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All this for me? You shouldn’t have.
My smile grows, and my shoulders relax as the tension seeps out. I keep picturing Anton there, how he’d look, how he’d react.
Where’s the whiskey, Nic? I come all this way, and you aren’t even offering me a drink?
The professor guy is very serious, isn’t he? I feel like I’m in school. Should I sit up straight? Pay attention?
As Cirillo talks, I conjure Anton until I can feel the solid weight of him under my outstretched legs and the heat of his hand on my calf. I hear his voice, the cadence and the undercurrent of laughter. Yet there is not one second where I think he’s actually there. This Anton is fully woven from memories, and in that he is real, but I don’t hear aword or see a movement that doesn’t come from my head. No whisper at my ear. No squeeze on my shoulder. Nothing.
He is being summoned, and the air around me sits dead and heavy and silent.
It’s the same for the others. Neither Shania nor Jin jumps or looks sharply to one side or reports seeing or hearing anything.
When Cirillo touches one of the devices, tapping the screen, I look over.
“Nothing, right?” I say.
“No, actually…” He trails off and checks the other devices.
“Dr. Cirillo?” I say.
“This one might not be working.” He picks up a device. “It’s giving me an unusual reading, while the others aren’t moving and I don’t sense—”
He stops abruptly, gaze swinging left.
I bite my tongue against an immediate question, not wanting to interrupt, but Shania says, “Doctor?”
He snaps his attention to her, his expression dark enough that she shrinks back.
“I didn’t mean—” she starts.
“No, it’s fine. I’m just…” His gaze goes left again.
“Dr. Cirillo?” I say. “If you want us to be quiet, say so, but you also told us to report anything we sensed.”
He taps that one device again, harder now, fingernail click amplified by the microphone, making us all jump. He snaps it off and gets to his feet.
“This isn’t working,” he says.
“The device?” I say. “Can’t we proceed without it?”
“I mean the summoning. It’s not working and…” His gaze slides sideways again. “I would like to stop.”
“Do we have a choice?” I say.
He starts shutting down his devices, each with a firm click or smack on the button.
“Guess that answers my question,” I mutter. “Did we do something wrong, Doctor?”
“Davos,” he says. “My name is Davos, and I have asked to be called that.”
I glance at Jin.
“Maybe, Doc,” Jin says, “if you want us to be comfortable calling you by your first name, you should stop reminding us that you’re in charge of this experiment by shutting it down without explanation, when you have clearly seen or heard something that you don’t want to explain, despite chiding Nicola to share her experiences.”
“Nicola is the reason we are here. She ostensibly wants to contact her husband.”
“Ostensibly?” I push to my feet. “If we make contact with Anton,Davos,I will fall on my knees crying. I will write every glowing recommendation you want, no matter how it makes me look, out of sheer gratitude for you giving me what I desperately want.”
