by Clara Kensie
Gasping for breath, I yanked the fog in. The visions disappeared and were replaced by gray cinderblock walls and Tristan’s worried face.
I blinked at him. “I’m going back.”
I lifted the fog before he could tell me to stop. Once again the visions rushed at me. I adjusted the fog, using it to corral them. They quivered, trembled, hissed, but I held the fog steady.
Vaguely aware that I was now lying with my head on Tristan’s lap, I lifted the fog, just a teeny tiny bit, allowing one vision through. The first one.
This is not quite a surprise; she’s been expecting a proposal but she didn’t know it would happen today. Andy had brought her to a field of wildflowers, spread a blanket on the ground, and opened a cheap bottle of champagne. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a ring. The diamond is minuscule, no bigger than a speck of dust, but it’s the most beautiful diamond in the world. She cannot suppress her elation, and hundreds of flowers pluck themselves from the ground and float around them as Andy slips the ring on her finger. They kiss as they are showered with thousands of petals.
No. That was beautiful, but it wasn’t what I needed to see. Give me proof my parents are innocent, I commanded the visions, and lifted the fog again. Show me what I need to see.
And they did.
He opens his eyes with a disgusted groan, then turns to his computer and starts writing his article about the politician he’d just watched with his mobile eye. With the help of his remote vision, he’d exposed more than a few politicians during his short tenure as a reporter, and this guy, Representative Harold Applebaum, was next. He was returning from an all-expense-paid vacation to the Cayman Islands, courtesy of the tobacco lobbyists. And the young, bikini-clad woman he’d brought on that trip was definitely not his wife.
He lifts his fingers from the keyboard.
Exposing Applebaum in his column probably wouldn’t even get the guy kicked out of office. And it certainly wouldn’t help the victims of the tobacco industry.
There must be a better way to take advantage of this secret.
Maybe he can follow Applebaum around for a few weeks with his mobile eye, learn his habits, figure out where to plant cameras....
“Wendy!” he shouts. “How’d you like to take a few pictures without touching the camera?”
She makes a phone call, anonymous and untraceable, to Harold Applebaum. “I know what you did.” She demands a large sum of money, impossibly large, to keep his wife from seeing the pictures of him in bed with his little blonde mistress.
Neither she nor Andy are surprised when Applebaum pays, quickly and without question.
They use the money to pay off their bills, just enough to get by for the next few months, then anonymously donate the rest to a hospital specializing in lung cancer. They declare themselves modern-day Robin Hoods.
He flips through his mental database of all the wealthy people he’s met. He and Wendy choose one of the wealthiest, an international auto tycoon. He’d shaken his hand once at a press conference. He concentrates on the tycoon and sends out his mobile eye. Within a few days, he learns all his secrets, any of which would destroy him if they were leaked to the public. Then he makes the phone call.
She sits in a French restaurant in Washington with her girlfriends, nibbling nervously on a petit four. Her friends comment that she’d picked a beautiful restaurant for lunch.
She glances across the restaurant at their latest victim, an auto tycoon, eating a filet and talking with his mouth full into his cell phone. He has only two days left to pay to keep her from sending proof of his embezzlement to his partners.
As she watches him inhale the filet, she decides this time they’ll donate the money—some of it, anyway—to hunger relief.
The tycoon looks over at her.
“I think you have an admirer, Wendy,” her friend Savannah says with a giggle.
She smiles weakly and looks back at the man.
He takes a last bite then wipes his mouth with a cloth napkin. He stands up, a curious, knowing sneer on his face.
A cold sweat forms at the back of her neck. Is he coming to flirt with her, or does he know who she is?
He’s coming closer. Has he seen her following him?
Panic skitters, then stampedes down her spine, and she realizes what she must do.
The tycoon stops, grabs his throat with both hands, and his face turns red. Despite repeated attempts by the waiter to perform the Heimlich maneuver, he is dead within minutes. It was just a small piece of steak, but the waiter was not able to dislodge it from his windpipe.
Her friends cry at witnessing such a horrible tragedy, but she weeps inconsolably. She’d never used her PK to kill anyone before. Not on purpose.
They have to stop doing this. But it’s so easy, it’s become routine. Almost boring. The newspaper sends him to press conferences, or Wendy tells him which important and wealthy people have made reservations at the hotel. He shows his press pass, shakes their hands. Later he sends out his mobile eye to see what they have to hide. Then he and Wendy gather the evidence. They make contact. They collect the money.
They have to stop doing this. It’s so easy, but now people are dead. Four, so far. All because Wendy panics. And then she’s a hysterical mess for days, barely able to function. If he didn’t have to take care of her, he’d be a mess too.
They have to stop doing this. But when he watches through her eyes, her gaze lands for minutes at a time on the big brick houses in the nice neighborhoods, so sturdy and safe. He watches through her eyes as she stares at the pregnant women and the families in the park.
They have to stop doing this. And they will, after this next job. This time they’ll keep all the money. And then they won’t ever do it again.
One more job. Maybe two.
He squeezes his eyes shut and rubs his temples.
She leans her head on Andy’s shoulder and sighs contentedly. The floundering beat reporter is now a respected journalist at a prestigious paper in D.C., and the trailer-trash motel maid is now the director of special events at an elegant hotel in the city. They live in an elite neighborhood in Kitteridge, in the most impressive house on the block. Their children attend the most exclusive school.
“Look at our babies,” she purrs as the children play in the pool in their large backyard. Jillian dives off the diving board, and Logan slides down the twisty slide. Tessa watches them contentedly from the steps in the shallow end, which is as deep as she will ever go.
Jillian, seven years old, confident and beautiful, showed signs of psychokinesis before she could walk. Logan’s PK was evident before he could crawl, and he’s hypercognetic, too. An automatic learner. Only four years old, reading high-school level books with a swipe of his palm. Just last week he sat down on the bench in front of their new grand piano, feet not even reaching the floor, and he’d played the instrument like he’d been playing for years.
And then there’s Tessa. Nothing makes her happier than seeing Tessa’s big green eyes light up with joy. She’d never admit this to anyone, but she loves Tessa the most. Tessa needs the most love. Her lack of paranormal ability, while surrounded by a family that has total control of the world, has made her timid and insecure. But maybe her paranormal talent will develop later. Her own talent didn’t become apparent until she was almost thirteen. Tessa’s only six. There’s plenty of time for her ability to develop.
Her children are perfect. The love she shares with her husband is deep and passionate and perfect. Her home is perfect.
Her life, quite simply, is perfect.
A knock at the door.
Jillian and Logan are at the park, and Tessa’s outside reading a book after she hurt herself at the playground. Wendy’s at the computer. He’s free for the moment, so he answers the door.
Two men. One about his age, tall and
lean. The other a bit older and shorter. Both wearing ties and sport coats. One is holding a stack of flyers. The other holds a large manila envelope. Collecting money for something.
He decides to donate generously, whatever the cause. They show him a flyer with the picture of a little girl. Her name, Rebecca Lukas, is printed underneath the photo. “This little girl has leukemia,” the shorter man says. “Her parents don’t have medical insurance, so we’re raising the money for her treatment through donations.”
He takes the flyer. “Poor kid. My sister had leukemia. Come on in. I’ll get the checkbook.”
He leads the men to the kitchen and takes his wallet from the drawer. What an odd coincidence. His sister’s name is Rebecca too. He decides to be especially charitable to the girl on the flyer. “You fellows know who Xander Xavier is?”
The shorter one clears his throat. “He’s a journalist at the DC Daily. I enjoy his columns.”
“Xander’s a close friend of mine,” he says. “I’ll ask him to mention this girl in his column. Maybe some media attention will bring in more donations.”
He notices the two men glance at each other, then back at him. The short man smiles. “That’d be wonderful.”
He writes the check. “A thousand bucks okay?”
“You’re very generous, sir.”
“Hopefully little Rebecca makes a full recovery.”
“With proper treatment, most do recover,” the taller, younger man adds. “Like your sister.”
Now he’s suspicious. “That’s funny,” he says softly. “I don’t recall mentioning she recovered.”
The taller man licks his lips. “I—I just assumed....”
The house is silent.
Same illness. Same name. Maybe that coincidence is too odd to be plausible. “You’re not collecting donations, are you?” He tries to sound imposing while his heart pounds.
“No, sir, we’re not,” the shorter one says. “We’re from a department of the federal government. We’d like to ask how you learned so much about the politicians in your columns.”
Ah. Nothing to worry about after all. He could handle this. “Then you must have figured out that Xander Xavier is my pseudonym.”
“Yes, we did,” the taller man says, then lowers his voice. “We’d also like to ask about your special...ability.”
He exhales slowly. They know about his mobile eye.
They must know about the blackmail. The murders.
They must know everything.
“You’ve been watching us?” He stumbles backwards, blindly.
“Mr. Carson, please.” The shorter man steps toward him, palms open. “Don’t be alarmed.”
From the office, she listens to Andy’s conversation with the men who’d come to the door. Did he say a thousand dollars? He’s always so generous.
But wait. His voice sounds different now—apprehensive. Frightened.
Something is wrong.
One of the men says something about his special ability.
Terror surges through her body like an electric current, charging every muscle with panic. They know. They know! They’re going to take everything away. Her home. Her Andy. Her children.
On silent feet she darts to the living room and peeks in the kitchen. She pictures the mens’ hearts and imagines them stopping. They should be clutching their chests in a moment.
But they don’t.
She tries again, this time picturing blood clots traveling through their bloodstream and into their brains.
They don’t keel over.
She imagines their lungs shriveling up, their tracheas crushing, their kidneys exploding, their brains melting, their bodies bursting into flames.
They don’t burst into flames. They don’t collapse.
They stand. They breathe. They live.
She can’t let them take Andy and the kids from her. She can’t. She can’t lose them.
On the counter is a butcher block with six knives, their shiny black handles sticking out from the smooth wood.
Those men may be immune to her PK, but they can’t possibly be immune to knives.
A half-second later, the largest knife flies through the air, silver blade merrily reflecting the sun, and silently embeds itself between the shoulder blades of the shorter, older man. He exhales with a surprised “Oof!” and falls to his knees.
The taller man sees the knife, cries out, pulls a gun from his coat. He turns around, swings the gun madly, and fires.
She stops the bullet in mid-air. It drops to the floor.
The other five knives pull themselves out of the butcher block and fly, silver tips gleaming and glowing, toward the taller man. He stands and watches, unable to move, as if he knows this is it for him, something has gone horribly wrong and he has no chance, he is going to die...right...now.
The blades entrench themselves in his shoulder, his stomach, his leg. His chest. His neck. He collapses to the floor, a look of dismayed bewilderment on his face.
But it’s not over.
The front door bursts open, and a third man runs in, gun drawn, wire-rimmed glasses askew.
He watches as Wendy battles with the two men, and now a third. From the corner of his eye he sees movement. The older man is still alive. He’s on his hands and knees, crawling through the blood, trying to reach the knife in his back, trying to get away.
With a panicked shriek, he yanks the knife from the wounded man’s back, and plunges it back in.
Again.
And again.
And again, until the man finally collapses into the puddle of blood on the marble floor.
Andy has turned his attention to the third man. They scuffle, both men locked in a desperate fight to the death. She will not let her husband die. She mentally pushes on the third man’s heart again, willing it to stop beating.
The man inhales a shallow breath. Clutches his chest. Then he collapses, his glasses falling off completely.
Finally.
“Wait!” He stops short as they run from the house. “Wendy, Tessa’s gone.”
Her book and the ice pack are under the tree. But not Tessa.
She hadn’t gone back into the house, had she? Had she seen what happened inside? Had she witnessed the murders?
Dear God—Wendy lit the gas to destroy the evidence and burn the bodies. The house is going to blow any second!
“Find her!” Wendy screeches.
Quickly, quickly—he concentrates on Tessa and sends out his mobile eye.
He finds her immediately. She’s not in the house. Thank God. She’s in a car, the back seat of a car. She’s crying and pounding at the windows. Did those men take her?
But the car is still here. Through Tessa’s eyes, he can see their house. The car is parked on the street.
He runs over. The windows are tinted black, but he can hear the pounding of her little fists. He can hear her cries. He frantically tugs on the door handle, but it won’t open. Tessa is locked inside.
Inconceivably, the third man stumbles from the house, his hand on his chest, dragging one of his legs.
Who are these people? Don’t they ever die?
With a flick of her fingers, she pins him to the ground and holds him there, then turns her attention back to Andy. He’s trying to get Tessa out of the car, but she’s locked in. She imagines the car windows exploding, and they do. With a loud shattering boom, glass sprays everywhere, and Andy drags Tessa out.
“My daughter was in your car,” she rumbles to the man cowering on the ground. “You tried to take her away.”
“No.” He croaks breathlessly. “I was keeping her safe. I didn’t want her to see this.”
Her blood boils at the thought of this man touching her daughter. Putting his slimy hands on her
. A heart attack is too good for him. He needs to bleed.
Her eyes narrow, and she raises her hand into the air. She curls her fingers into a claw.
He begs for his life. “Please...”
She swipes the air , imagining five razor-sharp blades slicing through the man’s stomach.
Through her fury, she hears Tessa cry, and she glances at her.
And instead of cutting the man, she cuts her daughter.
They are safe, safe for now at least, at this rundown backwater motel. Jillian and Logan have been crying since they’d picked them up at the park and raced away, and now the two of them are huddled together on one bed. Tessa, finally awake from the overdose of Nyquil, is on the other. The blood from her wounds has soaked through the bandages and even the sheets. He cleans her up and wraps new dressings around her stomach.
Wendy can’t even watch. She paces the room instead and questions her again. “Are you sure you didn’t see anyone besides the man with the glasses?”
A sob. “It was only h-h-him.”
“What else can you remember about him, Babydoll?”
“He could hear me, but I didn’t say anything.”
“He’s telepathic? He read your mind?”
“Uh-huh.” A hiccup.
“Did he tell you his name?”
“Uh-huh.” A whimper.
“What is it? What’s the bad man’s name?”
“Den-Dennis Connelly.”
He sees a flicker of guilt in Wendy’s eyes before she turns her back. “Dennis Connelly did this to you, Tessa. Dennis Connelly cut you.”
He frowns at Wendy but says nothing. It’s better if Tessa never knows the slices down her stomach were made by her own mother.
