I was overwhelmed with the want of him, and the tingling intensified.
And then Stacy Easter walked into the fantasy, crooked her finger, and he dropped me in a heartbeat.
And that thought pretty much killed the tingling.
"Damn." I opened my eyes, and looked around. Both of the other times I'd done it, I'd been seriously freaked out. Was it sparked by fear? Maybe. I looked at Betty. "Do you think you can scare me?"
Betty smiled. "Oh, honey, I'm not very - BOO!" and she lunged at me. It startled me a bit, but it wasn't enough. I closed my eyes and tried to clear my mind, opening it to receive something that would adequately freak me out, if I just kept my mind clear -
It's your magic, baby. Isn't it beautiful?
I saw Davina's face, smiling brightly as she watched the bat phone fly around her. Then she looked at me, and spoke, but it wasn't her voice, it was the guy from the alley, Cain.
Is your father Gabriel Ford?
No, I said, and the bat phone lunged at me. I ducked and fell to the floor.
This is your destiny, baby, Davina said, in her own voice now, as she moved toward me. It wasn't right, them not letting you be what you are.
My arms felt rubbery, tingly, hot, the energy buzzing through my body, and I cried out, afraid and desperate to get away.
I hadn't felt myself fall, but when the water hit my face, I sputtered to consciousness flat on my back on the floor of Betty's kitchen. I swiped at my eyes, yelled, "I'm okay!" and the water stopped. I looked up to see Betty standing over me, the cold water pitcher she kept in her refrigerator at the ready. I put my hand on my forehead, dizzy. My heart was still beating so fast and so hard, I could feel it. It almost felt outside of my chest. It almost felt -
It almost felt like it was crawling down my stomach.
I lifted my head and looked down. A red ceramic bunny nose twitched at me, pushing out from the back of the mug. The handle at the other end had contracted in on itself to form the tail. Above the face of the bunny, two flopped-over ears stretched out from the rim of the mug. The body of the mug was rounded, and it puffed in and out, like the thing was breathing. The foot of the ceramic mug had sprouted bunny feet. The top of the mug was still open, sort of as if the top hump of the bunny's back had been sliced off, but it contracted and moved as though a full back were there, invisible muscles working to propel the mug bunny as it hopped down my leg, where it dropped down, landing with an awkward clunk on Betty's white tiled floor. I shifted up and away from it until I was sitting with my back resting against the refrigerator, watching the mug bunny as it stuck its little nose under the cabinet and sniffed around. I looked down at my fingers, and could see the fading wisps of yellow light dancing around them, like strands of smoky yarn. I shook them out, and the strands danced away, then dissipated.
"I think I'm gonna need the day off work," I said, unable to take my eyes off the mug bunny.
Betty knelt down beside me and we were both silent for a long time, just watching the bunny. "Well, I'll be damned."
"Yeah," I said, trying to figure out a way to explain it. "So ... I'm thinking ... alien mutant virus?"
"Nope," Betty said.
I looked up at her. "Well, it can't be a brain tumor. Unless it's contagious and we're sharing delusions. But that..." I shook my head. "No, that doesn't make sense, either."
"It's not a brain tumor."
And then I looked up at her, noticing for the first time that she seemed neither amazed nor surprised that I had just turned her ordinary coffee mug into a living, breathing critter.
"Betty?" I said, suspicion in my voice. "You know something about this?"
Betty put her hand on my shoulder. "Livvy, I think it's time we had a talk."
* * *
I sat in Booth 9, staring at my hands folded in front of me on the table. Betty sat across from me, apparently waiting for me to start, but I didn't know where to start, so I just sat there, my mind so beyond reeling it was blank.