The car is really fun to drive. It has a rear-wheel drive and makes very manly sounds, probably due to the air cooling, which elicits the same surface thought in everybody present simultaneously "the damn thing is broken!". It isn't, however, and it is quite capable of the 100 km/h that its manual promises. I wonder if I can make it go even faster with Skills...

"Mira? It's Elina again."
"Whassup?" I shield my mind from my friends the best I can.
"Not to worry you, but people have started disappearing. Our people. Please call me if they show up there."
"All right. Can't you see for yourself?"
"I'd think so, but lately a lot of things happened that I should have seen but didn't."
"Like us?"
"Like you. Do you all have the Skills now? We know about everyone except Tarja."
"Ask her. Here's the number." I give her the phone number.
"OK, I understand."
"Elina - how come you guys call them Skills and not superpowers?"
"Everyone agreed that superpowers would be too tacky and too sci-fi."
"But this is sci-fi stuff."
"It still feels tacky. Mira - there is one more thing."
"Yeah?"
"That flashover that Jamie had - it causes brain damage. Not permanent and not severe, but still... Most likely this will just feel like a headache to him, but he might start behaving irrationally."
"More irrationally that usual? I'll keep this in mind. Not that I can subdue him or anything... Hold on, what flashover?"
"The one you saw in their bedroom. You have mind-sense, so to you it must have looked like a flash of black fire."
"You mean like the one inside... I did not see any flashover! I just went straight in there and saw that the bed was ruined. Was that it?"
"You waited at their door for a minute and looked like you were watching them through it. That's when it happened and then you went in. You don't remember? But you did see the black fire somewhere? Mira, if any of your party has the black fire constantly in them, this is a very serious problem! Please tell me!"
"I've seen it. No, not constantly," I lie.
"Are you sure? Because it is very dangerous. What you see as the black fire is the energy used for the physical and chemical Skills. When everything is OK it seems to dissipate into the person's body and reappear when the person is using the Skill. If it looks like the fire is constantly there, it means the Skills has not properly integrated with the person's conscious mind. Very dangerous for themselves and others."
"What... what can be done about it? Can it be integrated? Or removed, or transferred somewhere?"
"Yes, it can be integrated, but that needs professional intervention. I can do it. But it cannot be removed or transferred from person to person."
"OK. Another thing: how do I know if somebody is changing my memories?"
"If they are old memories, trivially," she shows me a complex image, "and if they are new memories, under a few hours old, you cannot. Fresh memories can be erased without a trace, but it has to be within four hours max. But if the erased memory is long enough, there will be sort of an empty space where it used to be. This one wasn't nearly long enough though."
"Thanks for telling me all this."
"Anyway, I am planning on getting down south tomorrow. It would be nice if you could all stay together somewhere on the Finnish side. If you can make it to Lappeenranta, there is another woman with Skills there, Sinikka. She is not very powerful and I don't think it would be wise for her to approach you, but you can call on her in an emergency. Or otherwise."
"I'll see what I can do. I still don't really trust you, but it looks like I can't trust anyone anymore anyway."
"Mira, these people are still your friends and your boyfriend. They are just shocked and traumatized. Like you are."
"I know. I am just pissed."

Mind-shield still up, I grab Jamie by the hair and turn his face towards me, still keeping my own eyes on the road.

"Jamie. I am not loving the new you. I know you are a very powerful critter nowadays, and probably always were, but if I catch you altering my memories ever again, I swear you won't be able to sit on that ass of yours for a week."

This gets his attention, and everyone else's.

"I am sorry," he says. "I really couldn't let you remember that thing. I am sorry for making you forget it, and I am sorry for keeping some of the information from the rest of you. There are some things we should really keep private. And when those Community people will start to interrogate us - and that's a 'when', not a 'if' - I can keep our secrets and the rest of you can't."
"If you are the only one keeping them, they are your secrets, not ours," points out Timo.
"Trust me, it's better this way."
"Problem is, I don't see any reasons to trust you at the moment," I say. "You keep reading our minds, and editing them to your convenience. I am sure you do it with the best of intentions, and according to your better judgement. Problem is, I want to use my own judgement, even if yours really is better."
"Jamie can read minds?" Rudy is shocked.
"Hello, where have you been for the last three hours?" says Katie.

I think we are losing track of who knows what about whom. I am losing track, anyway. In any case the wave of hatred, fear and shame coming from Rudy is so palpable that it doesn't require any active reading, in fact it's difficult to shut it out of my mind. I try to concentrate on the road.

"Love," says Katie, "just tell us those things we are not supposed to know. If we decide we'd rather not know them, you can wipe them out from our minds again."
"I'll think about it, OK? I think it's better you read the Community wiki first. I have downloaded it, it's in my laptop."

Katie gets the laptop, finds the stuff and starts reading out loud. Timo, Tarja and myself are listening. Jamie and Rudy are having a telepathic fight of epic proportions. The details are shielded from the rest of us, but the emotions run so high and so obvious that I feel like opening the windows.

The Community, or some sort of a community of people who have the Skills, has existed forever, or at least longer than the records have been kept. The records, incidentally, have been kept for about 200 years now and are now online. There are 607 of them; we are listed as tentative future members 608-612.

They believe, but are not sure, that there has always been about 1 of them per 10 million of normal population, but they are not evenly distributed. The distribution seems to depends both on the ethnicity and the location in complicated ways. About half of them were born with the Skills; about half were so-called potentials who have acquired the Skills later in life.

The potentials are born with the potential, and nobody knows why. The acquisition of the Skills often happens under a high stress, but often for no known reason.

The Skills vary. Everyone can communicate telepathically, and everyone has the Sight, or so they believed until they met Jamie. Now that they have 4 instances of people without the Sight but with other Skills, they are speculating whether or not the Skills-aura they can perceive by Sight is in fact Sight-aura, and whether there are many other Sightless Skilled people running around. They are not happy about the idea.

Reading minds is a common Skill, but they think Jamie is uncommonly powerful at it. Powerful mind-readers can also make permanent changes, for example erase memories. The Skill that I used on the evil henchman leader, where I made him obey my orders, is called coercion, and is considered a different Skill. Its effects disappear when the person is gone.

There is no exhausive list of Skills there; many are listed, and they are just grouped into mental, physical, chemical, etc. There is also a medical Skill, healing. Some degree of it is common, but being really good at it is rare. There are also elemental Skills, an increased ability to manipulate some particular element or chemical, also rare. There is a list of people who have this Skills, and what they can do. Katie, being a longtime player of Exalted, wonders whether fire, water, earth, air and tree are on the list, but of course they aren't. The water probably could be, though.

There are several people who can rejuvenate themselves, and a ferocious debate of whether this means they can live forever. On one hand, nobody sees why not, an the other hand, they are all human-aged now. Is this a new Skill, and if not, what happened to the people who used to rejuvenate before? And if yes, how did it appear?

There are also many ways of spinning illusions, some of which are considered mental Skills and some physical.

Their main concern seems to be newbies who panic and misuse their Skills in gross ways. Their second concern seems to be studying the Skills scientifically, which some of them seem to do for a living.

There are lots of instructions of how to deal with the newbies, but none on how to deal with the normal people. Not even "please don't describe your Skills to the tabloids".

Nothing on the black fire that Elina hasn't told me already.

A list of names, and we look for celebrities. Two third-world dictators, two famous athletes, three famous musicians and one actress. Heh.

"Do we want to go back to Helsinki today?" I ask. "The weekend is young, let's rent a cottage somewhere and try to work this stuff out."
"As long as it's in Finland," says Tarja.
"Of course."
"You do realize that the Community will find us anywhere, right?" says Jamie, who doesn't seem to like the idea.
"Yeah, but nobody else will. And I don't feel like going home."

Everyone agrees, as long as the cottage had inner plumbing, Internet and a proper lakeside sauna.

We return the car in Viipuri and rent another one, now in Katie's name. Crossing the border is surprisingly easy, even though I am ready to tell the border guards "these are not the droids you are looking for". We arrive in Lappeenranta, find an Internet cafe, and search for a cottage on the Net. While Timo is looking for a cottage, I order myself a pyttipannu and a Coke, and it sure feels good to finally have a peaceful lunch away from the Russian mafia. Katie, Timo and Tarja follow my example. Rudy buys himself a drink instead, and then another. Jamie buys a yogurt and sits down, looking at it like Bin Laden at a pork chop, and occasionally staring wistfully at our food. His stomach is really sore, which in conjunction with Elina's earlier warning about the brain damage makes me wonder where his brain is located. Although he has a headache, too.

Jamie - or somebody - is still shielding Rudy's mind from my reading, but the anger, the fear, the guilt and the shame seep through. Rudy seems to be very deep in his own personal hell.

Katie's black fire has grown again, and is growing further. So is her pain and guilt. I am almost convinced she killed the four evil henchmen, but if so, what's Rudy's problem? Or did they do it together?

Tarja is bracing herself for the imminent end of the relationship, but is determined to preserve friendships.

Timo is taking the whole thing the easiest, looking forwards to playing with the Skills and meeting the Community people, and only occasionally shuddering at the thought of the dead bodies we left behind. He rubs his cheek against mine, and although at this point I am quite sure he cannot affect my mind directly, it does make me feel better.

"Can you shield both our minds from reading?" he asks.
"Yeah. Jamie can get through the shielding, but I'd notice. Unless, of course, he erases the memory of it."
"Are you sure he erased some memory from your mind?"
"Back in the apartment, when I came back with the car, did I stand in front of their bedroom doors for a while?"
"Yeah, I think so."
"Well, I don't remember it. And after that in the car I said something and he started thinking 'eek, does she remember?'."
"What was it?"
"Something about their burnt bed. I guess I am not supposed to remember how it came to be that way. And I don't."
"Do you know how the memory erasing thing works?"
"Elina says it has to be done within 4 hours max for it to work properly. I don't know anything else."
"Well, it's something."
"Do you think Elina is trustworthy?"
"How should I know?" He adds as an aside "I don't even know if you are trustworthy", without realizing that I can hear his thoughts, and not only whatever he tries to communicate to me.
"I can hear that. I can read your mind," I say, and immediately regret it. "I'll try not to, but it's hard."
"Have you tried to write it, too?"
"No, but the temptation is sometimes strong."
"I can imagine."

"We probably need to buy some food on the way to the cottage," I say.
"And drink," adds Rudy.
"We... I need to visit some forest for a second. Preferably with a lake," says Jamie.
"What do you need a lake for?"
"A little experiment. Same kind that destroyed my clothes, but this time I don't want to damage anything, OK?"
"OK, but we should buy you some new clothes first, just in case," says Katie.
"You don't have any faith in me, do you?"
"No," reply all five of us simultaneously.
"OK, let's get some clothes," he answers amiably, apparently relieved by our lack of faith.

We download some maps of the area and go shopping. After buying some new clothes and a paper map "just in case", we drive to one of the small lakes. The road ends about 300 meters from the lake. There doesn't seem to be anyone around, and my Sight and mind-sense don't find anyone either. Jamie is also searching for people with his mind-sense, and not finding any. Katie is not using hers.

"This should be OK," Jamie says. "Wait for us in the car."
"Elina says that the thing you were doing causes some brain damage," I say.
"What does she know about it?" His question is not rhetorical.
"She saw the flashover. The one that burned the bed."
"Does she know what caused it?"
"Some misuse of the Skills. Anyway, you are pretty sore already. Be careful."
"I think all the damage I could do to myself is already done. Killed all the bacteria that's supposed to be in the digestive tract, for one thing."
"I'll add a pharmacy to our shopping list," says Tarja.
"Did you destroy everything around you that's not part of you?" I ask. "Then your stitches from yesterday are gone, too. Thank your lucky stars it wasn't a bigger wound."
"I am thanking my lucky stars I don't have any dental fillings. Now that would have hurt. But don't worry. Everything is gonna be OK, except maybe two square meters of the beach."

He takes Katie by the hand, and they start walking towards the lake. She is all broken inside and full of black fire again.

"Wait in the car my ass!" says Rudy and gets out. The rest of us get out too.

"I'll follow them," I say. "See what they are up to."
"We should all go," says Rudy.
"I can do it without being seen. The rest of you can't."

I follow them, watching them with my Sight. I could do it from the car, of course, or from Sweden, but somehow it seems to be better to follow them. I an trying to stay out of the mind-sense range.

There are two small hills between the car and the lake. After they pass the first one, Jamie takes all his clothes and accessories off, puts them down, says "brr", and goes on naked.

After they are over the second hill, I pass the first one, but as soon as I try to go up the second one, Jamie's voice appears in my mind:

"This is close enough. Stop right here."
"Oh, fuck."
"And since you've followed us, do us a favor: check if there is anyone around."
"Too late, they've already gone blind."
"I am serious."
"No, there isn't anybody except us."
"Lie down now. Just in case something happens. You can watch us through the hill with your Sight, but don't get into the line of sight, I mean the regular eyesight. It might be a bit bright. Close your ears, too, just in case."
"Oh, fuck off..." I start, but then give up and close my eyes.

They have a telepathic conversation which I cannot hear, but I can see that she is scared, and he is trying to reassure her, but is quite scared himself. She lifts a stick, turns away from him, brings it within a couple of centimeters of her lips and blows on it. A five-meter flame comes out of her mouth.

"Whoa! Behave yourself! We don't need a fire here!"
"It's raining like hell."
"OK, let's do it."

She lies down on the shore right near the water, and he lies down right in the water, swearing both mentally and audibly. The water is probably just a couple degrees above freezing and his Skills obviously don't include warming it up.

Tentacles of black fire come out of her and enter his body at many points. I try to check what it feels like and recoil, swearing, because at the same time I feel the cold water that he is lying in. "Not a good idea," he comments dryly.

The tentacles start pumping black fire into him, and I don't need to connect to any part of his sensory input to see that this hurts. His mind, which is not shielded from reading at the moment, is trying to keep this up for as long as possible in spite of the pain. He manages to hold out for a bit over a minute before he cuts it off. The tentacles withdraw, and then he realizes that something has gone wrong, and mentally screams "run! get down! don't look!" to all of us, especially Katie.

She runs over the hill and towards me. I am already lying down and not looking, so I figure that running would be superfluous, but I relay his screams to Timo and Rudy behind me, who immediately hit the ground and take Tarja with them.

Katie throws herself on the ground right next to me and hugs me. Jamie is engulfed in a flash of black fire that boils the water all around him. His mind screams "oh, shit!" but it doesn't sound or feel like a last scream of a person expecting imminent death, more like the regular "oh, shit!" when he realizes he just fucked something up.

The water is carrying him towards the center of the lake really fast, but he is still within the range of my mind-sense. The black fire subsides, but he keeps expecting something bad and urging us to take cover and not look. Katie and I have our eyes closed and our hands over our ears, but I can see everything with Sight and relay it to her.

An explosion makes it feel like the hill just dropped down half a meter, but I am not sure it has, and a huge flame comes out of Jamie. It is not killing him, or even hurting him as much as the black fire did, but it is enormous, several kilometers high and impossibly bright, and it keeps burning.

I check on everyone with my mind-sense, and nobody seems to be injured. I am still scared shitless, because a flame that size cannot be good. I can feel Jamie's mind check on us all, too. After realizing that he is not injured, we are not injured, and innocent bystanders are not injured or indeed present he relaxes a bit, thinking about all this power running through him and regretting that it cannot be his, or even be put to some practical use, but instead has to dissipate like that. Suddenly I realize that since he is not using his physical senses and does not have the Sight, he has no idea about the kilometers-high flame, or the fact that the lake has become a mushroom cloud. Right now might not be the best moment to tell him, either.

"Your mind-sense doesn't include animals, does it?" asks Katie.
"No."
"Neither does his. But I could feel all the fish die. And birds. And a moose."
"Fuck the moose," mentally comments Jamie.

The fire disappears and everything is very silent. All that's left of the lake is a cloud of vapor, the empty lakebed, and a pit about 50 meters deep and 100 meters in diameter. From the bottom of the pit comes an infinitely embarassed "oh, bugger".

"Is it safe now?" I ask.
"Yeah. Help me out of here."

Timo, Rudy and Tarja are running towards us. We pick up Jamie's clothes and come to the edge of the pit.

"You all right?" asks Rudy. "Told ya not to eat the Russian beans."
"The exact answer would be 'not permanently injured, and probably not in need of medical help'," answers Jamie. "Where did the lake go?"
"Right over there," says Timo, pointing up at the vapor cloud.
"Oh. What happened?"
"You are asking us?" - says Tarja.
"I think our vacation wasn't supposed to rate quite as high on the Richter scale," says Timo, "but there was an explosion and the ground shook and there was some bright flame and the lake evaporated and its bottom got damaged a bit. But don't worry, dude, we are the country of 49999 lakes, we can afford it."
"Oh. Shit."
"The flame was at least a few kilometers high," I add.
"And all the fish died," says Katie.
"Next time you decide to keep a low profile," says Rudy, "remember the first rule of the low-profile folks everywhere: 'try not to do anyting that would be seen from the moon with a naked eye'."
"I didn't think it would be that bad!"
"That's right. You never think," says Rudy.
"We gotta get out of here," reminds us Tarja. "Before anyone else comes. Do you think anyone has noticed?"
"Everyone has noticed," answers Timo. "Even the astronauts."

Jamie keeps trying to climb out, but the walls of the pit are not strong enough to hold him, and he slides down every time.

"OK, stand back, everybody," says Rudy. "I am gonna get the fucker out of there."

He concentrates for a few seconds, and levitates Jamie out of the pit. Instead of putting him down, he rotates him in the midair ass-up and grabs his clothes from Katie.

"Here is what I've wanted to do all day," he says, picks out the belt, and hits Jamie several times on the butt. He is not pulling his punches, so to say; instead he is trying to make it hurt, and it does, but the whole situation is so comical that we all laugh, including Jamie.

The really interesting thing is that yesterday's wound on his ass has healed without a trace.

Rudy puts him down in the standing position.

"You'll be getting the rest of it in the evening. For now get your clothes on and let's get out of here."

"Keep shielding my mind," reminds me Timo, as we go towards the car.

I suppress my desire to speed as we pull out of there. We are well on the highway and on the way to the town when we see several police cars and fire trucks going the other way.

"Pull over," orders Timo as we see a gas station, a cafe and a bus stop.

I pull over. He gets out of the car.

"You go on. I'll see you at the cottage."
"Timo, where are you going?" asks Katie.
"Doesn't matter. Out of here. You can only erase memories during the first four hours after they are formed. See you in four hours."
"I won't be erasing your memories!" says Jamie, hurt by the mistrust and at the same time aware that he has deserved it.
"Damn right you won't, not now," answers Timo with a smile, not really in a mean way. "You probably won't erase the others' memories either now that you can't erase mine."
"Write everything that happened just now in a file, encrypt it, and send to somebody who doesn't live in Europe," I tell Timo telepathically. "Do you have Sam's email address? Or my parents'?" Sam is my little brother, who lives in Hong Kong.
"Good idea, I'll do that."
"Take care," says Katie, "and keep your phone on."

Jamie extends a tentacle of black fire towards Timo. I hit him on the back of the head.

"Keep your tentacles to yourself!"
"Jamie has tentacles?" asks Tarja incredulously as the tentacle withdraws and Timo hastily departs.
"He can produce tentacles of black fire that are only visible to the mind-sense," I explain, seeing him cringe and enjoying it.
"No, he can't, he has just borrowed mine," thinks Katie, not with any intent to communicate telepathically, but loudly enough for Jamie and myself to hear. He cringes again.
"What in the name of holy fuck were you trying to do?" asks Rudy, but gets no answer.

I don't need to ask. He tried to heal the disruption in Katie's mind, and he managed to do it, too. He has clearly drained most of the black fire out of her, and this was probably a good thing. Except for the earthquake and the fire and the destroyed lake and the fact that we are probably gonna be the biggest news on CNN tonight, and certainly the biggest local news. And except for the fact that Elina said it could not be done. And the fact that Katie is already starting to generate more black fire.

* * * Community's IRC channel

<Elina> Holy shit!
<Else> This is gonna be all over CNN and BBC in an hour or so.
<Sinikka> They already have police and army and tv crews there. I should probably put up an appearance in the name of the city council.
<Elina> Be careful. And for God's sake don't approach them in person.
<Sinikka> What am I, crazy?
<Lauri> Uh, yeah? :)
<Hanne> Where is Michael when you really need him?
<Elina> I am afraid he's gonna appear here in Finland to see Jamie about a woman.
<Lauri> That woman who died 15 years ago? Don't be silly.
<Elina> Why not? Everyone else is.
<Else> Lauri, "that woman who died 15 years ago" had a name. Faye McGrady. She wrote funny little poems, liked to eat marsipan with beer, and waved her hands all over while discussing mountaineering gear...
<Lauri> Sorry, Else, I should have remembered you knew her in person. But still I can't imagine them fighting over her right now. Life moves on. Jamie is a married man.
<Elina> Michael isn't.
<Nate> Come on, they are two adults, they are not gonna fight about it. We'd better think about what to do with evaporating lakes and huge flames.
<Elina> At least they got away from people.
<Sinikka> Next time they might not have a chance.
<Lauri> There mustn't be a next time. Not even if we have to kill them all.
<Else> Lauri, it's my grandson we are talking about!
<Lauri> I have no idea what they are doing, but it's growing fast. First the bed, then the lake and the flame. What next, the whole Europe?
<Else> Lauri, if you as much as move in that direction, Europe might survive but you certainly won't.
<Diego> I love the smell of death threats on IRC in the morning.
<Elina> For fuck's sake, stop talking about killing people. They are already fighting among themselves. I'll try to get them to put Jamie to sleep, and I'll get there tomorrow.
<Diego> Do they trust you?
<Elina> Not really, but they sound like they want to.

* * *

The mood in the car is grim. Jamie's mind is partially shielded, so that I can't read his secrets, but his emotions are plainly visible. Despite the Russian mafia, the Community, and giant flames he seems to be primarily concerned with our anger at him. He is in general deeply uncomfortable both with important secrets and with leadership, and would like us to know he is not doing all this just for fun. He is also starting to realize that Katie's ability to grow the black fire is growing at a higher rate than his ability to absorb or dissipate it, but when I try to read deeper into it, he shuts me out. His mind keeps touching our minds in several-second intervals, asking for physical touch. I feel like yelling at him for that too, but then realize that he doesn't even know it, and pat him on the head absent-mindedly.

Katie is also thinking about the black fire and what to do with it. The actual plans, if any, are concealed from me, but she is very grim about it. The basic idea is that she is not intending to let Jamie repeat this performance, but doesn't have better ideas either. She feels very guilty, and afraid of the Community, and worried about Jamie. Her worries are very morbid, along the lines of "what will happen to him when I die?" and "what will happen to all of us if I go totally insane?". She also keeps thinking about the dead people we left behind, in very gruesome detail. Strangely enough, at the same time she manages to think about work. Some visualized chemical formulas come to her mind, and she thinks about concentrations of some chemicals somewhere, and what dissolves in water and what doesn't...

"Stop reading my mind!"
"Sorry. My own mind is wandering around, I guess."
"OK. Just try not to," she says.
"Do you think we should trust Elina with the info about your black fire? She asked about it. Said it was very dangerous."
"What other options do we have?"
"I feel like telling her, but I am afraid that they might hurt you if they don't manage to fix this problem."
"Heh. You thought 'kill' but said 'hurt'. But at this point I think I'll die if it doesn't get fixed. Or Jamie will die trying to fix it. Or we all. But I don't really think they can do anything about it."
"Elina says she can. Tell her."
"You tell her. Jamie won't let me," she says.
"What is he gonna do?"
"He told me he was gonna make me fall asleep if I even try."
"Shield your mind. I can help."
"For fuck's sake, I'd have to talk to her on the phone. He might be crazy, but he ain't deaf."
"OK, I'll tell her telepathically but you'd have to talk to her anyway. We should do something about Jamie. He is totally out of control."
"I was thinking the same thing," she says.
"The worst part of it is that he might also be right. About the things we have to keep from the Community."
"Yeah, but we need their help anyway."

"Hi. It's Elina again."
"Siinä paha missä mainitaan," I say. ("Speak of the devil...")
"Listen - this is getting very dangerous. You'll need to put Jamie to sleep. I'll tell you what pharmacy to go to and what to get, and the prescription will be waiting for you there. Have you ever injected anyone with anything?"
"No. And I am not about to start," I hesitate. "No offense, but I won't be injecting a friend with something a stranger gives me, no matter how helpful she is."
"I understand, but this might save his life, and yours."
"I'll try to put him to sleep using the Skills."
"You are not powerful enough."
"I'll try. And if I fail, I'll ask you what to get and how much, and check it on the Net, and choose my own pharmacy. I am sure I can convince them to sell without a prescription."
"OK, I understand. Be careful."
"Elina, Katie has the black fire problem. It's growing inside her and not integrating. Can you do somethin?"
"I'll try to change my flight for tonight, but I am not sure I can. In any case I am coming tomorrow, can you hold out till then?"
"We'll see. I am sorry. For everything."
"Never mind, just let's try to work this out."

Katie's phone rings, and apparently Elina is trying to propose the same thing with drugs to Katie, with the same results. In the meanwhile I try to make Jamie fall asleep. He just laughs.

Rudy is also grim and scared. He is trying to recite poetry in his mind to prevent surface thoughts from being visible, but I can see that he feels horribly betrayed by the very fact that his best friend has always been able to read his thoughts and see his secrets. I also get the impression that this is not just a privacy issue, but he actually has some secrets to keep. I try to read deeper and suddenly he stares at me hatefully. Did he notice it? There is so much suppressed violence in him, it's scary.

At the same time he awfully misses his cat. One of his uppermost surface emotions is the wish to have Tiger in his lap, stroke his fur and hear him purr. Rudy visualizes the kitten - I am not sure "visualize" is the right word for also imagining the feel and the sound - with such intensity that it is contagious, and now I want to have Tiger in my lap too. Are Rudy's emotions generally contagious? Ugh.

Jamie's mind cries out in panic. He is under some kind of mental attack that he is unable to shield himself from in the regular way, and he tries to warn us all. "It's just me," says Katie telepathically so that it's audible to all of us.

Gratitude and relief are the last things that flood Jamie's mind as he passes out. Katie reaches out from the back seat and strokes his cheek.

"How did you do it?" I ask.
"I can generate quite a lot of chemicals. So I synthesized a nice drug cocktail right in his bloodstream. Much easier than fucking around with pharmacies and syringes."
"Are you sure it's safe?"
"Safer than explosions and giant fires. Of course there is always a risk involved with medication. I tried my best, and everything seems fine."
"Should have done it hours ago," mutters Rudy. "He is much nicer when asleep."
"I should take his contacts off," says Katie.
"Wait till we are parked somewhere."
"He needs some rest," she offers an explanation, although nobody has asked her for any, "and besides, I need some time without anyone reading my mind," she looks pointedly at me.
"Point taken," I nod.
"Jamie's been an asshole, so he gets rewarded with intravenous hard drugs," sighs Rudy. "Nice guys always finish last."

Damn. I realize that we still have Timo's bag with six pistols in it, and the only person who can make them look like something other than pistols is asleep. Oh well, I can probably order the police not to look there, and why would the police want to anyway?

We drive to the nearest shopping center. Jamie's mind, though asleep, keeps touching all of ours, and I start wondering whether the mind-sense is always somewhat awake and capable of reacting to stimuli, just like sight and hearing, and whether this constant mind-polling is the way it does it. In any case I don't want to say anything secret in his presence even when he is asleep.

Katie takes his contacts out, much to Rudy's and Tarja's surprise, and with practiced ease. She doesn't feel like leaving him alone in the car, but she needs to talk to Elina away from him, and we convince her that not many people would want to steal a car with a sleeping guy in it. Before leaving the car I touch Jamie's face and try to read his mind. He is really asleep and there is not a lot to read, but I am pretty sure the mind-sense registers the touch and identifies me as its source. Interesting.

As soon as we try to leave Jamie reaches out to Katie's mind and stops her. Without waking up.

"You go ahead, guys," she says. "I'll stay here."
"Are you sure?" I ask. "Don't you realize that he..."
"Yeah, I noticed it too. It's OK, if he wants me here so much..."
"Are you sure? This is not right," I say, tugging on her sleeve, trying to edge away from Jamie, and at the same time shielding my mind, so that my distress doesn't attract his attention or make him more alert.
"Yes, I am sure," she frees her sleeve. "I absolutely trust you three to buy food and drinks." She is much calmer than myself, but the black fire inside her is growing again. "I can make the phone call from here, he is not awake enough to stop me,", she adds telepathically.

What makes her so sure? In any case, she takes her phone out and starts dialing, and he does not stop her.

"I am starting to be really afraid of Jamie," says Tarja as soon as we walk into the shopping center.
"I am just really pissed off," answers Rudy.

I am occasionally afraid, but mostly pissed off too. I just know him too well to be really afraid, but at the same time keep needing to remind myself all the time that, unlike the rest of us, he has had the Skills all his life without anything terrible happening. In a way, this is not a reassuring thought. What had he read in my mind all those years - or written? Could he have stopped me when I decided to leave him? Was I voluntarily with him in the first place? Did Katie marry him out of her own free will, really? He is attractive, intelligent and socially pleasant, but all of that is usually not nearly enough to rate a woman who looks like a model and earns an unusually good salary.

And an even grimmer thought: were the events in Angola 15 years ago his fault after all? He used to have moments of intense self-loathing at the time - did he somehow attract that band of outlaws to himself and his friends there, lured them possibly without knowing?

And what is Rudy so angry about anyway? He didn't date Jamie, after all, thank God for small favors. I try to read his mind cautiously. Oh, Rudy... I guess he is not as 100% heterosexual as he wants to be after all. Always thought he did protest too much. This certainly feels like an appropriately guilty secret, but on a deeper reading it cannot be, because he'd already told Jamie about it anyway. Which was really brave of him, BTW, considering how touchy he is on the subject.

Rudy slowly turns towards me and glares at me malevolently. Can he tell when I am reading him? I suppress my impulse to immediately withdraw, give him as innocent a look as I can under the circumstances and continue reading. Yes, he can feel something, but he is not 100% sure it's me.

He starts reading poetry in his mind to prevent me from reading, just in case, but he is not terribly good at it, and the two thoughts that he wants to suppress are "Debbie" and "Rebecca". What the hell? Has he been in contact with his ex-wives? Both of them? Do I even want to know more?

I firmly decide to leave reading Rudy's mind to Jamie, whenever he wakes up and feels like it. Maybe I should take his advice and concentrate on strangers.

"What in the bloody hell is that?" suddenly asks Rudy.
"A shopping center," explains Tarja in an even tone.
"No, that!" he points.
"Alko."
"Why is it closed? It's fucking Saturday!"
"It's not fucking Saturday, honey. It's Easter Saturday."

Rudy sighs and rolls his eyes. We walk into a supermarket.

"Can you guys shop on my behalf too?" I ask. "I want to send a message to Timo."
"Sure, what do you want?"
"Beer, sausage, bread, tea, chocolate. The sausage should have actual meat in it."
"OK."

I send Timo a message saying that we have put Jamie to sleep and are coming the the cottage right after the shopping. He answers that he is OK and is probably gonna make it to the cottage before us, and also wants beer and sausage and chocolate. I try to See him. He is in some downtown cafe with a piece of cake and a smoothie, looking fairly content.

Twenty minutes later Rudy and Tarja appear with a grocery cart containing what is, under the circumstances, an extremely good selection of beer and food.