Psychic

I awoke from being knocked out for the second time that night. I had no way of knowing how long I had been out either times, so I had no idea how late into the night it was.

I surveyed my surroundings in surprise. I was in the dark room from my dreams where Hawthorne and Magnus were originally talking about me. The creepy fire in the middle of the room was dying, making the light scarce.

I reached my thoughts out and found that there were no people in the room that I could read. So, I was alone.

But why leave me alone in this room? What was the point?

It was then that I realized that I was sitting at the same vantage point as the dreams, in the clear container.

I touched the walls, only to bring my hand back to my chest in pain. The walls must’ve been enchanted or something, so I couldn’t touch them. Great. All I needed was more magic to ruin my day, am I right?

The enclosure seemed to be about five feet round, maybe four feet high. I wouldn’t be able to stand at all in the small space, not unless I wanted to be electrocuted by the walls again.

So, that’s why they left me. I couldn’t break out of the enclosure, and it looked like I was stuck until someone came and realized I was awake.

But I wasn’t chained down to the floor like Victoria had been, so that was something.

“Hello, Olivia.” Said a small voice from a dark corner.

I looked frantically around in the dark, but I couldn’t see anyone. I again reached out with my thoughts, but came back with nothing. In fact, it seemed that, if anything, there was just something blocking my perception. Maybe it was the weird enchanted walls. They could be the reason why I couldn’t read the person or persons hidden in the darkness of the room.

The shadow stepped out and I stifled a snarl.

Magnus Moore.

I was furious at him. He had come after me with Hawthorne. He tried to stop me from helping Bella, which resulted in her mom being killed by Hawthorne. He had helped Hawthorne kill all those hunters, even if their deaths weren’t by his own hand.

I despised Magnus Moore with all my fiber right now.

“Get away from me!” I spat at him, seeing as he was walking closer.

He sighed and flinched as he looked down at me, somehow looking genuinely sorry for what he had done, though I wasn’t buying it.

“I’m sorry, Olivia. It had to be this way. My family . . . this was the only way . . . my brother . . .”

“Who is your brother?” I voiced. “I mean – I’m about to be imprisoned forever or killed by my own father, so you might as well tell me.”

“Well-”

“Magnus!”

He flinched again as Hawthorne came swooping in the room with a big black cloak on his shoulders. A boy followed him, but due to the poor lighting I couldn’t tell who he was. A final figure came through the doors, looking to be fighting against an imaginary force pulling her in. She had roped binding her arms and a furious expression that I would recognize anywhere, even in the poor lighting.

Bella Barnes.

“Get these stupid binds off of me, you animals!” she screeched. “Where is Liv?! What have you done with her?!”

Hawthorne only laughed at her before turning on me with a sneer. “So, it’s awake?”

I sneered right back at him, “It’s not very kind to call your own daughter an ‘it’”

“I stopped calling you my daughter the moment your mother confirmed what you were. How could I ever love a filthy psychic like you?” he scowled.

I was taken aback a bit. I knew Hawthorne was heartless, but to stop loving your own daughter just because they can read minds and occasionally control them? I mean, come on! It wasn’t like I chose to be what I am, and it’s certainly wasn’t like all psychics were bad. It was his fault the psychics were persecuted in the first place.

“The only reason you claim all psychics are bad,” I countered, “is because you blamed Victoria for your own actions to become a ruler. Isn’t that so, oh dear father?”

Magnus gave me a look of warning, but I couldn’t care less. Magnus was below my caring as far as I was concerned.

The other boy in the room chuckled, stepping forward towards the fire so that his features were now much clearer to me through the glass-like substance separating us. “You don’t really believe that old croon, do you, Liv?”

I was perhaps extremely shocked, but not as much as Bella, at who the other boy in the room was. I assumed immediately that the other boy was Magnus’s brother, Hawthorne’s right hand man and the one who originally suspected me of being the psychic. It all made perfect sense, it was a wonder I couldn’t see through his façade before now.

“Bryce? You’re with them? You’re one of them?!” Bella exclaimed. “You’re the one that just dragged me through this hall? You!” She stopped her fit when she lunged at Bryce, who muttered an incantation under his breath before she could. Bella was suddenly stuck in place, her feet seemingly glued to the floor.

Bella gave Bryce a death glare and opened her mouth for another fit of yelling when he muttered something again, the red stone on his ring flashing. Her mouth was moving, but no noise was coming out. She seemed to notice this and shut her mouth, still glaring at Bryce with all the hatred I never knew Bella could muster.

“Ahh, that’s better. I didn’t know for how much longer I could’ve stood all your whining.” Bryce exclaimed. “It did well for me to learn that little parlor trick in training school, didn’t it, Magnus?”

I, however, was not under a hex and used my vocal chords with all my might.

“You worthless pig! You were Hawthorne’s other spy the entire time? I knew that there was something off about you from the moment I met you.”

He laughed in my face. “Actually, you only just met me a little over a month ago. The real Bryce Hope is in an enchanted sleep somewhere in the compound. I, on the other hand, am not him.”

At my confused expression, and Bella’s for that matter, he looked to Hawthorne, possibly for permission to continue, which was granted.

“I, being Counselor Hawthorne’s right hand man, was set to the task of patrolling the neighboring cities and towns, looking for any signs or rumors about a strange girl who seemed to know more than she should. My dear brother over here was to be sent any place where I or other agents had heard of there being any mind reader of the correct age and gender.

“The search for you was almost looking like a lost cause until a little over a month ago. I came across a petty criminal, while under the persona of an equally petty criminal, who told me about this girl who stopped him from robbing an old lady. A girl who warned that she would go straight to the police with information about another robbery he had just committed if he didn’t leave at that moment. But how had the girl known about that? After all, he’d only just been thinking about it, not talking.

“It was a weak lead, but I thought I might as well check it out. After all, my dear brother, the only one, sadly, who could really tell who the psychic was, was on a wild goose chase in Brazil for the psychic. He was vying on information perhaps even more vague than what I was given by the petty thief, but somehow I knew it was worth checking out. Could it really be a coincidence that the possible psychic was just miles away from the last town she was spotted in at the age of five when she somehow thwarted our own Counselor and his guards?”

“So, performing a bit of advanced magic, I took the place of another teenager at the local high school. From what I gathered of the boy before I enchanted him, he was as arrogant as they came, popular too. I took on the persona of Bryce Hope, where I found out yet more about this strange girl.

“Bryce’s parents were very concerned about him and other kids at the school. Apparently a girl named Bella Barnes spilled a secret about another girl cheating on a test. Her parents grounded her in retribution. Bryce was friends with this girl, and she confided that she had done it so secretly that no one in the room should’ve known that she cheated, unless, of course, they could read the mind of the guilty party.

“It was then that I called in Magnus. It seemed that we had finally found the psychic Counselor Hawthorne had been vying for oh so long.

“But my brother had other ideas.

“He became close to you, not Bella Barnes, the girl I had suspected. So, I became close to her instead. It was obviously clear from the moment I spent time with her that she was no mind reader. I knew then that she wasn’t the psychic, but it must’ve been a close friend of hers, for how else would she have known about the cheating?

“Before long we were contacted by the hunters, who claimed to have found the psychic. They, of course, didn’t know exactly what you were. We just told them that there was a dangerous creature in their area, not actually warning them of what powers that creature held. We only told them on the rare chance they caught you and were perplexed about what you were. We had no idea that they would actually find you, though.

“But we were all busy with the Victoria problem at that moment, so capturing you would be hard. For one, the stupid hunters wouldn’t tell us who you were exactly, probably expecting us to take you before they could ‘interrogate’ you. Resources were also stretched to find Victoria again. We knew she would either run or go find you, both which were no beneficial to us. We would rather have the last two psychics in the world on our watch, as well as not have them together. Victoria was sure to teach you things that would be a danger to all us warlocks.

“It was at your ‘birthday’ dinner that I finally put the pieces together. Magnus was looking rather moody lately, and your fight with him let me see in between the lines. Magnus had known what you were, and you were doing something he didn’t like, like being in contact with Victoria. I also noticed the way you seemed to be reading Bella’s mind, how you knew what she was going to say before she said it.

“But, of course, the stupid hunters just had to ruin things, didn’t they? They kidnapped you that night, on the eve of your sixteenth birthday. The day you would take down Counselor Hawthorne, a grave mistake. We made to recapture you immediately. It was then that Hawthorne confided in me what Magnus had determined from the moment he met you, that you were his daughter. I, of course, believed his decision in perusing you was the correct route and didn’t judge him in the least, unlike Magnus.

“Which is what brought us here.”

I couldn’t speak for shock. Bryce Hope was, in fact, not Bryce Hope. He was Magnus’s brother.

Our group was interrupted when another man came barging in the room, out of breath and red in the face. “Hawthorne, she’s here. The other psychic.”