by J. D. Dexter
We both chuckle nervously. I’m a little ashamed of myself; I’ve always hated couples who engaged in PDA that makes me feel like I’m intruding on private moments. I just became one of them.
Swiping my hands through the tangle of my hair, trying to fan my heated cheeks, I see Hunter doing his own appearance pat down.
By silent agreement, we both turn, lock hands, and continue walking around the block.
Just as we’re about to reach my drive way, he stops me. His eyes serious, his mouth flat. I don’t really like this look on his sensuous face.
“I really like how you kiss me,” he says. A few seconds pass as I try to make sense of what he said compared to the tightness of his expression.
I burst out laughing once I finally catch up. His answering smile warms my heart.
“Ditto, Hunter. Huge, big, strong ditto.” I pop one eyebrow up, look at his crotch quickly, and meet his eyes again.
He throws his head back, howling his laughter. He starts to clap his hands, looking endearingly like a seal at the zoo.
I throw my arms around him, kiss his neck, and just feel his laughter rattle through my body.
“Well played, good lady, well played,” he says into my hair.
“Do you two ever take a break?” Josh asks from my front stoop.
“Nope. Go away.” I answer, not even turning around.
“Get your great ass back in here…you, too, Finley.” Josh shouts, his head still sticking out the front door.
Hunter and I both laugh as we walk up my driveway, and pass back into the house.
“Josh, I had no idea you had inspected my ass. I had you pegged as more of a breast man,” Hunter jokes as he passes Josh at the door.
I’m unsuccessful in stifling my snort, which might be why my ear is now stinging from the flick Josh delivered.
“Both. Well, hurry up, or your great ass is going to get hit by the door.” So saying, Josh pushes the door closed, barely missing said ass.
Settled back down on the couch in our original positions, Hunter and I bypass the blanket, heated from the sunshine and balmy temperatures outside.
It looks like Mark has heard back from his colleague. He looks dejected, almost on the verge of tears.
“My semiotics friend has never seen anything like this; outside of that movie you mentioned. To the best of his knowledge, the language for that movie was created by one of the wives of the creative team. She’s an artist and came up with the whole thing. There has never been a true, real-life language that uses circular patterns instead of lines, horizontal or vertical,” Mark explains, lifting his hands, shrugging his shoulders.
Ah, now I understand the sadness. Uncle Mark loves learning new things.
“Well, great. Back to square one.” I mutter, feeling defeated.
“Could you identify any of the foreign languages?” Brent asks, his computer open on the coffee table next to him.
“Not really. They didn’t look like any I’m familiar with. Although they did seem to be rudimentary letters. More like Norse Runes than English letters.” I shrug my shoulders. “I just recognized that I didn’t know them; I didn’t spend time trying to figure out what they said.”
“That’s okay.” Mom, ever the champion, pats my leg comfortingly.
“Well, we didn’t figure out if you could get into Josh’s mind. Do you want to try again, or would you rather not?” Dad asks, letting me make the decision.
“I can try, although I’m a little freaked out that Crazy Doll Lady will intercept me again.”
“You don’t have to do it right now, Fin. We can try again later,” Josh says, his face lined in worry.
“No, I’ll try. We need to know if I can do it or not.” I lean against Hunter a little more, entwining my fingers with his, hoping to use him as an anchor.
Everyone goes quiet, focusing on me. I close my eyes, pushing their heavy gazes out of my consciousness. Not wanting to go quite so deep into my weird trance, I stay closer to the top of my awareness.
Who am I kidding? I have no idea what I’m doing. I just don’t want the crazy scary lady to suck me into her brain games again.
Maybe instead of trying to send a better arrow, I should try to find Josh’s mind before sending mental projectiles towards it. I construct a mental picture of where everyone is sitting in my living room. Josh directly across from me sitting in a wooden chair. Brian and Brent next to him, sitting on the love seat. Mark nestled in the armchair. Dad takes up the last cushion of the couch Hunter and I sit on. Mom in another wooden chair from the dining room table sitting between Josh and I.
Focusing on the avatar I’ve made for Josh, I concentrate on the head portion. I open my eyes, using my Spectrum eyesight, to get an idea of where I’m sending the mental probe.
Never tell Josh you have mental probes. I chuckle at myself.
I form my arrow again, painting the tip blue, the color of Josh’s eyes, instead of silver. This gives me something more to focus on, something tied directly to Josh. I mentally compose the remainder of the arrow, and send it gently towards Josh’s mind.
Using the Spectrum to guide the arrow makes it much easier to connect with Josh. I feel the tip of the arrow pass through the protective barrier of his energy field. There’s no distinct popping sensation this time. However, it does feel like I’ve entered a man-cave where the TV is turned up on high volume.
I must have twitched, because Hunter’s hand clenches quickly around mine. I squeeze back, trying to let him know I’m okay.
“Josh? Can you here?”
“Yes. This is so freaky, Fin!” he says this out loud, letting the whole room know I’m talking to him mentally.
The gasps, grunts, and snorts almost pull me out of concentrating on Josh’s mind, but I hold it together, barely.
I feel the volume dim, like shutting a connecting door. You can still hear that something’s going on, but it becomes more indistinct murmurings, instead of words, sentences, and phrases.
I refocus my concentration, and realize that I can change the volume of what I’m hearing just by imagining a volume knob and turning it.
“This is so crazy. I really don’t want Finley to be able to see in my head. This is freaking me out. What if she finds out about…” The thought ends abruptly, like someone hitting the mute button on a TV.
I try my best to dig around in his brain, but everything except his highest level of conscious thought is locked away.
Wondering if this is limited to Josh, I pull back from his brain. Gently shutting the door, removing the arrow, and patching up the disturbance in his energy field, I shift my gaze to Brian.
“Brian, can I try with you?” I manage to get out, trying to hold focus while using the Spectrum is taxing my brain power.
“I guess. No sharing what you find in there though.” His chuckle sounds a little raspy, his discomfort obvious.
I change the tip of the arrow, making it a darker blue than Josh’s, and send it floating towards his mind. His Spectrum has always been a more saturated blue than Josh’s. I’m not sure why, but I can tell them apart by using nothing but their Spectrum colors. Brent’s has more of a green base.
Since I’ve never healed Brian, even on a small scale, I want to make sure I can get into his mind without hurting him, or do any lasting damage to his energy field. I take a couple of moments to study the ebb and flow of colors of Brian’s Spectrum, concentrating on the top of his head.
There don’t seem to be any holes, weaknesses, or places where he’s not protected. While this is great for his life and functioning, it doesn’t really help me with my mission right now.
Shifting my mental focus to my own energy, I try to match the colors and rhythm of my own Spectrum to that of Brian’s protective field. It takes what feels like an hour, but in reality is probably a couple of minutes, and I am able to merge with Brian’s Spectrum. Not blending in with his, but able to match it enough that I pass through the first layer.
“Finley…
” Brian’s voice wavers, sharing his trepidation.
“I’ve got it under control. I’m not in yet, just trying something new,” I try to reassure him.
I make sure to keep my energy from being consumed by Brian’s. I feel like I’m going through an obstacle course in the dark. Constantly running into things, while still trying to make it to the other side of the room. Preferably without losing myself in the process.
I take another deep breath, and hone my energy down into the tip of a needle.
“Stop, Finley. Whatever you’re doing, it’s making me sick.” Brian’s voice isn’t wavering anymore. Now it’s full of frightened anger drenched in nausea.
“Okay. Give me a second to pull out,” I tell him calmly.
I let my energy ease back out into it’s original form, slowly separating it from Brian’s pattern and rhythm. I hear a quiet plop in my head when I finally remove myself from Brian’s energy field, like dropping olives into a drink.
I take a couple more moments to inspect Brian’s Spectrum carefully. I want to make sure there’re no noticeable changes in his color pattern. Except for the change of colors signally his fear, anxiety, and nausea, everything is back to normal.
I pull my energy back, tucking it away where it belongs. I’ve always imagined that my energy field looks like a full-body sleeve—only on the inside.
I do an energy check on myself.
All systems go.
I collapse into Hunter’s side, his arms arranging me in a reclined position over his lap, my head and back supported by a pillow and the arm of the sofa. His arm drapes over my waist, hugging me to him.
I’m more than exhausted, I’m about to pass out. I haven’t expended that much energy since I healed Josh.
I can hear people talking to me, but I can’t quite make my mouth work. I feel a couple of grunts rumble through my chest right before I slip into the waiting, quiet blackness.
Chapter Twenty
The rush of frantic voices brings me up through layers of darkness, pulling my eyelids open.
The first thing I see is concern etched into Hunter’s handsome face. His brows puckered, the corners of his eyes pinched. I reach up, although my arm feels like it’s lined in lead, and brush my fingers through his hair, resting it against his cheek.
For a brief second, relief suffuses his features. He closes his eyes, and pushes his face into my hand. Turning, he plants a soft kiss in my palm.
My heart aches, and butterflies take flight in my stomach. Even though my body feels like it weighs a million pounds, I also feel light as a feather.
I’ve never been able to focus on one person to such a degree that everything else fades away. Something about Hunter pulls my focus, making him the one I concentrate on, the one whose smiles I want to see, the one whose tears I want to take away. I want to share every part of myself with him, and to learn every possible thing about him in turn.
“You’ve really got to stop passing out on me. I’m not sure I can handle it,” he whispers to me, a slight quaver in his voice.
“You’re really good at catching me though.” A huge yawn fills my mouth.
His laughter makes me smile, and breaks up the worried voices in the room with us.
“She’s awake,” Mom calls, her fingers brushing through my hair.
“How long was I out?” I ask Hunter.
Mom beats him to the punch, “Only about ten minutes, but we were about to call a doctor.”
“Because the doctor who took care of me in the hospital wasn’t good enough?” I chuckle. I feel Hunter’s hard abs pushing against my arm with his laughter.
She softly slaps my shoulder. “You know what I mean. Don’t sass me right now,” she scolds me, a smile pulling on her mouth.
“I’ll try to work on that, Mom. I love you.”
“Oh, nugget, I love you too.” She leans down, kisses my forehead, “So very, very much.”
“Nugget, if you think you can, could you tell us what happened?” Dad asks. I just now realize my feet are in his lap, his warm hands rubbing up and down over my shins.
“I’ll give it a shot.” I move to sit up, only to be restrained by Hunter’s arms.
“You can talk from this position. I don’t want you moving too much after you lost consciousness.” His lips quirking, he adds, “Doctor’s orders.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I see Mom blow him a kiss.
I wonder what other kind of orders he would give me, and I would gladly take. I can feel the heat touch my cheeks and ear tips.
Hunter’s soft groan is cut off quickly.
“Don’t even think about it, Fin,” Josh says from across the room, a scowl on his face.
“What? I didn’t even do anything,” I pout at him.
“I know what you were going to say. And no, I didn’t read your mind. I just know you really well.” He shakes his finger at me, his scowl lightening to a glare.
“Don’t tell me what to do.” I sulk, crossing my arms under my boobs. Considering they’re already in my face right now, trying to cross my arms over my chest would prove distracting.
“Children.” Dad’s tone cuts through our childish antics. Another trip to middle school.
“Fine.” I try to clear my throat, but end up choking. Mom brings me a cup of water with the straw I used for the coffee stain painting, cleaned.
After taking a couple of swallows, I give explaining another shot.
“I was able to get into Josh’s mind.” I see his wince, and the commiserating slap on the back he received from Brian. “I wasn’t able to get anything but highest-level thought—something you would have shared, had you been talking. I wasn’t able to ‘dig’ around,” making little air quotes, “so you don’t have to worry about that. You were able to stop a thought, and it was like it just disappeared. You were in the middle of thinking it, and then…poof…gone. You were hoping I didn’t find out about something.” I quirk an eyebrow at him. “Care to share?”
“Of course not. That’s why I didn’t share it in the first place. I don’t even know what you’re talking about. I could feel you like a…cloud, for lack of a better word…just hanging in my mind,” he explains, his own pout in full view. He’s clearly not happy that I could even get into his mind, let alone that I almost found out something he didn’t want me to know.
“What happened with me?” Brian asks. “I didn’t feel you moving around the whole time, but when I told you to leave, it felt like you were using a chisel and were trying to chip away at my brain. It was agonizing, and it freaked me out.” Brian’s voice wavers slightly in what sounds like anger.
“Well, I knew since I haven’t ever healed you—even a little baby boo-boo—that getting into your mind would mean I had to find a way past your energy field. Everyone has one, and that’s what I see when I look at people through the Spectrum.” I take another drink of water.
“Yours is a darker blue than Josh’s—his matches his eye color. I had to manipulate my own energy to match yours. Mine runs on a more purple frequency, so it took me what felt like forever to match up to yours,” I tell them all. I’m gauging faces to see if everyone was still following along.
“I noticed that your body temperature changed pretty suddenly,” Hunter adds.
“Really?”
He nods. “Yeah, your skin got really hot for a second or two, and then went back to normal.”
“I didn’t notice.” I shrug my shoulders. Something else for me to figure out. “Anyway, I had to match my energy pattern to yours. Once I did that, I was able to pass through the outermost layer of your energy field. I didn’t want to take the time to have to slowly filter my way through all of your layers, so I mentally changed my energy into the size and shape of the tip of a needle, thinking that would speed my progress through your field. That’s when you asked me to stop; just as I had changed the shape of my energy,” I tell Brian.
Everyone looks a little slack-jawed. I guess I haven’t really ever explained all of
the intricacies as I understand them with anyone else. And certainly not in a setting where I felt like a teacher.
“And you can all stop looking at me like that. I know I’m a weirdo, but I’m not that much of a freak.” I cringe, wanting to disappear. Another novel sensation. I’ve never felt the need to apologize or hide who I am from my family. I really don’t like this feeling.
“Sorry, nugget. We don’t think you’re a freak. I’m just so surprised that you have this whole library of knowledge, and I feel like you’ve never shared any of it with us before. It’s a bit of an adjustment,” Dad says gently.
“So, moral of the weirdo’s story,” Josh’s starts, blowing me a kiss, “is that she can not only get into my mind, but she can hear my thoughts.”
“I can get into your mind, but I can’t go looking around. It’s like looking into a room, unless something is in there when I look, I can’t see what it is,” I try to explain. I can’t imagine it’s very comfortable knowing someone could get into his head. I know I wouldn’t like it if someone could do it to me.
“And it took a lot of effort to go looking at empty rooms. Unless there’s a life or death emergency, I’m not going to go looking around in anyone’s head. I have enough stuff in my own to worry about, let alone go perusing through someone else’s.” I shake my head.
“It seems that something about your healing Josh changed him enough that your energy can get through his field easier than with someone you haven’t healed,” Mark lays it out.
“Yeah. Almost like my healing Josh made me a key to get through his field. But I don’t have a key to anything but the front door.” I try to break it down again, give everyone an analogy they can wrap their heads around.
“And because you haven’t healed Brian, you have no key. You could try to sneak in, but from what I observed, it took quite a bit of your own resources.” Mark indicates me reclining over Hunter and dad.
“I would agree with that.” I nod at him.
“I hate to change the subject, but something was just said that brought it my mind. I don’t want to offend anyone, but what is happening with Cynthia?” Mom asks almost timidly.
