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He knows he's going to die.
I tighten my grip on his hand. "You're going to be all right," I say.
He bites his lower lip as a single tear rolls down the side of his face. "Spence, tell my wife—" His voice is a whisper, barely audible.
"Hang in there!" says Fuzzball, grabbing Jim's face with his free hand and turning it so that he's facing me. "Now, Jillian!"
I close my eyes, see the dying man in my mind, and send as much of my life force as I can into him in one incredible rush. I see the blood flow stopping, the bullet working its way out, the wound beginning to heal, his breathing returning to normal, calm returning to his eyes—
And then I black out.
I'm holding a different hand and my hair is gently being stroked when I wake up. I already know the touch before I open my eyes.
I look up and see my boyfriend Ryan. I'm back on the couch with my head and shoulders on his lap. "Welcome back, Sparks." He leans down and kisses me on the forehead.
"Did I save him?"
Ryan flashes a big smile. "Yeah. Fuzzball called. Doctors at the hospital say they can't explain it but he's going to make a full recovery. Guess they don't study redheaded guardian angels with healing powers in med school."
I start to sit up but a throbbing headache pushes me back down and I grab my forehead. "Whoa. How long was I out?"
"Three hours."
"Wow. It's been a while since healing knocked me out. I thought I was past that. Damn, I'm fried."
"You should be. The guy was as close to death as anyone you ever saved."
"Yeah, no kidding. I've never seen anything like that. It was like a scene out of a gory movie. Good thing tomorrow's a Saturday so I can rest up." I reach up to run my fingers through his thick dark hair and let myself get lost in his deep blue eyes.
"Well, hate to tell you this, but we don't have the day off."
"What do you mean?"
My mom walks into the living room and smiles at me. "Good, you're up. You feelin' okay, sweetie?"
"My head feels like there's a man inside banging a Chinese gong, but I'll live. What's this about not having tomorrow off?"
Her smile disappears as she turns to Ryan. "You didn't tell her?"
"She just woke up, Mrs. Spectre. Didn't have a chance."
"Tell me what?"
She turns back to me with a familiar look that tells me something is very wrong. She bites her lower lip, then exhales. "We need to go to The Summit. Sebastien called."
Uh-oh. An emergency trip to the home office for those with paranormal powers. This can't be good. "Yeah? And?"
"There's been a change with your father."
So it turns out my father, the deadbeat dad who abandoned me and mom when I was a year old, the guy who tried to turn society into a bunch of pod people with a mind controlling cell phone and now has a day job as a comatose villain, has taken a turn.
For better or worse, we don't know. Although worse wouldn't break my heart considering he nearly killed my boyfriend and best friend. But something tells me if that were the case, we wouldn't have been summoned to western New Jersey by Sebastien, head of The Council. The old guy in charge of monitoring everyone with paranormal powers doesn't mess around.
Sebastien leads me, Ryan and Mom into the antiseptic secure chamber. It's become my father's permanent home since we basically fried his brain and his ability to meld with technology by using a powerful computer virus provided by your tax dollars and Fuzzball's Man in Black buddy who works for the feds. He's still in a coma, face drawn, skin lacking in color, oblivious to the rest of the world. Nothing's changed since that day in May, the last time I saw him.
Well, nothing had changed until yesterday, according to Sebastien.
"So, what happened?" I ask, looking at my father through the glass. "He looks the same."
"His brain waves changed slightly," says Sebastien, as he stares at my father's body. "We monitor the activity constantly and last night something happened that we cannot explain."
"Is he waking up?" asks Mom, staring at the man who was once the love of her life before turning into an evil maniac. Her tense face tells me she's still conflicted, still wondering if we shorted out the evil part of his brain and the good man might be inside.
Sebastien shakes his head. "No. But we detected a change in his Delta waves. Jillian, you know the implications of that."
I nod. "Yeah. The brain waves of the subconscious. How he was going to control me with the phone. So, could he simply be dreaming?"
"Our experts don't think so. There was no rapid eye movement detected, and dreams would produce a different kind of brain wave pattern that we've seen before from him. The change in his pattern is not unlike what we saw when you combined yours with Ryan and Roxanne. Our theory is that…well, the simplest way to put it is that we think he's been contacted."
Ryan furrows his brow. "How is that even possible?"
Sebastien shakes his head. "We don't know," he says, then turns to Ryan. "Which is why I asked you to come along. We were hoping…"
"You want me to read his mind?" asks Ryan.
"No!" I yell, throwing out one arm in front of Ryan before Sebastien has the chance to answer. "My father almost killed him twice, and you want to risk his life over some brain wave change? Find another way."
"There is no danger," says Sebastien.
My blood pressure spikes. "How the hell can you be sure of that?"
Mom grabs my arm. "Young lady, watch your tone. Don't yell at Sebastien."
"I'll yell if he's going to risk my boyfriend's life."
"We know there's no danger because we already tried using other mind readers. None of them suffered any after effects," says Sebastien. "But they also got no results."
"Then why do you need me?" asks Ryan. "I just finished my apprenticeship. I'm sure the people you've got here are the best and have a lot more experience."
"You've made contact with him before," says Sebastien.
"There's another part to that equation," I say. "My father also went into his mind, remember?"
Sebastien ignores my comment and keeps looking at Ryan. "We feel you may experience different results because of your previous connection with Jillian and Roxanne. Your powers are slightly different than the average mind reader."
"What are you talking about?" asks Mom.
Sebastien looks at the ground. "I admit, I should have told you this before. But when the three of them connected it took his powers in a slightly different direction. Roxanne's as well. They are both more finely attuned, as if they somehow absorbed some of Jillian's incredible gifts."
"I don't care if he's the best mind reader on the planet," I say, folding my arms. "He's not doing it. End of story."
Ryan rests his hand on my shoulder. "Hang on a minute, Sparks. The two times he attacked me he sent his own thoughts. He can't do that now."
"You don't know that!" I say.
"Yes, we do," says Sebastien. "There is no risk. But it is up to you, Ryan. I certainly understand if you don't want to do this."
Ryan nods, and I can tell he wants to do it.
Damn friggin' testosterone. That rampant Y chromosome needs a leash.
I reach for Ryan's hand and tangle my fingers in his, then give him the most soulful look I can muster. "Please don't. You're not bulletproof."
"I'll be fine, Sparks," he says, smiling. "Besides, you're here to heal me if anything goes wrong. You've done it before. Twice."
Damn friggin' logic. Why am I in love with the only eighteen year old guy on the planet with a forty year old brain?
Ryan turns to Sebastien. "You want me to do this now?"
He nods. "The sooner we find out, the better."
"Okay." Ryan closes his eyes, which is what he does when he's about to read a mind. I squeeze his hand harder and he squeezes back.
My heart slams against my chest and I focus on him, ready to send as much healing energy as I can muster. But thankfully nothing happens.
Finally, after what seems like an eternity but is actually about sixty seconds, he opens his eyes and looks at me. "See, I'm fine."
My heart downshifts as I wrap my arms around his waist and lean my head on his chest.
"Did you get anything?" asks Sebastien.
Ryan nods as he puts an arm around my shoulder and pulls me closer, then kisses the top of my head. "Not much. It's him, but he's like an innocent five year old who has no idea what's going on around him. And I didn't see any of those dark images he sent into my head before. I didn't pick up anything that might be taken as evil."
"Good," says Mom.
"But…" says Ryan.
Sebastien's eyes widen. "Yes?"
"Someone's been in his mind."
My best friend Roxanne furrows her brow as she pulls another slice of pizza from the pan that sits on the red-and-white checkered tablecloth. "Someone powerful contacted your father?"
I swallow a bite of the steaming double supreme and wash it down with a sip of my super-sized-anti-Mayor-Bloomberg Dr. Pepper. It's funny, even though the guy's out of office people still associate him with declaring DEFCON ONE on soda, and the pizza parlor actually named its extra large drink the Bloomberg Special when the law got tossed by the courts. It's the New York carbonated middle finger at the guy. The restaurant is crowded for a Sunday night, the Mom-and-Pop eatery filled with loud conversation, the smell of baking pies and the sounds of Sinatra. "That's what Sebastien said. It has to be someone strong to get through their security."
"No way to identify the person?"
I shake my head. "Nope. Not yet, anyway. All Ryan got from my father was that he'd had a visitor."
"So what was this person of power looking for?"
"The theory is that it's one of my father's minions who wanted to determine if his powers are totally fried. Or maybe try to bring him back to full strength. Which scares the hell out of me."
"Aren't you glad you didn't heal him."
"Yeah, no kidding." My heartbeat is picking up a bit and I realize we need to get off the subject. After saving a life on Friday and spending all day at The Summit yesterday, I need something mindless. "So did you and Jake have a good time last night?"
Roxanne surprises me as she shrugs. "Not really. We went to dinner and after that I wanted to go home."
"What happened? I thought he was taking you dancing at that new club?"
"I wasn't in the mood after hearing about his hot Political Science teacher for an hour."
"Hot teacher?"
She rolls her eyes and pushes her shoulder length black hair behind her ears with her hands. "Oooooh, Ms. Cruise. She's soooo interesting and she makes her lectures come alive with her incredibly expressive face and all the boys have a thing for her and it's amazing that she's forty and never married…I mean, I know college boys have it bad for women who are a little older, but geez, it was like he was talking to another guy. Then he goes on and on about a meeting he had with her after class and how she really takes a personal interest in her students and seems to think he's got a future in politics. Finally I'd had enough so I told him I didn't feel well and he took me home."
"Rox, I wouldn't worry about it. Freshmen boys are like kids in a candy store when they see college women after four years of high school girls. Even Ryan's got his head on a swivel."
"Yeah, but we're college women now."
"Yeah, but we're eighteen and a forty year old has been around the block already. It's the experience factor, and, as you know, we don't have any." I reach across the table and pat her hand. "Look, you've got nothing to worry about. Besides, if by some strange turn of events things didn't work out with you and Jake there'd be a line of hot guys waiting for a shot at a six foot babe with legs up to her neck. It's not a bad lookin' crop on that campus."
"I suppose. Still, I've got it bad for the little guy and it kinda hurt me a little, ya know?"
"Aren't you the one who always said men take longer to grow up?"
"Stop hitting me with my own logic, short stuff."
"Maybe you need a little of your own logic. Remember when you first started dating him you went out with someone else to keep him in line?"
"I'm not playing those games anymore."
"I'm not saying you should actually do it. But just talk about a male teacher and give him a taste of his own medicine."
"The only male teacher we've got is that eighty year old English professor who died and didn't get the memo."
"Okay, not my best idea. Tell you what, I'll send my alter ego into that classroom and see what the hell is going on with that teacher."
After four years of challenging my stomach to a daily culinary smackdown in a high school cafeteria that served dishes which looked suspiciously like lab experiments, there was no way I was gonna eat college food. Roxanne and I had already done reconnaissance during our spring campus visit and were treated to a mystery meat dish she referred to as "cold shoulder" since a: it was cold, and b: she found a bone in it that looked like a shoulder blade she'd seen in her cousin's butcher shop. Besides, with the campus in Manhattan I could throw a stone and hit any number of terrific and reasonably priced places to eat. However, the school does have a subsidized coffee bar, which offers terrific flavored joes at a dollar a cup, so I'm enjoying a mug of almond amaretto while I attempt to navigate through the 1800s literary version of the health care law, Moby Dick. Get this: the book is required reading for my Modern Literature course. Which begs the question, would you have to be living during the Abe Lincoln administration to consider this book modern? Anyway, after thirty pages on the care and feeding of whales I'm ready to impale myself on a harpoon and making a point to hit the college bookstore on the way home to pick up the Cliff Notes. Hey, I can spend fifty hours reading this dated monstrosity or getting the thirty minute recap and spending my time doing noble deeds. Seems like a no-brainer to me. I could even do a testimonial for the Cliff Notes people that they could put on the back cover:
"The condensed version of Moby Dick gave me the time I needed to save the planet."
-Jillian Spectre, superheroine
Anyway, the java bar is packed and I'm sitting alone at a corner table for two when a tight pair of jeans moves into my field of vision. I look up and see a Greek god standing before me with a cup of coffee.
"Mind if I join you? All the other seats are taken."
