Rei looks very unconvinced as he reads through the article, but I'm excited. Taylor is nothing if not negative energy, and maybe if she gets a few whiffs of white sage smoke, it will break her grasp on my body and I can push my way back in.

"This doesn't look like the same sage my parents sell at the store," Rei finally says. "Where would we even get this stuff?"

I wave him away from the keyboard and search for new age shops around the greater Burlington area. The closest one is over by the waterfront.

"The Hallowed Eave. Discover the magick of your true spiritual self. " Rei's shoulders wilt as he reads this. "Books, jewelry, aromatherapy, tarot ... ritual tools? Cauldrons? Voodoo?" He looks positively distressed now. "Really? You're sure about this?"

I nod emphatically. If nothing else, it will give us something to do besides sit here and worry.

"Okay," he sighs. "Let's get this over with."

Down an alley off a side road that's several streets away from the waterfront, we spy a violet colored storefront with a tangerine roof. Four dragon-faced gargoyles jut out from beneath the wide eaves, alternating with a dozen or more neon windsocks. There's a brightly painted, bohemian-looking sign that welcomes us to The Hallowed Eave. Rei looks less than enchanted.

A bell tinkles when we open the door and the cloying smell of incense nearly bowls us over. I know my senses are more sensitive when I'm out of my body, but one look at Rei tells me I'm not the only one who thinks this stuff stinks.

"I hope that's not what white sage smells like," Rei mutters.

There's an odd blend of dark and light energy sparring in here, almost as if the displays of witchcraft and voodoo merchandise want to overthrow the angel and fairy wares. Scattered around the shop are rustic baskets filled with gemstones-quartz, amethyst, and other pretty rocks I can't name, but there is a powerful buzz generating from them. I am sloughing off their energy as fast as I absorb it in an effort not to materialize in front of anyone. In the middle of all this chaos, Rei's energy is idling quietly as he gets his bearings in this strange shop.

"Merry meet, brother!" The middle-aged woman behind the counter reminds me of a cardinal with her poufy red hair, conical nose, and heavy eyeliner surrounding sharp little eyes that look Rei up and down over the rim of her psychedelic reading gla.s.ses. She hops off the stool and flits toward him. "Can I help you find ... oh!" She takes her gla.s.ses off and lets the beaded chain catch them. Her fingers twitch at her sides, and I'm only slightly horrified by how long her fingernails are. "Oh, my! You have a lovely aura," she coos at him. "Are you here for a psychic reading?"

Rei does not have a lovely aura, at least not at this moment, unless she's partial to the color of Dijon mustard. "Um, no. I'm looking for white sage," he says cautiously. "It comes in a bundle."

"Why, yes," the woman winks at him. "It certainly does. Follow me, dear." She leads Rei through a cluttered maze of bookshelves and clothing racks, past gla.s.s display cases featuring crystal b.a.l.l.s, a collection of ornately carved daggers under a sign that advertises Ritual Knives, and a creepy a.s.sortment of voodoo dolls, complete with their own lethal-looking hat pins. "Here 'tis," she chirps. "Would you like the abalone sh.e.l.l, too, dear? It's very handy for collecting the ash and it's only $9.99 more."

"No, thanks. I'm good."

"All right, then." Rei follows bird-lady to the register at the front of the store.

Three minutes later, Rei is sprinting to the car, having survived the bizarreities of The Hallowed Eave. Once he's in the car, he tucks the magical sage bundle under the seat.

"Did you see the ritual knives? What do people do with those?" he asks me as we head up the highway ramp. "And you must have loved the voodoo dolls."

Later that night in Rei's bedroom, we try to figure out the best way to fire up the sage bundle and smoke Taylor out. "My mom will kill me if I light this in the house," he says as he sniffs the sage bundle for the zillionth time. "It doesn't smell like sage," he says, also for the zillionth time. I have no idea. If someone wants to know what vanilla smells like, I'm their girl. Even blindfolded, I can identify garlic, cinnamon, even rosemary. But sage?

Rei is on the computer, Googling "what does white sage smell like" and he doesn't like what he finds. "If I burn this in the house, not only will she kill me, she will bury my dead body under the front porch for the worms to eat," he says flatly. "It smells like marijuana when you burn it."

Marijuana. Rei can be so formal.

I'd heard that Taylor and her friends used to go to Burlington and drink with the college kids, but I don't know if the party extended to drugs outside of alcohol. Did she smoke? I don't know. I wasn't privy to the conversations she had with her girlfriends.

Why don't we see if she'll smoke it?

Rei squints at the computer screen, not because he can't see what I've typed, but because he doesn't like it. "How do you know what smoking this stuff will do to you? Those are your lungs, too. And you never know what that stuff would do to your brain." Rei hides the sage in his bottom desk drawer, under a pile of college brochures. "I'll figure it out in the morning." He stretches out on his bed, flat on his back, and folds his hands under his head. He closes his eyes and I drift up and hover next to his bed. He looks tired. I've been feeding off his energy a lot today, and I can see the toll it's taking on him.

"Hi," he smiles without opening his eyes. "I can feel you there." He opens his eyes and rolls over onto his side, bunching the pillow up under his head. "Did you know that?"

No, I didn't. I shake my head.

"Yeah, I can feel you near me," he repeats with a trace of melancholy in his voice, "but I can't touch you." He reaches out and runs his fingers back and forth through my arm like I'm the flame on a candle, and it tickles when he does this. "I wish I knew how all this works. You're energy, I know that, but I wonder what kind."

Probably nuclear, I tease.

"Well, you are kind of glowing," he teases back. "Let me see your hand." I hold my left hand out, palm up, and let him inspect it. "I think maybe you're some kind of energy that humans haven't identified yet," he finally says.

Who knows? I usually need to pull energy from around me in order for you to see me, and I need a lot of it if I want to move stuff. Are you tired right now?

"Yeah, but it's getting late."

Still, I'm getting some of my energy from you. Does the room feel cooler than normal?

"Yeah, it feels good, though."

Because I'm also pulling heat from the room in order to have enough energy to type.

"I still don't understand how you can type." He runs his fingers through my arm a few more times. "How do you do it?"

I don't know. How does the wind move things? That's not solid, but it can rip a building apart.

"So what would happen if I wasn't around to pull energy from and you were someplace cold, like the South Pole? Then what would you do?"

Pull from the sun.

"What about at night?"

It doesn't matter. Stars give off a lot of energy and it's all just floating around in s.p.a.ce. And the energy that comes from nebulas or supernovas is pretty powerful. It's like drinking a couple of Red Bulls. If I concentrate really hard, I can tap into that.

Rei's smile is sleepy and sweet. "When have you ever had a couple of Red Bulls?"

When you weren't around to yell at me.

He smirks. "That's what I thought." He rolls onto his back and stares up at the ceiling. "It must be cool to see a supernova."

Want to see one? I can show you. Not that I seriously expect him to consider it, but how much fun would it be to show Rei around the universe!

He turns his head to read the computer screen and shakes his head. "Ha. Nice try, though."

Are you afraid someone will hijack you, too?

"Maybe. But like I said before, think about how fast you're moving out there. What would happen if you got sucked into a black hole? There's a lot of stuff in s.p.a.ce that scientists have no clue about. What if something can destroy energy, and we just haven't discovered it?"

You worry too much!

"And you don't worry nearly enough," he says. He closes his eyes and within minutes, the rhythm of his breath becomes deep and predictable.

For all the macho muscles he's built, I still see the little boy in Rei when he sleeps. His face relaxes. His lips part slightly, but he doesn't snore. He's never snored, ever, and I can say this without exaggeration because I have known Rei forever. We napped together as babies; we were potty trained together; we held hands as we boarded the bus on our first day of kindergarten. And this is why I feel so guilty now.

For years, I thought it was unfortunate that Rei's top lip is slightly fuller than his bottom lip, only because it was perpetually chapped. But Rei's all grown up now, and those lips aren't chapped anymore; in fact, they look really tempting.

I rest my hand on his chest to feel it rise and fall, feel his energy hum along in harmony with his heartbeat, and it hits me for the first time: Rei has always been my ninja protector, but he's not invincible. I know it's late, but how much energy have I pulled from him today? I can't keep doing this to him.

Yumi offers a type of hands-on healing called Reiki in her store. Literally, the word Reiki means unseen energy or life force, and it's something Yumi went to cla.s.ses to learn back when she was pregnant with Rei, which accounts for his full name-Robert Reiki Ellis. I used to wonder where she got this unseen energy, if she got it from the same places I find mine, but it's not something I could just go up and ask about, not unless I wanted her to know my secrets.

I don't know Yumi's source of energy, but I wonder if I can use my energy the same way she uses hers. One of the laws of physics states that energy always travels from order to chaos. Well, if I'm not a bundle of chaos, I don't know who is. I sit very still with my eyes closed, and I concentrate on that profusion of energy that exists within the universe. Like a magnet, I draw this power from the edges of creation, through all dimensions beyond me, pulling it toward me and through me, until I feel myself tingling. I float my hands over Rei and let the energy seep into him, little by little, until intuition tells me enough! I smooth his hair off his face and let him sleep in peace.

CHAPTER 14.

Before she dresses for work the next morning, my mom wakes up Taylor and decides she's okay to go to school. Taylor allows herself to be kissed on the cheek, and as soon as the bedroom door closes, she gets up and starts searching through my closet for something to wear.

"This is fugly, this sucks, absolutely hideous, wouldn't be caught dead wearing this!" she b.i.t.c.hes as she pulls one thing after another out of my closet and flings it over her shoulder. By the time she's done, there's a considerable pile of clothes on the floor and still nothing she deems worthy to wear. She settles on a pair of jeans and a shirt my mom bought me a year ago that still has the sales tag on it because I thought it was a little on the sleazy side. Once she tries it on, I realize I was right.

She roots through all my drawers looking for makeup and finds nothing but cherry Chapstick, so she waits for my mom to leave before sneaking into her room to use her stuff. The light is better and the mirror is bigger in my mom's bedroom, so she puts on foundation, blush, purple eye shadow, a thick rim of black eyeliner all around my eyes, a few layers of mascara, and a heavy layer of dark reddish lipstick. She blots her lips and makes a kissy face in the mirror.

Who the h.e.l.l is that? I don't recognize my face anymore. She stands there surveying herself, then grabs a hairbrush and with a disdainful look, begins to brush. I don't have that long, blonde Rapunzel look Taylor is used to. My hair is straight, tree bark brown, and I keep it long enough to put up in a ponytail. I tolerate the inconvenience of side bangs only because they hide the scar on my forehead. She has no choice but to make the best of it this morning.

Once she's ready, she looks uncertain. She glances at the clock, then at the phone, and then she stares out the window for a few seconds. My cell phone is on the bookcase, so she picks it up and flips through all five of my speed dial numbers. Rei's number is on top. I watch her press '1' and we both wait for Rei to answer.

"So yesterday when we were talking on my front steps, you said I take the bus with you," Taylor says by way of a greeting.

My hearing is sharp enough in this dimension that Rei's voice is loud and clear right through the phone.

"Good. You remembered that," Rei says. "You meet me at the top of my driveway every morning at seven, which means I will see you in ... six minutes. Did you take anything out of your backpack?"

"No. Why?" Taylor kicks through the piles of clothes she tossed, looking for what I can only a.s.sume is my backpack.

"Because you keep your epi in your backpack, but you probably don't remember that."

"An epi? Am I allergic to something?"

"Peanuts. But you don't eat tree nuts, either."

Taylor groans. "Peanuts? You're kidding me, right?"

"No, I'm not kidding," Rei's voice is crisp. "And I'll see you in five minutes."

That's long enough. I fly over to Rei's and find him still in his room. d.a.m.n! His computer is off and we don't have time to boot it up.

"Good morning," he says with a wry smile. "Nice of you to drop by."

I wave and I point to the bottom desk drawer.

"What ... the sage?"

I nod emphatically.

"Yeah, I haven't figured it out yet."

I roll my eyes in exasperation and point to the clock.

"Yeah, I know, four minutes. I have to go."

That wasn't what I meant!

I bounce back home to find Taylor mumbling little obscenities about me and my allergies, as if this is somehow my fault. She digs around the bottom of my closet until she finds a pair of seldom used clogs, and she unearths my black hoodie and backpack from the pile of castoffs on my bedroom floor. She doesn't bother locking the front door behind her.

Rei waits for her at the top of his driveway, one earbud stuck in his ear. When he sees Taylor, he whistles softly. "Whoa. I guess you forgot you don't wear makeup."

"I do now," she said shortly. "Does the bus pick us up right here?" She attempts her epic hair swish, which fails since my hair is not so swishable. It makes me laugh.

Rei shakes his head and grins down at her, clearly amused, as well. "Nope. It's up here."

She follows him toward the bus stop, and I follow along from a safe distance. Along the way, Taylor quizzes Rei about her schedule and asks more questions about things she 'can't remember.' I realize now why I never wore those clogs. They are not compatible with mud.

On the bus, Rei offers an earbud to Taylor, probably to keep her quiet. She frowns when she hears the music, and from my safe vantage point, I can barely hear her ask to see his iPod. Rei hands it over. She spins through his music, frowning.

"Don't you have anything good?"

Rei sucks in his cheeks. "Define good."

"You know, good. Don't you have anything, like, current? Some decent pop or R&B?"

Rei laughs, probably because she used the words decent and pop in the same sentence. "There's a lot of current stuff on there, but most of it is from indie bands you probably don't remember." He holds out his hand for the iPod, and when she hands it over, he surfs for something. "Here, try this."

She sits back with a look that clearly tells him she is settling for this music. Rei turns toward the window and rubs the center of his forehead just above his eyebrows.

For the rest of the school day, Rei coaches Taylor on where to be at what time, tells her which locker is mine, takes the package of cookies out of her hands in the lunch line and reminds her she's allergic to peanuts.

"So? These are chocolate chip, not peanut b.u.t.ter."

Rei flips the package over. "Read the ingredients."

She huffs at him. "Flour," she says sarcastically, "sugar..." she's quiet as she scans the ingredient list. "Processed on shared equipment with peanuts and tree nuts," she reads. "You're s.h.i.tting me, right?"

"Wrong." Rei puts them back on the rack. "And in case you forgot, you hardly ever swear."

"Yeah, okay, good. So what happens if I eat them?"

"Bad things. Just don't eat them. And make sure you keep your epi with you all the time. Okay? When we get back to the table, I'll show you how to use it."