Outlined in dirt, his Adam’s apple rose and fell and rose and fell and rose and fell again. Half the liquid was gone when he lowered the bottle. “Smoother than I remembered.”

“So.” Charlie shrugged out of the gig bag. “You’re a telepath.”

“No.” Still clutching the bottle in one hand, Dan reached up under his toque with the other for a good scratch. “I just hear shit.”

Well, that answered Auntie Catherine’s question. He knew because he heard shit.

Human mutations happened all the time, although they were usually less comic book and more in need of minor surgery.

New question. Who had he heard this particular shit from? Who else knew about the asteroid? Of course there was always a chance he’d heard Auntie Catherine’s thoughts. Which meant nothing good in a whole different way. Eavesdropping on the aunties had destroyed stronger men than Dan.

When she asked, Dan stared at her like she was crazy. “How the fuck should I know?”

“You can’t identify the voice in your head?”

“Voice? I wish I had a fucking voice in my head.” His laugh bordered on hysterics. “I have two-legged radio stations playing in my head 24/7, and I can’t shut them the fuck off.”

“Was it a woman?”

“Was what a woman?”

“The voice that said the sky was falling.”

“No women. No men. Just thoughts.” Dan stared at the ground between his feet with such intensity, Charlie leaned forward to see what he was staring at, but all she could see was grass. And a stick. “Thoughts have no gender. No pink. No blue. But I can tell you that the sky fell in English. It wasn’t French or Spanish or any of the First Nations languages. It wasn’t in Chinese. Or Japanese. Or Hindu. Or Portuguese. Or Farsi. Or Ukrainian. Or Gaelic. Or Italian. Or . . .”

“I believe you.” Charlie had no idea how many languages there were in the world. Nor did she want to find out. “You heard the thought in English. That doesn’t really narrow it down.” As neither the grass nor the stick seemed to have any answers, she straightened and tried to come up with a question that would actually get them somewhere. “You hear thoughts from all over the world?”

“North America. Melting pot. Mosaic. North part of Mexico. Siberia once or twice. Sometimes I can pull in Brazil.” He shrugged inside the cocoon of his clothing. “Depends on the weather; needs the right cloud cover, atmospheric conditions, ducks.”

“Ducks?”

“They tell you geese’ll do. But they’re wrong.”

“Okay.” She frowned. “So if you were shouting things you heard, and you hear in all these other languages, why do you only shout in English?”

“Because I don’t speak French or Spanish or any of the First Nations languages, or Chinese or Japanese or Hindu or . . .”