Free Vicious Grace by M. L. N. Hanover Page B

appeared with our meals. I’d gotten the fourteen-dollar BLT. I took a bite as the waiter passed the other plates around and asked if he could get any of us anything. My tomatoes tasted a little like cardboard, but the bacon was good. Oonishi was quiet until the waiter had gone, and even then spoke in a low voice.
    “I would rather that we kept this among ourselves,” he said. “I haven’t even spoken to the other researchers.”
    “They must know something’s up,” Kim said. “Unless you invite parasitologists to your lab at midnight on a regular basis, they’ll wonder why I was there.”
    “They think I’m trying to bang you,” Oonishi said. Kim’s eyes went a degree wider, and I felt some of her shock. My cough meant I was offended on her behalf, but Oonishi only gave a surprisingly boyish smile and shrugged. I found myself liking him less.
    “We can be discreet,” Aubrey said coolly, “but we can’t work without evidence. Would you prefer that we address the subject outside your study, or would you like to present it as part of the research?”
    Oonishi looked to Chogyi Jake in appeal, but he only got an enigmatic smile in return. After a long moment’s silence, he gave in.
    “I can interview them about the dreams,” Oonishi said. “You’ll need to tell me what to ask.”
    “One of us should be there,” I said, and Ex scowled at me. Having one of us present at the interviews would probably mean going back into Grace.
    “We’ll discuss that,” Chogyi Jake said. “But we should also address the price.”
    “Price?” Oonishi said.
    Chogyi Jake spread his hands toward the plates before us.
    “We have to eat somehow, Doctor,” he said.
    Over the next fifteen minutes, Chogyi Jake and Oonishi haggled quietly while the rest of us ate. I didn’t care what the answer was. My attention was on the others. Kim chewed slowly, her face a blank, but her eyes kept moving to Oonishi. I couldn’t tell what she was thinking. Aubrey was watching her too, and the anger on his face was like the perception experiments Oonishi had told us about. Even though it was subtle, I could see it clearly because I was prepared to see it. What I couldn’t say was what it meant.
    They settled on three hundred dollars a day with a one-month cap, payable when the inconvenient data stopped appearing in his study. Any longer than a month, and he wouldn’t have time to get enough fresh data, and he’d have to push back publication of his reports. We’d build a list of questions. He’d record the interviews, and if we needed follow-ups, they could go through him. Oonishi got to keep us his dirty little secret, and none of us had to go back to the hospital. Except Kim.
    We got back to the condo in the last gloom of twilight. Lake Michigan spread out before us. With the storm clouds blown off, it was a darkness scattered with the lights from boats still on the water. Ex threw himself onto the couch. Chogyi Jake shrugged out of his jacket and went to the kitchen, followed quickly by the beep of the microwave and the smell of green tea. Aubrey and Kim and I sat at the dining room table, our chairs turned so that we could see Ex in the next room. When Chogyi Jake returned, cup of too-hot tea held gingerly before him, he was shaking his head.
    “This place still feels small.”
    “All right,” Ex said. “Thoughts and opinions?”
    Aubrey was the first to speak.
    “I don’t think he has much to tell. Apart from the data we’ve already gotten, he doesn’t know much. He’s resistant to actually working with us. I think he’s going to do as little as possible.”
    “He did call us in,” I said. “That’s something.”
    “It may have been a desperation move,” Chogyi Jake said. “And I think he’s regretting it.”
    “Exactly,” Aubrey said. “That’s exactly the feeling I get.”
    Kim cleared her throat, a small sound.
    “I think you’re all being too harsh,” she said. “And what’s more, you’re missing