Firestorm by Iris Johansen

Okay?”
    She nodded. “You've thought it all through.”
    “I have to make sure you're free of worry.” He added, “I'm sure you'd be skeptical if I also said I wanted them to be as happy and comfortable as possible.” He smiled sardonically. “After all, I'm an abomination.”
    “Did that sting?”
    “Perhaps.” He thought about it. “I think it did. I'm used to it, but sometimes a word or a particularly vicious attack gets past my guard.”
    She was silent a moment. “You can't blame anyone for hating you for messing around in their minds. There couldn't be an uglier intrusion.”
    “I don't blame anyone. I'd hate it too,” he said wearily. “Do you think it's fun for me? You have no idea what ugliness people hide from the world. Some people's minds are cesspools.”
    “Then stay out of mine.”
    He smiled. “Your mind is remarkably clean. Oh, a few sexual repressions and fantasies, but on the whole it's clean and honest and bright. Most of the time it was a pleasure monitoring you. The only problems I had were the nightmares and the barriers you hid behind whenever you thought about your mother's death. That was a cross between riding a tornado and being locked in a coffin.” He glanced at her. “I can imagine what it's like for you. You should have let Travis help you to control it.”
    “I'm not interested in your opinion and I'm not looking for a crutch.”
    “A little leaning until you learn how to stand on your feet isn't a weakness.”
    “Are you speaking from experience?”
    He grimaced. “Caught. No, I was too mixed up and stubborn to let anyone help me. But you should do what I say and not what I do. It's much healthier. Life would have been a lot simpler for me if I'd had a Michael Travis during those early days.”
    “He told me you weren't actually part of his group.”
    He shook his head. “The only thing I had in common with Travis or his friends was that the talent came to me in the same way. I was injured in an automobile accident when I was thirteen and in a coma for almost a year. When I came out of it, everyone thought I was normal for a long while. Everyone but me. I knew I was screwed up, but I had no intention of letting anyone else know I believed I was being sucked into other people's minds. I thought I was going crazy, and I intended to live every minute of my life to the fullest before they shut me in the booby hatch. My parents were too busy pushing my brother Cam's political career to pay much attention, so they let me go my own way. And my way was to indulge in every excess under the sun and invent what I couldn't find available.” He shook his head. “Talk about black sheep.”
    “Michael said that you and your brother were close. I'm surprised he didn't step in.”
    “He tried. He always tried, but I wasn't having any of it. I finally exhausted myself sowing wild oats locally and took off and started wandering the world. I finally hit bottom in Tangiers and was considering going home and committing myself into the local loony bin.”
    “What stopped you?”
    “Ego. I decided that anyone who was as normal as me in every other way couldn't be nuts just because I was sucked into people's brains. So I gave myself six months to experiment and see if I was really nuts or if it was a true psychic ability. It was an interesting six months. I was lucky I wasn't psychotic after it was over. You'd be surprised how many nasty, twisted minds there are out there, and I dipped into some choice specimens. Sometimes the only way I could survive was to turn their reality into fantasy and alter it so that I could break free.”
    “Like you did with me.”
    He nodded. “Only their fantasies needed to be much filthier and more complex. I never knew that was part of my talent, but I got to be an expert from sheer necessity.”
    “What happened after those six months?”
    He didn't answer immediately. “You're very interested. Are you trying to find a gallows to hang me