Pyro

I headed into the kitchen to watch Jonathon work, but a knock on the front door stopped me. I was the closest person to the front door and it was my house, so I answered it.

“Hello?” I said.

“Hi,” Jackson replied. “Do you have a minute?”

“Sure. We can go into the bedroom.” I led the way to my room, not that he didn’t know the way. He’d spent some time there before. That’s another story or something to talk about later one. “What’s up?”

“I think Helen may have started that fire.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that the police are looking at footage of Helen starting that fire.”

“How is that possible? When she came to get me she didn’t smell like smoke.”

“How’s that?”

“Well, Helen called me to tell me that she’d seen Kendra at that hotel and that I should go meet her. I told Helen that I didn’t just want to go up and meet her that way, I wanted something memorable to tell our kids.”

“Do you think she’s capable of something like that?”

“I wouldn’t have thought so, but after talking with Kendra and with Jonathon, I’m just not sure. I’m scared to find out.”

“Kendra doesn’t know this, I don’t think, but not everyone made it out of the hotel. There were at least 50 fatalities and some of those that she helped either didn’t make it or were severely hurt.”

“Oh my. Do you think there will be consequences for me saving her and being involved?”

“I don’t know.”

“No way to find out?”

“Sweetie, there’s no one that I answer to. I just know things, like you do. To be honest, I’m not sure where these powers or gifts or curses come from.”

“Do you think of it as a curse?”

“No. People have been known to, though, and you know it.”

“I know, I thought it was a curse for awhile.”

“You did.”

“Yeah. When I was younger and no one believed in what I could do or when I was a little older and people did believe in what I could do and try to use it for things that were bad.”

“What do you mean?”

“I had one boyfriend, when I was a sophomore in high school, and he’d found out that I could see the future. He knew that I couldn’t see things whenever I wanted to, but he still tried to get me to trigger events so that he could gamble on the high school, college, and pro football, soccer, basketball, baseball, and other sports events. He was determined to be rich and he wanted to be rich sooner rather than later and he didn’t want to have to work for it.”

“What happened?”

“Once in awhile, when he’d get to be too overpowering, I’d tell him what he wanted to know. He’d win and then other times I’d tell him a lie. He’d lose. Soon he owed too much money. The bookies came.”

“And?”

“He tossed me to the wolves. They beat me up instead of him. When I woke up, I went to the police and they arrested the men on illegal gambling, delinquency of a minor, my beating, and several other things.”

“Your boyfriend?”

“The men found him once they were finished with me and killed him before the police could arrest him, too. They thought he would squeal once he knew how badly I’d been hurt. Truth is, he wouldn’t have cared.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because when I saw the outcome of the whole thing, I saw something completely different.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that if they hadn’t killed him, he would have killed me. He’d have continued to beat me, rape me, and then as my life expelled from my body, he would have told me that he didn’t care.”