Glimmer (16 page)

“Good.  You’re awake.  I don’t have much time.  I’m Rach--”

He blinked his eyes hard.  Not a hallucination after all. “I know who you are,” he said, wondering where Wes had got to; they’d been watching TV on his lunch break together before he’d fallen asleep, “and I want you to get the hell out of my house.” He stood up and focused his gaze on her, willing her to leave.

Rachel sighed and rolled her eyes. “You’re too weak and I’m dead, you idiot. Put your powers away and turn your listening ears on.”

Christopher’s heart sank.  The old bitch was dead?  He looked at her more clearly.  The afternoon light shone through her much as it did the kitchen window.  Shit!  All that work plotting his revenge and some other lucky bastard had got to her first?  “I don’t care what you have to tell me.  I said get out of my house.”

She stood up and got right in his face, ignoring his request. “The current leader of The Society is a Retroact named Mildred. She killed me and she’s going to kill you, my granddaughter, and another seer called Benjamin if you don’t stop her.”

“I’m touched you care,” Christopher sneered, “but I think dying messed with your head. How did you die anyway?  I do hope it was painful.”

Rachel did not back down. “Listen, you arrogant ass, that lovely boyfriend of yours let me out to warn you.  Mildred is keeping a lot of spirits trapped in limbo, including both your and Benjamin’s mothers.”

Christopher scoffed. “Why would Wes be doing anything for The Society?”

“Because Mildred promised to put him back into a body permanently, which I’ve informed him is not within her powers or any other Retroact’s to do. Besides, no spirit lasts long in a body they didn’t originate from. He chose to believe me and I suggest you do too.  He can only occupy her for a short amount of time.” She gave him a knowing grin. “I think you’re familiar with his methods?” 

Wonderful!  Wes had betrayed him
and
he was a whore. Ugh, and Mildred had to be in her seventies. That’s it. Their attachment was definitely off.  “Fine, tell me everything you know,” he said, relenting.

Rachel backed away and gestured for him to sit next to her at the breakfast bar. “Mildred has never been the best Retroact. Her rewinding skills are mediocre. Her glimpses and ability to see dreams are non-existent.  What she is good at is mind control and manipulating spirits.” She raised an eyebrow at him. “Didn’t know that was possible, did you? Not many seers have the ability to control the thoughts and actions of those that are alive, never mind spirits.

“Actually, Mildred is the only Retroact that The Society is currently aware of that can use mind control.” Christopher opened his mouth to speak, but Rachel shushed him. “I have long suspected that Mildred used her ability to get herself elected as leader and at the time, this was nearly twenty-four years ago, I sought to stay on her good side.  Shortly after she appointed me as enforcer of The Society’s policy on children, she shared a vision she had with me.

“In the vision she was old and gray-haired, but very powerful, commanding The Society and minions of spirits as well.  I inquired if she was teaching the spirits to be helpful, thinking maybe she was building some sort of guardian angel organization, and she laughed in my face. ‘Our abilities are wasted simply helping worthless people avoid death, we could be so much more’ she said.  Then she went on to tell me the rest of the vision. 

“She had encountered three seers, two males and a female, all Retroacts who possessed unique abilities.  One male could use mind control, the second could take on others’ powers for short periods of time, and the female had the ability to glimpse the future with complete accuracy.  These three would band together and attempt to usurp her position in The Society.” Rachel shuddered at the retelling.  Christopher continued to listen, his heart beating faster the more she spoke.

“Mildred was adamant that these Retroacts were not going to defeat her. She insisted that I see to it that all members of The Society for the next decade were not allowed to take their pregnancies to term.”

“So, why do I exist then?  Why didn’t you force my mother to abort me?” Christopher asked, disgusted.

Rachel shook her head. “I never forced a single seer to have an abortion.  At the time Mildred charged me with this undertaking, your mother was in her ninth month.  I took you from her and placed you with your adoptive family, explaining to her that it was the safest thing to do for you.  Then I told Mildred that I drowned you, and she had no reason to not believe me, so she didn’t press the matter further. 

“When your mother caused a big scene at a Society meeting, threatening to get back at Mildred for what she was doing to her fellow seers, Mildred had her killed and trapped her spirit in limbo. After that, I started using the abortion line to keep seers from even thinking about getting pregnant.  I managed to place four more babies with adoptive families with their mother’s blessings.  Benjamin’s mother, Laura, ran away from The Society after I had spoken with her. I had to tell Mildred that she’d been involved in an airplane crash and no remains were recovered.”

“Man, you’ve had to do a lot of fake killing,” Christopher said, impressed by the old lady’s ingenuity.

“That’s how one cultivates a reputation, dear.” Rachel smiled. “And that reputation has kept me and my family safe for a very long time, but now my house of cards has toppled over.” She looked Christopher directly in the eye, urging him to keep up. “Two years ago Mildred got a tip, from who I don’t know, that Laura was still alive and that Ben depended on her powers to use his. So, she had her drowned. I just recently found out about that or I never would have let Zellie near Benjamin again.

“When Mildred discovered that Zellie existed she was furious with me. I was the one who blew Grace and Zellie’s cover.  I mistakenly called my friend Candace after Zellie’s failed rewind trying to suss out if anyone had heard any mention of Benjamin. Mildred overheard Candace talking with another Retro about my granddaughter...I assured her that Zellie’s powers were very weak and that she was unable to glimpse. But she knew I was lying and had been for a very long time. She crushed my skull simply by looking at me.  So yes, I was in a tremendous amount of pain, but I didn’t give any information away. I’ve been locked in limbo for the past month. It’s not a nice place, Christopher.” Rachel took a deep breath, regrouping.

“Mildred knew the whereabouts of the Retroact who absorbed others’ powers and assumed Zellie was the one with accurate glimpses, which left you. She asked around in the spirit world, letting the spirits know there would be a great reward for whoever could lead her to a male Retro with mind control.  Wes came forward and she recruited him as her spy.  Then you helped her out by arranging for all three of you to be in the same town.” Rachel shook her head, almost laughing. “She is coming after you; she wants to kill you all at the same time to be sure you are no longer a threat to her.”

Christopher snorted. “Claire’s birthday party at the lodge this weekend. That’s where I was going to do it. Kill Zellie and Ben, I mean.”

Rachel narrowed her eyes. “Well, sorry to have ruined your weekend plans, but now you’ve got to work together against Mildred to ensure that The Society doesn’t turn into an evil institution bent on the destruction of mankind.”

“What’s to stop her from forcing us all together sooner?” Christopher asked.

“Three things,” Rachel held up three fingers. “One, your boyfriend has vowed to keep her occupied to the best of his amazing abilities. Two, she doesn’t know that you’ll be expecting her. Three, that bitch has always had a flair for the dramatic.  It simply wouldn’t do for her to kill you in your living room.”  Rachel looked at the clock on the microwave.  “I’ve got to go.  Get to Zellie and Ben.  Form an alliance. The three of you will defeat her. I know it.” She disappeared, leaving Christopher alone and confused at the breakfast bar.

“One last thing,” Rachel said, popping back into view. “My sister Hazel is alive, but she is on the run.  She is trying to gather as many rogue Retroacts and their Lookouts as she can to help you.  Tell Melody and Ben’s Lookout to be ready to fight too.” Again, she disappeared.

Christopher rose from his seat and shuffled over to the coffeemaker, pouring himself a lukewarm cup of this morning’s coffee.  Thanks to Wes’s diversion tactics and what he presumed was Mildred’s control over his sleeping patterns, his abilities weren’t at full strength.  Zellie’s were probably even less than his and Ben...who knew what was going on with him?

Christopher took one sip, spilled the crappy coffee down the drain and sat the cup in the sink.

Damn
. 

He was going to have to get Zellie and Avery back together.

I tapped my foot against the log, reluctant to sit down next to Ben, even though he’d promised eleventy billion times to never so much as shake my hand again.  We needed to figure out what to do about Assistant Pastor Morris, and we still weren’t any clearer on why our rewinds stopped or what our painful shared vision had meant.  Basically, we knew nothing, could do nothing, and were about as useless as a couple of frozen cat turds.

“Why don’t you try to glimpse maniacal pastor guy and see what goes down when we confront him?” Ben said, nuzzling his chin down into his scarf.

“It’s not that easy and you know it.  I can ‘try’ to glimpse all I want, but my body chooses what it wants me to see.” I relented at last and sat down next to him on the log.

“What if you purposely tried to glimpse something other than what you really wanted to see?  Like, tricked yourself?”

“I guess.” I shrugged.  Anything was worth a go at this point.  We had nothing to lose.  “So, you mean like, I attempt to glimpse my dad and because he and Assistant Pastor Morris work together, I might get some info on him?”

“Sure.  Worst case scenario you have a glimpse about your dad and he’s scratching his butt or something.”

I raised one eyebrow. “Remind me again why you’re not doing the glimpsing?”

He looked at me, incredulous. “Why would I bother when yours are a hundred percent accurate?  Seems stupid for me to expend the energy.”

“God forbid you have to
expend your energy
.”

“Well, I could expend some of the pastor’s weird energy, but you might try to hump me,” he teased.

“Please,” I shot back, “I was the humpee, not the humper.  Get your damn facts straight.”

“You’re the humpee, got it.” An expansive smile broke out across his face and he started snickering. 

It was contagious. I fought to keep the corners of my mouth from lifting.  “Stop it!” I said, slapping his arm. “We need to be serious!”

Ben continued on laughing.  “You realize humpee is about a thousand times better than Little House, right?  I’m totally going to make you a laminated name tag.”

I turned away from him. He was making me want to laugh with him and I was still angry.  Well, I was still trying to be angry.  “I’m glimpsing now.  Shh!”

Because Ben had put the notion in my head, when I concentrated on Dad all I could think of was him scratching his butt.  Awesome.  I adjusted my focus and imagined my father making me an omelet for breakfast like he used to every Saturday morning.

My eyes snapped shut.

I lay on the ground at Ben’s feet, rolling around clutching my head.  It felt like it would explode, the pressure was so great.  Ben knelt beside me, pulling my hands from my face, asking me over and over again.  “Are you okay?  What do you see?

“
Fire,” I screamed.  “She’s going to burn us alive!”

“
Who is, Zellie, who is going to hurt us?”

I prayed that my eyes would stay closed, but they flipped open just as the violent pain in my head took control.

Christopher grabbed the edge of the sink and hoisted himself up off the floor.  What in the hell had just happened?  He coughed and spat a thick glob of phlegm into the sink, expecting it to be black, as charred as his lungs felt.  He replayed the vision in his head. 

The brown-gray smoke hovered before him, encasing his body, leaving his nostrils and mouth dry and burning.  The weight of another person’s hand in his.  A man’s hand, squeezing so hard that he thought his fingers would break.  He didn’t let go. The pain was worth the contact.  He heard a female voice off to his right, Zellie Wells’s voice, yelling in between her own coughs.  On his right, blue flames raced up the heavy brocade draperies that hung from the massive floor to ceiling windows of the Lodge ballroom, increasing the temperature of the room.

Why weren’t the sprinklers working? Where were the rest of the party guests? This was not what his plan had been.  He had never considered a fire of this magnitude to kill Ben and Zellie.  He was simply going to apply pressure to their brains until they hemorrhaged and then set a small controlled fire to cover his escape.  But that had been his evil plan, and it was obvious now that the script had been flipped.

Christopher looked down at his body, unable to move as a trail of fire sped across the floor toward him and leapt at his legs.  The pain was instant and excruciating.  The hand holding his squeezed more tightly.  Ben’s.  Still Christopher burned.  Mildred was going to burn the three of them alive and they weren’t going to be able to stop her.

He stumbled to the bathroom and turned on the shower.  Quickly he stripped off his clothes and stepped underneath the cold spray.  His skin felt instantly soothed.  That vision had been more powerful than any he’d ever had, so realistic...and painful.  Christopher stuck his face close up to the shower mirror he used for shaving.  At least his eyes weren’t a bloody mess. He’d managed to retain enough of his power to avoid that nastiness. Washing up as fast as he could, he got dressed, ran out the door, and headed over to the Adams residence.

“Well that completely sucked.” I reached out for Ben’s hand to help me up.