“No!” Adam said. “She’s not who you think she is. She’s my—”
“I don’t care what you do with her, that’s none of my business. I’m just supposed to— Hey!” he said.
Standing where he was, Adam watched in disbelief as the man slowly lowered the arm holding the gun. Truthfully, it looked as though he couldn’t help himself, as though his right arm was being controlled by something outside of himself. When Adam turned to look at Darci, he saw that she had that look of intense concentration on her face that he’d seen before. Last night, he thought. He’d seen her look like that at that old couple when she’d wanted them to move out of “their” booth. What was it she’d said? She was going to apply her True Persuasion to them.
Even as Adam was thinking these things and making these observations, he wondered why he wasn’t making a move. Why wasn’t he leaping forward to take advantage of whatever was causing this man to lower his gun?
But, oddly enough, Adam didn’t feel as though he could move. It was as though his entire body from the neck down had turned into a statue and he was frozen where he was. He could slowly move his neck and look from Darci to the gunman and back again, but he couldn’t seem to move the rest of his body.
After several long moments, Darci, without losing concentration, without taking her eyes off the gunman, slowly walked toward him and took the gun from his hand. She held it by the grip, her hand on the trigger, for all the world looking as though she knew how to use the thing, and she aimed it at the gunman’s head. “Now take off that mask,” she said.
But then Darci sneezed.
And the sneeze broke her concentration. And when her concentration was broken, the hold over both the gunman and Adam was broken. The gunman didn’t try to take the gun from Darci. Instead, he took off running through the woods. “You’re a witch, lady,” he called over his shoulder. “And they can have you!”
It took Adam a couple of crucial moments to recover his senses, both in his mind and his body, then he ran after the gunman. But it was too late. Besides, the man knew the woods and Adam didn’t. As though he’d disappeared in a puff of smoke, the gunman was gone.
Slowly, Adam walked back to Darci. She was sitting on a log, the gun on her lap, and she was white with exhaustion. Her shoulders were shaking, and she looked as though she might pass out at any moment.
Adam knew he should offer her some comfort because, obviously, what she’d just done had drained her. But, for the life of him, Adam couldn’t bring himself to comfort her. Nor could he think of anything to say to her. For one thing, he wasn’t sure about what he’d just seen—and felt. What he’d felt was the most unbelievable. Somehow, Darci had used her mind to paralyze two grown men.
“Your sweater is on backward,” he said after a moment of looking down at her.
“Oh? Is it?” She removed the gun from her lap, set it on the log beside her, then, slowly and carefully, she stood up, pulled her arms out of the sweater, and turned it around.
Adam picked up the gun and held it behind him. “You ready to go?” he asked quietly. “I don’t think we’ll find out any...more.”He added the last because, though he wasn’t yet sure, he thought that, maybe, he’d just found out more than he wanted to know.
He remembered what Helen the psychic had said about Darci: “She’s not what she seems, not what she thinks she is, not what you see her as.” And the psychic had laughed after she’d said it.
Adam walked behind Darci to the car, ready to catch her if she fell, but he didn’t touch her and he didn’t speak. Once she was in the car, she leaned her head back against the seat, closed her eyes, and looked as though she’d fallen asleep. But when Adam got into the driver’s seat, he glanced at her and thought that she was awake but too depleted to speak.
He started the car and pulled onto the highway. Police, he thought. After all, they’d just been held at gunpoint by a masked man. But Adam knew that the police would ask too many questions. What were they doing in the woods before dawn? If they had been in a city, they might get away with the lie of saying they were out for a walk. But in this tiny town he had no doubt that every person knew what they were interested in.
As he drove, Adam glanced at Darci. If he took her with him to the police, if there was an investigation and the man was caught, then what? Would the man tell about what Darci had done to him? Adam knew in his heart that Darci was the person whom the murderer of those young women had been looking for. If they went to the police would that be putting Darci in even more danger?
When they got to Camwell, he parked in front of the grocery store and started to open the car door.
“Are you angry with me?” Darci whispered hoarsely. “I didn’t mean to—”
He put up his hand to cut her off. “How about if I go in and get us some breakfast and we take it back to the guest house? I think that we should have a nice, long talk, don’t you?”
“A talk about you or about me?” she asked with a tired little smile.
“You,” Adam said firmly. “Definitely you. Compared to you, I’m an extremely boring fellow.” He was trying to remain cool and act as though what he’d just experienced was something he’d seen a thousand times. After all, he was a man of the world, wasn’t he? But, truthfully, there was part of him that wanted to get out of the car and run as fast and as far away as he could get. “You don’t set things on fire, do you?” he asked softly, half as a joke but at the same time seriously.
“I haven’t managed to do so with you yet,” she said with such resignation that Adam laughed. And with the laughter, his feelings of, well, creepiness, left him. She was just Darci. She wasn’t a sideshow freak or a character in a horror novel. She was a funny little thing who just happened to have an extraordinary ability.
Smiling, shaking his head in disbelief, he got out of the car, then leaned back in through the window. “I want you to remain in this car while I’m in there. Understand?”
Darci nodded. She was still pale, still listless.
“And I don’t want you to True Persuade anything to anyone. Got it?”
Again she nodded, but she looked so glum that he was beginning to feel sorry for her. Smiling, he said, “Before you arrived, I bought some delicious cinnamon rolls at this store. How about a bag of them, some freshly squeezed orange juice, and milk? What kind of fruit do you want?”
“Something good enough to say thank you to me for saving your life,” she said, but she didn’t look at him.
Adam was taken aback for a moment and started to defend himself, but then he stood up and shook his head in wonder. Maybe she had saved his life. He wasn’t yet sure how she’d done it, but she had, somehow, stopped a gunman. And him. Ms. Darci T. Monroe could use her mind to freeze people in place.
Still shaking his head, still in a state of disbelief, Adam went into the grocery and returned fifteen minutes later with four bags, one full of buns, juice, and milk, and three bags containing one of each fruit the store had.
10
“NOT EVEN FOR CHOCOLATE chiffon pie with raspberries on top of it,” Darci said fiercely, then added, “I saw that in a magazine once. Sounds pretty good, doesn’t it? Think the diner—”
“We can ask,” Adam said, annoyed. “Look, I just want to do one more test and that’s all. I want to see if you can—”
“What?” she snapped. “Talk to animals? Is that what you’re going to ask me next?”
“No, of course not. That’s absurd. You ...you can’t,can you?” Adam asked.
Darci glared at him. “I’m going for a walk. A long walk. By myself.”
“Sounds good,” Adam said cheerfully. “I think I’ll join you.”
“I said I want to be alone.”
Adam gave her a false smile. “The only places you’ reallowed to go alone are to the bathroom and to get on an airplane. And even then I’ll choose your destination. But if you stay here, you stay near me; no walks alone.”
“And to think that I thought you were—”
She decided not to finish that sentence.
“I was what?” he asked as he followed her out the door. “Handsome? Intelligent? What?”
Halting, she looked up at him. “I would have been wrong if I’d thought any of those things, wouldn’t I?”
“We can’t all be oddities, can we?” He’d meant his words as a joke, but the minute he said it, he regretted it.
Without a reply, Darci started walking again, faster. There was a path at the back of the guest house that led in the opposite direction from the slave cabins, and she took it. Adam stayed several feet behind her, not walking with her. The truth was, he needed some time to think about today and what he’d seen and, most important, where they went from here.
It had been only six A.M. by the time they got back to their guest house at the Grove, Adam carrying all four bags of food.
Once they were inside, cautiously, he’d said, “Would you feel better if we went to the police?”
“Sure,” she said with a grimace. “Then we’d spend days answering questions. ‘And how did you escape this man with a gun?’ they’ll ask. ‘Oh,’ you’ll say, ‘my freak of an assistant used—’”
“You want cantaloupe or mango first?” Adam asked, cutting her off.
Darci blinked at him. “Does a mango taste good?”
After that, they’d not talked anymore about the police, through silent mutual agreement.
They’d spread the food on the coffee table; Adam sat on the couch, Darci on the floor. “Now,” Adam said as soon as they were settled, “I want to know exactly what you can do.”
“Why are some grapefruits pink and some yellow inside?” Darci asked. “Have the pink ones been crossed with another fruit, or do you think the growers bred them to be pink because market research showed that buyers like pink grapefruits better?”
“I see,” he said as he bit into a cinnamon roll. “You’re changing the subject. Does this mean that you want me to find out for myself?”
“No,” she said sweetly as she pierced a slice of mango with her fork. “I want to punish you. I’ve been trying to tell you about my True Persuasion ever since we got here, but you’ve smirked and patronized me every time I’ve mentioned it. So now if you want so much as one word out of me, you’re going to have to beg.” At that she bit into the mango. “Oh, my, but this is good. Where do these come from?”
For a moment Adam looked at her in consternation, having no idea what exactly to do. Didn’t she realize that this . . . this “power” of hers had to be part of why the psychic had said Darci could read the mirror? Didn’t she realize how important this discovery was?
Adam opened his mouth to begin his speech, but before the first word was out, he could envision Darci yawning. No, lecturing wasn’t the way to get her to talk.
What was it she’d said? Before she went into ecstasies over a mango, that is? Beg? Is that what she’d said?
With a great groan, as though he were a very old man, Adam got off the couch, then slowly, creakily, went onto his knees on the carpet. He straightened and put his elbows to his side, forearms up, letting his hands dangle in front of him, then he opened his mouth, let his tongue droop out, and he began to pant. “Please tell me,” he said. “Please. I beg you. I beg with . . . with every mango and kiwi that’s ever been grown.”
After her initial shock, Darci began to laugh.
Finally, Adam thought, he had been able to make Darci laugh. He had—at last—made a joke that had not fallen on its face. And it was amazing how good it felt to have caused that smile on her pretty face.
“Please,” he said, pushing his joke further. “Just one ittybitty test. Just one. One test and I’ll listen to every Putnam story you tell me. I’ll even listen about your cousin Vernon.”
“Uncle Vernon, cousin Virgil,” Darci corrected him, “and you might learn something from hearing about Virgil. He’s the one who taught me how to use a gun.”
Adam got off his knees. “Maybe that story would be too much for me,” he said as he took his place on the couch. “So, does everyone in Putnam know about this . . . this . . . thing you can do?”
“People in Putnam are as good at listening as you are,” Darci said instantly.
“Ouch. But then I guess that means that you haven’t had much call to, uh, use it.”
“I have, but nobody noticed.”
Adam blinked at her. “I see,” he said, again trying to sound worldly. But then he thought, Why try to do something he was incapable of ? “No, actually, I don’t see. Are you saying that all your life you’ve been stopping people where they stand and no one noticed?”
Darci reached across the table and speared a slice of mango off Adam’s plate. “Actually, in spite of what you seem to think my life has been like, this was the first time that anyone has ever held me at gunpoint, so I didn’t know that I could make a person freeze.” She paused to chew and swallow. “All I did this morning was think as hard as I could that I wanted that awful man to put that gun down. But at the same time I didn’t want to see you do anything silly, like wrestle him for the gun. That’s all. I thought and it happened.”
“I see.”
“Will you stop saying that!” she said. “You sound like Abraham Lincoln.”
“You haven’t met him, have you?” he asked, eyes wide.
“Was that a joke?”
“I wanted it to be. Unless you can see people from . . . from the beyond. That psychic you met, Helen, she talks to dead people all the time.”
“That’s weird,” Darci said.
Adam started to say, And what you can do isn’t weird? But he decided that the wiser course of action would be not to say that. “Have you explored your abilities?”
She took the last two slices of mango off Adam’s plate. “Why don’t you just come out and say what it is that you want from me and get it over with?”
“I want to see what you can do,” Adam said honestly. “Would you mind very much if I made a few experiments?”
Darci paused with a slice of mango on the way to her mouth. “You mean like rats in a lab?”
“No,” he said slowly. “More like....”His head came up.“Like the first friend you’ve ever had who’s noticed that you can do something extraordinary and he wants to know all about it. All about you.”
As Darci sat there blinking at him and considering this, he could see her defiance melting away. “Okay,” she said softly. “What do you want to do to me?”
At first Adam had no idea what he did want to do or find out about. He wasn’t even sure about what he wanted to know. Actually, psychic abilities and paranormal experiences were not something he’d ever been interested in. Some of his cousins loved ghost stories, but they’d never interested Adam. The only reason he was interested in recovering the mirror was because of his parents. And because—
“All right,” Adam said slowly, searching his mind for what kind of test to give her. “First I’ll. . . . I know! You write something on a piece of paper, turn it over, then use your mind to see if you can make me do what’s on the paper. I want to see if you can make people follow your instructions.”
“I like that idea,” Darci said enthusiastically as she picked up a pad and pencil off the side table.
“No sex,” Adam said.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Don’t act innocent with me, Ms. Monroe. Don’t you write on that paper that you want me to take you to bed and spend the whole day making love to you. Or even that I should kiss your neck and—”
Darci was smiling at him in a way that threatened to make him blush. “Never entered my mind,” she said. “But it obviously entered yours. Never let it be said that I interrupted a man. Kiss my neck, then what?”
“I’m not sure this particular activity is such a good idea,” Adam said, looking away.
“Oh, no, you wanted to do this, so we’re going to do it. You can’t chicken out on me now.” With that she wrote something on the paper, turned it over, then looked at Ad
am with total concentration.
For a moment he couldn’t look away from her, but then, he thought, I don’t like these experiments, and I think they should stop. Maybe it was better that he didn’t know what she could do.
Wanting to give himself some time to think, he got up and went to the refrigerator. “You want a soda?” he asked.
“Sure. Seven-Up.”
Still thinking, trying to decide if he wanted to pursue this or not, absently, Adam took a bag of pretzels from the basket of snacks the hotel had left in the room, the two cans of soda, then took them back to the coffee table. But as soon as he got there, he realized that Darci would want her drink in a glass with ice. For a country girl, she certainly had some genteel ways, he thought. As he got a glass and ice and poured her drink, he kept thinking that maybe he should forget the entire project.
“All right?” he asked as he set her drink on the table. “I was just thinking that I’m not sure we should do this. In fact, I think—” He broke off because Darci had turned the paper over. It read, Get me a drink, glass, ice, and pretzels, and think about dropping this whole idea.
“Oh.” Adam said as he sat down on the end of the couch. He didn’t know whether to feel foolish, frightened, or elated. She had just made him perform a task. Like a trained monkey, he thought.
But even more astounding, she had used her mind to make him think what she wanted him to think.
“If you keep looking at me like that, I’ll....”Darci didn’t know what to say to complete that threat, but she knew she was very near to bursting into tears.
Adam had to work to get himself under control. He took a deep breath and tried to calm himself. “So why haven’t you used this . . . this power on whomever you owe seven million dollars to?” he asked, amazed that he could even form words. He kept looking at the paper on the table.
Darci began to clear away the breakfast things and talked as she worked. “I did. I got Putnam to pay for all my schooling.”
“So you owe him? Putnam? Your fiancé?”