“Well, not as far as she goes.” Jonathan took a bite but kept talking. “I went with Julio once to watch, and I think I figured out how it worked. The woman would say weird, random things, one after another, until something rang a bell with Julio and his eyes would light up. She’d keep pushing in that direction, and he’d start talking and telling her everything. His dreams, what he was worried about, whatever. He thought that she was reading his mind, but she was only getting him to tell her what was going on inside his head.”

“Sounds like a good trick.”

“I’m not sure it was just a trick,” Jonathan said. “I mean, she really seemed to help Julio. When he was about to do something stupid, he wouldn’t listen to anyone else, but she could always talk sense into him. Like when he’d decided to run away from home one time, she was the one who talked him out of it.”

Jessica put down her fork. “So she wasn’t just ripping him off.”

“Well, the funny thing is, I’m not sure that she knew what she was doing. Maybe it was all instinct and she really thought she was psychic, you know? But she wasn’t really psychic, just psychosomatic.”

Jessica smiled, taking a thoughtful bite of her salad. The woman Jonathan had described sounded a lot like Dess. Her weird, probing questions and random statements, all delivered with total authority, had almost started Jessica believing that Dess had some kind of special power. Or at least they had fooled her enough to creep her out. Maybe it was all in her head. If Jessica believed that Dess had some special power, then in a way she did.

In any case, Dess certainly put the psycho back in psychosomatic.

“So it’s possible,” Jonathan continued, “that this girl you know isn’t completely nuts. She might have a different way of communicating, but maybe she does have something important to say.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Jessica said. “But whatever it is, I kind of wish she’d just come out and say it.”

“Maybe you’re not ready to hear it.”

Jessica looked at Jonathan with surprise. He blinked his sleepy brown eyes at her innocently.

“Well, maybe you’re right,” she said, shrugging. “But until then, I’m not going to worry about it.”

“That makes sense.”

Jessica smiled at those three words as Jonathan attacked his final sandwich. It was about time something made sense.

7

12:00 A.M.

DARK MOON

That night the blue dream came again.

Jessica had been lying awake and staring at the ceiling, relieved that it was finally the weekend. Tomorrow she was determined to finish unpacking. Searching through the fourteen boxes piled around her room was getting old. Maybe organizing her stuff would make her life feel a little bit more under control.