Sizzle and Burn

sure of that?”
    “Statistically speaking, psychological problems associated with parasenses kick in early, usually around the time the talents start to appear. Mid to late teens. If you were going to end up in a psychiatric ward or on heavy-duty meds because of your clairaudient abilities, you’d know it by now.”
    “But Aunt Vella didn’t start having serious problems until she was thirty-two. The same age I am now.”
    “I won’t kid you, no one knows why your aunt ended up in an institution. But it is extremely unlikely that it had anything to do with her talents. She managed those just fine into her early thirties.”
    “But you said your analysts were amazed that I haven’t been confined to a psychiatric hospital?”
    “Clairaudient psychometry, especially when it reaches the level-ten category of power, is one of the most difficult of all talents to handle because the sensation is so intensely disturbing. Without someone to guide you through the learning curve, it’s easy to believe you’re going crazy. Other people around you usually come to that conclusion immediately and send you off to a series of doctors. You end up on a lot of drugs or in an institution. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.”
    She gripped the arms of the chair so tightly her nails dug into the upholstery. “It’s as if some stranger has invaded my mind. It’s so horribly intimate and it’s so evil. It makes me feel as if I’ve been…violated.”
    “Trust me, catching a glimpse or two of what that stranger experienced when he shoved a dagger into someone’s chest is just as bad. It’s as if I did the deed myself. For a while afterward, I feel—” He broke off abruptly.
    She sensed that he hadn’t expected to confide that much to her and wasn’t sure he wanted to add to it.
    Then, very deliberately, he tapped his fingertips together again. Once. Twice.
    “I feel contaminated,” he said quietly. “As if some of the darkness inside the killer has seeped into me.”
    She searched his face. “That’s how it is for me, too.”
    His mouth curved in an odd, bemused smile. “I’ve never told anyone that before. The stuff about feeling the killer’s darkness invading me, I mean.”
    “Neither have I.” She took a deep breath. “I always assumed it would be stupid to go around telling folks that I’m afraid I might be absorbing some of the dark energy produced by a bunch of murderers and freaks. I didn’t want to alarm the people close to me, and it certainly doesn’t make for scintillating cocktail party conversation.”
    “Those are the same reasons I’ve kept quiet about it, too.”
    Shared secrets, she thought. The exquisite intimacy of the situation was indescribable. How could she be having a conversation like this with a man she had only just met? Where would it lead? Perhaps more to the point, where did she want it to go?
    “It’s bad enough hearing the voices,” she said. “I can’t even imagine experiencing the visions.”
    “What are the voices like?” he asked, sounding genuinely curious.
    “Whispers,” she said slowly, searching for the words. “But not real whispers, not real voices. My mind understands the difference even though I can’t explain it.”
    He nodded. Deep understanding shadowed his eyes.
    “It’s as if I’m standing in one dimension and there’s a very thin veil between me and another dimension,” she said. “Someone is on the other side of the veil, talking. If I pay attention I can make out occasional words. But I don’t hear the voices, at least, not exactly. I feel them.”
    “When you pay attention, as you term it, what you’re really doing is opening yourself up to the stimuli your psychic senses are receiving, allowing your intuition to interpret the energy.”
    “It’s like having a ghost walk through my mind.”
    “Sometimes you hear the victims’ whispers, too, don’t you?”
    She shivered. “Those are the worst. I hate the freaks’ whispers but when I hear the victims’ voices, it’s a million times more awful because I know it’s probably going to be too late to rescue them.”
    “There are exceptions. That girl in your aunt’s basement today, for example, and that kidnapping victim you helped Mitchell find a few months ago.”
    “True. But the happy endings are few and far apart. And with the cold cases there is never a good outcome.”
    “Except justice,” he said quietly.
    “Yes.”
    “This probably won’t be much