Psychic

“What?! I thought you were on my side, Magnus!” I yelled at him, not caring about the attention we were attracting on the busy street.

“Liv, just listen-“

“No!” I exclaimed. “Are you crazy? Hawthorne isn’t my friend, he will most likely kill me, blood relation or not. Has this been your plan all along? Were you just getting close to me so you could gain my trust? Was this all some sort of charade so that you could hand me over to your boss quietly?”

“Liv!” He interjected in my rant. “That’s not what I was doing.”

“Oh, yeah? Well, it’s not hard to believe. It looks like you would do anything to be the Warlock your parents wanted you to be, like your brother, am I right? The only way you’ll ascend in that little ladder of ranking in your stupid little magical community is if you turn me in, and what’s stopping you? I should never have trusted you!”

“That’s not what this it, Olivia! You have the Hunters after you, and twenty of them in the same place is never a good thing. They believe that all things unhuman are horrible creatures. They won’t give you the benefit of the doubt, no matter if you’re friends with one of their daughters. They’ll just think that you befriended her to do something bad to her. Don’t you see this, Liv? At least with the Warlocks I can help you. I know Hawthorne won’t kill you as well. He’ll want to interrogate you first.”

“Oh, great. I get to be tortured by a bunch of rednecks with vendettas or a madman of a father who thinks I’ll destroy his reign. Just great, Magnus.”

He sighed in frustration. “Look, Hawthorne isn’t completely evil. You’re his blood, he’ll value that even if you are a monster in his eyes.”

I narrowed my eyes and stepped closer to him, “Well, that didn’t stop him from killing my mother, now did it?”

Magnus tilted his head in confusion. “Your mother? When did he do that, and, quite frankly, how did you find that out?”

It was my turn to freeze up. He didn’t know about the other little dream I had, where I saw Hawthorne ordering his thugs to kill me, and then my mother jumping in front of me. And then the little mental freak out I had that caused them all to hold their heads in pain, like what I accidently did to the librarian the other day. My mother was the one who caused me to forget my old life, and I didn’t blame her if her own husband turned out to be a homicidal maniac.

“I . . . uh . . . I had another dream the night you told me about what I was. It was memories from before I was put in the foster care system. Hawthorne came over to this apartment where my mom had hidden us and he ordered them to kill or capture me, but she stepped in front of me and their magic hit her instead. She died, but not before performing a spell that would make me forget my life before that. Before I passed out, I did something with my powers and all the men fell down, pain radiating throughout their heads. It scared me that I could do something like that with my powers.”

Magnus scoffed. “And why didn’t you tell me this sooner?”

“Well, with Mandy Dawson being attacked the next morning and Victoria escaping I had a bit more important things on my mind there.”

Magnus sighed in frustration and ran a hand through his hair. “Well, I don’t think there’s any place safer for you now.”

We were seriously back on this track? Again?

“Magnus, maybe you didn’t hear me the first time, but I am not going to be handed over to the one man in this world who is out for my blood for no other reason than to prove a point and avoid a stupid prophecy that was written in some stupid book.”

“How do you know about that?”

“Know about what?” I asked tentatively.

“The book.” He said. “The Book of Truth. That’s where the prophecy about you came from. I never said anything about it.”

I coughed awkwardly.

“Umm, yeah you did.” He couldn’t know about the real reason I knew about the book.

“Umm, no I didn’t’.” He mocked me. “Who told you about it?”

I crossed my arms and decided to go on the defensive. “It’s none of your business.”

Suddenly his eyes flashed in realization. A couple of seconds passed where information was running through his brain at a high speed before he glared accusingly at me. “Victoria didn’t leave town, did she?”

I scoffed, trying to reveal nothing by my body language. “What do you mean?”

He chuckled, “It all makes sense now. She got to you, didn’t she? No wonder you’ve been acting so strange. What has she told you? Has she claimed her side of the story to get you to trust her? Please, we’ve all heard those lies that she talks about. Why wouldn’t she use her powers on Hawthorne if she liked him? It doesn’t make any sense. I just don’t understand why you of all people believed her.”

“How do you know that?” I asked harshly. “How would you know if she chose whether or not to read Hawthorne? You don’t know what it’s like to have this ‘gift.’ Just because you have the power to do something doesn’t mean that you want to. If I thought I loved someone, then I wouldn’t want to read them either. It’s an invasion of privacy.”

“Just because she’s a psychic doesn’t mean that you two are alike. Sure, you might have the same abilities, but you have different agendas. She’s rotten to the core, don’t let her take you in with her lies, Liv.”

I looked down. “Well, maybe you just don’t understand, Magnus. You’ve never had to feel out of place because of something you couldn’t control. You’ve never had to feel unwanted because no one wanted to adopt you. You’ve never had to feel like a monster in your own skin.”

“Who says I haven’t?” He argued.

I scoffed. “Oh, please. Just because your brother was a better warlock than you doesn’t give you the right to go around kidnapping teenage girls just because they might be the child of a prophecy that might actually take down a totalitarian leader. Have you ever thought that it would be better for someone who wasn’t Hawthorne to take charge?”

Magnus was taken aback, “What? Are you actually saying that it would be better if you destroyed the magical community? If you fulfilled this prophecy?”

I shrugged. “You know, I’ve never even seen this prophecy. Maybe you warlocks just interpreted it wrong. Maybe I’m your savior, not your doom. Have you guys ever thought about that, or were you too busy taking away innocent lives and ruining mine?”

Magnus gave me a dark look. I would’ve been scared had I not been so mad at him.

“You can’t blame me for the actions of my predecessors.”

“The same goes for me.” I argued back. “But I’m not the one turning in an innocent girl to a madman just because a couple rednecks are after her and she believed the cries of an innocent woman who understand her.”

“It’s for your safety!”

I huffed and narrowed my eyes at him. “Right, and how am I supposed to believe that?”

He ran his hand through his hair again in frustration. “Look, Liv, if you turn Victoria in, they might be lenient with you.”

“Turn her in?” I exclaimed in disbelief. “Are you joking? She’s the only one around here who seems to be sprouting the truth. Besides, I have an appointment that I’m missing right now, so, if you don’t mind, I’m going to leave. Don’t bother talking to me ever again.”

He tried to argue, but I shouldered past him before he could. I walked a couple steps away before I felt him tug on my arm and turn me around. “Don’t touch me!” I screamed in his face, ripping my arm from his grip.

“Is there a problem here, Miss?” asked a passerby. The man was in his late twenties or early thirties, a rough and mysterious look.

I dug into his mind and saw something that might help. All I had to do was speak, I didn’t even have to plant any ideas in his head.

“Yes,” I gulped in my best sturdy voice and stared at Magnus in fear, “my ex won’t leave me alone. I told him to go away, but he just won’t listen. Please get him away from me.”

The man gave Magnus a look even more terrifying than mine. Magnus made a move towards me and I flinched, which was the last straw for the man. “You need to leave this young lady alone, and never speak to her again, do you hear me? Or do you want the cops involved?”

Magnus gave me an intriguing look before shouldering the man’s hand off of him. He turned and walked away, but not before I caught his accusatory glare. He knew I had used my powers, and he wasn’t happy considering who I learned them from.

“Do you need me to take you home, miss?” The man asked sincerely.

I shook my head and directly my thoughts at him. “No, sir. Thank you, but I’m fine now.” He nodded and walked away with some help from some strategically places thoughts.

I sighed in relief, glad that plan worked. It turned out the man’s wife got assaulted and stalked by her own ex for years, so he had strong feelings toward any man who mistreated a lady. All it took was some acting and a bit of mind reading.

I was joyous that my powers worked in my favor for once, but I was wary about the encounter. Magnus now knew that Victoria was here in town and that she was helping me. Who knew how long it would take for him to tell his superiors, or worse, Hawthorne himself what he’s found out.

All I knew was that I was in even bigger trouble than before. I had the hunters, Hawthorne, and now even Magnus himself after me.

And to think just a couple weeks ago I was just an abnormal teenager who happened to read minds. Now I was a psychic who had a dead mother, a homicidal father, a best friend who might betray me, and a friend who wants to betray me.

And to think people wish to be what I am.