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We’re both quiet for a moment as I compose myself.
“I’d just had enough, and then bam, Penn. Looking back, I’m pretty sure he used his mojo on me, but some of the things he said made sense.”
“Like what?”
“Like people could only hurt me if I let them. They only had power over me if I allowed it. Nobody owed me anything, so in the end, the question became less about other people and more about myself. Could I live with the decisions I had made? The answer to that was yes. My pain came from other people’s actions, not my own, and by taking my life, I was giving them all the power. So I took it back. I stopped going out of my way to help people. If I had a vision and I thought I could make a difference in the outcome, I’d say something. But sometimes I know I’m not there to change the future—just witness it for some reason.”
I think about the woman from the diner, knowing she falls into that category.
“I live a quiet life now, and I keep to myself. I never want to feel like I did that day again.”
“And then Penn came back,” she whispers.
I nod, looking at her. “I don’t know how he found me. I was a different girl, living a different life. But he walked up to my door and knocked like he visited every day. He told me about you—about what you could do. He said—” I snap my mouth shut. I hadn’t planned on telling her the next part. She looks at me warily, like I’ve wounded her, so I give in.
Fuck it. “He said there were others like me. Others like us out there. That I wasn’t alone and that we were all struggling to find our way in a world that both revered and loathed us.”
Her mouth drops open at that.
“You’re surprised?”
“You weren’t? I mean, I knew about my family and Penn, and then you came along, so I figure there might be a few others. But you’re making it sound like there’s a lot more than that.”
“I don’t know how many there are, but I doubt it’s too many. Think about how hard it is to hide those parts of you. Now imagine if there were thousands of us living around the world with strange and often uncontrollable powers. It would get out eventually.”
“Maybe it does? We all see these bizarre stories in the news that we write off as crazy. Maybe there’s an element of truth in all of them.”
“Maybe not all of them. I read about a woman giving birth to an octopus yesterday. There are some things I really need to remain fiction.”
She giggles, breaking the tension.
“Anyway, as Penn was leaving, he grabbed my hand, and the vision of you flashed in my head.”
She swallows before looking at me. “But how did you know it was me?”
“I didn’t. Penn did. His gift somehow enabled him to see what I was seeing.”
She frowns before shaking her head. “He’s powerful. I knew that as a child, but that’s not the nature of Penn’s gift. Unless he has developed a new one over the years, then that’s not something he can do.”
“Well, he must have because he saw the same thing I did, which is why he told me I had to find you,” I tell her, feeling somewhat defensive because I’m not lying.
“I’m not explaining this properly. I believe Penn saw what you did. I just don’t think it was Penn’s power that allowed you to share the vision. It was yours.”
I shake my head right away. “I’ve never been able to share my visions with anyone before.”
She looks away again, tense once more. “When I heal, I push energy into the person I’m helping. I have to be careful that I don’t drain myself, though. If I give too much, then I don’t have enough natural defenses left to heal myself. Penn showed me something else about my gift, something I knew nothing about. He said there is a duality to all gifts. He was born with the ability to read other people’s emotions, but he figured out how to manipulate them too.”
“Motherfucker. I knew he mojoed me!”
She cracks a smile at that before continuing. “He taught me that I could do something similar. Instead of pushing energy into a person, I can draw it out.”
She lets that hang in the air as I realize what she’s saying. Her voice cracks as she continues, “I can draw someone’s life force into me. It charges me up like a battery, and then I can pass that energy into someone else if I need to. It’s not something I do lightly. It terrifies me, that feeling of being full of power. I can easily understand how corruptible it could be.”
“I don’t know you that well, Salem, but you’re a good person. You radiate kindness. I don’t think you need to worry about the power going to your head. But knowing from experience how people can be, I feel better knowing you have a way to protect yourself that others can’t take away from you.”
She slumps in relief. I guess she expected me to paint her out to be the monster she clearly believes herself to be.
"I hope you know I would never judge you for who you are or what you can do." She looks at me with hope in her eyes. “There are enough people out there willing and waiting to hate us for the things we can do. Don’t be one of them too.”
