"PROTECTED AND COMFORTED. YES. A NOBLE GOAL."
With that, the presence fled from my mind, and I felt the pressure return. More than just returning, it built and grew inside me. Astoundingly, it was no longer painful. Uncomfortable and foreign, absolutely, but it was no longer distressing.
I stepped over to the girl and kneeled, so my head was closer to her eye level. I softly asked, "Hey, are you okay now?"
She was crying, still rocking back and forth, and hadn't lifted her head to see who was talking to her. She was clearly not okay. She responded, shrilly and uneven, "I don't have the money. He put it somewhere. Told me to forget about it."
I responded, careful to control my voice to be as calm as possible, "I figured you didn't know. He set you up to take the blame. Are you okay?"
She opened her eyes and looked up at me, and I got a good look at her face for the first time. Her makeup had been smeared by crying and subsequently wiping her face, and her green eyes looked up at me in anxiety and confusion. With that said, the flow of fear pouring off her slowed somewhat. It was now an old, lazy river pouring a large amount into the ocean that was already here instead of the raging torrent dumping incomprehensible quantities it was before.
"You aren't here about the money?" She asked incredulously.
"No, I'm just a guy who saw something happening that didn't seem right and couldn't help but jump into a mess he didn't understand." I stood up but remained bent over and offered her my hand. "C'mon, we should see to getting you home. Can't stay here all night. What would your parents think?"
She bristled at my comment, defiance growing on her face. The fear I was smelling faded, replaced with hatred and resentment. She practically spat her words as she spoke, "She'd say I got what I deserved."
Still, she took my offered hand to pull herself to her feet. I felt a painful shock when our fingers connected and saw a quick spark between our palms. I could have ignored that as static electricity, except I also heard an echo throughout the alley, like a sonic pulse reverberating from our hands. The pressure that had been growing while we talked evaporated, suddenly relinquished. I was exhausted, and everything ached. I wondered if it was just my adrenaline fading, and I was feeling the effects of the fight now because my bones physically ached.
She shivered slightly but offered no other indication that she had noticed a change. She didn't mention the shock, spark, or echo; she simply took my assistance in getting to her feet. I was astonished to feel that her hands were rough and dry. I would've expected them from a day laborer or perhaps the men in the suits behind me, not from this dainty girl.
The voice from the monster in my head spoke one final time, but it was subdued and sounded far away and weak, "OUR WILL IS DONE. I SHALL REST." I observed it slink even further away, deeper into the recesses of my mind. I felt alone, abandoned in the dark of the night by the one thing that seemed to understand what was occurring.
As I stood, I realized the girl had never let go of my hand. She was still holding onto it for dear life. It didn't bother me. It just made me curious, so I let it be for now. When we walked to the alley's entrance, the suited man stopped me and spoke.
"You should not have done that. You know we can't use our Gifts in mundane lands. You know I'm going to have to report this tonight." He laughed softly before continuing, "Like they don't already know. Seriously man, what did you do? People in Toronto -- hell, maybe Cleveland -- will have felt that."
I was deliriously tired and wanted to get home and deal with everything tomorrow. I shrugged at the guy and said, "I don't know what you're on about. Are you stopping me here?"
He shook his head and said, "Playing coy and innocent in front of her now, yeah? Worth a shot, I guess. Nah, I don't think I could stop you." With that, he and his partner stepped out into the night, and I lost sight of them in the crowd within moments.
I was oblivious to how strange it was for two suited, massive men to disappear in a crowd of twenty-somethings, so I turned to the girl and asked, "So, where do you live? We should get you home."
The fear that had been receding since I spoke to her spiked, and she mumbled as she quietly said, "I had been staying with him."
I grunted, "Hmm. That could be an issue. Alright, how about your parents? They must be around here somewhere."
She aggressively reacted to that suggestion, "I was staying with him to get away from my mother. My father died when I was young, or so my mother says. Staying with her was like living in a brothel, and they started to think I was on the menu. I'll sleep here before returning there." She shivered in disgust as she spoke.
That didn't seem like a good option. "So, no friends or anything you could crash with for a night?"
She sighed and said, "No, that's why I was staying with him. My friends all got tired of me couch-surfing between their places long ago."
"Alright. I guess you can stay with me for the night. We'll figure this out in the morning."
For the first time since I realized that I could recognize emotions, I smelled hope coming off her. A hint of gratitude and a heavy amount of lingering fear, but for the first time, there was a refreshing hint of optimism.
"Are you sure? I don't want to impose. I'm sure I can figure something out."
I looked at my phone to see the time. "Figure something out alone after midnight when you've already rejected all the intuitive solutions? Nah, come on. It's easier this way. Besides, you're not imposing, I offered."
We walked in silence back to my apartment, leaving the jubilation of the night behind us. She never let go of my hand, and as we got further from the crowded commercial streets and into my neighborhood, the fear she was producing faded into the background. It didn't disappear entirely, but it was no longer oppressive and overwhelming.
It was nearly one in the morning when I unlocked my front door and let her inside. My place wasn't anything special; a cheap (not inexpensive, my mother would remind me) two-bedroom apartment just off a college campus for students. My roommate had bailed out a few weeks before classes started, deciding to chase a girl on a backpacking trip through Europe, so I was on the hook for all of it myself. I didn't mind -- paying more was unfortunate, but having a place solely my own had advantages. Turning the second bedroom into an office and studying space certainly made concentrating on schoolwork easier.
As we came in, I turned on my living room light and got my first good look at the girl I had dragged to my home. She was petite and lean, wiry instead of athletic. She had a cute little button nose, curled up at the end, nestled between two sparkling green eyes staring at me and waiting for instruction. Her hair was a light brown, and for some reason, I thought that in the sunlight, it would look almost auburn with red sparkles where the light hit it. What struck me most was how young she looked. Too young to be caught up in the mess outside. Too young to be taken home by a random stranger she had just met in an alley because she had nowhere else to go. She must've been aware of how youthful she would naturally appear -- her skintight jeans and strappy minuscule pink halter top fought hard to make her look older.