Devil's Advocate (The X-Files: Origins #2)(48)

Corinda raised a hand. “And some of us hear the change calling, so we come a-runnin’.”

Sunlight gave her a fond, tolerant smile and then took a bite from the strawberry. He did it slowly, savoring the taste, and then licked a drop of juice from his lip. Dana had to force herself to look away, especially since she was aware that Sunlight understood the effect he had on her. And, she thought, on every other female creature on the planet.

“I don’t feel like I’m evolving,” she said. “I feel more like I’m being mugged by what’s going on in my head.”

“Maybe,” said Sunlight, “that’s because you are.”

She blinked. “What?”

“I see your aura, I can see the shape and color and texture of your soul, and I can read its frequency. Do you know what I see when I look at you?”

All she could do was shake her head.

“I see power,” he said. “Don’t look so surprised. You are a very powerful person, Dana Scully, and you have great potential. Your mind is like a furnace, but you’re filled with doubts, and you don’t know what you want to forge in that furnace. Part of you wants to cast armor that you can wear to protect yourself and also hide from the world. Part of you wants to make a sword so you can fight back.”

Dana said nothing, but her mouth was dry as paste.

“And another part of you wants to build instruments of great power and sophistication. Let’s call them a telescope and a microscope. The telescope so you can look beyond the limits of what your eyes can see. There is a vast and complex universe out there, and it is calling to those who can hear, inviting us to watch, to listen, to know. And the microscope because yours is a practical and orderly and very hungry mind, a mind that needs to understand things all the way down to the cellular level.”

“Her eyes are starting to glaze over,” said Corinda with a laugh.

“A bit,” admitted Dana. She drank her tea, which had gotten tepid, and ate more of the grapes but didn’t even taste them. “And, as cool as all this is, it doesn’t help me with what I’m going through.”

“Fair enough,” said Sunlight. “But this is hardly the right atmosphere for anything more precise. I have my own psychic instruments, and they require something closer to a laboratory setting.”

“Which means what?”

He patted her hand. “Let me show you.”





CHAPTER 45

The Chrysalis Room

6:17 P.M.

Sunlight led her through a door in a corner of the café, facing the room used by AA and meditation classes. Dana stepped into darkness as Sunlight closed the door and moved past her, but he did not pull back the heavy curtains. Instead he produced a lighter from his pocket and lit a cluster of short, thick candles. Soon, the air was filled with mingled scents of peppermint, sandalwood, and jasmine.

It was very quiet.

Corinda had walked over to the room with them, but Sunlight had stopped her at the door.

“Thank you,” he said, blocking her from entering. “We’ll be fine. Just have Angelo bring me some of the new incense. I’m running low.”

Dana thought she saw surprise and hurt in Corinda’s eyes. And maybe something else, but the other emotion was there and gone before she could identify it. Now, with the door closed and the candles lit, Dana felt enormously awkward.

“That’s normal,” said Sunlight, as if reading her mind. Or, perhaps, actually reading her thoughts.

“What?” she said, recoiling a half step.

He chuckled. “No, seriously, Miss Scully, I understand that you’re freaked out. I get that a lot. It’s a side effect of being who and what I am.”

“And what is that, exactly?” she asked, still standing by the door. There was a knock that startled her, but then the door opened and Angelo came in with a bundle of incense sticks wrapped in coarse blue tissue paper. He threw a quick look at Dana but said nothing to her.

“Corinda said you wanted this,” he said, handing it to Sunlight. “They delivered it this morning for you.”

“Thank you, Angelo. Close the door on your way out.”

The young man lingered for a moment, then glanced around the room, gave Dana a small nod, and left. When he was gone, Dana repeated her question. “What is it you’re supposed to be?”

“I am a psychic. I’m a very good psychic; I’m very powerful. Corinda would say it’s a gift, and perhaps it is, but so far it has been mostly a pain in the ass. Pardon my language. Let’s call it a ‘quality’ instead. I’ve been like this since I was a boy and it has never gotten easier, never became second nature, never allowed me to fit in. I don’t have to be around people very long before they realize there is something not quite right about me. They’re correct. I’m not ‘right,’ by their definition. I am very different. Because other people react to my difference, I tend to retreat from them. When I was young, my parents took me to doctors and they, of course, dismissed any possibility that I possessed special abilities. Instead they diagnosed me as having ‘social phobia.’” He paused, then added, “It’s nothing new. Hippocrates once described it, and I quote, ‘his hat still in his eyes, he will neither see, nor be seen by his good will. He dare not come in company, for fear he should be misused, disgraced, overshoot himself in gesture or speeches, or be sick; he thinks every man observes him.’”