Prologue

Cate and her parents, Linda and Frank Jennings, worried about their son. While the events of the past week, where they'd gone to New Orleans for their two youngest kids' spring break, were extraordinarily strange, it was the trip home that put Cate's brother Alex into a terminal funk.

And the past week was indeed odd. The family lived in a quiet and secluded little community in Shawneetown, Illinois, set in a major national forest which restricted the development of the town. As a result, their children hadn't had much exposure to the wider world. They were no slouches, and were certainly well read, but they were bookish and shy, and hadn't traveled much other than in their reading, so taking them on this trip seemed like a good idea.

The trip was an early graduation present for their only son, Alex. Frank and Linda promised him that if he kept his grades up, they'd reward him with a trip to New Orleans. And rather than leave his younger sister Cate behind, they brought her along since she was already an excellent student, but also because she was especially devoted to her older brother. Neither of them seemed as close to their two older sisters, who were already in college. The trip turned out to be quite different than any of them had anticipated. On their first day there, that evening actually since they'd arrived on a late Friday evening, Cate and Alex discovered something they'd never had a chance to before, largely because they'd always lived in such a small, insular community all their lives.

They encountered a woman, Shaniqua (Shani) Sharp, a Jamaican-American, who ran up to them, fell to her knees before Alex and proclaimed him an angel. The two kids, seventeen and sixteen years old respectively, tried to disabuse her of this notion, but they quickly learned this woman was no quack. Instead it seemed that Alex had some unknown ability to trigger an underlying ability in certain women—and it was almost exclusively women—which allowed them to 'see' a person's life force.

It seemed they could view 'auras' around people. The person themselves shone with a light which reflected their overall health. Any underlying health problem would present itself as a dimming of this light. Overlaying this central color, and their normal vision as well, were a series of odd colors completely different than those normally seen, which reflected the person's basic personality traits. Surrounding these danced a variety of colors which seemed to represent their emotions—which affected the underlying personality on a changing basis.

However, the most notable thing was that Alex's aura—the person responsible for effecting this change—was incredibly strong, so much so that Shani was unable to look at him directly for more than a few short moments. Cate theorized that Shani was observing a previously undetected 'life force' that gave energy to all living things, and was attracted to Alex because he much more of this energy than anyone else, enough that he could trigger these changes in people.

Shani, a human resources specialist for a major corporation, decided on the spot that she would stick to Alex's side in an effort to learn as much about him, and her new abilities, as she could. Of course, this presented a dilemma for Alex, as he now had to explain all of this to his parents to account for her following him around.

In order to help explain it the next morning over breakfast, he pulled in someone that seemed to be similarly attracted to him, but who seemed to be missing whatever affected the change in Shani. Natalie Mendoza, a hotel employee, explained that she felt compelled by Alex and had known instantly that he was not only incredibly powerful, but that he was inherently a good, honest and reliable individual. That first awkward introduction led to a series of 'experiments' by Cate which fleshed out much of these basic abilities.

The rest of the week, they met more and more people, almost a person a day. There seemed to be two different 'classes' of individuals, 'Watchers'—as Alex decided to call them because that is what they seemed to do, constantly watching him from the periphery—and those like Shani who actually demanded his immediate attention when he 'activated' their abilities.

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