COPYCAT

By Wesley Overhults

San Francisco, California

“Your usual?”

Rachel Roth looked at the barista and smiled before nodding her head. The girl at the counter shook her head and then went to work on making Rachel some coffee. Rachel excused herself to use one of the computers in the cafe, knowing that the girl at the counter would bring her the coffee when it was finished. The teenage empath knew she was getting too predictable. That was usually a sign that something bad was going to happen. She couldn’t really help it though. Everyone had a routine, a pattern of behaviors that they carried out every day. Everyone wanted to stay connected to the lives of those they considered friends. In Rachel’s case, that meant the people who were part of the same message boards and websites she visited every day. Yet there was a false sense of friendship in those habits. You could read about people’s lives and you could read the things they said but in the end, that didn’t really make them your friends. So why did Rachel still continue her habit of lurking on those sites then? Maybe some routines were harder to break than others.

“Is it sad that I’ve memorized how much money this costs?” she asked as the girl brought her the coffee and Rachel fished some money out of her pocket. “Thanks, Lori.”

“Gotta cut you short tonight,” explained the girl, who couldn’t be too much older than Rachel herself. “I’m closing tonight and I wanna get out of here early. School stuff, you know?”

“I’ll just be a few minutes then,” promised Rachel, typing in a URL and beginning her ritual. “You can go ahead and start cleaning up if you need to.”

“I should just give you the keys and tell you to lock up when you’re done,” joked Lori Zechlin as she began wiping down the tables.

Rachel smiled and went back to her browsing. It was true that she didn’t need the cafe’s internet anymore now that she was living with June but she still frequented the place often enough that she could be considered a regular. Rachel enjoyed getting out into the city for some reason other than her usual nightly activities. Ever since the ordeal with her half-brother Lust and her rededication to her mission, she wanted to become a part of the city’s population instead of just its silent guardian. Saving the people of San Francisco was something she felt good about but she also thought it was important to make personal connections with the people as well. Plus, she enjoyed the quiet times of solitude she spent at the cafe. Rachel loved June but she also loved having her space and coming to the cafe was part of that alone time.

Rachel was so lost in her online world that she barely even noticed when Lori came up to her. As always when someone was watching her, she felt that person’s eyes upon her and turned to meet the barista. Rachel inwardly laughed due to the fact that she must have looked like a puppy begging for a treat. She knew that Lori wanted her to finish up and it was just as well. There was nothing worth reading tonight anyway.

“Guess I’d look pretty pathetic if I asked for five more minutes, huh?” she inquired and Lori chuckled.

When Rachel had first seen Lori, she couldn’t help but think of herself. She pegged Lori as being a year or two older than her but the resemblance in clothing style and overall appearance was uncanny. The two girls could have been mistaken for sisters. Rachel found it odd at times but it was nice to think that she wasn’t so alone in the world, that there were others like her out there. Of course after her dealings with Lust, Rachel decided that maybe more people like her in the world wasn’t the best thing. Still, when Rachel looked at Lori she saw a kindred spirit. It made her wonder just what Lori’s story was although she never pried. Rachel understood the value of privacy and the concept that some people preferred to keep their secrets rather than share them. Lori had never once asked for any information other than the one time when she asked Rachel what her name was. Rachel chose to give her the same courtesy.

“Like I said, normally I’d let you stay but tonight’s a busy night,” said Lori. “Maybe you should think about getting a job here, Rachel. I mean you practically live here anyway and the job’s pretty easy.”

Rachel couldn’t tell if Lori was joking or not. She knew they both had the same sense of humor but she didn’t pick up anything in Lori’s mood that would indicate she was joking. Truthfully, something about reading Lori’s emotions always unnerved Rachel. There was always a little more black in Lori’s emotional aura than there should be. It bothered Rachel but she always decided not to press the subject. She didn’t like revealing herself to someone who probably couldn’t handle it. So far, Rachel’s friends were people who had their own ties to the occult and were able to deal with the weirdness that accompanied it. From what she could tell though, Lori was normal and therefore probably not the greatest person to share that kind of secret with.

“I could probably use the money,” admitted Rachel, knowing that her bank account was starting to run dry. “Do I need an application or anything?”

“Come by tomorrow during the day when our manager’s here and talk with them,” suggested Lori. “I mean it’s worth a shot, right?”

“Guess so,” said Rachel with a shrug before finishing up her browsing and then logging out. “See you later, Lori.”

“You mean tomorrow,” corrected Lori with a grin as she wiped down Rachel’s table and began stacking the chairs on top of it.

Rachel nodded and then made her exit. She pulled up the hood on her jacket and decided to catch the bus back to June’s apartment. Things had been quiet lately, perhaps a little too quiet for her taste. She needed to stay focused on the mission. Brother Night was still in control of the city’s underworld and Rachel knew it was only a matter of time before she crossed paths with him again. She wasn’t going to let him continue to operate in what was now her city and that meant she had to keep hitting the pavement and doing whatever she could to stop his schemes.

“Life in the city is never dull,” she muttered to herself as she approached the bus stop and checked her watch, noting that the bus should be arriving any minute.

As the bus pulled up next to the curb and Rachel got on, she felt something strange and turned back to the coffee shop. It was completely empty and she decided that her weird feeling was nothing. She couldn’t shake that feeling though that there was something going on and that something felt familiar to her.

Rachel Roth mumbled something unintelligible as she felt someone shaking her awake. She absently swatted away whoever it was and realized that it could only be one person. Rachel groggily opened her eyes and saw June standing next to the couch. The previous night had been largely uneventful. She had stopped a few petty crimes, busted some drug dealers, the usual nightly activities. It seemed, however, that something else had happened that night and it was something that had June worried from the look she was giving Rachel. If it was something that could make the host of The Enchantress worry then it was something that demanded Rachel’s attention.

“You need to see this,” said June, giving her only explanation for why she was so forceful in her attempt to rouse her roommate.

Rachel grumbled under her breath but sat up and stared at the TV as June turned up the volume. She didn’t see what had June so worried. It appeared that someone in a particularly nice neighborhood had suffered a break-in the previous night. It was so mundane a crime that Rachel didn’t understand its importance but as she continued to watch, the story began to unfold and she soon saw the problem.

“This was last night?” she asked as the screen showed the pictures of the victims.

“Yeah,” answered June. “Rachel . . . it looks like you’re the one that did it.”

Rachel couldn’t deny that there was an eerie similarity. Someone wearing a jacket with the hood up had entered the house seemingly out of nowhere. From there, events began to get muddled. There was only one person in the house still alive to tell the sordid tale, but his account sounded more like the ravings of a lunatic to the unassuming masses. From what he could relate, the attacker had accosted him and his friends and it sounded as if the attacker had used telekinesis. Whatever the attacker had used, it was effective in killing everyone save for the one survivor. According to the boy, the attacker had put the fear of God into him by turning into some kind of demon right before his eyes. Rachel felt her mouth hanging open by the time the news report concluded.

“I was nowhere near that neighborhood last night,” she said to June. “Hell, I don’t even know where that neighborhood is.”

“You know what this looks like though,” said June. “I mean I’m not saying you did it but I’m at least saying we have to look into it. This person is trying to frame you, Rachel.”

Rachel wordlessly nodded, still trying to process everything. She never thought anything like this would happen when she began her campaign to take back the streets of San Francisco from Brother Night. She never factored the police into the equation at all, much less inspiring someone else to start doling out the same vigilante justice that she was. Had she caused this massacre somehow, at least indirectly? Was she responsible for the deaths of the people inside that house?

“We have to get a look at that crime scene,” realized Rachel.

“That house is crawling with cops,” reminded June. “I can’t just go down there and feed them some cover story. This is the police, Rachel.”

It strangely occurred to Rachel that she had never had any dealings with the police in all her life aside from Detective Dale Colton helping her out with the Church of Blood back in Gotham. When she came to San Francisco, her seeming crusade to help people had been a spur-of-the-moment idea. She wanted to operate as secretly as possible so she didn’t attract the attention of the police. She never meant for it to spiral out of control like this but she knew that it had and it was her responsibility to get it back under control. She helped people but she didn’t kill them as this person had obviously done. What was worse than the grisly murders was the fact that the killer was using Rachel’s persona, and even her powers it seemed, to accomplish their gruesome task.

“We’ve got to figure something out then,” said Rachel. “You said it yourself, June. Whoever this person is, they’re framing me by using the same methods that I do. I can’t stand for something like that.”

“Well there’s nothing we’re going to be able to do in the daylight,” said June. “I have to get to class. Tonight will probably be the best time if you want to check out the crime scene. I mean they can’t have cops there all the time, can they?”

“No clue,” admitted Rachel. “I’ll see what I can find out tonight.”

Alamo Square

The neighborhood was too familiar to her. The houses were old, Victorian style homes but the basic look of the Alamo Square neighborhood of San Francisco was one that Rachel understood. It was a neighborhood that presented the all-American dream. It was a heavenly slice of suburbia populated by upper-middle-class families. Rachel knew what neighborhoods like this looked like. It made her feel a tad nostalgic, made her long for the good old days back home in Gotham Heights. She was so far away from that now, in more ways than one. Alamo Square wasn’t the kind of neighborhood likely to have a drug house in it, at least not the kind of drug houses that Rachel was used to seeing. What she had told June that morning was true. Rachel didn’t venture into neighborhoods like this much anymore. Her dealings were mostly kept to the area of the city where June’s apartment was or the area she had been patrolling earlier when she was living in the homeless shelter. There was enough crime in those neighborhoods to keep her busy. Apparently though, she should have been paying more attention to neighborhoods like this.

“Figures it would be somewhere like here,” she said to herself as she ducked under the caution tape that barred the front door and entered the house.

Rachel never asked about her powers. It wasn’t as if there was some teacher or guru that she could direct her questions to anyway. At this point, she had fallen into a pattern with her abilities and she was mastering those she had previously exhibited. Apparently though, her powers could sometimes evolve or perhaps she was simply learning to tap into other aspects of them. Whatever the case, now was one of those moments of evolution. She could feel it in her heart, the emotions that were still strong inside the walls of the house. There was fear, greed, anger, and so much death that it made her tremble. She closed her eyes and tried to steady herself, tried to sort out all the information that she was getting. Until now, she had only sensed the emotions in people. Apparently, she could also sense them after those people were gone.

The dealers that used this house as their base were angry at first. Someone had invaded their home and they were ready to defend themselves. That anger soon turned to fear though. Whoever had picked a fight with them had scared them. Rachel followed one trail of fear until it disappeared out the backdoor. She assumed that fear belonged to the lone survivor. Rachel went back inside the house to continue casing the crime scene. The dealers were afraid but there was anger coming from somewhere even through all the fear. Rachel first assumed it was still from the dealers but now she was starting to wonder if she was wrong. She crouched down and studied the chalk outlines of the bodies. She sensed nothing but death there. If the killer was using telekinesis then it likely meant the police were confused by the crime scene. The angles of attack and the murder weapons would be a nightmare for forensic investigators to explain. That anger was coming from somewhere though.

“Warmer,” said Rachel as she tried to trace the anger back to its point of origin.

The anger led her out the front door and she could feel it growing fainter when she stepped back onto the sidewalk. The anger had started outside and then grew stronger once it moved inside. That meant that the anger was coming from the killer. The killer knew these drug dealers or perhaps the killer was angry at what they were rather than who they were. Whatever the case, it was clear that the killer was motivated by anger. However, that anger was only present just outside the house and concentrated inside it. There was never any indication of where that trail went. Rachel assumed that meant that whoever it was had teleported out of the house when the killing was finished. It seemed that the killer really did have Rachel’s powers.

Rachel was about to leave when she realized that someone was watching her. Her emotional radar was still thrown off by everything she had experienced at the crime scene but she knew enough to trust her instincts. She located the person watching her in a few seconds and only took a second more to appear before them. The boy ran right into her as he was attempting to get away and both of them fell to the sidewalk. Rachel took this as the opportunity she needed and telekinetically held the boy aloft, watching him squirm in her grasp while she got back to her feet.

“Did you come back to inspect your work?” she inquired, assuming that the boy she had captured was the killer.

“What the hell are you talking about?” asked the Asian boy as he still struggled against his bonds. “I didn’t do this.”

“Then why are you here?” asked Rachel.

“Look, I was trying to see what happened,” explained the boy. “I heard about the murders on the news this morning. I know the kids that hung out in this house.”

“Did you know they were drug dealers too?” Rachel could sense the fear coming off the boy and knew that she was onto something with her question.

“Yeah,” he replied. “Look, I didn’t buy anything from them. I knew them from school and sometimes I would hang out with them but I wasn’t into drugs.”

“What did they sell?” asked Rachel, assuming it was something like marijuana or maybe even cocaine.

“They pushed pills. You know, prescription stuff. I never touched that shit, I swear.”

“What’s your name?”

“Kyle.”

“Go home, Kyle,” ordered Rachel. “If I come back and find out that you’ve been here again, you’re not going to like what happens next.”

“Was it you?” asked Kyle. “Did you kill my friends?”

“I didn’t do this,” answered Rachel. “I don’t kill people. I just scare the crap out of them.”

Rachel released Kyle from her telekinetic grip and then disappeared. She decided she had learned all she could from the crime scene and it was best if she made herself scarce around it anyway. She couldn’t be sure if the police were still monitoring things and if they were then they would come after her. She had to plot her next move though and Kyle had unknowingly given her an idea. The media had released the names of the victims as well as the lone survivor. The killer obviously had some sort of connection to the victims. Since she didn’t have the resources of the police department, Rachel decided she would have to rely on how she usually did her detective work. The internet, particularly social media, was always a wonderful tool for learning more about people than you ever wanted to know.

As Rachel disappeared into the night, Kyle watched her leave and pulled out his phone. He dialed someone’s number and waited for the person on the other end to pick up. His hands were shaking and he tried to steady them so he didn’t drop his phone. It felt like forever before the person on the other end of the line finally answered his call.

“Hello?” asked a girl.

“It’s me,” said Kyle. “Couldn’t get what we wanted, baby. The cops are gone but I ran into this girl with weird powers.”

“Was it her?”

“No, somebody else.”

“I think she knows about us.”

“Baby, she doesn’t know,” assured Kyle. “You know how hard it’s been for her since her mom died. She’s too busy taking care of herself and her dad to go snooping around. We’re cool. Don’t worry so much, Dawn.”

“We can’t meet tonight,” decided Dawn. “I don’t wanna take the risk. We’ll try again tomorrow.”

“Alright,” agreed Kyle. “Love you.”

“You too.”

With that, Dawn hung up on Kyle and left him standing alone in the dark. He put the phone into his jacket pocket and hurried off back to his house.

“What did you find out?” asked June as soon as Rachel reappeared in the apartment.

“Whoever the killer was, they probably had some connection to the dealers,” said Rachel. “I ran into this guy named Kyle. He said he knew the dealers from school but he wasn’t the killer. I did get an idea though.”

“Check their Facebook pages?” asked June with a grin. “Already did that. You’re not the only one in this friendship who can do some snooping, Rachel.”

“That’s why we make such good friends,” joked Rachel. “What did you find out?”

“Come see,” suggested June as she led Rachel into her bedroom where her computer was and showed Rachel the pages.

Rachel scanned through the Facebook pages of the dealers. It seemed that they all ran in the same circle of friends, or at least as far as their online friendships were concerned. She found Kyle’s page and clicked on it, deciding that since he was her only real lead at the moment that she should learn more about him. Scrolling through Kyle’s profile yielded an interesting and unexpected result though.

“Wait, that’s Lori,” realized Rachel as she saw that apparently Kyle and Lori were in a relationship with one another.

“Who’s Lori?” inquired June.

“This girl that works at the coffee shop I go to,” explained Rachel. “We talk sometimes while I’m there but I don’t really know her that well. We never talk about real personal stuff so I didn’t even know she had a boyfriend.”

“You don’t think she’s involved in this too, do you?” asked June.

Rachel thought about it before trying to give an answer to her friend’s question. Kyle had sworn to her that he never did drugs and Rachel could always tell when someone was lying to her. Still, if Kyle was involved with those dealers, which clearly he was, then it made him shady at the very least. From what she could tell about their Facebook pages, Rachel couldn’t see any signs that Lori knew about Kyle’s association with those dealers. Rachel knew how it worked online though. On the internet, you could project whatever kind of image you wanted. People with the darkest secrets were the ones who looked the cleanest to everyone else. Something about this wasn’t adding up.

“I don’t really know,” admitted Rachel finally. “Honestly, I’m finding out more about Lori just now than I ever knew before.”

Rachel was still scrolling through Lori’s Facebook wall, which was a little sparse. There was one large mass of activity though and a closer look revealed why. Lori’s mother had died fairly recently and it was obvious that Lori was still shaken by that untimely passing. There were two main sources of comfort for her, at least as far as Rachel could see. One was obviously Kyle. Rachel could see him playing the role of supportive boyfriend very well, perhaps a little too well. There was someone else though, Lori’s best friend from the looks of it. The girl’s name was Dawn.

“Sounds like she keeps to herself then,” said June. “It’s not hard to figure out why you two are friends.”

Rachel knew that June meant her comment as a joke and Rachel took it that way. However, there was something else that unnerved her and as she continued to assess things, it became clear what that unnerving something was. Lori Zechlin was almost a mirror image of Rachel. She was a teenage girl who had suffered the loss of a loved one and didn’t have many people to reach out to for support. Rachel could see that once her mother died, Lori became more withdrawn. She knew how that could affect a relationship and the lack of public interaction between Lori and Kyle after her mother’s death confirmed it. Lori was retreating into herself and it seemed as if no one could stop her from doing so. There was something else going on though and that something else was alarming.

“Girl’s got some anger issues too,” noted Rachel.

“You’re not thinking what I think you’re thinking, are you?” asked June.

Rachel knew the signs of someone going through some serious emotional problems. It was clear that Lori’s mother had taken her own life and that prescription pills were the instrument of that suicide. Lori made no effort to hide her anger towards not only those who abused pills but those who sold them as well. Rachel knew the equation so well. Angry kid plus desire for revenge plus means to do so only equaled one thing. What was hard for Rachel to understand was how Lori somehow acquired powers that were almost the exact same as Rachel’s.

“I’m thinking I need to have a real talk with Lori,” said Rachel. “I’m going to track down Kyle and see if he can give me some info on where Lori lives. After that, I’m going to talk to her and try to figure all this out.”

“You want some backup?” asked June.

“You sure you want to get involved with me again?”

June smiled and nodded. Ever since what had happened with Lust, she had been a little worried about helping Rachel in her quest to clean up San Francisco. She knew in her heart that what Rachel was doing was good. Someone had to protect the city’s people and June knew that Rachel couldn’t do it all by herself. So no matter the risk, June was willing to keep sticking her neck out for Rachel because that was what friends did. Friends stuck together no matter what and June knew that Rachel could appreciate that sentiment. If it was true that Lori was this killer then maybe she would’ve turned out differently if she had a few more friends that she could turn to.

“My life would be boring without you, Rachel,” said June. “You want me to tag along or not?”

“I’d be lost without you, partner,” said Rachel. “C’mon, let’s go see what we can find out.”

Finding Kyle’s address wasn’t that hard when it was on his Facebook page. Rachel had really wanted to find Lori’s address but she didn’t put personal information like that online where everyone could see it. Rachel respected that decision because it wasn’t as if she was one to make the intimate details of her life public knowledge either. It seemed though that other people were more comfortable about things like that.

“Should we just go inside or something?” asked June as soon as she and Rachel appeared in front of Kyle’s house. “I mean is that how this usually works?”

“There’s no real instruction manual for it,” said Rachel, realizing that this was actually the first time that June had really accompanied her on one of her excursions.

“Well one of us is probably going to have to talk to his parents,” said June.

“I think bad manners is now the least of our worries,” decided Rachel as her emotional radar went off and let her know that something was going on inside the house. “Looks like someone had the same idea that we did but they were quicker about it.”

June was about to say something in response but she felt Rachel’s dark energy envelop them and transport them inside Kyle’s house. The second they appeared, Rachel instantly felt something incredibly familiar. Someone’s emotional aura was exactly the same as hers and it was confusing her powers. She saw someone in what looked like a jacket with the hood up. They were standing over Kyle as the boy was struggling to get back to his feet.

“You thought I wouldn’t find out?” asked the attacker and it was clear that she was a girl. “How could you do this to me? How could you turn on me when I needed you the most?”

Rachel had let that exact question turn over in her head so many times after she found out that Eric had cheated on her with her best friend. She knew so well how betrayal and rejection could drive someone crazy with anger. More importantly, she knew whose voice now spoke the same question she had asked herself so many times. She felt her heart break a little as she knew that she was right about Lori. It wasn’t too late though. There was still time to stop Lori from going down the road to ruin. It was too late for Rachel to save her childhood friend and maybe it was too late to save herself. It wasn’t too late to save Lori though.

“Lori, you need to stop,” she told the girl and watched as the girl whirled around to react to her name. “Whatever he did to you, it’s not worth it.”

“Rachel,” said Lori and surprisingly it was a statement and not a question. “I figured you’d come around eventually. I gotta say, I was a little surprised when I first figured it out. After that though, I knew that you gave me what I always wanted.”

“How are you doing this?” asked Rachel.

“Because you can,” answered Lori. “All those times you were hanging out with me at the coffee shop, I was copying your powers. It took some practice but I got the hang of them and when I did, I knew what I had to do. You don’t know what they’ve done to me, Rachel. Kyle, Dawn, the pill-pushers, all of them took everything from me. Well now I’m going to take from them.”

It was a tune so familiar that Rachel knew it by heart. It was the song of an angry girl lashing out at the world. It was the melody of pain that sprang from the lips of someone whose heart and spirit had been crushed by the cruelty of life. Rachel wanted to believe that she and Lori were one in the same and now she learned that it was so terribly true. There was one key difference though. Rachel never let herself succumb to the darkness inside of her. It was a darkness that Lori didn’t know how to handle and because of that, it was killing her.

“Baby, I never did anything with Dawn,” pleaded Kyle. “You know you’re the only one I love.”

“Liar!” snapped Lori. “I saw those texts you sent her, Kyle. I know that you want her. Am I too much trouble for you now? Am I too screwed up for you now?”

Rachel knew that Lori had Kyle locked inside a telekinetic grip just as she had done to him earlier in the night. She reached out with her own powers in an attempt to dislodge Lori’s hold on him. However, it seemed that Lori was right about having copied Rachel’s abilities. Rachel couldn’t loosen Lori’s grip because it was exactly the same as hers. However, it didn’t mean she couldn’t try another angle of attack. Something flew off one of the shelves in the living room and collided with Lori’s back. It was enough to break her concentration and let Kyle go.

“Get him out of here,” Rachel said to June. “I’ll handle Lori.”

“I thought you were my friend,” said Lori, seething with anger at another apparent betrayal. “I thought you could understand how I feel.”

“I do,” admitted Rachel. “Do you know how powerful you are right now, Lori? Do you know how many people want to hunt me down all because of what I am? You can walk away from all this. You can just walk away and live your normal life. I’ll never have that option but you do and I’m trying to get you to use it.”

“No you’re just turning on me like all the others,” retorted Lori as she reached out to the objects in the room with her newfound telekinesis.

Rachel threw up a shield that surrounded her on all sides as the torrent of objects came flying at her. She didn’t exactly know what to do. She was never much good in a fight unless she could use her powers. It seemed that this time though, she was going to have to resort to getting her hands dirty if she wanted to survive this encounter. She tried to teleport to surprise Lori but it seemed that Lori already knew what was coming. Rachel reappeared only to find Lori gone. She spun around and went right into Lori’s punch. Rachel staggered backwards and almost fell onto the floor. She caught her balance at the last second and regained her composure only to find that Lori had disappeared again.

Rachel readied herself for another attack but realized that it wasn’t going to come. That meant that Lori had gone after June and Kyle, no doubt intent on finishing her revenge. Rachel teleported outside but found both Kyle and June unharmed. Lori was gone it seemed.

“Did you get her?” asked June.

“No, she got away,” answered Rachel. “I thought she was coming out here to take another shot at Kyle.”

“Where else would she go then?” asked June.

“Where does Dawn live?” inquired Rachel, knowing that there was only one other person in Lori’s life that the girl would hate more than him.

“A few blocks away from here,” replied Kyle. “You don’t think that she’d go after Dawn, do you?”

“If I was her then yeah that’s what I’d do,” said Rachel. She concentrated on Dawn, or what little of her that she knew. She didn’t like teleporting in blindly but it seemed that now she had no other choice.

Lori Zechlin had an average life once. It was a good life filled with good people, or so it had seemed to the outside world. The truth was that Lori’s life wasn’t as good as everyone thought. Her mother had problems, problems that could only be solved by shoveling handfuls of pills into her mouth. One day, Lori’s mother didn’t care how many pills she took. That was the day that she died, the day that Lori’s world collapsed in on itself. Since then, Lori had been trying everything she could to keep herself and her family from coming apart. Her father barely got out of bed anymore. She had to assume responsibilities that a teenager shouldn’t but through it all she had a few lifelines. She considered Dawn and Kyle as things that kept her from going crazy, from just buckling under the pressure and doing exactly what her mother had done. Now Lori didn’t know what was keeping her afloat anymore. Maybe it was the rage, that all-consuming anger, that drove her. Maybe that was the only thing she had left now.

“I trusted you,” she said as she appeared in Dawn’s room. “You were my best friend.”

Dawn tried to bolt for the door but the door closed on her thanks to Lori’s borrowed telekinesis. Dawn turned and Lori could see the fear not just in her eyes but in her heart as well. Lori always considered yellow as a bright color full of life and energy. She had never really associated it with fear before but she had to admit, it looked good on Dawn. Lori admired how her former best friend didn’t even try to hide the fact that she was helping Lori’s boyfriend cheat on her. Lori could see that Dawn knew exactly what this was about. It didn’t quell Lori’s rage in the slightest. If anything, it only intensified it.

“I warned you that you were dangerous,” said Dawn. “That’s why we kicked you out of the coven, Lori. Too much negative energy.”

“You abandoned me!” snarled Lori in return. “You were always jealous of me. That’s why you kicked me out and that’s why you stole Kyle from me. You think you can do magic? You think you’re special? You’re nothing. I’m the one with all the power now, the real power.”

Lori’s rant was broken as something appeared in the air behind her. Rachel tackled Lori to the floor, grappling with her as best she could given her limited fighting ability. She had to figure out a way to take Lori down. How could she though when Lori’s powers were exactly the same as hers? Rachel decided she would have to use the direct approach and allowed her fist to have a meeting with Lori’s jaw. It wasn’t the most proper of punches but she hoped it would do the trick.

“Your power’s not real either,” she told Lori. “It’s mine and you have no idea what you’re doing with it.”

“You’re all blue,” said Lori as she kicked Rachel off of her and tried to get away. “What does blue mean? I’ve never seen it before. I thought maybe when I showed you what I could do, you would teach me how to use these powers. I thought maybe you could’ve been a real friend, Rachel.”

“Blue means hope,” said Rachel.

“Hope?” scoffed Lori. “No wonder I’ve never seen it before. I gave up on that when my mom died.”

Dawn’s bedroom mirror exploded but the shards of glass only seared towards Rachel instead of spraying the room. Again, Rachel used a shield to block the attack but inwardly she was trying to figure out how to defeat Lori. She didn’t really want to hurt the girl but it seemed that Lori wasn’t giving her a choice in the matter. Plus there was the fact that their powers were completely in synch with one another. It seemed that they were at a standoff but Rachel knew that she wasn’t Lori’s real target. Lori knew it too and turned to continue her pursuit of Dawn, who by this time had escaped her room. Rachel used her telekinesis on the bedroom’s carpet, bunching it up under Lori’s feet and causing her to trip on it.

“I won’t let you hurt her,” stated Rachel as she telekinetically ripped up the carpet and used it to entangle Lori.

“Is this really the best you can do?” asked Lori as she teleported out of Rachel’s trap and then blindsided her. “You really suck at using your powers. I’m doing better with them than you are and I’m still new at this.”

“That’s because I don’t really want to hurt you,” retorted Rachel as she managed to get her fingertips on Lori’s head. “I’ll show you why.”

Rachel shoved all her emotions into Lori’s brain. Lori screamed at the intrusion, thrashing as she tried to fight off the things she was feeling now. She saw the grief still present in Rachel’s heart over losing her best friend. She saw the anger Rachel felt towards her father and the Church of Blood. She saw Rachel’s fear that she would one day become like the rest of her family. Most of all though, Lori saw new emotions that exploded in dazzling colors across her mind. There was hope, compassion, love, and so many others. They went off like fireworks behind Lori’s eyes, the colors so bright that she thought she might go blind from them.

“Why?” asked Lori as she finally got away from Rachel, staggering in her blindness. “Why don’t you hate them for what they did to you?”

“Hate’s a pretty strong emotion but there are lots of them that are stronger,” said Rachel.

“I’m not like you,” said Lori, trying to put as much distance as she could between herself and Rachel. “I don’t have those emotions in me anymore.”

“Yes you do,” countered Rachel, saying it because she could see the colors in Lori’s emotional aura.

Lori turned and started running. All she wanted to do was get away from Rachel now. Any thoughts of revenge against Dawn were outweighed by the desire to flee in terror. Rachel had made her feel so many things that Lori swore she would never feel again. She looked down at herself and saw the black aura she was used to seeing. There were streaks of color now, as if she was trying to bring herself back to life again. She knew that was Rachel’s doing and she wanted no more of it. Lori barreled through the front door of Dawn’s house and immediately realized that things had gone from bad to worse. The front lawn was littered with police cars and the occupants of those cars had their guns trained squarely on her. Lori put up her hands and was about to attack when something struck her in the back. The bolt of magical energy stunned her and knocked her unconscious.

“We need to go,” stated The Enchantress as she looked at Rachel.

“When the hell did you learn how to teleport?” asked Rachel, having been surprised by The Enchantress’s sudden appearance.

“Since always,” shot back the sorceress before taking Rachel’s hand and then making them both disappear before the police could catch a glimpse of them. “You may be more powerful than me, Rachel Roth, but you aren’t as skilled as I am.”

Rachel was about to retort when she realized that they were back in June’s apartment. She gave the sorceress an icy glare, clearly not happy about The Enchantress’s treatment of Lori. The Enchantress customarily disregarded the glare and instead transformed back into June Moone.

“I’m sorry but there was no other way to catch up with you,” explained June. “I’m sorry about your friend too. You did everything you could. That should count for something.”

“It doesn’t feel like it,” admitted Rachel sadly.

“Rachel, don’t do this to yourself,” said June as she put a hand on the younger girl’s shoulder. “You should know how hard it is to let someone help you. Lori’s obviously just not ready for that yet.”

Rachel knew that June was telling the truth. It was hard to open your heart to someone. It was the most frightening thing in the world to let someone in. You always ran the risk of getting hurt. For so long, it was a risk that Rachel never wanted to take. Even now when she was starting to actually make friends, it was still hard. However, Rachel knew there was an even more painful feeling and it was that feeling of loneliness. It was looking at a crowd of people and wanting so desperately to be a part of it.

“I just wanted to give her a place to belong,” said Rachel sadly.

“I know,” said June as she hugged her friend. “I hope that she finds it someday.”

The powers always wore off after awhile. It was why Lori was so grateful to see Rachel every day at the coffee shop. Rachel’s powers were like a drug for her and she found herself needing that daily hit of it. The way things were going now, Lori didn’t think she would be getting another dose of that power for a long time. That meant she was stuck being normal. Lori hated normal but there was something else she hated more, or rather someone. A new name was now at the top of her hit list and that name was Rachel Roth. Lori had learned some things when Rachel had used her powers on her. Memories and emotions were tied together so closely that sometimes they couldn’t be separated. When Rachel’s emotions had forced their way into Lori’s mind, some of Rachel’s memories came with them. Those memories held information, little chunks of it that could be useful in the future.

“I’m Detective McKenna,” said the African-American woman as she took a seat across from Lori. “You’ve compiled a pretty impressive rap sheet in such a short time, Zechlin. I’d consider you a criminal prodigy.”

“Fast learner,” cracked Lori, straining against the cuffs that kept her in her chair.

“And is that how you plan to explain the rather unusual abilities you displayed?” asked Detective McKenna.

Melody McKenna wasn’t as naive as some of her colleagues. She had seen the news reports about strange things happening all over the country. There was the man in Metropolis who could fly, the strange Batman of Gotham, and a host of other individuals with unusual abilities. Even in the city of San Francisco, weird occurrences were more frequent these days. McKenna wanted to know why these things were happening in a city whose people she had sworn to protect and serve. So far, the police had never been able to catch anyone connected to that weirdness, or at least anyone who would talk about it that is. She was hoping that Lori Zechlin could change that.

“Would you believe me if I told you it was magic?” asked Lori.

“You’d be surprised what I believe. There have been reports of a girl in a purple jacket going around beating up criminals. I noticed when we brought you in, you were wearing a jacket but it wasn’t purple. Did you decide to change colors?”

“Purple’s never been my color,” said Lori. “I prefer black, like you couldn’t notice that already. I don’t give a crap about your investigation, Detective. I just care about getting even with one person. It’s kinda funny actually. That one person is the same person you’re looking for.”

“You’re telling me you know who this girl in the purple jacket is?” asked McKenna.

“I’ll plead guilty to the murders of those drug dealers,” said Lori. “Hell, we can throw in what happened tonight too. I’ll use an insanity defense, get to spend some time in a nice padded cell. You promise to help make that happen, I’ll tell you what I know about the girl in purple. Deal?”

“Let’s see what info you have first,” decided McKenna.

“Her name is Rachel Roth,” said Lori with an evil smile. “I’m not saying anything more until we work out a deal.”