Out of Mind by Stella Cameron Page B

from inhaling her life. And while he pulled on herinsides with the massive drag of his sucking, Caroline got smaller.
    She did get smaller, and smaller. She shrank until his mouth drew in her whole head.
    A plop and he spat out her head again. She flipped over and landed in something transparent. A loud, loud bang sounded before it got darker. Wherever she was, the way in or out had been closed.
    Peering as best she could, her whole vision was filled with a large, almost black eye looking back at her.
    Then she knew where she was. Naked, curled in a ball, Caroline lay in the bottom of her own empty champagne glass.

10
    “Y ou aren’t my father, Ben,” Willow said, frustrated that he refused to let her go to see Nat Archer on her own.
    Ben watched her face for an uncomfortably long moment. “Glad you noticed.”
    The precinct house was also on Royal Street and only blocks from the Millet antiques shop.
    They had almost reached the black railings around the forecourt that led to Nat’s office. Willow stopped walking. She faced Ben with the little red dog she already loved under her arm. “I don’t know how you found out when I’d be coming down here. You just showed up when I was leaving my flat. You keep on just showing up. Have you been messing around in my head again? There are basic courtesies to follow—for all the families like us. You know the rules about that.”
    “I do, but I’m surprised you mention them.”
    Lightning showers didn’t usually start in the morning, but today was an exception. White streaks cracked the heavy gray sky and big raindrops began to fall. The street smelled of damp grit and a suggestion of spilled beer from the night before.
    Ben pulled her closer to the coffee shop next to theprecinct house. “Why do you have to try to be such a loner?” he said through his teeth. “You pretend you don’t need anyone. Not you, not Miss Independence. Crap. We all need other people.”
    He didn’t get mad easily. Everyone said Ben had a long fuse, and he had almost never gotten angry with Willow. She looked from her white tennis shoes with lime-green flashes and laces, to the open door of the coffee shop. It wasn’t much after seven, but a stream of people on their way to work filed in and out. They dragged in. They came out with coffee steam rising past their noses and faint sparks of new hope in their eyes.
    “Want some?” Ben angled his head toward the shop.
    “I want you to go away and leave me to be an adult. I’ve got trouble—we both know that—but I’m the only one who can deal with it. And I’m not guilty of anything, so I’m not worried.” Not true .
    “You’re right, it isn’t true,” Ben said. “You’re worried out of your mind and I don’t blame you.”
    She frowned at him. “Stay out of my head!”
    “I wasn’t in there. You were in mine.”
    Had she been? The thought unnerved her. If she was starting to voluntarily enter his mind, or anyone else’s, she was losing her grip on being normal. She was normal, dammit. Being around all these so-called paranormal people was getting to her—rubbing off in some irritating ways and all of them imaginary. She would be okay as long as she remembered she only imagined she was psychic sometimes because she was afraid of being so.
    “Thinking about it, are you?” Ben said.
    If she didn’t turn a bit wobbly just looking at him, this wouldn’t be so hard. When his blue eyes looked straightinto hers and she could see how intensely concerned he was for her, staying mad took a lot of willpower.
    Yesterday’s kisses still left their imprints on her. She looked at the palm of her hand and sighed. Yes, she really could still feel the imprint of his mouth there. Just giving in and sliding into his arms again would be heaven. It would also be unfair—to him, and to her in the end.
    “Thanks for caring about me,” she said, softening her voice without meaning to.
    “Can’t help myself,” he told her without a hint of