unfriendly publicity, and he backed off. I didn’t hear about it until two years ago, and I didn’t hear it from Lauren.”
Jamie watched Nat as she spoke, trying to fit the poor little rich girl she described with the woman of his visions, the one who built snowmen and laughed in the early mornings.
His family was big, rowdy, and contentious. That any one of them might try to seriously squash his dreams was unthinkable.
Nat spoke again. “Don’t feel sorry for me. I have a life I love. That wasn’t always true, but what came before led me to here.”
“’Here’ just took a bit of a crazy turn. That sits okay for you?”
“Lauren’s life is never boring.” Nat sipped her tea and thought a moment, then gave him a more serious answer. “Sometimes you know you will spend your whole life with someone. A partner, a child, a friend. A lifetime will bring some surprises—it has to. If Lauren’s a witch, then I’m friend to a witch.”
She would stick. Jamie wondered how a woman who grew up with jerks for parents learned to love like that. Time to find out if she had room for one more.
“Can you handle two witch friends?” He started to add that it would be easier on Lauren, and then just shut up. It was time to talk about Nat and Jamie. Just Nat and Jamie.
Nat smiled slowly. “If you’re going to be my friend, you need to tell me what you saw. It doesn’t seem fair for you to know more about my future than I do.”
Well, that headed straight for the gooey, sticky stuff. Jamie still wasn’t sure exactly how much he wanted to tell her. “You need to know that precog is really unreliable. Sometimes it shows the future, sometimes only possibilities. It’s wide open to interpretation, too—the visions aren’t always literal.”
Nat’s face furrowed. “You don’t like having this precog talent, do you?”
“Sucks. Seeing the future sounds cool until you get this two-second flash and have no idea what it means, or if it will really happen.”
“So, you only saw a couple seconds of my future?”
“No. This wasn’t your garden-variety precog episode.” Jamie stopped. She had a right to know, and maybe it would be easier to show her. God knew he was going to die of embarrassment trying to tell her.
“I can share what I saw with you. Precog leaves a strong imprint, so I pretty much have a tape of it stored that I can play for you. I’ll need you to be open to me, though. My mind talents are fairly weak, so I can only project that much detail if you help me out.”
Nat sipped her tea. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but isn’t that what conked Lauren over the head?”
Definitely not a pushover. “Sort of. There are two big differences, though. Precog hits hard, and this one was more intense than most. Being connected on a replay won’t carry the punch of the original. Second, you’re not a mind witch. For Lauren to have overloaded the way she did tells me she’s very sensitive. One day she’ll be really strong. Right now, it just made her very vulnerable.”
“So if it had been me sitting where she was, I wouldn’t have been as affected?”
“Exactly. And it won’t be a surprise for me this time, so I should be able to keep my reactions under wraps.” He hoped.
Jamie wasn’t thrilled about sharing precog visions with the woman who starred in them. It was going to require some serious finesse to share the visions, but keep his emotional reactions to himself. His mind powers ran to the clunky side of things.
“You do yoga, right? So can you meditate, clear your mind?” Of course she could. No mind was that serene by accident.
Nat went to collect a couple of comfortable bolsters and handed him one. She sat gracefully and tangled her legs into full lotus. Jamie wasn’t dumb enough to try to copy her. “This is easier with a physical connection, if that works for you.”
“It’s fine. You didn’t do that with Lauren.”
“No. It’s a bit of a crutch, so we try to avoid it in early training. Once she can work using only a mental connection, she can layer in the physical contact to increase sensitivity. Since this isn’t training, I can take the easy way.” Jamie scooted knee-to-knee with Nat and reached for her hands.
“Close your eyes and do whatever you normally do to clear your mind. I’ll pick