"I'm good," I said with a noncommittal shrug. When she narrowed that arresting gaze on me, I added, "I promise. All is right with the world. Seriously, though, you need to at least consider selling your body for profit. I can be your pimp. I'd be a freaking awesome pimp."
Though she didn't quite believe me – the I'm-good thing, not the pimp thing – she dropped it. Or pretended to. She oozed concern. After everything that had happened to her, she was still worried about me. I could tell. No, I could feel her concern, her desire for me to be well and happy. And I was grateful. Really I was, but there were times when I could feel deception swell out of her as well. It snaked into our conversations. A microsecond later she would change the subject. Yet I could tell she genuinely cared about me.
Then again, lots of people cared about me. From the moment I'd woken up in the alley behind the café a month ago with no recollection of how I got there, many of the residents of Sleepy Hollow, New York, had banded together to help me out. A total stranger. Some dropped off clothes while I was at the hospital. Some gave me gift cards to this store or that.
The outpouring of goodwill had waned after a couple of weeks – a fact for which I was also grateful – but people still stopped in to check on me. To see how I was doing. To find out the latest. Did the cops have any leads? Did I remember anything? Did anyone claim me?
No, no, and no.
Just like with Cookie, I felt their concern, but I felt something else from them that I didn't feel from Cookie, nor from several of my other regulars: a freakish curiosity. A blistering desire to know who I was. If I'd really lost my memory. If I was faking it.
The doctors found nothing wrong with me. According to them, I was perfectly fine. Perfectly normal. But normal? Seriously? What they would think about my ability to see into a supernatural dimension? Was that fine? Was that normal?
But maybe they were right. Maybe the only thing wrong with me was psychological. If I couldn't remember anything about my life pre-alley-awakening, was it me? Was I blocking my own memories? If so, what the hell had happened that was so awful? What made me not want to remember my own past? My own name? And did I really want to know?
Yes, I suppose I did. The struggle, the constant tug-of-war, the pull of wanting to know was stronger than the bliss of ignorance. In the meantime, there were people like Cookie who stood by me and kept me semi-sane.
There were the skeptics, of course. Not everyone believed I had retrograde amnesia, and I knew it. I felt doubt leach out of the occasional customer. I felt disbelief hemorrhage out of a random passerby, and with it, a revulsion.
For most, however, it was just a small suspicion. They wondered not only if I was faking it but why. And they were right. Why? Why would I fake something as horrific and agonizing as amnesia? For the attention? For the money? There were easier ways to get attention, and the money sucked. I now had a gazillion dollars' worth of debt thanks to the hospitals and doctors and endless tests.
So my fifteen minutes were proving costly. I lived tip jar to tip jar. I could never pay all the bills I'd accumulated, not unless I got that major book deal I'd been angling for. At least, that was one theory floating around. According to some more aggressive skeptics, I had an angle that would lead to a huge payoff. Sadly, I didn't. But their doubt, their certainty that I was faking it, kinda sucked. As far as I knew, I'd never faked it.
But that brought me to my second superpower. I could feel things. It was awesome.
No. It was beyond awesome!
If a deranged serial killer who uses control-top pantyhose to strangle brunettes ever attacked me, I'd be able to feel how much he wanted me dead.
Okay, it wasn't that bad. It did have its perks. Like, I knew when anyone lied to me. I absolutely could-bet-my-life-on-it knew. No matter how good they were. No matter what tricks they'd adopted to conceal their deception, I knew. So there was that.
But along with the perk came the drawback. I felt other things as well. Otherworldly things. Sometimes I felt like I was being watched. Hunted. I felt the cold gaze of a stalker I couldn't see. The hot breath of a predator fan across the back of my neck. The searing touch of a stranger's mouth brush across mine. Of course, I only felt those things after my seventh cup of pre-noon coffee. The moment my customers' faces started to blur, I switched to half-caff.
"Cold enough yet?" I asked her just as Dixie, the owner of the café and my savior – in the nonreligious sense – stuck her head out the door. Her hair was very much like Cookie's only a bright, almost neon, red. Though I had yet to confirm my suspicions, I was pretty sure it glowed in the dark. It made her pale skin look vibrant and youthful despite the fact that she had to be in her late forties.