Page 133 of Gifted & Talented

“Yeah, well, I didn’t rehearse this.” She looked at me then, and I was temporarily rocked by the fact that I was sitting in a car with Meredith Wren, a thing we had done so often when we were teenagers, and now all this time had passed and I didn’t even feel it. It was barely in the car with us—it was hardly even real. This was Meredith, my witchy best friend.

“How did you do it?” I asked her.

“Cheat?”

“Yeah.”

“You couldn’t tell?”

“I just want you to tell me.”

“You would.” She rolled her eyes, then pursed her lips. “Fine. I sat down with all the clinical patients. I changed them all individually.”

“Changed them?”

“You know. Fixed them.” She made the universal sign for witchy spell-casting, a little flutter of her fingers. “I made them happy.”

“Did thatwork?” I asked, astounded. I had seen Meredith influence people before, but I never thought of it as permanent.

“It seemed to, at least for long enough that they reported feeling happier.” She looked up at the ceiling of my car, seeming to retreat a little into her thoughts. She’d always done that as a kid, too. She used to have a problem with not seeming very present. I noticed in her recent talks and interviews that she had improved that, made herself seem like an active listener. I was pretty sure that Meredith was still busy with the inside of her head, but now she at least made it look like she was making an effort.

“Does it work?” I asked, and she looked over at me with a bemused sort of frown.

“You already know it doesn’t. You told me so yourself.”

“I know, but…”

I trailed off.

Then I reached for the steering wheel.

And paused.

“You really want to appoint me CEO of Wrenfare?” I asked.

“You can’t work for a Wrenfare store, I won’t be able to sleep at night from my cushy little prison cell,” she replied. “It’s too, like, dark. I mean really, Lou,retail?”

I sidestepped that, because she wasn’t totally wrong. In general, people were… how to put this? Fucking unbearable. “What about Birdsong?”

“Oh, I don’t know. They’ll remove me, maybe put Ward in charge, or maybe declare bankruptcy if everyone jumps ship.” She sighed. “I’m really fucking pissed about that part, actually. All that work.” She made a drizzling motion, then an explosion sound. “Gone.”

“Does it work?” I asked again.

“What?”

“Chirp. I know it doesn’t do what you said it does. But does it work?”

Her face contorted in an indecipherable way. “I mean—”

“Couldit work,” I clarified. “Your research, your product development before Tyche came in. The thing you actually wanted to make.”

“What?” She looked at me like I was speaking another language.

“You wanted something more streamlined,” I reminded her. “Something that responded in real time to brain chemistry. Not just dopamine hits, actual pharmaceutical tweaks. Right?”

“That was the concept,” she said with a shrug.

“Do you know how many people that could help? Even if it only worked on one thing. Bipolar, or clinical depression. Or anxiety. If you just focused ononeof those things—”

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