How to Read a Soul

Prologue: The Stranger

The barista was staring at her again. He wasn’t doing such a good job at hiding it either.

Genevieve sighed and stirred her coffee lazily, from her seat on the counter. This was what she hated about small towns. Strangers and new faces could never go unnoticed in small towns, and in her line of business, going unnoticed was a matter of life and death – which made her going here an extremely stupid decision, in her opinion.

She took a sip of her coffee, and frowned. She had stirred it for far too long, and it was now warm. She looked around. Other than the barista, there was no one else around. Satisfied that she had no audience, she whispered something under her breath and waved her hand over the coffee. She took another sip and smiled triumphantly. Nothing like a hot cup of coffee to wake you up on a lazy Saturday morning, she thought.

“How did you do that?”

The voice took her by surprise. It didn’t sound like the barista, and she was sure there had been no one else around. She felt a tug on her shirt and looked down, only to find herself staring at a small white-blonde girl with green eyes. She looked about ten, eleven years old, and from the height of Genevieve’s chair, she felt stupid for not seeing her. It was only a small consolation that the first person to have seen her reveal herself in a long, long time was a small child. She smirked inwardly. Well, children are “prone to succumbing to their wild imaginations”, she reasoned.

“Do what, little girl?” she asked, with the sweetest smile she could come up with.

“Your coffee. There’s steam coming from it,”

“Well, that’s generally what comes out when your coffee is hot. You see, when your coffee is really, really hot, the heat turns it into steam –”

The little girl raised a brow at her. To be honest, Genevieve found it quite adorable. “I’m aware how evaporation works, lady,” the girl frowned. “I meant, why is your coffee hot now? I’m pretty sure it wasn’t steaming two minutes ago,”

“Are you absolutely sure?”

“Positive.”

“Completely, positively, absolutely sure?”

“I’m young, not stupid,” the girl said, and Genevieve smile, genuinely. She hadn’t met a child this stubborn since –

“Ow,” the girl suddenly cringed, clutching the back of her head. Genevieve saw the barista look at them before he took out his phone and made a call.

Oh great, he probably thinks it’s my fault.

“Something wrong?”

“No,” the girl answered quickly. She bit her lip and closed her eyes.

Something’s seriously wrong here, Genevieve thought. But at least she forgot about the coffee.

“I didn’t forget about the coffee,”

Genevieve froze. She stared at the little girl. “What?” she said as she stepped off the chair.

“I said –” The girl stopped abruptly and removed her hand from her head. She looked up at Genevieve, and this time, her every word sounded calculated. “You said, ‘At least she forgot about the coffee,’. I think you didn’t know that you said it out loud. Sometimes, people don’t realize it when they do that,”

“Well, I am complete, positively, absolutely sure that I didn’t,” Genevieve narrowed her eyes at the girl. What the hell is this girl? “Who are you?” The little girl’s left eye started twitching. She clasped her head, this time with both hands. Suddenly, she gripped Genevieve’s arm, just as her knees gave way beneath her.