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  “His family,” she said, then changed the subject. “I thought you wanted me to make you do things.”

  “I want to understand all of this,” Adam said seriously, dragging his eyes away from the paper to look at her. How could this tiny woman hold such a power? He was having trouble comprehending what she could do. She could use her mind to make people do—and think—what she wanted them to. Didn’t she have any idea of the possibilities of that kind of power?

  “What have you done with this ability of yours?” he asked softly. “How have you used this power in your life? When did you first realize that you could do this? How have you refined it? Worked on it? Who knows about it?”

  “Which of those questions do you want me to answer first?” Darci asked as she sat back down on the floor and sipped her drink. “I want to make something clear from the start. I’ve never used what you call my power to do anything bad to anyone. And, the truth is, until today, I didn’t know that I could . . . that I could make people stop in their tracks.” She looked away for a moment, and when she looked back at him, her face was pleading with him to understand.”You see, I’ve always believed that anyone could use True Persuasion, but people choose to believe that they can’t. They’d rather whine that they can’t do so-and-so because somebody didn’t give them something, or love them enough, or whatever other excuse they have for not doing something.”

  “You can’t possibly believe that normal people—” He cut himself off when Darci started to get up. “Sorry,” he said quickly then she sat back down. “Look, it’s nice to believe that anyone anywhere can do what you can, but they can’t. And I’m glad they can’t. If everyone could do what you do—” He ran his hand over his face to clear his mind of that thought.

  Looking at her again, he took a breath. For himself, he needed to understand all of this. “Okay, so maybe you haven’t explored this ability of yours fully. You’re young, so you haven’t had time. And you haven’t shared this with anyone because you didn’t grow up with a warm, loving family who could sit down with you and explain things and—”

  “And you did?” she shot back at him. “I haven’t heard you say anything warm and loving about your childhood. What happened to your parents that was so horrible that you can’t speak of it? And don’t tell me again that you ‘don’t know.’ And how old are you, anyway?”

  “This isn’t about me,” he said, louder and more angrily than he meant to. “This is about you and how you can freeze people in place. Oh, no, you don’t!” he said when he saw Darci looking hard at him. “You’re not going to—” But in the next moment he leaned across the table and kissed her on the cheek.

  Part of him was annoyed, but the greater part of him saw the amusement in what she’d just done. Leaning back against the couch, he looked at her. “I want you to tell me everything. I want to know what you can do, what you have done, and I want to find out what you don’t know that you can do.”

  “Why?” she asked. “Give me a good reason why I should share my lifelong secret with you when I’ve shared it with no one else.”

  It took Adam a moment to form his answer. “When I started this search, it was personal. All I wanted to know was what happened to my parents.” When Darci started to speak, he put his hand up.”Yes,” he said,”that’s what I want to know. But I also want to know what was done to me. No! I can’t go into that now. Now’s not the time. Anyway, since I started searching, I’ve learned a lot about some ugly things that go on in this world, and I’d like to put a stop to as much of the ugliness as I can.”

  “What you’re saying is that you want to use me to obtain what you want.”

  Adam took a deep breath. Should he lie? Or should he tell the truth and risk angering her so much that she walked away? “Maybe,” he said, deciding on the truth. “The idea that’s coming to me is that you could stay somewhere safe and use your mind while I....”He lifted his palms up as if to say he wasn’t sure what he meant.

  “You mean that we’d make a team,” Darci said, smiling. “Almost a marriage of sorts.”

  Adam smiled. “I guess so.”

  “That makes sense,” Darci said lightly. “So, where do you want to start?”

  “With your history,” he said quickly. “Tell me what you’ve done and what you know,” he said as he pulled his briefcase from beside the couch and withdrew a notebook and a pen.

  This time, when she started talking, Adam listened. Previously, she’d accused him of not listening to her, and he knew that she’d been correct. As she began to talk, he racked his brain to remember every time she’d mentioned her True Persuasion, trying to recall what she’d said—and what had happened. On her first night in Camwell, she said that she’d found him by applying her True Persuasion. What can she find? he wrote in his notebook. Darci had said that she had been surprised when he offered her the job because she hadn’t yet applied her True Persuasion to it. In Hartford, she’d used it on the hairdresser to give her a great haircut. She’d used it on the people sitting in “their” booth. She’d used it to get people to feed her when she was a child.

  And she’d used it to paralyze two grown men.

  “You sneezed and broke the spell,” Adam said, interrupting her. “How long can you hold a spell?”

  “I am not a witch,” Darci said. “I don’t cast spells on people. I just—”

  “Make people do what you want them to. For how long can you hold them under your”—he searched for a word—”enchantment?”

  “Some people are easy and some difficult. I think it depends on how stubborn they are. But if I think really hard over many days, I can almost always bring even the most stubborn person around. But sometimes I can’t persuade the person, so then I have to maneuver others around that person.”

  “What does that mean?” Adam did all he could to keep his feelings from showing on his face. She seemed to have no idea how truly unbelievable what she was saying was. But he knew that to express shock would make her stop talking. He held his pen ready to write down her answer.

  “What are you going to do with what you’re writing?”

  “Publish a biography on you and make millions,” he said quickly. “You’ll either be reviled or worshiped. You’ll certainly be a celebrity.”

  “Very funny,” she said, but she didn’t laugh. Instead, she was looking at him hard.

  “Are you trying to make me fetch something for you or trying to read my mind?”

  “Read your mind,” she said, “which, by the way, I can’t do. Was that a joke about writing a bio? I can never tell about your jokes.”

  “Yes, it was a joke. You know, some people think I have an excellent sense of humor. They— Never mind about that. I want you to tell me about what you can do. I know. How about giving me an example? Take one thing you’ve done and tell me about it from beginning to end. Tell me an instance of where you worked on someone stubborn.”

  “All right,” Darci said slowly. “There was a man in Putnam named Daryl Farnum who owned a very mean dog. Actually, Mr. Farnum owned lots of dogs and some of them were probably very nice. I guess. But then, it’s not like anyone ever saw the nice dogs Mr. Farnum owned, because he kept them in back of his house where no one ever went. Except for Mr. Farnum, that is. Anyway, he kept the mean dog chained up in his front yard, and the animal snapped at everybody who walked past his house. And since he lived next door to the elementary school, there were a lot of scared kids. Also, the animal barked all day long, so the teachers on that side of the building could hardly hear themselves talk.”

  “So what did you make Mr. Farnum do?” Adam asked.

  “Move away from Putnam.”

  Adam’s face showed his disappointment in her answer. “It wasn’t an easy job,” she said defensively. “Mr. Farnum’s house and property were a pigsty so the first thing I did was think really hard in an attempt to get Mr. Farnum to clean it up. But I couldn’t make him do it. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that all the True Persuasion