After a visit to a drugstore we finally get to the cottage. It's quite dark already. Timo greets us from the air on his mop, flying just over our heads as we get out of the car.

"Whee!"

Damn, I forgot to tell the others. I greet him, jumping up, and trying to stay in the air. It sort of works, in the way that I come down slowly, not like in a regular jump. Rudy has considerably better luck. Jamie and Katie jump up and down without any unusual results whatsoever.

"Can we unload the groceries first?" asks Tarja.
"Women," sighs Rudy.

We bring the groceries inside.

"The tea is hot," says Timo, floating in the air in the middle of the kitchen. Rudy grabs a beer, and Katie pours tea for the rest of us. Timo lands on the sofa next to me and wraps his arm around my shoulders.

"Look what I can do!" exclaims Rudy, pointing his finger at my cup. The tea turns to brown ice.

"Cool. Now heat it back up."
"Hmm...microwave?"
"Moron."
"Bitch."

I try to heat up the tea by wishing it hot, but it remains very firmly iced, which makes me wonder how I managed to melt that gun. Katie takes my cup and immediately returns it hot. The firewood stacked on the floor jumps into the fireplace by itself and catches fire, and a package of sausages opens itself and the sausages fly one by one and hover above the fire. Katie grins.

"Well," says Timo to Jamie. "Are you gonna tell us what's going on?"
"Yeah, the Community already knows anyway. I can use other people's Skills, and take some of their energy. Can transfer the energy from myself to other people, too, not sure about the Skills. So when Katie started producing huge amounts of energy I figured I'd just take some of it. Except that I couldn't hold it, so now Finland has one lake less."
"Why was this such a secret? I mean, you obviously meant well."
"Are you kidding?" asks Rudy. "How do you expect a group of people with Skills to relate to someone who can use the Skills of others? It's probably like the ultimate boogeyman for them. Besides, he feeds on everyone around him all the time."
"Really? I've never felt eaten," says Timo.
"I don't eat enough to hurt people, but there is the whole consent issue here, not to mention the squick issue," explains Jamie.
"Why do you do it?" I ask.
"I don't know. I didn't even know I do it all the time. It's kind of like breathing, I guess."
"But you did know you could do it on purpose, right?"
"Yes."
"I've always considered Jamie some kind of a humanitarian," says Tarja, "but I didn't mean it quite so literally."
"You can probably kill people with your brain!" says Rudy to Jamie.
"I think so."
"So why didn't you do it to those thugs? Why didn't you see them coming anyway?"
"I don't read everyone's minds all the time, and I was sort of hoping to convince them to go away and maybe get some information out of them."
"We can see how well that worked out," sighs Rudy.
"About as well as trying to kick six guys' asses in the apartment?"
"Well, nobody died in the apartment!"
"No thanks to you!"
"Tell me more," says Timo. "How do you use others' Skills? Can you take them for yourself forever?"
"I can use Skills through their real owner, sort of channelling them, and it would use up their energy and not mine, but it's kind of hard if the real owner resists. I can also consume them with some energy, and use them for some time after that, and the real owner's Skills would be weakened for a while, but I don't need to struggle with them for control. I think I'd need to kill somebody and consume all their energy to use their Skills forever, and I am not planning to do that. Elina take note!" he waves to the ceiling.
"How do you know all this?" asks Katie. "You said that until three days ago you had no idea there are other people with Skills in the world."

He looks like he is about to get his ass kicked, and probably is.

"I can do the same with potentials' Skills. Been using yours and Mira's for years. I am sorry."
"You what? You knew!"
"I could see some of your Skills and that you cannot use them for some reason, so I used them myself and sometimes channeled them for you. There in the warehouse I opened my mind to channel everyone's Skills, and I have no idea why you can all use them now. Except Tarja."
"Maybe I am not a potential?" asks Tarja.
"Sinikka thinks you are."
"You didn't use my Skills?" asks Rudy. "Or Timo's?"
"Didn't know you had them. The mental Skills are easy to see. I had no experience in seeing physical ones, or known that they exist. I didn't know that Katie could make fire, for example."
"So what did you use? Your mind-sense and coercion are better than mine," asks Katie.
"Generally, yeah, except that you can order animals around and I cannot. I always use your coercion when telling something to the dogs. The damn beasts never listen to me otherwise."
"That's because you spoil them all the time!"
"No, I don't!"
"Yes, you do! Who let them sit on the sofa and eat from your plate the other day?"
"What did you use from me?" I ask, trying to turn the conversation away from the dog-raising track.
"Your coercion is better than mine. You know, the Skill where you give direct orders and people obey while you are there."
"That's good to know."
"Tell us more about what you can do, and when you found out," says Timo.
"I've always had mind-sense, far as I remember," Jamie starts listing, "and coercion. Was 19 or so when I realised I could use others' Skills, but I knew I could consume energy before that, and also give it out. Never knew I could produce illusions before today, but probably could do it all along. I can influence emotions but it never occurred to me to scare people shitless before today. Yeah, and I can use other people's bodies."
"What do you mean?" I ask.
"This." My fist opens and closes without any input from me.
"You can possess people?" Rudy is shocked for some reason.
"Yes. It's not as useful as you think, I almost never do it. It's much easier to make them want to do something, or to do it myself. And I am definitely not a disembodied spirit so when I want to possess somebody I have to take my own body along and control both of them, very inconvenient."
"Have you actually done that to any of us?" Katie asks. The generalized anger and sense of violation in the room in palpable.
"No. I did this only once, to Ang, on McKinley in 1989. It was an emergency. I returned his body an hour later in mint condition, but he was kind of pissed off."
"Who would have thought?" says Timo.
"Sinikka says I can also heal myself, including some things that normally don't heal, but it usually takes a long time. Wish I knew it years ago, would have saved myself a lot of surgery."
"Better late than never," says Tarja.

While this conversation is going on, I follow Jamie's feeding. He keeps touching our minds all the time, making us touch him physically, generating our concern for himself and feeding on the concern and the touch. He doesn't seem to be aware of it. He also tries to make us feel less violated, and he is well aware of that, and quite deliberate.

I shield my mind from him, and try to digest the fact that my old friend, ex-boyfriend and sort-of relative is, in fact, a mind-altering soul-eating monster. After struggling with this concept for a minute I give up, reach out and scratch the soul-eating monster's back. The soul-eating monster smiles at me and rubs his cheek on the middle finger that I show him.

His mind is open and he is scared of us, or rather afraid that we won't like him anymore.

"You seem freaked out," says Timo telepathically.
"No shit! Jamie is a soul-eating monster! Has been all these years!"
"Come on, he is a fairly nice guy for a soul-eating monster."
"He is. But still."
"You have worse soul-eating monsters in your family," consoles me Timo. "Think about uncle Isaac for example."
"I love it how you always manage to remind me of worse things in life. But yeah. I don't think Jamie is evil, just lacking in moral fiber."

"Have you ever made a woman have sex with you?" Katie asks, her mind closed.
"No."
"Why not?" asks Rudy. Everybody looks at him. He gives us a "I didn't mean this that way" look.
"Why should I? Getting women is easy if you can read their mind. I can always see when a woman is sexually interested in me, so I just have to come up to her and flirt a little."
"Why haven't you told me when women were interested in me?" asks Rudy.
"I have."
"Yeah, but I never believed you!"
"You mean all the social advice that you have ever given any of us has always been based on actual knowledge?" asks Timo.
"Of course."
"Damn, should have listened to you more often."
"Why didn't you make me believe?" asks Rudy.
"I can't believe it. First everyone is understandably mad at me for messing with their minds, and now you start chewing me out for not messing with your mind? Can we talk about something else for a while? Or somebody else? How have you been, Timo?"
"Learned to fly." Timo gets up from the sofa and flies around the room a few times. Rudy also gets up and flies after him. I jump up in the air and manage to remain there, then try to fly ahead and collide with the ceiling lamp.

"Oops!" I try to stabilize the lamp, make a wrong move and collide with Rudy.

"Bloody hell! Watch where you are flying!"
"Rudy, don't wave your hands like that, it doesn't help," advises Timo. "Mira, don't try to rotate your butt like that, it's not a propeller. It takes a bit of practice, and it's better to practice outside tomorrow when it's light."

"I can also heal really fast," says Timo after we have all settled down. "I noticed it the first time I flew into a tree."
"Can you also heal other people?" asks Jamie.
"Maybe, haven't tried. Possibly. I can sort of see inside people's bodies if I try very hard."
"Can you see inside mine?"
"You have wisdom teeth growing really fast, and a very low blood pressure. But I don't know what that means."
"The blood pressure is just a chronic thing, doesn't usually cause much trouble. The teeth are supposed to be some Healing accident, did you have anything to do with that?"
"No, or not that I know of anyway. So, what can the rest of you do?"

Rudy demonstrates all kinds of telekinetic tricks, from making the table dance to making kitchen knives fly through the air with considerable speed. He seems to have a lot more telekinetic power when he touches the object in question than when he doesn't. He is very graceful with it, too: the amazing dance of grilled sausages in the air is perfectly Disney-worthy.

"Katie?" asks Timo.
"I think we have already seen a very good demonstration of my powers. And so did CNN, BBC, Yle, and most of the astronauts."
"You can also make drugs," reminds her Jamie.
"Can you make just a little bit of cocaine?" perks up Rudy.
"I'll show you fucking cocaine." She tries to sound threatening but her heart clearly isn't in it.
"Can you make illusions?" asks Jamie.

Katie gets up from the sofa, concentrates, and turns into another copy of Rudy, who is sticking his tongue out at the real thing. The real thing gives her a finger. Tarja takes a picture of them both.

"Hey, you can fool a camera!" she says, when Katie turns back into herself, but the picture keeps showing her as Rudy.

I try an illusion too, but I am not as good as Jamie and Katie. I only succeed in producing various recognizable versions of myself in different colors, and I certainly cannot fool a camera. I can do a bit of unimpressive telekinesis, too.

"You should be able to heat stuff," says Timo. "You melted that gun."

Heating stuff doesn't work until I try it on the cast-iron frying pan, which heats up at once. It's also much easier to get in the air than other objects, and I melt it and reshape it as I please. Finally I get up and try to touch it.

"What are you doing?" says pretty much everyone in chorus.
"I don't think that this or anything iron can hurt me. I wonder if that's what those elemental powers are."

The almost-melting pan feels hot but not painfully so; I hold it without any visible harm to myself. I can also manipulate any other iron object every which way.

"You can make me a katana!" joyfully squeals Rudy.
"What for?"
"Uhm... to defend ourselves from the mystery man in a car who is coming here?"
"We can do it without a sword. I think a sword would be quite useless."
"Please! Please-please-please!"
"OK," I sigh.
"Can I have a dao?" asks Jamie, not even trying to conceal that he just wants a new toy.
"If you explain to me what a dao is."
"I'd like a sword too," says Timo.
"What for? You don't know how to use it, and besides you have six pistols."
"For the sake of coolness."
"Can I have a European broadsword?" asks Tarja.
"You?" Rudy is suprised. "Do you know how to use a sword? I didn't teach you."
"There's one British guy that teaches European broadswords in Jakomäki."
"I've heard about him, they say he is very good," Rudy concedes. He doesn't add that he thinks that a katana is the one and only proper sword, but you don't need to be a mind-reader to see his thoughts on the subject.
"OK, everybody: if you find me a proper iron supply and tell me what exactly all those things are supposed to be, I'll do it."

Rudy goes out and soon comes back carrying a rail telekinetically.

"Rudy!"
"It wasn't a part of any actual railway. Seriously."

I check this from his mind, and he starts giving me instructions on how to make all the aforementioned swords. He is very curious of whether the swords created with my Skill would be as good as the real thing. Jamie and Tarja just want a new toy each, and Timo has given up and is checking out his pistols.

"Can you shoot?" he asks Katie.
"Like an Imperial Stormtrooper," she sighs.

We make some more tea.

"Are we the most powerful people on Earth?" wonders Rudy.
"I don't think any of us are," answers Jamie. "Katie might have the most powerful firemaking Skill, but I am not sure. From their IRC channel I have at least figured there are a few mind-readers stronger than myself. But I think that together we are the biggest cluster of power. All the rest of them work alone most of the time, or at least don't see each other in person much."
"Why?" asks Tarja.
"They don't trust each other?" I suggest.
"And we do?"
"To a higher extent, yes," says Jamie, who has done nothing to improve this trust today.
"Why don't you use your powers?" ask him Rudy.
"I use them all the time and you guys keep complaining," points out Jamie.
"No, I meant serious use, and not just to get us to massage your shoulders."
"Like what?"
"Save the world?"
"From whom?"
"Terrorists? George Bush? Global warming? The return of the Eighties' fashions?"

Jamie makes a rude sound.

"We could at least have punished those Russian gangsters," continues Rudy.
"That's what the police and the courts are for."
"We'd be more efficient."
"I am sure we would, but it's still the matter for the police and courts."
"Since when don't you believe in vigilante justice?" Years ago Jamie has dispensed some well-deserved but surprisingly brutal vigilante justice to Rudy's first wife Debbie. Rudy is still a bit sore about it.
"I do believe that vigilante justice has its place, for example when somebody is threatening you and the police cannot protect you. After the crime it's still the matter for the courts."
"Man, you were raised by wolves and lawyers. Don't you want to bring more justice to this world?"
"Rudy, I think that if I start doing that, pretty soon I'll be the one that the world needs saved from. I'd be the Big Bad, the Ultimate Evil." He is kidding - he considers himself pretty nice, and in fact usually is - but he is also sort of serious about the thought that if he starts bending too much of the world to his will, he might become evil, or cause something bad.

Rudy jumps up, throws Jamie on the floor, twists his arm and sits down on top of him, tickling him mercilessly.

"Hey, I have captured the Ultimate Evil! And now the Ultimate Evil is paying for the pizza! Somebody get me one of those!" Rudy points at the several pizzeria ad flyers on the kitchen counter.
"Eek! The Ultimate Evil doesn't have his wallet! Argh! I burned it with my jeans back in the apartment."
"I think Jamie will need some more practice with evil overlording," suggests Timo.

We order the pizza, Timo and Jamie go to the sauna, and the rest of us turn the TV on. We are the biggest news on all the channels, or at least the fire is. A whole bunch of scientists from different countries wonder what made a kilometers-high flame erupt from a lake.

"Wanna try flying?" asks me Rudy. "Let's go outside, but try not to read my mind."
"I'll try. It's kind of hard."

As soon as we go outside he rises gracefully in the air. It takes me a couple of attempts, some swearing and two sore buttocks to do the same. We start flying together around the cottage.

"Mira. What you saw in my mind there was not a big deal. I understand I probably deserve to be laughed at, for all the stuff I've said about homosexuals, but yes, I sometimes have sexual thoughts about men, but I've never had sex with a man and not planning to and Jamie knows everything, we talked about it, and I know that he doesn't swing that way and everything is OK with both of us and our friendship is certainly not based on this."
"I know."
"I just don't want you to think about that every time you see us touch each other. He just is touchy-feely, you know him."
"I know him. I totally believe you guys have worked this thing out years ago. Now tell me what you've been up to with Debbie and Rebecca."

He flies into a tree with a loud "oh, shit!".

"Nothing! I've been just talking to them on IRC."
"There is no such thing as 'just talking'."
"You keep talking to all your exes all the time! You have one of them right here!"
"That's what happens when you part as friends. 'Mortal enemies' is a somewhat different arrangement."
"I miss them!"
"Try to work on your marksmanship."
"I am serious."
"Me too. You can't do this to Tarja. She senses something."
"I love Tarja, I just miss Deb and Rebecca. Tarja and I are doing great, but sometimes I just need something more..." he thinks "fiery" but rejects it as an unfortunate choice of word. Debbie has actually tried to set him on fire.
"Either you stop talking to those psychos, or you'll have to renegotiate your relationship as an open one. And remember, if you break her heart I'll make you propose to Paavo Väyrynen in a public place."

He is somewhat annoyed, but the image I conjure for him is so funny that he laughs and hugs me, and we fly inside.

Katie and Tarja have been talking about men, but still pretend to watch our exploits on CNN. I try to See into the sauna, and there Jamie seems to have convinced Timo to pull his wisdom teeth out. It seems to be going successfully and painlessly, but is still kind of disgusting.

The pizza still hasn't arrived.

"Mira, there is a man coming there," says a man's voice in my head.
"We ordered pizza."
"He ain't bringing any. He has a gun, duck!"

"Everybody down!" I scream and hit the floor as several bullets pierce the lock and a man walks in. I recognize him as the man who was putting bugs in our luggage. The bomber?

"Where is he?" he screams in English, brandishing an assault rifle. "The guy with long hair arrgghh!" The question turns to howling as I melt his gun in his hands, talking care not to spill any on the floor.

Rudy waves his hand at him and he flies out the door. Rudy follows, and so do Tarja, Katie and I.

"We have two guys with long hair," says Rudy helpfully, "would you like to see the blond one or the dark-haired one? Also, your gun seems to have melted."

The man is not scared of us, which is amazing under the circumstances, especially since Katie casually passes meter-long flames out of her mouth, the same way some people pass rings of smoke. There is something wrong with him. It's as if he is unable to get scared. There is something else wrong with his mind, but I am not a psychiatrist. I am not sure whether I want to kill him or to make him run away so I don't have to, and I have a feeling I will regret it either way. He is not the kind of guy that'd give up. He is, in fact, Anton the bomber, except that his real name is Yury.

"He is dangerous," says Katie, letting out another of her flames. "I think I'll burn him."
"No, please don't," I say. "We don't know what that'll do to you. I better shoot him and then you'll burn the body."

Timo and Jamie appear at the door, stark naked from the sauna. They are both quite fair-skinned, and look very eerie in the moonlight. The impression is reinforced by the blood on Jamie's lips, although it's also somewhat spoiled by the fact that they are carrying a sauna bucket with water.

"Who are you? What are you?" asks Anton-Yury, still unafraid - almost.
"My name is Jamie. I am a system administrator, and I eat souls."
"They all do," Timo slanders the sysadmin profession telepathically.
"I think you better go away," says Jamie to the bomber. "Right now, and don't ever come back."
"I'll find you!" the man answers, enraged and showing emotion for the first time.
"You have found me," gently points out Jamie. "Now go away."
"I'll find you off your guard, and then I'll kill you, your girlfriend, all your family and friends," the man really means it. "I never give up."
"OK. I stand convinced."

Jamie doesn't move, but does something very violent that I can feel with my mind-sense, and the man falls dead.

Jamie silently turns back to go inside, and manages to walk about three steps before throwing up in the bushes. This turns out to be unfortunately contagious and we all follow suit.

"You know that you did what had to be done," says Katie after she is done throwing up.
"I know. It doesn't make this any less horrible."
"Did you eat him?" asks Tarja, cringing at the question but unable to contain her curiousity.
"God, no. That would have been really disgusting. I stopped his heart."
"Can you drink human blood?"
"Anyone can drink blood. But I prefer hot chocolate, if you don't mind. The blood on my lips was just from some improvised dentistry."
"I'll make you some." She goes inside.
"Thanks."
"You didn't have to kill him," I say, my mind closed.
"I did. He really meant it about coming back, and you know it."
"It probably had to be done, but you didn't have to do it. I could have done it. Or any one of us. You are traumatized enough for today."
"You were gonna shoot him, for fuck's sake! I think that in this case making the death appear natural was more improtant than my traumas." He is also thinking that killing people probably shouldn't be left to the people who can get over it easily. I am not sure he is right.
"What are we gonna do with the body?" I ask.
"Jamie. Timo. Inside. Now. Take a hot shower and put your clothes on," says Katie. Timo resents taking orders from her, but they both comply.

"Can you look around and see if there are more of them?" asks me Katie.

My Sight reveals no accomplices or witnesses. I also try to See whether the mysterious stranger driving towards us has reacted to the events in some way. He hasn't, but then it's probably hard to use the Sight while driving.

I then look into the late bomber's car. Explosives, guns, a whole arsenal.

"Do you think we should just destroy the body and the car, or call the police?" asks Katie. "Maybe we better ask Jamie."
"Since when do you take orders from him?"
"Since about 10am today. He's been at it for 34 years and I for about 10 hours, so I kinda want the benefit of his experience."
"I think we should call the police if we can do it safely, and destroy the body otherwise."

Rudy doesn't say anything, he just stands next to us staring at the body.

Tarja, Timo and Jamie come out with steaming cups of hot chocolate.

"I think we should call the police," says Jamie. "The man died of a heart failure, he was the bomber in yesterday's attack, he came after us because I was a witness. The only part hard to explain would be the melted gun."
"We have a lot of weapons ourselves. Can you conceal them if the police searches the place?"
"Sure can."
"What about the melted gun?" I ask. "I can melt down the rest of it, but the burns on the body will remain."
"Leave it as it is," says Katie. "Let the police wonder about it."

This seems vaguely wrong, but I don't have any better ideas, and after discussing the details Timo calls the cops and we go inside. We look shaken enough and don't have to pretend much, I think.

Rudy makes us some tea. The pizza is still not here, which is a good thing, because a pizza delivery man probably wouldn't enjoy seeing a dead body in front of the cottage.

Jamie curls up on one of the sofas. "Is this a good look for talking to the police?" he asks.

The illusion that he has conjured is very much recognizable as himself, but a very ethereal version of him. The real him, in spite of being shorter and thinner than an average guy and having fairly delicate features, is pretty much the polar opposite of ethereal. Some people just always look fresh, cheerful and well-fed, no matter how thin or hungry they are and how little sleep they have had last night.

The illusion is much paler than the real thing, has sad, feverishly shiny eyes a little bigger than his regular eyes, a somewhat more delicate nose and hollow cheeks, and looks like somebody who feeds exclusively on poetry and might die at the slighest shock. It is a bit over the top, but with a right kind of mental nudge it will elicit as much protectiveness as can be possibly accorded to a grown man in our culture.

Katie and I look at this infinitely delicate creature and burst out laughing, because underneath this ethereal facade Jamie, though still shocked and upset about having killed the bomber, can't help thinking about the pizza, whether the cottage's Internet connection is sufficient to play EVE Online, whether he'd have time for it tonight, whether we'd remembered to buy chocolate, and whether there is a new Battlestar Galactica episode coming next week. He is quite ashamed of this all, which makes it even funnier.

"Share the joke with us?" asks Rudy, but then I shush him, because the police car is coming.

The cops ask us all together for our story, and don't seem very interested in interrogating us separately. Our story is quite simple: the man came in shooting and threatening us, then his gun started melting by itself, he backed out of the cottage and expired in front of it. The cops search the grounds, but don't try to search the cottage. They ask Jamie a few questions about what he saw during the bombing in St. Petersburg. In the middle of all these proceedings a middle eastern man appears, shocked at the sight of the dead body and the cops, but absolutely determined to deliver the pizza. I make a mental note to tell Jamie that the world really does need people who never forget about the pizza in love and war and any other disaster.

The appearance of the pizza delivery man seems to have a good influence on the cops, who assume that real evildoers don't usually order pizza before committing a gruesome murder. The search the area for a while, and then take the car and the body away.