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to phrase his words carefully, using the good communications skills our dad, a therapist, had drilled into us. “I’m hearing you say…” he started. I gritted my teeth in annoyance. Logan threw up his hands. “Oh, to hell with it. I’m still confused. You freaked out because some guy started talking to you? And what does Amberlyn and the Riverwalk and skipping school have to do with it?”
    I leapt out of bed, infuriated. I was wearing the same outfit I’d left the house in, minus my socks. “I was not skipping school!” I yelled as my bare feet hit the carpet. “I was supposed to be drawing the river, but I drew…” Too late, I realized how wobbly I was. Too late, I realized I must have been given a sedative of some kind to make me sleep so deeply, at the wrong time of day. My legs buckled underneath me, pitching me into my closet on my side. I silently blessed my slovenly ways as a pile of clothes on the floor cushioned my fall. I followed this almost instantly with a scream of pain when I instinctively tried to push myself up with my injured right hand. Logan’s arms reached for me, pulling me up in the darkness, but I pushed him away. I didn’t want to strain him any more than I already had. Plus, I was mad at him.
    “Caspia,” he said, a note of pleading creeping in. “I’m worried about you. You went hysterical and passed out right on the square. You’re hurt and not making sense. You scared the hell out of me.”
    A familiar soft sigh floated into the room over his shoulder. “Me too, Caspia,” Amberlyn seconded. “No one could get any sense out of you. Mrs. Alice said you went from crying to hysterical in less than a minute, and after you got nothing but good news, too. Thank goodness she was there to dress your arm; you burned it when you crushed your coffee. And if that nice man hadn’t been there to help carry you back here, I don’t know what we would have done.”
    I sputtered in my closet. I absolutely ached to tell Logan I had drawn a stranger standing in a storm of talons and blood and planes of light by the St. Clare River earlier today, but doing so would mean letting Amberlyn know all about my freakish ability. I didn’t need her to think insanity was a permanent condition of mine; bad enough she thought it a temporary one. I kicked a pile of clothes in frustration and tried another route. “Whatnice man? The one who just came up out of nowhere and knew all about me in Mrs. Alice’s store? That nice young man? He’s the one who upset me in the first place! He did this to my arm! Logan, I’ve been trying to tell you!” I fumed. Logan went rigid. Something in his face, his stance, even in the deep shadows of my darkened room, made my insides freeze and my body still. Logan looked more than shocked; he was hiding something. Years of silent communication between siblings warned me he had a secret. Well, I had one, too. I desperately needed to get him alone. I began to pace.
    “Oh,” Amberlyn said softly from over Logan’s shoulder. “Mrs. Alice didn’t say anything about that, Caspia.” She twisted a huge rose quartz ring on her delicate finger. “Are you sure? You were really upset, you know. Nobody blames you; we even kind of expected it, actually.” She and my brother exchanged quick, guilty looks. I suppressed a surge of annoyance. They’d been talking about me, then. “You’ve been pushing yourself so hard, and been under so much strain,” she began, her voice softening as she retreated underneath her curtain of spiral curls. “We were worried about you.”
    Logan’s stance had gone from confused to protective in the space of a breath. “Amberlyn’s right. We thought maybe you were just over-stressed or something. Mrs. Alice told us about selling all your cards, and how much it upset you.” He gave me a reassuring squeeze. “It just didn’t make sense, that a big sale would upset you so much.”
    “It wasn’t the sale,” I insisted, drawing on reserves of