The Empath’s Current
The fluorescent lights blazed overhead with brutal efficiency. They washed away the forgiving shadows of emergency power. Every detail stood exposed in harsh relief. The low vibration of backup generators quivered in the floor itself.
I squinted against the glare. My eyes were still adjusting. Around me, officers straightened their uniforms and cleared their throats. They tried to regain some semblance of authority after being trapped in the dark with us. The atmosphere had shifted from tense standoff to awkward bureaucratic cleanup.
Raven’s hand found mine without conscious thought. His fingers interlaced with mine in what should have been a simple gesture of comfort. Instead, something electric jumped between us. It wasn’t static or the usual warmth of human contact, but actual current. Stinging. Aching. Magical energy arced from his palm to mine. The sensation was bright. It startled both of us.
We jerked apart and stared at each other.
“What was that?” Raven whispered. His voice dropped below the chatter surrounding us.
I flexed my fingers. The lingering buzz where his skin had touched mine still pulsed. “I don’t know. I felt… your magic.”
“Not… exactly.” His eyes fixed on mine. “I felt my energy, but like… louder. Like you turned up the volume.”
“Whoa!” Veronica gasped. She studied us intensely, the way she studied a disputed provenance, then clasped her hands over her open mouth. To Raven, she was the big sister he’d never had—fierce, protective, and relentless in her loyalty even as she carried her own grief for Shelby.
“You’re not just an empath,” she whispered through her fingers. “Lilah! You’re an amplifier!”
The words should have felt like revelation, but instead, they settled into place with the certainty of something I’d always known but never named. Of course. How else had I survived everything I’d been through? How else had the empathic abilities that should have driven me insane instead become a source of strength? All the feelings around me always seemed bigger than the person feeling them, and all along it was me amplifying the energy around me.
The main entrance buzzed with electronic authority, footsteps sounding in the corridor. Deanna was returning and bringing with her the full authority of administrative oversight. Like she was the institution itself.
Veronica pivoted toward me on the floor. “Lilah, give me your hand. Raven, take her other hand. Jakin, get in here between Raven and me. Now.”
Jakin lifted his head from where he slumped against a desk. “Nah, I’ll pass.”
“Hell, no, you won’t! Get your ass over here and complete the circuit or I swear I’ll spend the rest of this incarnation and the next making your sorry life unbearable. I don’t care how little juice you’ve got—we need anything you can give.”
“Fine,” he mumbled. “If you put it that way.” He crawled over to complete our circle even though he seemed wary of Veronica’s grip, but I was ecstatic to know he’d found someone who truly scared him into submission.
The four of us formed a tight ring on the floor with our hands clasped—Veronica to me to Raven to Jakin to Veronica. The energy that passed between us was jagged at first, uneven. Moving clockwise. It felt like an orchestra with half the instruments out of key. I sensed Veronica’s steady determination, Raven’s controlled power, Jakin’s modest energy.
Focus. The thought came from somewhere deeper than conscious decision. I reached out with abilities I’d never fully understood. I didn’t push my own power into the circle but drew from what Veronica passed to me—amplifying what already existed, making it stronger, clearer, more focused, then passing it to Raven, who passed it to Jakin, who passed it to Veronica. The next time around the circle, the energy had tripled. The next? Tripled again.
The effect was immediate and overwhelming.
Power slammed through our connection, bigger than any current I’d ever carried. Veronica gasped and continued chanting. Her grip tightened as magical energy flooded the circle. Even Jakin straightened. His eyes widened as he felt what real power was supposed to feel like.
The air around the vault door shimmered. The steel surface rippled, blurring at its edges, and the massive door flickered. Then, between one moment and the next, I felt the vault room beyond it change.
Where the imposing book-lined space had been, there was now a mundane concrete closet. Gray walls, cracked paint, a utility bucket sitting next to two worn brooms. The illusion held all the way down—not just to the eye but to every other sense. Even knowing it was fake, I could smell the mustiness of an old storage space. I could see the way dust had settled in the corners. I wanted to sneeze.
The spell completed just as Deanna’s voice echoed from the corridor. Her tone was sharp with administrative authority. Our circle remained frozen. Our hands stayed clasped. Our breathing remained carefully controlled. To anyone looking, we were four traumatized staff members seeking comfort in each other’s presence.
That’s when Raven caught Dru’s attention and mouthed, “Now.”
Dru held herself still for half a breath longer, waiting. Then, as if sensing just how brief our window, she uncoiled from her position.
Deanna swept through the entrance. The Chancellor and two men in suits followed. Their faces set in expressions of professional frustration, but everyone else inside Gate 1 went utterly silent.
Samantha sat near Dru, her knees drawn to her chest and arms loosely around them. She glared at Jakin, not speaking, but the conflict was plain on her face. Fury and pity, side by side. She didn’t trust herself to say anything he wouldn’t deserve. I could tell by her energy that she was afraid to interfere with whatever we were doing and end the moment prematurely. For a witch-wannabe, she knew that much.
“Well?” Chancellor Inman’s voice carried the particular edge of a man of importance who wasn’t used to having his time wasted. “Where’s this supply closet full of explosives I’m going to have to explain when the Secretary of State calls me wanting answers? You know how much I despise dealing with her.”
I stifled a chuckle. Good man. Aoife Jung wasn’t just the Secretary of State but also the Ranking High Priestess of the Order of Daegan. Dru worked for Aoife, not the Chancellor.
Charlie attempted to stand. His mouth opened to object, but he stopped when he realized he no longer had a badge to give him authority. Instead, he remained hunched against the filing cabinet. Confusion wafted off him in waves I could feel even while maintaining the magical circle.
“Good to see you again, Chancellor.” Dru tilted her head at the man as if she’d never endured a crisis of any importance in her entire life.
Charmed, the older man smiled back at her. “You, too, professor. Your work here brings over ten million dollars a year to our university. Would you mind terribly letting these men verify what’s behind that door so the Secretary won’t be calling for my head on a platter?”
She glanced back at Raven, waiting for his nod. “For you, Bob, of course.” Her tone contained just enough resignation to sound believable. “If it will end this intrusion.”
Without even looking, she swiped her card through the reader. The panel beeped acceptance, and she entered her code with the same deliberate precision she used for everything else.
The door opened to reveal exactly what the illusion promised—a cramped concrete storage closet containing a bucket, two brooms, and decades of accumulated dust. The officers peered inside. Their expressions shifted from anticipation to annoyance.
The lead officer gave the now-mundane closet door a final, disgusted look. The two German Shepherds, which had been tense and whining for the last hour, now sat placidly at the vault’s edge, sniffing idly at a scuff mark on the floor. The threat, as far as the dogs were concerned, had vanished completely.
Dru pushed the door shut with a sharp clunk. It beeped, and a solid red light glowed on the keypad outside the door, but the four of us didn’t disband, just in case Dru was asked for a second look.
“This isn’t right,” Charlie muttered. His voice thickened with bewilderment. “The shelves… the other gates… they were right here.”
Dru turned to face the officers. Her expression remained perfectly composed. “A closet. As I’ve been telling you. Are you satisfied?”
The lead officer scoffed. His frustration finally boiled over. “We’ve been had. This was a prank call. Someone’s idea of a stupid joke.”
Dru shrugged. “We did try to tell you.”
Hold the circle, I heard Veronica say in my head. Until Dru says to let go.
Will do, I heard Raven answer.
Caught in their priestess-to-priest telepathy, I didn’t respond. Not the first time I’d heard Raven’s internal priest voice, but unnerving all the same. From what he’d told me, it was a rare survival instinct among the Daeganeans when they implicitly trusted one another—and trust was definitely rare among its members.
Before the dozens of strangers in the library could leave, Deanna snapped her fingers to get the lead officer’s attention. “Who reported this?” She glanced at Chancellor Inman to make sure he was watching her idea of taking charge. “I need to know because I intend for this kind of prank not to happen again, and I assure you, if they’re a student here, it will be dealt with.”
“Like I told Mr. Peterson when we came in, it was a former employee.”
Deanna twisted her head to one side. “The Special Collections library doesn’t have any former employees.”
Wearily, the officer flipped through his notes. “Here it is. Female. Called twenty minutes before we arrived. Said she used to work here.”
“Anonymous?”
“No, we have a name. Not sure if it’s a first or last name though. Emory.”
“That’s impossible.” Dru held her fingers to her lips and waited several deep breaths to continue.
“What? You don’t have a former employee here named Emory?”
“Emry died.”
“Are you sure? Because she… oh.” The look Dru gave him shut him up.
But the name hit me like a punch to my face, and I wanted to cry. I stared at the carpet until the pattern blurred. I knew Raven did, too, but he was forcing himself to concentrate on the door and the spell behind it.
I could hear him in my head. Focus, focus. Focus, focus.
Emory. Not Emry—Emory. Rune had always called her that, despite knowing how much my friend had hated the mispronunciation. It was a small cruelty, the kind of verbal papercut that Rune specialized in. But this time, it was also a signature.
Rune’s fingerprints were all over this chaos. But the presence I’d felt earlier was gone and had been since before I’d joined hands with Raven and Veronica.
While the officers continued their discussion, I caught the attention of a campus security guard standing near the wall. Hiking my chin, I urged him closer, and he leaned down.
“Where’s your partner?”
The guard furrowed his brow. “Partner? No, I came alone. There was a guy in a facilities uniform here earlier, said he was checking the fire extinguishers on this level. He left right before the last round of alarms went off.”
A facilities uniform. Not a new guard. A ghost. An operative who could walk the halls unchallenged, watch Charlie, and vanish before anyone even knew he was there. Rune hadn’t just called in the threat; she’d had eyes on the inside the entire time.
I scanned the room as officers began filing toward the exit. Their official business had concluded in disappointment. Near the entrance, half-hidden by the shuffle of departing boots, I spotted something on the floor that stopped me mid-scan.
A black crow feather lay on the floor, pristine despite being trampled by at least a dozen people. It shouldn’t have survived the chaos intact, shouldn’t have remained so perfectly positioned unless someone had wanted it to be found.
Rune’s calling card. Again.
Deanna ushered the Chancellor out the door, then paced near the front of the Special Collections Library. She watched the officers disappear through the glass wall that separated Dru’s domain from hers.
Charlie hovered off to the side. He wrung his hands and cast occasional, nervous glances toward the door. I understood now. He didn’t have anything to do with using Emry’s name in vain. If he had a smidgen of morality left, he wouldn’t have betrayed her memory like this. But I could tell from his nervous snickers that he was afraid he knew who the real culprit was, and everything he’d done today had been to protect her, or maybe us, but most likely himself.
“All right, you can get up now,” the lead officer announced to our huddled group. His tone suggested we’d been clinging to each other far too long for his comfort.
The four of us remained seated on the floor. We maintained our circle despite the obvious dismissal. Raven managed a weak smile. It somehow conveyed both gratitude and exhaustion.
“We’re good,” he said. His voice contained just the right note of emotional fragility. “Just… shaken. We’ll stay down here for a bit.”
“Suit yourselves.”
The officers exchanged glances that spoke volumes about their opinion of academic types who went to pieces at the first sign of real trouble. Finally, with expressions of barely concealed relief, they filed out of Gate 1.
The heavy outer door sealed behind them with a solid thunk that seemed to drain all the tension from the room. Dru gave a single, almost imperceptible nod.
We broke contact simultaneously. The magical circle dissolved as our hands separated. The absence of that shared power left me disoriented, like I’d stood too quickly in a dim room. Everything still ringing, still off-kilter.
I sagged against Raven’s shoulder. Exhaustion swept through me in ways that had nothing to do with the early hour. The amplification had taken something out of me—focus more than energy. The magical effort had left me drained and oddly vulnerable.
That’s when I heard it.
Even though we were no longer touching, thoughts that weren’t my own filtered through the residual magical connection. Veronica’s mental voice resonated as clear as spoken words, though her lips never moved.
What are you waiting for, sweetie?
Raven’s response came through the same channel. Something like longing colored his thoughts. You’re the one who told me what the future looked like.
Sweetie, maybe that future changed.
You were right about Jakin.
You want this, Raven. You want her. I can feel it in your heart.
It doesn’t matter what I want. I would never do anything to cause Lilah pain. Not even unintentionally.
The conversation cut off abruptly as Raven stood. He broke whatever lingering magical connection had allowed me to overhear their private exchange. As he straightened, the illusion of the janitor’s closet faded in my mind’s eye, but only in my mind’s eye, and I knew that the room behind the door was back to its true form. Tall shelves, warm light, rare books simmering with dormant magic. It was Gate 2 again, exactly as it had been before. A living heart beneath the library’s skin.
I didn’t follow Raven right away. I remained rooted, feeling the emotional aftermath settle over the room.
When I finally moved, it wasn’t to chase him or stop him or say something brave. I approached where he paused, halfway to the hall, and slipped my fingers into his without a word.
He didn’t speak either. But his hand curled around mine like he’d been waiting. Not for permission. Just for me.
And then—too soon—he let go.
Jakin gathered his belongings in silence. He hoisted his worn leather satchel with movements that betrayed deep exhaustion and tossed the volume he’d been reading onto a nearby table. From somewhere behind me, Samantha scoffed, but he ignored her and trudged toward the exit without looking back. He stepped around the feather without seeing it, unaware that even his shadow was already being erased as he moved out of the light. The door sealed behind him with finality.
The vault they’d tried so hard to breach stood intact, its secrets secure. I watched Raven walk away, his shoulders tense with whatever he wasn’t saying. Some doors don’t need locks. Love holds them shut just fine.
THE END
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