Reluctant Psychic

by Dima Zales

  Was running a miscalculation? Are they like dogs who chase whatever runs because the mere act of running marks one as their prey?

  Well, I always have the option of pulling a cat on them—standing my ground in a scary enough way where they start wondering why they chased me at all.

  If only I had a gun.

  No matter.

  I’ll save the cat strategy for the same situation as the felines do—in case I’m cornered.

  A half-baked plan forms in my head, and I run down the escalator, dodging people on the way as I exit toward Battery Park.

  The b-hive follows me, and is actually catching up, despite both girls running in high heels.

  I get onto a jogging path and run toward my destination—a secluded gazebo that is Rose’s favorite spot.

  The hope is that she and Vlad are there and can help me out.

  A bicyclist nearly rams into me but swerves just in time.

  I speed up and almost knock over a little girl on a skateboard.

  I glance back. The b-hive have tossed their high heels aside and are gaining on me faster.

  Making a sharp turn through the perfectly manicured shrubs, I sprint down the grassy patch that leads to my destination.

  For a second, I wonder if they didn’t see me get off the road, but then a rustle of the shrubs behind me bursts that bubble.

  At no point do I see any hint of Rose and Vlad—which is bad. But they may be inside. Or, since the gazebo has two entrances, they might’ve just come out of the side opposite me.

  As I approach the gazebo, I push my muscles to the max.

  My heart is hammering in my chest.

  I dive for the entrance.

  Rose and Vlad are not here.

  Crap. Hopefully, I can catch them on the other side.

  I sprint there, but hear panting right behind me.

  I turn and see Ashley/Maddie about to catch me.

  She sneers and looks behind me.

  I follow her gaze.

  Roxy is entering the gazebo on the other side—sandwiching me between the two of them.

  Sounds like it’s time for that cat strategy now.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” I give Roxy a scathing glare. “Did you not learn your lesson the last time?”

  I reach into the back of my pants—as though for a gun.

  They follow the movement of my hands with their eyes but don’t back away.

  When I don’t produce an actual gun, Roxy’s mouth curves in a predatory smile, and she starts to strip at an impressive speed.

  I pivot toward Ashley/Maddie and find her already naked.

  This is my chance.

  Is tackling a naked teen easier than a dressed one?

  If I were in their shoes, I’d feel vulnerable—but they look anything but that.

  A flash of energy tells me it’s too late.

  They’ve both turned into wolves.

  With a sinking feeling, I back away.

  Both beasts show me their teeth, and Roxy leaps at me.

  Chapter Five

  I jump to the side, and Roxy’s crushing teeth clank right next to my ankle.

  There’s some kind of movement behind the wolves, but I focus on dodging Ashley/Maddie’s attempt to chomp on my knee.

  Roxy momentarily puts her weight on her haunches, then leaps.

  A pale hand snaps Roxy from the air by her neck, like a kitten, and at the exact same time, a booted foot pins down the second werewolf’s tail.

  “Is this how ladies behave?” Vlad growls, his perfect features transforming from brooding to furious.

  Rose shows up behind Vlad, pointing each of her index fingers at her lover’s captives.

  Blinding streams of energy smack into them, and with another flash, the wolves turn back into naked teens.

  Vlad removes his foot from Ashley/Maddie’s butt, but keeps holding on to Roxy’s neck, seemingly oblivious to her state of undress. “Did your father put you up to this?” he asks her sternly.

  Suddenly finding herself in Vlad’s hold must be too overwhelming for Roxy’s tiny brain, because she just stands there, gaping at him, then at Rose, then at me.

  Finally twisting out of Vlad’s grasp, she crosses her arms to cover herself. “What does my father have to do with anything?” she petulantly asks.

  “He and Sasha have a history.” Vlad’s voice is hard. “You’re not a good enough actress to pretend you know nothing about that.”

  “But I don’t.” Roxy’s arrogance appears shattered so badly I almost feel sorry for her. “He never tells me any—”

  “Who is her father?” I ask, though I can guess based on the context.

  “Chester,” Vlad says, confirming my suspicion. “The former Councilor who—”

  “Oh, I know who that is,” I say and look at Roxy.

  Yes.

  Now that Vlad has pointed it out to me, I can see that Roxy has Chester’s exact cheekbones and chin.

  Except he’s not a werewolf.

  Then I recall our last Orientation lecture.

  Roxy raised her hand when Dr. Hekima asked whose parents are different types of Cognizant. I jokingly thought then that her non-werewolf parent had to be a harpy or the unleashed kraken—and it seems I was close, as Chester is worse than both of those combined.

  Does she have double powers?

  Can she manipulate probabilities like Chester?

  Dr. Hekima said that was rare, but he also said probability manipulators have an edge in that regard.

  Her having Chester’s powers could explain how I had such bad luck bumping into her and Ashley/Maddie.

  Then I recall something else—something Gaius told me before my Rite.

  Chester’s beef with Darian was over a dead wife. A dead werewolf wife who’d committed suicide in response to a prophecy in which she was to be the cause of her daughter’s death. Was Roxy that daughter? Does she know? I hope not. That would mess with any child’s psyche. Maybe I should’ve been nicer to—

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Roxy says, getting her spunk back. “We met at Orientation last week, and when we saw her again, we decided to have some fun.”

  Rose’s smooth forehead folds into a full-blown scowl. “I have the power to prevent you from changing for days, young lady—maybe even weeks if I wish.” She extends her hands toward Roxy, and energy starts to crackle around her fingers.

  Roxy pales, but for whatever reason, gives me a death stare.

  Like Rose’s threat is my fault.

  “Sasha,” Vlad says to me. “You better head home while Rose discusses ladylike behavior with these girls.”

  He doesn’t need to ask me twice.

  Keeping my posture as straight and proud as I can, I walk out of the gazebo and hightail it home.

  By the time I get home, I’m relatively calm. Despite their deadly wolf form, it’s hard to view Roxy and her gang as anything but bratty teens. Plus, I can’t help but feel sorry for Roxy. With her mom’s suicide and Chester as her father, the poor girl is entitled to be a little prickly.

  Fluffster greets me at the door, so I grab him and get some pet therapy as I tell him about what happened.

  When I’m sufficiently relaxed, I decide to give Darian’s teachings another go.

  In order to avoid pausing and re-starting the tape, I re-watch it until I have every step of the meditation committed to memory.

  Recalling my earlier back and leg discomfort, I sit in a chair instead of a lotus pose and close my eyes.

  I do the recommended breathing and slide my awareness around my body until it settles on my “third eye.”

  My mind is now as serene as a Zen monk’s.

  Even if I don’t reach Headspace, this is bound to be good for my stress levels.

  “Back on track,” I remind myself and focus on the third eye again.

  I’m so in the moment that the passage of time becomes hard to track. Floating on a cloud of relaxation, I feel my palms grow warm
.

  So warm they’re almost hot.

  According to what I’ve read, warm palms and feet are classic signs of the “relaxation response”—just as cold appendages are the body’s reaction to stress.

  I keep breathing and empty my mind again.

  My palms are so warm now they feel like they’re on fire.

  Some intuition makes me open my eyes, and I see lightning forming on my palms.

  I gasp.

  Instantly, my autonomic nervous system turns my deep relaxation response into its complete opposite.

  I’m breathing at a hundred miles an hour, my heart pounding against my rib cage.

  All warmth leaves my palms—and the lightning fizzles out.

  My fight-or-flight response doesn’t go away, though. Instead, it goes into overdrive as I realize what the next step of the meditation would’ve been.

  The lightning was going to go into my eyes.

  Chapter Six

  I take in a calming breath, but it doesn’t work.

  The idea of lightning hitting my eyes bothers some primal part of my brain—the place responsible for fear of spiders, falling, and snakes.

  This fear is obviously irrational, and likely made worse by the adrenaline that’s been swimming in my system after the encounter with the b-hive. When I had my first-ever awake vision yesterday, lightning streamed from my palms into my eyes. Felix showed me a video that proves it.

  Unfortunately, merely knowing that the lightning is harmless doesn’t help. I’ve always been sensitive about things going into my eyes. I’ve even refused glaucoma tests after the first, horrific one, choosing to take my chances with the disease.

  Why didn’t Darian say anything about the lightning?

  He sure talked a lot about everything else.

  For that matter, what does he really want? Why is he teaching me?

  I don’t buy the Jubilee gift explanation. I bet it’s all part of some plan of his—a plan that somehow culminates in the two of us together… assuming he didn’t lie about having that vision.

  Either way, that vision is not going to come true—not based on my current levels of annoyance and frustration with him.

  Then an idea comes to me—one that should’ve occurred to me yesterday.

  Worried that I’m too late, I rush to the door to see if the box Darian used to ship me the VCR is still there.

  I exhale in relief.

  The ripped-up box is where I dropped it last night. It’s a good thing my earlier cleanup wasn’t that thorough—or that my roommates aren’t bothered by junk lying in the hallway.

  On the shipping label, right below Darian’s name, is an address.

  Unlike on the tape package—which Darian pretended to mail from the TV studio where he may or may not have worked—this address is on the Upper East Side, a mere forty-minute subway ride away.

  I enter the address into my phone, quickly get dressed, and head out.

  It’s time I asked Darian some very pointed questions.

  Surprise, surprise. Darian’s posh building has a doorman with a long-tailed coat, white gloves, and a hat.

  “Take the elevator to the fourteenth floor,” he tells me when I explain whom I’m here to see. “Let me get that for you.”

  As I follow the man, I nearly jump up and down in excitement. Until this moment, there was a real chance that Darian just put a random address on the package. In that case, the doorman wouldn’t have known who Darian is—but he does.

  Now I have to wonder if Darian put his real address there because he wanted me to come.

  The building has four elevators but one button. The doorman presses the button for me, and the leftmost doors slowly open.

  I get in, press the button for my destination, and the doors close just as slowly.

  Then—just like the other day when I was standing outside Felix’s room—lightning bolts explode in my vision.

  I’m bodiless in a corridor of a posh building.

  Right in front of me is Nero. He’s holding Darian by his throat, easily lifting him off the ground with one hand.

  Nero’s free hand blurs into that morbidly familiar claw I saw yesterday, during the orc massacre.

  In a voice that would be comically deep and guttural under other circumstances, but is chilling in this context, Nero growls, “You knew the orc would bruise her. And what I would do to them as a result. And that she’d walk in on me while I was slaughtering them. And how she’d react.”

  “You wanted to know if she would live if you hired the orcs, and I told you she’d be fine. And she is,” Darian chokes out, his face turning an unhealthy shade of purple.

  Nero’s claw flies for Darian’s chest.

  Darian squeals, and I fully expect bits and pieces of him to fly in every direction.

  But he’s intact.

  Nero’s talons stopped right next to Darian’s shirt.

  “You screamed,” Nero says, and if I had a body, I’d shudder from the cruelty in that deep voice. “Does that mean you didn’t foresee if you’d live or die?”

  “Stop this now,” Darian chokes out, his eyes bulging out of their sockets. “She’s about to step out of that elevator.” His gaze darts to the leftmost doors. “If you kill me now, she’ll see it—and her reaction will be worse this time.”

  Nero can tell if people are telling him the truth, so I have to assume Darian was honest because Nero lets Darian fall, looks at the door in question, and growls, “If you come near her again, you’ll die. If you send her another package, be it another tape, or a vinyl record, or an email, or a DVD, or a fucking carrier pigeon—you’ll die.”

  Darian looks like he’s about to say something, but then there’s a bright flash near his face and he stays silent. Does that mean the seer lightning just hit his eyes, and Darian foresaw what would happen if he talked back?

  Whatever Darian glimpsed in his vision—assuming I didn’t imagine that flicker of lightning—must’ve really impressed him, because he nods his agreement so vigorously there’s a real chance of whiplash.

  “Scram,” Nero snarls.

  Darian turns his back to Nero and stabs the elevator button as if his life depended on the speed of its arrival—which I guess it does.

  The doors of the rightmost elevator open, and Darian jumps in.

  I come back to my senses and look around the elevator car in confusion.

  It must’ve been another awake vision.

  That means Nero and Darian are about to have that conversation.

  I press the fourteenth-floor button forcefully, but that doesn’t seem to improve the crawling speed of the elevator.

  Something occurs to me.

  Just like the last time, the beginning of the vision felt like I had lightning streaming from my hands directly into my eyeballs—and it wasn’t so bad. Next time I do the meditation, I need to remember how unpainful the unsolicited vision was.

  Then again, perhaps it feels different under conscious control.

  After what seems like an hour, the elevator stops.

  Jumping from foot to foot, I press the open-door button, over and over, but the uncaring doors crawl apart at the pace of a drunk snail.

  I leap out of the elevator—and come face to face with Nero.

  “Sasha.” He tilts his head to the side. “What are the chances?”

  “Don’t,” I hiss and jump back into the elevator.

  Pressing the first-floor button as fast as I can, I toggle the close-door button in the hope that the doors slide shut quickly enough to allow me to catch Darian downstairs.

  The doors barely move.

  Nero stares at me, his piercing blue-gray eyes bringing to mind the myths about snakes being able to hypnotize their prey.

  I lift my chin in a wordless challenge.

  His limbal rings seem to visibly thicken, creating the illusion that the dark circles are eating away the whites of his eyes and the irises.

  “You won’t make it,” his eyes appear to say. “And
even if you do, I’ll kill him if he talks to you.”

  “You wouldn’t dare,” my own eyes reply. “If you kill him, I—”

  The doors finally close, stalemating our staring contest.

  The ride down feels even longer than the ride up.

  Can’t the people in this uber-expensive building spring for a better elevator? It might be more useful than a doorman.

  The elevator stops.

  The doors begin to crawl open again.

  In the distance, I see Darian’s back. He’s running out of the building so fast his soles are flashing.

  As soon as I can fit through the crack between the opening doors, I do so—and launch into a sprint.

  The doorman watches me in puzzled fascination.

  Darian is outside, hailing a cab by the time I reach the door.

  I rush out of the building.

  He gets inside the cab.

  I run to catch him, or better yet, to get into the same cab.

  With a screech of tires, the cab jolts forward just as I grab for the door handle.

  Darian stares ahead, refusing to look at me.

  I try to hail a cab, desperate to follow him, but Murphy’s/Chester’s Law is at it again—the next three cabs already have passengers.

  By the time one stops, I lose track of Darian completely.

  “Let’s go home,” I tell the cabby in frustration.

  “And where would home be?” the guy says with a gap-toothed smile.

  I give him my address and sit there sullenly, processing what just happened.

  Nero doesn’t want Darian to train me, or even speak with me. It might be because Nero has plans for me, or because he still sees himself as my Mentor, and Cognizant rules state that it’s a big sign of disrespect to teach someone else’s Mentee.

  Or maybe it has something to do with me telling Nero about the future Darian allegedly foresaw—the one where Darian and I become lovers. But that would imply that Nero is jealous, which would in turn imply that he has human feelings—something that seems farfetched.

  Whatever his reason, Nero has just made sure I can’t ask Darian for any help.