by Ladew, Lisa
“Actually not a whole lot when you’re not around someone like Katerina. Almost every person on this planet is a telepath to some degree. We can all sense the emotions and mental well-being of other people most of the time. And most of us send out our emotions and mental well-being to the people around us without realizing it. Some people are a little bit better at one or the other. You’re exceptionally good at transmitting. I bet you are scary to the people around you when you are mad, but when you are happy, you lift everybody’s spirits.”
West nodded, recognition spreading in his mind. “I try not to get mad because it does seem to affect people strongly,” he said, remembering when he’d scared a high school girlfriend so badly she’d broken up with him, even though he hadn’t been mad at her or done anything to her. But on the other hand, he’d always been able to cajole others out of their bad moods fairly easily.
Agnes gave him a final look, then turned her attention to Katerina.
“I’m not sure exactly what to call you. I know you are an empath and a telepath, and if you got your visions from objects, I would call you a psychometrist, but I’ve never heard of one who only received information from people. I don’t know if there is a name for exactly what you are. And the medical aspect-” She leaned forward, a look of intense curiosity on her face. “Can you tell me what I take medication for?”
Still massaging her wrist, Katerina answered right away, her voice dull. “Angina. Your right ventricle is failing and will blow out completely in less than two years.”
Agnes gasped again and sat up straight. West looked at Katerina, shocked. Katerina looked back challengingly, but then her eyes widened, as if she had just realized what she said.
West couldn’t think of anything to say or do. Katerina had just predicted this woman’s death.
Chapter 9
“Well I guess we all have to go sometime,” Agnes said weakly. She looked around the small apartment like a bird searching for a window to fly out of. “Do you have a bathroom?”
West shot to his feet. “Let me show you where it is.” He took Agnes a few steps down the hall and then returned to Katerina. She had her hands on her cheeks and was looking at him with the expression of an animal in stark fear.
“Oh my God. Oh my God. I can’t believe that just happened,” Katerina moaned.
“Is it true?”
“Yes. I think. I could see it West, I could see the thin wall in her heart. I don’t have any idea why I said less than two years, though. How could I know that?”
West put a hand on her shoulder. He didn’t know what to say to her. They sat in silence for several moments.
Long before West expected her, Agnes came back out from the bathroom. She sat heavily in her chair. She looked at Katerina, her gaze unwieldy. “Could you fix it?”
“What?”
“If you were to cut me open, could you fix it?”
Katerina shook her head no, but the words that came out of her mouth were more positive. “Maybe… if I were trained as a surgeon.”
Agnes nodded as if she had expected that. “What about your hands? Could you lay your hands on me and manipulate the energy of my body in some way that made it heal?”
Katerina looked at West, and he saw more deep fear in her eyes. He nodded encouragingly at her, thinking it was a question that she needed to answer.
“I’ve no idea. It’s not something that I’ve ever considered.”
“Of course not, you’ve just discovered you can do this. But consider it.”
West saw irritation flash in Katerina’s eyes and he wanted to warn the other woman not to push her, that Katerina had a short fuse these days and anything might topple her over what was proving to be a razor-thin edge.
Before he could say anything, Katerina lifted her chin and with a challenging note in her voice, said, “Let’s see.”
For a split second, West worried about Agnes’s safety. Then he shook his head, trying to dislodge the idea. This was Katerina they were talking about. He watched her round the table and place her hands on Agnes’s shoulders. For several moments, nothing happened. It seemed to West that Agnes didn’t even dare to breathe. Then Katerina’s eyes slipped closed and her brows came together in concentration. West watched color fly back into Agnes’s face as she finally took a massive, rib-cracking breath. West felt wonder steal over him. She was doing it! She was doing something, anyway.
Katerina ripped her hands from Agnes’s shoulders and took a step back, the wall behind her stopping her short. Her eyes flew open and she stared at Agnes in what looked like horror. West felt that fear again, but when his eyes dropped to Agnes’ face, the fear dissolved. Agnes’ cheeks now held the color of a young girl’s. They glowed under her powder. He couldn’t exactly say that she looked younger, but she did look more vibrant, more alive. West was reminded forcibly of a dozen clichés. The one that hit him the hardest was of a centuries old vampire who had gotten a throat-quenching drink of young blood.
Agnes stood up, her earlier stiffness gone. She took three large strides into the living room, her sensible black shoes clunking on the floor, then turned around to face them. “I feel … I feel …” She looked at Katerina, her eyes sparkling. “What did you do?”
Katerina shook her head and looked at her hands. “I did - nothing …”
Agnes lifted her face to the ceiling and laughed. She looked back at Katerina. “That wasn’t nothing young lady, that was something amazing. You have to tell me what exactly you did. You have to tell me what was going through your mind. You have to tell me how it felt and if you knew whether it was working or not.” Agnes’ words ran together and in her excitement she did a little dance on the carpet. “You could be the greatest doctor that ever lived!”
“I just want to be a normal person!” Katerina cried and West saw panic fly into her eyes. She looked around the room, like a startled deer preparing to flee from a threat in the woods. West stood up quickly and put himself between Katerina and the door. It was too dangerous for her to run that way. She lowered her head and ran down the hallway, slamming the door to her bedroom. West looked after her in dismay.
“Oh no, I’m sorry,” Agnes said, but with a wide smile still on her face. West doubted she even knew it was there.
“It’s not your fault,” West told her, sinking back down into his chair. He put his head between his hands and tried to absorb what had just happened. In his imagination, he could see Katerina flinging herself on the bed and doing the same thing he was. It had to be so much worse for her.
Agnes came back to the table and sat, but her legs and arms jiggled constantly. She seemed to be full of new energy.
West lifted his head and studied her. “So what happened?”
“I’m not exactly sure,” she answered, excitement in her voice. “At first I didn’t feel anything, but then I felt a warmth and tingling in my chest, and suddenly I was flooded with enough energy to run a marathon,” she said, in her clipped, British tones.
“Do you think she… fixed you?”
Agnes leaned forward and grasped both of West’s hands with hers. “I do, West. I think she added ten – maybe twenty years to my life. Do you think she will come back out? I would love to ask her if she thinks she fixed me.”
West smiled weakly but shook his head. “No, I don’t think she’ll come back out.”
Agnes sighed. “I guess I came on a little strong.” Her hands drummed on the table.
West nodded.
“Will she mind if I tell you what I know about her? You can tell her later. Something could help her.”
West leaned forward, eager to hear this. “No, she won’t mind. She knows that’s why you came.”
“Okay first,” Agnes counted off on her fingers. “She’s powerful. She is the most powerful healer I have ever personally come across. There are rumors of holy men in other countries who can do what she did, but I’ve never found one, and believe me, I have looked. This is modern day, though. If you look back thr
ough history, there are many claims of people being able to heal with a touch. Second, like she suspected, she has sucked in little pieces of this guy’s psyche that she dealt with – I could feel them rolling around inside of her, like tumbleweeds caught in a windy corridor. I’m certain she can get rid of them, but she needs to learn a few tricks and exercises. Third, these angry moods and behaviors that she’s having? They are caused by the energy residue of that horrible man. They are causing her such problems because of the way she is.”
“The way she is?”
“Innocent. Sweet. Good. She’s a good girl, West. She’s always been a good girl her whole life and she’s never dealt with impulses like this before.”
West’s confusion must have showed on his face, because Agnes tried a different tact.
“When you were a boy, did you get in trouble a lot?”
West grinned and nodded. He remembered things like throwing snowballs packed with rocks at cars and stealing candy bars from the local store.
“So you know what it’s like to have a mischievous thought pop in your head. Then you have to decide whether to ignore it or act on it. Do you still ever get thoughts like that?”
“Well sure, everybody does.”
Agnes shook her head. “Not everybody does. Katerina has never had a mischievous or bad thought pop in her head before now. She’s always wanted to be a good girl, to please her parents and teachers, to do the right thing. And her thoughts have always been aligned with that. But now, she’s receiving thoughts, impulses, and emotions, that she’s never dealt with in her entire life. She’s like a two-year-old who doesn’t know how to control themselves yet, but instead of just wanting to climb up on the counter and get into the cookie jar, she is feeling much more dangerous impulses. She’s feeling uncontrollable anger for the first time in her life, and she just doesn’t have the experience to deal with it. It’s not her fault. She should’ve gone through her entire life never feeling the urge to hurt someone. That’s not who she is.” Agnes shook her head sadly. “But her experience with this man – this Phillips character – has destroyed that innocence and trampled on that sweetness. She has to learn how to control herself, how to ignore these dangerous thoughts. And it’s not just angry thoughts that you need to worry about. Phillips was a man with a deep hatred for himself. He never had a suicidal impulse, because he translated those into homicidal impulses. But I think we both know how different Katerina is. If she doesn’t get a handle on what’s going on inside her, you may have to worry about her trying to harm herself.”
West felt panic erupt inside him. “Can’t she fix herself – heal herself?”
“Possibly. She’ll have to try and see what happens. I suspect she has a multitude of abilities that would surprise both of us.”
“What about these exercises you mentioned?”
“Yes, there are a few. Isolating and expelling exercises. If she’ll come out, I’ll walk her through them, but it might be a better idea if you just have her call me later, after she calms down. Or even tomorrow. I’m not leaving until the evening so I could come back at any time during the day, or we could just talk on the phone if she would like that better. I don’t think she’ll need to see me face-to-face in order to learn the exercises.”
West thought hard. “Maybe that would be best. Maybe I should try to talk to her tonight and see what she wants.”
Agnes stood up as if that settled things. West noted how very easily she stood straight and tall, and how different she looked from when she had walked in the door. “Very well, West,” she said holding out her hand.
West stood up also and grasped her hand. “Is it okay if I have my brother cut you a check for your fee and expenses?”
Agnes smiled widely and shook her head, her eyes twinkling with barely-suppressed joy. “Oh no, we are paid in full. Let me just give you one final piece of advice. Keep her safe, and don’t let the world know about her. They would eat her alive, trying to get a little piece of the magic that is inside her.”
Chapter 10
Katerina sprawled on her bed, her hands pulling her hair theatrically. She knew she was being sensational, but she didn’t care. If ever there had been a drama-filled moment in her life, this was it. The old woman’s words echoed in her ear. You could be the greatest doctor that ever lived. She didn’t even want to be a doctor anymore. She would settle for being a housewife at this point. A normal housewife, with no abilities or anything interesting going on in her life. Why couldn’t she and West be normal and have a normal life and be in a normal relationship? Why did she have to be caught up in this mess and have all of this happening to her? God! She was nothing but a freak! An aberration! A mutant!
The feeling of the woman’s skin underneath her fingers came back to her. She rubbed her hands together fiercely trying to erase all memory of what had happened. She didn’t want to think about it, but her mind went there anyway. She had put her hands on the woman’s shoulders, not expecting anything, not trying to do anything, just trying to make the woman shut up already. But then something had happened, and it had been interesting. She’d talked to the cells with her hands, and they had responded. They had talked back! Not in words, but in something else that she could understand like words. Life force. Energy. Whatever it was, she had felt it in her fingertips and it had made sense to her. Cells and tissues had woken up and rushed to be near her. The cells had been old, tired, almost worn out, but her tiny bit of inexperienced communication had made them stand up and practically cheer. She had felt them vibrating through the women’s skin, and she had liked it. She had wanted to talk to the cells. She had wanted to wake up the organs. She had wanted to get the hormones flowing. It had felt good, almost like she was born-Katerina squeezed her eyes shut against the thought. It wasn’t true. She wasn’t born to do this. She wasn’t born to wake up sleeping cells and converse with lumbering organs. Katerina hid her face in her hands and tears spilled down her cheeks. She’d never had such a ludicrous thought in her life. Lumbering organs? Cells didn’t sleep and organs didn’t lumber. Why was this happening to her? She wished this was all over. She almost wished she was dead. That would make all of this stop.
A small but very powerful voice inside her head spoke up. Be careful what you wish for, your body obeys your commands even when you don’t know they are commands. Katerina’s tears stopped, and she lay suddenly very still, trying to hear if the voice had anything else to say. When it was quiet, she dropped her head to the mattress and cried bitterly again. Why had West invited that old woman into her home? She hadn’t said anything helpful. Anger reared up inside her like a charging horse and suddenly she wanted to find West, scream at him, tear at him with her fingernails. Her hands bunched into fists and pulled at the blanket. When the old woman was gone, she would talk to West. She would tell him how wrong he was. She would make him understand.
She lay on the mattress and pulled deep breaths into her lungs. After a few moments she realized there were no voices coming from the living room. Had the old woman left already? She dried her face with the blanket and pushed herself off the bed, then tiptoed to the door. She pressed her ear to it and didn’t hear anything, so she pulled it open and walked out into the living room. The apartment was empty. Had West left her? Abandoned her? She’d been expecting that for days. Why he had stuck around as long as he had was beyond her. She was nothing but a stupid freak, a basket-case caught up in some deadly game she didn’t want to play.
Katerina saw his phone on the table and realized he hadn’t left after all. A fierce gladness welled up inside her, followed almost immediately by a dirty glimmer of anger that he would leave her in here by herself and not even say anything. Katerina pinched herself on the leg, hard, irritated with her emotional swings. They were exhausting her.
Katerina walked to the door, unlocked it, and pulled it open. She was going to find West. Be nice to him, she told herself. As she stepped onto the balcony of her second-floor apartment and squinted her eyes against the bri
ght sunlight, the first thing she noticed was a crowd of people standing in the parking lot. She stepped forward to get a better look and blinked a few times. In one part of the parking lot at least fifty people stood in a group, and Katerina could hear them muttering from where she stood. Her eyes looked in the direction they were facing, and her breath caught in her throat. Cop cars. Everywhere. Uniformed cops. Everywhere. Technicians in white shirts working on something just out of her line of sight, behind some trees. One of the technicians moved, and she saw a naked, motionless foot. A body. At her apartment building. Katerina’s hands fluttered up to her hair again, but this time they went to her face and scratched. The pain distracted her from the endless, hysterical thoughts that had bubbled up inside her again. She tore her gaze away from the dead body that shouldn’t be there and saw West and Agnes ten feet away on the other end of the balcony. They were watching the technicians, and Katerina was struck by how sad West looked. He knew. He knew this body had something to do with her - was all her fault.
Katerina watched as West said something to Agnes and then started towards the concrete stairs leading down to the parking lot. A baffling but compelling fury filled her and she suddenly saw him, in her deepest mind’s eye, laying bent and broken at the bottom of the stairs. Her feet began to move and her body followed. She rushed towards him, her thoughts urging her on. She passed Agnes and reached West as his foot stepped off of the top riser. Her hands shot out but just before they connected with his back she jerked herself to the right, the hands that were meant to shove him down the stairs glancing sideways off of his back instead. Her own feet tangled together and she felt her body flying through the air. She was going down the steps instead. At least she hadn’t pushed him. Thank God she’d been able to stop herself, was her last thought as she faced her own sure and violent death.
Strong hands grabbed her by the shirt and one arm and hauled her to safety.
