Page 88 of Elanie & the Empath
I grimaced. In my experience, this statement was rarely a good start to a patient encounter. “Okay.”
In perfect comic timing, Lars chose that moment to walk by. He glanced at me, then, noticing Old Max’s pale and wrinkled foot, and said, “Woof. Good luck with that.” Then he scurried down the tunnel without glancing back.
“It started peeling last week.” Old Max picked at something on the sole of his foot. “And now it’s draining.” He sniffed, made a face. “Kinda smells.”
Setting my jaw while I questioned my life choices, I stepped through the door. “All right,” I said, because even down here, I was still a professional. “Let’s take a look.” I’d just managed to get to my knees to examine Old Max’s foot when remarkably strong fingers wrapped around my wrist.
“Listen to me, blue man,” Old Max hissed, and when I met his eyes, they were as clear as a star-filled night. Instead of the chaotic, rambling annoyance I usually read from the man, a shrewd intelligence zinged from him, crackling through my mind.
“Old Max?” I tried to pull my hand away. “Are you all right?”
“Bah.Old Max.” He stuck out his tongue. “Only the pestilent, indecorous sycophants down here call me that.” As he yanked me close, the slack lines of his face sharpened, his thousand-yard stare suddenly honed like a knife. “But I’d expected better from you, Doctor.”
It clicked into place. Old Max was a Gol denier too. “You’ve only been pretending to be feebleminded.”
He rolled his eyes. “Figured that out all on your own, did you? What a staggering intellect.”
One of the fun things about being an empath was that I not only heard any insult hurled at me, but I felt it too. This pummeling swell of condescension hit me square in the chest.
After a slow, calming breath, I asked, “Why are you pretending to be impaired?”
“Because I have been waiting,” he replied, his eyes sparkling, “for you.”
When I tried to respond, he cinched his grip, squeezing my wrist so tightly my bones ground together.Saints alive, he was strong.
“We have no time,” he hissed. “I’m old. I’m dying. And I refuse to die down here.Youare Portisan.” He finally released my wrist, only to grab my hand and spread my fingers apart, revealing my webbing. “Only you can make the swim. Only you can survive the pipe.”
“No.” I pulled my hand out if his grasp. “Not a chance. I have other options.”
“What, like the market? The elevator?” His brow arched sharply. “Perhaps the pigs’ feed chute?”
I hadn’t even thought of that one.
“None of those will work,” he said. “I have been here for a very long time and have tried them all. The pipe is the only way out.”
“The pipe is impossible.” I pointed at the ceiling. “There’s someone I care about up there, and the next time I see her, I’d rather not be dead.”
After a long blink, he asked, “Are you always this dramatic? Or are you just trying to impress me?”
“Who are you?” I asked. This close, Old Max seemed eerily familiar. Something about his eyes, long and narrow nose, that little scar through his left brow. “Have we met before?”
He gave me a dubious once-over. “I highly doubt it. The name’s Osbourne. Long ago, I was a?—”
“Master mechanic!” I gasped as his face snapped into place on the magazine covers from my childhood. “Saints of the deep! You’re Maximus Osbourne!”
Throwing his hand over my mouth, he warned, “Keep your voice down, for shit’s sake. Lars zaps me one more time with that cattle prod of his, and I’m cooked.”
He removed his hand, and I winced. “Sorry, but you’re, like, my hero. You designed the engine used on every Imperion Class-A warship?—”
“A million years ago,” he grumbled.
“That might be true, but they still use your engine. Nobody has improved upon it yet. I used to idolize you, until you vanished without a…” My eyes swelled, realization dawning. “Until you came to Thura, and Gol threw you into this putrid pigsty.”
His sigh was heavier than lead. “Unfortunately.”
“How in the worlds did you wind up?—”
“Stars above,you’re chatty. Did you see a sign on the door that read Maximus Osbourne’s Story Hour?”
