This Isn't What It Looks Like by Pseudonymous Bosch Page B

you spread it on toast and eat it, too?”
    “Wait—feel my ears.” Cass reached for the Jester’s hand and made him touch the points of her ears. “See, they’re just like
     yours.”
    “That they are,” said the Jester agreeably. “But it proves not that you are my future self, merely that you, like me, are
     half elf.”
    Cass froze, her heart beating in her chest. Could that be true, as incredible as it sounded? Was that her secret? Was that
the
Secret?
    “Are you really… part elf?” she asked.
    The Jester chuckled. “Now it is
your
mind that is lost! No, I am not, and none is that I know.”
    “Oh,” said Cass, relieved and disappointed at the same time. “Well, elf or not, I am your descendant. I’m ninety-nine percent
     sure, anyway.”
    The Jester sighed. “Perhaps you are; I myself am sure of nothing.”
    Calm again, the Jester sat down next to Cass.
    Now’s the time, she thought. She was about to ask about the Secret when a loud crash echoed in the corridor.

M ax-Ernest couldn’t have been in a worse mood.
    Reading the purloined book hadn’t helped him get any closer to reading Cass’s mind. * As far as he was concerned,
Second Sight: Seeing With Your Third Eye in Four Easy Steps
might as well have been written by someone who really had three eyes—it was that silly.
    After that particular book proved to be of little value, he’d managed to secure his parents’ permission to comb through their
     bookshelves. The imminent arrival of Max-Ernest’s baby brother seemed to have made them relax their guard.
    “Just keep an eye out for any baby how-to books we might have missed,” said his father.
    “Let us know if you see any more books about raising babies,” said his mother.
    Max-Ernest sat on the office floor for hours, reading book after book not on babies but on extrasensory perception—some logical
     and scientific, but most too fantastical for his taste—and he learned a fair amount of fascinating trivia.
Bilocation
, for instance, was the condition of being in two places at once (just as he’d often had to be when his parents lived in separate
     places).
Dowsing
was a form of divination that involved the use of a wire or pendulumto locate a missing object (he wondered whether Mrs. Johnson’s using a magnet to locate the Tuning Fork would count). And
scrying
was using an object such as a crystal ball or a mirror to see faraway events (which is pretty much what you’re doing when
     you’re watching television, Max-Ernest reflected; not really all that impressive).
    There were many theories about the hows and whys and wherefores of mental telepathy. But it all sounded more or less like
     hogwash to Max-Ernest, and in any case he found no instructions for reading the mind of a comatose girl. Most of what he read
     advised him to start by looking into someone’s eyes (Cass’s were closed), studying that person’s facial expressions (Cass
     made very few), or listening to his or her voice (Cass was pretty much silent).
    Why do they call it mind
reading
and not mind
seeing
or mind
hearing
, Max-Ernest wondered, if all they can tell you is to look and listen?
    As a master decoder and puzzle-solver, Max-Ernest was used to finding a single key, a set of rules, a rubric with which to
     solve any problem that confronted him. The books advised him to rely on his intuition, which frustrated him greatly.
    What’s an intuition, anyway? he grumbled to himself. An intuition is nothing. It’s a hunch. It’snot logical. It has no basis in anything. I don’t have intuitions. I have ideas.
    His reading did lead to a couple of unexpected discoveries, however. The first involved Mrs. Johnson’s magnet pendant. One
     of the so-called magical objects Max-Ernest read about was a
lodestone
, a naturally occurring magnet. He had thought Mrs. Johnson’s pendant looked like a stone, and now he was sure of it. Not
     that the information was useful in any way. Somehow he doubted that he could wake up