A Touch Of Lightning (COMPLETED!)

Chapter 10 Raina

Chapter 10 Raina

Raina trailed one hand along the wall as she walked down the hallway, her eyes shut. She was focusing her mind, trying to use an aspect of her power she had rarely experimented with. Recently, it felt like her empath powers had begun to grow rapidly. To become much more sensitive. Now, she was reading the psychic imprint in the walls.

She had learned only about six months ago that intense emotions could actually get embedded into walls, into objects in general, if they were strong enough. Her power had seemed to grow, to become sensitive enough for her to detect these extremely faint, old traces of emotions, about three weeks after her sixteenth birthday. Now, six months later, she realized she could actually sense quite a bit in the old walls of the mansion.

It almost felt like the walls themselves here had specific, well defined emotions blended into them. She hadn't yet discerned what those emotions were, exactly, but she had recently begun to map them all. She was curious if the map she was building in her mind would be enough for her to navigate the mansion blindfolded, using just her awareness of where she was by seeing the psychic patterns around her, inside her mind.

The emotional waves she was reading in the wall suddenly spiked, rising so high that it instantly overwhelmed her defenses and swept her along with them. Forcing her to feel the same emotions. Raina yowled and snatched her hand away from the wall as if it had suddenly become blisteringly hot, stumbling back to fall onto her butt.

She stared at the wall with wide eyes, holding her hand against her chest, her breath heaving. That emotional imprint was not old, it was not faded. It was Carmen's attraction to Callin, and it was very real, and very intense. And it was now rushing through her, fully entangled within her own sense of self, blending with her emotions, until she didn't know where her own feelings for Callin began and where Carmen's feelings for Callin ended.

She scrabbled back against the wall behind her as the door along the wall she had been touching opened. Callin stood in the doorway, looking at her with raised eyebrows.

Raina felt her face heat up, echoes of Carmen's attraction to Callin rising up in her even higher, now that she was looking at him. And also because she was sitting in the hall outside his room, after having yelled loud enough for him to have obviously heard her.

"Uh...hi Callin." She managed, frantically trying to regain her composure. She couldn't believe the effect Callin was having on her! She was most definitely going to have a word or fifty with Carmen after this. How on earth was she this attracted to Callin when he had only been here a week?! That girl needed to get a grip on herself!

Callin looked both amused, and confused. "What are you doing?"

Raina opened her mouth, then shut it as she reconsidered what she was going to say. She actually didn't know what to say to him. She certainly wasn't going to explain what she had been doing with her powers, as that would lead to more, very difficult questions.

Callin narrowed his eyes at her, obviously sensing she had decided not to tell him the truth. "Raina..." He warned.

It immediately grated on her. She couldn't stand when boys thought they could be all serious and make her do something she didn't want to do. "What's it look like I'm doing? I was going for a walk and got tired, so I'm sitting here relaxing." She said, with as much confidence and assurance as she could muster, considering she was looking up at him, considering she was still reeling from the aftershocks of Carmens attraction to him.

It was obviously untrue, but said with such conviction and haughtiness, that Callin almost believed her, for a second. Then he sighed and leaned against the doorjamb, folding his arms and narrowing his eyes at her.