psychic signs

"No, wait," Evelyn squeaked. She backed across the floor on her buttocks, pressed her back to the wall and lifted her hands. "Don't."
"You helped your client try to kill people, Evelyn," I said in a calm voice. "Tell me who."
Her eyes widened even more. "What? No. No, I didn't know anyone would get hurt."
I stepped closer and snarled, "Talk."
"All right, all right!" she stammered. "She-"
She stopped speaking as suddenly as if someone had begun strangling her.
I eased up on the intimidation throttle. "Tell me," I said, more quietly.
Evelyn Derek shook her head at me, fear and confusion stripping away the reserve I'd seen in her only moments before. She started shaking. I saw her open her mouth several times, but only small choked sounds emerged. Her eyes lost focus and started flicking randomly around the room like a trapped animal looking for an escape.
That wasn't normal. Not even a little. Someone like Evelyn Derek might panic, might be cowed, might be backed into a corner-but she would never be at a loss for words.
"Oh," I said, mostly to myself. "I hate this crap."
I sighed, and walked around the desk to stand over the cowering lawyer. "Hell, if I'd known that someone had..." I shook my head. She wasn't really listening very hard to me, and she'd started crying.
It was one of about a thousand possible reactions when someone's free will has been directly abrogated by some kind of psychic interdiction. I'd just created a situation in which every part of her logical, rational mind had been completely in favor of telling me who had hired her. Her emotions had been lined up right behind her reasoned thoughts, too.
Only I was betting that someone had gotten into her head. Someone had left something inside her that refused to let Ms. Derek speak about her employer. Hell, she might not even have a conscious memory of who hired her-despite the fact that she wouldn't just hire some detective to spy on somebody for no reason.
Everyone always thinks that such obvious logical inconsistencies wouldn't hold up, that the mind would somehow tear free of the bonds placed upon it using those flaws. But the fact is that the human mind isn't a terribly logical or consistent place. Most people, given the choice to face a hideous or terrifying truth or to conveniently avoid it, choose the convenience and peace of normality. That doesn't make them strong or weak people, or good or bad people. It just makes them people.
It's our nature. There's plenty to distract us from the nastier truths of our lives, if we want to avoid them.


Turn Coat Chapter 22, page 201-202