The Last Dancer | Page 6

at Goddess Home who had some small fragment of the Gift, some touch of real ability. Most of the women at Goddess Home were no more gifted than any other human; and the three that were, Alaya again excepted, did not seem to have made much productive use of their fragmentary Gift. "I know what you mean," Jasmine said quietly. "I've felt the same in you."
"You lie," said Alaya without anger. "I'm no more in your league than Marien Lisachild is in mine. She may be the most popular psychic at Goddess Home, but she's a fraud and we both know it. I'm not a fraud, but I'm not what you are, either." Alaya paused. "Your eyes are green."
Jasmine was grimly certain she knew where this was going. "So?"
"Were you born with eyes that color?"
Jasmine sat silently a long moment, letting the question hang in the air, and then said, "I think we're done."
"I don't think so."
Jasmine stared bleakly at the woman. "Meaning what?"
A less self-assured woman might have taken warning from the tone of her voice. Alaya Gyurtrag forged ahead. "Back in 2062 two genies, two of the Castanaveras, were kidnapped from the Chandler Complex in Manhattan, before the Complex was nuked by Space Force. They never found out what happened to them, to those children. And you're--"
The images tore through Jasmine, the smell of Alaya's mother, the calm and steady warmth of her father. Her father's smile, the gentle reassurances in the face of adversity, the promise that what Alaya attempted she would be competent to do. The inconsolable ache at their loss, lessened only slightly with the passage of thirteen years, particularly the loss of the man who had taught her to read, who had praised her early attempts at painting, who had consoled her when she was twenty, after the loss of her first love--
Jasmine pulled free of the link, mildly impressed that Alaya had managed it in the first place. "I'm sorry, Alaya. But it wasn't my fault."
Alaya's voice shook slightly. "My parents died during the Troubles."
"I know, and I am sorry. But so did both of mine."
Alaya nodded, eyes not moving from Jasmine's, and her right hand dropped below the edge of her desk.
Jasmine Martinez said simply, "Please don't do this."
Alaya licked her lips quickly. Her expression held a very good attempt at innocence. "Don't do what?"
Jasmine heard the desk drawer sliding open. She exhaled, let the living air flow from her lungs, closed her eyes and stepped out of her body.
The room lit with a flat, grainy gray light.
In the stillness between heartbeats Jasmine Martinez moved away from her body and walked through the desk.
She did not recognize the make of the gun Alaya was taking from her desk drawer. A double-action automatic of some kind; from the size of the barrel, perhaps a 9mm. The safety was already off. She touched the magazine, ran a finger through the metal and up into the chamber; fifteen shots staggered in the magazine, one shot in the chamber, ready to be fired.
Jasmine had no idea what Alaya expected to do with the weapon, and did not intend to wait and find out. She let go of the automatic, grasped Alaya's arms just above the elbows and reached out for the glowing blue filaments of Alaya's nerve network. Here, and here, she touched, quieted the flow of neurons, and then opened her eyes to a world of color and movement.
The gun in Alaya's hand fell noiselessly from her nerveless hands to the surface of the carpet. Jasmine stared at Alaya, eyes glittering, and with the full force of her Gift reformed the link Alaya had attempted, and, as Alaya Gyurtrag drew breath to scream, Touched her soul.
Jasmine came back to herself slowly, distantly aware of tears dripping down her cheeks; knew as though it were something happening to someone else that she shook with the force of her sobs. She mourned for the parents Alaya had lost in the Troubles, for the slow loss of Alaya's friends. The pain of Alaya's incomprehension, that men and women alike, people she cared for, should misunderstand her advances, should interpret her love as interference, and her fear as anger. Alaya's desperate fear that she was already too old to find the love she craved, that if she had not found it yet she would never find it, and would age alone, unloved, and friendless.
And die so.
Alaya blinked. It took a moment for her eyes to focus. When they did she looked at Jasmine with sudden concern. "Are you all right, dear?"
"I'm--fine," Jasmine managed to say. A lethal headache pulsed immediately behind her eyes; it happened every time she used the deepest elements of the Gift. She gathered herself and wiped away the tears, picked up her travel bag, and