“This,” said Sunlight, “is the larger world.”
Dana felt the room spinning, and she placed her hands flat on the table to keep herself from spilling and tumbling away. Corinda, seeing her distress, took one of Dana’s hands in both of hers.
“It’s scary now,” she said, “but the more you travel in the world of spirits, the less frightening it gets. After a while it’s so much sweeter and safer than the physical world.”
“How can any of this be real, though?” said Dana, almost pulling her hand away.
Sunlight answered that. “Reality itself is unreal. Reality is a perception. We each see the world in a certain way, and that is real to us, but we don’t all see it in the same way.”
“How’s that possible? I see this table, these teacups, this bunch of grapes, and even if you didn’t and I drew a picture of it, you’d see what I saw.”
“We’d share your perception of it,” he said. “And our perceptions greatly overlap. Sometimes we share a perception of a thing and there is an agreement on the soul level that this is how we will both remember it, because it allows us to communicate without needless complication. Humans do this all the time. It’s one of the ways in which we communicate on the purely physical plane, but it is not the only way.”
“What do you mean?”
“Our minds are evolving faster than the physical form,” said Sunlight. He picked up a strawberry and studied it for a long moment before continuing. “Organic matter has limitations imposed on it, but the mind and the soul do not. They have the potential to expand and transform at exponential rates. Not for everyone, though, and not at the same rate of speed. What people call psychics or intuitives or spiritualists are those who have embraced this change to various degrees, and who, through practices such as yoga, meditation, and other forms of enrichment, encourage their own spiritual evolution.”
Corinda raised a hand. “And some of us hear the change calling, so we come a-runnin’.”
Sunlight gave her a fond, tolerant smile and then took a bite from the strawberry. He did it slowly, savoring the taste, and then licked a drop of juice from his lip. Dana had to force herself to look away, especially since she was aware that Sunlight understood the effect he had on her. And, she thought, on every other female creature on the planet.
“I don’t feel like I’m evolving,” she said. “I feel more like I’m being mugged by what’s going on in my head.”
“Maybe,” said Sunlight, “that’s because you are.”
She blinked. “What?”
“I see your aura, I can see the shape and color and texture of your soul, and I can read its frequency. Do you know what I see when I look at you?”
All she could do was shake her head.
“I see power,” he said. “Don’t look so surprised. You are a very powerful person, Dana Scully, and you have great potential. Your mind is like a furnace, but you’re filled with doubts, and you don’t know what you want to forge in that furnace. Part of you wants to cast armor that you can wear to protect yourself and also hide from the world. Part of you wants to make a sword so you can fight back.”
Dana said nothing, but her mouth was dry as paste.
“And another part of you wants to build instruments of great power and sophistication. Let’s call them a telescope and a microscope. The telescope so you can look beyond the limits of what your eyes can see. There is a vast and complex universe out there, and it is calling to those who can hear, inviting us to watch, to listen, to know. And the microscope because yours is a practical and orderly and very hungry mind, a mind that needs to understand things all the way down to the cellular level.”
“Her eyes are starting to glaze over,” said Corinda with a laugh.
“A bit,” admitted Dana. She drank her tea, which had gotten tepid, and ate more of the grapes but didn’t even taste them. “And, as cool as all this is, it doesn’t help me with what I’m going through.”
“Fair enough,” said Sunlight. “But this is hardly the right atmosphere for anything more precise. I have my own psychic instruments, and they require something closer to a laboratory setting.”
“Which means what?”
He patted her hand. “Let me show you.”
CHAPTER 45
The Chrysalis Room
6:17 P.M.
Sunlight led her through a door in a corner of the café, facing the room used by AA and meditation classes. Dana stepped into darkness as Sunlight closed the door and moved past her, but he did not pull back the heavy curtains. Instead he produced a lighter from his pocket and lit a cluster of short, thick candles. Soon, the air was filled with mingled scents of peppermint, sandalwood, and jasmine.
It was very quiet.
Corinda had walked over to the room with them, but Sunlight had stopped her at the door.
“Thank you,” he said, blocking her from entering. “We’ll be fine. Just have Angelo bring me some of the new incense. I’m running low.”
Dana thought she saw surprise and hurt in Corinda’s eyes. And maybe something else, but the other emotion was there and gone before she could identify it. Now, with the door closed and the candles lit, Dana felt enormously awkward.
“That’s normal,” said Sunlight, as if reading her mind. Or, perhaps, actually reading her thoughts.
“What?” she said, recoiling a half step.
He chuckled. “No, seriously, Miss Scully, I understand that you’re freaked out. I get that a lot. It’s a side effect of being who and what I am.”
“And what is that, exactly?” she asked, still standing by the door. There was a knock that startled her, but then the door opened and Angelo came in with a bundle of incense sticks wrapped in coarse blue tissue paper. He threw a quick look at Dana but said nothing to her.
“Corinda said you wanted this,” he said, handing it to Sunlight. “They delivered it this morning for you.”
“Thank you, Angelo. Close the door on your way out.”
The young man lingered for a moment, then glanced around the room, gave Dana a small nod, and left. When he was gone, Dana repeated her question. “What is it you’re supposed to be?”
“I am a psychic. I’m a very good psychic; I’m very powerful. Corinda would say it’s a gift, and perhaps it is, but so far it has been mostly a pain in the ass. Pardon my language. Let’s call it a ‘quality’ instead. I’ve been like this since I was a boy and it has never gotten easier, never became second nature, never allowed me to fit in. I don’t have to be around people very long before they realize there is something not quite right about me. They’re correct. I’m not ‘right,’ by their definition. I am very different. Because other people react to my difference, I tend to retreat from them. When I was young, my parents took me to doctors and they, of course, dismissed any possibility that I possessed special abilities. Instead they diagnosed me as having ‘social phobia.’” He paused, then added, “It’s nothing new. Hippocrates once described it, and I quote, ‘his hat still in his eyes, he will neither see, nor be seen by his good will. He dare not come in company, for fear he should be misused, disgraced, overshoot himself in gesture or speeches, or be sick; he thinks every man observes him.’”
Dana said nothing, nor did she move away from the door.
“They thought I had this phobia, this social neurosis, because I withdrew from people, but they were quite wrong. I withdrew because I was not one of them. I could not relate to them, and after a while I didn’t want to. What I did want to do was find others with similar qualities. I spent a great deal of my life cultivating my own skills while also seeking out those of my kind.”
“Other psychics?” asked Dana.
Sunlight did not move from where he stood, and the candlelight flickered softly across his face, sculpting and emphasizing his subtle expressions. “Yes. Though even the word ‘psychic’ is imprecise. It may be that we will need to invent a better word for it, but I’ll leave that to linguists. For now I see the world in a kind of black and white. There is them, th
e ones who do not have these qualities, and there is us—we who do possess them.”
Dana nodded. She was still nervous being alone with him, but her trepidation was ebbing. Sunlight seemed very genuine and a little sad.
“Because we are few,” he continued, “and because there is so much misinformation and disinformation surrounding this topic, going all the way back to when they burned people with such qualities and called them witches, any meeting between people like us tends to be awkward.”
“Like us,” echoed Dana softly.
“Like us,” he said. “You have some real talent, Miss Scully.”
“Call me Dana.”
“Dana, then,” said Sunlight, nodding. “Your visions are not simple nightmares. You have to know that now, even if you don’t want it to be true.”
“I don’t,” she said emphatically. “I really don’t.”
“We are not given a choice,” he said, turning to stare at the candles. “We are who we are and we become what we must become.”
“What do you mean by that? Become what?”
“Darwin spoke of evolution of the species, but there is another kind of change. Metamorphosis. It is an evolution of the soul, of our very nature. We are born as one thing, but some of us—a rare few—tear out of the chrysalis of our own lives and emerge as something else. Rare, beautiful, powerful. We cease to be what we were and we become what we are meant to be.”
“I don’t…”
He turned back to her and said, “I can tell you when you first started having visions, and I don’t need to rely on psychic powers to do it. Shall I tell you? It was within a few months of starting puberty. Don’t blush; I’m not being crude. But think about it for a moment. The transformation from child to teenager involves a hugely powerful biochemical change. The body undergoes changes at every level. Physical, psychological, chemical, intellectual, emotional. Talents emerge, preferences change and become refined, personalities alter. We are never the same as teens as we are as little children. Don’t you agree?”
“I guess.”
“No,” he said, wagging his finger. “That is an imprecise answer. You agree or you don’t. Be certain, Dana. Don’t quibble or hide behind tricks of obfuscation.”
She nodded. “Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize, either,” he said. “You came in here to learn, and this is a lesson. Never apologize for what you don’t know. There is no shame in that. Shame comes when you refuse to know or pretend not to know. That is deliberate ignorance, and it is loathsome.”
She actually started to apologize for apologizing, caught herself, and nodded.
“Most psychic gifts begin to emerge during adolescence,” he said. “For some—most, actually—these qualities are short-lived and end when puberty itself has run its course.”
“And what about the others?”
“We continue to transform.”
“Even you?”
“Oh,” he said in a soft, almost imperceptible voice, “especially me.”
She said nothing because she had no idea how to respond to that.
Sunlight nodded, though, and gave her a rueful grin. “Those of our kind tend to be weird, eccentric, and enigmatic. We take getting used to, even with each other.”
“I don’t mean to be rude, Mr. Sunlight, but—”
“It’s just Sunlight.”
“Okay, Sunlight. This is all really fascinating, and I’m not being sarcastic, but I’m not sure how it helps me understand what’s going on. I’m pretty sure that someone is murdering teenagers, and I don’t know what to do about it. I’m afraid to go to sleep and I’m afraid of being awake. I don’t think my folks or the cops are going to believe a single word I say.”
“They probably won’t.”
“Then what can I do? I can’t just stand here talking about ESP all day. I have to do something.”
“Yes,” he said, “you do. And I can help.”
“How?” she begged, taking a definite step forward.
“By teaching you to use your qualities, Dana. Right now they control you. But if you learn to control them, you will hasten your transformation. You will become something much more powerful than you can imagine. Then, and only then, will you be able to focus your visions like a laser. But first things first. Corinda has told me some of what has been happening to you. I’ve sensed some of it myself.”
Dana shook her head. “This is so weird.”
He gave her a rueful smile. “Well, to be entirely true, Dana, it’s weird to me, too.”
That made her laugh.
“I know about the dreams, about the angel. I understand about how vague some of this is, how fragmented memories of visions can be. I can help you gain the strength and clarity to see through the masks worn by this creature who calls himself an angel. Only then will you be able to save lives. That’s what you want, isn’t it? To save lives? To heal the harm that is being inflicted on the children of this town?”
“Yes…,” she murmured. “But this angel is so strong.”
“Strong? Yes, I believe he is, Dana, but that doesn’t mean he is all-seeing and all-knowing. Everyone has limitations, blind spots.”
She stared at him. “I … never thought about that. Do you … do you think there are things he doesn’t know?”
“Absolutely.”
“Then does that mean there might be some way to try to stop him? Some way he won’t see coming?”
Sunlight nodded and gestured to where a mass of cushions littered the floor.
“Anything is possible. Have a seat, Dana,” he said. “We have work to do.”
“I have my jujutsu class tonight…”
“Don’t worry,” he said. “This won’t take that long. Where we’re going, time spins at a different speed.”
“What’s that mean?”
Sunlight smiled. “You’ll see.”
CHAPTER 46
Beyond Beyond
6:20 P.M.
“What are you doing?”
The question was whispered but still sharp, almost shrill. Angelo leaned away from the closed door, straightened, and turned to see Corinda standing ten feet away, fists on hips. She scowled.
“I wasn’t doing nothing,” he said.
Corinda looked past him to the door to Sunlight’s Chrysalis Room. It was off-limits to everyone when he was in there. Only students enrolled in his classes or people having one-on-one sessions for psychic enrichment were permitted to enter. Even Corinda, who co-owned the store with Sunlight, had rarely passed that threshold.
“You know the rules, Angelo,” she scolded. “Sunlight maintains a pure energy space around this room. He doesn’t want or need anything to taint the energetics.”
Angelo shoved his hands into his back pockets. “Then why do I see you creeping around here all the time? You’re pissed because he’s the one with the real power. You think you’re the reason people come here?”
She took an angry step toward him. “You might want to be careful about what you say and to whom you say it, young man. You should be happy you even have this job.”
“Oh? And why’s that? Because this is such a great place to work?”
“Because Sunlight and I looked the other way when it came to your record.”
“You going to throw that in my face again? It’s been how many days since the last time you mentioned it? Oh, wait, no, you mentioned it this morning. And yesterday. You’re always on me about that.”
“Shouldn’t I be? After what you did?”
“Maybe you don’t know everything about everything, Miss Psychic Powers,” he said.
“And maybe you should watch your mouth and remember who signs your paycheck. You’re on dangerous ground.”
Angelo took his own step toward her. “Dangerous? You think you even know what that means, señora? I don’t think so.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
He snorted. “You don’t know? Funny, I thought you could read minds.”
Corinda backed up a step. “I can read yours well enough to know what you’re thinking about Dana. You keep your distance or I’ll—”
The look in his eyes stopped her words as surely as if she’d been slapped.
“Or you’ll what?” he asked quietly.
Corinda did not answer. Angelo nodded.
“Mucho cuidado, mi hermana,” he said, and walked away like a hungry tiger. Corinda stared at his back until Angelo vanished into the stockroom. She was furious, but she was frightened, too. Angelo always scared her. There was something wrong with him. Maybe something wrong inside him. A darkness that Corinda had never been able to penetrate. She would have fired him months ago, but she was afraid of what he would do. People told her stories about him, about his temper. About his bursts of violence. Like the week before Christmas, when two drunk college frat boys threw an empty beer can at him. Angelo had beaten them unconscious and would have served time had Sunlight not happened by and broken up the fight. Sunlight claimed to the sheriff that the frat boys had thrown the first punch, but Corinda had her doubts. And there were all those fights he’d gotten into when he was younger. Sunlight thought he had potential, but Corinda did not. She thought Angelo was damaged goods.
However, Sunlight protected the boy. And while Corinda admired Sunlight’s compassion and generosity, it put her in the position of having to work with the increasingly impudent Angelo.
Now this. She had seen him standing there, leaning his ear against the door, eavesdropping on Sunlight’s session with Dana. It was outrageous.
She watched the stockroom door for a full minute, but Angelo did not reappear.
The store was emptying out for that slow gap between afternoon shoppers and the start of the evening classes. No one was looking at her.
She took a breath and then leaned her own ear against the door.
CHAPTER 47
The Chrysalis Room
6:22 P.M.
“Listen to the sound of my voice,” said Sunlight.
Dana sat cross-legged on the floor, hands layered one atop the other in her lap, eyes almost closed. The session started gently. They drank a cup of herbal tea as Sunlight explained the process he used to help his students tap into their inner selves and allow their psychic qualities to manifest without conscious interference.