Free Hell Week by Rosemary Clement-Moore

for as long as I could remember. When I stayed with Gran as a kid, she would put a soft pallet on the floor, and I would sleep among the books. When I got older, I stuffed my blanket into the crack beneath the door so that the light wouldn't show, and I could read all night.

    Today, the blinds were drawn and the lamp that Gran switched on was golden and warm. She went to a corner and ran her fingers over the spines of a hodgepodge of new and old volumes.

    "Does your book talk about using imagery to build up defenses?"

    "I guess." There was a section about protecting yourself from negative energy. Naturally, I'd been pretty interested in that. "The guy talks about surrounding yourself with a halo of love and pixie dust and unicorns. Like that would last a second against some Hell-spawned demigod."

    Gran paused to look over her shoulder, amused. "Well, pixie dust is sufficient for most people. What do you imagine?"

    I fiddled with an incense burner, collapsing a spent cone of ash and releasing the scent of rosemary into the air. What was Gran trying to remember, I wondered. Maybe my grand- dad. I hadn't even known him, but I got a sense of him in this room, a big, ruddy-cheeked man who loved to sit in the arm- chair with a glass of scotch and a mystery novel.

    Maybe this vision thing didn't have to be horrible scary.

    Pulling a book from the shelf, Gran faced me, expec- tantly. What had she asked? What did I imagine when I thought about psychic protection. "The Millennium Falcon," I said. She laughed immedi- ately, and then again as I explained. "You know when the TIE fighters are swarming in, and Han Solo is telling Chewbacca to raise the deflector shields?"

    "Whatever works, I suppose." She laid a book in my hands. It was glossy but well used, a Practical Guide to Medi- tation. "Maybe you can add some of those to your exercises. I used that to"--she debated the right word--"insulate my `baggage' from you. You could use the same thing to insulate yourself from things you brush up against."

    "Thanks, Gran." I flipped through the pages of the book. It had big pictures and examples and step-by-step instruc- tions. I liked it already. "So you don't think this is weird that I've suddenly got a new superpower?"

    "No, because I don't think it's new." She straightened a picture, one of me and my parents at Disneyland. "You re- pressed your Sight for seventeen years. I think now it has to catch up with you. Naturally, you're going to have some growing pains."

    She switched off the lamp and I followed her out into the living room. "Why was it so easy for you to accept your gift?"

    "I suppose because I grew up in the old country." The lilt of her accent deepened when she talked about Ireland. "It was a simpler age. We didn't have a television, and I didn't even learn to drive until I came to America."

    "Really?"

    "You're very worldly and cynical here, and the need for proof blinds people to what may only be taken on faith."

    I thought about that while I sat at the kitchen table, where my tea was now cool enough to drink. What she had said was true. My never-was-boyfriend studied the occult and my best friend was a witch. I'd had a demon stalker and lived to tell about it. But my first thought with the visions was that I must be going crazy.

    It made me wonder how many things there were in the world that people just dismissed as coincidence or fluke, never realizing the extra layer of weird that overlay our mundanity, like a high-frequency radio station that most people's tuners never reached. 9

    Rush, I wrote, sitting cross-legged on my bed, wearing my rattiest pajamas and stripped of the makeup and jewelry that Mom had insisted were compulsory for the final round of parties, is like courting. First round is like speed dating. You ro- tate at the ding of a silent bell, learning more about someone from their dress and manner than from any rote list of banal questions. (What's your major, for example.)

    The second round is