Free The Compendium by Christine Hart

wait around when she wants something.”
    We moved on to a table of organic lavender and honey products. I turned away and headed back to the main hallway. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
    “Nothing. Sorry, I didn’t mean it like that. I wish we had both been honest about how we feel before now. We could have been together for longer.”
    “I hate to keep saying this, but we’re not together. Not until you’re cured–or stable at a bare minimum,” I said as we passed a window of glass sun-catchers.
    “Can you let me worry about my health?”
    “Let’s agree to disagree for now.” I walked into a small shop of handmade wool accessories. I lifted a price tag on an unseasonably full yarn infinity scarf. “One hundred and ten dollars?” I blurted loudly. The proprietor sitting on a stool next to the cash register glowered at me.
    “This is Pike Place Market,” said Jonah. “If we ever go back to Vancouver, I’ll take you to Granville Island. It’s the same idea, an artists’ market with super cool handmade stuff we really can’t afford.”
    I followed Jonah back out into the hall. “I’ve been to Granville Island. Let’s stick to window-shopping from now on. It’s less tempting. You know, if we all still worked for Innoviro, this stuff wouldn’t be so impractical. It’d be a splurge. Why did I have to go digging and ruin everything?”
    “Because you thought Ivan was doing something wrong. And he was. We didn’t want to listen at first, but for my part, I think I’d known for a long time. I wanted my cure and I didn’t want to get off the gravy train any more than anyone else. It took someone new–who hadn’t been sucked into the lifestyle yet–to question everything.”
    We emerged on another sub level with a vaulted ceiling above two floors of open space. Inner windows from all the shops around us on the floor above displayed plants, clothes, books, posters and more trinkets.
    “Oh, I’d been sucked into the lifestyle. Only I was naïve enough to think that asking a few questions might solve a problem. I didn’t think I’d bring the whole place to a halt.” I craned my neck, looking around at each glass-enclosed shop.
    “It needed to end. You should never question doing the right thing. We can’t put the genie back in the bottle anyway.”
    “Good point. Hey, speaking of genies.” I caught sight of a turban-topped antique mannequin in a glass and wood case with the word ‘Swami’ artfully painted on the front. The figure stood guard next to the entrance to a magic shop.
    I stepped up to the swami and looked into his painted brown eyes. What do I have in common with this man? I wondered. How many real psychics have there ever been? Will there be more of us now?
    I stared and stared into the swami’s eyes, thinking hard about Ivan, pondering where he might have gone with Tatiana in his silver Audi. The walls of the Pike Place basement dissolved like smoke and I stood in an apartment with a view of the Golden Gate Bridge. Fog covered the bay around it like a blanket of cotton batten. I turned to see the contents of the room.
    Ivan and another man in a collared shirt were seated on an expensive-looking white couch. Ivan’s face bore the scabby wounds I had seen outside Gemma’s apartment at UBC. The other man had bright silver hair, although he looked to be no older than his early thirties. A stainless steel coffee mug sat in front of each man, floating on an almost invisible glass coffee table.
    “I expect to view the site tomorrow. I didn’t hop on a red-eye for my personal entertainment,” said Ivan.
    “You do understand, we’re still weeks away from the earliest possible test date,” said the silver-haired man.
    “Listen, Waynesburg, you need to understand me . You’re adapting to my timeline now. My son and daughter are on the loose with their friends stirring up trouble. My softhearted children have it in their heads that Compendium work needs to stop. I don’t know