“What the hell?
“I was thirteen,” she said quietly. “I had just arrived at Summerlight. I was alone and vulnerable because I hadn’t connected with Nick and Abby yet. Two of the older boys cornered me outside a storage room and dragged me inside.”
“Bastards.” Rage ripped through him.
“I was terrified and I was furious and I was desperate. I fought with everything I had, and I discovered that I had more weapons than I knew I possessed.”
“You used your talent to defend yourself?”
“It was a shock to all three of us, believe me,” she said. “My talent was still developing, and I was still learning to cope with it. I honestly didn’t know what I could do until I realized that one of the creeps was screaming in panic and looking at me as if he was seeing a monster. I had unintentionally put him into a dream trance—a waking nightmare.”
“You can do that?”
“Sure. It requires physical contact, of course. But I use my ability to put my therapy clients into a light trance all the time. It’s how I work. I can make the experience very . . . unpleasant if I want.”
“What happened that day when you were attacked at the school?” he asked.
“The first creep freaked. His reaction caused his friend to freak, too. They both let go of me as if they’d been scalded and turned to run. But when they opened the door, they ran straight into Nick, who had sensed something bad was going down and decided to investigate.”
“This is Nick Sawyer, the friend you’ve mentioned?”
“Right.” She smiled. “He claims that he was born to be a really good cat burglar. He can see in the dark better than most people can see in daylight. And I’m pretty sure he’s never found a lock he couldn’t get through. He claims that if it hadn’t been for Abby and me, he probably would have pursued a career as a jewel thief. We talked him into going into the hot books business—antiquarian books with a paranormal provenance—instead.”
“What did Sawyer do to the two sociopaths who tried to assault you?”
“Nick caught the first guy coming out of the storage room and slammed him into a wall with such force that the jerk’s nose was broken. Nick sent the second one down the gym stairs. The result was a broken wrist and some cracked ribs.”
“Did the bastards complain?”
“Sure, but the authorities didn’t take them seriously. They were known bullies, and Nick was smaller and lighter. He looks more like a professional dancer than a street fighter. At any rate, from that day on, I was a member of Nick and Abby’s crew. The three of us stuck together until we graduated. We’re still family.”
He knew it was dumb, but he couldn’t suppress the flicker of jealousy that crackled through him.
“Was Nick your high school sweetheart?” he asked.
Gwen shook her head. “Nick is gay. He became my brother, not my boyfriend. I didn’t go out on any real dates until I left Summerlight and went off to college.”
“No high school dances? No prom night? No trips to lovers’ lane?”
“Nope, nope and nope. You don’t do that kind of stuff when you’re attending a boarding school that has bars on the windows.”
“It sounds awful.”
Gwen made a face. “Summerlight was not a normal high school. The students were all there because we were considered abnormal. Some of us were more abnormal than others. And some of the kids were downright dangerous. The atmosphere was not conducive to dating, believe me. Besides, we wouldn’t have been able to go off the grounds.”
“Were all of the kids psychic?”
“No, a percentage were genuinely disturbed. But a surprisingly large number of students showed traits that Abby and Nick and I have come to associate with forms of psychic talent. That’s what brought Evelyn to the school. She somehow discovered that there was a high proportion of talents at Summerlight. Abby and Sam found out recently that the school deliberately searched for teens with strong para-psych profiles.”
“Sam mentioned that.”
“I can assure you that in the course of tossing out a wide net, the school administrators managed to gather a lot of serious wack-jobs, some of whom no doubt went on to become very scary people,” Gwen said.
“Like the two bastards who assaulted you. Do you know what happened to them?”
“No. They steered clear of the three of us after that. When Abby and Nick and I got out of Summerlight, the last thing we wanted to do was keep in touch with former classmates, believe me. I will give the academy credit for teaching us one very valuable lesson, though.”
“What was that?”
“How to pass for normal,” Gwen said.
“But it’s hard to pretend you’re normal when you get involved in a close relationship of any kind—friend or lover.”
“Obviously, you’ve had some experience,” Gwen said.
“Yes,” he said. “But unlike you, I grew up in a family that accepted the fact that Sam and Emma and I are different.” He smiled. “I should say Dad has accepted it. Mom still tries to pretend the three of us are normal, but deep down, she knows the truth.”
“I’m sure that mothers always do know the truth about their offspring, whether they admit it or not.”
“Probably,” he agreed. “All right, the assault in the linen closet explains how you came to find out that you were capable of sending a man screaming into the night. But that was a deliberate effort on your part and done in self-defense. That doesn’t explain why you would send a lover screaming from your bed.”
“Not intentionally,” she assured him. “Honest.”
“Unintentionally?”
She grimaced. “The problem is my aura. When I sleep, I dream more intensely than most people. My dreaming aura affects anyone who happens to come into physical contact with me. If that person happens to be asleep and dreaming, my currents overpower his. The result, I’m told, is a particularly unnerving kind of nightmare.”
“Well, that answers one question,” he said, satisfied.
She raised her brows. “About my love life?”
“No, about how Zander Taylor happened to go over the falls. You sent him into a nightmare, didn’t you? He went crazy and started running.”
She closed her eyes. “I knew you would figure it out sooner or later.”
“Nice work.”
She opened her eyes and watched him very intently. “It doesn’t bother you that I’ve got the ability to send someone into a nightmare landscape so intense that the victim actually leaps to his death to escape?”
He patted her bare shoulder. “We’ve all got baggage.”
“That’s very broad-minded of you, but in my case my baggage makes me a prime suspect in a few murders, past and present. And some would say that in Zander Taylor’s case, I’m guilty.”
“Not like he’s a great loss to the world,” Judson said.
“You’re not taking this seriously, are you?”
“I’m taking you very, very seriously, Gwendolyn Frazier.”
He tightened his grip on her face and pulled her mouth down to his. He kissed her until she wrapped herself around him once more.
A LONG TIME LATER, he awoke to the feel of someone shaking him gently.
“Judson,” Gwen said.
“What?” He did not open his eyes.
“Judson, wake up.”
The urgency in her voice brought him fully awake. He sat up swiftly and used his other vision to quarter the room, searching for the threat. Nothing of a dangerous nature presented itself.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Nothing.” Gwen was on her knees amid the tumbled bedding. Excitement blazed in her eyes. “That’s just it,
