Chapter One
Aislinn Kelley was not usually the type of person to sit in her car for hours, hesitating over something and arguing with herself, but this was a special occasion. The girl had parked her car about a block away from her destination, over two hours ago, but she had only brought herself to pull the keys out of the ignition. She was too nervous to get out of the car. Every instinct had warned her not to do this, her mother's voice in the back of her head repeated that exposing herself would lead to pain and probably death. But her mother was gone, leaving her alone in the world.
The back of her car held her clothes, an outdated laptop, a few mementos, and a small box of pictures. That was all Aislinn had to show for the last 32 years of life. She had never made friends before, or gone to college, or even had a job, her mother had kept her inside the house at all times, afraid that if Aislinn got close to someone, they would learn about her odd abilities and take her away. She had been allowed to go to a public high school, but only because her mother didn't have the time to home school her. And every morning, her mother would sit her down at the table before the bus came and tell her what horrible things would happen if she told anyone what she could do. So Aislinn had been that weird loner girl in school, with a few other loner people for company that she had considered friends, because they were the closest to friends she had there.
She might have been popular, if she were normal. In high school she was slim and fit from going to her mother's yoga classes with her so that the woman could 'keep an eye on her'. She had stopped growing after her freshman year, coming to 5'3", which was tall for her family. She had never met her father, he had died before she was born, but in the pictures she had of him he was no taller than her mother. She had inherited her parents bright red hair, and her father's green eyes, but she had avoided her mothers Irish temper, which she was thankful for. Overall, she considered herself to be pretty. Not beautiful, like some of the girls in her school were, but pretty enough that she could have joined their group had she talked to them. If she had been normal, and had decided not to join the cheerleading clique, she might have joined the music kids, which weren't as looked down upon as they were in the movies because some of the popular kids had joined choir and band for fun and made friends with the other choir and land kids, and Aislinn wasn't half bad at singing. She could stay on key all the way through the song at least. And if all that had failed, but she had still been a normal kid, she might have found her place with the English nerds. She had loved the subject in school and had taken all the non required English classes offered, surely, if she had tried, she could have fit in there.
But she wasn't normal, so she had ended up eating lunch at the nearly empty table in the back of the cafeteria, not talking to the few other people there.
Her hand rested on the door handle, which was the closest she had gotten to exiting the car since she had gotten into the city. Santa Barbara was bigger than her hometown in Wisconsin had been, but it wasn't too much different overall. There were a lot of the same fast-food places and chain stores, the same looking trees. It was more hilly, and the smell of the salt in the air from the ocean was sting enough that she could smell it some inside her car. She had always loved the ocean, but this was the first time she had ever seen it, which was maybe a little bit of the reason that she hadn't left the car yet. She had lived right next to Lake Michigan back home, and it looked a lot like the ocean, the waves and the beaches, though these beaches were nicer and the air didn't reek of dead fish, at least not from where Aislinn was sitting.
She pulled open her door, stepped out, shut the door, and locked it, all before she could argue herself into staying put. Standing on the side of the road would make her look stupid, so she got onto the sidewalk, walking slowly toward her destination, her feet dragging slowly, but her eyes darting around her at the people nearby. She usually wore thin skin colored gloves and long sleeved shirts, covering as much of her skin as possible, but she had left the gloves off today, so she could get an accurate feel of whether she should stay or not. It was disconcerting, knowing that at any second, her hand might brush against someone else's, or something that someone had touched, and that part of her brain that was not normal would supply her with images of things that weren't there, and the feelings that went along with them. She kept her hands clenched tightly in the pockets of her sweater, and by the time she had walked a block, she was sweating a little, both from nerves and from the heat of the day added to a sweater. Clothes were one of the hardest things for her to come by. They were necessary, and she was forced to touch them with her skin, which meant that the first few weeks of owning something were full of little flashed of how it was made, the people who had touched it's materials, the people who hung it in the store, the people who tried it on before she bought it. This was why she hung on to clothes for as long as possible. Once she had gotten past most of the memories that clung to the material, she could wear them freely. It was why her jeans were very faded and the bottom hems were ragged, and why her sweater had a stain on the bottom of it and a small tear in the elbow that had been clumsily repaired, and the pockets of it were torn on the sides. She could afford better, especially now that she had inherited all of her family's money. She had sold the house in Wisconsin that she had felt was a jail to her. Even if this didn't work out, she wouldn't go back there. She wasn't sure where she would go.
She realized she had been standing outside the door for a while, but she couldn't bring herself to open it quite yet, so she walked to the end of the boardwalk, looking out over the ocean, then back to the office, then she walked the length of the building once, twice, three times, and finally, she drew a breath and raised a hand to knock, her sweater sleeve pulled down over her hand so she wouldn't actually have to touch the door. Her effort was wasted when the door flew open before she could actually land a knock. She automatically took a step back, her hand back in her pockets, and looked up at the man standing in the doorway. He looked the same as he had in the papers, so she knew she was at the right place, as though the large letters spelling 'Psych' across the front window wasn't enough of a give away.
"Hello," the man said in an exuberant manner that had her smiling tentatively. "I sensed that you are in need of my services, please, come in," he stepped away and waved an arm to direct her into the building. She glanced back at her car once, she still had time to make an excuse, say she was lost, and leave. She took a deep breath, and then a step forward, walking past the man while giving him more distance than necessary. The office looked more like a male teenagers room, tv, gaming system, mini fridge, and she immediately relaxed a little. This was obviously not a place where they would try to ship her off to some government facility or a mental ward. At the worst, they would laugh her off or make her leave. She let out her breath.
"I'm Shawn Spencer, this is my partner Earnest Lambert Watkins," the man said, following her into the room after closing the front door.
"My name is Burton Guster," the other man said, throwing a glare at Shawn, then smiling in what he clearly thought was an attractive manner. "You can call me Gus," he continued, moving over to her and gesturing that she should sit not he couch. She shied away from the hand he reached out to guide her, and sat on the very edge of the couch, closest to the door, then charted her various escape routes as Shawn moved to sit in one of the arm chairs. The place probably had two doors, though she wasn't sure where the other one was, so she would have to take her chances with the front door, even though Shawn was between her and it. She turned to Shawn.
"I read about you in the paper," she said, her eyes still flitting around the room. "It said you are a psychic." Her voice had fallen almost to a whisper by the word psychic.
"That I am. The spirits guide me in all that I do," he said, over dramatically waving his arms about. She ignored that. She wasn't sure if he was telling the truth yet, he certainly seemed eccentric enough to communicate with the dead, the only other woman she had met who could talk to the spirits was also loud and outgoing. "What can we help you with? Cheating boyfriend? Missing person? Murder?" He drew the word out until it was funny rather than something horrible. She shook her head.
"I was… I'm…" It was so much harder to say than she had thought it would be. Years of her mother's warnings had made her barely able to think about it, let alone speak about it. She took in a breath. "I'm psychic too." Once the words were out, her heart began to pound against her chest, and her palms began to sweat. She wiped them on the inside of her sweater. "Not the same way you are, I don't talk to the dead, but I see things, about people, from the past, and I met this woman," the words were spilling out of her now, and she hoped they were making sense. "She could see a little of the future too, just concepts, but she said I should look for others like me and that I shouldn't be alone." She paused to take in a breath, and realized she had been looking in her lap as she spoke. She looked up in time to catch the briefest expression of doubt on Shawn's face before he hid it. She wasn't sure if it was doubt over the woman's prophecy or doubt over Aislinn herself. "It's just that most people who can… who are psychic, they keep to themselves and it's hard to find them, but you are in the paper and on the news sometimes, and all over the internet." She looked down again and was silent for a moment. "I can prove it." She looked up, this time sure the doubt on their face was for her.
"What's your name?" Shawn asked, glancing behind her at Gus, an eyebrow half raised. Aislinn shook her head.
"I'm not giving you my name until you believe me," she said. "I don't want to go to a mental asylum. I'm not crazy."
"We didn't say you were," Gus said, finally speaking up. He stood though, and shifted away from her, giving her the impression that his thoughts were different from his words.
"Look, I'll prove it," she said, pulling her hands from her pockets. She rested them on her legs as she leaned forward a little, looking at Shawn. If they were so hesitant to believe she was different from other people, he probably wasn't really psychic, but she had to be sure. She held her hands out, palms up in invitation to him, and he glanced again at Gus, then lifted his hands into hers. She could still see the office and the two men, but as soon as her skin made contact with his hands, another, slightly transparent image appeared. Somehow, and she was never quite sure how it worked, she was always completely aware of both places. Sometimes she could even push the images aside and almost ignore them, though they supplied her brain with information she would remember later anyway. Now she focused not he images in her mind. They flashed by at an alarming speed, but she was able to focus on each one and gather the information from it.
"As a child your father trained you to be a cop, he wanted you to follow after him in the line of duty, but after your parents got divorced you rebelled and left town. You travelled across the country, then when you got bored of that you travelled to other countries," her voice was soft but strong, it was the one she used when she spoke during visions, though she wasn't too sure why her voice became that one. The images flew in front of her eyes, different countries, colors, people, foods. "Your favorite place was Argentina. You liked their food the best, and their women. And their men," she added, getting another flash of image. She could hear the music and laughter and talking, she could almost feel the wet heat of the rain forests clinging to her skin, smell the damp earth and the smoke of campfires. The images were cut off as Shawn pulled his hands away quickly and stood.
"Their men, Shawn?" she head Gus ask in surprise. She frowned, she hadn't meant to cause drama between the two of them, and she hoped they wouldn't fight. Shawn just shrugged.
"I'm not picky," he said simply, then looked back at her.
"You aren't psychic," she said, frowning as her heart sank. She had put all her hope into this, and now she wasn't sure where to go. "You had to lie to stay out of jail, and now you enjoy it," she continues, recalling another flash of pictures and feelings.
"I really want to say you know all that from stalking me, but there's just no way…" Shawn said, trailing off. He looked at Gus. Then he looked back at her and shook his head. "There has to be some way you know that, who did you talk to?"
"No one," she said, getting to her feet. "I was born with this," she held her hands up in a half gesturing motion. "I don't know where it came from." He shook his head again, but sat back down, running a hand over his face as he thought.
"You were right bout everything though, even guessing you would have been off about something," he said, mostly to himself.
"Shawn," Gus said, breaking Shawn out of whatever thoughts he had been having. "This is impossible, you can't believe this."
"Let her touch your hands and see what she knows about you," Shawn retorted. Aislinn almost smiled. He believed her! Or at least, he was beginning to doubt himself. She turned to Gus, who frowned, then shook his head.
"No thanks," he said, but Shawn shook his head.
"Do it," he said, getting to his feet, a small frown on his face.
"Shawn, I don't want someone inside my head," he said, sitting down behind his desk and frowning.
"So you believe me then?" Aislinn asked, a half smile on her face.
"No," Gus said, shaking his head.
"If I'm lying I wouldn't be inside your head at all. And if you believe that I would be inside your head, then you believe I'm not lying," she reasoned, and he sighed.
"Fine, I believe you," he said, and Shawn paced the room.
"So you aren't going to have me locked up in a padded room somewhere?" She asked, her voice casual, but she stood, ready to bolt. Both men shook their heads and she let out a breath. She wasn't sure why she trusted them to be good to their word, but something inside her was telling her they weren't dangerous. She resumed her seat on the couch.
"My name is Aislinn Kelly, I grew up in Wisconsin," she said, finally introducing herself. Shawn sat back down in his chair and she could tell Gus was listening from his desk. "When I touch something I get, uh, visions I guess, of the memories attached to it. Images, sounds, feelings, smells. But it's only skin contact, I usually wear gloves. I've been able to do it since I was born, I learned how to talk and read faster than any other kids my age because I could see my mother's memories. My mother was convinced that if anyone knew I could do this that they would take me away from her, so I've never told anyone, but she died four months ago, and at the funeral there was this woman, she acted a lot like you actually," she said, gesturing to Shawn. "She was loud and eccentric, but she told me she knew what I could do and that I should look for others and that I should stay in Wisconsin alone. And I remembered reading about you int he paper, so I came here." They all sat in silence for a few minutes.
"Where are you staying while you are here?" Shawn finally asked, glancing at Gus. They seemed to be having a silent conversation of sorts.
"Nowhere. I just drove into town a few hours ago and I haven't decided if I'm staying," she said, looking between them. Shawn look back at her.
"Would you like to work on a case with us?" Shawn asked, grinning as Gus shook his head.
"A case?" She asked, tilting her head to the side a little.
"A police case. We got it this morning. I think, and my partner will eventually agree, that we could use someone like you to help us solve cases," Shawn said. "Also you know too many of our secrets so we want to keep you nearby."
"I won't tell anyone anything personal I learn, it feels like… cheating I guess. Like I can't help but to know things that people don't want to tell me, and it feels wrong to share those things with other people," Aislinn tried to explain.
"Even if they are criminals?" Shawn asked, raising an eye brow.
"But you aren't criminals," Aislinn said, confused.
"No, but if you work on our cases it would be really useful for you to be able to tell us who the bad guys are," Shawn said, smiling.
"Oh," Aislinn said, then thought about it for a moment. "Well, criminals deserve to go to jail, so if I can help with that I will," she said. Shawn nodded.
"So this case," he said, standing and walking over to his desk. "a bunch of really old books were stolen from this guys library. The their managed not to trip the security system on the house, or be caught on the cameras int he hallways. The library was on the third floor, but the only sign of forced entry was the window, and there is no way someone climbed down that way." Aislinn listened, not really knowing what she was supposed to do. "So, we have no idea who the their is or how he got into the room. Are you up for a ride?" It took her a second to realize he was asking her something.
"Um, sure, but I don't know what I'm supposed to do," she said, standing.
"Oh that's easy, just go touch things until you find the perp," he said, grinning as Gus stood as well. Aislinn frowned. It wasn't pleasant, getting memories off of things, especially if they led to a murder or something bad, but she figured a theft couldn't be too horrible.
"Okay," she said, nodding. Shawn grinned and the two of them led her out to the parking lot to a very odd looking blue car. She got into the back seat tentatively, making sure not to touch anything with her hands. She hesitated, then grabbed the seatbelt, ignoring the images that flashed through her mind of an older British man complaining, and of Gus being angry about having to sit in back, and of a cat curling up to sleep, and a few other people. Gus drove them to a house that was more a mansion than anything, and led them up to the foo and knocked. A butler opened the door and stood aside so they could enter.
"Mr. Spencer," the butler said, giving a little bow. "I'm afraid the Daniels have gone out for the afternoon," he said, but shut the door anyway.
"That's okay," Shawn said, grinning. "I was hoping to get another look at the room where the robbery occurred." His words sounded almost polite, but the tone he said them with made them sound mocking. She shook her head.
"Of course Detective," the man said, and Aislinn was confused for a moment, but didn't think about it too long as the man led them up the stairs to the third floor, then down the hall to a rather impressive personal library. She could see the spots not he shelves by the desk where books had obviously sat at one point, and she could see the cracked window fame behind the desk, rattling a little in the wind from outside. The butler bowed and left as Shawn and Gus walked around the room, looking at papers and things.
"Well, go ahead. Touch things," Shawn said, noticing that she had stayed by the door. She sighed then walked over to the window, resting a hand lightly against the wooden frame.
A small petite woman with dark blonde hair rolled into neat curls was outside the window, hanging down from a higher ledge, a thin rope tied around her waist. She kicked in the window, then swung inside. She wasn't young, but she wasn't old either, maybe in her forties. The woman crossed the room, Aislinn turning to follow her, her hand still resting on the window frame. The woman grabbed a few heavy volumes off the shelf where the missing books had been, and tucked them into a bag, then she carried them back to the window, her arms straining with the weight. She looked outside for a few moments, her eyes scanning the ground below until she finally saw something moving. Aislinn peered closer to see a man approaching the found below the window, walking carefully to stay on the rocks in the driveway. The woman dropped the bag of books out the window, watching just long enough to make sure he left, then she climbed out the window to the upper floor, leaving the window open. Aislinn blinked and pulled her hand away, frowning.
"It was a woman, maybe in her forties, short, dark blonde hair. She came in through the window from upstairs, and left the same way, but she dropped the books to a man who was waiting outside," Aislinn said, her voice conveying her confusion as to why anyone would do that. She hadn't gotten a reason, or feelings, with the images, which wasn't unusual for her, seeing as she had only touched something the person had brushed by, something without their essence on it. She ran her hand along the window to the lacy, and froze in surprise.
"Who do you think the blond woman is Shawn?" Gus was asking, but Aislinn didn't give him a chance to answer.
"She lives here, or is here often," she said, her mouth moving without he being conscious of letting it do so. "She's always alone when she comes here, she looks through the desk, she reads papers, and she always leaves the window open when she's here." The images faded away and she was left staring out into the yard and driveway.
"Wait, is this her?" Shawn asked, picking up a photo from the desk and turning it toward Aislinn. She looked, pulling ghee hand away from the window.
"Yeah, that's her, but that wasn't the guy she gave the books to. Can we go outside?" She asked, the question slipping through her lips. She hadn't meant to ask, but she felt like she should be out there.
"Sure, there's not much else in here," Shawn said, shrugging as he straightened the picture again. The butler was there with them as they walked back to the front doors and Aislinn stared at him as they walked. She waited until they were outside in the driveway underneath the window before she spoke.
"The man I saw, he looked a lot like the butler, but younger," she said, frowning. "It's possible I saw something that happened a long time ago… but the woman in the picture looked the same as the woman I saw…" She shook her head, confused.
"Maybe he has a son or a brother," Gus suggested.
"I'd guess brother, he wasn't wearing a ring and these upper class people want everyone associated with them to be respectable. They wouldn't hire someone with an illicit child, not if they knew about it," Shawn said. She wondered briefly how he knew that, but she had seen in his mind that he was very observant of the tiniest details. Or maybe he was basing that off of some tv show he had seen. Aislinn knelt in the driveway, running her hands over the gravel and larger stones, but she only got flashes of cars and valets.
"There's nothing here," she said, shaking her head as she stood. "What were those books that went missing?" She wasn't sure knowing would help her at all, but she was really curious about them.
"Something about the civil war," Shawn said, shrugging.
"They were handwritten accounts of the battle tactics used in the civil war, Shawn," Gus said, shaking his head. He turned to her to explain further. "They were written by the generals and colonels on the confederate side."
"So they were really valuable then?" She asked to clarify. Gus nodded.
"Mr. Daniels' grandfather was a general, he wrote some of those books. Mr. Daniels obsesses over them, he reads them all the time, and it's pretty much all he talked about last time we were here," Gus said. "He seemed really broken up about them."
"Well if they were valuable he had to have insurance on them, doesn't that make him a suspect?" She knew they were professionals and she probably didn't know what she was talking about, but she had to ask.
"Usually, yes it would, but the insurance policy on them hasn't been changed in years and he didn't update it to include the most recent book he added to that collection, which is also missing, so we don't think it's him," Shawn said, looking around him as they walked back to Gus's car. "Plus he wasn't in your vision was he?"
"I don't see everything," she said. "And the woman in there was wearing gloves and she didn't touch anything with her skin that time, so I can't tell what she was feeling when she was there. But…" she trailed off, just now recalling some of the other images she had gotten.
"But?" Shawn prompted.
"The other time's she was in that room she was upset, angry, jealous, and sad," she said, sure of herself.
"Hm," was all Shawn said as they drove back into town. They parked outside the police station, much to Aislinn's surprise, and Shawn and Gus both turned int heir seats to look at her. "As you know, I have an image to uphold here," Shawn began, and Gus roles his eyes. Aislinn could tell he was nervous, though she wasn't touching him at all. "If I'm putted as a fake now, not only will I go to jail, but Gus and my father will, and all the cases I've worked on could be brought back into question and the prisoners let go." Aislinn nodded in understanding.
"You can use whatever I tell you in your visions," she said, knowing that's what he was after. "I won't say anything about it, I promise." It felt a little childish, but she held out her pinky, a small smile on her face. Shawn raised a brow.
"You know the pinky promise is the most sacred of promises," he said seriously, though the corners of his mouth twitched up. Aislinn nodded solemnly, and ignored the small flood of images and feelings that flowed through her mind as Shawn completed the pinky promise, but she couldn't ignore the strongest of them.
"I know you are putting a lot of trust into someone you hardly know," she said, repeating back what he was thinking. "And there's not really anything I can say to make you not worry about that, but I can offer you something in return for your trust," she said, half unsure of what she was actually saying. He looked confused, not that she could blame him. "When I come into contact with the essence of someone, I learn their past, the pivotal points in their lives that made them into the person they are at that moment," she explained. "I don't see everything, just the important things, and there are a lot more of those in anyones life than they realize, and I've seen some of yours, that's how I know about you." She paused to make sure he was following. "I can return that favor if you let me, I can share some of my memories with you."
"I don't see how you telling me about yourself is supposed to make me trust you, I still hardly know you and I wouldn't know if you were lying," he said. She smiled.
"You could probably tell if I was, but that's not what I meant. I can show you my memories, the same way I saw yours," she said. It was something she had learned how to do as a baby, before she could talk, when she wanted something she could put the image of it into her mothers mind. Shawn glanced at Gus, who shrugged, then turned back in his seat.
"Okay sure, what do I need to do?" Shawn asked, facing her. She slid into the middle of the back seat.
"Just close your eyes and keep an open mind," she said, smiling. He hesitated, then closed his eyes. She brought her hands to the sides of his face, the tips of her fingers resting over his temples, and closed her eyes, then let her mind open. The images flashed in front of her eyes as a normal vision did, and she was sure he was seeing the same things, because he gasped and pulled away, breaking the connection only seconds after she had begun.
"What the hell?" He asked, rubbing his head.
"Oh, sorry, I should have warned you about the headache," she said. "I used to get them all the time when I was younger until I got used to the visions. I forgot," she frowned.
"All your visions are like that?" He asked, no longer rubbing his head.
"Yeah, but I've learned how to sort through it all so that I can remember it. Isn't that what you do with crime scenes?" She hadn't made the connection until just then that Shawn must have some sort of memory tricks he uses.
"I have an eidetic memory," Shawn said, nodding.
"Then you can recall all the things you just saw," she said, nodding. "I have the same thing, but it's only with things I see through my visions, not with things I actually see."
"That was the weirdest thing I've ever done," Shawn said, shaking his head.
"I wasn't done, I can show you more if you still don't trust me," she said.
"Nah, we're good," Shawn said, grinning. "So you've never had a job before? That's really weird."
"I've never needed one. And you can't talk, you've had more than fifty jobs," she said, but she was smiling.
"Shawn," Gus said, frowning. "You can't just trust her like that, she could be anyone."
"Could be, but she's not," Shawn said.
"I can show you too if you want," she said, looking towards him. She expected him to say no, but he glanced at Shawn, then at her, then back, finally nodding. He turned in his seat and closed his eyes.
"It'll give you a headache," she warned, and he nodded. "And if you don't have perfect memory recall you won't remember much of it," she said, her hands hovering over his temples until he shrugged. She closed her eyes, ignoring the flood of images she got from him, and focusing on her own memories. To his credit, Gus sat through almost the whole thing, it only took about twenty seconds. He shook his head, his eyes screwed shut as he rubbed his forehead.
"Good god woman, you must live on Excedrin," he said, and she smiled.
"I got used to it, I only get the headaches when I touch something with a lot of sentimental value to more than one person," she said.
"Okay, now that that's all settled, lets go bother Lassie," Shawn said, opening the car door. Aislinn and Gus followed him up the steps.
Aislinn only knew who 'Lassie' was through the memories she had gotten off the boys, but both of them seemed to see him as a friend, to an extent. They both would care if he was killed, for instance, but neither of them would ever say as much. And they seemed to like to push him to the breaking point. She wondered if he felt the same way about the two man children, but didn't want to see his memories to find out. Through Shawn and Gus's memories, she could tell that they had seen a lot of unsettling things, and she was sure that, as a cop, Lassiter had seen more.
As they walked up the steps to the station, she realized that she had tucked her gloves into her sweater pocket before she had gotten out of her car. She slipped them on, making sure the tops of the gloves were covered by her sweater sleeves. It was still much too hot to really be wearing a sweater, she was still sweating lightly from all the running around they had been doing that day. She wasn't sure she was allowed to follow the two into the deeper parts of the police station, but they didn't stop walking, so she followed, trying to look like she belonged there. They stopped at an empty desk, a few of the passing people nodding to Shawn as though they saw him there a lot, and stopped.
"Huh," Shawn said, looking around them. "I thought for sure they'd be here, I haven't heard anything on my police scanner all day." Gus wandered off towards a vending machine, shaking his head, and Shawn plopped down into the chair behind the desk. Aislinn stood in front of the desk, nervously playing with the ends of her hair. There were a lot of people here, she wasn't really used to being around a lot of people, and it made her nervous that someone was going to bump into her or something. She saw Gus sit down on a bench against the wall and was just considering going to join him when she felt more than heard two people walk up behind her.
"What the hell Spencer," the man said, and Aislinn turned around to face them, taking a step back as she did so. "Get out of my chair." She recognized the man as Detective Lassiter, and the woman as Juliet O'Hara, the woman that Shawn flirted with more than he flirted with everyone else. She was pretty, though she looked different through Shawn's eyes than she did to Aislinn now. Aislinn smiled at her, but lowered her eyes when she noticed Lassiter's glare, even though it wasn't directed at her.
"I'm here about the case we've been working on," Shawn said, hopping out of the chair and lifting his hand to his head. She almost laughed at how ridiculous he looked. "I'm sensing-"
"Did you bring a date to the police station?" Lassiter interrupted, making Shawn sigh with fake annoyance. Aislinn shook her head, a small smile on her face.
"Of course not," Shawn said, walking around the desk to drape an arm over Aislinn's shoulder and turn her to face them completely. "This is the lovely Aislinn Kelly, and I'm not her type. She's more into tall, dark, and handsome, salt and pepper hairs detectives with nice blue eyes." He winked at Lassiter and Aislinn shrugged his arm off of her then quickly hit him in the back of the head. He winced over dramatically. "Okay fine, she's more into beautiful blonde haired detectives with nice cheekbones and blue eyes?"
"Shawn." Her voice was impatient and she was considering smacking him again. She half lifted her hand but he flinched away.
"Okay fine, it's not like you've given me anything to work with here," he said, then turned back to the two. "Aislinn is the newest member of the Psych family. Now, back to my divining." He raised his had again, but was this time interrupted by Juliet.
"Psych family? You work for them?" She was speaking to Aislinn this time.
"No, this is a trial run," Aislinn said, shaking her head.
"Aislinn!" Shawn cried. "Don't be the cold fresh fry in the bottom of the bag! You have to work with us, we've already bought you a desk and everything!"
"I hope that wasn't with my credit card Shawn," Gus said walking up to the group.
"Of course not, it was with mine," Shawn said.
"You don't have a credit card Shawn," Gus scowled.
"Get to the point Shawn," Aislinn said with a sigh.
"I sense that the Daniels' butler has a younger brother, maybe an illegitimate son. Possibly a cousin. Maybe a nephew," Shawn said, his face scrunched up weirdly. Gus elbowed him. "If you fine him, you'll fine the books."
"We did check out the butler," Juliet said, going over to her dest to grab a file and flipping it open. She read for a moment, then tapped the page with her hand. "Says here he live with his wife and two children, and his younger brother, not too far from the Daniels' home. So you think he stole the books?"
"Yes," Shawn said, and this time Aislinn elbowed him. "No. I sense that he was an accomplice. The real their was the queen."
"The queen?" Gus asked. "Queen Elizabeth?"
"No, no, not the queen, the queen to be," Shawn said, and Aislinn was completely lost.
"The princess?" She asked, tilting her head.
"Yes, the princess," Shawn was practically flopping around now, grabbing things from Lassiter's desk.
"Yeah, that's great Spencer-" Lassiter began, but Shawn lunged forward and covered Lassiter's face. Aislinn did giggle now.
"Princess Beatrice?" Gus asked. Shawn dropped the act for a moment to give him a look of exasperation.
"Who the hell is that?"
"She's the crown princess of England, Shawn. Maybe if you bothered paying attention to anything besides food you would know that," Gus said.
"Princess Diana?" Aislinn added, smiling now.
"Yes, Diana!" Shawn said, falling back into the 'vision' by leaning against Lassiter's desk. "But she's no princess, she's a dirty dirty liar."
"Diana Daniels? The wife?" Lassiter asked incredulously.
"Yes, I'm sensing that she is the one who took the books. She entered the room through the window, using her bedroom right above it to stage the operation. She took the books and dropped them down to her willing servant, the butler's son, who took them and vanished into the night," Shawn said, collapsing into Gus who pushed him into Aislinn. Aislinn grabbed his elbow so he wouldn't fall. trying to hide her smile. Shawn was very good at acting like an idiot.
"Why would she do that?" Juliet asked, and all the little bits of information her visions had given her suddenly clicked into place.
"Because she was jealous," Aislinn said, her eyes blank as she remembered the visions. "Her husband spent more time reading those books then he spent with her. She was angry that he cared more about some dusty old books than about their marriage. She thought that getting rid of the books will mean that he will pay more attention to her, but she's wrong, because he's having an affair with…" she trailed off, waiting for just a second longer for the last piece of her vision to settle in. In the vision she had seen before, of the wife going through the desk drawers, she had seen a photo on the desk of the couple, and another girl, a tanned dark haired girl, all of them sitting around a table. The two women had been leaning in to each other, obviously talking, while the husband had been looking at them, but he wasn't looking at his wife with that adoring expression, he was looking at the other girl, around the same age as his wife. They had to have been friends. Not sisters, they didn't look enough alike for that. "her best friend," Aislinn finished, connecting all the information in barely a half a second. She glanced up at Shawn who's mouth had fallen open. "Oh, sorry Shawn," she said, frowning. "I just figured that out now."
"What is this?" Lassiter finally said, looking between Aislinn and Shawn as though they were playing some kind of joke on him.
"Oh, didn't I mention that Aislinn is a psychic too?" Shawn said, grinning. Aislinn tensed, still not liking that people knew that about her.
"Oh is she now?" Lassiter asked, his lips turning up into a sarcastic smirk. "Well why don't you and your new psychic friend leave the station and never come back. Sound good?" He asked, putting a hand on Shawn's shoulder and beginning to lead him away towards the door. Gus followed casually.
"So you're a psychic too?" Juliet asked as Aislinn was about to follow. She shrugged.
"Not like Shawn is," she said, which was true. She was still a little proud of herself for making the connection of the husband and the friend. It was exciting, figuring out a puzzle. As long as it turned out to be true anyway, which she was only about %85 sure about.
"Thank god for that," Lassiter said, returning to his desk in time to catch their conversation. "There is only so much of that insanity I can handle."
"He's really not a bad person," Aislinn tried, but Lassiter just raised an eyebrow.
"Don't you have some dead spirits to go commune with or something?" Lassiter asked sarcastically. She smiled and decided that if she was going to be hanging out with Shawn and Gus that she may as well learn to rile him up since it seemed to be one of their favorite things to do.
"Oh, no, that's Shawn's forte. He deals with the dead, I only deal with living spirits," she smiled wryly. "The gift matches the personality you know. Shawn is exuberant enough to deal with the dead, I'm calm enough to deal with the living." She did her best to make her voice sound all knowing, and she was pleased to see that O'Hara edged away from her a little. She gave them one last smile and turned to find Shawn and Gus.
"O'Hara, look up that girl, I want to make sure she didn't just escape from an insane asylum," Lassiter said, not quite waiting until Aislinn was out of ear shot. She frowned and considered going back and trying to make them think she was normal again, but as she rounded the corner Shawn and Gus were there, both with their hand's help up for high fives.
"That was great, he was so spooked," Shawn said, grinning. She gave them both high fives.
"Are you wearing gloves?" Gus asked, frowning at her.
"Yes, I said I wear them most of the time. I don't like getting flashes of memory form everything I touch you know," she said as they left the station and went back to the car.
"So, are you staying in Santa Barbara?" Shawn asked as Gus started the engine.
"Well, I don't have anywhere else to go," she said. "And if we actually solved that case, that would be really cool."
"Oh we solved it," Shawn said, smirking. "How'd you know about the affair? I totally didn't get that."
"That's because you aren't psychic Shawn," Gus said.
"In one of the visions of her going through the desk, there was a framed picture of the three of them on the desk," she said. "It was obvious in the picture that they were friends and that the husband was staring at the friend."
"Well nice work," Shawn said, grinning.
"I didn't mean to take away your big reveal," she said, frowning.
"Nah it's fine. They have to learn that theres more than one psychic in town now," Shawn said. "Oh Gus, lets stop for smoothies."
"Technically, theres still only one psychic, since you were never one to begin with," Gus pointed out, driving past the smoothie place Shawn had pointed out.
"I need to find a place to live," Aislinn said, sighing. "Do you know anywhere that's renting?"
"Oh, I know this little old woman who owns an old restaurant thats closed down, you could move in there," Shawn said. "She would probably give you a good deal on the rent."
"I don't need a good deal on the rent," she said, rolling her eyes. "And I'd rather live in a real apartment."
"One of my work friends has a sister that owns a bunch of apartment buildings around town, I gan call her up and see if she has anything open," Gus said, watching the roads.
"That would be great. I've never been apartment shopping before, so I don't really know anything about them," Aislinn said, looking out the window.
"Well we'll help you out," Gus said, smiling now. He wasn't nearly as standoffish of her as he had been before she had shared some of her memories with him. "That's what friends are for right?"
She smiled at that, realizing that it was true, they could be considered her friends, the first real ones she'd ever had.
"Thanks."