12
2:30 p.m., Friday, October 25
Riley was mid-snore when a polite throat-clearing woke her.
She jolted awake and found Gabe looking down at her. “Where am I? Where is everyone? Where is Bethame? I mean Sesame.”
Laughter erupted from somewhere in the house.
“The others are dining on pizza in the room of no purpose.”The room of no purposewas the sunroom between the dining room and the kitchen at the back of the house. It had a weird layout and no real furniture yet because Riley couldn’t figure out what the space was for.
She felt better, she realized. Still tired. Still a little woozy, but steadier—like the day after the stomach flu. She yawned. “Why not the dining room?”
“The chandelier fell from the ceiling and broke on the table,” Gabe explained. “Nick’s small, scary cousin-in-law Josie informed me that you wished to see me.”
Riley sat up and noticed that Gabe’s hands and forearms were covered in taco-themed bandages. “What happened to you?”
“I was injured repeatedly by a crustacean.”
“Wow. Save a guy with the Heimlich and suffer a lobster attack in the same day.”
“I will be sharing many colorful experiences in my diary tonight.”
A loud snore erupted nearby. Riley looked around and found Burt on a pile of throw pillows that the dog must have pulled off the couch and stacked at her feet.
“Burty Boy, you had a rough day too, didn’t you?”
Burt lifted his head off a tufted tangerine cushion, looking adorably dazed with his tongue poking out the side of his mouth.
“Sometimes it’s really creepy how he seems to understand exactly what we’re saying,” she observed.
“I concur. Did you wish to discuss Burt’s linguistic comprehension with me?” Gabe asked, looking as if he’d enjoy nothing more than philosophizing about just how much English the dog understood.
“Actually it’s a psychic thing. Let’s walk and talk if I’m capable of it,” she said.
Burt wasn’t about to let them leave without him after hearing the wordwalk, so they got his leash, and together they slipped out the front door and headed south on Front Street. The afternoon was warm, but the trees along the river were a showy riot of reds and golds. The fresh air made her feel even better as nature recharged her batteries.
Riley quickly explained her reaction to Sesame as they walked, stopping every few feet for the dog to sniff and pee.
Gabe frowned thoughtfully.
“What do you think? Did I somehow fry my powers?” she asked. For as long as she’d wanted to just be “normal,” the idea of suddenly losing her psychic powers was disorienting.
“Rest is our most valuable resource. A well-rested psychic is a good psychic. Are you sleeping well?”
Riley hedged. “I’ve been sleeping okay.” It wasn’t exactly the truth. She hadn’t been sleeping well since Nick had stopped coming to bed at night. “Maybe it’s some kind of psychic defense?” she asked as Burt bit the head off a dandelion and spit it out onto the sidewalk.
“In order to have a psychic defense, one must be psychic,” Gabe explained.
“So it’s possible she has some kind of ability. But neither Nick or Kellen ever mentioned it, and you’d think it would have come up given their proximity to my, uh…gifts.” She was still uncomfortable referring to her powers as gifts when they mostly served to get her in trouble.
“Not everyone who is gifted realizes they are gifted,” her friend professed.
“Are you being all philosophical right now, or do you mean that literally?”
“Perhaps both…or neither.”
Riley blew out a breath. “If psychic defenses exist, does that mean psychic attacks do too?”
