Free In the Air Tonight by Stephanie Tyler Page A

meant.
    She stopped, pulled her half-extended arm back, the bottle cradled against her, looked like she wouldn’t mind taking a shot or two. “I don’t know yet.”
    “But since you were on the news …”
    “An author called, wanted to interview me for a book on Jeffrey. Wanted me to be able to have my say. I left because I didn’t want to stick around and let the hate mail start, blaming me and my parents for what happened. I can understand why on a rational level—on every level, actually. I’ve always felt responsible.”
    I knew he would do this
.
    Gray had told Mace that too—she was sure of it, because he didn’t seem surprised at her statement, didn’t try to tell her that wasn’t the case.
    The non-rush to reassurance was oddly comforting.
    “With Jeffrey … I knew he was bad. I’d known it forever. He scared the hell out of me when he was just in the room, never mind when he was torturing me by cutting up my toys, stealing anything I valued and generally terrorizing me with his stories and drawings. He was mutilating neighborhood animals and no one knew he was doing it, except me. I stopped telling my parents because they didn’t believe me. Didn’t want to. He passed for normal, everywhere but my house. I think maybe my parents were afraid of him, worried what people would think. Worried that no one would believe them.” She paused. “It was easier not to believe me. If they didn’t believe what I said, then none of it was real and they had the perfectfamily. And then I went out of my way to avoid him. He tried—he knew I could see things when I used my gift, and he tried to make me see inside of him.” She rubbed her covered arms as a sudden chill blasted through her, the way it always did whenever she talked, thought or dreamed about her brother. “The irony was, if I’d just done what he wanted, if I’d laid my hands on him, I would’ve known what he planned. I could’ve stopped everything.”
    “And maybe you couldn’t have. He’s a sick guy, Paige.”
    She nodded. “Yes, he is.”
    “You were a kid. You should’ve been worried about getting invited to the freshman dance, not stopping your brother from opening fire on people in the school cafeteria.”
    “Not just people—my friends,” she whispered. “My best friends in the whole world. He made sure, from that day on, that I wouldn’t be able to have any close friends, just like he couldn’t.” He was charismatic, sure, always had a crowd around him. He was popular, well liked. But he’d once told her, in a surprising moment of self-reflection,
I’m never going to be able to connect with anyone. I feel dead inside, even when I know I’m supposed to feel happy or sad … or just feel anything
.
    “Maybe you can talk to someone,” she’d urged. His sneer had come back immediately, coupled with a threat to keep her mouth shut or else. She’d never wanted to find out what the “or else” was, and so she had.
    “I didn’t think he was capable of doing what he did to my friends. I thought … if anything, I thoughthe’d kill me. If I’d put my hands on him, they might’ve had a chance.”
    “You feel responsible because of your psychometry?” he asked.
    “Yes,” she answered quickly, to yank herself away from the memory of that night. Not that it was ever very far from her psyche.
    “How does that work, exactly?”
    She knew he was asking more for self-preservation than anything else, but that was okay. By not touching him—or anyone—she was in self-preservation mode herself.
    “I absorb feelings and images from people. And objects, sometimes, although I’m able to block that more. I always have been, which has been a small blessing,” she explained. “It’s not like this with every person who has my ability. It’s not that cut-and-dried, although some people try to make it like that. Sometimes, the reality is very different from the descriptions in textbooks or articles on the