Twilight Prophecy

“It’s okay,” he told her. “It’s okay. It’s not as bad as it looks.”

“What … what’s that light? What are you doing?”

The glow intensified, just as it always did at the end of a healing. It grew brighter and then died, just that fast. Like the flash of a firefly on a summer country night.

“Get the fuck off her, pal!”

A pair of hands gripped his shoulders, jerking him bodily up and away from her. He’d been unaware, for a few ticks of the clock, of what was happening around him. Other black coats had emerged—some from the studio, others from the dark-colored vans that were lining the street. An ambulance had backed up to the curb, and the medics sprang into action the second James was no longer blocking their way.

He was weak. He was always a little weak after a healing, and this made two in one night, only a bit more than an hour apart. He felt disoriented, too. Il-logically, he didn’t want anyone else near this woman, and he started to push his way back to her, but his sister touched his arm.

There’s nothing we can do now, she said, mentally. Too many witnesses, and we don’t want these suits to know who the hell we are, J.W. Not if they’re who I think they are.

But they’re taking her—

We’ll get her. We will. But later. This is too risky.

Even as they carried on the mental conversation, one of the medics looked up. “There’s not a mark on her. I don’t understand. Where the hell did all this blood come from?”

“Just get her into the ambulance,” one of the men in black ordered, and then he turned, scanning the crowd—in search, James knew, of him.

The man had a scar running from the outer corner of his left eye, across his cheek, reaching almost to the center of his chin, and eyes the color of wet cement.

“You,” he said loudly, pointing at James, who was some twenty feet away. “I want to talk to you.”

Brigit tugged his arm. “We have to go. Now.”

He knew she was right. But it was killing him to leave Lucy Lanfair. Even as his sister tugged him toward her waiting car, James was looking back, watching them lift the gurney on which the beautiful professor lay, strapped down now, into the back of the ambulance.

She was looking straight back at him. She didn’t reach out, and she didn’t speak, but she couldn’t seem to take her eyes off him, either.

And then they closed the doors, and Brigit gave him a shove.

“I said wait!” Scarface commanded. He was reaching into his coat now, and James had little doubt he was about to pull a gun.

They’d made it back to the car, and James reached for the passenger door just as Brigit started the motor with a roar. Her window was down, and she was looking back at the man. As James predicted, he was leveling a gun.

“Freeze! Don’t make me—”

Brigit lifted a hand, palm up, fingers loosely touching her thumb.

“Don’t kill him!” James shouted.

She flicked her fingers open as her gaze intensified, and a beam of light pulsed from her eyes toward the man. Something exploded, shaking the sidewalk, and even the street, so powerfully that several onlookers fell down. Dust and rubble rained down as people ran screaming for cover. At the same instant, Brigit was gunning the motor again, spinning the tires, shifting rapidly through the gears as she sped away.

James turned in his seat, wondering if the debris falling on the crowd included bits of Scarface. But no, it seemed to be a magazine stand that had stood a few yards from him.

“Don’t worry,” Brigit told him. “The vendor had left his post to gawk at the lady who was gunned down on the sidewalk. No casualties, though I think letting that scar-cheeked bastard live was a mistake.”

“You sound just like Rhiannon, who, I think, originated the phrase ‘Kill them all and let the gods sort them out.’”

“Funny you should mention her.”

He closed his eyes. “Tell me that’s not where we’re going.”

“Who the hell else is going to be able to tell us what’s going on, J.W.?”

“I keep telling you, I go by James now.”

“Yeah. You do keep telling me that. It’s irritating. I wish you’d stop.”

She took a corner so fast that he was mashed up against the door, and he knew there was no going back now.

He’d been sucked back in. Just as he’d always pretty much known he would be. His family were not the kind who let go easily.

The ambulance attendant was sticking a needle into her arm the second the doors swung shut, and Lucy gasped at the unexpected pinch of it. Then she looked up at the young man and said, “I really think I’m all right.”

“Just relax, Professor Lanfair. You’re in good hands.”

“How do you know my na … uh …” Ocean waves came washing into her brain, crashing and then slowly sucking her logical mind back out to sea again. “What did you … give me?”

“Just relax now. It’s all fine. Just relax.”

He was smiling and his eyes were kind and sort of hazel. But they weren’t those other eyes. Those piercing, electric-blue eyes she’d been lost in moments before. And this medic’s hands, while soothing and strong, were not the same hands she’d felt on her before, either. That other touch had been so powerful she’d felt it in every cell of her body. A touch that she knew had somehow … healed her.

And that man. That face. That familiar, beautiful face. Something in her, something deep inside her, had recognized him—though she knew she had never seen him before in her life.

Perhaps, she thought, he was an angel.

“Time to wake up now, Professor. Come on. You’ve had a good rest. Wake up. We need to talk.”

Lucy opened her eyes. But the white room was tipping slowly one way, then the other, growing on one side, shrinking on the other, then reversing itself before just spinning slowly. There was a woman. Black hair with a white streak. A man with a big scar on his face. It must have been his voice she heard.

That was all she noticed before she slammed her eyes closed again.

“I’m going to be sick.”

“No, you aren’t,” the woman said softly. “Do you remember who you are, dear? Hmm?”

“Am in the hospital? Did I die?” God, she was so disoriented.

“You’re safe, and you’re fine, and you’re going home soon.”

Her voice was deep. A little gravelly. A Stevie Nicks voice. Lucy loved Stevie Nicks, mainly because her mom had.

“Now, tell me your name,” Stevie Nicks said.

Lucy smiled, remembering the soundtrack of her childhood, before it had all gone so dark. “Lucy. Dad used to call me Lucille. But I hated it. I wouldn’t hate it now, though. I’d love to hear him call me Lucille again.”