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Unquiet
Fandom: Ace Attorney
Characters: Athena Cykes, Mia Fey, Maya Fey
Word count: ~3900
Warnings: Mia is and remains a ghost
Notes: For![[archiveofourown.org profile]](https://p.dreamwidth.org/b164c54b26e4/-/archiveofourown.org/favicon.ico)
ziskandra for Trick or Treat 2020! Takes place after Spirit of Justice but contains no spoilers for SoJ. AA1 through 5 are fair game though.
Mia is so cool. Trying to write her was really intimidating, because... she is so cool.
She had met Maya Fey before, in passing, and they'd gotten along fine. She'd read about Mia, the legal legend who'd been cut down too soon, only to come roaring back. She'd had a long conversation with Pearl about the Kurain Channeling Technique. Mr. Wright had contributed significantly to hyping this meeting up, saying mysterious stuff about, “There's someone I'd like you to meet, could you come back by the office around eight tomorrow evening,” so basically -
Basically, this should have been amazing on all possible levels. But with every word the ghost of Mia Fey spoke through her sister's body, Athena felt a little more of the air leaving the room.
“It's the sound of my voice, isn't it?” said Mia. Athena looked up at her from the swivel chair behind the Wright Anything Agency's reception desk. She tried to make some excuse, couldn't come up with one, and nodded weakly. “Phoenix told me about your abilities. We wondered how you might cope with hearing the voices of the dead.”
The dead. The dead. The voices of the dead. It wouldn't stop echoing inside her skull. There was an awful buzzing inside her left ear, like she'd been standing too close to a guitar amp or a small explosion. Her fingers were going numb; her knees had given out shortly after introductions, barely leaving her time to find a seat.
“It'll – it'll pass,” she said, and hoped this weak grimace would pass for a smile. This wasn't how she wanted things to go. Breaking into a flop sweat and turning totally incoherent was not the impression she wanted to make on her boss's very cool and impressive former boss. “Right? I'm sure this happens to a lot of people. Channeling isn't an everyday...”
“It's interesting, actually,” said Mia. “Most people can't tell when they're speaking to a ghost. Not everyone can tell the difference, even if Maya channels right in front of them.”
Athena wanted to battle through the discomfort to say something astute, really prove her toughness, show she was someone clients could depend on – but Widget beat her to the punch with a sarcastic chirp: “Even if she gets five inches taller and a completely different face?”
“Even then,” said Mia, with a wry smile. “But you knew right away, didn't you?”
“How could I not?” said Athena. She waved her hands around her ears. It did nothing to lessen the cacophony. “With all this... feedback?”
Mia looked thoughtful. It was a normal human expression, like a normal person would wear, and probably often had, in life. “What is it you're sensing from me?”
“Discord. Dissonance. It's awful.” Athena rubbed at her arms. “I – I don't mean – there's nothing wrong with your voice, I bet it's a really pretty voice when – I bet it was when you were alive -” She stopped and took a shaky breath. Mia was silent, and Athena shot a worried look her way – but there was no judgment or impatience. Mia waved for her to go on. “Normally if people sound this out of harmony with themselves, it's because they're hiding something, or lying to themselves, or there's something they haven't dealt with. And – I don't want to accuse you of any of that! But at the same time – this is the worst I've felt it in years. I'm sorry. This isn't the impression I wanted to make.”
“It's completely okay. We can do this in writing if you'd prefer.” Mia looked around the general jumble of the Wright Anything Agency's consulting office, and then conceded under her breath, “If Phoenix even keeps anything around to write with. What has he been doing?”
“I dunno, losing and regaining his license? Raising Trucy? A lot of poker, apparently?” said Athena. “The place may look a little crazy, but – I'm happy to work here. Really. And – thank you, but I can take it.” She planted her hands on the desk and pushed herself upright. “This is good training. No matter what happens, I could never let a client see me like this.”
“I'm not your client,” said Mia, “and not everything is training.” Was that worried frown still for her old student, or was it for Athena? “I appreciate your determination, but -”
“No,” said Athena, “really, tell me something. Is this a test? I know Mr. Wright and your sister would use channeling to help them build cases back in the day. Now that Maya's back in the States, he can use her help again. And... if I'm going to freak out about it, it's better to know now instead of in the courtroom. The three of you could have cooked this up -”
“That's not all of it,” said Mia. She sounded sincere; the words did not clash against Athena's ear. “We did discuss that possibility, but most of all – I really wanted to meet you.”
That part hit strangely – a jangle like someone had dropped car keys on a cymbal and the cymbal was inside her head. It was all she could do not to slap her hands over her ears. That would look bad, and it wouldn't help anything.
“I trust Phoenix to do right by you, don't get me wrong. He knows a lot about how to work the court system, and the value of faith in your clients, and how to turn a hopeless situation around. He was a wonderful understudy, I'm proud of him, and I'm proud to have helped him on his way. But – there are some challenges particular to being a woman in the courtroom that he may not know how to help you with. I think you should have someone in your Rolodex who can.”
Athena could barely keep her feet in the tide of sound. She could barely separate the words – even though they were friendly words! Kindly meant! – from the background clangor, the hiss and murmur of something just outside her comprehension. Widget said, “What the heck's a Rolodex?” because of course that was the one point she managed to latch onto.
“And here's a story I think you've heard before: a brilliant woman has a young daughter with unusual talents. After a massive, tragic public incident, that woman is taken away. The daughter doesn't fully understand what's happened, but she believes justice isn't being served. So off she goes to find the truth. She goes to law school, hits the books, passes the bar her first time around, and prepares to make her mark -”
Concentrate, Athena, concentrate. It was hard enough to pick out the words themselves against this discord (like a bag of loose coins in a tumble dryer), let alone any sneaky subtextual implications. “Are you... are you talking about me? Or you?”
Mia smiled. “Now you're getting it.”
And suddenly – the dissonance was gone.
Shocked, relieved, Athena drew in a huge lungful of air and wiped at her brow. “Okay. Okay, wow.” Mia stared at her in perplexity. “Sorry, but – something changed just now. And...” She frowned. Mia was still a ghost, so that couldn't be the true source of the issue. “I think I want to try something.”
Mia raised her eyebrows in inquiry, seemed about to say something, and stopped. Like she'd realized words were redundant, and wouldn't risk her voice causing Athena any unnecessary distress. It was no wonder Mr. Wright spoke so highly of her – when he spoke of the time before his disbarment at all.
As the ringing in her ears receded further into memory, Athena found it easier to summon her usual confidence. Not to say bluster. She would never. “Okay, I'm gonna go ahead and set up Widget exactly like if I was speaking to a witness. In case I do have to cross-examine a ghost someday, it's good to practice in a controlled environment, right? If you don't mind helping me out here.”
“That all sounds reasonable.” Still no discord. Excellent.
“And maybe we can suss out what it is I'm hearing – well, what I was hearing, if it's all over now. Knock on wood.” She paired Widget with her tablet and gave it a few seconds for the mood analysis routine to fire up. When Widget beeped confirmation, she tapped in a command to analyze the past two minutes of audio. “Just so you know, I'm not storing your recording for anything. I clear Widget's cache at the end of every session.” Mia gave her a puzzled smile, as if this meant nothing to her but she was happy to accept the attempted reassurance for what it was. “You do not want to know what's happened in privacy law since you've been out of commission.”
“I might,” she said, and Athena mentally kicked herself, remembering – the BlueCorp case, the wiretap – she needed no help parsing that tone, the hint of steely grimness under Mia's polite exterior.
Athena muttered, “I really keep sticking my foot in it, huh?”
The analysis came back.
“Oh,” she said, quietly. “This is weird.”
“What is?”
“I knew I was hearing some strong negative emotion, but I couldn't pin it down. I didn't think it was coming from you. It didn't make any sense. We were just talking about normal stuff, and it was this – background buzz, not even related to anything -”
“But if I don't talk, you don't hear it,” said Mia. “Wouldn't it have to be me?”
Athena scrolled through every data visualization format Widget had on offer, and they all came up blue. “But would you say you're sad today? Afraid? Lonely? In pain? I'm sorry if this sounds invasive, but all the readings I'm getting are somewhere around there.”
“I don't think I'm in any particular mood,” said Mia, frowning. “It's nice to visit the living world again when it's not an emergency, I suppose. I'm used to showing up just to bail Phoenix out of another disaster.” The words scraped across Athena's nerves like a file. The mood matrix spiked blue again.
Athena bit her tongue and had Widget generate a spectrogram. She studied it – and at first didn't want to believe what she was seeing – and then started to feel cold. If this meant what she thought it did, she was standing on the edge of something big. She wanted to close the program and leave. She wanted to shake Mia Fey's hand, wish her a nice afterlife, and book a flight to France. She didn't. She collected her failing nerve, and asked the most absurd question she'd had to put to anyone in at least a week. “When you're not here, where are you?”
Mia said, “I'm sorry, but that's something I can't discuss,” and Athena's vision skewed sideways and started to lose color. It was so loud, whatever it was, wherever it came from – this thing she wouldn't say.
“Because,” said Athena. She closed her fists and put her hands at her sides, but that only concealed the shaking, it didn't stop it. She felt like her brain was shorting out, only able to produce words in random fits and starts. “Because what if – something hitched a ride back with you? Or what if – you brought back some residue from – that side? I don't think it is coming from you. This... hollowness. But I don't think that's better – because it means there's someone else in this room. Look at this graph.” She forcibly opened her right hand, one finger at a time, and moved Widget's display to project onto the nearest blank spot on the wall. “Whenever you speak, there are two voices.”
Startled, Mia looked back and forth between the spectrogram and Athena. “That isn't possible. Maya can only channel one spirit at a time. A spirit medium isn't an open invitation – the link is established to one specific person. Even if we had any opportunistic family ghosts, they've already been dealt with.”
There was something so chilly in her voice at the mention of “family ghosts,” something that owed nothing to her extra passenger. But it was office policy that Mr. Wright did not answer questions about “Fey family baggage,” and the public record was sparse.
Athena thought, If we had more time I might push on this. If we had more time and she wasn't scaring the crap out of me. “Sorry,” she grated out. “Ms. Fey. One more question.”
“Go ahead.”
“Do you know the answer already? Are you just – trying to make me figure it out myself? Totally fine if it's a teaching exercise,” she lied – this was not remotely fine, it felt like drowning - “but I'd just appreciate – a little reassurance -”
“I'm sorry, Athena, but I really have no idea. This set of circumstances has never occurred before. I've been the channeler and I've been channeled, but how it's perceived by outsiders to the process – my experience doesn't extend there.”
“Okay! Great! Cool! ¡Fantástico!” said Athena, half frantically. “Things are exactly as spooky as they seem, but I'm not being manipulated, so that's – I guess that's a plus!”
“Has the discord been constant the whole time I've been speaking to you?” said Mia, and Athena made herself concentrate. There was a background radiation of – despair, or resentment, something old and cold and abrasive – something as much alienating as it was sad.
But that wasn't good enough. That didn't lead anywhere. Filter it out, Athena told herself, Focus on what matters. And when she closed her eyes and held the sound in her head, she thought – It spiked when she said “I.”
“No,” she said finally, opening her eyes again. “It comes and goes. That means – if we can figure out what this voice agrees with you on, and where it disagrees the most strongly, we can make a better guess what it is.”
“All right. What do you want me to talk about?”
“I don't know.” Athena was grateful Widget's processing power was too much taken up for him to give her away. What she really wanted to say was, I don't want you to talk at all. Or maybe, Why don't I go out of the room and call the office phone and maybe the lower audio quality will filter out all this ghost stuff and I can pretend I never knew about it? Why don't I go learn sign language? “Let's start out with a safe topic. The weather?”
Mia shrugged apologetically. “Maya's the one who walked over here. I guess it must be chilly” - she nodded toward the coat hook where Maya had haphazardly thrown off a jacket - “but I really couldn't tell you anything about the weather.”
The pressure against Athena's inner ear mounted, but it wasn't unbearable. She gritted her teeth. She forced herself to sound conversational. Maybe it was kind of late to try and save face, but – it was the principle of the thing. “It's a pretty nice day, actually. I don't know why she brought the coat at all.”
Mia's expression softened. “Maybe it was a favor. I always got cold more easily than she did.”
“Do you still?” said Athena. “Are you cold now? Or does Maya's body...?”
“I'm not sure. To be honest, most of the time when I'm being channeled I have more important priorities than physical comfort.” A pause. “Athena?”
“Sorry,” said Athena. “Sorry.” She had ducked down on reflex. “For a second, the other voice was – angry?” She folded herself into a less defensive posture and fought the urge to look around the room for vengeful ghosts. She wouldn't have been able to see them anyway. It hadn't felt like a directed anger, in any case. More a slow simmer of indignation. An awareness of wrong.
“Does that tell you anything?”
“I – maybe. But I don't understand. This voice... Who else would feel this strongly? Even if they disagree with you about what it all means, to be so invested in you, where you are, what you're doing, your life and your sister's -” She squeezed her eyes shut, tried to concentrate, waiting for the buzzing in her skull to subside. “I think this is someone who cares about both of you, a lot.” She took a few more breaths, knowing this next question would likely set it off worse than ever. But if she was going to figure out who this spiritual hitchhiker was, and if she was ever going to be able to talk to a medium again without screaming, she had to know. “Can you tell me... When Maya calls you to this plane, what does that feel like?”
For a long time, Mia didn't answer. And as long as she didn't speak, the room seemed to gradually right itself. It was easier to breathe. Easier to hold a thought in her head. Athena realized how hunched her posture had gotten and very consciously straightened her spine, and looked Mia in the face.
Weird that eye contact was the easy part. Weird that a ghost could look at you with kindness and intelligence, out of very ordinary brown eyes, and you'd never know. And you'd never want to. You would just think, Man, I wish this woman had never died and was just my mentor's mentor and we could meet for lunch and I could take her advice without wanting to black out –
Mia frowned slightly, as if struck by something. She said, “You're asking the wrong questions, Athena. Where I was before this isn't important – it's not possible that I brought someone else with me.”
“Then what? If it's not me, it's not you, and you didn't bring them here, then -”
“Then there's only one explanation. Think it through.”
“Then the other voice would have to have been here before you.” Athena shook her head. It wasn't an explanation at all. “The only people in the office this evening before you showed up were me, Mr. Wright – but he left to run some errands – and... Maya.” Involuntarily her hand came up to her mouth. “You don't mean...”
Mia folded her arms, looking at Athena sidelong. “I don't like this implication any more than you do. Maya's soul left this body so that I could occupy it. She shouldn't be conscious on any level. A spirit medium doesn't dream. She should be equally unable to sleeptalk. But if you detect things normal people can't, and you say there's a presence... I don't know who else it could be.”
“So it's not where you came from – it's where she went.”
“And apparently that wasn't far.”
“I'm hearing a restless spirit, but it's not you. It's...”
“It's my sister.” Mia closed her eyes, sighing, “Oh, Maya.”
There was no response from the restless spirit. Nothing at all. But Mia's sorrow was its own force.
This was too much. It was wrong, and it wasn't fair. There had to be a way out. “You were a medium, too, right? If you didn't know about this – that means you forget when you wake up. Doesn't it? People just don't remember anything that happened while they were out.”
“That's one possibility.”
“What do you mean, 'possibility?' Maya's okay, isn't she? She's been doing this her whole life! If she had to live like this, why wouldn't she just stop?” Mia looked troubled, and didn't answer. “Pearl's okay! You were okay! This is just a weird side effect no one would ever know about if I didn't...”
“I hope you're right.”
“Do you... ...do you feel anything from Maya?”
“No.” Mia folded her arms. “I'm alone in this body.”
It was the first thing she had said about the body that caused no dissonance at all. No – this was constructive interference. I'm alone, she said, and it came with an echo, just beyond the edge of hearing. Not merely alone, but standing in a desert plain, in a dried-up seabed, where no one could ever reach, past the point where all human sympathy had withdrawn. Mia Fey was dead. And Maya walked into that void and back, over and over again.
“I'm sorry,” said Athena, watching the walls loom toward her. This seemed a normal thing for them to do. She couldn't hold her head up if she tried, and she was swaying on her feet. “I'm sorry, I can't -”
“Hey! Whoa! Athena! What happened?” The voice was loud and bright, and entirely natural. Hands closed around her forearm. “Should I get Nick? Here, I'll clear a spot on the couch for you to sit down -”
The world gradually stopped spinning. Athena looked at the hands holding her arm. “Ms. Fey?”
“C'mon, I said you can call me Maya.”
Athena jerked her head up – and then had to adjust downward, finding nothing at Mia Fey's eye level. At Maya's, there was Maya's worried frown. All Athena managed to say was,“The channeling?”
“The link's broken for now, but I can call her back up if...” Maya trailed off and quickly looked around the office. “Okay, we're still where we started. Nothing's out of place. Did anything happen? What did Sis say to you? You look -”
“Like I've seen a ghost?” said Athena, and grinned, and hoped the huge effort it took wasn't evident. “I'm fine. I just – my mother was a scientist, right? So the supernatural... I freaked out a little, but that's all on me. Your sister's really cool. Nothing... nothing bad happened.”
Maya looked at her levelly. There was nothing of Mia behind that stare – well, nothing more than family resemblance. She said, “Okay, if you're sure. I still think you should sit down for a bit. And then maybe we should get you a burger. It's the prescription that never fails.”
Am I sure? Athena thought. Have I ever been sure of anything? Did anything bad happen?
Maya didn't seem to think so. She was carelessly moving a bunch of Mr. Wright's and Trucy's stuff out of the way to make space for Athena on the couch, talking idly about the weather and traffic and whether that burger joint she remembered from back in the day was still in business, and this viral video of a red panda that had gotten picked up by the morning news. All normal, cheerful stuff designed to put Athena at ease, and not a hint of conflicted emotions anywhere. To the best of Athena's ability, she could not determine that Maya was anything other than a cheerful twentysomething woman on a social call. She wasn't talking like someone whose soul had been forcibly ejected and then crammed back in in the past fifteen minutes.
Athena thought, No one's that good. Right? Maya didn't feel any of it. People aren't supposed to feel that and live.
Half-dazed, she let herself be sat down on the couch and asked her opinions about red pandas, giant pandas, acceptable and unacceptable ways to eat french fries, and – Maya had clearly been working up to this for some time – children's television programming. This must just be one of those things, she thought, and then thought, But what the heck do I tell Mr. Wright?
It was then Maya noticed the spectrogram, and Athena realized she'd forgotten to power down Widget's projector. “Huh,” said Maya, “what's that about?”
Athena quickly switched it off. “That is, um – your sister...” No. There was no point getting into this, and no way she could bluff her way through. “I'm sorry, but that's something I can't discuss.”
Characters: Athena Cykes, Mia Fey, Maya Fey
Word count: ~3900
Warnings: Mia is and remains a ghost
Notes: For
Mia is so cool. Trying to write her was really intimidating, because... she is so cool.
She had met Maya Fey before, in passing, and they'd gotten along fine. She'd read about Mia, the legal legend who'd been cut down too soon, only to come roaring back. She'd had a long conversation with Pearl about the Kurain Channeling Technique. Mr. Wright had contributed significantly to hyping this meeting up, saying mysterious stuff about, “There's someone I'd like you to meet, could you come back by the office around eight tomorrow evening,” so basically -
Basically, this should have been amazing on all possible levels. But with every word the ghost of Mia Fey spoke through her sister's body, Athena felt a little more of the air leaving the room.
“It's the sound of my voice, isn't it?” said Mia. Athena looked up at her from the swivel chair behind the Wright Anything Agency's reception desk. She tried to make some excuse, couldn't come up with one, and nodded weakly. “Phoenix told me about your abilities. We wondered how you might cope with hearing the voices of the dead.”
The dead. The dead. The voices of the dead. It wouldn't stop echoing inside her skull. There was an awful buzzing inside her left ear, like she'd been standing too close to a guitar amp or a small explosion. Her fingers were going numb; her knees had given out shortly after introductions, barely leaving her time to find a seat.
“It'll – it'll pass,” she said, and hoped this weak grimace would pass for a smile. This wasn't how she wanted things to go. Breaking into a flop sweat and turning totally incoherent was not the impression she wanted to make on her boss's very cool and impressive former boss. “Right? I'm sure this happens to a lot of people. Channeling isn't an everyday...”
“It's interesting, actually,” said Mia. “Most people can't tell when they're speaking to a ghost. Not everyone can tell the difference, even if Maya channels right in front of them.”
Athena wanted to battle through the discomfort to say something astute, really prove her toughness, show she was someone clients could depend on – but Widget beat her to the punch with a sarcastic chirp: “Even if she gets five inches taller and a completely different face?”
“Even then,” said Mia, with a wry smile. “But you knew right away, didn't you?”
“How could I not?” said Athena. She waved her hands around her ears. It did nothing to lessen the cacophony. “With all this... feedback?”
Mia looked thoughtful. It was a normal human expression, like a normal person would wear, and probably often had, in life. “What is it you're sensing from me?”
“Discord. Dissonance. It's awful.” Athena rubbed at her arms. “I – I don't mean – there's nothing wrong with your voice, I bet it's a really pretty voice when – I bet it was when you were alive -” She stopped and took a shaky breath. Mia was silent, and Athena shot a worried look her way – but there was no judgment or impatience. Mia waved for her to go on. “Normally if people sound this out of harmony with themselves, it's because they're hiding something, or lying to themselves, or there's something they haven't dealt with. And – I don't want to accuse you of any of that! But at the same time – this is the worst I've felt it in years. I'm sorry. This isn't the impression I wanted to make.”
“It's completely okay. We can do this in writing if you'd prefer.” Mia looked around the general jumble of the Wright Anything Agency's consulting office, and then conceded under her breath, “If Phoenix even keeps anything around to write with. What has he been doing?”
“I dunno, losing and regaining his license? Raising Trucy? A lot of poker, apparently?” said Athena. “The place may look a little crazy, but – I'm happy to work here. Really. And – thank you, but I can take it.” She planted her hands on the desk and pushed herself upright. “This is good training. No matter what happens, I could never let a client see me like this.”
“I'm not your client,” said Mia, “and not everything is training.” Was that worried frown still for her old student, or was it for Athena? “I appreciate your determination, but -”
“No,” said Athena, “really, tell me something. Is this a test? I know Mr. Wright and your sister would use channeling to help them build cases back in the day. Now that Maya's back in the States, he can use her help again. And... if I'm going to freak out about it, it's better to know now instead of in the courtroom. The three of you could have cooked this up -”
“That's not all of it,” said Mia. She sounded sincere; the words did not clash against Athena's ear. “We did discuss that possibility, but most of all – I really wanted to meet you.”
That part hit strangely – a jangle like someone had dropped car keys on a cymbal and the cymbal was inside her head. It was all she could do not to slap her hands over her ears. That would look bad, and it wouldn't help anything.
“I trust Phoenix to do right by you, don't get me wrong. He knows a lot about how to work the court system, and the value of faith in your clients, and how to turn a hopeless situation around. He was a wonderful understudy, I'm proud of him, and I'm proud to have helped him on his way. But – there are some challenges particular to being a woman in the courtroom that he may not know how to help you with. I think you should have someone in your Rolodex who can.”
Athena could barely keep her feet in the tide of sound. She could barely separate the words – even though they were friendly words! Kindly meant! – from the background clangor, the hiss and murmur of something just outside her comprehension. Widget said, “What the heck's a Rolodex?” because of course that was the one point she managed to latch onto.
“And here's a story I think you've heard before: a brilliant woman has a young daughter with unusual talents. After a massive, tragic public incident, that woman is taken away. The daughter doesn't fully understand what's happened, but she believes justice isn't being served. So off she goes to find the truth. She goes to law school, hits the books, passes the bar her first time around, and prepares to make her mark -”
Concentrate, Athena, concentrate. It was hard enough to pick out the words themselves against this discord (like a bag of loose coins in a tumble dryer), let alone any sneaky subtextual implications. “Are you... are you talking about me? Or you?”
Mia smiled. “Now you're getting it.”
And suddenly – the dissonance was gone.
Shocked, relieved, Athena drew in a huge lungful of air and wiped at her brow. “Okay. Okay, wow.” Mia stared at her in perplexity. “Sorry, but – something changed just now. And...” She frowned. Mia was still a ghost, so that couldn't be the true source of the issue. “I think I want to try something.”
Mia raised her eyebrows in inquiry, seemed about to say something, and stopped. Like she'd realized words were redundant, and wouldn't risk her voice causing Athena any unnecessary distress. It was no wonder Mr. Wright spoke so highly of her – when he spoke of the time before his disbarment at all.
As the ringing in her ears receded further into memory, Athena found it easier to summon her usual confidence. Not to say bluster. She would never. “Okay, I'm gonna go ahead and set up Widget exactly like if I was speaking to a witness. In case I do have to cross-examine a ghost someday, it's good to practice in a controlled environment, right? If you don't mind helping me out here.”
“That all sounds reasonable.” Still no discord. Excellent.
“And maybe we can suss out what it is I'm hearing – well, what I was hearing, if it's all over now. Knock on wood.” She paired Widget with her tablet and gave it a few seconds for the mood analysis routine to fire up. When Widget beeped confirmation, she tapped in a command to analyze the past two minutes of audio. “Just so you know, I'm not storing your recording for anything. I clear Widget's cache at the end of every session.” Mia gave her a puzzled smile, as if this meant nothing to her but she was happy to accept the attempted reassurance for what it was. “You do not want to know what's happened in privacy law since you've been out of commission.”
“I might,” she said, and Athena mentally kicked herself, remembering – the BlueCorp case, the wiretap – she needed no help parsing that tone, the hint of steely grimness under Mia's polite exterior.
Athena muttered, “I really keep sticking my foot in it, huh?”
The analysis came back.
“Oh,” she said, quietly. “This is weird.”
“What is?”
“I knew I was hearing some strong negative emotion, but I couldn't pin it down. I didn't think it was coming from you. It didn't make any sense. We were just talking about normal stuff, and it was this – background buzz, not even related to anything -”
“But if I don't talk, you don't hear it,” said Mia. “Wouldn't it have to be me?”
Athena scrolled through every data visualization format Widget had on offer, and they all came up blue. “But would you say you're sad today? Afraid? Lonely? In pain? I'm sorry if this sounds invasive, but all the readings I'm getting are somewhere around there.”
“I don't think I'm in any particular mood,” said Mia, frowning. “It's nice to visit the living world again when it's not an emergency, I suppose. I'm used to showing up just to bail Phoenix out of another disaster.” The words scraped across Athena's nerves like a file. The mood matrix spiked blue again.
Athena bit her tongue and had Widget generate a spectrogram. She studied it – and at first didn't want to believe what she was seeing – and then started to feel cold. If this meant what she thought it did, she was standing on the edge of something big. She wanted to close the program and leave. She wanted to shake Mia Fey's hand, wish her a nice afterlife, and book a flight to France. She didn't. She collected her failing nerve, and asked the most absurd question she'd had to put to anyone in at least a week. “When you're not here, where are you?”
Mia said, “I'm sorry, but that's something I can't discuss,” and Athena's vision skewed sideways and started to lose color. It was so loud, whatever it was, wherever it came from – this thing she wouldn't say.
“Because,” said Athena. She closed her fists and put her hands at her sides, but that only concealed the shaking, it didn't stop it. She felt like her brain was shorting out, only able to produce words in random fits and starts. “Because what if – something hitched a ride back with you? Or what if – you brought back some residue from – that side? I don't think it is coming from you. This... hollowness. But I don't think that's better – because it means there's someone else in this room. Look at this graph.” She forcibly opened her right hand, one finger at a time, and moved Widget's display to project onto the nearest blank spot on the wall. “Whenever you speak, there are two voices.”
Startled, Mia looked back and forth between the spectrogram and Athena. “That isn't possible. Maya can only channel one spirit at a time. A spirit medium isn't an open invitation – the link is established to one specific person. Even if we had any opportunistic family ghosts, they've already been dealt with.”
There was something so chilly in her voice at the mention of “family ghosts,” something that owed nothing to her extra passenger. But it was office policy that Mr. Wright did not answer questions about “Fey family baggage,” and the public record was sparse.
Athena thought, If we had more time I might push on this. If we had more time and she wasn't scaring the crap out of me. “Sorry,” she grated out. “Ms. Fey. One more question.”
“Go ahead.”
“Do you know the answer already? Are you just – trying to make me figure it out myself? Totally fine if it's a teaching exercise,” she lied – this was not remotely fine, it felt like drowning - “but I'd just appreciate – a little reassurance -”
“I'm sorry, Athena, but I really have no idea. This set of circumstances has never occurred before. I've been the channeler and I've been channeled, but how it's perceived by outsiders to the process – my experience doesn't extend there.”
“Okay! Great! Cool! ¡Fantástico!” said Athena, half frantically. “Things are exactly as spooky as they seem, but I'm not being manipulated, so that's – I guess that's a plus!”
“Has the discord been constant the whole time I've been speaking to you?” said Mia, and Athena made herself concentrate. There was a background radiation of – despair, or resentment, something old and cold and abrasive – something as much alienating as it was sad.
But that wasn't good enough. That didn't lead anywhere. Filter it out, Athena told herself, Focus on what matters. And when she closed her eyes and held the sound in her head, she thought – It spiked when she said “I.”
“No,” she said finally, opening her eyes again. “It comes and goes. That means – if we can figure out what this voice agrees with you on, and where it disagrees the most strongly, we can make a better guess what it is.”
“All right. What do you want me to talk about?”
“I don't know.” Athena was grateful Widget's processing power was too much taken up for him to give her away. What she really wanted to say was, I don't want you to talk at all. Or maybe, Why don't I go out of the room and call the office phone and maybe the lower audio quality will filter out all this ghost stuff and I can pretend I never knew about it? Why don't I go learn sign language? “Let's start out with a safe topic. The weather?”
Mia shrugged apologetically. “Maya's the one who walked over here. I guess it must be chilly” - she nodded toward the coat hook where Maya had haphazardly thrown off a jacket - “but I really couldn't tell you anything about the weather.”
The pressure against Athena's inner ear mounted, but it wasn't unbearable. She gritted her teeth. She forced herself to sound conversational. Maybe it was kind of late to try and save face, but – it was the principle of the thing. “It's a pretty nice day, actually. I don't know why she brought the coat at all.”
Mia's expression softened. “Maybe it was a favor. I always got cold more easily than she did.”
“Do you still?” said Athena. “Are you cold now? Or does Maya's body...?”
“I'm not sure. To be honest, most of the time when I'm being channeled I have more important priorities than physical comfort.” A pause. “Athena?”
“Sorry,” said Athena. “Sorry.” She had ducked down on reflex. “For a second, the other voice was – angry?” She folded herself into a less defensive posture and fought the urge to look around the room for vengeful ghosts. She wouldn't have been able to see them anyway. It hadn't felt like a directed anger, in any case. More a slow simmer of indignation. An awareness of wrong.
“Does that tell you anything?”
“I – maybe. But I don't understand. This voice... Who else would feel this strongly? Even if they disagree with you about what it all means, to be so invested in you, where you are, what you're doing, your life and your sister's -” She squeezed her eyes shut, tried to concentrate, waiting for the buzzing in her skull to subside. “I think this is someone who cares about both of you, a lot.” She took a few more breaths, knowing this next question would likely set it off worse than ever. But if she was going to figure out who this spiritual hitchhiker was, and if she was ever going to be able to talk to a medium again without screaming, she had to know. “Can you tell me... When Maya calls you to this plane, what does that feel like?”
For a long time, Mia didn't answer. And as long as she didn't speak, the room seemed to gradually right itself. It was easier to breathe. Easier to hold a thought in her head. Athena realized how hunched her posture had gotten and very consciously straightened her spine, and looked Mia in the face.
Weird that eye contact was the easy part. Weird that a ghost could look at you with kindness and intelligence, out of very ordinary brown eyes, and you'd never know. And you'd never want to. You would just think, Man, I wish this woman had never died and was just my mentor's mentor and we could meet for lunch and I could take her advice without wanting to black out –
Mia frowned slightly, as if struck by something. She said, “You're asking the wrong questions, Athena. Where I was before this isn't important – it's not possible that I brought someone else with me.”
“Then what? If it's not me, it's not you, and you didn't bring them here, then -”
“Then there's only one explanation. Think it through.”
“Then the other voice would have to have been here before you.” Athena shook her head. It wasn't an explanation at all. “The only people in the office this evening before you showed up were me, Mr. Wright – but he left to run some errands – and... Maya.” Involuntarily her hand came up to her mouth. “You don't mean...”
Mia folded her arms, looking at Athena sidelong. “I don't like this implication any more than you do. Maya's soul left this body so that I could occupy it. She shouldn't be conscious on any level. A spirit medium doesn't dream. She should be equally unable to sleeptalk. But if you detect things normal people can't, and you say there's a presence... I don't know who else it could be.”
“So it's not where you came from – it's where she went.”
“And apparently that wasn't far.”
“I'm hearing a restless spirit, but it's not you. It's...”
“It's my sister.” Mia closed her eyes, sighing, “Oh, Maya.”
There was no response from the restless spirit. Nothing at all. But Mia's sorrow was its own force.
This was too much. It was wrong, and it wasn't fair. There had to be a way out. “You were a medium, too, right? If you didn't know about this – that means you forget when you wake up. Doesn't it? People just don't remember anything that happened while they were out.”
“That's one possibility.”
“What do you mean, 'possibility?' Maya's okay, isn't she? She's been doing this her whole life! If she had to live like this, why wouldn't she just stop?” Mia looked troubled, and didn't answer. “Pearl's okay! You were okay! This is just a weird side effect no one would ever know about if I didn't...”
“I hope you're right.”
“Do you... ...do you feel anything from Maya?”
“No.” Mia folded her arms. “I'm alone in this body.”
It was the first thing she had said about the body that caused no dissonance at all. No – this was constructive interference. I'm alone, she said, and it came with an echo, just beyond the edge of hearing. Not merely alone, but standing in a desert plain, in a dried-up seabed, where no one could ever reach, past the point where all human sympathy had withdrawn. Mia Fey was dead. And Maya walked into that void and back, over and over again.
“I'm sorry,” said Athena, watching the walls loom toward her. This seemed a normal thing for them to do. She couldn't hold her head up if she tried, and she was swaying on her feet. “I'm sorry, I can't -”
“Hey! Whoa! Athena! What happened?” The voice was loud and bright, and entirely natural. Hands closed around her forearm. “Should I get Nick? Here, I'll clear a spot on the couch for you to sit down -”
The world gradually stopped spinning. Athena looked at the hands holding her arm. “Ms. Fey?”
“C'mon, I said you can call me Maya.”
Athena jerked her head up – and then had to adjust downward, finding nothing at Mia Fey's eye level. At Maya's, there was Maya's worried frown. All Athena managed to say was,“The channeling?”
“The link's broken for now, but I can call her back up if...” Maya trailed off and quickly looked around the office. “Okay, we're still where we started. Nothing's out of place. Did anything happen? What did Sis say to you? You look -”
“Like I've seen a ghost?” said Athena, and grinned, and hoped the huge effort it took wasn't evident. “I'm fine. I just – my mother was a scientist, right? So the supernatural... I freaked out a little, but that's all on me. Your sister's really cool. Nothing... nothing bad happened.”
Maya looked at her levelly. There was nothing of Mia behind that stare – well, nothing more than family resemblance. She said, “Okay, if you're sure. I still think you should sit down for a bit. And then maybe we should get you a burger. It's the prescription that never fails.”
Am I sure? Athena thought. Have I ever been sure of anything? Did anything bad happen?
Maya didn't seem to think so. She was carelessly moving a bunch of Mr. Wright's and Trucy's stuff out of the way to make space for Athena on the couch, talking idly about the weather and traffic and whether that burger joint she remembered from back in the day was still in business, and this viral video of a red panda that had gotten picked up by the morning news. All normal, cheerful stuff designed to put Athena at ease, and not a hint of conflicted emotions anywhere. To the best of Athena's ability, she could not determine that Maya was anything other than a cheerful twentysomething woman on a social call. She wasn't talking like someone whose soul had been forcibly ejected and then crammed back in in the past fifteen minutes.
Athena thought, No one's that good. Right? Maya didn't feel any of it. People aren't supposed to feel that and live.
Half-dazed, she let herself be sat down on the couch and asked her opinions about red pandas, giant pandas, acceptable and unacceptable ways to eat french fries, and – Maya had clearly been working up to this for some time – children's television programming. This must just be one of those things, she thought, and then thought, But what the heck do I tell Mr. Wright?
It was then Maya noticed the spectrogram, and Athena realized she'd forgotten to power down Widget's projector. “Huh,” said Maya, “what's that about?”
Athena quickly switched it off. “That is, um – your sister...” No. There was no point getting into this, and no way she could bluff her way through. “I'm sorry, but that's something I can't discuss.”