He held out his hand and I gently laid my right one on it. A far softer bolt left me, causing him to yelp, but he didn’t fall over or start peeing himself, thankfully. Then, as usual, a slew of colorless images crowded my mind. True to his word, they weren’t violent, but I saw no full-color, hazy images afterward.
“Sorry, I didn’t see anything about your future,” I said.
His smile was expectant. “What’d you see from my past?”
The others looked interested, too. I glanced away. “You don’t want me to say, trust me.”
“Come on, how else will I know it worked?” Ben pressed.
“Yes, tell us,” Joe added.
“Tell us” came in a chorus from the group. I shook my head, muttering, “It’ll embarrass you,” but I was swamped with more demands for proof.
I threw up my hands. “Fine, but I warned you. When you were twelve, you stole your little sister’s favorite Minnie Mouse DVD and beat off to it every night until your dad caught you and made you buy her a new one out of your allowance money.”
Stunned silence followed. Ben’s face went red.
“I don’t believe it,” he muttered, but that was soon drowned out by laughter and good-natured ribbings. I let it go on for another few moments and then cleared my throat.
“I bet the rest of you have some embarrassing sins, too, so give him a break or I’ll start copping feels.”
The teasing subsided to lingering grins and the occasional giggle. Ben shot me a grateful look. Hey, compared to the sins I’d seen from other people, his was steeped in innocence.
“When I was a little girl, I wanted to be Miss Piggy so I could marry Kermit the Frog,” I told Ben, winking. “Kermit. Talk about shameful.”
“Ouch. You shoulda kept that to yourself,” he said, giving my arm a friendly knock.
The brief contact meant only a tiny bit of electricity sizzled into him, but he winced. Then he grinned.
“My sister used to rub her socks on the floor and then chase me. Reminds me of that.”
“She owed you for the stolen DVD,” I quipped.
“Like you said, I bought her a new one,” he replied, still grinning. “Hey, what’s wrong with your ear?”
“What?”
I reached up and felt something wet. Ew, I’m still sweating like a pig, I thought, but when I looked at my hand, it was red.
Sandra gasped. That was the last thing I heard before everything went hazy and the exercise bench reared up to hit me in the face.