Chapter 10: Heartache Revisited

"Hello again, Ral," Michael said.

I stood there staring back at him, waiting for something to happen. He just stood there grinning.

"What do you want?" I asked. My voice was steady. Yay!

He shook his head. "Merely to help you."

"Help me how? You've already got me standing on edge and have scared my girls."

His smile softened. "I do apologize. I've not been very forthcoming with you, but as to how I can help, there are a great many things we should discuss. I'm sure I can answer questions for you and even teach you a few things. Most of which I'm sure you'll appreciate later."

The wind gusted, blowing the lower part of his coat to the side. He wore slacks and expensive-looking shoes. He dressed like he had money. Still, nothing about him indicated whether I could trust him or not.

"How do you know that I need any help?"

"Please, Ral. You're young, impetuous, naïve and have others who look to you for protection and more. What I told you on the flight is true. You are condemned, and I may be your only salvation."

Okay, this guy had me pegged pretty well. "Then I don't understand why no one but you would help me."

He smiled and seemed to ignore the implied question. "May I come in for a moment? It is quite cold out here."

I looked back at the girls. They were standing at my back like they would duck behind me if something happened. I wasn't sure just what could happen if he came in but if he was going to try something wouldn't he have done so as soon as I opened the door?

I stepped back and the girls did too. The den was right there and I held out my hand, directing where to go. Michael nodded to me and the girls and then went through the other door.

I turned quickly to the girls. "Look, if he's really going to help, that's great; but I want to know that he's on the up and up. Chloe, go upstairs and get my laptop. Yvonne, stay with me."

Chloe nodded and ran up the stairs. Yvonne followed me closely.

The den was used mostly as Mom's office. At one end was a desk built into the wall for her computer and shelves on either side. At the other end, next to the window facing the front yard, there was a table with four chairs. I had hated it but even though I had a desk in my room, Mom and Dad always made me do my homework here. It might have been so they could keep an eye on me, but I had always thought it was so they could glare at me longer.

Michael had taken off his scarf and long coat. He wore an aubergine shirt, a purple so dark it almost looked black, a black leather belt and those slacks. With his coat hung over his arm, he looked fairly comfortable.

When Yvonne and I walked in, removing our own coats, he turned and smiled.

"You'll forgive my paranoia, but I want to wait for Chloe to return," I said before he could say anything. He merely nodded and waited with us.

Chloe was back down within a minute. I took the laptop and sat down. Each of the girls sat on either side of me and I held out my hand inviting Michael to sit.

He watched me open the laptop and boot it up. "You know Ral, I'm already password protected."

I looked up. It must have been obvious what I was going to do. "Then you have nothing to fear, right?"

He nodded. "And paranoia will help you; but you need friends, too, Ral. Friends that can do more than provide the energy for your power or fetch a computer for you."

I scowled. I didn't know if he meant that as an insult or if it was just me. If he could really answer my questions then I could tolerate some comments, either until I knew him better or decided to just throw him out. Once Master PC was up, I put in his first name regardless of him having a password or not. The search gallery didn't have his face and there weren't that many Michaels to begin with. I looked up and knew why he hadn't shown up in the program. Michael wasn't his birth name.

He must have known what I was going to ask and he confessed, "My friends call me Michael because of my mark." He grinned as his golden halo appeared again.

"My real name is Frank Springbright. Michael is my name among the Mind Magi. You can look me up if you'd like."

I did just that. Sure enough, his picture was in the search gallery, and just as he had told me, he was password protected. Eventually, I would have to learn how to bypass the password protection like Vikkor had been able to do.

"Let me see the laptop for a moment..." He held out his hand as if expecting to be obeyed.

I saw no reason not to allow it, so I pushed it to him.

He typed something in and turned the computer back to me. He had entered his password. His image spun on the screen, showing him in the same sitting position he was across the table from me. However, I was more interested in his command box.

There were a few things, like my girls and me, that rid him of common ailments, but there was also an amount of scribbled code like mine. He didn't have near the volume of mine, which either meant he had limited abilities or I just had a lot more I didn't know about.

I closed his profile and shut down the computer. He had proven he trusted me already by allowing me access to him in the program. It was a good start. "How did you know where to find me?" I had hoped that I had lost him after leaving the airport.

He grinned again. "It wasn't all that difficult. I came here a couple of months ago looking because another Mind Magi was sent here last year looking for you, but either he wasn't skilled enough or something else hid you from him. I wanted to double check his attempt to locate you."

As small as my hometown was, I might have known the man. "What was his name?"

Michael raised an eyebrow, looking at me like he was considering what I might know. "John Gilman. His daughter, Sally, attended the same high school as you last year."

I couldn't hide my shock.

Michael's other eyebrow matched the first. "Did you know Sally?"

I nodded. "I knew her. We dated." I never thought I would hear her name again and never, in my wildest dreams, thought she might somehow be involved in anything regarding Master PC. Of course, Michael was more than just modified by the program. He had abilities he was born with. He was a Mind Magi and if Sally's father was too...

Yvonne leaned closer to me, still keeping a suspicious eye on Michael. "Isn't she the one you broke up with just before starting school?" I had shared my memories of Sally with the rest of my women not long after school had started. We had all been trying to get to know each other better and everyone had been curious about my first girlfriend.

I nodded at her question.

Michael's look shifted back to his knowing smile. "So John found you, but didn't know it."

"My abilities didn't manifest until after I went to college. I didn't even see my own mark until then. He probably just saw me as any other high school kid."

"You said you and Sally dated," Michael said nodding to Yvonne. "How serious was your relationship?"

I shrugged at Michael's question. "Apparently not serious enough."

"What I meant was how did you feel for her, really feel for her?"

I hesitated. Michael was asking something very personal. Not even my women asked questions like that. I didn't have to think hard about how I had felt for Sally. I would have been perfectly happy to have spent the rest of my life with her.

"Hmm, I see," he said as if reading my thoughts on my face, which he probably did. "Do you know whether she felt the same for you?"

I looked him square in the eyes. He either assumed my silence showed the level or he read me again.

"I do apologize, but your response may tell me more than you know. Please, do you know how she felt for you?"

I broke eye contact and shrugged again. "I thought I did, but I was wrong. I wanted to take our relationship to the next level, a more intimate level, but she wanted to wait for marriage." Finally, I looked back at him.

Michael looked away for a moment, gazing out of the window. It appeared he was thinking about what I had said. Then he looked back at me and asked, "How insistent was she about getting married?"

His questions about Sally were beginning to really upset me. "What do you mean? What does this have to do with me being condemned? Why would you bring her up now?"

"Again, I apologize. Heartbreak is something even we Mind Magi suffer. Still your answers are important. Did she offer to go to that next level if you agreed to marry her?"

I shook my head. "No. She just went on about wanting to be married."

"I see," he said solemnly. "Then maybe it wasn't what I thought."

"What was that?"

"Well, when Mind Magi have children, usually the child is either mundane or a Mind Magi. However, they could also be what one would call a Soul Mate." He looked at Yvonne and Chloe in quick glances. "Tell me, do you feel as if you're complete with your women?"

The girls knew the answer to that question as well as I. However the painful memories of my breakup with Sally, a pain that had dissipated over the last few months only to be brought, boiling, to the surface again in this conversation, compounded the incompleteness we all suffered. Even though we were so many, we all felt as if someone were missing from our group.