any psychic frills, you have been working on building a shield,” DeMarco said.
“And you know damned well I’m still broadcasting like a beacon more often than not. Which means nada on the shield.” She sounded frustrated.
When he glanced at her, the same frustration was written clearly on her expressive face.
Choosing his words carefully, DeMarco said, “I’m sure you remember that Miranda also offered a theory about that.”
“Yeah. That all my abilities, including initially becoming an active rather than a latent psychic, have been triggered by . . . events. By need.” Her voice was calm and even wry and offhand, the way it always was whenever she mentioned the subject of her developing abilities.
DeMarco wondered if she realized how much she distanced herself emotionally when she spoke of them, especially when the subject was the devastating attack that had triggered her latent abilities as a medium.
Though God knew it had to be a survival mechanism for her to say as little as possible—and that, light and almost flip. The report of that attack had held only the cold, brutal facts, but those had been enough to shock and sicken even a man who had been to war.
Knowing what had been done to her gave DeMarco horrific nightmares—and if some of those were her nightmares, unremembered in the sane light of morning, it was something he would never tell her about. Because she would only take another step away from him, guarded and wary.
Not ready to truly face it herself, far less ready to share it with the man who loved her.
It didn’t help DeMarco to know that the serial rapist and murderer who had brutalized Hollis, leaving her terribly injured body and soul, even her sight,
her eyes
taken from her, had paid for his crimes with his life. It didn’t help him to know that Maggie Garrett, a gifted empathic healer, had helped ease the worst of the pain and trauma so that Hollis had emerged from the horror of that attack able to not only continue to live her life but also thrive and grow, reinventing herself rather than retreating into darkness, as that monster’s other surviving victims had done.
It didn’t even help that a gifted surgeon—and, DeMarco suspected, her own innate healing abilities—had given her back her eyesight.
None of it helped.
Because Hollis had been hurt terribly in ways no human being should ever be hurt, and no matter how deeply buried the agony of that was, no matter how easily she seemed able to refer to “the attack” almost as if it had happened to someone else, the truth was that she would live forever with a dark knowledge of true evil and unspeakable loss, and that might never, ever heal.
And there wasn’t a goddamned thing DeMarco could do to help her deal with that.
Unaware of his thoughts or the pain they brought him, Hollis was going on in that almost flip, uncaring tone she invariably used when discussing the evolution of her psychic abilities.
“The first new sense opened up because of extreme trauma and because I’d lost one of the original five, and nobody knew it’d be a temporary loss, even my own mind. Later I apparently needed to see auras, so I did. I needed to be able to heal myself because I’d be dead otherwise, needed to be able to heal others because Diana would most probably be dead otherwise—and I’m not going to let a friend die if there’s anything I can do to stop it.”
“I don’t think there was a ‘probably’ about that one,” DeMarco murmured. “Without you, she would have died.” 2
Hollis half nodded, acknowledging that. “And I needed to be able to channel pure energy, dark energy,
and
scrub it clean, because it was causing all
kinds
of trouble and threatening more; someone had to take care of it, and evil has a nasty habit of deceiving most people, even most mediums. But not me, I’m not deceived, mostly due to that first traumatic event in my life, where I met evil up close and intensely personal, so the evil behind
“And you know damned well I’m still broadcasting like a beacon more often than not. Which means nada on the shield.” She sounded frustrated.
When he glanced at her, the same frustration was written clearly on her expressive face.
Choosing his words carefully, DeMarco said, “I’m sure you remember that Miranda also offered a theory about that.”
“Yeah. That all my abilities, including initially becoming an active rather than a latent psychic, have been triggered by . . . events. By need.” Her voice was calm and even wry and offhand, the way it always was whenever she mentioned the subject of her developing abilities.
DeMarco wondered if she realized how much she distanced herself emotionally when she spoke of them, especially when the subject was the devastating attack that had triggered her latent abilities as a medium.
Though God knew it had to be a survival mechanism for her to say as little as possible—and that, light and almost flip. The report of that attack had held only the cold, brutal facts, but those had been enough to shock and sicken even a man who had been to war.
Knowing what had been done to her gave DeMarco horrific nightmares—and if some of those were her nightmares, unremembered in the sane light of morning, it was something he would never tell her about. Because she would only take another step away from him, guarded and wary.
Not ready to truly face it herself, far less ready to share it with the man who loved her.
It didn’t help DeMarco to know that the serial rapist and murderer who had brutalized Hollis, leaving her terribly injured body and soul, even her sight,
her eyes
taken from her, had paid for his crimes with his life. It didn’t help him to know that Maggie Garrett, a gifted empathic healer, had helped ease the worst of the pain and trauma so that Hollis had emerged from the horror of that attack able to not only continue to live her life but also thrive and grow, reinventing herself rather than retreating into darkness, as that monster’s other surviving victims had done.
It didn’t even help that a gifted surgeon—and, DeMarco suspected, her own innate healing abilities—had given her back her eyesight.
None of it helped.
Because Hollis had been hurt terribly in ways no human being should ever be hurt, and no matter how deeply buried the agony of that was, no matter how easily she seemed able to refer to “the attack” almost as if it had happened to someone else, the truth was that she would live forever with a dark knowledge of true evil and unspeakable loss, and that might never, ever heal.
And there wasn’t a goddamned thing DeMarco could do to help her deal with that.
Unaware of his thoughts or the pain they brought him, Hollis was going on in that almost flip, uncaring tone she invariably used when discussing the evolution of her psychic abilities.
“The first new sense opened up because of extreme trauma and because I’d lost one of the original five, and nobody knew it’d be a temporary loss, even my own mind. Later I apparently needed to see auras, so I did. I needed to be able to heal myself because I’d be dead otherwise, needed to be able to heal others because Diana would most probably be dead otherwise—and I’m not going to let a friend die if there’s anything I can do to stop it.”
“I don’t think there was a ‘probably’ about that one,” DeMarco murmured. “Without you, she would have died.” 2
Hollis half nodded, acknowledging that. “And I needed to be able to channel pure energy, dark energy,
and
scrub it clean, because it was causing all
kinds
of trouble and threatening more; someone had to take care of it, and evil has a nasty habit of deceiving most people, even most mediums. But not me, I’m not deceived, mostly due to that first traumatic event in my life, where I met evil up close and intensely personal, so the evil behind
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