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By the time he returned to the dining room, the woman and the couple were gone.

 
     
     
     
     
    CHAPTER
    5
     
    KATE

     
     
     
    Yekaterina Malinov trudged through the snow in her well-worn boots and ill-fitting coat.  The frigid air blew beneath her collar and seemed to invade every cell of her body as she crossed Kiev Polytechnic Institute campus. 
    Yekaterina, known to friends and family as Kate, enjoyed learning.  Her dream was to become a physician, like her father, but with the recent economic downturn throughout the Ukraine, there was little money for higher education.  During the six years since graduating from secondary school, she had completed just over half of her university requirements.  The subsidies from the government did little to ease the financial burden, so she took classes as her family could afford them, usually one at a time. 
    As she walked the half mile from the university to the small downtown apartment she shared with the rest of her family, she contemplated the reality of her latest struggle.  In less than two months, her younger sisters, twins, would be graduating from secondary school.  She knew they were both far more intelligent than she was and they deserved an opportunity to attend university as well.  The unfortunate truth was that even with the government stipend her sisters would receive, her family could not afford to send all three girls to college at the same time.  She knew it was time to leave school and pick up a second job to help put her sisters through college.
    Along the walk, she stopped in a handful of retail stores to inquire about job openings.  As was always the case, none were hiring.  She was frustrated with the lack of opportunities for her generation.  After the country gained its independence from the Soviet Union, times had been tough.  Eventually, the Ukraine had found its place in the world and experienced economic success at the turn of the century.  In those years, she had convinced her mother to open a bakery and her father had developed a thriving medical practice.  However, since the global economy had recently declined, life had taken a turn for the worse in the country as a whole and in her family as well.  Her mother had scaled back the bakery workers to a skeleton crew, and although her father still saw patients, many of them could no longer afford to pay him for his care.
    Since times had gotten tough, she had begun to rely more and more on her gift to help her family get by.  As a child, she had learned early on she could manipulate the people in her life into doing the things she wanted them to do.  And although she could have spent her childhood persuading her friends and family into giving her toys and candy, she found she was happiest when she was using her ability in the service of others.
    During the summer when she was seven, her family had taken a much anticipated trip to the countryside for a three day vacation.  During their travels, they happened upon a small town with a gelato shop.  Her father had treated her and her sisters each to a delicious cup of icy goodness which they enjoyed while sitting on the front stoop of the shop.  While they ate, a large group of farm children passed by, hot and tired from a day spent working in the fields.  Watching them trudge down the street, she remarked to her sisters that she thought the farm children looked as though they would like some gelato too, if only she could buy some for them.
    At that moment, the shopkeeper emerged from the store and announced the cooling unit of the main freezer had suddenly shorted out and the gelato would need to be eaten immediately before it melted and caused a mess.  He began passing out bowls of gelato to everyone on the street, including all of the farm children.  It was at that moment she began to fully understand the power of her gift.  She realized she only needed to acknowledge her own conscious desires, and somehow, her abilities