Fade To Midnight. Shannon McKenna

did this to me,” he said, touching the scars on his face. “There were others, but he was the driving force.”

      That, at least, was no surprise. “Dr. O.” The name left a bitter taste in her mouth.

      “You knew him?”

      She nodded. “I did the Haven program, when I was fourteen.”

      “You don’t look surprised to find out he was a psychopath.”

      “I’m not,” she said. “I knew he was rotten. I told my father, but Dad didn’t believe me. He thought I was just trying to wiggle out of any efforts to improve myself. Being weak and whiny and defeatist.”

      “So he made you do the Haven program? Why? What for?”

      “I was depressed, doing badly in school,” she explained. “Dad wanted to fix me. Soup me up. Dr. O talked a good line, but I don’t think Daddy realized exactly what the brain potential workshop entailed. Dr. O stimulated our brains with electricity and drugs, to enhance our mental function. So he said. It was…well, it was weird.”

      Kev’s mouth hardened. “Did it work?”

      She shivered. “I guess that depends on what you mean by working,” she hedged. “You might get in touch with the liaison from Helix to Osterman’s research facility, see if they have documentation on the Flaxon era. They might be able to tell you something.”

      “Hmmm.” He looked into his coffee cup.

      “I don’t understand why you came to me,” she told him. “I know so little. I can’t help you. With anything.”

      “On the contrary. You’re the only one who ever has helped me.”

      She gazed at him, blank and bewildered. “How could I?” she demanded, almost angrily. “I did nothing. It was awful to watch that. I felt so helpless.”

      “You did help,” he insisted. “In my dreams.”

      “Ah! Your dreams!” She laughed, nervously. “It’s funny, to get credit for how I behaved in another person’s dreams. I don’t even know what I did in them, so how can I—”

      “You were my angel. When I needed help, you helped me.”

      She shut her mouth, swallowed. “Um. How?”

      “By existing,” he said simply.

      She grunted. “That’s enough? Just to exist? I didn’t do anything?”

      “You didn’t have to do anything. You just were. A beacon in the dark. The only one I had. It saved my sanity, maybe my life. So, thank you.”

      “Don’t thank me,” she said. “I can’t take credit for that. In my world, you don’t get points for what you are. Only what you do.”

      He shook his head. “Your world is about to change.”

      Wow. That was bold. The quiet conviction in his voice made her catch her breath. Her toes and fingers were tingling with it.

      Toughen up, Edie. “All this woo woo stuff is really spooky and interesting, and great material for a graphic novel, but it’s the creation of your own overheated brain,” she said crisply. “Just like my own stories are the creation of my own overheated brain. I don’t want to be mean, but your dreams have nothing to do with me. So get real, and take credit for being your own damn beacon.”

      He shook his head. “I might have agreed with you before I read the Shadowseeker books. But I think you’ve been close to me all along.”

      She was shredding the edge of her paper coffee cup into a fringe. An unconscious thing she did whenever she didn’t have a pencil in her hand. Another of Edie’s little closet full of compulsions, as her mother had called them. She tried to stop, then gave into it, and started tearing again. Why not? What the hell? She had nothing to prove to him.

      “I’m sorry,” he said, watching her precisely tearing uniform strips in the cup’s edge. “I didn’t mean to make you nervous.”

      She kept her mouth shut and her eyes on her cup fringe. The silence grew impossibly long, but she resisted the impulse to pump chatty filler into it. After several quiet minutes, he spoke again.

      “What happened, in the bookstore? The girl ahead of me in line?”

      The awful memory made her gut clench. “Oh, that,” she mumbled. “Just my evil genie, poking out its head.”

      He waited for more, but she no longer freely confessed what happened when she sketched people. It never went over well. Her parents had gone bananas. Her therapist tried to put her on antipsychotic meds. The one time she’d confessed it to a boyfriend, he’d dropped her flat and never called again. Other friends and lovers had found out, too, when one of her fits came over her. They always had the same reaction, in the end. So she didn’t go there, anymore. Not ever.

      “Tell me,” he prompted, gently.

      She opened her mouth, let it fall out. Secrecy seemed irrelevant with this guy. After all, he was already inside her head. He lived there.

      “It happens when I sketch,” she said. “I sometimes, ah…I pick up things. From their heads. I, um, tune into their frequency, I guess.”

      He didn’t look alarmed, or even surprised. “What did you see?”

      “I saw her boyfriend strangling her to death,” Edie said.

      His eyelids contracted, a quick flinch. “Ouch. Jesus,” he said. “How reliable are these perceptions?”

      “I can’t verify all of them,” she said. “Of those I can verify, one hundred percent. I’ve had no luck in changing outcomes, but not for lack of trying. I saw my mother’s heart attack, but I couldn’t persuade her to go to the doctor. I sketched my father a few weeks ago in a restaurant, and I…ah, never mind. So what do you want? An introduction to my father? I’m not really the one to ask, with the low opinion he has of me.”

      “No.” He patted her hand. “I don’t want to make difficulties for you. I can get in touch with your father and Helix with no introduction.”

      “So what do you want, then?” She felt lost.

      “Nothing,” he said. “Just keep existing.”

      She narrowed her eyes. “Oh, come on. Give me a freaking break.”

      A shadow of a smile flashed over his face. “I don’t know. You could walk with me.” His voice sounded almost shy. “Just keep me company. Talk to me for a while. I like the way it feels. To be with you.”

      Did he? Wow. He knew all her deepest, darkest secrets, and he wasn’t afraid of broadcasting something compromising to her? Was his heart so pure? Was he so fearless, so free of shame? Maybe he just didn’t believe her. Maybe he thought she was nuts. That was a classic.

      She was flushed, charmed. Was he coming on? She didn’t have a lot of experience with come-ons. She wouldn’t recognize one if it bit her in the butt. He fell into place beside her on the sidewalk, and they walked in silence. So much for keeping him company. She didn’t have a thing to say. She was flustered, bashful.

      She reflected on what he’d told her. He was a man who had made his peace with silence and solitude, and it had changed him, made him different from other men. She felt it. With him, silence could be as eloquent as speech. Each silence had its own tone and flavor, its own subtle tints and nuances. Each silence said something specific. And she understood each one. Or thought she did. Maybe she was projecting, or deluded. But she couldn’t resist that leap of silent understanding. Raw emotion in the center of her chest. Emotion she could barely control.

      Play it cool. This man is a stranger, babbled the shrill voice of reason. She knew nothing about him, except that he was more or less brain damaged, full of weird notions, and intensely interested in her.

      She should not be having