Free Love Beyond Sight by Rebecca Royce

soul mate were present. The house stood empty of life. As if to prove his point, he marched forward to the front door.
    "Are you planning on kicking it down?"
    He didn't turn around to answer Marina's question. Instead, he concentrated his energy on the door handle. It was one of the perks of his particular power. He could, sometimes, send his energy out in such a way that he could do minor things like opening a door lock at his command. Most of the time it felt like he took the energy from the door into himself thus removing the door's ability to stay locked. He couldn't accomplish anything major like end world hunger. This, however, he could do.
    He felt the lock release and turned the handle to open the door. "We're in," he called over his shoulder.
    "How long have you been able to do that?" Marina ran up the stairs behind him.
    "A long time." How had she thought he'd fed them all of those times Veli had taken off to search for other Outsiders when they were children? He'd broken into the neighbors' homes and made sure that his family was always fed. Had they not known?
    Whatever. It didn't matter now and it hadn't counted for very much then. He still hadn't been able to protect any of them from anything when it had mattered. "I'm going in."
    As the first bolt of electricity zapped his body he wondered if those would be the very last words he ever uttered. Then he couldn't think about anything at all.
     
    * * * *
     
    The water hit Christophe hard in the face and he gasped, trying to get his bearings. Where the hell was he?
    He'd done it again, not that he wasn't used to it, but suddenly finding himself transported someplace where he ended up soaked was a new experience for him altogether and not one he particularly cared for.
    He wiped the water out of his eyes as he stumbled around looking for an exit from his wet prison. Was it raining?
    Looking up only proved to get him hit in the eyes with a cold spray again. He wiped away the wet even as the sting burned his tired eyes. It looked like some kind of sprinklers affixed to a roof were going off. Or, had gone off at some point and were now coming to a stop, hence the trickle down of the occasional spray hitting him in the eyes.
    Residual gray smoke covered the ceiling and made it hard to see. If there were any lights on, Christophe couldn't see them. He pushed forward in the dark, knowing he could be walking into a disaster of some kind. This room had been on fire. The sprinklers and the smoke made that clear enough.
    "Help me." A voice called out in front of him and he kept walking in its direction. "Is someone there who can help me?"
    Christophe could see a little light up ahead. The small voice came from that direction so he moved forward hoping he'd be able to see better and help whoever called out to him.
    He could never be sure why he was sent where he ended up. One time he'd been able to help some people who'd been kidnapped. Other than that, his inadvertent travels had always been mysterious to him.
    "Help me." Christophe stopped in his tracks. He could see who called out to him now and it didn't make him feel any better.
    "Damn." He muttered to himself because he knew it wouldn't matter what he said to the voice now. How many years had it been since he'd last been forced to deal with a ghost? Ten?
    He'd been plagued with them as a child. His parents had thought he'd had an active imagination. It had become quite a joke for them to talk about at dinner parties. Finally, through sheer force of will alone, he'd managed to make them go away and leave him alone.
    If he hadn't known beyond a shadow of a doubt that he periodically transported from one location to another without knowing how or why he did it, he might have come to believe the ghosts were nothing but a figment of his imagination. But Christophe knew weird things happened. Particularly to him.
    And in the scheme of things ghosts were actually not that odd.
    He still didn't like having to deal with them.