"Shit. She won't want to leave."
"I'll go with you."
"No, you won't. You'll leave, then I'll have one less to worry about. Go on." Jackie gave her a little push. "Go."
But once she was turned around, Kai saw what Jackie had come to warn about. Though the colors around the crowd had canned, a small group of men - maybe twenty - kept to themselves off to one side. Kai didn't like the look of their thoughts or the murky swirl they swam in.
"Jackie," she started, turning around - but her friend was gone, swallowed up in people.
It was Kai's turn for some lip chewing. Earlier she'd seen a couple of police officers over by the Midland Center, the brick building whose wall made one boundary for the plaza. Maybe she should find them, see if she could persuade them there was trouble brewing. Or maybe... no,, dammit. Don't even think about it.
Telling herself not to think about something was hopeless, of course. Don't think about an elephant inevitably conjures the image of an elephant. Once it occurred to Kai that she might be able to stop the ugliness before it erupted by calming those thoughts, she couldn't banish the idea by telling herself to drop it.
Okay, then. Consider it logically, pros and cons, she told herself as she began weaving through the packed bodies, heading for the Midland Center.
The pro was that she might be able to prevent violence. The con was - well, there were several. First, ugly thoughts didn't necessarily lead to violence. Second, she had no idea what she might do to any minds she tampered with. That was a good reason, an excellent reason, not to interfere. Third, she didn't even know if she could do it.
"Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live!" someone yelled from the back of the crowd.
Kai turned - and those thoughts were roiling now, seething with colors that made her think of storms and blood. There were more shouts, the volume and venom in them mounting every second.
Someone cried out in startlement or fear, someone else in anger. Kai couldn't see what was happening, but the people near her started moving - most trying to get away from the commotion at the rear, some shoving their way toward the trouble. She heard Charley's amplified voice telling everyone to stay calm, stay calm, but no one was listening.
She heard screams.
And the patterns - ! The air was thick with the bleached yellow of fear, rippling with electric green and swirls of dark ocher, darker gray, mud brown. The wrongness of the patterns sucked at her. Kai breathed in raggedly - and let herself go, falling into fugue. She had to try -
Someone bumped her, hard. She fell against another someone, which kept her from hitting the ground, and found herself engulfed in a moving knot of people. An elbow jabbed her ribs. She heard screams, cries, yelling., Panic sent her heartbeat rocketing. She fought to keep her feet.
Suddenly she found herself in a pocket of space left inexplicably open in the shoving crowd. She started to reach again for fugue - then saw the body lying on the ground.
It was Jackie.
Kai threw herself to her knees beside her friend. Terror keened her senses, drowning the immaterial in a flood of physical. She shivered as she reached for the pulse point on Jackie's throat... strong. Jackie's heart beat strongly.
Kai shuddered in relief. She ran her hands over Jackie's head, looking... there, yes, there. On her temple, a knot. The skin wasn't broken, but something had hit her, knocked her out.
Another shiver hit. The air was freezing all of a sudden. Jackie had on a warm jacket, but was it enough? Maybe -
A woman built like a small rhino lumbered into the open space around Jackie. Kai pushed to her feet, thrusting out a hand and calling out for her to stop. Her voice was lost in the din.
The woman's face crumpled in fear. She pushed right back into the crowd.
Kai blinked. She'd never scared anyone off by waving at her before. What in the...oh. The cold. The cleared space. Even nulls sensed ghosts sometimes. Kai imagined spirits ringing her and Jackie, pushing back at everyone. She'd have to tell Jackie her ghostly friends weren't useless after all. Once Jackie was... oh, God. She had to be all right. She had to.
A sudden surge of people broke past the ghosts' ability to frighten - a mob with neither intention nor control over where it went, pressed willy-nilly by others behind them. The blood drained from Kai's face. She shoved a man aside. Another, a woman, was pushed almost on top of them, but saw Jackie at the last second and managed to stagger over her body without stepping on her.
Too many. There were too many, pressed by too many others. She couldn't -
Then a man in a khaki uniform slipped through the rush of people streaming the other way. Nathan. He bent and scooped Jackie up in his arms. "Get behind me!" he shouted. "Hold my belt."
Kai all but plastered herself against him. She gripped his belt as if her life depended on it, and rode in his wake as he cut sideways through the mob.
They broke out of the crowd near the fountain. Nathan didn't stop, but stepped up into the first stone tier, drained and dry now for winter. Carefully he laid Jackie down, running his hands over her much as Kai had done, then lifting each eyelid. "Concussed," he said, voice raised enough that she could hear. "What happened?"
"I don't know! It happened so fast - these people, the ones with ugly colors, they started yelling at us. At the Gifted, I mean, but I couldn't see what they did. Something that scared people, because all of a sudden everyone was - it was - " Kai found herself horribly close to tears. "I couldn't stop it. I couldn't."