Thursday, 6:05 a.m.

Aidan McConnell awoke to the smell of gingerbread and the
sharp, piercing sound of a woman’s scream.

The scream ended the moment he opened his eyes. The smell
did not.

It took him a minute to place the scent, which had invaded
his head and his dreams as he tried to grab some sleep just
before dawn on Thursday. At first, in those early moments
between asleep and awake, he assumed he’d been dreaming of
some long-forgotten holiday visit to his grandmother’s
house; her kitchen had always been rich with all the
delicious aromas any sugar-deprived kid could desire. But
when he sat up on his couch and realized the cloying,
sickeningly sweet odor of ginger and spice was truly
filling his every breath, he knew he wasn’t dreaming.

He was connecting.

“Damn it,” he muttered, not wanting this, not now, not
again. Not so soon after last night’s mental invasion.
Bacon, for God’s sake. The reek of fatty, greasy bacon had
seemed to permeate every inch of air in his house a few
hours ago, and now it was gingerbread.

Forcing himself to focus on his other senses, he stared at
his huge, antique walnut desk, which sat in the dead center
of the room. Its surface was hidden as completely as the
top of a freshly buried casket. Files, notepads, research
books, his laptop—they consumed almost every inch of space.
A few random items finished the job: A coffee mug that
read, “Psychics do it when they’re not even there.” A
colorful sand pail filled with pencils in varying lengths.
A paperweight. An old-fashioned wind-up clock that dinged
violently when the alarm went off.

Aidan stared, he focused, he thought about the coolness of
the brass on the clock and the heft of the stone base of
the paperweight and the way freshly brewed coffee tasted
when sipped out of that mug. He thought of the thousands of
doodled sketches he’d made with those pencils, trying to
capture images he’d seen while mentally connecting with
someone before they shortened and finally disappeared from
his mind like a shadow at high noon.

It didn’t work.

Spice. Cinnamon. Sugar. But bloated, vile, thick and
putrid like the remnants of a Thanksgiving pie buried in a
garbage heap with rotting turkey and moldy stuffing.

He focused harder, rubbing the tips of his fingers across
the grain of the leather couch, craning to hear the faint
tick of that clock, staring at the desk, ordering his other
senses to combine and smother the smell. But still the
stench enveloped him. He could taste it now, the sting of
too much ginger, the vile, rancid sugar melting on his
tongue. His stomach rebelled.

Closing his eyes, he gritted his teeth, resorting to his
oldest tricks against the familiar invasion into his
psyche. He visualized a sea of sturdy cement building
blocks. One by one, he began piling them up, erecting the
psychic barrier between his mind and the one he was
unwillingly connecting with. Building mental walls in order
to protect himself wasn’t just an expression when it came
to Aidan, it was pure survival. He’d have gone insane long
ago if he hadn’t learned how to protect himself.