Chapter 1
Listen, my children, I’ve a tale to tell
Of wishing on pennies in deep wishing wells,
Of sticks and stones and ice cream cones
And tolling Cathedral bells.
— From An Ode to Childhood, Annalise Phenix
[Koishikawa Korakuen Garden, Tokyo, Japan — Marie]
Marie knew the willow-green dress was wrong the moment she saw the blood-red bridge. She stepped to her left, off the path, and vanished into the overhanging willow branches. Thomas was an idiot if he thought that bridge was a good location for a swap.
Too open. She’d make an easy target.
Fear would get her killed.
Opening a mental closet, she shoved the terror beast inside and slammed the door, bolting the lock. She went through the steps for cleaning and loading her gun, allowing the familiar rite to calm her. She repeated the exercise until her psionic abilities were under control.
She searched the surrounding area psionically. Lots of people. That could be good.
When the contact changed the meeting place from the Full Moon Bridge to the Tsutenkyo she hadn’t realized how utterly void of cover she would be. Short of diving head-first into the rocks below, the only way on or off that bridge was exposed.
A bullet-proof vest would be good right about now. Wouldn’t draw much more attention. Oceans of green in this garden, and the contact picks a red bridge.
So much for being invisible.
A couple strolled the path only a foot from her, their minds too full of each other to notice anything. A woman crossed the bridge pushing a baby carriage and Marie smelled the faint scent of jasmine that always reminded her of Dana. A group of school children explored the distant rice paddy. Her contact was just entering the garden.
There was a threat, but she couldn’t get the direction. Perhaps it was just her own fear echoing back at her. She didn’t want to get in a shoot-out around this many people.
Time to move. She had to be in place before the contact arrived.
Standing on the bridge, feeding the fish in the pond far below, she sensed the focused attention of those nearby. Their minds echoed with images of how picturesque she looked. She resisted the urge to hunch over the rail to make a smaller target.
Despite the tingling along her left temple, she couldn’t find the threat. Of course, if the shooter were a psi-nil, he’d be imperceptible.
She followed her contact’s movements through the traditional Japanese garden, could see him in her mind as clearly as the swarming koi below. She sprinkled the last grains from a small paper sack onto the silent sea of hungry mouths just as the well-dressed man moved to stand at her shoulder. He was a hyped-up ball of nerves, his head springing from side to side, watching for any sign of attack.
Amateur.
He spoke the right code phrase, an inconsequential greeting in Japanese. His voice was low, soft, his tone even and respectful, but his thoughts were clouded, paranoid.
Concerning.
She crumpled her empty sack.
The contact bowed and traded his full bag for hers before dashing away down the steep slope.
Stupid amateur.
She pocketed the bag and strolled down the opposite side of the bridge. Her right hand slipped into the false pocket she’d sewn in her skirt. Her fingertips brushed the textured grip of the gun she wore strapped to her thigh.
She tasted the moist air in an attempt to expand her range, locate whoever was targeting her. Jasmine again, and to her right, a psionic emptiness.
Marie!
Marie heard someone scream her name inside her head. She knew the voice, knew the terror.
And she knew Dana’s scream came from the other side of the planet.
Time slowed. With a practiced motion, she whirled, ducked and came up, gun in hand, her eyes locating the attacker’s weapon just as the blinding flash exploded.
[Los Gatos, CA, USA — Dana]
Marie!
I woke, heart leaping after the fading vision. She wasn’t dead. She couldn’t be dead. I’d know if Marie was dead.
Donald grumbled awake. “Dana, go back to sleep.”
The nightmare wove an inescapable spell, the images too real, too vivid. I sat on the edge of the bed, fingers clawing the mattress.
Breathe. My breaths came in tiny sniffs like a fish thrown onto land. I stared into the dark searching for another glimpse of Marie. I had to get under control, calm down, focus my abilities, then maybe I could reach Marie. Help her.
My husband switched on the lamp. He put on his glasses and squinted at me with his clinical microscopic gaze. “Did you take your medication tonight?”
I winced at the light. “Apollina gives it to me every night.”
I’d sketched Donald once, early in our marriage, enjoying his clean form of toned muscle. I’d played with his light Germanic coloring, captured the marble in his hazel eyes. The picture disappeared from my studio during one of his affairs.
He placed his hand on my upper arm and drew me into the emotional icebox of his embrace. “You should be sleeping. I’ll order another blood workup. If the dosage is too low….”
I pulled away. “No need. It was just a nightmare. I’ll make some hot cocoa and read for a few minutes.”
Cheerful, smile cheerfully. My lips twitched. Traitors.
Donald studied my expression until he seemed convinced and lay back down. “Wake me if you need me.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll be fine.”
I went down to my studio. Safe inside, I leaned on the closed door and fought to catch my breath. I didn’t want him to check my blood levels. He’d see I didn’t have any drugs in my system. He would realize I’d caught on that they weren’t anti-depressants, but anti-psychotics.
My husband thinks I’m crazy.
Either that or he’s using meds to keep me from discovering his latest affair.
Two days of ditching the pills and the fog in my mind was on the edge of lifting. Clarity ebbed and flowed like the tide, wafting through my world playing hide-and-seek with reality. How many days before I could think?
Desperate to capture the vision’s images on canvas before they slipped away, I paced my sanctuary and tried to control my breathing. The room was an artistic space complete with high ceilings, dark paneling, and rich red leather furniture: an elegant cage.
Marie. I sensed her, smelled the familiar scent of roses. Distant. Guarded.
She wasn’t dead, but she wasn’t sharing, either. My heart rate returned to normal.
Setting aside the sketch I’d been working on earlier, I put a tall canvas on the easel and adjusted the track lighting to center me in an illuminated pool, banishing the darkness to the edges of the room and the night outside floor-to-ceiling windows.
Glass. Broken glass was the first image to capture, like a shot had pierced the psychic wall separating us.
Marie, Lara and I had been able to experience each other’s emotions since we met in college, but life pulled us apart, and I’d respected their privacy. I hadn’t noticed when Donald’s medication dulled my gift, but now that wall was shattering.
Using a pencil, I drew the breaking point in the upper right hand corner of the canvas, separating the remaining portions into shards, a technique I’d learned glancing through Marie’s comic books.
I sketched for hours. Just after dawn, I heard Donald wake. I locked the door, moved the easel away from the windows, lay down on the sofa, and pulled a blanket over me.
The wood floors creaked, then stopped. He paused outside my door. The handle rattled. I waited. Listening. Barely breathing. He stepped away and I heard the sounds of him leaving the house. I watched him come to the window. Let him think I’d fallen asleep in the comfort of my studio. That wasn’t unusual.
The car pulled away, and I heard Apollina getting breakfast.
I returned to my drawing.
In one section, I’d drawn a mass of hungry koi, their all-consuming mouths open, snapping at nothing. Another held my best friend’s face, frozen in the act of turning toward her assailant. Still another held the gun.
Had I known anything about guns, the level of detail would have made sense. Instead, the realism of that gun heightened my feeling of having been possessed.
The black sketch that filled the canvas was alien to me. Had she seen him? I desperately wanted to put hope into the picture, but felt little. The threat remained. My friend was in danger, and somehow this vision held a key, otherwise, why had our connection chosen this instant to return?
Apollina knocked, and I opened the door so she could bring in my breakfast. “Good morning, Dana.” Her voice was a gloss of cheer that did little to hide her concern.
There is not a bit of plump on our housekeeper. I’ve never seen her work out, but she must. I’m surprised Donald has never hit on her. He goes for red-heads, but then Apollina is a little older than his usual. He also tends to like women he can control. Her teal eyes hold too much intelligence for Donald, no matter how sultry her French accent.
“Interesting drawing.” She held the tray balanced on one lean hip while she examined my work.
“Just leave that on the coffee-table.”
“Dr. Rosenthal made me promise I’d watch you take your medicine. He said you had a nightmare again last night.” Her expression was tight, as if my husband’s name was bitter.
“It was nothing.” I put the pill in my mouth, followed by a long drink of orange juice.
Her head angled towards the easel. “That doesn’t look like nothing.”
I stuck out my tongue. “There, happy?”
She narrowed her eyes. “No. I’d be happy if you’d go out and breathe fresh air.”
“Not today.”
She left and I spat the pill into the sink, watching it vanish down the drain before returning to my drawing.
A tranquil Japanese garden filled one shard of the drawing. It reminded me of a place I’d visited often with Marie and Lara, only this area was more wild, the chasm beneath the bridge was deep.
The drugs were still in my blood, urging me to set the picture aside, lulling me with the promise of sleep.
My nerves ached for the remembered harmonic link with my friends that had been both beauty and nightmare before I married Donald. Before Marie joined SciTech. Before Lara became a witch.
Before Kevin vanished.
Kevin would have believed me. He knew I wasn’t crazy. Kevin was psi.
Like me.
Kevin never doubted me. But then he’d vanished. SciTech had transferred him overseas. Donald said he’d heard the job was a cover, that Kev had been admitted into a psych ward. Wherever he was, Kevin wasn’t coming back and Donald had always been there. Deliberate, solid, philandering Donald.
The koi in my picture should have been iridescent with shades of red, orange, and yellow, but I’d drawn them in black and white — the way Marie processed the world.
Hours later, exhausted from the furious sketching, all the picture lacked was meaning. Had Marie been shot? Why was my best friend a target?
I stepped back and caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror: disheveled, hair askew, dressing gown coated in a fine layer of chalk dust.
If I wasn’t careful, I’d be locked away like Kevin. The last time I’d tried to divorce Donald, he’d threatened to have me committed. Even through the drug-induced haze, I’d known I was trapped unless I had proof. Donald always followed through on his threats.
Swallowing the bile of that thought, I went upstairs and dressed to face the day that was mostly past, and returned to my studio. The mirror showed a sparkle in my eyes, a hint of Marie’s spirit. The three of us had shared that fire, and Kevin had sworn to protect us. I wouldn’t be able to hide that spark once it flamed.
Some people talk of seeing auras. I don’t see auras, I smell them. In my experience, psionics is not a sixth sense. It heightens the first five senses, most of all smell. And the pine-scented breeze that swirled around me smelled like Kevin, reminding me of an autumn forest shrouded in fog.
The phone rang and I shivered. It might not be logical, but … think of the devil and he would appear.
“Kev.” I choked his name into the phone.
“You haven’t lost your touch.” His laughter rustled like aspens.
A hundred questions caught in the bottleneck of my throat. I stared at the phone with my mouth opening and closing like a starving koi.
The silence lingered.
I fought to sort through my emotions, distracted by his tentative mental embrace. I glanced at the drawing of a warm forest glade I’d hung over the hearth, the trees so like Kevin’s eyes. “I didn’t think I’d hear from you again.” My voice was a whisper. It should be strong with the force of lost years, but the fear of answers I might not want strangled my words.
No, I didn’t want to know where he’d been.
“I’m sorry,” he said at last.
I wanted to be angry, should be angry, but the tenderness in his words cut to the lonely part of my heart. I could almost feel him, sense his protectiveness. I missed the safety of having him near, longed to lean on his shoulder and spill out all of my frustration and fear. “Why are you calling me? I’m married.”
“I know. I won’t offer congratulations.”
“No.”
“I’m calling because you’re in danger.”
“Marie is, not me.”
“No, both of you — all three of you are in danger.”
“From who?”
“I’m not sure yet, but I’ve got suspicions. I need you to promise me you’ll stay with Don for a while longer.”
He’d know if I lied. “You know my husband?”
“Don’t change the subject. I don’t have much time.”
“What danger?” I fiddled with a bit of charcoal.
“I can’t tell you on the phone. I’ll make sure Marie is safe, then go after Lara. If you stay put, I know you’ll be protected. You’re safe with Don.”
“You’ve decided to go back to being our protector?”
“Hard to believe, but I’ve never stopped.”
Glancing down, I was surprised to find my hand covered in black from the charcoal. I put the phone on my shoulder and washed my hands at the wet bar. “You don’t know what my marriage is like. He’s had one affair after another. He’s been keeping me drugged, Kev. I looked up the meds he’s been giving me. It was an anti-psychotic. I’m done. I’m getting out before he figures out I can think again and has me committed.”
“Please. Stay.”
The warm light of sunset was fading, lending a bloody glow to the finished picture.
Donald was late, if he even was at work.
I let all of my frustration and confusion flow through the link, letting Kevin taste the loneliness of his disappearance, feel how I’d fallen for Donald, believing he could know me in time. Let him see the years I’d spent looking for closeness. All of my pain poured into my friend’s open heart.
Kevin accepted the sensations I was projecting, took them and refused to be swayed. “I know this is hard. I know you’ll make your own decisions, but I’m begging you to trust me.”
“I can’t stay here, Kev. I have to get out. I’m free now. Once he realizes, he’ll find another way to control me. I may not get another chance.”
“Trust me and stay with Don.” Kevin’s tone was tight. “I have to go.”
The line was dead.
I sat, listening to the house creak, holding the phone to my heart until Donald’s familiar grip on my shoulder stopped my heartbeat.
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