Psychic

Of course, it could’ve just been any forty year old woman with red hair in a dark hoodie – maybe out for a late night run – but what were the odds?

I had no doubt in my mind that it was Victoria. I didn’t know what she would do, but just the knowledge that she’d been able to find out where I lived so quickly scared me. If she was able to find me so easily, what was stopping Hawthorne? I mean – Hawthorne even had Magnus and his other source after me, even if Magnus was reluctant to share information on me now.

I only had the assurance that I was safe inside my own home. It wasn’t like Victoria could climb through the window or something. I would scream for help long before she could get up to my room, I was sure of it.

I was safe here. She couldn’t get to me while I was-

“Liv, honey!” Amy called up the stairs. “There’s one of your teachers from school here to see you!”

You’ve got to be kidding me.

I ran to the window and did a quick search outside. She was gone. I quickly ran back to the top of stairs. From this angle I could see Amy and Rick talking energetically with a red haired woman in a black hoodie. Victoria.

I started to hyperventilate. Victoria was here. Victoria, the only other psychic on the planet who was most certainly a mad woman.

I mean – couldn’t the universe have given me just one normal, stress free day without the threat of being found out?

Around the corner I could still see Victoria, laughing at something one of my foster parents had said. I couldn’t believe how someone so cruel could be laughing with the parents of the girl she’d most likely come to kill or at least fatally harm.

I took a deep breath and walked down the stairs, careful to keep my face and mind blank. I didn’t know if other psychics could read each other, and I really didn’t want to find out the hard way.

I wonder why Liv never talks about this teacher, she seems so nice, Amy thought. Rick, however, wasn’t thinking on the same path as she was. Ms. Lewis sure is a hot teacher.

I chuckled out loud at Rick’s thoughts. Everyone suddenly turned their attention to me, including Victoria, who I assumed told Amy and Rick that she was a Ms. Lewis.

“Liv!” Victoria exclaimed with a smile like poisoned honey. “I was just telling your parents here about how great a student you are. They sure must be proud of you!”

“Foster parents,” the reply slipped out before I could control myself. “They’re my foster parents.”

The gleam in Amy and Rick’s eyes dulled a little at my comment, but I couldn’t help myself. After just reading about what had happened to my mother, I didn’t want anyone else to be labeled in her place. Victoria was the reason my father had been driven mad trying to find me, the reason my mother had to hide with me, and the reason she was murdered by one of Hawthorne’s henchmen. I couldn’t stand to let her label anyone else as the parents I had lost because of her.

The room had been carpeted in a dark silence. I hadn’t meant to hurt Amy and Rick with my comment, but I knew I had anyway.

“Well,” Victoria said with a grin, “I can see that they are still as proud of you as your real parents might’ve been. I actually came here today to discuss a project in my class that I had you doing. It’ll only take a couple minutes.”

I stared her down with the evilest glare that I could manage, which probably looked far less than threatening due to my baby face and dull, straight hair.

Victoria suddenly glanced at Amy and Rick. A strange expression passed over their faces as Victoria’s gaze sharpened in precision. The moment was over as soon as it started though, because the next words out of Amy’s mouth were, “Of course, we’ll be waiting in the dining room.”

I was in shock. As Amy and Rick left the room, my mind wandered. My foster parents might’ve let me have my space, but putting me in a room alone with an adult that they had only just met, that was unheard of. Victoria must’ve done something to them when she glared their way. But Victoria was no warlock, and I hadn’t heard her mutter a spell anyways. She’d done something beyond my knowledge of the supernatural, which, quite frankly, wasn’t much to start out with.

“Hello Olivia.” Victoria said, sporting a smile that didn’t reach her eyes.

I narrowed my eyes in her direction, “My name is Liv.”

She nodded. “Alright, Liv,” she drew out, lingering on my ‘new’ name in her eyes.

“What did you do to Amy and Rick?” I asked, wasting no time in my bombardment of questions running through my head.

“You know who I am, correct?” She said, totally ignoring my question.

I sneered, “Yes. I know that you’re a psychic. I know that you murdered a lot of people in a small town called Wallington. I know that you muttered a prophecy about me to Hawthorne that sent him on a mad spree to find me. I know that you are the reason for my father’s search, which inevitably led to my mother’s death. I know that you are evil.”

Victoria pouted her lips. “Ahh, but you don’t know the whole story yet, Liv.”

I stood my ground. We stared at each other for a while before she finally broke away and sighed in frustration. “Alright, what I did to your ‘foster parents’ was called mind manipulation. Only psychics possess this ability, it is the reason we can read minds, and it is the reason we are feared in the magical community. They’ll be fine. Perhaps they’ll be confused for an hour or two, but they’ll be fine.”

I nodded, surprised at my own actions. She’d just answered a very important question of mine, one I’d had since the beginning. Reading minds wasn’t too potentially scary, especially when dealing with people who were good at hiding their thoughts, but being able to control people by only using your mind, now that was scary.

“Psychics can read minds, but that’s only the tip of the iceberg. Our real power is mind manipulation. With a thought you can turn someone’s will into your own, but it still isn’t that simple. Knowing what someone is thinking, being able to get inside their head to know their deepest, darkest secrets, that’s how we can manipulate them. If you know what a person expects, you can twist their thoughts into something similar.”

It didn’t sound any more respectable when she explained it, in fact, it painted a picture of how corrupt psychics could be. It was a wonder to me why the magical community didn’t try to do away with psychics sooner. We sure had scary powers.

Victoria sighed. “Oh, don’t look so scared, Olivia.” She used my full name, something I didn’t quite enjoy. “We aren’t all evil. Just because you have the ability to become bad doesn’t mean that you will, trust me. There are much more . . . convenient and hidden ways to be evil, trust me.”

I glared at her, “Like murdering a bunch of innocent people?”

She glared right back, “You’ve got the picture wrong. I didn’t murder the stupid royal family or all those other people that day. I’m just the scapegoat. Hawthorne used my childish feelings against me.”

I stayed silent, and she took that as an invitation to keep explaining.

“Hawthorne was the Counselor. He was the highest ranking official next to the royal family. He knew that he could never be in charge with the royal family still in place, and there was no way he could turn the entire magical community against them, so he did the only other thing he could. He killed them off.”

I gasped.

“Oh, please,” Victoria sneered, “it wasn’t like he got his hands dirty. He probably had one of his henchmen do it, but that’s not the point. The point is, he needed someone to blame. And this is the part of the story where I come in.

“Ever since I was born, people have treaded around me like I was glass. I was a psychic, arguably one of the most powerful beings ever in existence. With one thought I could turn them against each other. I could see into their heads and use that information for my own gain. Long story short, people tended to avoid me. I was powerful, which meant no friends. People started to think I was favored more by teachers and I was too much of an advantage for one team to have in sports.

“And then one day I met a guy who didn’t shy away in fear when he found out who I was. Of course, he was newly married and had a newborn at home, but I couldn’t help but to get attached to the one man who had shown me kindness out of all the others.

“In all reality, I should’ve been able to see it coming sooner, I was a mind reader for crying out loud! But I was convinced that he was in love with me, so I refrained myself from ever reading him. That’s what made that fateful day when he had the entire royal family murdered so sudden. If you think about it, maybe it was all my fault after all. If I had read him, his thoughts would’ve betrayed him and I could’ve told someone what he planned, but I didn’t, and he got away with it.

“Hawthorne used my feelings for him against me. He convinced everyone that I had murdered them because I was after power. It wasn’t hard for the people to believe anyways. They might not have hated the psychics, but they sure were wary and perhaps even a bit jealous of us. Believing that I had betrayed them was an easier story to sell, especially since he was the Counselor – he was trustworthy.

“When I told him about you, I wasn’t lying. I had known for quite some time that the psychic after me would be even more powerful then all of the rest. I’d been approached by the psychic before me when I was twenty. He gave me the Book of Truth, an ancient thing that acted as a prophecy teller of sorts. The Psychics were the race entrusted to keep the book safe from all outside sources, because its words could call for the rise and fall of many great kingdoms. There was a passage about a psychic who would bring about the fall of a Counselor, and I somehow knew that it would be the psychic after me.

“As I was being arrested, I knew that I could never get the word to the next psychic, they would only be two years old at the time anyways. So, I made sure to let Hawthorne know. If he started the hunt for the next psychic, he would have to let the public know why he needed them, which would be warning enough for their parents.

“What I didn’t expect was for you to be the next psychic. I mean – what are the chances that Hawthorne’s own daughter was the creature he was searching for? But, the closeness was what aloud your mother to hide you. Hawthorne couldn’t arrest his own four year old daughter, the public would start to doubt his self-made image. Because of this, you were given time to escape into the real world, one without magic. Your mother was smart in the sense that she made you forget about our world. You were left safer in the dark, until now.”

I took a couple moments to process that all. It was obvious from what I knew of Hawthorne that he was nice to Victoria for one specific reason. He knew that he would need her one day, so he made sure she trusted him – trusted him enough to not use her gifts on him. From there it was simple, blame the heinous acts on the one person the public could never totally trust.

I still couldn’t trust Victoria fully, though. If what she said was true, then Hawthorne was driven crazy by his own grasp for power, crazy enough to the point where he barely blinked an eye when his own wife was murdered and initiated a manhunt for his own innocent daughter.

But what Victoria had said about me being safer here, in the real world, she was wrong. She had some valid points, but if I had known who I was, what I was, I could’ve been more prepared for all this chaos.

More importantly, I wouldn’t have gone through the hell that I called the foster system.

“You don’t know what I went through in the system. This power was the reason no family wanted to even take a look at adopting me. I was the little traumatized girl who heard voices in her head! I was broken!” I was yelling now, letting out all of my frustrations about the past couple weeks at once. “If I had known what I could do, maybe I could’ve protected myself from all of that! I would’ve had to see those . . . images every damn night! So don’t go telling me that I was better off this way, Victoria. It’s still your whole fault, no matter what spin you put on it. You’re the reason I went through all of this in the first place!”

Victoria had stayed silent and blank faced throughout my entire outburst, but now she finally spoke, “If you want to blame anyone, blame your dear old father. I came here to warn you, not to hear you complain about what I’ve done.”

I narrowed my eyes at her, hoping that I could somehow actually alight her already vibrant hair into an actual fire. That is, until she spoke again.

“You need to stay away from that boy, Magnus. He’s working for Hawthorne.”