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dumbfounded. “Is something wrong with you?”
    “Cancer. Caught it early, thank the Lord. I’ve told no one,” Faye said, while draping the necklace back over her head. The light vanished.
    I felt ashamed. Like a Peeping Tom. Did I have any right to see these private things? I impulsively hugged her, surprising myself. “I’m so sorry.”
    She laughed wryly and patted my back. “Sorry? No, dear. Don’t be sorry. It’s like being sorry your ears can hear Mozart or the wings of a hummingbird.” Faye pushed me back at arm’s length. “You look scared. I gather this is new, and you need to understand it.”
    Faye led me through the bookstore, past shelves of books on everything from occult practices to diets for your zodiac type. I watched as her thick finger trailed their spines. “Ah,” she said, landing on one in particular. She tilted it out and passed it to me. Beyond Form—How to See and Read Auras.
    “That ought to get you started. And this,” Faye said, handing me a laminated sheet. “It’s a color chart. It will help you recognize the meanings of the colors you see. But don’t take it as gospel. Sometimes, the seer’s own perceptions are more important. Pink is often described as a loving color, but if green is the epitome of love to you , trust it.”
    She offered a plate of cookies and looked intensely into my eyes. “You have a gift.”
    “It doesn’t feel like a gift,” I said with a sigh, taking a cookie. “How many people can do this?”
    Faye smiled. “Not many, I suspect. Lots of charlatans claim to. I think you’re the real deal.”
    “Is your necklace some kind of protection?”
    She waved her hand and chuckled. “Ooooh, I sure hope so, from the energy vampires of the world.”
    I shivered, thinking of the man in the hospital and how I felt like my life was being sucked from me when he was near.
    “Don’t look so frightened. It’s simply a figure of speech. Haven’t you ever been around someone whose mere presence wore you out? They could be as nice as cool lemonade in summer, but instead of feeling refreshed, you feel just plain sapped?”
    “I can think of lots of people who make me feel that way, especially at school.”
    “Ha! That’s because teenagers are exploding with new energy.” Her arms waved in the air. “Y’all are a bunch of out-of-control aura-bombs discharging around each other.” She laughed. I liked the sound of it—spicy and soaked with joy.
    I asked to see the display of Kirlian photography. We walked to the back corner of the store where there was a large gallery with dozens of pictures of plants and people, their auras captured beautifully on film. The sight of all those people, all those colors, was amazing confirmation of what I’d been seeing.
    “There’s something missing here,” I ventured, the sense of unease about myself becoming a familiar gnaw. “None of these pictures show an aura like my own.”
    “Indeed? What does your aura look like?”
    “I don’t have any of these colors, not even white. My aura is nothing but silver.”
    Faye glanced away from me for a moment, thoughtful. Her eyes had the faraway look of reaching for a memory. She gazed back at me with an intensity that made me flinch.
    “Tell me.”
    “In this business you hear many tales over the years, scraps of legends and myths. Many attributed to places in the British Isles, like Ireland and Wales, some from civilizations much older even than the Druids or Celts. But if you’re right and your aura is pure silver…” She riffled through her bookshelves. The chaotic way she did it—pulling out one book, setting it on the floor, running to a different shelf, fanning quickly through the pages of another book, disappearing into the back of the store—made my skin prickle.
    “What are you looking for?” I asked, standing over her as she sat on the floor, her skirt in a puddle around her, with two books open on her lap.
    Faye looked up at me. “Something’s