[Ganzfield 2] Adversary by Kate Kaynak

the remnants of the fire. He’d wrapped himself in two sleeping bags, although one had a huge rip down an entire side. Loose batting spilled from the torn nylon shell, leaving little puffs on the ground. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one who’d had a bad dream in the night.
    I offered up a silent prayer of gratitude to whatever Higher Power had put Trevor in my life. I felt emotionally intact again. Whole. Because of him, I’d be able to cope, to make it through the day. I needed to…we had a lot of problems to solve.
    The morning air felt warmer and a little damp. It was above freezing—it might even make it up into the forties today. I followed the trail back to the camp, carrying a small pile of clean clothing and my toiletries. I needed coffee and a shower, preferably both as hot as possible.
    Drew’s mom, Viv, oversaw the kitchen in the winterized caretaker’s cabin that sat next to the lodge. She pointed me in the direction of the coffee then put me to work cleaning dusty pans and chipped dishes while I waited my turn for the single working shower. Water to the outbuildings, including the shower house, was shut off for the winter so the pipes wouldn’t freeze. This little cabin was the only building with heat and water. Fortunately, all the other buildings had fireplaces and were made from non-combustible materials. That must’ve been what appealed to spark firefighters to buy the old camp in the first place.
    Viv McFee looked close to six feet tall, large-boned and a little plump. Strands of white shot through her blonde hair, which she wore tucked back in a braid. Her bright blue eyes were edged with what some people call laugh-lines, but I saw enough of her thoughts to know that most of them hadn’t come from laughing. Her mind gave off a sense of endurance. More than once, I heard her think something like we’ll get through this. We’ve been through tough things before . I’d met her briefly at Christmas, but apparently I hadn’t made much of an impression. She didn’t remember my name, but I didn’t take it personally. I was terrible at remembering names myself.
    I finally broke the kitchen’s silence. “Who does this camp belong to?”
    “Quentin and Gerry bought it a few years back. They wanted a summer place we could all come, even the active sparks.” I saw their faces in her mind as she talked. Gerry had shown Trevor and me to our campsite last night.
    “I’m so confused about how everyone is related. How are there so many G-positives in one family?”
    “You don’t know the story?” Viv gave me an appraising look. Should I give her the public version or the real version?
    “Real version, please.” I hoped I wouldn’t offend her by picking the unasked question from her mind.
    She cracked a wide smile. “That’s right. You’re the little telepath dating Drew’s friend, Trevor. I remember you now.”
    I decided not to take offense at the “little” thing. Compared to Viv and most of the McFees, it was accurate enough. Besides, I was intrigued. What was in the “real” version that made a “public” version necessary?
    “It all goes back to Gram. That’s Nan Cochran McFee—my husband’s great-grandmother. Andrew brought me up to meet her shortly after we started dating. She was a hundred years old that year. She died at a hundred and three, I think, back in the early 1990s.”
    I saw her memories of the old woman, whose body looked so hunched and frail but whose mind had struck Viv as being so strong. “When Nan was fifteen, she started having dreams of her future husband. Over and over she saw the same man in her dreams. She knew he was in America, and keep in mind, she was still back in Ireland at this point. Her family lore had always held that her mother’s people had a bit of the ‘second-sight,’ so she took her dreams seriously. After months of dreaming of this same man, she finally decided she simply had to know if he was real. This was 1904, mind you, and