“Tattletale?”

I thought of Tattletale in the trigger dream. Scrambling to save her brother.

I knew that all of us tended to have hangups about our trigger visions. It had been part of the reason I’d asked Dean about his. I knew I would maybe forever have a pet peeve about being ignored, trampled. Movers would feel restless, tinkers would deal with anxiety. It was the way things went.

So I could extrapolate, think of that scene, and think of Tattletale and her every interaction with anyone she seemed to care about being an extension, in some small way, of that desperate and helpless struggle to save her already-deceased brother. Too late, wrestling with the blanks and question marks in the aftermath.

“I wish she was a hero,” I said.

“Can you elaborate?” Eric asked.

Still no smile on his face. Still no feigned friendliness. The forcefield had batted his hand aside, and dashed those overly friendly pretenses and leers away.

“She’s exactly what we need, in terms of information, the ability to tie disparate things together, and penetrate to the heart of things. She came last night because of her association with Kenzie’s group. She came because she wanted to know what was going on. And I’m on the same page as her there. Just about everything else, I think we disagree. I respect her, but I don’t like her or respect a lot of her actions.”

“Uh huh,” he said. “And yourself?”

“Hm?”

“Self-evaluation.”

I wasn’t in a good place to do a self-evaluation. I’d just sort of done one in front of Jessica, a little ways down the hall, and it had been a rambling mess, an outpouring of feelings.

And she hadn’t been receptive, so I’d said and done something stupid, hurting her and putting her on the spot.

“I want to help. When we’re this desperate, I feel like that’s all that should matter. Outside of that… I don’t think I can give you an objective self evaluation.”

“What about an un-objective one?” Eric asked. He smiled for the first time since I’d brushed his hand away.

“I feel like there’s too few people who are looking at the big picture, and it’s an actually terrible thing that my sister is one of them, and she and I are on a similar page in this. I’d like to think that everything I said about the rest of my team is true about me too. The good parts. To lesser degrees, obviously, but… even that sounds like I’m full of myself.”

Eric nodded. He turned back to the computer, and I had hopes it would be my dad. Because it’d be awfully nice to talk to my dad in this moment.

But he switched to another window, and began doing some typing. Summarizing my notes.

Looking over his shoulder seemed to be making him self-conscious, and I thought about enjoying that as some eye-for-an-eye bullshit, but I didn’t want to make a bad impression. I stepped back and away, so the desk was to my right and I could only see the side edge of the monitor.