TWENTY-TWO

 

“Thank the stars you’re here.” Olivia hugged me as I entered Mystic Dream. “Did you have trouble getting onto the grounds?” She scowled. “I know they mean well, but last night I was at the store when they arrived and as I drove up to the door, they had guns drawn and made me show ID before letting me get out of the car, let alone enter my own house.” She shook her head. “As if their weapons would have chance in hell of stopping a demon.”

“I was lucky.” I shook my head. “Agent Runyan had met me at the Chesco meeting. You’re going to think I’m kidding, but Bennett’s scent still lingered around him.” I sighed. “Not only didn’t I ask Harrigan to assign protection, but I don’t know how to get rid of them.” I smiled at the twins asleep on the sofa.

Olivia crossed her arms. “I know. Bruce and the other SAO agents are getting tired of staying invisible.”

Gregory stormed out of the bedroom. “Okay, I’m dressed and these guys have got to go.”

“What’s wrong?” My eyes widened at the depth of his anger. He’d always been so self-controlled and low-key. Fatherhood brought out the lion in him.

“Their presence is hindering us. If we don’t get rid of them, someone’s going to get hurt, and most likely it’ll be one of them. Then what do we do?”

Miranda, Gregory, get out here. Two agents are tied up behind some sea oats. Near the rock garden in the backyard. As I heard Bruce’s telepathic message, I looked at Gregory. “Did you hear what I heard?”

He nodded.

“What did you hear?” Olivia stared at us both.

“Nothing to worry about. Stay in here with the kids.” He nodded at me and we ran out the back door. I watched as an agent vanished in a spiral of smoke. Running to where Bruce stood, semi-solid, he sent us another telepathic message. I can’t materialize in front of them. They’re on the other side of those sea oats. Then, he completely vanished.

Running around the large clump of long reeds, we found the agents bound and gagged, small burns near their ties and burn marks on the cheeks. We removed an agent’s duct tape.

“Ouch,” Agent Runyan said. “What the hell was that thing that jumped me?”

“I’ve got a knife strapped to my ankle,” Agent Taylor told Gregory. “Cut me loose then get back inside so I can check where that giant went.”

Gregory sliced both men’s bindings.

“The guy came out of nowhere. He had to be seven feet tall.” Taylor stared at his blisters. “Where the hell did these come from?”

“Hell,” I murmured, then frowned. “What happened to the agent out front?”

“Jordan left before you arrived. There’s only Taylor and me.” Runyan looked at his watch. “I’ve been back here for twenty minutes.”

I frowned. Xaphan had obviously jumped the real agents back here. But, Runyan met me out front less than ten minutes ago, only it wasn’t Runyan, but Bennett, because there weren’t any red eyes. Hopefully it was his last salvo before taking off for more fertile hunting grounds. Corruption, not the actual murder of children or angels, was his specialty.

* * * *

 

Initially, the FBI fought our request that they drop their security detail. They agreed only because Gregory told them he’d hired his own security detail and introduced the SAO as our protection. With the help of Jared’s mind control, Harrigan agreed we’d made the right decision. Just like that we were on our own again.

“I hope we did the right thing,” Olivia said over lunch with Natasha and me three days later. “But it feels right, so I was willing to join you guys for lunch and leave Gregory and the twins at home. Of course, they’re surrounded by the guys from the SAO. Things have been unbelievably quiet—it feels like the calm before the storm.”

“There was no other decision. We had to get rid of the feds. Otherwise we’d be spending all our time protecting them and not you and the twins.” I took a bite of my shrimp salad sandwich. “But, you’re right, there’s trouble ahead. The festival’s only a couple of days from now so enjoy the lull; because I predict fireworks very soon.”

“I believe that,” Natasha said. “I’m even having nightmares, which is rare for me. Most of the time I dream of nude George Clooneys and barely clad Colin Farrells.”

I laughed. “What does Seth think of that?”

She shrugged. “Seth says he has this recurring dream of a pool full of women, including Angelina Jolie, Megan Fox and assorted other foxes.” She grinned. “He also says he’s one relieved Evolve to find me beside him when he wakes up.”

“And we thought the man wasn’t slick.” Olivia grinned. “So what are you having nightmares about?”

“They’re convoluted,” Natasha pulled the dill pickle slices off her tuna fish sandwich. “One minute I see this woman dressed in long flowing white robes and, as she gestures in the air, children run out the doors of all the homes on the beach. Then she leads them down the shore to a warehouse and locks them inside. Once all the children are in there, the woman turns into this hideous hag in black jagged skirts. Then, Poseidon rises from the sea in his clamshell, and waving his trident in the air, he orders the waves to start crashing over the building. Gale force winds are blowing yet his long gray curls barely moved. Then the next thing you know, the building and all the children are gone.”

“Lilith and Poseidon are scary enough. Working together they’re terrifying.” I rubbed my arms, willing the goose bumps to go away.

“That’s not the frightening part.” Natasha put down her sandwich. “This huge Tartaros buzzard flies over the ocean with David in its talons and drops him into Poseidon’s waiting arms who then laughs as he takes David under the waves.”

Olivia’s eyes filled with unshed tears. “Thank the stars you don’t have Rae’s or Farley’s clairvoyance. Otherwise, I’d be quaking in my boots.”

I read Natasha’s mind as she looked at me. Don’t tell her I have it but haven’t used it since my second life.

* * * *

 

From the table on the patio, I gazed at the sunset painting the beach in pinks and golden oranges. “Did you know Natasha has been sublimating her clairvoyant powers since her second life?”

Jared looked up from his ice cream. “I did, but I’m surprised she told you.”

I turned in my seat. “How did you know?”

“I was there in her second life. At least, I was in Rome when they brought her before the counsel. She probably doesn’t remember me.”

“Why was she there?”

He set his bowl on the table and faced me. “Nothing by today’s standards. But back then they thought it was heresy.”

“What on earth did she do, Jared? Spill it.”

He raked his hands through his hair and sighed. “You have to understand, I was there on similar charges. Both of us had foreseen a major meteorite shower. Big ones, not those small ones that burn up in the atmosphere. I didn’t know Natasha at the time. Not that it would’ve mattered, we were both Incogs so we had no memories other than that life’s. But our psychic powers were alive and well. Natasha went so far as to tell them the largest stone, a conical formation, the Needle of Cybele, would be found in Phyrgia. True to our prophesies, stones fell in all their blazing glory. Some statesmen told Romans it was the end of the earth. Cattle were found dead where they grazed. Craters were discovered in the middle of fields. It truly was like the Apocalypse.” At my glare, he smiled. “The one humans think is going to happen.”

“Get to the point, will you?”

“I was a centurion so I at least had some status and it put me in a better bargaining seat. But Natasha was only a slave. So when she told them the stone was being worshipped in their recently conquered land and that it was wrong to worship anyone but the Creator, she’d committed blasphemy and got stoned to death in the streets. But first they made her watch as her daughter Friona was killed, then hung from a pole. I said something equally damning but got sentenced to the Colisseum as a gladiator.”

I gasped. “No wonder she’s never wanted children.”

“It’s also why you didn’t know she was clairvoyant. Something like that marks you for eternity.”

“Then why did she tell us she had a dream?”

He shrugged. “I suppose it’s her way of telling you what’s going to happen. She cloaks it as nothing more than a dream. Then, she can say her incessant thinking about it made it come true as the universe accepted it as real.”

“Do you think that’s really going to happen?”

“Do you think you can really read minds? The dream may be nothing more than a dream she’s mixed up on purpose, but I’d bet good money on it being real.”

Just then, a spiral of smoke rocketed down from the sky and reared back cobra-style. Kendra, the snake, materialized into her red-haired persona before me. She stared at me, her red eyes aflame. “What a sweet domestic scene. Two lovers conjecturing those nasty demons’ next conniving, brilliant and deceiving move.”

She placed an elbow-length gloved hand on her hip. “Miranda, you are an endless amazement to me with you’re underestimating the gravity of your situation. Here’s a suggestion, sell the movie rights once you’ve lost all and no longer have your friend, her husband, the twins, and,” she glanced at Jared, “your lover with you.” She sighed. “I suppose you’ll be busy visiting Olivia once she has been checked into angel rehab. Oh, wait, she won’t be there. Remember Salem when she almost didn’t make it? This time she won’t.”

I lunged for Kendra only to have her laugh in my face as she dematerialized and spiraled up out of sight. Tears streaming down my face, I raced to Jared. He pulled me down in his lap, shushing me and rocking me back and forth. “It won’t happen. Ms. C won’t let it happen. I will never let their plan succeed.”

* * * *

 

The next morning I woke up sore. I’d had little sound sleep despite the shield I had erected before lying down. All the previous day’s events replayed in my mind, including the chiding by that demon, Kendra. She made her sister look angelic. I had also mourned Natasha’s loss for her through the early morning hours. It would do no good to mention I knew the truth. I just needed to remember to give her extra TLC when I saw her.

To the right, the bedcovers were turned back. Jared had apparently already taken off for the bookstore. I’d never heard him get up. I struggled out of bed, put on my robe and made my way to the shower, stopping at the top of the stairs as the doorbell pealed out Westminster chimes. Down the stairwell, Harry the butler opened the front door.

A Neptune Beach police officer stood on the threshold. “Is Ms. McChesney here?”

“I’m Miranda McChesney.” I all but ran down the stairs, my heart thumping in my chest. Please don’t let anything be wrong with Jared.

“Ms. McChesney, I believe you have a cook named Pandora Norris?”

My mouth gaped open. “I do. We call her Pokie. Do you need to speak to her? I’m sure she’s in the kitchen…”

“She didn’t show up for work this morning, ma’am,” Harry said.

“Didn’t Uncle Paddy call to see what happened to her?”

Harry shook his head. “Mr. Patrick went surf fishing at dawn.”

“Your cook is in the hospital.” The officer’s grim expression did nothing for my racing pulse. “She asked that I contact you.”

“Is she okay?”

He nodded. “She’s in stable condition in the ER, but someone worked her over pretty good. She’s got a couple of broken ribs and burn marks on her arms. We found her in the alley behind the Sand and Surf Diner.”

“Oh, my heavens! Why would anyone…” I stopped, knowing full well why someone would—Xaphan. “Thanks for coming by. I’ll get dressed and go see her.”

Less than an hour later, I arrived at Pokie’s hospital room. Knocking, I entered to see a nurse huddled over my dear friend, administering a new bag of IV fluids. “That’ll take about two hours to empty, Ms. Norris,” the nurse told her. “Then, the doctor will decide if you can leave or you need to be admitted.”

Turning, her head bowed, the diminutive woman left the room. I walked to Pokie’s side. “How are you feeling?”

“Lousy.” She tried to smile. “But don’t worry, it’s only a couple of broken bones. That ain’t enough to keep ol’ Pokie down.”

“How did this happen?”

“I was walkin’ to work, like always. You know as well as me that your part of Neptune Beach ain’t no criminal neighborhood. So I wasn’t lookin’ ’round for a seven foot tall monster jumpin’ out at me. He dragged me into the alley, slugged me a couple of times, and as he held my wrists, I smelled my own flesh. Don’t know how the son of a gun did it. ’Fore he left me, he laughed and said, ‘Ain’t no one near Miranda gonna be free from injury.’” She jerked her arm. “My arm’s burnin’ somethin’ awful.”

Looking at the bag of fluids hanging next to Pokie, I noted it was sterile water. “I don’t think this should be here.” I pushed the call button. “Get a nurse in here now, not the one who was here, and call security.”