Chapter 14

Once the three of us were inside, I said, “Have a seat, Ms...?”

“Ms. Grays, but please, call me Alexandria,” she said as she took the chair.

“Can I get you anything to drink?” I said and then remembered, “I only have tea and water.”

She shook her head, “No thank you, Mr. Sutton.”

“Please, call me Ral,” I said, and then waved at Rachel. “And this is Rachel.” The two of us sat on the loveseat with me closer to Alexandria. I was the one she wanted to speak with after all. “So, what do you want to talk about?” I asked.

Alexandria looked at Rachel. Her presence seemed to make her hesitate. “I’m not sure if I’m free to discuss what I’m here about.”

I glanced back at Rachel and then looked back at Alexandria. “Like I said before, anything you and I discuss I’ll tell her anyway. We don’t keep any secrets from each other.” That was true as far as we currently knew each other. Of course, there was always the possibility that Rachel had other secrets I had yet to learn, but right at the moment that didn’t matter.

Alexandria nodded and said, “I represent an organization for those who have special abilities, like you, Ral.”

She sounded like Rachel did at Charlie’s Café yesterday. Mr. Shepherd had known about me because he had a vision of Rachel and me meeting one another. But how would another House find out about me? “Like me?” I watched Alexandria for a moment, studying her aura. “How do you know me?”

She watched me just as steadily. “We saw the news report about the shooting at the mall. Your name was mentioned as a good Samaritan who helped to bring the situation to a peaceful end.”

I shook my head. “That doesn’t explain how you know about any special abilities.”

She nodded. “Our resident psionic said there was something left out of the report. We did some searches online, trying to find out if any other news broadcasts offered more information. I was surprised to find several videos of the shooting on YouTube.”

“What?” Rachel asked.

Alexandria nodded at Rachel and then looked back at me. “One of the videos had clear detail of you forming a shield when the gunman shot at you, as well as the push you used to stun him.”

Rachel hopped up from the loveseat and went to my bedroom. She returned a moment later with my laptop. One of the features the apartment complex offered was Wi-Fi connections to the internet. She went straight to YouTube and found the video Alexandria mentioned.

I felt odd watching myself in the video. Part of the reason I didn’t watch television and movies was that I could see the auras of the actors and stuntmen. It killed that level of disbelief not only in dealing with stuntmen but the actors themselves performing one emotion while their auras betrayed others entirely differently. However, in the video we were watching, I could see my aura. It was amber and shifting through all the emotions that I had felt at the time: worry, fear, despair.

When the video was over, I looked at the rest of the page. There was one detail that stood out to me like a beacon in the night: the hit counter. It was over a hundred thousand and the video had only been posted the night before at about ten o’clock.

Alexandria said, “Normally we don’t approach Powerborne who’ve gone public. Usually, because they cause damage or are arrested.”

I looked at her. “Then why are you here?”

She studied me for a heartbeat or two. “Your incident was different. By the look of things from the video, your abilities had only manifested at that time. The shield rose to your defense. The push came from your desire to stop the gunman from shooting the woman, not to mention stunning him so he could be disarmed.”

I shook my head. She didn’t answer my question.

“There was also your purpose for being there,” she went on. “The video clearly shows you approached the gunman with the intent of stopping him. It even caught your response to the guard ordering you to stay back.” She hesitated. “You said you ‘can’t’.”

I sat there staring at Alexandria. I had seen that part of the video but hadn’t thought about that.

“Why couldn’t you avoid the situation Ral?” she asked.

I looked at Rachel. She looked back at me, concern etching her face. I thought about what had been going through my mind at the time and shrugged. “I don’t know.” It was something of a lie. Mr. Shepherd had told me that only I could bring the situation to a non-lethal end. I looked up at Alexandria shaking my head. “I don’t know. I just knew I had to stop him.”

She was watching me steadily.

I didn’t know if she was looking for a lie or trying to discern something else. It bothered me enough that I wanted the focus of this discussion off of me. “If you normally stay away from Powerborne who go public, why did you look for me?”

Her gaze relaxed. “My House leader and some of our more involved members would like to meet you, to talk about the shooting.”

Oh, just great! I didn’t need a whole room full of people trying to find out why I had been there in the first place. My question had only redirected the subject back to me. “There still seems to be a conflict of interest. They don’t want to be known about and,” I waved at the laptop Rachel was still holding, “I may not be someone to have around if they want to keep their secrets safe.”

She nodded. “True. We’re not asking you to become a member. A connection between you and our House could be disastrous. Only those interested in you and the shooting would be present.”

“Sort of like an interview?” Rachel asked.

Alexandria nodded at her. “Yes.”

I stood up and paced the room. Another House wanted to talk about what had happened. They’d want to know more about me and what I could do. It wasn’t that they would know my secret, because they had already figured it out, but just the idea that I would be confirming what they already understood.

I caught sight of the laptop again and remembered the viewer count. Total strangers knew about me, though they didn’t know my name or where the incident had happened. Yet there was the fact that it was a shooting in a mall. That had made the news. Anyone who wanted to know more about me would only have to do what Alexandria’s House did, search the web for more news reports, and possibly run across that or other videos on YouTube or other such sites.

That scared me more than meeting members from another House. Public knowledge of what I could do would bring all kinds of unwanted attention. Was there anything I could do about it? At the moment, I didn’t think there was.

I turned back to face Alexandria but Rachel’s anxious expression caught my attention. Her aura said she was worried, but for me or her? Her secret was still safe. Even Alexandria didn’t know about her. But if she continued to hang around with me her life would end up just as public as mine. I couldn’t do that to her. She could keep her secret safe. I would find a way to help her with that.