When I reappeared in Remy's living room, Hunter was right where I left him, curled in a tiny ball on the floor, cradling his broken arm. He was hurting too much to cry now; the shields I helped him construct to keep his visions at bay had collapsed in my absence, while he tried to figure out ways for me to survive every single thing his father might throw at me. He was so overwhelmed he could barely whimper.

I knelt next to him and helped him put the shields back up, so he didn't have to feel possible futures spreading out in a million directions any more. I didn't understand why the whole world's future was in such a state of flux tonight; what events could generate such uncertainty? I felt sure I'd read about them in the papers tomorrow. A natural disaster, like Katrina or the Asian tsunami a few years ago? A man-made disaster like the Gulf oil spill? Another terrorist attack? One more war in the Middle East or Africa? Some horrible political event somewhere? I didn't know if any of those could make the future as uncertain as it was, though... maybe all of them were happening at once, this evening?

No, Hunter told me when the shields took hold, allowing him to think clearly again. It's you. You're important, Aunt Sookie. You have to live.

I'll do my best, sweetie, I promised, knowing that even if I was the center of Hunter's world right now, I wasn't the center of the world. Even if I don't, you'll be OK. Quinn will take care of you, just like you saw in your head.

I was relieved he wasn't sending me away again; that there was nothing else I had to deal with at home before I could take care of him. That's what was really important: making sure he was safe, even if the price I paid for his safety was my life.

But you're the Miss Airy, he told me seriously. You have to live, or there'll be a war.

He was trying to tell me something important, I could feel that, but I was busy working out how to deal with his father. I had to convince him to let Hunter come live with me, without letting him kill me along the way. If Hunter's visions were correct, that was going to be tough.

Remy was stuck to the wall right where I left him, his mouth still glued closed. If he was angry when I put him there, he was apoplectic (word of the day last week) now. His face was bright red and he glared at me. If looks could kill... I thought to myself.

"Remy," I said gently, "I think we need to talk about Hunter's future. Doing this to your own son," I knelt down and gingerly helped Hunter hold his arm out, showing how badly broken it was, "isn't OK. I don't think he should stay with you right now. You should let me care for him."

You'll never get your hands on my son, bitch, he was thinking. I'll kill him before I let you make him any more of a freak.

I sighed loudly. "I didn't make him like this, Remy. If you want someone to blame, Niall's the one who activated all of Hunter's fairy powers. He did the same thing to me, and I don't know if it was a wise decision, but it's done now and we can't go back. But even if he hadn't, we were both already telepathic. Neither of us had any chance of being 'normal', we're both different to other people. Hunter still needs to be loved and cared for, though. He certainly doesn't deserve to be hurt like this. He didn't choose to be different, and he can't stop being who he is."

Nothing I said was getting through to Remy; he was so furious about being stuck to the wall and magically gagged that he wasn't willing to listen to me. I couldn't see my motivations for letting him go when I saw this in Hunter's visions; his telepathy and his visions were separate, so he couldn't 'hear' what people were thinking in the future, he just saw what they said and did. That was usually a good thing - his gifts would be even less manageable if he had to listen to everything people ever had or would think - but in this case, I could have used some warning. I had planned to make myself safer by leaving Remy as he was while I talked him into sending Hunter to me, so he couldn't move to hurt me. Now I knew it wouldn't work that way; as my prisoner, he was completely unwilling to listen to me.

"I know you're going to try to kill me," I said, looking him square in the eye, "and you should know that Quinn, the big tiger guy you hate so much, has been teaching me to fight. I could break both your knees and both your collarbones in under thirty seconds, and if you try anything, I will. I'll let you land just enough blows to make it clear that you attacked me first, and then I'll take you down."

Sure, girly, he was thinking. Like you could hurt me. I've got a full head of height and at least fifty pounds on you. Your oversized rack won't help you with this one.

"No, it won't," I laughed. "But being able to throw you around without touching you will. So will this."

I clicked my fingers and used my outfit-changing powers to put a set of restraints around his wrists, binding his hands together in front of him. It was a trick Quinn taught me; using leather cuffs that left no marks so I could take down an attacker more easily, then make them disappear so I could attribute my win completely to good luck and decent self-defence skills. Remy finally had the sense to look a little frightened of me.

"That's not all I can do," I told him seriously. "You really should think twice before you try anything. We need to talk about Hunter, so I'm going to let you go, but if you try anything I can put you right back there in under a second. I can do a lot of other, worse things, too."

I contemplated giving him a big jolt of pain, letting him feel what his son was feeling for a few seconds, but his thoughts were already a tangle of revulsion and fear. He hadn't changed his mind about killing me, but he'd discounted most of his plans now, figuring they wouldn't work. I still had to have my wits about me, but I doubted he'd try anything rash now.

Of course, I was wrong.

I snapped my fingers and Remy was released from his magical bindings, sliding down the wall until his feet were on the floor again. I left the restraints on his wrists for now, but clicked my fingers a second time so he could speak.

"You God-damned freak," he spat as he lunged towards me, his hands reaching for my neck to strangle me.

He had the element of surprise because he literally acted without thinking, but he still had no hope of landing a blow. After sparring with Quinn so much, Remy seemed to be moving in slow motion, telegraphing his moves so far in advance I felt like I could file my nails while I waited. I rolled my eyes and dodged him easily, tripping him so he fell over his coffee table and landed head-first on his couch. I was already clear of his limbs and had turned to watch him before he finished falling.

He rolled over quickly, thinking I would jump on him in retaliation. He was thinking it wasn't a fair fight because his hands were restrained and mine weren't. I snapped my fingers and the restraints disappeared; I wanted to make it clear exactly how out-matched he was here.

"It's still not a fair fight," I told him. "I don't have to touch you to kill you."

Unfortunately that gave him an idea, and he started throwing things at me in frustration. Remote controls, coffee mugs, beer bottles, Hunter's toys, dirty plates, discarded shoes... every piece of detritus in the disorderly living room was hurled at me in turn. I flung each one back at him with a crisp flick of my wrist, so he was the one who got pelted with all the junk. I had to hold back a lot though; my telekinetic abilities were strong enough now that I could easily have killed him with any of those objects, just by putting enough force behind them. I knew the neighbors would call the police soon though, and I didn't want him to look as though he'd been in a fight, so I couldn't throw anything hard enough that it would even bruise him.

I did manage to make Remy look like a slob though, by spilling the dregs from his beer bottles and coffee mugs onto his shirt when they hit him, and making a couple of dirty plates he threw wipe themselves across the front of it. By the time his throwing arm got tired and he gave up on hurling things at me, he looked as though he had been on a week-long bender without ever changing his clothes. I knew that wasn't far from the truth; he had been drinking heavily recently, as evidenced by the number of empty beer bottles on his living room floor. I was pretty sure the police would report his filthy state to social services, when they were eventually called.

The living room looked unfit for human habitation now. Objects were strewn all over the room, and despite my best efforts not to smash anything (I didn't want shards of glass flying around the room while Hunter huddled in the middle of it) a few beer bottles had shattered. The room reminded me of some of the living rooms I had seen in the Seattle bombing, the only noticeable difference being that all four walls were still intact... although the large front window was broken, because a beer bottle Remy threw at me had missed and smashed through it.

His rage that I stuck him to the wall and made him shut up for so long was now mixed with a dented ego, because being unable to land a single blow in the fifteen or so minutes he'd been trying to hurt me made him feel impotent. His frustration that his once-beloved son was turning into "such a freak" (his thoughts on the matter, not mine) had been enough to drive him to violence alone. Add his rage and frustration - plus the ten beers he's drunk that afternoon and evening - and he was a very determined, albeit completely inept, attacker.

He picked up the big wooden coffee table that sat in front of the couch and lunged at me, trying to body-slam me with it. I dodged and gave him a small telekinetic push that sent him sailing out through the smashed window, landing on top of it in his front yard. He had the attention of the whole neighborhood now; I could hear the buzz of their thoughts as they peered through their windows, concluding that he was drunk and crazy. They were right. I 'heard' two of them call the police, and knew I was running out of time to talk to Remy, if I were to convince him to let Hunter live with me.

Only one of the neighbors had the guts to approach Remy as he lay on the smashed coffee table in his front yard, cursing and screaming.

"Fuck off, Rob," he snarled as his neighbor approached.

I peeked around the torn curtains to watch. Rob was tallish - not as tall as Eric, let alone Quinn, but still taller than most men; perhaps six foot - and the expression that came to mind was 'built like a brick shit house.' He didn't have a defined physique, but his whole body was big, and it was clear that under the thick layer of padding, there was plenty of muscle. He had hands so calloused I could see them from where I hid a few yards away, which made me think he must be a brick layer or something like that. He certainly had that look about him, wearing an outfit that would be at home on any building site: jeans, boots and a wife beater. His thoughts and manner told me he was a gentle giant though; a man who looked so big and tough that nobody would pick a fight with him; a man who could usually break up a fight simply by telling the participants to stop, and often did so.

I immediately liked him, and I knew that if Amelia were here, she'd be drooling. He wasn't handsome, but his close-cropped light brown hair was unmistakably masculine and his bright blue eyes twinkled, set amongst abundant laugh lines. She thought of men like him as 'a bit of rough trade' and got a kick out of seeing 'blue collar' men on the ludicrously expensive Frette sheets she pinched from her father when she moved out of home. Something about bedding a working class guy on her rich Dad's thousand-dollar sheets turned her on.

"Remy," Rob greeted him cautiously. "You OK, mate? You just went through a window."

"I'm fuckin' fine," Remy snapped, picking himself up off the ground. "We gonna have a problem?"

"How's the little guy doin'?" Rob ignored his threat.

"Fuckin' freak turned into a fuckin' tiger in my fuckin' living room! But I showed him, he won't pull that shit on me again."

Rob noticed blood on Remy's temple, which I hadn't seen because he was facing away from me. He realized at the same moment I did that Remy must have hit his head on the concrete path when he fell down. His thoughts were an even bigger mess than they had been before, and I knew he was concussed. Perfect, I thought. Like that's gonna make him more reasonable...

"Let's get you inside," Rob suggested, leading the way and hoping Remy would follow. He did.

I slipped into the kitchen just as Rob walked into the living room, almost-closing the door between the two rooms. If I teleported away, he would hear the loud 'pop!' so I thought it better to just hide, if I could. The door was open a crack so I could watch what was happening, and I saw the horror on Rob's face when he noticed Hunter, still curled in a tiny ball in the middle of the floor. He crouched down to check him over.

"Are you OK?" he asked, already knowing what the answer would be.

"My arm hurts," Hunter told him.

He examined Hunter's arm gently and was appalled by what he saw.

"What happened?" he asked, again knowing the answer before he asked.

"My Dad."

That's when Remy walked in, carrying a thick wooden leg that had broken off the coffee table. Acting completely without thinking, he raised it and began to swing. I flung the door open automatically, instinctively wanting to help this stranger.

NO! Hunter yelled. Let him!

I hesitated for a split-second, and by then it was too late. I wasn't prepared for this; I expected Remy to hurt me, but I had heard in his thoughts that he and Rob were friends, so I didn't think he'd hurt him. Remy was badly concussed though, and was lashing out at everyone. He must have been a great ball player in high school, judging by the way he swung the 'bat', the way the tip connected with his neighbor's head and the amount of force behind it when he did. Rob's skull crunched sickeningly and he went down hard, narrowly missing Hunter.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" I hissed, as Remy turned towards me.

He swung at me and I popped away, reappearing on the other side of the room. He stepped right over Rob's body to come after me, thinking it served his friend right for interfering in family business. As far as Remy was concerned, nobody had the right to stop him 'disciplining' his kid however he wanted to. You don't know what it's like to have a freak for a son, he thought to himself.

I dodged his makeshift weapon a couple more times, then teleported back to the other side of the room. I was trying to work out what to do, frustrated that I didn't already know. I was trained to end a fight by putting down an attacker so they wouldn't get back up again. When I told Remy I could break both his knees and both his collar bones in thirty seconds, the only thing I was exaggerating was the time it would take. Really, it was unlikely to take me more than ten seconds... but I knew I really only needed to break his right collarbone and one knee to stop him, which I could do in a swift one-two... so even including the time to find the right opening to do it, I could have ended this fight in well under five seconds. But unfortunately, if I did, the police would have questions about who attacked Remy, and that would be bad.

I considered my options as he came after me again, stopping only to push Hunter into the corner telekinetically, because Remy almost trampled him as he rushed towards me. I could stick him to the wall again and leave him there until the cops came... but then he wouldn't listen to me when I tried to convince him to let me look after Hunter. I could give up on convincing him and try to convince social services instead. Or I could take him down in some way that would look like he'd injured himself. That seemed like the best idea, so when he swung the table leg at me again, I tripped him, sending him slamming into the cupboard in the corner of the room.

I silently cheered as I heard the distinctive crunch of a shoulder dislocating and a tendon snapping. It was his left shoulder, which wasn't ideal, but he would have to wield the table leg one-handed now. That meant there wouldn't be as much force behind his blows, his aim wouldn't be as good, and I would be able to take it off him more easily. But I also felt his triumph when he saw the cupboard door had been forced inwards when he hit it, breaking off the lock as well as the door's edges. He tugged the door open quickly with his other arm, grabbing at something inside that he was convinced gave him the upper-hand in this fight, thinking Now you die, bitch.

Whatever he just grabbed, I knew I needed to take it off him quickly. When he swung around to face me, I saw exactly why: he had a gun.

My blood ran cold. I raised my hand and gave a tug telekinetically, trying to pull it from his hand. Then I saw that his finger was already on the trigger and stopped just in time. If I'd moved it forward just a fraction more, it would have fired.

He grinned triumphantly as he lined up his shot, then squeezed the trigger. He was aiming for my heart, and he knew what he was doing.

Oh, shit, I thought as the gun went off.