Appearances: Hidden Salem, Curse of Salem

NELLIE CAVENDISH

Age thirty, petite, slender, brown eyes, and brown hair. Her father, Thomas Ryan Cavendish, left a mysterious message for her that brought her to Salem just before her thirtieth birthday (see Hidden Salem). She had no intention of remaining, but a deadly battle against an evil adversary leaves her at least temporarily in charge, the head of her family—one of the Five. Nellie is a rather extraordinary psychic, something she has hidden her entire life. Until Salem, where both her abilities and her understanding of them grow, and where she may or may not find the beginning of a new life.

Appearances: Hidden Salem, Curse of Salem

LEO

Nellie’s black Pit bull. Not exactly an ordinary dog.

PSYCHIC TERMS AND ABILITIES

(As Classified/Defined by Bishop’s Special Crimes Unit and by Haven)

Adept: The general term used to label any functional psychic; the specific ability is much more specialized.

Clairvoyance: The ability to know things, to pick up bits of information, seemingly out of thin air.

Dream-projecting: The ability to enter another’s dreams.

Dream-walking: The ability to invite/draw others into one’s own dreams. (This is a separate ability from “walking” in the gray time, a kind of corridor between the living world and spirit realm where Diana Brisco Hayes, medium, has walked most of her life.)

Empath: One who experiences the emotions of others, often up to and including physical pain and injuries.

Healing empath: One who has the ability to heal the pain/injury of another.

Absolute empath: The rarest of all abilities, this one causes the psychic to literally absorb the pain of another, to the point that the empath physically takes on the same injuries, healing the injured person and then healing herself or himself.

Healing: The ability to heal injuries to self and/or others, often but not always ancillary to mediumistic abilities. Sometimes ancillary to empathic abilities.

Latent: The term used to describe unawakened or inactive abilities, as well as to describe a psychic not yet aware of being psychic.

Mediumistic: Having the ability to communicate with the dead. Some see the dead, some hear them, and some both see and hear.

Psychic medium: A medium who sees and/or hears the dead and is able to interact with them.

Physical medium: A medium who interacts with spirits using all senses, including feeling the emotions and sensations of a spirit. Rare.

Precognition: A seer or precog’s ability to correctly predict future events. Whether they are able to affect or change those events is a much-debated and uncertain question; attempts have produced mixed results.

Psychometry: The ability to pick up impressions or information from touching objects. Sometimes linked with clairvoyance.

Regenerative: The ability to heal one’s own injuries/illnesses, even those considered by medical experts to be lethal or fatal. (A classification that is unique to one SCU operative and considered separate from a healer’s abilities; most mediums, however, have a remarkable ability to heal themselves.)

Sensitive: Usually a latent psychic whose abilities have not been triggered but who is far more aware of the moods and emotions of those around them than a person without active or latent abilities.