I felt the emotions flow over me long before Echo voiced her discontent about being where we were. She didn’t like it one bit. The irritation she felt was mixed with subtle hints of fear, and it made me wonder why. Clarisse got up to set incense to burning around the room and lit several candles as she went. I watched as she seemed to float from place to place. Finally, she came back to the table and lit three of the four candles there. When she lit the fourth, the air grew thick, and Echo’s emotions went from unsettled to full-blown panic. What the hell was she so uptight about?
Eden, I don’t want to be here. Echo’s voice was uncharacteristically strained. Please—I want to leave—NOW!
At the onslaught of Echo’s protests, Madame Clarisse looked up from the task on the table and rose a brow inquisitively. I wasn’t the only one who saw the gesture either. Echo saw the world through my eyes, and so she’d seen it as well.
Oh—my—Eden, she can hear me! You see what I just saw—right? Echo whispered like she thought that would help. She is reacting to me talking.
My emotional balance at that moment spun out of control as my own emotions, rational reasoning and calm, tried like crazy to quell Echo’s irrational, frenzy of fear. She was scared shitless, and I didn’t know why. Her fear was so intense that it started to bleed over into my personal emotional balance, and I started backing off the chair I’d been sitting on. Echo had not had this kind of control over me in years, and it startled me.
Drew looked at me with concern as I started to inch away from the table. “Eden, what’s wrong? Are you okay?” He stood from his chair and laid a supportive hand on my arm. I glanced at him, not sure what to say.
We are leaving now, Eden, whether you want to or not. Echo was screaming in my mind. Clarisse cocked her head to one side as she openly studied me. She was clearly concentrating and not trying to hide it. A single tear streaked down the reader’s face, and the shouting protests in my head ceased. The panic and fear Echo was projecting on me was replaced with rage and anger.
Don’t you dare pity me! Get out of my damn head, you intrusive witch. Echo screamed at Clarisse from inside my head as if the reader could hear her. The rage and anger escalated and evolved into something so strong, so toxic, that the only name I could give this new emotion was hatred. Echo loathed Clarisse’s very existence.
Echo was screaming so loud, I thought my skull would explode. My hands shot to my head as the pain streaked through my mind in violent, pulsing waves. I moaned with the rolling sensation of it.
“Eden, what’s wrong? How can I help?” Drew’s alarmed voice said as I crumpled into a sitting position on the floor and rocked with the pain Echo’s temper tantrum was causing.
Drew looked like he might lose his mind with how much he was worrying over me. His lips were moving, and his expression was pained as I looked at him, but I heard nothing he said over Echo’s rantings in my head. A shocked expression crossed Clarisse’s features as her hand paused over the center of the cloth on the table, and then she took a small step in retreat. Her eyes widened, her cheeks flushed and a second tear joined the first. If I hadn’t known better, I’d have to agree with Echo, but I didn’t because I did know better. I hadn’t told Clarisse about Echo or any specifics about my situation at all. The information exchanged was basic on my side of that conversation, my name, my age, when she could expect me to walk through her shop door. My head was pounding with the surge of negative emotion that coursed through me, and then Echo’s emotions took a dark turn toward something I’d never felt before. Laced through the foreign emotion that pulsed through me like a heartbeat, was an emotion I was familiar with—protectiveness. I realized that Echo felt the absolute need to protect me from Clarisse, so much in fact, that the direction of her emotions was taking an aggressive turn.
Look at her! She can hear me, Eden. A look of alarm passed over Clarisse’s face.
“Clarisse, you can hear her?” I asked uncertainly. “Can you hear her thoughts, because that is what it looks like?”
“Hear? No, I can’t hear anything Eden, but what I feel—well, it’s not something someone like me feels every day. I thought I might be crazy, but with the question, you just asked—well, I know now that I’m not. Who is she Eden, and why does she hate me so much,” Clarisse asked.
Chapter Ten
The One Way Window
“Echo, Clarisse can’t hear you, calm down,” I said aloud, where everyone, including Echo, could hear. “Clarisse is an empath, she can feel the arc of your emotions, that’s why it looks like she can hear you.”
Echo fell silent within my head, and my emotions leveled out. I still felt raw in the wake of those emotions, but at least I had complete control again. I sat back on the soft blue velvet chair with a white silk runner, and Drew sat in a green one to my right with a black runner. He still held my hand, and when
