(ARGH!  I couldn’t stop myself!  And now I’ve got ANOTHER story to finish!  *cries*

Love to my best people- A.H., Alira, Rae, Rylyn!)

It’s one of those bright, cheery mornings when the sun’s all golden and the sky is too blue for mere words to describe.  It’s the sort of morning you get the kids together, dress them up all pretty, and take them to church.  It’s the sort of morning young couples go out to picnics on.  It’s the sort of morning you wish you were anything but a low-pay, psychic-snatching, well-dressed bit of bait.

I went through my first year of college with the idea of becoming a poet.  Don’t think that I’m stupid; I knew I had to choose a major that I could actually get a decent job with, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t take English courses on the side and become as celebrated as Byron or Shelley in my old age, right?

The only problem with this plan was that I seemed to have picked the worst possible college ever to try to become anything mundane- and, compared to what I’m slowly evolving into here, a poet is damn mundane.

It’s not so much the college that’s the problem; it’s the people that go here, and the people that have settled around it over the years.  There’s a huge wealth of energy in the place, like it’s a dip in the general energy landscape and it falls in here and builds up.  A good metaphor for this would be a lake, formed by underground rivers or something of that sort.

But the point is, with all this energy just lying around, people with the slightest psychic inclination are attracted for miles and miles around.  You can’t walk down the street without meeting half a dozen freaks.  I’m used to crowded cities and to having a few psychics around, but never this much and never all the time.  It gets on your nerves after a while.

However, that’s really beside the point.  See, I couldn’t get a job for the life of me, and my scholarship didn’t extend to covering everyday, basic necessities like food, and my parents were of the belief that sending me off with a bunch of ramen noodles was good enough.  I can’t stand ramen noodles, and I will not eat those foul things.  So I was stuck begging for scraps from my roommate, Eli, a tricky little bastard with a fetish for short blonde guys.  And, yeah, I’m a short blonde.  And being fed strawberries by a grinning Italian-American who watches you chew and swallow with a suggestive glint in his eyes is very, very humiliating.  Is it any wonder I widened my job search to the realm of the less than normal, more than legal?  It certainly pays well enough to afford my lamentable Dr. Pepper and Pixie Stix habit.

So, here I am, a male Charlie’s Angel who hunts down psychic predators and brings them back to my employer, who turns them into psychic eunuchs.  And I don’t want to know how he does it; just knowing that he can is enough to scare me silly.

And it seems my target has finally spotted the flashing neon “VICTIM!!!” sign I so carefully crafted over my aura.  It’s about damn time; I’ve only been following him for an hour, now.

Now, your average psychic predator is the sort that latches onto you like a leech and sucks your energy away a bit at a time.  My employer decided that since I’m a little too strong psychically to draw such simple fish, I’d be assigned to tracking down the more dangerous sort- the kind that leave most people emotional and mental wrecks after being around them for all of an hour.  They cut directly into a person’s energy field, suck it dry- in some cases killing people- and walk off, leaving no one the wiser.  Some of the smarter ones keep a person under their thrall for days at a time, using them not only for energy, but for money, sex, connections, whatever-the-hell.  These are the people I get to find, after a few incidents of accidentally beating the shit out of the regular leech sort.  I’m not violent, I swear!  They all just fell down stairs, or resisted being taken away, or seemed to magnetically attract random objects like toasters…

Ooh.  My target is stopping, checking out the sale signs in the window of a random book store.  Time for me to sashay past him and appear psychically edible.

The secret of being good at this is to appear like a psychic who has no fucking clue of what he is.  It’s a strange fact that psychics are the most vulnerable to other psychics.  Regular people have a kind of built-in resistance to suggestion.  You’ve got to get a person in the right mood, at the right brain-chemical imbalance, et cetera to get into their more closed-off energy field.  It’s much easier to hack at someone whose mind is already opened up.

Which is why the tall, twenty-something year old brunette over there is looking at me like I’m a chocolate éclair.

This is the part where I slowly head somewhere that’s somewhat out of the way and wait patiently for the bastard to strike.  Keeping up an expression of casual consumer composure, I wandered over to the nearest display window of a random store, thanking God for this handy pedestrian street-mall.  It’s not long before I can feel someone moving to stand next to me, and I see his reflection slide into place to my right.

“Hey,” he says quietly, his voice soft but rich.  I can feel a small tendril of psychic energy- what I usually call a hook- carefully insinuate itself past the upper layers of my shielding.  That’s all right; the upper layers are just blinds.  I happened to be a natural at layering, so Quin- my employer- just gave me a few more tips and then set me loose on the city.

“Hi,” I answer brightly, going for a perky attitude rather than a flirty one.  The hook isn’t set sexually; I don’t have to act as if I’m totally enamored with the guy.  Though he is pretty damn gorgeous.  Big brown eyes, thick brown hair, and a medium build all covered with an earnestness that most people wouldn’t know is false.  But he’s not gay or even bi; he’s just making sure I follow him to an even more hidden area so that he can get all his hooks in.  If I were a cute blonde girl, he’d take his time, but as a guy I’m just to be drained and left.

Hey, no problems here.  I’d rather this was over quicker than not.

“Follow me?” he says, smiling innocently.  I look at him for a moment, confused and a little hesitant, until I feel the hook catch and pull a little.  I nod, smile in an almost bewildered way, and walk with him into a little alley between two shops.  He leads the way to a dumpster and turns to me calmly and somewhat triumphantly.

There’s no one around.  My smile suddenly grows vicious, and he blinks, stepping back.  “Are we going to party, you son of a bitch?”

“What-“ he starts to say, reaching out physically and psychically to get a hold on me.  I lash out with a blast of pure energy, knocking his rather weak second hook to pieces and making him fall back, crying out in pain.  Hoping like hell no one heard him, I pull the sock of pennies I habitually carry around whenever I’m hunting from the pocket of my overly large pair of jeans and send another blast of mental energy at him, but it’s deflected.

I think the guy expected me to be surprised that he’s fighting back, but I’ve learned not to pause to congratulate myself until after the guy’s been dragged back to Quin and I’m sitting at home, removing whatever little bit of a physical disguise I have on.  Last time I did that, I nearly got myself killed.

Yeah, even I was green at one time.

He stands up and, with his physical advantages of height and weight, tries to attack me bodily.  I level one more psychic blast at him, this time focusing on confusing the information flow from his senses to his brain.  He pauses for a second, and that’s enough for me to run around and hit him in the back of the head with my pennies.  He goes down like a sack of potatoes, and I hope once again that I haven’t actually killed the guy.

I suppose if I ever do, though, Quin’ll get me out of it.  He’s got connections with the police around here- they were quite happy to see the level of unexplained kidnappings and murders go down when Quin set up shop, I imagine.  Though I suppose many of those people wish he was a little older.  Who seriously trusts a twenty-five year old to be responsible for something like this?

I reach out carefully mentally even as I put more distance between myself and the body on the ground, and feel intensely relieved.  He’s alive, but definitely unconscious.  There’s a weird depression in a person’s energy field when they’re asleep or unconscious- at least, that’s what it’s like to me.  Other people tend to experience this stuff differently.  That’s what makes a person a natural at some aspect of psychism or not- how they think, and how they respond to stimuli.  Being a naturally… exuberant and excitable sort of person, I was quicker to learn how to affect other people in a more physical manner psychically.  Most people seem to affect others emotionally first.  I’ve often referred to myself as a freak because of this.

I reach for the cell phone supplied to me by my employer most graciously and dial his work line.  “Quin?”

“Zac.”  His voice is somewhat cold, but I doubt it’s my fault.  At least, I hope so.  Quin’s the last person in the world I want angry at me.  “Location?”

“Uh…” I cast around for some kind of address.  “Between the bagel place and Peter’s Bookstore down at the street mall?”

“I’ll send someone down.”  With that curt announcement, he hangs up and I’m left to mutter vaguely about ungrateful bastards while I absent-mindedly kick the prone form at my feet.  An officer will be showing up shortly to take him back to Quin’s place for an appointment to become a normal person again.  I have no doubts that Quin’ll get a few names out of him first- whoever he’s left for dead in his stay in this fine city.

But the thought still scares me, that Quin can do something to make people unable to use their psychic abilities anymore.  It makes me more nervous than I care to admit whenever I’m around the boss.

There’s a patrol car pulling up.  Time to go report.

Damn.

Quin’s watching me carefully as I tell my story, making sure to make myself seem as innocent and efficient as possible.  No need to talk about the few kicks delivered to an unconscious bastard, right?

I already mentioned that Quin’s twenty-five, five years older than me.  And my birthday was only two weeks ago.  He got me a hanging plant.  I suppose I should be surprised that he actually knew when my birthday was.

Quin’s tall and lean and angular and cold.  His hair is this funky dark blonde that almost looks dusty and his eyes are so dark blue they could be black or gray.  He has a terrible habit of wearing old jeans that always look like they’re just about to slip off his narrow hips.  If he didn’t scare me so much, I’d try chatting him up- though I doubt it would work.  Like I said, he’s a cold bastard.

“You should take a vacation,” he says suddenly, cutting off my rambling monologue.  Like most people, I get nervous around the boss and just keep talking to fill the damnable silence that follows him around like a cloud of despair.

I stare at him blankly.  “A vacation?”

Is this a polite way of firing me?  What’d I do?  I try to keep my face immobile, but I think he can tell that I’m starting to fret, because there’s the barest hint of a smirk on his face.  What an asshole.

“You should take a break,” he says slowly, enunciating carefully.  “You’re always working.  You’re going to go into burnout before you know it.”

That thought makes me wince, but I rally quickly.  “I haven’t shown the least little sign of burnout and you know it, Quin!”

He picks up a file from his desk and starts going through it.  His whole office is white and gray; even the view out of the huge windows that dominate the room shows the suddenly cloud-covered sky and lends no color to the place.  “This is the third psychic you’ve discovered in under two weeks.  You’re working yourself to the bone.”

“Am not,” I say sulkily.  He glances at me and I know he’s totally unimpressed with my whining.  I place my hands on my hips and glare at him as coldly as I dare.  “Who’s going to keep a watch on the place while I’m off sitting in my room, throwing darts at my roommate?  Everyone else you’ve got is working the regular rabble.  You can’t force me to go on vacation.”

I thought it was a pretty sound argument, but Quin’s already giving me the ‘you are just too ignorant of everything in the world, little boy’ look that he’s so damned good at.  “Don’t you have homework?  A book you want to read?  Something that can keep you occupied for a week?”

“I have a job,” I snap, stamping my foot for emphasis.  And there’s that hint of a smirk again.  “And I enjoy it.  I’m not taking a fucking vacation when I don’t need one!”

“Watch the language,” Quin warns, and his eyes darken enough that I step back.  I always forget that he doesn’t appreciate vulgar language.

“I don’t need a vacation,” I repeat, my voice subdued.

Quin sighs and I’m surprised he can do something so human.  “Zac… invite someone out to dinner.  Go to the movies.  Forget the job for a while.  You can have a life outside of it.”

Now I’m pissed.  “And who says I don’t have a life outside of it?”

He glares at me and says, “And what kind of life do you have outside of your job, then?”

“I write, I do my homework, I hang out with Eli and Anna; I have a life!” I almost shout, not even noticing when I started to raise my voice.  Quin raises an eyebrow as I wave my arm rather dramatically.

“You write?” he echoes, looking amused.

“Yeah.  Poetry.”  And now I glare with all the force I didn’t dare to use before.  If he wants to mock my writing before ever seeing it I will cheerfully give him two black eyes and a broken nose.

No, I’m not a violent person at all.

“I’d like to read your work sometime,” he says, and now I’m all confused.  Quin puts the file away, turns to me and continues, “Then take some time to work on your poetry.  At least three days.”

I start to object and he holds his hand up.  “Three days, Zac.  Just take a break.”

My eyes narrow, but I don’t want to get the forced ‘vacation’ back up to a week, so finally I nod and look at the floor, pouting.

“Thank you.”  And that’s a clear dismissal if I’ve ever heard one.  I dart one more glance up at my boss, who is studying me with some strange look in his eyes.  Probably looking for signs of burnout.  I scowl, bow mockingly, and walk out.

He’s such a bastard.

Just outside the door I slam into Melea, proving that the world is against me today.

“Ouch!”

“Sorry, Lea,” I say, shrinking back a little.  She looks at me coolly, big sea-green eyes completely dispassionate.  At least Quin is always a little amused or exasperated by my behavior.  Melea just acts like I’m a bug or something.

“Don’t let it eat you,” she replies distantly, already turning to knock on Quin’s door.  I watch her for a moment, knowing that I have a hurt puppy look on my face, but I can’t help it.  She’s always so… well, snobby.

It’s probably left over from high school, I guess.  Melea’s tall, slender, and pale, with long honey-brown hair and perfect features.  Then add in her intelligence, her complete composure, and the psychic ability that, while not on par with my own, manages to keep the lesser denizens of the evil psychic underworld down…  She’s everything that another girl would hate.  But I don’t hate her; I’ve never been rude to her or given her a reason to dislike me- well, that I know of.  It’s a depressing situation.

“Move along, Zac,” she says, and where anyone else would have a hint of some kind of emotion in their voice, she’s just calm.  Totally fucking serene and there’s no hint at all of any feeling.

“’Kay,” I answer meekly even as Quin opens the door.  He gives me a quizzical look, as if to say, ‘why do you listen to her and not to me?’ but I’m already on my way.

I hop down the stairs, taking three or four at a time, and decide to spend the remaining hours of daylight down at the lake with a notebook.  Maybe I’d write something that I wouldn’t mind showing Quin.  Okay, that’s probably hoping for too much.  Maybe I’d write something I wouldn’t mind showing Eli and Anna.

Anna is Eli’s twin and the only girl I’ve ever kissed.  And while it wasn’t a terrible experience, it’s something neither of us would ever want to repeat.  Though I do now make it a habit to steal her lip gloss.  It tastes really good.

But, as I was saying, Eli and Anna are the two people I trust to help me refine my poetry.  Eli tells me when my metaphors make no sense and Anna goes after symbolism.  I love them both for their never-ending patience and their senses of humor.  Eli’s is rather vulgar, but Anna’s is dry and entertaining.

So I head back toward the dorm, humming a little under my breath and tilting my head back to look up at the sky, deciding that perhaps taking a small vacation won’t be so bad after all.  Not that I’d tell Quin that.  That would be admitting that he’s right and I’m wrong, and that just won’t do.

Yeah, I’m a freak.  So what?

“Hey, Zac!”

I turn around, frowning slightly.  Ben is running towards me, waving somewhat frantically.  Oh joy.

Ben’s a guy in my Anthropology class who always has an excuse or seven to stalk me.  I’m considering getting into a relationship again just to keep this kid away from me.  It’s not anything against Ben; I mean, he’s cute, he’s smart, and he’s fun to talk to, but he isn’t psychic, and I learned my lesson about having a meaningful relationship with someone who isn’t psychic back in high school, thanks.  And I’m not in the mood for the fling.

“Zac,” he says, smiling shyly.  I almost want to kick him.  Damn Asian-Americans and their cute slanty eyes.  “You were at lecture the other day, right?”

“Yeah,” I say, sighing a little.  “Let me guess, you need the notes?”

“If it’s not a problem.”  He has dimples!  Christ.  The world really, really wants me to suffer.

“Of course it’s not.  I’ll get them to you tomorrow at section, okay?”  Please don’t want to follow me to my dorm.

“Sounds great.  Thanks, Zac,” Ben says, sounding grateful and giving me inviting looks.  Perhaps I should get in the mood for a meaningless fling.

“Don’t worry about,” I reply, already turning away.  I can resist temptation; really I can.

I just wish I didn’t have to.

The story goes like this: back in high school, I had finally managed to get a hold of my own psychic abilities and suddenly I’m faced with another dilemma.  I liked guys.  I didn’t want to pretend I didn’t like guys.  And it seemed that someone had gone around putting up “short blonde hunting season” posters in the girls’ locker room.

Seriously, I was being attacked on all sides by aggressively flirting teenage girls, and that is not the best thing to happen to a boy who just wants another nice, preferably cute, boy to make out with.  So, being the flamboyant little freak that I am, I very dramatically came out in the middle of English class my sophomore year and asked the guy in front of me if he wanted to go to the sweetheart’s dance and got the shock of my life.

The guy said yes.

So Luke, the most wonderful guy who ever lived, was my first boyfriend and my first real love.  He was tall, muscular, brown-eyed and brown-haired, and a complete sweetheart to boot.  I loved him more than I can even say, and from what he said and how he acted, he loved me the same amount.

It sounds all fairy-tale perfect, doesn’t it?  But it didn’t work out.  Most high school relationships don’t.  I was learning the limits of my psychic talents and he was out playing basketball and soccer with his friends.  I was setting up long, passionate arguments about any random topic that crossed my mind and he was playing racing games on the Playstation.  We stayed together for two long, happy years, and parted with hardly a regret.

Or so I like to say.  I still miss him sometimes.  When you learn how to sleep in someone’s arms, lulled by the sound of his breathing and the beat of his heart, it’s difficult to learn how to fall asleep without that again.

He knew I was psychic; he’d seen me do enough things to have it proved to him rather conclusively, but he was never really comfortable with it.  But I couldn’t pretend that I wasn’t psychic.  Fuck that.  I’m not going to be someone I’m not, not even for love.

So it was my fault.  It was his fault.  It was no one’s fault.  It doesn’t make it hurt any less when I’m not dating and I’m wondering what he’s up to, or who he’s laughing with while watching some stupid movie or playing a game.  I’m a hopeless romantic, I’m sure.

It’s funny, but I’ve never been able to write a poem about anything that happened between me and Lucas.  The words just disappear.

“What the hell are you doing home?” Eli asks, frowning at me like he has a right to be upset.  The guy in his bed tries to hide under the sheet, but he was a little late in trying to hide.  I saw it all.

“Um, let’s see: I LIVE here?” I say, trading glare for glare.  Eli hasn’t bothered to cover himself, but I’m not impressed.  “Christ, you could have told me you were planning on having a tryst!  I would’ve packed up my stuff and gone to the lake without having to make a stop!”

“You’re always gone for the afternoon,” Eli retorts even as his lover scrunches further down into the bed and under the sheet.  I have to wonder if his face is right in Eli’s crotch, but that makes me want to snicker, so I focus on my anger instead.  “You’re always working!  What, did you get fired?”

“I didn’t get fired!” I yell, suddenly incensed.  “I’m taking a break!”

“Someone’s touchy,” Eli mutters.

Glaring with all the strength I can muster, I edge towards my bed around the bits of clothing that seem to have been removed with much haste and grab my backpack and my notebook.  “I’m out of here, Casanova.”

“Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.”

Sometimes I could just hit that bastard.

I slam the door when I walk out, knowing that by the time I get back, the guy will be gone and Eli will be working his damnable charm that always makes me forgive him.  This has happened four times already this year, each time with a new guy hiding in Eli’s bed.  Hell, at least I’ve never found them in my bed.  Then I might have to kill someone.

The weather hasn’t improved by the time I get outside.  Thinking wistfully of the bright, lovely morning, I shake my fist at the sky and ignore the few stares and giggles that are directed my way.  I know I’m eccentric.  Some people like to point out that “eccentric” is a synonym for “queer.”  That’s okay, I always tell them; I’ve got that one covered, too.

Sometimes, it even gets a laugh.

The walk to the lake is strange.  I’m just starting to realize that work has taken over my life; I’m unconsciously scanning the area for psychic activity and picking out people who might possibly be predators.  I guess I do need a break.

Again, no one has to let Quin know I said that.

There’s this great big terrace right by the lake that’s usually full of people talking and laughing.  I avoid it like the plague.  I prefer to walk down by the edge of the lake near the forest path, climb down on the rocks along the edge, and stare out into the blue.  Sometimes it’s more like brown or green, but blue sounds better, doesn’t it?

I make myself comfortable on a pile of rather large rocks and pull out my notebook, chewing lightly on my pen.  It’s not something I do often, but every once in a while I feel the need to put teeth marks on the cheap Bic I stole from some person or other.  It makes the lender that more reluctant to try and get his pen back from me.

But the muses are reluctant in gracing me with their presence today, and the wind is starting to pick up and give me a chill.  I glare down at the empty page and start scribbling for the hell of it.  I should just pick a random word and go with it.  Sometimes that works.

Now, what’s a good word?  Rage.  Enraged.  Malevolence.  All wonderful words that help to describe today.  I jot them down carefully, looking over my list with a critical eye.  This is shaping up to be an unhappy poetry session.

And there’s someone looking at me.

Years of psychic training and channeled paranoia keep me from turning around and searching for whoever is staring so much I can feel a blazing mark on my back.  There’s no malicious feeling in the stare; it’s just someone watching.  Steadily.  Unceasingly.

Creepily.

I put the pen back in my mouth and chew a little, looking out over the lake and trying to appear like an artistic visionary.  Even as I look like I’m focused on the inner workings of the universe or something, I carefully send a psychic tendril back to find out who the spy might be.

Shields like crazy.  Whoever’s watching me is psychic, and strong.  Paranoia levels rising, along with anger levels.  I thought I was supposed to be taking a break, here!

I straighten up a little and reach out further psychically, trying to poke a bit further into the identity of my stalker, but it seems I’ve been caught.  My little thoughts are pushed aside easily and then the person is gone.  I stand up and try to scan the lakeshore, but I don’t see anyone at all.

“Okay,” I murmur aloud, hugging my notebook to my chest and biting my lip- something I only do when I’m nervous.  “This is mildly scary.”

I think I should hang out inside somewhere for a while.  Somewhere where random people can’t watch me.

~~~~ 

(You know you love it.)