When the pain became sharper, I lifted up both my hands and pushed them out toward the cup.

Nothing.

“Shit!” I fairly shouted.

“Little girl,” Dad started, “give it a rest. You been tryin’ that crap for an hour now and getting nothing. You’re doin’ your own head in.”

Frustrated, I glared at him.

“Yo, Lilah,” Moose called, lazing on a sofa with his head to the arm, hands linked behind his head, ankles crossed, and eyes closed. “When you take over the world, get me a mansion big enough I can ride my Harley in the front door,” he requested.

“Moose, I’m not taking over the world,” I told him.

“Shame,” he murmured. “Figure you’d do a better job runnin’ it than the assholes who got it now.”

That probably wasn’t a bad guess, considering the world was on the brink of disaster.

“If you’re takin’ orders,” Jabber, sitting in an armchair with an open bag of potato chips in his lap, an open bottle of Bud at his side, put in. “I want one of those sisters, the ones in that reality show about bein’ famous for bein’ famous. I don’t care which, but the tall one is far from hard on the eyes.”

“Jabber, I’m not taking over the world,” I snapped.

“Okay, say you get famous,” he kept at it. “You might meet her at a party. You could put in a good word for me.”

“Jabber, open your senses and read my mood,” I hissed.

“Girl, known you since you was three,” he replied. “I can read your mood. But if I learned I got it in me to take over the world, I wouldn’t be staring at a red Solo cup and gettin’ pissy. I’d be layin’ plans.”

“Well, I’m not you,” I pointed out.

“Pity,” he muttered.

I turned to Dad.

He shrugged.

“Perhaps, Lilah, this ability cannot be honed,” Jian-Li suggested, sipping tea in the chair opposite Jabber. “Perhaps it only comes naturally. Abel has said it’s powerful and it was so when you didn’t even know you were using it.” She tipped her head to the side and her voice went gentle. “There’s much to be frustrated about, qīn ài de, therefore there’s no purpose to making yourself more frustrated.”

She had a point.

I moved to a vacant armchair and slumped into it.

“All that starin’ and throwin’ your arm out and shit, it’s gotta take it out of a girl. You want me to get you a beer?” Jabber offered.

I’d learned from years of him being around that Jabber was annoying.

He was also sweet.

So I grinned at him and said, “No, Jabber, I’m good.”

He nodded and reached for his own beer.

The door behind me opened.

I twisted to look around my chair and saw Abel striding in with his brothers, those being the brothers Jin.