Dead Waters - Anton Strout [52]
As I walked toward the bar, I passed by their table at first, ignoring it, and then I did a double take.
“Hey,” I said, stopping and turning to the blond girl, “don’t I know you?”
She turned from her conversation with her friends and rolled her eyes at me. “Oh, brother,” she said. “Are you for real? Is that seriously your ‘A’ game?”
I resisted the urge to launch into her, but it would blow my cover even before I started, so I bit my lip and gestured to everyone in the booth.
“No,” I said. “I meant all of you.”
As one unit, the entire table stiffened, which was the opposite of what I wanted.
“NYU, right?” I asked.
The only one to relax was the youngest-looking kid sandwiched in at the back of the booth. “Oh, yeah,” he said, a little too eager, I thought. The tall guy with the ear gauging shot him a look that said he thought so, too.
“I graduated a year ago,” I said, starting in with my lie. “You probably wouldn’t remember me. I did a lot of geeky stuff for one of my mentors in the film department.”
“Who?” the girl asked, still wary.
“A bit of an eccentric,” I said. “Mason Redfield.”
The girl raised an eye at me. “Oh, really?” she asked. “Well, I knew the professor pretty well and I don’t remember you.”
I kept my eyes on her. “I kept to myself mostly. I did a lot of . . . special project work for him.”
“Really,” she said, her voice flat. “What classes did you take?”
There were some things I could bluff my way past and some things I definitely couldn’t. This was one of them. What classes? Specifically? I had no idea. My heart leapt into my throat as I thought about my options. I had to come up with something or they were about to learn how full of shit I was. I pointed at an extra seat at the end of their booth where most of the book bags were gathered on the table.
“May I?”
“Be our guest,” the girl said. I took my time sitting, but she didn’t stop staring at me. “So. . . what did you say you took with Professor Redfield?”
As I sat, I pulled off my gloves and set my hands down on the table, purposefully brushing my left one against her shoulder bag lying there. I had avoided using my powers, but I had to chance a flare-up now to get a quick reading. I pushed those worries to the side and pressed my power into the shoulder bag with one thought in my mind.
Schedule.
My mind’s eye opened up on Elyse taking out her printout of classes. I watched her as she programmed it into the calendar on her iPhone. I scanned them quickly, looking for signs in the class codes for something with a three or higher in it. Some of these students might have taken the advanced course load that a graduate like I was pretending to be had already, but I doubted all of them had. I needed enough information to sound credible.
Finding what I needed gave me an ounce of hope and I let down the guard I had put up against my worries of another flare-up. The second I did, the screen of the iPhone in the vision flickered like old-time television static, the face of the tattooist pressing forward out of it. My heart froze for a second, but rather than get caught up in the building rush of anger and jealousy that always accompanied her, I remained calm. I pulled out of the vision before it could fully take hold and shook off the disorientation. When I opened my eyes, the entire group of students was staring at me.
“You okay?” the heavy guy asked me.
I nodded, brushing it off. “Just a little drunk,” I said. “No worries.”
This seemed to satisfy everyone except the girl. “Your classes. . . ?” she asked, waiting.