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  Vance took the bleach-scented cloth from her hands and wiped the table. “Because I work as a dishwasher to pay my way through school, so I know what I’m doing. And because I think you can help me.”

  Aisi inched away from him, but he caught her by the hand and held on tight, not letting her go.

  “Do you know what all that stuff is on the table?”

  She shook her head.

  “I don’t need to tell you all the names or explain everything,” he continued, “but they only respond to psychic events. Every time you opened your mouth, my EMF detector went off. And your dad?” Vance looked into the open window which separated the large electric grill from the dining room. “The man set off every piece of equipment I own.”

  Aisi put on her best poker face and shrugged. As she tried again to pull away, she became very aware of his warm hand holding hers firmly. She wouldn’t meet his eyes but the image of his tan face, smoky eyes, whisker-stubbled chin, and strong, wide frame was already burned into her mind.

  “You know what I think, Aisi Turay?” Vance finished wiping the counter with a flourish before tossing the rag with perfect basketball player form through the window separating the kitchen and dining areas. It flew right to the sink against the back wall and wrapped itself around the base of the faucet. He turned back to her, gray eyes boring into hers.

  “No clue,” she lied. She knew exactly what he thought.

  “I think if you’re not psychic, your father must be.”

  Chapter 7: Infrared

  Aisi finally looked up into Vance’s eyes. She wasn’t sure why, but she believed she could trust him. Her brow furrowed as she wondered why this guy, of all people, would show up at the tail end of the single most awful day she’d ever had. A guy who would believe in what she was. A guy who studied it. Why would he come right then? She didn’t believe in random chance. Something must have brought him here, something bigger than just a school project. She might not believe in coincidences, but did she believe in fate?

  She finally glanced away, heart pounding as she realized some part of her knew she could tell him. Out of the corner of her eye, something caught her attention and looked toward the kitchen door. She saw her father’s silver eyes watching them closely. She realized that Vance still held her hand, and at that moment the door jingled open and her mother swept in. Aisi jumped back with a squeal of surprise, blushing furiously. Great timing, Mom!

  “Aisi! Just look at you!” her mother said, jerking to a halt in the door way. She was backlit by Padelski’s still-flashing lights at the corner. She looked from Aisi to Vance and back again. Aisi flushed further, wondering why she felt guilty and embarrassed when she had no reason. Her mom just walked in at a bad time, right?

  Jorja pursed her lips, her expression a mix of curiosity and surprise. “Is this a boyfriend I have yet to meet? Why does my own daughter never tell me anything? Come here, boy, let me look at you.”

  Jorja flounced across the diner in the most dramatic way possible so her floor-length broom skirt swooshed around her. Her excessive bracelets jangled, and her purple shawl swept behind her. Long auburn curls spiraled down to frame her pale, freckled face. She quickly yanked his hand up from his side and gazed intently, squinting at it as if she were far-sighted, her face inches from his palm. With one long, slender finger, she gently traced the lines of Vance’s palm.

  “Do you know what I am doing, boy?” Jorja whispered. “Chiromancy. The ancient and sacred art of divining the future by studying what the gods have written on your palms. I see something peculiar at the intersection of your head line and your heart line, and your life line has several curious branches at its end.” She looked up at him, still caressing his palm. Aisi rolled her eyes as her mother continued. “This means, of course, that you are intent in your purpose, and nothing will distract you from reaching it. Such intensity is to be feared. You have several alternate destinies, which you choose by your actions. If you choose to become less focused in your present quest, you may yet have a long and happy life, but if you choose to pursue the dangerous and the unknown...Well, just know that I’m not responsible for your painful and violent end.”

  Jorja dropped his hand as abruptly as she took it, and Vance stepped back, startled, as she reached up to pat his cheek indulgently. “But don’t worry, boy. I did not foresee anything horribly sadistic happening to you tonight. If you would like to come visit me in my shop, we can work on altering your future so you may live longer.” She turned her back to him, her long curls whipping him in the face as she spun. “Billy? Where’s Leo?” she called shrilly.

  “I’m here, Momma!” he called, running out from the back and sliding across the floor in his socks. He zoomed past her down the aisle between the rows of booths before he scrambled back to jump on her for a hug.

  “Good gracious, Leo!” Jorja sighed as she heaved him up, his scrawny arms wrapping around her neck. “I’m not your personal playground!” She gave him a quick hug and dropped him back down.

  Billy came from the kitchen, a dish towel draped over his shoulder. He looked tired. “How was your church meeting tonight?”

  Jorja shook her head. “I don’t think I want to go anymore,” she scoffed. “I just haven’t found the spiritual fulfillment there I hoped to find, but I met a Buddhist at the library today who wants me to come to their meetings. We read something together about living the simple life to attain nirvana. It was just sublime! I heard there’s a Buddhist chapel next county over. I should look it up.”

  Aisi tried to hide her face from her mother as she rolled her eyes. Her mom changed religions as often as most people change their bed sheets. Once she got done with Eastern religions, Aisi thought, she would have to start over with whatever religion she practiced first. Thankfully, her mother seemed to have forgotten for a moment that she had walked in on her daughter apparently holding hands with a cute college boy. Jorja swept into the back as Leo tugged at her skirt, probably to show off his latest and greatest kindergarten art project.

  Aisi eyed Vance wryly, who seemed confused. “Sorry about that,” she apologized. “That’s her weird way of getting your attention. And it’s kind of funny that you’d accuse me of being psychic, when my mother pretends to be exactly that. She’s a genuine con artist, bilking cash out of the unsuspecting masses who look for answers to questions that should remain unanswered.” Jorja always made a big deal about predicting the impending doom of her new acquaintances in the hopes of getting new clients.

  Vance frowned. “I didn’t accuse you of anything, Aisi. I just expressed my hypothesis. That’s what a scientist does: form a hypothesis and then work to prove it.”

  “You know, some people would argue that parapsychology isn’t science at all,” Aisi said, a bemused expression on her face. “Some would say you’re full of it.”

  Vance glanced over at the equipment on his table before looking carefully around the room. His eyes suddenly sparkled when he saw what he wanted to see. “Do me a favor and go sit down in the last booth in the corner, will you?”

  “Why?” She folded her arms and leaned away from him.

  “I want to show you something.” He hurried back to the table where Zinnia and Colby still chatted animatedly. Aisi smiled a little at her friend, who caught her eye and grinned excitedly in return. Things seemed to be going well in Zinnia’s latest flirt fest. Vance hurried back with his digital camera.

  Aisi pulled a face and looked at it warily. “Is that thing going to beep at me, too?”

  “No,” Vance replied, once again Mr. Intensity as he switched it on. “What’s your mom’s name?”

  “Jorja, but why—”

  “Jorja!” he called, cutting her off. Jorja immediately came back out from the kitchen. As she approached, he reached toward a bank of light switches on the wall immediately behind where Aisi sat, but it looked and felt like he was putting his arm around her. She tried to act casual and not look completely confused.

  Aisi managed to catch his
eye as he turned back around. “You and your cousin are pretty rude, you know. I have never been interrupted so much in all my—”

  “Did you call, boy?” Jorja asked as she approached their table. She looked a little smug as she continued. “I impressed you, didn’t I? You need me to look beyond this mundane world to give you the guidance you so desperately need.”

  “Kind of,” Vance replied. He smashed Aisi against the wall of the booth as he reached over to spank the light switches. The diner plunged into temporary darkness, disrupted by three quick flashes of light. Just as Zinnia and Colby shouted in confusion, the lights came on again. Aisi sat blinking in the momentary blindness that comes after someone takes your picture, made worse by the fact that he took it in pitch darkness.

  “What on earth did you just do?” Jorja asked, outraged.

  “I just wanted to take the picture of the woman who…uh…warned me about my future.” Vance smiled sweetly at Aisi’s indignant mother. Aisi had to give him props. Whatever he was up to, he knew how to sweet talk her mother, who gazed down at him with a look of affection she and Leo hardly ever saw anymore.

  “You are quite welcome, boy. Don’t forget to come visit me in my shop soon.”

  As Jorja left, Aisi turned her attention to the camera. Vance changed the setting to review pictures, explaining, “I have this camera set to photograph in the infrared spectrum. This is where we can actually see paranormal activity. The first here?” He indicated a completely black screen. “This is your mother. She’s not psychic.”

  “Well, duh. Just don’t tell her that,” Aisi warned. “She’s had enough disappointment in this life. I don’t think she needs any more.”

  Vance looked at her oddly, but ignored it and switched to the second picture. The image was mostly black, but a faint blue glow which Aisi recognized as her own profile sat in the center surrounded by vibrant splotches of red, orange, and yellow. They seemed to pulse and glow, even in the still image. The hair on the back of her neck stood up as she realized they were around her, the ghosts who always sought her. Her forehead wrinkled in concern. Why couldn’t she see them right now? It was a faint comfort, to have that connection with another realm, as if maybe one day she could…She stopped herself with a sigh.

  “And this next one? This is your dad.”

  He switched to the third image and they both said, “Whoa!” at the same time. Vance had pointed the camera at the open kitchen window, creating a black frame around the deeply white-blue, pulsating outline of her father standing in the center. All around him, a bright silvery light filled the background except where a little blue head popped into the picture. Leo must have peeked up at just the right moment to see why the lights went off. Aisi groaned.

  Vance flipped the camera off and turned to her. “Really? Your brother, too?”

  Chapter 8 Picture on the Wall

  Aisi sighed. Her best friend didn’t even know her secret. She hadn’t told her father either since she was little, when no one believed her, so she stopped trying to tell him. Apart from Zinnia, she was closer to him than anyone else. She had absolutely no reason to trust some guy she’d known for maybe ten minutes.

  Her heart thudded inside her chest because she wanted to say it to someone, to finally share this burden. This morning she told Leo people would call them crazy if they knew the two were psychic. It was true—it happened to her, when she first started seeing spirits. Last thing she wanted was a one way ticket to the wacky shack when people found out.

  And yet...as she looked into his sparkling gray eyes, something deep down told her he would get it. For the first time ever, she could really tell someone who would believe what she had to say. She didn’t know why, but she knew Vance was different. She closed her eyes, waiting for it. A quick image flickered into her mind of Vance running through smoke and flames toward her and then snuffed out, but it was enough. A time would come when she’s need him, and he’d be there.

  Her thoughts raced back to her father, whose image in the picture shone so bright. He was surrounded by…something. She foolishly convinced herself that she had it all under control, but now she had so many more questions. Discovering Leo was haunted last night was tough enough. Seeing this picture of her father made her realize she didn’t know what she thought she knew. Maybe the demons were out of control because she had lost control.

  “Will you show me that picture of my dad again?” Aisi asked quietly. “I need to look at it more closely. I think I might have some great information for your project, but I can’t explain why or how, or much of anything.”

  He handed her the camera silently. She switched it back on and pushed the review button until it came to the third shot, the infrared image of her father in a glowing, pulsing blue, framed in black, surrounded by white light. She hit the crop button to zoom in on the white portion, and her stomach sank.

  The closer she zoomed in, the more pixilated the image became, but what originally looked like faint specks of red scattered in the original shot became sets of red dots, two by two, around her father. How many? Aisi quickly counted them and realized that her father was at that very moment surrounded by at least ten demons not yet strong enough to appear to Aisi. If the rest of the day were any indication, they would be soon. She’d never tried to vanquish more than one at a time. Her heart pounded harder.

  She gave the camera back to Vance. “Do you see those little dots in the white, set side by side?” She pointed to the screen, tilting her head toward him. Her curls fell over his shoulder despite being tied back in a low, loose pony tail, but he didn’t brush them away.

  He looked closer, squinting a little. “Yes,” he answered.

  “You just captured ten little baby demons in your picture,” she said simply. She smiled at the look of alarm on his face as he grabbed the camera and stared at the image. “You’re doing this fancy college project and you’ve never seen one? Well, here you go. I see them all the time, and I found out last night my baby brother does, too. I could handle them pretty well by myself until just today. So you showing up here right now either means this is the world’s biggest coincidence, or you’re the luckiest guy I’ve ever met. You just waltzed into demon central.”

  “Wait, what?” Vance spluttered, still astonished. “How do you know these are demons?”

  “I told you,” she replied impatiently, “I see them all the time. If I stay calm, I can vanquish them with some insults and a few Latin swear words. Today? Holy stinking wow…”

  She sighed, and then she launched into the short version of her day. The night terrors. The demon in class and her ruined test. Getting spanked and burned by a demon strong enough to take on something close to human form without possessing someone else’s body. She stood up to show him char marks on the shredded pocket of the seat of her pants, a blackened hand print with claw rips still visible. As she sat back down, she finished, “And he farted at me! The demon actually farted at me.”

  Vance could not have looked more perplexed. “Demons…can fart?”

  Aisi almost laughed. She took a deep breath, pushing a shiny, spiral lock of hair out of her face. Her hair bothered her, so she pulled her long black tresses out of the rubber band which held them and twisted it up on top of her head. As she secured it with the elastic in her hand, she said indifferently, “This one did. Smelled like rotten eggs.”

  Vance looked grim. He recovered a bit, thinking hard about all she said. “Sulfur. Hellfire and brimstone.”

  Aisi shrugged. “He said his name was Malus Indolus. In Latin, that means evil genius, but I called him on it. I told him the name was stupid. He didn’t like that so much.”

  Vance’s eyes grew wide. “You called out a demon? Whoa…” He looked at her with profound respect. “Aisi, you have no idea how exciting this is to me. I am totally blown away by this. I…I don’t even know what to do with all this information!”

  She leaned forward, her elbows on the table. Out of the corner of her eye she could see he father watchi
ng them, pacing inside the kitchen. Weird. She focused on the gold speckles in the cheap Formica table top, absently tracing patterns on it with her fingers. “I can’t help you much more with this school project or whatever. Everything that’s happened today is really confusing.” She shook her head. “I don’t even know why I told you all this, except maybe that you might be the first one to get it. I can’t tell my mom any of this. You’ve seen her. She’d use Leo and me to make more money. I never thought of telling my dad again. When they were still married I told them, and my mom kept dragging me to psychologists until I pretended I didn’t see anything and they said I was cured. The thing is, I never saw anything at all until…”

  Aisi paused and looked at a small framed picture on the wall close to the restrooms. She stood and walked to it, a feeling of hopelessness washing over her. In it, identical twin girls stood holding hands, wearing matching white sun dresses. Their long black curls were pulled up into pigtails on either side of their heads with white ribbons streaming down to their shoulders. Smiling parents stood behind them on the porch of the house that was now an abandoned wreck near the church where Father J, the famous demonologist, built his church. She pulled the image from its hook on the wall and handed it to Vance with trembling hands.

  “Everyone in town knows about my twin sister, Nakia,” Aisi said shakily. “She disappeared ten years ago. For a while, they said my dad killed her and threw her body into the old well behind the house. Then the police decided it must have been an accident after he passed all their lie detector tests. They never found a body…they said she fell down the well. They thought my dad just got nervous because he’s an immigrant and covered it all up so he wouldn’t get in trouble.”

  Vance looked outraged. “Why would they think that?”

  Aisi closed her eyes, wishing she didn’t have to remember any of it. “Because the night she disappeared, my father took cement and sealed the well.”