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(c) 2008 by Trismegistus Shandy

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
I.e., feel free to repost or mirror it unmodified on any noncommercial website or mailing list.

---

Every six months or so, depending on how his budget is looking, Nat Holcomb places a personal ad in anywhere from a dozen to three dozen newspapers, mostly in the southeastern U.S. plus a few larger ones elsewhere. His paycheck from the Georgia State Patrol Auxiliary, which is usually just enough to cover textbooks and gasoline, included a large hazardous duty bonus this week, so he goes all out, sending the ad to every paper he's ever placed the ad in and a few more.

"Vincent, I've figured out how I did it and how to reverse it. Call me at 404-555-0135. Natalie."

The phone number in the ad doesn't go directly to his cellphone; it goes to a voicemail maze a friend helped him set up. Anyone who calls it will be asked a series of questions, some multiple-choice (Press one if your family was Baptist, two if they were Methodist, three if Catholic, four if of some other religion, four if no particular religion...), some asking for an answer to a numerical question (Enter the number of the grade we've known each other since, use a 0 if we met in kindergarten). The last question asks for the caller's birthdate, year-month-day. The latest revision of this questionnaire has filtered out all the crank calls Nat used to get when he first started placing the ad; if the caller answers all the questions right, identifying themselves as the Vincent the ad is meant for, the call will be transferred to Nat's main cellphone number. (If at least two-thirds of the answers are right, it goes to another voice mailbox, one Nat checks every day or two in the weeks after the ad runs; maybe Vincent has forgotten some of those things. So far there's been nothing in that mailbox, either.)

He doesn't really expect an answer anymore; it's been four years with no sign that Vincent, if still alive, is reading the personals section (or googling his birth name; that string still turns up a cryptic message on Nat's homepage in the first page of results, or as the number one result if combined with "Natalie", "Holcomb" or both). Probably after this insertion he'll cut back to running the ads once a year for two or three years, and then give up.

---

It's a good thing he's at home when the call finally comes. The shock is so bad that he's intensely glad he's not in the student center or some other public place, or, worse, driving. (He has a hands-free headset, but talking to Vincent hands-free while driving would be as dangerous as talking to most other people with one hand on the phone and one on the wheel.)

"Hello?"

"Nat?" A woman's voice he's heard only once in his life; he doesn't recognize it at first. "This is Nat Holcomb I'm talking to, right, not another damned voicemail menu?"

His heart speeds up. "Vincent?"

"You made it kind of hard for me to introduce myself that way without people looking at me funny, but yeah, that's what my parents named me." There's hostility dripping from every word; not surprising, really.

"Vincent, I'm glad you finally got my message. I've been placing those ads every few months ever since it happened..."

"So what do I have to do?"

"Just come to Atlanta. I'll meet you somewhere convenient, in a public place like a park or a mall if you want. I can change you there, or we could talk first and then go someplace more private."

"I'll have to quit my job to come to Atlanta with less than a week's notice. But if you're serious about changing me back, I'll do it."

"You don't have to do that," Nat says, "I don't have any travel plans anytime soon. Wait and get approval for your vacation if you need to."

"I want to come." Less hostile now, but still maybe a bit suspicious. "I'd want to quit my job and find a new one anyway, once you change me. Anyway, it's almost three days to Atlanta by Greyhound from here. I'll call you when I get in town, OK? Give me your direct phone number so I don't have to crawl through that maze again."

Nat recites the number. "Listen," he says, "I'll meet you at the bus station. And... I'll change, try to look as much as I can how I looked when you saw me last."

"That's big of you. I'll call you from the last stop we make before Atlanta. How's that? If I can't reach you then, I'll call again when I get into town and check into a hotel. It might take me a day or two to wind things up here and book a Greyhound ticket — I'm going to Milledgeville after I meet you, and won't be coming back here for a while, if ever." No explanation of where "here" is, but three days on Greyhound suggests somewhere in the Northwest. Seattle, Portland, maybe Vancouver? This is the first time he's placed the ad in the free alternative papers in those cities.

"All right," Nat says. "Talk to you then."

His hands are trembling as he hangs up.

---

The next day after his last class, Nat goes home and changes. Then she goes shopping. She's looking for a dress that looks like the one she wore one night four years ago, running several blocks, panicked and disheveled, not realizing what had happened and that she was no longer in any danger of rape. She visits three stores before she finds a reasonably close match.

As soon as she gets home she changes back, before eating supper and going to bed.

---

Three days later Nat's phone vibrates in his pocket while he's studying at the library. He checks the caller ID; not recognized. But Vincent might be calling about now, so he grabs up his books and papers and hastily walks outside to answer it.

Sure enough, it's Vincent.

"I'm calling from Nashville — the bus is supposed to arrive in Atlanta about 5:35."

"That's fine — I should be able to get to the station in time to meet you when you arrive."

"See you then."

"See you in a little while," Nat says, but the line is already dead.

After Nat puts away his phone, he does some figuring. If he's going to meet Vincent at the Greyhound station at 5:35, he needs to leave early, skipping at least one class — and if he's going to change, he needs to leave especially early, to go home before returning downtown to the Greyhound station. So right after his World History class he leaves the school, goes to the MARTA station and heads to East Point, where he parks his car every morning, and then home to his apartment in Jonesboro. He fixes a sandwich and eats, dreading the meeting to come in a very few hours.

After undressing, he stares at the dress hanging in the closet for a long, tense moment before changing. She takes her time getting dressed again; it's been a while since she's been out in public as a woman and part of her wonders why she offered to change into this more recognizable form and clothing to meet Vincent. She could have just carried a big cardboard sign with Vincent's name on it. She uses less makeup than she used to use in high school — less than she was wearing the last time she saw Vincent. She doesn't want to impress her — doesn't need to impress her; she just needs to be recognizable. And, looking in the mirror, she thinks that, aside from her shorter hair, she does look enough like her sixteen-year-old self to be recognized.

She still has plenty of time, but she's too fidgety to sit around her apartment now that she's ready to go, so she puts The Bridge at Andau in a purse that's collected a lot of dust since she last used it — it doesn't quite match the dress but she gave away or threw away most of her other purses a couple of years ago — and gets in the car, heading back to the East Point MARTA station. She's off the train at Garnett station a few minutes later, and walking the short distance to the Greyhound station.

This was a mistake, she's already thinking. I should have asked Vincent to meet me somewhere else. Because of her paranormal power Nat isn't objectively in any danger of rape, but a knife or gun can still kill her just as dead; and though this isn't one of the highest-crime neighborhoods in Atlanta, she still feels out of place and vulnerable, both because she's white and because of the way she's dressed. She feels slightly better after she's inside the Greyhound station waiting area, checking the arrivals board — the 1123 bus from Nashville is on schedule — but not much better. She takes the book from her purse and tries to read about the Hungarian revolution, but can't focus on it for long. She feels like half of the other people in the waiting area are staring at her, and though she knows it's mostly her imagination, she can't ignore the feeling long enough to read two paragraphs.

Hours creep by, and Nat reads a whopping three pages of this book she has to finish and write a paper on by next Friday. Finally, the arrival of the bus from Nashville is announced. Nat gets up and approaches the door where the people getting off the bus will come in.

She hasn't seen Vincent in four years, and only once after she changed her, so she doesn't know what to expect. A crowd of people get off, most reclaiming baggage from the bus's storage compartment, and most of them immediately enter the station. Nat flinches a couple of times as some of those disembarking brush her in passing, just barely managing to avoid using her power on them; there's a good reason she doesn't go out in public as a woman anymore. She's too paranoid in this form.

Finally, when most of the crowd off the bus has gone, a woman several inches taller than Nat, in grungy, ill-fitting clothes that don't fit her any better for having been slept in, approaches pulling a smallish wheeled suitcase. "Nat Holcomb?"

"Yes. Vincent Carnes?"

"That name sounds familiar. I think it used to be on my birth certificate. The real one."

"Well." Nat hesitates. "I guess this isn't a good place, is it...? We could go somewhere else and I could change you there...

"Where else?"

"Maybe you would want a change of clothes too? Maybe we could go to a thrift store and use their changing room?"

Vincent shrugs. "The stuff I'm wearing is loose enough that I should be fine if you change me right now. Yeah, I'll want new clothes soon, but it doesn't have to be tonight. Do you not want to change me in the middle of the Greyhound station, for some strange reason?"

"We're — at least I'm — attracting plenty of attention as it is. No, I'm not going to change you here in the station. Let's go."

"Where are we going?" Vincent asks as she follows Nat out of the station onto Forsyth Street.

"I'm not sure; I should have thought this through more clearly... On second thought I don't want to change you in a thrift store changing room. Too good a chance somebody might notice the oddity of a man and woman walking out the room when two woman walked into it — and I think you can figure out why I might not want to be alone in such a small room with you when you're a man again, too. And any other public place I can think of might be even worse..."

"So we need somewhere private. You're keeping your power secret?"

"More or less. The Georgia State Patrol Auxiliary know about it, but my name's been kept out of the news in the few cases I've helped them — or the World Guardians — with. You know that alien invasion last month?"

"Which alien invasion do you mean? The flying saucers that knocked down the Washington Monument or the ones that landed in rural areas and sent rover craft heading toward the cities...? Of course I know that alien invasion last month. Do you mean you had something to do with it?"

"I started a civil war on their mother ship by changing a bunch of their workers and warriors into queens. Never mind that for now; I think our options are basically two. I can call a friend of mine who lives in Atlanta and maybe we can go to his apartment and I can change you there, and then you leave and go wherever you want to go next. Or we can go out to my apartment and I change you there. In that case I'll be changing myself as well, because for reasons I don't need to point out to you I don't want to be alone with you when we're of opposite sexes." Nat has been leading Vincent toward the MARTA station; wherever they're ultimately going, she wants to get out of this neighborhood in one direction or another.

"This friend already knows about your power?"

"He's the one who got me up to that alien mother ship and back again... But on second thought I don't want to get him involved in this if it's not necessary. What are your plans?"

"After you change me? Buy new clothes, ditch the clothes that don't fit me any more. Call my parents once I have my proper voice back, and ask them when it would be convenient for them to come to Macon to meet me at the Greyhound station there."

"So you'll need to stay in Atlanta tonight...?"

"Probably so. There's a bus for Macon leaving at 7:15, and another one a little later, but I don't want to press my parents to drive to Macon at nine or ten at night on such short notice."

"Well," Nat says, knowing she might regret it, "if you don't mind not changing back until tomorrow, you could sleep on my sofa tonight."

Vincent stops walking and stares at Nat. "I get it," she says after a long pause. "You got me to quit my job in Seattle, give all my girl things to Goodwill, and take a three day bus trip to Atlanta so you could string me along with a promise you can't or don't want to keep."

"That's not true! I said I would and I will. Only..."

"You don't want to be a girl in the same room with guy-me. I heard you the first time. Okay, I don't know how much money you've earned fighting off alien invasions for the State Patrol, but I haven't earned so much being a waitress that I can afford to turn down a free place to crash. Lead on."

The MARTA train is crowded both with commuters on their way home from downtown and people heading to the airport to catch evening flights; they talk little more until they reach East Point station and Nat leads the way to her car. Even then, the tension is too much at first.

"So where have you been all this time? I started placing those ads just a few months after it happened, when I first got my power under control. My brother Will talked to your parents for me and found out that you'd never gone home..."

"After you brushed me off and wouldn't change me back the day after you changed me —"

"I couldn't, yet. I didn't know how it worked and I didn't have conscious control over it."

"Whatever. I was scared. I got in my car and drove all the way to Chattanooga. I would have driven farther but I got stopped for driving with a broken headlight, and then almost arrested for driving without a license. Didn't match my driver's license, thanks to you... I got away, but lost the car, and got pretty hungry for a while before I found a job I could do without legal ID. Kept working my way farther from home, and saved up some money I eventually used to have some fake ID made up. Then got an apartment, shared with two other girls, and a more respectable job. Don't ask me what the earlier jobs were."

"I won't..."

"What about you? What have you been doing when you weren't fighting aliens?"

Nat summarizes the painful history of the first few days after her power manifested, and how she joined the GSPA.

"Superhero work. That thing you did to me, is that your only power?"

"Yes. I can change myself, or other people, or animals, or apparently aliens, I just found out. But nothing else. I'm not super fast or strong or tough."

"So why did they take you on?"

"I'm a reservist — they call me in when they think my power would be useful and they ignore me most of the time. Once they experimented with having me trap and change a rapist, but then our lawyer advised us to not do it again. And another time..."

"Yes?"

Nat hesitates. She hasn't told this whole story to anybody who wasn't involved, not even her brother Will. But it seems like just the thing to break down Vincent's hostility and resentment at the loss of control in her life due to Nat's power.

"There was this telepath from Alabama..."

---

Nat had been just past her eighteenth birthday when the GSPA loaned her to the Atlanta Police Department to help them bait and trap a serial rapist in a neighborhood not far from the Greyhound station where she would later meet Vincent. That operation went reasonably well, in that the rapist was no longer capable of rape, but not quite as planned, since she got away and was never heard from again. Nat expected this job to be followed by similar ones, but it was several months before the GSPA called on her again. By then she had just started her first semester of classes at UGA.

"We got a tip from a low-powered telepath in Columbus," Captain Rapid told her at the briefing. "He manages a restaurant. He was out front talking to a new waitress he was training when a woman came up to them and asked where the restroom was. He says that signs of tampering were all over her mind, too obvious for him to miss. He probed a bit and saw that her affections had recently been diverted to a man she'd just met. He watched for her when she came out of the restroom; she went to a table where a man and two other women were sitting. He noted what they looked like, and asked a waiter to take his cigarette break just when they left and note down their license plate. He spent the next hour back in the kitchen, well away from the man, whom he was pretty sure was a telepath far stronger than himself. A little later he called us with the descriptions and the license number."

"So he's using mind control powers to collect a harem?"

"It looks like it. We traced the Alabama tag and found the car had been bought at a dealership in Tuskegee just a couple of days earlier at way below sticker price. The salesperson who sold it got fired; the boss thought she had cut a deal for a friend and wasn't even smart enough to hide it. We suspect the woman who sold the car had her mind tampered with, too; we're sending someone to check."

"So why do you want me for this one? Don't you fight telepaths with telepaths?"

"We're sending in the best telepath in Georgia to take this guy down. But we think you would be useful too. The evidence we have so far suggests his power might be more effective on women, or maybe it only works on women. So..."

"You think if I change his victims they might rebel against him and distract him, making it easier for your telepath to get at him?"

"That might help. But mainly we want you to help protect our telepath against him. I think you've met Officer Habersham before?" he said, turning to the woman seated at his right.

"Yes... once or twice." Janice Habersham smiled uncomfortably at Nat. They had met a couple of times while Nat was living at the GSPA training camp in Toccoa during her last year and a half of high school.

"I guess they've told you about my power?" Nat asked her.

"Yes," she said. "I'm not convinced this is necessary or useful. I won't know how powerful this rascal is until I meet him, but so far as I know there are only six telepaths in the U.S. more powerful than me, and of those probably only two could beat me in a mental fight; I've got more experience and skill than most. The chances that this kid from Alabama who's just discovered his power can do anything to me is very slim."

"I want you to have every protection," Captain Rapid said firmly.

"Being a man would distract me and throw me off balance," she argued. "If he's never met another telepath before and has no shields, as I expect, it might not matter, but if he's powerful enough to put up any fight, I need to be able to focus."

"And if his power only works on women — and we have no evidence yet that it works on men — he'll be completely vulnerable to you if you're a man."

"Why should it work only on women? There are a few telepaths I know of whose power only works on persons of the same sex; that's similar to the phenomenon of autistic telepaths who can only talk to other autistics, but..."

"Can you rule it out? Haven't there been cases of telepaths who control people of the opposite sex, not around here or very often, but somewhere?"

Officer Habersham paused. "No, it's not impossible. There was a case in Colombia ten or twelve years ago, now that I think of it — a case kind of like this one. The man was shot by a jealous husband before his power could be scientifically analyzed, but the ITC's tentative conclusion was that he had a telepathic power that only worked on women, or worked a lot more powerfully on women than on men. Some of the commissioners thought his power was pheremonal, though, not true telepathy..."

"Then I'm ordering you to let Officer Holcomb change you, to give you an extra possible protection against this suspect." Captain Rapid turned to Nat again. "We sent an APB to all police and sheriff's departments in Georgia and Alabama, warning them not to approach but to contact us instead. A couple of hours ago we heard that the car is parked at a motel in Mableton, near Six Flags. We're sending you two, in plainclothes in an unmarked car, with some other officers at a little distance for backup. You'll stake out the motel and ambush the suspect when he and his mind-tampered girlfriends come out of their room, or enter the room, depending on Officer Habersham's judgment of the situation. She'll be in charge; don't approach unless she — he — tells you to. Be ready to change the man's victims or the man himself when and if Officer Habersham gives you the signal. Understood?"

"Understood, Captain."

"Good. Now both of you go change."

---

"I'd never changed Janice before — she wasn't around the training camp when they had me testing my powers and practicing to get them under control — but she adapted to it a lot faster than any other woman I'd ever changed." Nat is nearing her apartment; Vincent, in the passenger seat, has been listening quietly. "I think it's because she'd been in such deep telepathic contact with men before that she knew what it would feel like in advance. She didn't like it much, though."

"I wonder why," Vincent says.

"So we went to this motel, both of us men. I did the driving so Janice would be free to concentrate on scanning the minds of the people around us, looking for the telepath and his victims. I found the car we were looking for and parked right near it, so we were facing the outside of the motel and probably the room where the guy and his victims were staying, assuming they'd parked near their room. I asked if we should go ask the clerk to tell us what room the people driving that car were in, but Janice told me — silently, telepathically, you know — that we should stay put, she would find the guy quick enough just sitting there.

"That was when things started going wrong, though I didn't realize it at the time."

---

Nat sat in the driver's seat of the unmarked Crown Victoria as the sun set and it got gradually as dark as it was ever going to get, this close to the city lights of Atlanta. Janice sat next to him, his eyes closed in telepathic concentration. Nat wondered fleetingly, if Janice fell asleep, how could he tell? — but his head was erect, and would of course lean back (or forward) if he dropped off to sleep. Tension gradually gave way to boredom, and then to other disturbing thoughts. What evidence did they really have that this guy had coerced those women? They might be travelling with him entirely voluntarily... the telepath they met in Columbus might have been mistaken thinking their minds had been tampered with. He wasn't near as powerful a telepath as Janice, or he wouldn't be working as a restaurant manager.

Nat glanced at his watch. They'd been sitting there for over an hour. Shouldn't Janice have found the telepath by now? There couldn't be more than forty or fifty people in this little motel on a Tuesday night. He didn't want to disturb Janice's concentration, but after another ten minutes he finally asked, quietly, "Have you found him yet?"

{I found his companions,} Janice replied silently. {I won't say victims. I think we were wrong about him. He healed them of various neuroses and compulsions and they naturally fell in love with him out of gratitude... I think he altered them just a slight bit more to keep them from being jealous of each other, but other than that there was no real tampering with them. He didn't force them to come with him, like that amateur in Columbus thought.}

A long silence. {So we just go?} Nat asked silently, hoping Janice was listening to his surface thoughts.

{No... I want to talk to him too.} Silence again.

Nat thought about that. A telepathic healer! All right, a polyamorous telepathic healer who didn't have a psychiatrist's ethic of professional detachment from his patients. But, still, overall a good thing, right? Maybe this guy could fix Nat's paranoid fear of rape; it didn't make sense given his power, but he still felt it whenever she was female and in a public place with strange men around... or his tendency to procrastinate on his homework, or...

The door of one of the ground floor rooms opened. A man came out. Nat's heart leaped. That was him, he was sure! He'd done a lot of good so far and would do a lot more good if he wasn't thrown in jail on trumped-up charges... Nat and Janice silently agreed to get out of the car and go meet him.

Halfway across the parking lot Nat realized that they didn't need to be male. It was such an awkward shape. A moment later they were in their natural forms again, not breaking stride. Their clothes didn't fit, but they could fix that later.

"Welcome, ladies," said the young man standing in the doorway. "Would you like to come in?"

"Yes, thank you," Nat said. He was about her age, and really cute.

There were two other women sitting on one of the beds, fully dressed, and sounds from the bathroom suggested the other woman was inside. Nat and Janice sat down on the other bed and the man, having closed the door, sat on the further bed next to the two women.

"We have much to discuss," the man said, "but first, introductions. My name is Timothy Baines. This is Carla Wyatt, here," nodding to the woman on his right, "and Mary Linton. Sarah Leigh is in yonder, powdering her nose. Carla, Mary, this is Natalie Holcomb and Janice Habersham, of the Georgia State Patrol."

"Auxiliary," Janice added.

"Excuse me. Yes, they're from the auxiliary wing, the police with paranormal powers like mine. But are they here to recruit me?"

Janice frowned. "That is not why we were sent here, although..."

"No. Their suspicious superior officers thought that I had enslaved you! How silly!"

Mary and Carla laughed. It sounded like genuine amusement. Nat couldn't help grinning, too; their suspicion seemed so absurd in retrospect!

"Of course, in a few minutes they will call their colleagues on the police radio and tell them they were mistaken. And a few minutes after that we will leave. One day at Six Flags is enough, I think, with forty-eight other states and well over a hundred other countries to explore?"

Mary and Carla agreed enthusiastically. Suddenly Nat picked up on their wanderlust, and wondered why she'd spent her whole life in Georgia when there were so many other places to see.

"In any case, my healing talents are not well suited to law enforcement, I think. Perhaps someday I will settle down somewhere and work in criminal rehabilitation. But for now... nineteen years in Rock Springs, Alabama is long enough to spend in once place!"

"Too long," said Mary with a look of disgust. "Way too long."

"We'll keep travelling, and I'll heal people to pay our way, like that poor workaholic woman at the Chevy dealership in Tuskegee, or the nicotine-addicted clerk at the motel here. Miss Holcomb, Ms. Habersham, you ladies are welcome to accompany us if you wish."

Of course they wished to!

---

"At the time, nothing about it seemed weird. His control over us was so sudden and so complete that we didn't notice anything unusual about the way were were thinking. We just liked him, and were suddenly bored with Atlanta, and wanted to go with him and see the world. The car was crowded with six people in it, driving all night to Nashville, but we all liked each other so well we didn't mind being squushed. (Mary and Sarah took turns driving; Baines sat in the back seat between me and Janice.)"

They've arrived at Nat's apartment. Nat parks, and they get out, Vincent retrieving her small suitcase from the back seat.

"In Nashville we traded the car for a minivan. Baines told us he'd healed the salesman of an Internet addiction. Then we drove around for a while, seemingly at random, until Baines told us to stop at a particular house — a minimansion in a newish subdivision. He told Mary and Carla to go up and knock on the door. I asked him where we were, and he said there was a ladies' poker game in the house. With a few distant nudges from him, the rich ladies at the party would invite Mary and Carla to join the game, and with a few hints from him about what the other players were holding, they would win enough to keep us in gasoline and food for a few hundred more miles. Meanwhile he would see what psychological problems the ladies at the party might have that he could fix. He leaned back and closed his eyes, to concentrate on the ladies in the house, and told us and Sarah we could go for a walk. We walked around the neighborhood, and came back a while later. When Mary and Carla came out of the house and got in the van, we drove off and found a motel to stay in."

Nat lets them into the apartment, and interrupts her story to say, "Look, I'm going to go change into something more comfortable. Feel free to look around the kitchen and see if there's something you want for supper, or we could order out."

---

As Carla parked the minivan outside the motel office, Timothy asked them, "How many rooms do you reckon we want?"

The women looked at one another. "We've got the money for two or three rooms," Mary said, looking over her poker winnings. "But we don't really need that many, do we?"

"Natalie, Janice — y'all don't mind sharing a bed, do you?" Sarah asked.

"No, of course not," Nat said. She was a little nervous, but pleasantly excited too — sharing a bed with who? And how? She hardly dared hope that Timothy liked *her* well enough to...

Carla went in to register, then came back a few minutes later and drove them around to the back of the motel. Another ground-floor room. Three per bed? Nat wondered.

---

"...I won't go into details," Nat says, as she and Vincent sit down to bowls of microwaved canned soup. "He shared a bed with Mary and Carla that night, and Janice and I slept with Sarah in the other bed. We fell asleep surprisingly fast and slept quite soundly, so we didn't hear what, if anything, was going on in the other bed. I think he thought he was exercising restraint, going slow... But I went to bed that night vaguely partial to him, maybe just starting to develop a crush on him, and woke up the next morning passionately in love with him. He'd been working on me in my sleep. With Janice, who was still fighting him on some level, it took him another couple of days to get to that point."

"Could you pass the parmesan cheese?" Vincent asks.

"Here you go. — So the next day, we drove around Nashville, seeing the Parthenon and so forth, and buying feminine clothes for me and Janice, and we went to the Grand Ole Opry in the evening. I sat next to Baines and we held hands for a while; then he slipped a hand under my blouse, and I let him. I was so happy, it was disgusting."

"My condolences," Vincent says. There's sarcasm in her voice, but not as much as there was earlier.

"And later on, back at the motel... Well. The whole point of my having this power is to protect me from rape, you know? I mean, the paranormal doctors tell me that if you hadn't... done what you did, it would have manifested later, in some other form. Probably healing people from sickness or injuries. That would have been a lot more useful, I reckon... But it didn't do me a bit of good against a man who could make me not want to use it against him."

Vincent has stopped eating. "I'm sorry," she says. "I'm sorry I tried to push you that night, and I'm sorry this telepath treated you the way he did... if it makes you feel any better, something like that happened to me, more than once, within a few days after I left Milledgeville. I was hitching a ride out of Chattanooga, and this guy... I'd been planning to accept rides only from women but I was getting cold and tired, and he looked so respectable..." She halts, unable to go on, shuddering.

After a moment's hesitation, Nat reaches a hand across the small table and lays it on Vincent's. "It's over now," she says. "It was horrible but it's over, and we're still alive."