Warping Minds & Other Misdemeanors (The Guild Codex: Warped Book 1) by Annette Marie & Rob Jacobsen

Author:Annette Marie & Rob Jacobsen [Marie, Annette & Jacobsen, Rob]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781988153544
Publisher: Dark Owl Fantasy Inc.
Published: 2020-08-06T18:30:00+00:00

Chapter Thirteen

As I stood there in a pathetic stupor, the obnoxious squeal of air brakes pierced my ears. Twenty yards down the street, a city bus had pulled up at a stop. The doors creaked open and a pair of women in business slacks got off while an old lady with an umbrella and a cane waited to board.

Maggie’s anti-telethesian potion had probably expired by now, and this neighborhood would be crawling with agents in a matter of minutes.

I bolted down the sidewalk. The slow granny had inched onto the bus, and I jumped in after her. She tapped her bus pass on the card reader next to the driver and it flashed green.

I, of course, was sans wallet. My bus pass was in the care of the MPD, along with my credit cards, driver’s license, and a Starbucks gift card worth a whopping ten bucks.

Focusing on the bus driver, I stuck my arm out. The bus pass hallucination in my real hand tapped the reader, and I added an approving green light before shuffling toward the back of the bus. As I sank onto a seat across from the rear door, the bus accelerated away from the café.

Breathing slow and deep, I closed my eyes.

It hadn’t gone to plan, but I’d done it. I’d escaped.

Well, sort of. There was the telethesian problem. All Agent Cutter had to do was find my trail at the bus stop and he could, in theory, track me forever. Imagine a predator—a bearded, plaid-adorned, axe-wielding predator—who could always find you. It was the ultimate “you can run, but you can’t hide” situation.

It was almost as scary as the Predator predator.

I knew a few methods to slow down or throw off a telethesian, but they weren’t all that convenient. My best shot was sticking to vehicular travel. Though it wouldn’t obscure my psychic trail, it would hamper Agent Cutter’s tracking progress.

The bus took me into the downtown core where I switched to another. After a few blocks, I got off and grabbed another one headed in a different direction, each time using my bus pass hallucination to board.

One more bus change and I found myself heading into a coastal suburb called Deep Cove that had a sleepy, Hallmark vibe to it. The sun had set and the streets were quiet.

Not good. Not good at all.

Don’t get me wrong; I desperately wanted to buy an artisanal donut, get some organic kombucha, and book a week-long stay at a cozy bed and breakfast. But if I rounded up all the people I could see on the street, I wouldn’t be able to field an entire baseball team, and that was a problem, because mixing in with a crowd was another way to muddy a telethesian’s tracking.

But taking this bus back into the crowded downtown core, where Lienna, Agent Cutter, and any number of other agents would be tracking my wacky bus trail, wasn’t smart either.

The thought of Lienna desperately chasing me across the Greater Vancouver area set off a pang of guilt in my gut that hit much harder than I’d expected.

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