Flux (The Flux Series Book 1) Page 3

  “Dad, the last thing I want is to go and speak to a shrink. I was involved in a bombing where my sister died. I’m not crazy, I’m just really fucking sad, and kind of afraid of how fucked up the world is right now!”

  I never swore in front of him. Certainly never the ‘f’ word, but my angry, frustrated reaction was perhaps because a part of me knew he was right, but I didn’t want to admit it. I was frightened to go back to work because it would put me right back in the middle of a restaurant setting—far too close to the scene of where I’d been when the bombing occurred. I didn’t want to be forced back into that situation.

  The light above my head began to flicker, and the e-reader I’d been holding suddenly started to swipe through the pages. I glanced up and then down, confused. What was going on?

  My dad hadn’t noticed, still intent on trying to create some focus in my life. “How about I book your first session, and if you don’t like it, you can always decide not to go back?”

  I gritted my teeth. “Dad, I’m a grown woman. I don’t need you organizing my life for me.”

  I might legally be an adult, but I didn’t feel like one. More now than ever I felt far younger than my twenty-two years. It was as though Karina’s death had somehow reverted me back to childhood.

  “Just one session, Ari. That’s all I ask.”

  “I said no.”

  The thought of leaving the house caused panic to rise in front of me like a tidal wave at night, deceptively silent in its power. To defend myself against what I perceived to be the threat—at that moment, my father—my temper snapped. My breath grew shallow, my heart galloping. I clutched the e-reader tighter, trying to hide the fact my hands were shaking.

  “Please ...” he tried again.

  “No. I’m not going out there.”

  “This is exactly what—”

  “Leave me alone!” I pointed at my bedroom door, which he’d pushed shut behind him as he’d walked in. “Just get out!”

  I jabbed my finger at the door again, and the door swung open, so fast and violently, it hit the wall behind with a massive crack.

  We both stared toward the open door, eyes wide.

  I broke down in sobs on the bed. Perhaps my dad was right and I needed to go and see a shrink, because ever since the bombing I was started to believe I was being haunted by my dead sister.

  ***

  It turned out my dad had already booked the appointment.

  The following day I set out. He’d wanted to come with me, but I didn’t want a babysitter. I was more than capable of catching the tram and then walking the couple of blocks to the shrink’s offices.

  It was strange being out in the open again. I felt incredibly vulnerable, and tucked into myself as I got off the tram to walk the rest of the way. I kept my head down, my shoulders rounded, my hands shoved into my pockets. I knew the chances were that nothing bad was going to happen to me, yet I couldn’t push away the sense of impending doom. Perhaps the therapist would tell me this was completely normal after what I’d gone through, and losing the person closest to me as well—I was sure he’d say that it had made me aware of my own mortality in a way I hadn’t been before—and he would probably be right. But it felt like more to me. Something had changed since the bombing, something inside my head as though a piece of the mechanism of my brain had been shaken loose. Where before I’d felt like a normal twenty-two-year-old, now I felt like I was separated from the rest of the world, as though I was walking around in my own bubble no one else could see.

  The streets felt ominously quiet. I passed a couple of other pedestrians, but I avoided eye contact.

  I sensed it before actually seeing anything, the feeling of being watched, of someone behind me, their eyes boring into my back. I shot a glance over my shoulder. I caught a dart of movement, but it could have been my imagination. I was out alone for the first time since the bombing. My nerves were bound to be frazzled. I found myself wishing I’d taken my dad up on his offer to bring me. I kept walking, shivering against the cold. San Francisco had a way of changing weather from one hour to the next. One moment you could be in bright sunshine, the next you were freezing cold and either being blown down the street, or else surrounded in fog.

  I turned back around and kept walking. The psychiatrist’s office was part of a building at the end of a narrow alley. I didn’t think he was going to be the most expensive shrink in the world considering the location, but I wasn’t working now, and Karina’s funeral had sucked most of my father’s savings. The last thing I should be doing was criticizing his choices when he’d only ever been trying to help me.

  I turned left to go down the narrow street toward the office, but as I did so, I caught movement out of the corner of my eye again.

  This time I spun around, my heart beating hard. I hadn’t been imagining things. Someone was following me, and whoever it was didn’t want to be seen. My gaze flicked between places the person might be hiding—a lamp post, a parked car, a tall trashcan up against the wall. The trashcan caught my focus, and, instead of doing the sensible thing, I found myself turning around and stalking toward it. I should have been frightened, but instead I was angry, the same rage I’d felt bubbling inside me when my dad had suggested coming here in the first place. I burned my gaze into the trashcan, willing whoever was behind it to suddenly become visible so I could catch them and demand to know who they were and what the hell they were doing.

  The can began to vibrate, and I drew to a halt in confusion. The vibrating got worse, whatever was inside clanging against the sides. A low hum met my ears, and I realized it was coming from the trashcan.

  A bomb? Was it another bomb? Panic surged inside me, but, before I could turn and run, the trashcan shot out into the road as though it had been pushed. A car driving by swerved to avoid it and the driver beeped their horn.

  My eyes widened as the person who’d been following me was revealed in the space the trashcan had left.

  From one knee, the tips of his fingers against the ground as though he was about to start a race, rose a man in a black leather jacket. As he got to his feet, he began to clap his hands in slow applause.

  My heart stuttered. This was the same man I’d seen both at the cemetery and the hospital. His dark brown hair was long enough to curl at the ends, and was swept back from his face. He was in possession of equally dark eyebrows, with chocolate brown eyes. A scruff of stubble covered his jaw, framing his full lips.

  He wasn’t especially tall, just shy of six feet, but I could make out the lean muscle beneath the gray t-shirt he wore under the leather jacket. Jeans and boots completed the outfit. He was looking at me with a kind of cold amusement as he clapped at me in a way I could only describe as sarcastic.

  “Why the hell are you following me?” I yelled at him.

  He stopped clapping long enough to shove his hands in the pockets of his jacket. “Why do you think?”

  His answer baffled me. I’d been expecting him to say he hadn’t been following me, but that obviously wasn’t the case.

  “I have no idea. That’s why I’m asking!”

  “I’m following you to make sure you’re safe.”

  “Safe? You think I’m in danger?”

  “That’s certainly a possibility, but mostly I think you could be a danger to others. I’m making sure you don’t do anything stupid.”

  I blinked, my mouth dropping open. “Why would you think that?”

  “Because you’ve changed.”

  “I’ve changed? You don’t know me. How could you possibly know if I’d changed or not?” Despite my words, I knew he was right. I had no idea who this guy was, but I had changed. I barely recognized myself anymore.

  The hint of a smile quirked the corner of one side of his lips. “Nice trick with the trashcan, though that’s a perfect example of what I’m talking about when I say you could be a danger to others. You might have caused a car accident doing that.”

  I didn’t think it was possible for my jaw to
drop any farther, but apparently it could. “What are you talking about? You just shoved it into the road!”

  He shook his head. “No, I didn’t touch it. You were the one who made it move.”

  I snorted in derision. “This is insane. I wasn’t anywhere near it.”

  “You didn’t need to be near it. You wanted to see what was behind it, and so you made it move.”

  It was a shame he was a complete raving lunatic. He was kind of hot.

  “I’m about to go to shrink appointment, but I seriously think you’re more in need of it than I am. Please, take my spot.” I swept my hand as though showing him the way.

  Frustratingly, he laughed. “You don’t need a shrink, Arianna. Neither do I.”

  At the sound of my name, I stiffened. “How do you know my name?”

  “It’s my business to know. And I know exactly why the world has seemed so different to you lately.”

  Chapter Five

  I stared at the man who was essentially my stalker.

  I wanted to tell him to get lost, but something about his words resonated with me. My world had changed since the bombing, but it was more than being traumatized by the explosion and losing my sister. Something fundamental about me had changed. I felt as though I’d been rewired into a different person. The core of me was still there, but all the surface stuff I’d thought was so important had been wiped away. I didn’t know how else to explain it. Perhaps it was simply the result of going through what I had, and, if I went and sat down with the shrink, he’d tell me everything I was experiencing was completely normal, yet I couldn’t help feeling like it was more.

  I was pretty sure the sensible thing to do right then was turn my back on this stranger and head straight to the psychiatrist’s office and tell him someone was stalking me. But I hadn’t exactly been in the headspace for making sensible decisions lately. Besides, this guy intrigued me. Perhaps I’d be less intrigued if he’d looked like a troll, but I found a frisson of excitement building up inside me as he locked me in his stare. It was the first time I’d felt anything other than despair since Karina died, and I wanted to hang onto that feeling.

  The traffic was still swerving around the industrial sized trashcan in the middle of the road, but no one stopped to push it back onto the sidewalk. Why had this guy said I’d been the one to move it? It was such a crazy lie to tell. We both knew I hadn’t been anywhere near it. I wondered if we should be moving it back again before there was an accident. The police might even be called, as it was causing an obstruction, and for some reason I really didn’t want to see the cops again. Perhaps they reminded me of that day as well, of the questioning that had happened after.

  “So tell me what you know.” I said to him, lifting my chin defiantly, my hands on my hips. “If you claim to know so much about me, tell me what’s changed.”

  He bit his lower lip as he studied me. “You feel different than you did before—like you’re seeing things in a new way. Strange things keep happening around you—electrical equipment defaulting, glass breaking, things moving when they’re not supposed to.”

  A chill speared down my spine then spread down my limbs and across my whole body. “How do you know that?” He was talking about the feeling of being haunted that I’d experienced since my sister’s death. “Are you some kind of ...” I sought in my brain for the word. “Medium?” I lifted my eyebrows and tilted my head slightly in a patronizing way. “Do you see dead people?”

  His brow pulled down in a frown. “No, of course not. What the hell are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about how all these things that have been happening are to do with my sister haunting me!” I could barely believe I’d said it out loud. But there it was. It was out there now. I figured he was probably going to tell me he could communicate with her then hit me up for some money. A part of me was almost hopeful that was what would happen. Even though I was partially skeptical, I would have given anything to be able to speak to my sister again.

  But to my surprise, laughter burst from his mouth. “Is that what you think has been happening? Your sister has been haunting you?”

  My face dropped into a scowl. “Well, isn’t it? And by the way, laughing at the fact my sister just died makes you a total asshole.”

  The smile fell from his face. “Yeah, you’re right, and I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to laugh. Your answer just wasn’t what I was expecting.”

  “It wasn’t? What the hell were you expecting?” I didn’t think I’d ever been more baffled in my life.

  His voice softened. “That you’re the one causing everything going on around you, Arianna.”

  “Ari,” I said. “Everyone calls me Ari.”

  The corner of his lip quirked again. “Ari,” he confirmed. “Like I said, you were the one who made that trash can move. You’re the one who’s been causing all the strange things that have been happening around you. There’s no such thing as ghosts.”

  I stared at him. “How could you possible know that? It’s crazy. What you’re saying sounds insane.”

  “I know because I have the same ability.”

  “What—”

  I was cut off as the large can that had been sitting in the middle of the road suddenly started to roll back toward us, gaining momentum, until it flew back onto the sidewalk between us and stopped in exactly the same position as it had been before.

  The man in the leather jacket stepped out from behind it and back into view. “Ta-da.” He said, gesturing toward the object.

  My mouth dropped open once more. I did not just see that. It must have been a gust of wind or ... something.

  The world suddenly withdrew around the edges, my visions graying out, and my legs buckled out from beneath me.

  “Whoa,” he said, darting over to me, catching me right before I hit the ground. “You okay, there?”

  Ugh. I did not just swoon? The world righted itself again, though I still had no strength in my legs. The scent of leather and musky cologne drifted to my nostrils.

  “This cannot be happening,” I managed to murmur. “I’m losing my goddamned mind.”

  “You’re not,” he said, still holding me around the waist. “You’ve just found it.”

  “Found what?”

  “The piece of your mind you’ve kept hidden from yourself all these years. You have a gift, Ari. A talent. You just need to learn how to use it.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “This gift has always been inside you. Did you not notice the little things you were able to do—like being able to tell if someone was about to open a door, or picking up the phone and calling someone right when they were calling you. You might have moved things without realizing you were doing it—pulling a pen or a cup, for example, just a couple of millimeters closer to your fingertips before you touched it.”

  I shook my head slowly. “No, I don’t think—”

  But then I remembered when I’d known something personal about one of Karina’s friends—that she was pregnant and was considering an abortion—before Karina had even told me. It had just popped into my head and I’d blurted it out to Karina. My sister had looked at me like I was a witch and asked me how I’d known. I told her I didn’t—that it was just a guess. And then I remembered another time when I’d been waitressing and one of my tables had tried to run without paying. I was washing dishes in the back of the kitchen at the time, but I’d known, just known, and ran out to catch them leaving. Two of them had already run out the front door of the restaurant, but the door had slammed shut on the third, allowing me to catch him. I had thought it was a coincidence at the time, but perhaps I’d had something to do with the door flying shut like that. I had also always been bad with anything electrical, and they were always breaking on me, but I put that down to bad luck. Perhaps it had been more than that.

  No, this was crazy.

  He was staring at me intently. His eyebrows lifted, his eyes wide. “You do remember things, don’t yo
u?”

  I gave my head a slight shake. “They could be anything. Coincidences. I’m sure everyone has those kinds of things happen to them.”

  “And what about now?” he urged. “These kinds of things don’t happen to everyone.”

  “And what are we talking about here? That having things randomly moving around me, and light bulbs bursting, and things breaking are all down to me?”

  He nodded. “It’s been inside you this whole time, ever since you were born. But it normally takes some kind of violent or traumatic event to switch your brain so it’s able to fully connect with your abilities.”

  “How do you know all this?”

  “Because I’m one, too?”

  “One what?”

  “A person with telekinetic abilities.”

  I covered my face with my hands and turned away, still shaking my head. “This is insane. I need to go.”

  I needed to focus, to get my life back on track like I’d been promising my dad I would try to do. I didn’t need to be fed crazy ideas by hot guys in leather jackets who were playing tricks on me. That’s all this was—some crazy trick. I’d probably turn around and discover I’d been Punk’d, which I thought was actually a pretty shitty thing to do to a girl who’d gone through the things I had recently.

  I shoved myself away from him, untangling myself from his arms. “No, I need to go. I’m late for my appointment.”

  “Ari,” he said, “you have to come with me now. I realize everything that’s been happening is frightening, and you probably feel like you’re losing your mind right now, but this is important.”

  I shook my head. “No, I’m not going anywhere with you. You could be a rapist or a murderer. I’m not just going off with some stranger. I don’t even know your name.”

  “My name’s Hunter. Hunter Boone. See, we know each other’s names now, so we’re officially no longer strangers.”

  “I don’t care what your name is. You’ve been stalking me, and now you’re putting crazy ideas into my head. I’m not going anywhere with you.”