What's the trouble? Harry was switched on now, alert to danger. And he could still sense Jordan's uncertainty.
Harry, I don't know. I came down to London to see if I could maybe find something out for you, but I've been blocked all along the line, almost from the start. I came here to watch them, E-Branch, but hell… I didn't think there'd be anyone watching me/
Right now?
Right now, yes.
I'm on my way, said Harry.
Air made a small implosion into the empty space where he stepped through a Möbius door, its draught causing papers to rustle in a filing cabinet he'd left standing open. But before the papers had stopped rustling Harry had tracked down Jordan's thoughts to Barnet.
He emerged silently into the resurrected telepath's front room, whose first-floor bay windows overlooked a cobbled cul-de-sac, the end wall of a park, and the dark, gently mobile silhouette of trees beyond. The room was in darkness and Jordan was at the window, looking out through a crack in the curtains on a street shining dull yellow in electric lamplight. Harry reached out to a wall switch and put on the light, and Jordan hissed, fell into a crouch and whirled to face him. There was a gun in his hand.
'It's OK,' the Necroscope told him. 'It's just me.'
Jordan drew a deep breath and almost fell into a chair. He waved his hand to indicate Harry should also sit down. 'It's just the way you come and go,' he said.
'You invited me,' Harry reminded him.
Jordan nodded. 'Here I am a bag of nerves, looking out into the street — and then the light going on like that!'
Harry said, 'It wasn't deliberate; or rather, it was. If I had spoken you'd have turned and seen me. I'm not sure which would have shocked you more: the light going on suddenly, or seeing my eyes in the dark.'
'Your eyes?'
Harry grimaced, nodding. 'They're red as hell, Trevor. And there's nothing to stop it now. What's in me is a strong one.'
'But… you still have a little time?'
Harry shrugged. 'I don't know how long. Long enough to do one last thing, I hope, and then I'll be on my way.' He finally sat down. 'Now, would you like to put your gun away and tell me what's on your mind?'
Jordan looked at the gun in his hand as if he'd forgotten it was there. He gave a snort and replaced it in its shoulder holster. 'Nervous as a cat,' he explained. 'Or rather, as a mouse watched by a cat!'
'Are you watched?' Harry didn't know where to aim his thoughts to check. Searching for Jordan had been different, for he'd known what he was looking for; likewise Paxton. But looking for someone he wasn't used to — some unknown someone — was a trick he'd yet to master. 'Are you sure?'
Jordan got up and put out the light, went to the curtains again. 'I've never been so sure. He or they are out there right now, not too far away, scanning me. Or if not scanning, obscuring. They're blocking me. I can't read past them. I keep thinking it can only be E-Branch, but how the hell would they know I was back? Alive, I mean?' He looked back from the curtains, saw Harry's alien face and said, 'I… I see what you mean.'
Harry, a tall, dark silhouette whose eyes made his face a mask from hell, nodded. But there were other things to worry about than the glare of his blood-hued eyes. 'What does it feel like, to have someone watching you, blocking your mind?'
'Being watched is how it felt with Paxton; blocking is mental interference. A screen of static.'
'But I wasn't even sure Paxton was there until you told me. He was just an itch. And as for mental interference…'
'OK.' The other matched Harry's shrug. 'I'll give you an example. Try aiming your thoughts right at me.'
Harry did it and met a buzzing wall of interference. If he hadn't known it was Jordan, then he wouldn't have known what it was. Jordan said, 'Find something like that, and you know someone's scrambling you. Deliberately. I know because I've had practice. When the Russian espers used to cover the Chateau Bronnitsy, it was like this all the time. We used to try and break through, and they were always trying to get through to us.' He looked at Harry again, penetratingly. 'Incidentally, you do it all the time, Harry, except when you're wanting to read someone, or wanting someone to read you. But with you it's different. Something that's permanent and getting stronger all the time. It isn't static but something else, and it comes natural to you. So natural you didn't even know about it, did you? Or maybe "natural" is the wrong word for it. What you have is… well, in E-Branch we used to call it mind-smog.'
The Necroscope nodded. 'I wondered about that. It's a dead giveaway. By now Darcy's espers must know what I am. Or if not he should fire the lot of them! So it looks like the talent Wellesley gave me is going to be redundant… or maybe not.' And after a moment's thought: 'No definitely not. Wellesley's thing is a total blanket: it doesn't just make my mind unreadable but blanks it out entirely. The vampire thing is just mind-smog, like you said. But it makes me wonder: how come Paxton didn't discover what was happening to me earlier? How was he able to get to me at all?'
'It was only just starting then,' Jordan answered. 'Your vampire thing wasn't fully developed. It still isn't, but sufficiently so that it stopped me. I've tried to reach you half a dozen times this last couple of days but was only able to make it when you wanted to contact me. Oh, and something else. You mentioned Darcy Clarke, right? Well — '
Suddenly he paused and held up a cautioning hand. 'Wait!' And in another moment: 'Did you feel that?'
Harry shook his head.
'A probe,' said Jordan. 'Someone trying to get in to me. The moment I relax, they're there.'
Harry stepped toward Jordan and the large, curved windows, but held himself back a little in the shadows. 'You said it was on your mind to get out of here. What did you mean?'
'Only that I don't know what's on their minds,' the other told him. 'I mean, I know it can only be E-Branch out there, but I don't know what they're up to or what they're planning. Do they know it's me? That seems unlikely: what, that I'm back from the dead? But on the other hand, and from their point of view, who else can I be if I'm a telepath using Trevor Jordan's flat? And this watch they're keeping on me: it reminds me of that time we were covering Yulian Bodescu. I mean, who the hell do they think I am, Harry?'
Very slowly, Harry nodded. T begin to understand,' he said. And he gripped Jordan's elbow. 'And you're right: it's exactly like that time they were covering Yulian Bodescu. Which means that it's not so much a case of who they think you are but what they think you are!'
Jordan gasped. 'You mean they think I'm…?'
'It's possible. You're back from the dead, aren't you?'
'But I have no mind-smog.'
'Neither did I, until recently.'
Again Jordan's gasp. 'They're waiting to see how things develop before they move in! Which would explain just about everything. Certainly it would explain why I'm shit-scared of them! I'm picking up something of their suspicions, their intentions. I'm sensing the hunters hot on my track. Harry, they think — they suspect — that I'm a vampire!'
The Necroscope tried to calm him down. 'But you're not, and it's easy to prove that you're not. Also, Darcy Clarke's in charge of E-Branch, and… what were you going to tell me about Darcy, anyway?'
Jordan came away from the window. Another look at Harry's face convinced him the light would be better on. He tripped the switch on the wall, then sat down heavily. 'Darcy's at home,' he said, 'and very unhappy about something. He was the one I was supposed to be watching, remember? Because he's the boss and would know which ways things are jumping. But now he seems to have been taken off the job. And while he isn't a telepath himself, still somebody is throwing up a pretty good shield around him, making it hard to get anything.'