Free Psyched by Juli Caldwell [fantasy] Page A

inside her chest because she wanted to say it to someone, to finally share this burden. This morning she told Leo people would call them crazy if they knew the two were psychic. It was true—it happened to her, when she first started seeing spirits. Last thing she wanted was a one way ticket to the wacky shack when people found out.
    And yet...as she looked into his sparkling gray eyes, something deep down told her he would get it. For the first time ever, she could really tell someone who would believe what she had to say. She didn’t know why, but she knew Vance was different. She closed her eyes, waiting for it. A quick image flickered into her mind of Vance running through smoke and flames toward her and then snuffed out, but it was enough. A time would come when she’s need him, and he’d be there.
    Her thoughts raced back to her father, whose image in the picture shone so bright. He was surrounded by…something. She foolishly convinced herself that she had it all under control, but now she had so many more questions. Discovering Leo was haunted last night was tough enough. Seeing this picture of her father made her realize she didn’t know what she thought she knew. Maybe the demons were out of control because she had lost control.
    “Will you show me that picture of my dad again?” Aisi asked quietly. “I need to look at it more closely. I think I might have some great information for your project, but I can’t explain why or how, or much of anything.”
    He handed her the camera silently. She switched it back on and pushed the review button until it came to the third shot, the infrared image of her father in a glowing, pulsing blue, framed in black, surrounded by white light. She hit the crop button to zoom in on the white portion, and her stomach sank.
    The closer she zoomed in, the more pixilated the image became, but what originally looked like faint specks of red scattered in the original shot became sets of red dots, two by two, around her father. How many? Aisi quickly counted them and realized that her father was at that very moment surrounded by at least ten demons not yet strong enough to appear to Aisi. If the rest of the day were any indication, they would be soon. She’d never tried to vanquish more than one at a time. Her heart pounded harder.
    She gave the camera back to Vance. “Do you see those little dots in the white, set side by side?” She pointed to the screen, tilting her head toward him. Her curls fell over his shoulder despite being tied back in a low, loose pony tail, but he didn’t brush them away.
    He looked closer, squinting a little. “Yes,” he answered.
    “You just captured ten little baby demons in your picture,” she said simply. She smiled at the look of alarm on his face as he grabbed the camera and stared at the image. “You’re doing this fancy college project and you’ve never seen one? Well, here you go. I see them all the time, and I found out last night my baby brother does, too. I could handle them pretty well by myself until just today. So you showing up here right now either means this is the world’s biggest coincidence, or you’re the luckiest guy I’ve ever met. You just waltzed into demon central.”
    “Wait, what?” Vance spluttered, still astonished. “How do you know these are demons?”
    “I told you,” she replied impatiently, “I see them all the time. If I stay calm, I can vanquish them with some insults and a few Latin swear words. Today? Holy stinking wow…”
    She sighed, and then she launched into the short version of her day. The night terrors. The demon in class and her ruined test. Getting spanked and burned by a demon strong enough to take on something close to human form without possessing someone else’s body. She stood up to show him char marks on the shredded pocket of the seat of her pants, a blackened hand print with claw rips still visible. As she sat back down, she finished, “And he farted at me! The demon actually