The Last Dancer | Page 6

and make
the circles, they--" Alaya hesitated again. "A lot of them--almost all of
them, damn it--are kidding themselves. But you're real, you have
something. I have a little bit of it, enough to know when a spell has
worked, when a circle closes correctly. Sometimes I get some of what
people are thinking and feeling. But when you walk into the same room
with me--there's a sound, except it's not a sound, like a thousand bees
buzzing all around me, and I can't hear anything. People have lied to
me when you were nearby and I couldn't tell."
Jasmine nodded slowly. Not counting Alaya, there were three women
she had met 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