“Stay out of my head,” she said.
I gaped at her.
“I didn’t—”
“You just did. I felt it,” she said. “It’s rude, and I don’t like it.”
Could I have done that?
“Is he tall with frizzy hair and glasses?” I asked.
“Yes.”
The image in my head must have come from her, because I’d never seen him. Now that I thought of it, I’d gotten flashes like that all my life. I thought everyone got them, that they were just ideas or intuition. How many had been my own thoughts, and how many had I stolen from other people? I’d been a cerebral peeping-Tom. How many other things did I do that were abnormal that I didn’t even know about?
I put my elbows on the table and my face in my hands.
“I’m sorry, Aunt Tibby. I didn’t mean to. I can’t control this thing. I just want it to go away.”
A short bark of brittle laughter escaped her.
“No you don’t, child. That’s like saying you want your lungs to go away because you have the hiccups or your eyes to go away because they burn and won’t focus right. Being virago is a part of you—it’s a part of everyone, just not as strong.”
“It’s ruining my life.”
“Only because you’re fighting it. To lose it is a sort of half-death. Trust me—you don’t want to find out what that’s like. Why do you think I look so old? I age faster now that it’s gone.”
I looked up at her. She gazed at the twirling glass again.
“But you still have it—pieces of it, you said.”
“It’s like losing part of your hearing or part of your vision. What’s left of it is sporadic and damaged. It comes to me at night sometimes when I dream of,”—she took a deep breath—”of Sarkis. Then, sometimes it comes in a huge wave, and I can feel and hear everything—everything in the world it seems, and I can’t think because so many other people and things are in my brain thinking and feeling.”
The glass of tea shook as she raised it to her lips.
“I just want to be normal, like everyone else,” I said.
She laughed.
“There are no normal people. Haven’t you ever looked into their thoughts? They all have secrets. They all have abnormalities. You’d be surprised how many have crazy relatives living in the woods.”
Her eyes met mine and crinkled with a sad humor.
“It’s so wonderful to talk to someone about this,” I said. “Someone who knows. I can’t talk to people very well. I’m afraid something will slip, and they’ll know I’m a freak. If they’re high-energy people, I absorb from them. If they’re low energy, they wind up hanging around me because they mysteriously feel better. I think they absorb the energy I throw off.”
“I remember those times,” Tibby said. “Low energies can’t absorb and store like we can, but they can . . . oh, I don’t know, what would you call it?”
“Collect?” I said.
She snapped her fingers.
“Yes, that’s it exactly. It’s like they collect it on their skins, but it evaporates as soon as they’re not around us for a while.”
She stared at nothing, as if lost in memories.
“There was a girl named Bunny when I was a kid,” she said. “She was big and slow, and she had the lowest energy of anyone I’ve ever met. She would find me no matter where I was and follow me around like a shadow. I’d hide from her, but she could always find me. It was like in her own way, she could sense me.”
Tibby’s eyes focused back from the memory and a frown formed in the deep wrinkles around her mouth.
“I hadn’t thought of that in years. I wonder what happened to her.”
The lack of electricity and people made this piece of wilderness a haven of low natural energy. I was still relatively calm, but a slight tremor now shook my hand as I reached for my tea. Blaming it on the caffeine, I pushed the tea aside and tried to catch up with the conversation.
“So, you’ve never gone back home?” I asked.
“No. When I escaped Sarkis, I just ran. I wound up here. I thought it was by accident until I met Daniel Risingmoon.”
“Who?”
She stood and hobbled over to the sink.
“Daniel was a Blackfoot and a medicine man of sorts. He said he felt me in his dreams and called to me. He used to call me Broken Star.”
“Used to?”
“He died a few years ago. He was in his fifties when I came to him, and that was ages ago.”
She looked around the cabin and waved her arm once through the air.
“He built this place for me, instructed his family that they were to let me live here as long as I wanted.”
She laughed.
“They will, too,” she said. “They’re afraid he’ll come back to haunt them if they don’t. He called me here and patched me up physically and mentally as best he could—heck, as best as anyone could have. He saved me. Although, sometimes I wonder what good it did. I’ve been hiding out here ever since, with my books and the trees and the nothingness. Daniel used to bring me books. He knew I loved to read. Now his family brings them, like offerings, and leaves them on the front porch.”
She turned, parted the curtain above the sink and peeked out. After she let the curtain drop back, she rubbed both her upper arms.
I rubbed my own tingling arms, absent-mindedly watching her.
“What did Sarkis do to you? How did he find you?” I asked.
She shuffled back to the table and sat.
“Oh, you know, people gossip. They talked about the witch of Duncan, Oklahoma, who could move things and read minds. There’s a military base in Lawton not too far from Duncan. A lot of boys I went to school with wound up there trying to escape farming. I figure that’s where he heard of me.
“He showed up at the house one day in a big Cadillac. Made me feel like I was special—not a freak or a witch. He said he could teach me to be powerful, and in turn I could be the key to teaching others how to do what I did.
“I was twenty-one, and he was in his thirties and so smart. I guess I was a little smitten with him. He was the first person to ever treat me like I was important. I left with him, and at first it was all right—even fun sometimes. He worked with me to build my abilities.”
“What kind of abilities?” I asked.
“Telekinesis, telepathy, precognition. Telekinesis was the easiest for me. Precognition was pretty hit and miss. Telepathy is easy with some people, but impossible with others, and all sorts of things can block or interfere with it.”
“So what happened?” I rubbed the small hairs at the nape of my neck to stop them from standing on end.
“Well, after about a year or so, he had me try to train other people, but I couldn’t. It was like teaching deaf-mutes to speak French. You could give them theory until the cows came home, but if they couldn’t physically do it, they couldn’t do it. That’s when he changed.”
“Sarkis?”
“Yes. The war in Vietnam was just about over and government funding was drying up. He started running tests on me that were much more invasive than before. I couldn’t read him, I never could, but I sensed a desperation about him whenever we talked.”
She stared at a spot over my right shoulder, lost in her memories, and from the look on her face, they weren’t happy ones.
“Then it happened.”
“What happened?”
“He gave me a vitamin shot first thing one morning. There was nothing odd about that. I got them all the time. I burned more calories and nutrients than most people when I used my powers.”
I thought of my Gatorade habit and nodded.
“But this shot was different. I got really tired and fell asleep. I woke up in a recovery room with bandages on my head and one hell of a headache.”
“He’d operated on you?” I fought not to let my mouth gape and rubbed my arms again. They were tingling more by the minute. I scanned the cabin and checked the windows sure someone was watching me.
“He said I had a stroke and he had to operate to save my life. Like I said, I couldn’t read his thoughts. Most of the time, there was a strange static that blocked me. I suspect now it was because he was crazy. But I read from a few of his men that it was exploratory surgery. I never had a stroke, or at least I hadn’t before the surgery. I might have had one during or right after, because my powers were all wrong when I woke up.”
“But why did he do it?”
“I think he went in to see how my brain did what it did, and he broke the golden egg he was looking for. When I caught thoughts from the orderlies that Sarkis planned to operate again, I escaped. He knew my abilities were damaged and it gave him hope because he knew what part of my brain he’d damaged, so he figured that’s where the powers stemmed from.”
“How did you escape?” I shrugged my shoulders up to my neck to try to ease the tension and warmth radiating from the base of my skull.
“I pretended I hadn’t recovered. They had to push me around in a wheel chair. They sent a small woman to take me for my daily visit above ground outside. Most of the complex was underground. When we got outside, I knocked her out and ran. I didn’t even know where I was going. I just took off. I stole a truck and drove to a town and stole a car. Then I ditched that and hitchhiked. Daniel was waiting for me at a little truck stop about a hundred miles north of Vegas. He knew I was coming.”
“How did he know?” I rubbed the back of my neck. It felt like it was on fire.
“He knew because he’d called me there. He’d been in my mind the whole trip, guiding me. I just hadn’t realized it.”
She rubbed her neck, too, and looked around the room as if confused. Then her eyes snapped to mine wide with fear.
“Oh my God! You have the tingling, too. They’re coming.” She jumped from the chair and grabbed my arm. Her eyes locked on mine.
“Did you bring or lead anyone here?”
“What?”
She shook my arm. “Just tell me, yes or no. I’ll know if you’re lying. That I can still do.”
I looked around the cabin.
“No. I didn’t.”
The image of four men flashed in my mind. They were in a car traveling down a dirt road—Aunt Tibby’s dirt road. One of them was Mr. Smith.
I shot to my feet, toppling my chair.
“We need to run,” I said.
“No,” she said. “No time. I could never outrun them.”
She hobbled to the center of the floor and lifted the rug. She stomped on a board and a section of the wood flooring popped up. Her fingers pried under the lifted section of wood until it opened.
“Come on.” She waved me over.
I ran to her. She’d uncovered a small, dirt-lined space under the cabin floor.
“It’s not large enough for both of us,” I said.
“Get in, child.”
“No. I—”
She grabbed my arm and with surprising strength, yanked me into the hole.
“You’re my legacy, my blood. I won’t let them do to you what they did to me.”
Tires crunched gravel outside the cabin. She pushed my head down, forcing me into the tiny space.
“Lay back and don’t make a sound,” she said.
I laid down on the dirt, face up with my hands over my ribs like a mummy. She slammed the section of floor over me, and through the cracks in the boards, I saw the rug sweep back into place. My world constricted to darkness and sound and the smell of musty earth.
The back door opened but didn’t close. Seconds later, the front door splintered and heavy footsteps rushed in.
“Shit, where the hell are they?”
“The back—”
Footsteps pounded through the cabin, sending bits of dirt into my face. The footsteps continued out the back door. Seconds later, they returned through the back door, but there were fewer feet than before. A thump and my aunt’s cry of pain sounded directly above me.
“Bastards,” she yelled.
“Where is she?”
“Who? I’m the only one here. Ow!”
“Marlena Burns, your niece. Where is she?”
“You mean you didn’t come for me? I’m crushed.”
“I’ll crush ya.”
My aunt’s scream brought tears to my eyes, and I pressed my lips together to keep from echoing it.
“Deke, knock it off. We’re taking her back, too, and the doc won’t like it if she’s damaged.”
“Look, old lady, we know she’s here. Her car’s out front.”
“Those are both my cars. Ow.”
“Try again. The Ford’s her rental. It has her bag in it. One more time, lady, and then I tell the good doctor you were dead when we got here. Where is she?”
My aunt laughed.
“She’s gone and you filthy bastards won’t find her. She can twist your minds so you’ll look right through her.”
“Bullshit.”
Tibby laughed again. “Okay go look for her. Knock yourselves out.”
“Then we’ll just have to convince her to show. She’s a bleeding heart. She won’t want to see her loving aunt hurt.”
More movement from above and more dirt in my face, and my aunt’s grunts sounded slightly farther away. They’d stood her up.
“You’re not taking her,” my aunt said in a low, calm voice, “and you’re not taking me.”
More scuffling and now shouts.
“Deke, watch your gun!”
“Don’t—”
A shot exploded and I jumped. The sickening thud of a body hitting the floor rattled the boards above me.
“Shit, the crazy bitch shot herself.”
One of the voices neared the floor.
“She’s still breathing, but I don’t think she’s going to make it.”
Two other sets of footsteps pounded into the room.
“What the—”
“Did you find her?”
“No. It’s like she just disappeared. What happened? Doc’s gonna be pissed you shot her.”
“I didn’t. She shot herself, and Doc doesn’t have to know. We find the other bitch and say this one was already dead.”
“But we can’t see her.”
“What the hell’s he talking about?”
“She shields herself, but she can’t sustain it forever, and she can’t stay out there forever. Her car, tickets, backpack—everything is here.”
My stomach heaved, and I bit my lips together to keep from screaming or crying. My breath came in ragged gasps. I had to do something.
“She’s not coming back,” my aunt said in a weak voice directly above me. “She knows her way out of these woods. Her friends will pick her up.”
“Friends?”
Tibby laughed but it was weak. “You don’t think she came with no one to back her up, do you? She’s not stupid.”
My own physical condition crept into my awareness. At first, I’d been too wrapped up in what was happening in the cabin to pay attention, but now the small space and stress made themselves known.