A-Cup Angst Ch. 14

Lori teared up. It hurt him to feel the emotions ripping through her heart. She didn't want to see him leave, but she also didn't want to leave the life she was just starting to build. She felt guilty for being the kind of mother that let her child roam while she focused on her own happiness. Then she felt guilty for uprooting Suzie a second time. Her emotions ran all over the place and both options, staying and coming along, seemed bad to her. Just as she was going to sacrifice her happiness and Suzie's and decide to come with him, he bent over and kissed her on the forehead.

"It's okay, Mom," he whispered. "I'm going to be all right. You already gave me everything I need. You take care of yourself and Suzie. Goodbye!"

With that, he left and snuck out. He couldn't help but sense Lori being ripped up by grief. He set his mouth tight, wiped the moisture from his eyes, and drove off. With his goodbyes done, he needed to face forward. He needed to figure out where he was going to go and what he was going to do. He drove towards Florence. It was a big enough city to get lost in and it had a very decent airport with many flights each day. He had no intention of flying out of it, but it would be nice for his inevitable pursuers to think he might have done it. As soon as he turned onto the road for Florence, he felt that vague feeling of foreboding rear up again. It was getting less and less vague the closer he came to Florence. It warned him of someone he loved that was in danger. His gut told him it wasn't his family, but it didn't stop him from worrying. By the time he reached the city limits, he decided to discreetly buy some space on a server and set up some surveillance software Nova left him so he could keep tabs on his sister and mother and spot any Section agents coming.

He found a room to let in a private residence in Florence and checked in. He sensed the owners hated technology and felt confident no one would ever be able to track him to their house, even if his trail got picked up. He went out and made the arrangements for the server and installed the surveillance software. By the time he was done, it was almost night. He went to dinner at a small trattoria and had some bland food that he didn't even finish. As he was walking back to his car, the foreboding feeling became stronger than ever. He didn't need to meditate to clarify it. There was a person he loved in his vicinity and they were in some kind of trouble.

Jamie retreated to his calm center and let the feeling guide him. He soon started to receive a sense of direction. He followed it and found himself entering a beautiful palace that housed a museum. He walked briskly down its halls, guided by the feeling, and ignored all the artwork.

He was barely warned that it was coming, when his name suddenly pierced the hallowed silence of the museum and resonated through its cavernous halls. All heads, including his, turned the same way. He beheld a mass of wild, black hair that bounced as the woman that had screamed his name was running his way. The rest of her was obscured by a gaggle of short, asian tourists. When she came running around them, Jamie's jaw dropped in shock.

Mara O'Donnell ran over to him, her big, blue eyes sparkling and her thick, luscious lips shiny with peach gloss. Jamie stood still and received her as she threw herself at him, bodily. She hugged him tight, squeezing him with all of her might. Jamie retreated into his calm center and returned the hug. Her presence was utterly unexpected. He calmly went probing into her mind and soon found out that she was no longer a witch doctor.

"Oh, Jamie," she said, "It's so good to see you!" She broke their hug and held herself at arms' length from him. "What on Earth are you doing in Florence!?"

"What on Earth are you doing here," he asked.

Mara rolled her gargantuan eyes and said, "Oh, it's a long story. Maybe we can get together some time and I can tell you all about it?"

The vague feeling of foreboding had been warning Jamie that Mara was in trouble and now he sensed she was no longer a magician. He concluded that whatever was going on with her must be serious and he decided to stick around and render her what aid he could before he resumed his running and hiding.

"Well," he said, "there's no time like the present!"

"Really," she asked, looking up at him with her sparkling eyes. "Give me one second!" She ran off to talk to an older gentleman that had been eyeing her ever since she had ran into Jamie's eyes. Jamie probed the man's mind and saw that he was a professor of art history and that Mara was a student of his. The older man's attention was purely the result of concern for the well-being of his student. The professor and Mara talked in hushed tones for a minute and then Mara ran back to Jamie. "I'm free! Where shall we go?"

Jamie had been intent on going back to his lodging and convincing the hosts to make him something to eat, since his bland dinner had been very unfulfilling. "Dinner," he asked.

"Yes, please," Mara said, smiling. "I still remember the last dinner we had together. And everything that followed." She blushed and looked down.

"Well, tonight," he said, "I'm only offering dinner. I'm dying to know what you are doing here!"

"I'll tell you all about it," she said. "Where shall we go?"

"Well, you're the student here," he said, "you tell me!"

"Oh, well, I'm still new in town. Actually, I'm still new in Italy and I... I never told you I was studying here! How did you know?"

Jamie shrugged. "Lucky guess." He offered her his arm.

"Lucky guess, my ass," she said and took his arm. They started walking to the exit. She leaned in and whispered in his ear, "You're still up to your magic tricks, aren't you? I just hope you don't wind up killing a bunch of people like you and your girls did in that park north of the university."

Jamie frowned and gave her a look. "Why do you think that was us," he asked.

Mara adopted a haunted look and her eyes watered. "I, uh..." She swallowed and seemed to change her mind about saying something. Jamie delved into her mind and saw that she was feeling very guilty over her role in that fight. She suppressed her line of thinking before he could glean anything else, like what she had actually done. She affected a smile and said, "It just sounded like you guys, that's all."

"Wow," Jamie said, his tone despondent. "A massacre happens, and people assume it's my doing. That's swell."

Mara stopped and rounded on him. Her eyes got even bigger as she said, "No, no, no, no, that's not what I meant to say! I mean..." He sensed her inner struggle. She made up her mind and whispered, "I was a part of that fight, too. I made the casters in the house on the opposite side of the square disoriented. I made them all run out the same way and you and your girls killed them all."

Jamie read in her mind that that was true. He had been assuming that those casters ran into Nova's fire unwittingly, or spurred on by anger. He had never even considered that they might have been influenced by someone else. He hadn't even known they had been there until they ran headlong into Nova's bullets. For the second time in the last twenty-four hours, he realized just how much dumb, blind luck had gotten him through his past scrapes.

"Wow," he said and led the two of them out of the museum and away from anyone that might overhear them. "I can't believe you did that. I'm grateful that you did, but... How? Why?"

Mara twined her arm with his and took hold of his hand as he led her across a square. "How? My former spirit guide and the spirits of my people gave me the powers of the earth. As to why?" She looked up at his eyes. "Well, I did owe you and your girls my life. Plus, I was kind of fond of you."

Jamie picked up on the meaning behind her words. "Was," he asked.

Mara blushed and looked down. She nodded her head and said, "I'm still in love with you, Jamie. You were my first and you're still my only. This meeting of ours... It's not chance. It's not random. It's fate. Destiny." She stopped them and lifted her face to his. Her eyes burned with emotion. Jamie could read them all over her face, just as well as he could sense them in her mind. "I love you, Jamie Jacobs."

Jamie hugged her tight and sighed. He couldn't start up a relationship with her, not with Section and the French looking for him. He decided to help her with whatever predicament she was in before leaving. He sensed Mara expecting to hear an answer from him and he floundered for words. "I, uh... I just ended a relationship and I, uh..."

Mara pushed back and out of his hug. She wiped the moisture from her eyes and said, "Oh, my God, Jamie, I'm so sorry! I'm acting like a lunatic, aren't I? I'm sorry! I didn't mean to go all crazy on you, like this." She laughed a nervous laugh. "I mean, declaring my love for you, how crazy is that? I didn't even take into consideration that we haven't seen each other for months now, and..."

Jamie put his hand on her shoulder and gave it a little squeeze. "It's ok, Mara," he softly said. "It's ok."

"It's embarrassing," she said.

"Well, yes, a bit," he said. "But I understand. I am irresistible. I've ruined you for other men." Mara laughed out loud and playfully punched him in the ribs. The two of them shared a laugh and then Jamie said, "But, seriously, let's go to dinner and talk about things!"

They walked over to a restaurant, sat down and Jamie ordered for them. "Wow," Mara said, "I had no idea you spoke Italian."

Jamie shrugged and said, "I just picked it up recently."

"Recently," she said and snorted a bit. "You sound like you've been speaking it your whole life! All I've been able to pick up is how to say yes, no and come in. Are you really supposed to say, 'pronto', when you pick up the phones around here?" Jamie nodded. "Wow. That's weird. That's like answering the phone with, 'chop-chop, hurry up'!" She laughed at her observation.

Jamie joined in her laugh, politely and then decided to broach the subject of her witch doctoring and said, "Former?"

"What?"

"You said your former spirit guide gave you the power to intervene in the fight," Jamie said. "Did you change guides?"

Mara looked a bit uncomfortable and Jamie sensed the subject was very sore for her. "I was asked," she said and paused. "No, I was ordered to retrieve a fresh lycanthropic wolf from a forest and set it up in a town where it could bite men and turn them into werewolves."

"Holy fuck," Jamie whispered as he read her thoughts and saw that it was true.

"Well, I didn't do it, of course," Mara added, quickly. "I mean, I have no intention of getting a bunch of women kidnapped and raped for a year or so. I refused and I was," she paused to take a deep breath, "dropped from the team for it."

"They took away your powers," he asked.

Mara nodded. The waiter brought their entrées around and they paused their conversation for a minute. When he left, Mara said, "I'm now just as I was for most of my life. No magical powers to speak of."

"I'm sorry," Jamie said.

Mara shrugged and said, "Don't be. I grew up without them and it's not like I did anything with them. I mean, I didn't have any plans for them, anyway. In a way, I'm relieved to be back to normal. You know?" She took a bite of her food and moaned in appreciation of the taste.

"Listen," Jamie said, "did you warn anyone about this...?" He stopped when he sensed a deep trauma surfacing in her mind.

"Yes," she said, her voice sounding distant. "Yes, I did. I contacted Section and they brought me in for questioning." Jamie saw terrifying images in her mind. She recalled just a little of her questioning and struggled to bottle it back up again. She blinked away her tears and cleared her throat. She took a big gulp of her wine and said, "It's kind of the reason why I'm here, studying art history. I left the States as soon as they let me go."

"Did they torture you?" Jamie still tried to make sense of the terror associated to the memories of her questioning in Section.

"No," she said. "Yes. They, uh, they... They sent this man into the room and he, uh... he..." She faltered and Jamie made sense of the alien images and thoughts that were rising in her mind. "He made me think of things and he read them, right out of my mind." Her voice broke and she started to sob.

Jamie got up and came to her side of the table to give her a hug. He couldn't believe that Section had such abilities. He could sense in her mind's eye that she had been completely taken over by that man and he could manipulate and read her thoughts as if they were his own. Jamie's own power extended solely to gleaning what is running through a person's mind at the time, and people can slip one past him with ease, so long as they buried the thoughts of it. His only success at actually reading a mind was when he had probed into Valeria's head and that was only because she had been literally fucked out of her mind and lay there wide open for anyone and anything to do with her what they wanted. This man from Section had a power that didn't care about obstacles and simply barreled through Mara's mind like it was a recording for him to rewind and view at his leisure. It made Jamie's skin crawl. It was a violation that would leave anyone traumatized.

"I'm so sorry they put you through that, Mara," Jamie said.

Mara nodded and calmed down in his hug so he went back to his seat. "So, anyway," she said, "I decided to leave the US and never go back there again. They let me go and here I am. This was the first English-speaking program abroad that I could qualify for. But enough about me, tell me all about you! How did you get here?"

"Ah," Jamie said. "Now, that's a long story."

"Well, if you don't finish it here," Mara said, "maybe you can walk me to my dorm later and continue it there."

"You can have guests over in your dorm?"

"Yeah, sure," she said. "Now, start talking! I'm eager to hear all about what you've been up to since we last saw each other."

Jamie regarded Mara and tried to decide how much of his story he was going to actually tell her. "Have you been in touch with any of my girls," he asked her. Mara shook her head no. Jamie sighed and decided to tell the girl the truth about everything.

At a small airfield on the eastern seaboard, a group of people walked towards a jet on the tarmac that was spooling up its engines. They were the entire Johansson clan and Martin Johansson led them. They were fifty yards away from the plane when a massive illusion they hadn't sense before suddenly inverted itself. It revealed a group of fifty casters that stood between the Johanssons and the plane and it also concealed all of them from the outside world. The casters were lined up and Martin immediately realized he was facing the entire Alpha and Beta enforcement teams. They were Section's best. There were no mundanes to be seen and Martin knew that meant that each and every one of his clan was covered by several marksmen, ready to fire enchanted ammunition. He raised his hand in a gesture of restraint, geared towards his followers. If anything happened there, they'd be slaughtered in seconds.

The leader of the Section casters declared them all under arrest and started ordering the Johanssons to approach, one by one, and be fitted with manacles that restrained magic. As he called out each name, the person in question shot Martin a look, but he just nodded at the ambush and they reluctantly presented themselves for hobbling. He was saved for last and the leader of the teams fitted him with manacles himself. He led him to an SUV and sat him down in the back. He went around the car and sat on the seat next to Martin. He gestured with his hand and spoke some mumbled words. Martin recognized it as a spell that prevented eavesdropping of both the mundane and magical kind.

"Martin," the leader said, by way of acknowledgement.

"Roger," Martin responded in kind.

"How many times have you saved my life, Martin?"

Martin gave his former friend a look and said, "Three. If you count Missouri."

"I do," Roger said.

Martin looked out the car's window at the other cars assembled there and the many Section agents. "Both the strike and intervention teams dispatched to arrest a bunch of people going on a family vacation," he said. "That's something."

"Cut the crap, Martin," Roger said. "We know you're heading over to Italy to go after Jamie Jacobs." Martin just gave him a cool stare. "We also know it was you who hired the cartel goons that killed Jacob's father in Mexico."

"I don't think you have any proof of that claim," Martin said. "Either one of them."

"Doesn't matter," Roger said. "We have probable cause and that means that the Tribunal is gong to authorize a reader to go poking around in your minds. We're going to find out for sure."

Martin shifted uncomfortably in his seat. If a Section Tribunal did loose a reader on their minds, the entire clan is going to be found culpable of one thing or another. It was going to be the end of them. "Why are you telling me all this," he asked. "Why aren't you rushing me over to the Tribunal? Why the delay?"

Roger looked at Martin for a few seconds and said, "Because I disagree with my orders. We are in big trouble, Martin. All of us. Section should be gathering everyone to them to deal with the crisis and not splitting up its assets to dole out petty justice."

Martin knew Roger to be a strictly by-the-book kind of guy. It was why he regularly found himself in peril and had to be saved so often. If he was disagreeing with the head office over something, it must be serious. "What crisis," Martin asked.

"All three known shapeshifters vanished last month," Roger said, prompting Martin's gasp. "And everyone that had been a part of Section's Hunting department has since turned up dead. Both the active assets and the retired ones." Roger looked at Martin with a haunted look in his eyes. "Everyone. Even the seers that predicted which wolf would be called up next. We are operating in the dark here. There is only one former member of the Hunting department still unaccounted for. Alice Worth. I'm sorry that I haven't caught her here today. Give her to us and we need not remove your power and scour your mind for secrets. Get Alice to come in and tell us what's going on and your whole clan will be welcomed back into the fold. We need everyone we can get. Amnesty is but a phone call away."

"How did everyone from the Hunting department die?"

Roger hesitated for a moment and then said, "You don't want to know."

"I do," Martin said, firmly.

Roger looked away and sighed. "The mundanes were assassinated by sniper rifles," he said, at last. "For the casters... it was a sickness. It spreads to other casters upon physical contact. We had to get the CDC mundanes to come in and clean up. Our losses have already been great and we believe that was only a test run, whatever it was. The real strike is yet to come."

Martin swallowed nervously. "So, the sickness doesn't spread to mundanes, he asked. Roger shook his head no. "What of the seers? How did they die?"

"Suicide," Roger said. "They all killed themselves on the day the shapeshifters disappeared. They went into their consecrated spaces to do their thing and then they came out, told their families to kill themselves and slit their own throats open, or drank Drano. We interviewed the family members. Even sent readers out. It was not pretty. Not pretty at all. Martin, we're desperate. All the seers killed themselves on the same day. No one knows what's going on. We need to talk to Alice Worth. She's the only one left who can shed some light on the situation."

"Well," Martin said and swallowed hard. "If you're telling me the truth, then she's probably dead somewhere, too. Her corpse just hadn't been discovered yet. I tossed her out of the clan a while back and I haven't had any contact with her since. No one has."