’s wrong,” Gray said aloud, his voice trembling. “Nick, I don’t think this a Ment that we’re dealing with.”

“What do you mean ‘something’s wrong?’” Nick demanded. “Just blast open the damn door.”

“I can’t because—”

Whatever Gray was about to say was lost as his body was yanked backwards, spine bending in a perfect arch as something pulled him up the stairs.

Shit. Logic dictated that whatever had grabbed Grayson was another Telekinetic, but Nick hadn’t seen anyone nearby. As far as Nick knew, there wasn’t even another Telekinetic in the USA let alone one with enough range to grab his friend a story down. Alternatives? Nothing natural. Which left . . .

“Come on up, Nick,” Sohvi’s voice taunted from above.

“Join the party, Nick,” Kim’s voice added with an unnervingly high-pitched giggle.

“You won’t regret it, Nick.” This last line was said by Gray.

Damnit. Nick reached out—he could feel Gray upstairs, his mind oddly calm. Was Gray asleep? Leave it to that asshole to get knocked unconscious and leave Nick alone to fight a ghost. (As soon as the thought occurred to him, Nick immediately regretted it. Grayson was in no way an asshole, even if it was awfully inconvenient of him to get taken out of play. Nick would’ve been concerned for his friend’s life, but he’d waken Gray up from enough naps at his desk to know that, even unconscious, Gray’s telekinesis had a way of kicking in to defend himself from bodily harm.)

Nick didn’t bother trying the door again. Even if he’d been allowed to escape by whatever . . . entity had taken Gray, he wasn’t about to leave his friend stranded. He grabbed the candlestick that had clattered to the floor; the silver felt reassuringly heavy in his hand.

Nick’s final thought before heading up the dark stairway was that he should’ve stayed at home with Button.

* * * *

“I take back every good thing that I've ever thought about you,” Nick informed Grayson over lunch the next day. “You're a jerk. I genuinely thought that you’d been ghost-napped.”

“Consider it payback for the tights,” Gray said, taking a sip of the soup thermos that Nick had packed him. "And for your prank last Halloween. I'm pretty sure that my father disowned me after seeing those photos."

“How’d you get Kim and Sohvi to cooperate?” Nick asked.

Gray smirked. “I promised Sohvi that I’d file her next five mission reports. Kim didn’t need incentive."

"The tape player under the floorboards was an ingenious touch,” Nick admitted. “How long did it take you to master flying up the stairs like that?”

Gray grimaced and rubbed a bruise on his lower forearm. “Longer than I’d care to admit,” he said. “But your expression was worth the effort.”

“And so the student becomes the master.” Nick leaned back in his chair, lifting his own thermos cup in salute. “I’m proud of you, kid.”

“Thanks?” Gray looked wary at the praise. Good. That meant that he was learning.

Grayson may have won this Halloween, but next year? Nick had already solicited Button and Sally's assistance, and Gray's fake ghost ass was getting busted.