The Law of Nines

Terry Goodkind

To Jeri, the love of my life, who is always there for me.

She gives me her strength when I’m weak and her special smile when I’m strong. No one knows as well as she everything that has brought me to this place, this book, this new road. I could never be who I am, or accomplish all that I do, without her at my side every step of the way. She completes me.

This one is for her.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

At Putnam I wish to thank the publisher, Ivan Held, and my editor, Susan Allison, for their boundless enthusiasm and support.

I would like to give special thanks to my friend Andrew Freeman, not only for all his help, but for bringing his remarkable vision, talent, enthusiasm — and unfailing sense of humor — into my life.

My thanks also to Heather Baror for coming up with great ad copy as if it were the easiest thing in the world. It is not, believe me.

1

IT WAS THE PIRATE FLAG flying atop the plumbing truck that first caught his attention. The white skull and crossbones seemed to be straining to keep from being blown off the flapping black flag as the flatbed truck, apparently trying to beat the light, cannonballed through the intersection. The truck heeled over as it cut an arc around the corner. White PVC pipe rolled across the diamond plate of the truck bed, sounding like the sharp rattle of bones. At the speed it was traveling the truck looked to be in danger of capsizing.

Alex glanced to the only other person waiting at the curb with him. With his mind adrift in distracted thoughts he hadn’t before noticed the lone woman standing just in front of him and to the right. He didn’t even remember seeing where she’d come from. He thought that he saw just a hint of vapor rising from the sides of her arms into the chill air.

Since he wasn’t able to see the woman’s face, Alex didn’t know if she saw the truck bearing down on them, but he found it difficult to believe that she wouldn’t at least hear the diesel engine roaring at full throttle.

Seeing by the truck’s trajectory that it wasn’t going to make the corner, Alex snatched the woman’s upper arm and yanked her back with him.

Tires screeched as the great white truck bounced up over the curb right where Alex and the woman had been standing. The front bumper swept past, missing them by inches. Rusty dust billowed out behind the truck. Chunks of sod and dirt flew by.

Had Alex hesitated they both would have been dead.

On the white door just above the name “Jolly Roger Plumbing” was a picture of a jovial pirate with a jaunty black patch over one eye and a sparkle painted in the corner of his smile. Alex glared back as the pirate sailed past.

When he looked up to see what kind of maniac was driving he instead met the direct, dark glare of a burly passenger. The man’s curly beard and thick mat of dark hair made him look like he really could have been a pirate. His eyes, peering out of narrow slits above plump, pockmarked cheeks, were filled with a kind of vulgar rage.

The big man appeared infuriated that Alex and the woman would dare to be in the way of their off-road excursion. As the door popped open there was no doubt as to his combative intent.

He looked like a man stepping out of a nightmare.

Alex felt a cold wave of adrenaline flood through him as he mentally choreographed his moves. The passenger, who seemed to be getting ready to leap out of the still-moving truck, would reach him before the driver could join in, making it one against one — at least for a brief time. Alex couldn’t believe that it was happening, but it was and he knew that he was going to have to deal with it.

Calm fury filled him as he prepared himself for the unavoidable.

Everything slowed until each beat of his heart seemed to take an eternity. He watched the muscles in the man’s arm bulge as he held the door open. In response, Alex’s own muscles tightened, ready to meet the threat. His mind was cocooned in silence.

Just as the passenger’s stout leg swung out the open door, flashing lights and the sudden wail of a siren made the burly man turn his attention away. A police car, tires squealing, launched across the intersection in a way that suggested the cops were angered by the truck’s stunt. The police car had been parked beside a hedge to the side of the drive into the parking lot across the street. As they had sped past, the men in the truck apparently hadn’t seen the parked police car watching traffic. Lost in his own thoughts, Alex hadn’t, either.

The loudspeaker crackled to life. “Pull it over!”

The world seemed to rush back in.

The white plumbing truck, trailing a fog of dust, slowed as it rolled off the curb up ahead, the black-and-white police car right behind it. As the truck stopped, two policemen leaped out, hands resting at the ready on their guns as they approached from both sides of the truck at the same time. They yelled orders and both men carefully emerged with their hands up. In an instant the officers had them out and leaning on the front fenders of the truck.

Alex felt the tension drain out of his muscles, leaving his knees feeling weak.

As he turned his glare from the men being frisked, he found the woman’s gaze fixed on him. Her eyes were the luscious color of his finest sable artist brushes. It was clearly evident to him that behind those sensuous brown eyes she appraised the world around her with an incisive intellect.

She glanced deliberately down at his big hand still tightly gripping her upper arm. He had intended to toss her back out of harm’s way so that the passenger couldn’t hurt her, but the police had shown up first.

She looked up at him in silent command.

“Sorry,” he said, releasing her arm. “You were about to be run down by pirates.”

She said nothing.

He had meant his comment to be lighthearted, to ease the fright of what had nearly happened, but by her calm expression she didn’t appear to be the least bit amused. He hoped he hadn’t hurt her arm. He knew that sometimes he didn’t realize his own strength.

Not knowing what to do with his hands, Alex combed his fingers back through his thick hair as he stuffed his other hand in a pocket.

He cleared his throat, changed his tone to be more serious, and started over. “I’m sorry if I hurt your arm, but that truck would have hit you if I hadn’t pulled you back out of the way.”

“It matters to you?”

Her voice was as captivating as her eyes.

“Yes,” he said, a little puzzled. “I wouldn’t like to see anyone get hurt in an accident like that.”

“Perhaps it wasn’t an accident.”

Her expression was unreadable. He could only wonder at her meaning. He was at a loss as to how to respond.

The memory of the way she’d been standing at the curb still hung in the shadows in the back of his mind. Even lost in distant, dejected thoughts at the time, he had noticed that her body language hadn’t been quite right. Because he was an artist, a person’s balance, either at rest or in motion, stood out to him. There had been something out of the ordinary about the way she had been standing.

Alex wasn’t sure if, by her answer, she was simply trying to do the same as he had been doing — trying to lighten the heart-pounding scare of what had nearly happened — or if she was dismissing his chivalry as a presumptuous line. He imagined that a woman as attractive as she was had to deal with men constantly trying clever lines in order to meet her.

The satiny black dress that hugged her curves looked to be either high fashion or oddly out of time and place — he couldn’t quite decide which — as did the long, deep green wrap draped over her shoulders. Her luxuriant fall of soft, summer-blond hair could have gone either way as well.

Alex figured that she had to be on her way to the exclusive jewelry store that was the anchor of the upscale Regent Center across the street. The slanted glass façade was just visible beyond the shade of ash and linden trees spread across the broad grounds separating the upscale shops from Regent Boulevard.

He glanced over at the plumbing truck sitting at the curb. The strobing lights from the police car made the white truck look alternately blue and red.

After getting handcuffs on the passenger, the police officer pointed at the curb and told the man to sit beside the driver. The man sat and crossed his legs. Both wore dark work clothes covered with grime. While both men quietly did as they were told, neither looked to be the least bit cowed.

One of the officers started toward Alex as the other spoke into the radio clipped to his shirt at the shoulder.

“Are you two all right?” the man asked as he approached, his voice still carrying an adrenaline edge. “They didn’t hit you, did they?”

Both of the cops were young and built like weightlifters. Both had bull necks. Black, short-sleeved shirts stretched over the swell of their arms served only to emphasize the size of their muscles.

“No,” Alex said. “We’re fine.”

“Glad to hear it. That was quick thinking. For a minute I thought you two were going to be roadkill.”

Alex gestured toward the men in handcuffs. “Are they being arrested?”

With a quick glance he took in the woman, then shook his head. “No, unless they come back with warrants. With guys like this you never know what you’ve got, so we often cuff them for our own safety until they can be checked out. When my partner is finished writing up that ticket, though, I don’t think they’ll be in the mood to pull a stunt like this again for a while.”

That two cops this powerfully built would be worried about the guys in the truck to the point of cuffing them made Alex not feel so bad for being spooked when he’d looked into the dark eyes of the passenger.

He glanced at the badge and extended his hand. “Thanks for coming along when you did, Officer Slawinski.”

“Sure thing,” the man said as he shook Alex’s hand. By the force applied to the grip Alex figured that the man was still keyed up. Officer Slawinski turned away, then, eager to get back to the pirates.

The driver, still sitting on the curb, was thinner but just as mean-looking as the burly passenger. He sat stone-faced, giving brief answers as the officer standing over him asked questions while writing the ticket.

The two officers spoke briefly, apparently about the results of the warrant check, because Officer Slawinski nodded, then uncuffed the passenger and told him to get back in the truck. After climbing back in, the passenger rested a hairy arm out the side window as the other cop started uncuffing the driver.

In the truck’s big, square side mirror, Alex saw the man’s dark eyes glaring right at him. They were the kind of eyes that seemed to be out of place in a civilized world. Alex told himself that it had to be that in such a newly built, luxurious part of town the work-worn construction vehicles, despite there being a lot of them, all seemed to be out of place. In fact, Alex recalled having seen the Jolly Roger Plumbing truck before.

Alex’s small house, not far away, had once been at the outskirts of town among a cluster of other homes built in the seclusion of wooded hills and cornfields, but they had long since been swallowed by the ever-expanding city. He now lived in a desirable area, if not exactly on a desirable street or in a desirable house.

Alex stood frozen for a moment, staring at the grubby, bearded face watching him in the truck’s mirror.

Then the man grinned at him.

It was as wicked a grin as Alex had ever seen.

As the black flag atop the truck lifted in a gust of wind, the skull also gave Alex a grim grin.

He noticed then that the woman, ignoring the activity, was watching him. As the light turned green, Alex gestured.

“Would you allow me to escort you safely across the street?” he asked in a tone of exaggerated gallantry.

For the first time she smiled. It wasn’t a broad grin, or a smile that threatened to break into laughter, but rather a simple, modest curve of her lips saying that this time she got the lighthearted nature of his words.

Still, it seemed to make the world suddenly beautiful on what was otherwise a rather depressing day for him.

2

I’ D LOVE TO PAINT YOU SOMETIME — if you’d be interested, I mean,” Alex said as they made their way across the broad boulevard. “Paint me?” she asked, her brow twitching just a little. It was an achingly feminine look that invited an explanation.

“I’m an artist.”

He glanced at the traffic stopped across the intersection to his left, making sure that no rogue construction trucks were about to make another run at them. With the lights flashing on the police car sitting at the curb, everyone was driving cautiously.

He was glad to at last be away from the pirate plumbers. They looked to have developed a grudge. Alex felt a flash of anger at the injustice of their belligerent attitude toward him.

“So you paint portraits?” she asked.

Alex shrugged. “Sometimes.”

Portraits weren’t his specialty, although they did occasionally bring him some income. He would work for free, though, just for a chance to paint this woman. In his mind he was already analyzing the curves and planes of her features, trying to imagine whether he could ever get such an enchanting face right. He would never start such a work unless he was confident that he could get it perfect. This was not a woman he would want to render in anything less than perfection. Changing her in any way would be unthinkable.

He gestured to the low, elegant structure peeking through the shimmering leaves. “I have a few pieces at the gallery.”

She glanced to where he had indicated, almost as if she expected to see the gallery itself standing there.

“I’m headed there now, as a matter of fact. If you’d like to see some of my work, the gallery is down a little ways from Regent Jewelry. .”

His voice trailed off. He suddenly felt a little foolish at his presumption. He imagined that a woman like her would be interested only in the exclusive jewelry store or the boutiques. Since she wasn’t wearing any jewelry he wasn’t sure why he assumed such a thing, but he guessed he feared that she probably wasn’t interested in art — or his art, anyway.

“I’d like to see your work.”

He looked over at her. “Really?”

She nodded as she pulled a wavy lock of blond hair back off her face.

Alex felt his cell phone vibrate silently in his pocket, letting him know that another text message was being delivered. He sighed inwardly as he cut a straight line across the nearly empty parking lot. It was only midmorning; most people didn’t arrive until closer to lunchtime. A few dozen expensive cars, glittering in subdued shades of silvers, reds, and ambers, were parked in a cluster around the main entrance.

Message delivered, his phone finally stopped vibrating. Bethany, he was sure, was responsible. He hadn’t even known that his phone was capable of receiving text messages until after he’d met her several weeks back. After he’d gone out with her a second time she had started sending him text messages. They were painfully petty. He rarely read them anymore. She usually asked things like if he was thinking of her. He hardly even knew her. What was he supposed to say? That she hadn’t entered his mind?

He ignored the phone as he opened the center-pivot glass door for the woman. It wasn’t the kind of shopping area that lent itself to the financially timid. She glided through the doorway with the kind of grace and confidence born of being used to such places.

Before the door closed Alex glanced back across the lot, between the linden trees lining the edge of the street, to the white truck still sitting at the curb in front of the police car. He couldn’t make out the men inside.

As they passed into the hushed, grand seclusion inside, he was a little surprised to see the woman only glance at the alluring glimmer of Regent Jewelry. As they strolled through the halls, her cool gaze took in each exclusive shop in equal measure. The dress shop, Alex knew, didn’t sell anything, except maybe a scarf, for less than four figures. The woman scanned the outfits in the window with no more interest than she took in the shoes in the next store window, or the purses in the next.

Alex saw other women cast appraising glances her way. She looked at the other women, but in an altogether different manner. They were evaluating her socially. She was assessing them. . spatially, checking their distance before briefly taking in their faces as if to see whether she recognized them.

“Down here, around the corner,” Alex said, drawing her attention.

When he spoke to her she met his gaze with a focused involvement that was respectful and interested. He couldn’t imagine this woman ever sending him a text message.

She allowed him to direct her around the curve of the corridor decorated with sweeping inlaid metal lines in the speckled pink granite floor. Cast-stone arches stood at a branch of halls. The one Alex took led into a sunlit corridor. Skylights overhead let streamers of light play across the planters overflowing with philodendron and an assortment of salmon-colored hibiscus.

Alex drew them to a halt before the gallery window surrounded with ornate gold molding. The molding, meant to resemble a picture frame, showcased some of the more expensive and sought-after works just inside.

Alex gestured through the window. “This is the place.”

A twitch of disapproval ghosted across her features. “Do you mean to say that you. . painted this?”

She was looking at the large piece displayed in the center of the crowded floor just inside the window. It had been done by R. C. Dillion, a midwestern artist who was becoming a national figure. It was said of him that R. C. Dillion was at the forefront of a new reality in art.

“No, not that one,” Alex said. He leaned closer as he pointed beyond the nonobjective works crowding the window to a small landscape displayed on an easel near the back. “That’s one of mine back there. The mountain scene with the pines in the foreground to the left.”

Alex was relieved to see that Mr. Martin, the gallery owner, had at least put a small spotlight on the painting rather than setting it on the floor, leaned against a wall, as he sometimes did. The small light made the sunlit clearing, within the hushed cathedral of trees, come to life.

“See the one I mean?” he asked as he glanced over at her.

Her mouth opened a little in surprise. “Alexander, it’s beautiful.”

Alex froze.

He knew that he hadn’t yet mentioned his name. He knew because he had been waiting for the right time to do so without sounding like he was coming on to her.

It finally dawned on him that she’d probably been to Regent Center before and she must have visited the gallery. That only made sense; wealthy women knew the gallery, after all — they just didn’t tend to take note of his work. Alex’s bio, with his photo, was posted beside his paintings. He signed his name in the longer form — Alexander — and that was also the way it was shown on his biography. She must have known his name from that.

She looked up to study his face intently. “Why did you paint that?”

Alex shrugged. “I like the woods.”

Her eyes began to look a little more liquid, as if what she saw in that painting had some hallowed meaning to her. “No, I mean why did you paint that particular place in the woods?”

“I don’t know. I just made it up from my imagination.”

She looked like she wanted to say something, but she instead turned back to stare through the window, looking too taken for words.

Alex was about to ask why that particular scene seemed to matter so much to her when his cell phone rang. He didn’t want to answer it, but the woman was staring through the window, absorbed in gazing at his painting, so he turned aside and opened the phone.

“Hello?”

“Alex, it’s me,” Bethany said.

“Uh, hi,” he said quietly as he hunched over the phone.

“Didn’t you get my text messages?”

“I’m sorry, I haven’t read any of them today. I told you, you should just call if you have something to say.”

“You’re so silly, Alex,” she said in a lilting voice that he found grating. “Who doesn’t use text? Don’t be so ancient. Everyone does it.”

“I don’t. So, what is it?”

“Well, if you would have read the messages that I took the time to send you, you’d know. I made plans to take you out tonight and get you good and drunk for your birthday.”

She sounded miffed. Alex didn’t really care. Nor did he care to get drunk or do anything else to celebrate such a somber day. He was even more annoyed at her presumption.

Bethany was beginning to assume that there was far more between them than was actually there. He’d taken her out a couple of times — enough to find out that they didn’t really have anything in common. The dates had been relatively short and unremarkable. He didn’t know what she saw in him, anyway. They just didn’t click. She liked expensive things and Alex wasn’t wealthy. She liked to party and Alex didn’t.

And, his art bored her.

“I’m sorry, Bethany, but let me read your messages and I’ll get back to you.”

“Well—”

He flipped the cover closed and turned back to the woman. She was watching him again in that way that he couldn’t quite figure out.

“Sorry.” He briefly held up the phone in explanation before stuffing it back into his pocket.

She glanced back over her shoulder to his painting. “Me too. My time is up,” she said as she turned away from the window to face him. “I have to go for now.”

“Really? Well can I at least—”

The phone rang again. He wished he had shut it off.

The woman’s small smile returned, curving her lips in a way that was bewitching. She arched an eyebrow as she gestured to his pocket. “You’d better talk to her or she’ll be even more angry with you.”

“I don’t really care.”

But Alex knew that Bethany wasn’t going to give up, so he finally pulled the ringing phone from his pocket. He held a finger up toward the woman. “Give me just a moment, please?”

The woman took one last look through the window and then turned back to him, considering. The way her expression turned serious made him pause in place.

The phone stopped ringing as it went to message.

“Be careful of mirrors,” she said at last into the quiet. “They can watch you through mirrors.”

Goose bumps tingled up Alex’s arms.

He almost dropped the phone when it rang again.

“What?”

She only stared at him with that bottomless gaze.

“Please,” he said, “hold on for just a second?”

She melted back into the shadows between the shops, as if to give him his privacy on the phone.

He turned away and flipped open the phone. “What?”

“Alex, don’t you ever—”

“Look, I’m right in the middle of something important. I’ll call you back.”

He flipped the phone closed without waiting for Bethany to agree and turned back to where the woman waited in the shadowy nook.

She was gone. Simply. . gone.

3

ALEX CRANED HIS NECK, K, looking around at the well-dressed shoppers strolling the hushed hall. Most were women. He didn’t see the one he was looking for.

How could she have vanished so quickly?

He trotted to the archway, looking back toward the massive Regent Jewelry, but he didn’t see her there, either. It was not simply startling that she had left so quickly, it was maddening. He had wanted to get her name, at least.

He hadn’t expected that he would so abruptly run out of time. He had missed his chance.

But maybe not. She had said that she had to go “for now.”

He wondered what she’d meant by that.

He let out a long sigh. Probably nothing. She was probably only being polite. She’d probably wanted to be rid of him the same way he’d wanted to be rid of Bethany.

Somehow, though, it didn’t seem like that was it. Something else was going on, he just didn’t know what.

In the hallway filled with the whisper of footsteps and soft conversation sprinkled with light laughter it began to feel like he had just imagined the whole thing.

That was a thought he truly didn’t want to have, especially not on this day of all days.

The Regent Center suddenly felt very empty and very lonely. His mood, which had only started to lift, sank back down.

He pressed his lips tightly together in agitation at Bethany and her mindless text messages and phone calls. They were never important, but they had just interrupted something that was.

Letting out another sigh of disappointment, he finally made his way back through the clusters of women out for a bit of shopping. He scanned the faces, absently looking for the one who had vanished. He eventually ended up back at the gallery without seeing her, somehow having known that he wouldn’t find her.

Seized by a sudden idea, he peered in the window, wondering if maybe the woman had actually gone inside to look at his painting while he was answering the phone. Maybe he simply hadn’t noticed. Maybe she’d just wanted to see it up close. After all, she had seemed to be taken by the painting.

Peering in the gallery window, he didn’t see the woman, but Mr. Martin saw him and flashed a polite smile.

Hand-wrought Tibetan bells hung by a knotted prayer cord on the door into the small shop rang their simple, familiar chime as Alex closed the door on his way in. He only glanced at the featured pieces on his way past. He had trouble calling them “works.”

The slender Mr. Martin, dressed in a dark double-breasted suit, had a habit of nesting his hands one atop the other. He usually reversed the order several times before their arrangement suited him. A bright pink tie flared from his collar just below his prominent Adam’s apple.

“Mr. Martin, how are things today? I just stopped by to see if—”

“Sorry, Alex. None of your pieces have sold since the one last month.”

Alex drew his lower lip through his teeth. “I see.”

He guessed he would have to walk whenever possible until he could get his truck fixed. Fortunately the places he needed to get to were close enough, now that shops and stores had opened in the last year. His grandfather’s house had always been within walking distance. Ben, in fact, was probably waiting for Alex to stop by.

Mr. Martin drew on his thin smile again as he leaned in patiently. “If you would let me guide you, Alex, I know that I could make a name for you — along with a lot of money.” He lifted a hand, waggling his lithesome fingers toward the painting displayed in the center view of the window. “R. C. Dillion is making himself a fortune with his striking works. His all too obvious anguish and distress over the ruination of the planet is not just heartbreaking, but sought after. Collectors want an artist who can bring such meaningful emotion to the canvas. It gives them a certain sense of pride to let others see the important concerns they so obviously share with the artist.”

Alex glanced at the angry slashes of red paint. It certainly did represent ruin. “I hadn’t been aware that that was what R. C. Dillion was trying to portray.”

“Of course not, Alex, because you won’t take my valuable advice and open your mind to the essence of other realities, as important artists do.”

“I like painting the essence of our own reality,” Alex said as civilly as he could. “If you think that the buyers are so interested in the planet, why don’t you show them my paintings of it?”

Mr. Martin smiled in that tolerant way he had. “I do, Alex, I do, but they’re more interested in true artistic vision than. . than what you do. You show nothing of the rapacious nature of mankind. Your work is charming, but not important. It’s hardly groundbreaking.”

“I see.”

Had he not been so dejected, Alex likely would have gotten angry. Through his gloom, though, the slight didn’t lift his hackles. Instead it only served to weigh him down further.

“But I assure you, Alex, I do display your work as favorably as possible, and we have had some minor success with it.” The smile became fawning as Mr. Martin remembered that occasionally one of Alex’s paintings did sell, and that his gallery took a forty percent commission. “I’m hoping for better sales of your work when the holidays come around.”

Alex nodded. He knew that arguing his beliefs about art was pointless. It only mattered if he could sell his work. He had success with a few people who appreciated his landscapes. There were still people who wanted to see works like his, paintings that crystallized the beauty of a scene. There were people who appreciated a vision that uplifted them.

The woman, after all, had liked it, and she easily appeared more intelligent than any of Mr. Martin’s collectors. She knew what she liked and wasn’t afraid to say so. Most of Mr. Martin’s clients depended on him to tell them what they should like. They were willing to pay handsomely for such erudite guidance.

Still, Alex needed to eat.

“Thanks, Mr. Martin. I’ll check back—”

“Don’t worry, Alex, I’ll call you right away if one of your pieces sells, but please think about what I said.”

Alex nodded politely before he headed for the door. He knew that no matter how hungry he got he would never throw paint at a canvas and pretend it was art.

It was turning out to be an even more depressing birthday than he had expected. His grandfather might cheer him up, though.

He paused, then turned back. “Mr. Martin, I need to take this one with me.”

A frown creased Mr. Martin’s brow as he watched Alex lift the small painting from the easel. “Take it? But why?”

Taking one painting left the gallery with six of his pieces to sell. It wasn’t like there was a run on his work.

“It’s for a gift — for someone who values it.”

A cunning grin overcame Mr. Martin. “Clever, Alex. Sometimes a small gift can be the seed that starts an expensive collection.”

Alex forced a brief smile and nodded as he tucked the painting under his arm.

He didn’t know if he would ever see the woman again. He realized that it was rather silly to think that he would.

But if he did, he wanted to give her the little painting. He wanted to see her smile again, and if it took only a painting then it would be more than worth it.

4

I THINK THE MIRRORS ARE WATCHING ME,” Alex said as he stared off into distant thoughts. Ben shot him a look back over his shoulder. “Mirrors tend to do that.”

“No, I mean it, Ben. Lately it feels like they’re watching me.”

“You mean you see yourself watching you.”

“No.” He finally focused his gaze on his grandfather. “I mean it feels like someone else is watching me through mirrors.”

Ben gave him a look. “Someone else.”

“Yes.”

Alex wondered how she knew.

He was beginning to seriously doubt that she had been real. Was it possible that he could have imagined such a thing?

Was it beginning to happen to him, too? He fought back a ripple of panic at the thought.

“Don’t let your imagination get the best of you, Alexander,” his grandfather said, turning back to the work at his bench.

Alex’s gaze again wandered off into gloomy memories.

“Do you think that I’ll end up crazy, too?” he murmured after a time.

In the dead silence he turned to see that his grandfather had halted his tinkering at his timeworn workbench to stare up with an unsettling look, a kind of hard glare that could have been born only in dark and angry thoughts.

Alex found such a look frightening in that it was so unlike his grandfather, or at least the man Alex knew.

A wrinkled smile finally banished the forbidding look. “No, Alex,” the old man said in a gentle voice, “I don’t think that at all. Why would you come up with such depressing thoughts on your birthday?”

Alex leaned back against the paneling covering the stairwell nook so that the mirror on the wall to his left couldn’t see him. He folded his arms.

“I’m the same age, you know. Today I’m twenty-seven, the same age as she was when she got sick. . when she went crazy.”

The old man stirred a long finger through a battered aluminum ashtray overflowing with a collection of odd screws. Ben had had that ashtray full of used screws for as long as Alex could remember. It wasn’t a convincing search.

“Alexander,” Ben said in a soft sigh, “I never thought your mother was crazy then, and I still don’t.”

Alex didn’t think that Ben would ever come to grips with the sad reality. Alex remembered all too well his mother’s inconsolable, hysterical fits over strangers who were supposedly after her. He didn’t believe that the doctors would keep the woman locked in an institution for eighteen years if she wasn’t seriously mentally ill, but he didn’t say so. Even having the silent thought seemed cruel.

He had been nine when his mother had been institutionalized.

At such a young age Alex hadn’t understood. He had been terrified. His grandmother and Ben took him in, loved him, took care of him, and eventually became his legal guardians. Living just down the street from his parents’ house kept continuity in Alex’s life. His grandparents kept the house clean and in shape for when his mother got better and was released — for when she finally came home. That never happened.

Over the years as he grew up Alex would go over there from time to time, usually at night, to sit alone in the house. It felt like his only connection to his parents. It seemed to be another world there, always the same, everything frozen in place, like a stopped clock. It was an unchanging reminder of a life that had been abruptly interrupted, a life suspended.

It had made him feel like he didn’t know his place in the world, like he wasn’t even sure who he was.

Sometimes at night, before he went to sleep, Alex still worried that he, too, would end up falling prey to insanity. He knew that such things ran in families, that insanity could be passed down. As a boy, he’d heard other kids say as much, even if it had been in whispers behind his back. The whispers, though, had always been just loud enough for him to hear.

Yet when Alex looked at the way other people lived, the things they did, the things they believed, he thought that he was the sanest person he knew. He often wondered how people could be so deluded about things, like the way they would believe it was art if someone else simply said it was.

Still, there were things when he was alone that worried him.

Like mirrors.

He studied the side of the old man’s gaunt face as he searched through all the odd bits of junk littering the workbench. His gray stubble showed that he hadn’t shaved that morning and possibly the morning before that. He had probably been busy in his workshop and had no idea that the sun had come and gone and come again. His grandfather was like that — especially since his wife, Alex’s grandmother, had died. Alex often thought that his grandfather had his own difficulties dealing with reality after his son and then his wife had both passed away.

No one thought the old man was crazy, exactly. Most people thought that he was merely “eccentric.” That was the polite word people used when a person was a little loony. His grandfather’s impishly innocent outlook on life — the way he always smiled and marveled at everything, and the way he became distracted by the most ordinary objects, along with his utter lack of interest in the business of others — reassured people that he was harmless. Just the neighborhood nut. Most people regarded Ben as a meaningless old man who tinkered with the likes of tin cans, tattered books, and odd assortments of mold that he grew in glass petri dishes.

It was an image that Alex knew his grandfather cultivated — being invisible, he called it — and was quite different from the kind of man Ben was in reality.

Alex never thought that Ben was crazy, or even eccentric, merely. . unique, a singular, remarkable individual who knew about things that most people could not even imagine. From what Alex gathered, Ben had seen enough death. He loved life and simply wanted to investigate everything about it.

“What are you doing here, anyway?” Ben asked.

Alex blinked at the question. “What?”

“It’s your birthday. Shouldn’t you be with a young woman, out enjoying yourself?”

Alex let out a deep breath, not wanting to get into it. He forced a smile. “I thought you might have a present for me, so I came by.”

“A present? What for?”

“My birthday, remember?”

The old man scowled. “Of course I remember. I remember everything, remember?”

“Did you remember to get me a present?” Alex chided.

“You’re too old for a present.”

“I got you a present for your birthday. Are you too old?”

The scowl deepened. “What am I to do with, with. . whatever that thing is.”

“It makes coffee.”

“My old pot makes coffee.”

“Bad coffee.”

The old man shook a finger. “Just because things are old, that doesn’t mean they’re of no use anymore. New things aren’t necessarily any better, you know. Some are worse than what came before.”

Alex leaned in a little and lifted an eyebrow. “Did you ever try the coffeemaker I got you?”

Ben withdrew the finger. “What is it you want for your birthday?”

Alex shrugged. “I don’t know. I thought you’d get me a present, that’s all. I don’t really need anything, I guess.”

“There you go, then. I didn’t need a coffeemaker, either. Could have saved your money and bought yourself a present.”

“It was meant to show respect. It was token of love.”

“I already know you love me. What’s not to love?”

Alex couldn’t help smiling as he slid onto the spare stool. “You have a funny way of making me forget about my mother on my birthday.”

Alex immediately regretted his words. It seemed inappropriate to even suggest that he might want to forget his mother on his birthday.

Ben, a tight smile on his lips, turned back to his workbench and picked up a soldering iron. “Consider it my birthday gift.”

Alex watched smoke curl up as his grandfather soldered the end of a long, thin metal tube to the top of a tin lid.

“What are you making?”

“An extractor.”

“What are you trying to extract?”

“An essence.”

“An essence of what?”

The old man turned in a huff. “Sometimes you can be a pest, Alexander, do you know that?”

Alex lifted one shoulder in a half-shrug. “I was just curious, that’s all.” He watched in silence as solder turned to liquid metal and flowed around the end of the tube.

“Curiosity gets you into trouble,” his grandfather finally said, half under his breath.

Alex’s gaze dropped away. “I remember my mother saying — back before she got sick — that I got my sense of curiosity from you.”

“You were a kid at the time. All kids are curious.”

“You’re hardly a kid, Ben. Life should be about being curious, shouldn’t it? You’ve always been curious.”

In the silence of the basement room, the only sound was the “tick” made each time the plastic tail of the black cat went back and forth, marking each passing second on the clock in the cat’s stomach.

Still hunched over the bench, Ben turned his dark eyes toward his grandson. “There are things in this world to be curious about,” the old man said in a soft, cryptic voice. “Things that don’t make proper sense, aren’t the way they appear. That’s why I’ve taught you the way I have — to be prepared.”

A shiver tingled up between Alex’s shoulder blades. His grandfather’s chilling tone was like a doorway opening a crack, a doorway into places Alex could not begin to imagine. It was a doorway into places that were not the realm of lighthearted wonder that usually seemed to make up Ben’s life. It was the flip side of lighthearted, seen only during training sessions.

Alex was well aware that, for all his tinkering, his grandfather never really made anything. Not in the conventional sense, anyway. He never made a birdhouse, or fixed a screen door, or even cobbled together lawn art out of scraps of metal.

“What essence are you extracting?”

The old man smiled in a curious fashion. “Oh, who knows, Alexander? Who really knows?”

“You must know what you’re trying to do.”

“Trying and doing are two different things,” Ben muttered. He looked back over his shoulder and changed the subject. “So, what is it you want for your birthday?”

“How about a new starter motor for my truck.” Alex’s mouth twisted in discontent. “Not all old things are so great. Women aren’t much impressed with a guy who has a Jeep that won’t start half the time. They’d rather go out with a guy with a real car.”

“Ah,” the old man said, nodding to himself.

Alex realized that, without meaning to, he had just answered the question he’d avoided when he’d first come down into Ben’s workshop. He realized that he hadn’t remembered to call Bethany back. He supposed it was more avoidance than forgetfulness.

“Anyway,” Alex said, leaning an arm on the bench, “she’s not my type.”

“You mean she thinks that you’re too. . curious?” The old man chuckled at his own joke.

Alex shot Ben a scowl. “No, I mean she’d rather be out going to clubs and drinking than doing anything with her life. In fact, she wants to get me drunk for my birthday. There’s more to life than just partying.”

“Like what?” Ben prodded softly.

“I don’t know.” Alex sighed, tired of the subject. He slid off the stool. “I guess I’d better get going.”

“A date with someone else?”

“Yeah, with a junkyard to try to find a cheap starter motor that works.”

Maybe if he did ever see the strange woman again, and his Cherokee would start, he could take her for a drive in the country. He knew some beautiful roads through the hills.

He considered his memory of the woman, the way she walked through Regent Center as if she belonged in such places, and dismissed his daydream as unrealistic.

“You should get a new car, Alex — they work a lot better.”

“Tell that to my checking account. The gallery hasn’t sold one of my paintings in nearly a month.”

“You need money for a car? I might be able to help out — considering that it’s your birthday.”

Alex made a sour face. “Ben, do you have any idea what a new car costs? I’m doing all right but I don’t have that much money.” Alex knew that his grandfather didn’t, either.

Ben scratched the hollow of his cheek. “Well, I think you just might have enough for any new car you could want.”

Alex’s brow twitched. “What are you talking about?”

“It’s your twenty-seventh birthday.”

“And what does that mean?”

Ben tilted his head in thought. “Well, as near as I can figure, it has something to do with the seven.”

“The seven what?”

“The seven. . in twenty-seven.”

“You lost me.”

Ben squinted off into the distance as he journeyed into distracted thoughts. “I’ve tried to figure it out, but I can’t make sense of it. The seven is my only real clue, the only thing I have to go on.”

Alex heaved a sigh in irritation at Ben’s habit of wandering off down rabbit holes. “You know I don’t like riddles, Ben. If you have something to say, then tell me what you’re talking about.”

“The seven.” Ben looked up from his essence extractor. “Your mother was twenty-seven when it came to her. Now you’re twenty-seven, and it’s come to you.”

The skin of Alex’s arms tingled with goose bumps. By her twenty-seventh birthday insanity had come to his mother. The familiar basement was beginning to feel claustrophobic.

“Ben, stop fooling around. What are you talking about?”

Ben paused at his work and twisted around on his stool to study his grandson. It was an uncomfortable, searching gaze.

“I have something that comes to be yours on your twenty-seventh birthday, Alexander. It came to your mother on her twenty-seventh birthday. Well, it would have. .” He shook his head sadly. “The poor woman. Bless her tortured soul.”

Alex straightened, determined not to get caught up in some fool word game with his grandfather.

“What’s going on?”

His grandfather slipped down off the stool. He paused to reach out with a bony hand and pat Alex on the shoulder.

“Like I said, I have something that becomes yours on your twenty-seventh birthday.”

“What is it?”

Ben ran his fingers back over his head of thin, gray hair. “It’s. . well,” he said, waving the hand in a vague gesture, “let me show you. The time has come for you to see it.”

5

ALEX WATCHED AS HIS GRANDFATHER shuffled across the cluttered basement, kicking the odd cardboard box out of his way. At the far wall he moved rakes, hoes, and shovels to the side. Half of them fell over, clattering to the floor. Ben grumbled under his breath as he used a foot to push the errant rakes away until he had cleared a spot against the brick foundation. To Alex’s astonishment his grandfather then started pulling bricks out of a pilaster in the foundation wall.

“What in the world are you doing?”

Holding an armload of a half-dozen bricks, Ben paused to look back over his shoulder. “Oh, I put it in here in case of fire.”

That much made sense — after a fashion. Alex was perpetually surprised that his grandfather hadn’t already burned down his house, what with the way he was always using matches, torches, and burners in his tinkering.

As Ben started stacking bricks on the floor, Alex turned to check. Just as he’d suspected, his grandfather had forgotten the soldering iron. Alex picked it up just as it was starting to blacken a patch on the workbench. He set the hot iron in its metal holder, then sighed in exasperation as he wet a finger with his tongue and used it to quench the smoking patch of wood.

“Ben, you nearly caught your bench on fire. You have to be more careful.” He tapped the fire extinguisher hanging on the foundation wall. He couldn’t tell if it was full or not. He turned over the tag, squinting, looking for an expiration or last inspection. He didn’t see one. “This thing is charged and up-to-date, isn’t it?”

“Yes, yes,” Ben muttered.

When Alex turned back, his grandfather was standing close, holding out a large manila envelope. Traces of ancient stains were visible under a layer of gray mortar dust.

“This is intended for you. . on your twenty-seventh birthday.”

Alex stared at the suddenly ominous thing his grandfather was holding out.

“How long have you had this?”

“Nearly nineteen years.”

Alex frowned. “And you kept it walled up in your basement?”

The old man nodded. “To keep it safe until I could give it to you at the proper time. I didn’t want you to grow up knowing about this. Such things, before the right time, can change the course of a young person’s life — change it for the worse.”

Alex planted his hands on his hips. “Ben, why do you do such strange things? What if you’d died? Did you ever think of that? What if you’d died and your house got sold?”

“My will leaves you the house.”

“I know that, but maybe I’d sell it. I would never have known that you had this hidden away down here.”

His grandfather leaned close. “It’s in the will.”

“What’s in the will?”

“The instructions that tell you where this was kept and that it’s yours — but not until your twenty-seventh birthday.” Ben smiled in a cryptic fashion. “Wills are interesting things; you can put a lot of curious things in such documents.”

When his grandfather shoved the envelope at him Alex took it, but only reluctantly. As strange as his grandfather’s behavior sometimes was, this ranked right up there with the strangest. Who would keep papers hidden in the brick wall in his basement? And why?

Alex was suddenly worried about the answers to those questions — and others that were only beginning to formulate in the back of his mind.

“Come on,” his grandfather said as he shuffled back to the workbench. With an arm he swept aside the clutter that covered the work surface. He slapped his palm on the cleared spot on the bench. “Put it here, in the light.”

The flap was torn open — with no attempt to be sneaky about it. Knowing his grandfather, he would have long ago opened the envelope and studied whatever was inside. Alex noticed that the neatly typed address label was made out to his father. He pulled a stack of papers from the envelope. They were clipped together at the top left corner. The cover letter had an embossed logo in faded blue ink saying it was from LANCASTER, BUCKMAN, FENTON, a law firm in Boston.

He tossed the papers on the workbench. “You’ve known all along what this is?” Alex asked, already knowing the answer. “You’ve read it all?”

Ben waved a hand dismissively. “Yes, yes. It’s a transfer of deed. Once it’s executed, you become a landowner.”

Alex was taken aback. “Land?”

“Quite a lot of land, actually.”

Alex was suddenly so full of questions that he couldn’t seem to think straight. “What do you mean, I’ll become a landowner? What land? Why? Whose is it? And why on my twenty-seventh birthday?”

Ben’s brow creased as he paused to consider. “I think it has to do with the seven. Like I said, it went to your mother on her twenty-seventh birthday — because your father had died before his twenty-seventh birthday when it would have gone to him. So, the way I figure it, the seven has to be the key.”

“If it went to my mother, then why is it mine?”

Ben tapped the papers lying on the workbench. “It was supposed to go to her, because your father had passed away, but the title to the land couldn’t be transferred to her.”

“Why not?” Alex asked.

His grandfather lowered his voice as he leaned closer. “Because she was declared mentally incompetent.”

The silence dragged on a moment as Ben let that sink in before he went on.

“The stipulations in this last will and testament specify that the heir to whom the title is transferred must be of sound mind. Your mother was declared not to be of sound mind and has been in that institution ever since. There’s a codicil to the will that stipulates that if the heir in line isn’t able to take ownership of the title to the land because of death or mental incapacitation, then it remains in abeyance until the next heir in line becomes twenty-seven, whereupon it is automatically reassigned to them. If there is no heir, or if they are likewise declared in violation of the stipulations—”

“You mean crazy.”

“Well, yes,” Ben said. “If for any reason the title can’t be transferred to your father, mother, or any of their issue — that means their descendants, and you’re the only one of those — then the land goes to a conservation trust.”

Alex scratched his temple as he tried to take it all in.

“How much land are we talking about?”

“Enough for you to sell it and buy yourself a new car. That’s what you ought to do.” Ben shook a cautionary finger. “This business with the seven is nothing to fool around with, Alex.”

For some inexplicable reason beyond his grandfather’s admonition, Alex didn’t feel at all fortunate at the windfall.

“Where is this land?”

Ben gestured irritably. “Back East. In Maine.”

“Where you used to live?”

“Not exactly. It’s farther inland. It was land that has been in our family forever, but they’re all dead now, so it goes to you.”

“Why not to you?”

Ben shrugged. “Don’t know.” He suddenly grinned and leaned in. “Well, actually, it’s probably because they never liked me. Besides, it’s just as well — I’ve no desire to live there again. Blackflies and mud in the spring, mosquitoes in the summer, and endless snow in the winter. I’ve spent enough of my life hip deep in mud and bugs. The weather here suits me better.”

Alex wondered if the people who made up the will had discounted Ben because they didn’t consider him of sound mind in the first place.

“I’ve heard that autumn is beautiful back East,” Alex said.

Autumn would soon arrive. He wondered if there was enough land to get away and be alone for a while to paint. From time to time Alex liked to hike into wilderness areas to be alone and paint. He liked the way the simplicity of primeval solitude allowed him to lose himself in the scenes he created.

“How much land are we talking about? Is there at least a few acres or so? I’ve heard that some of the land in Maine is pretty expensive.”

“That’s on the coast,” Ben scoffed. “This is inland. Inland the land isn’t worth nearly as much. Still. .”

Alex gingerly lifted the cover letter, as if it might suddenly bite him, and scanned the legal jargon.

“Still,” his grandfather went on, “I’d venture to say that this is enough to buy you a car.” He leaned closer. “Any car you want.”

Alex looked up from the papers. “So how much land is it?”

“A little under fifty thousand acres.”

Alex blinked. “Fifty thousand acres?”

His grandfather nodded. “You’re now one of the largest private landowners in Maine — other than the paper companies. At least, you will be once the title is transferred.”

Alex let out a low whistle at the very thought. “Well, I guess I very well might be able to sell a piece of it and buy me a car. I might even sell enough to build—”

Ben was shaking his head. “Sorry, but you can’t.”

“Can’t what?”

“Sell a part of it. The covenants to the deed say that you can’t sell any part of it. If you ever want to sell, you have to sell the whole thing, all in one lot, all together and intact, to the conservation trust that’s holding the land. They own the surrounding land.”

“I’d have to sell it all — and just to this one group?” Alex frowned. “Are you sure I couldn’t just sell some of it if I wanted to? Just a little?”

Ben was shaking his head. “Back when the papers first came your father and I studied the documents. We even went to a lawyer friend your father knew. He confirmed what we thought from what we’d read. It’s airtight. Any violation of the stipulations will result in the title reverting permanently to the conservation trust.

“It’s a very tricky document. It’s drawn up in a way that ensures that any deviation from the stipulations will cause the land to go to the trust. There’s no wiggle room. It’s constructed so as to tightly control what happens to the land. You might say that it doesn’t grant an inheritance so much as it offers choices among very limited options.

“With your father’s premature passing, and then your mother getting sick, the transfer of title wasn’t able to go forward, so it was put in abeyance, in limbo, until you were twenty-seven.”

“What if I don’t want to decide right now what I want to do?”

“You have the year you are twenty-seven to decide to take title or not. You don’t have to take the land. You can refuse it and then it goes to the trust. If you don’t act while you’re still twenty-seven, title to the land automatically transfers to the trust — except under one condition: your heir.

“You’re presently the last heir in line, Alex. You aren’t allowed to will the land to anyone other than a direct descendant. If you never have children, then, when you eventually die, the land goes to the trust.”

“What if next week I get hit by a bus and die?”

“Then the title immediately transfers to the trust — permanently — because you don’t have an heir, a child. If you become a father, even if you don’t act to claim rightful ownership during the time you’re twenty-seven, then that child becomes part and parcel of the will. It waits for them to come of age. In fact, that’s how you came to this place. If you’re hit by a bus it doesn’t affect any offspring’s rights, just as your father’s death didn’t negate your rights.

“You can take title and enjoy the land all you want and if you ever have children you can pass it on to them, providing you haven’t sold it to the trust. Once sold to them it’s theirs forever.”

“If I can only sell to the trust, then they can set the price cheap.”

Ben flipped through the pages, searching, until he found what he was looking for. “No, look here.” He tapped the page. “You have to sell it to the Daggett Trust — that’s the conservation group — but they must pay fair market value. You can name your own appraiser to ensure that the price is fair. And I can tell you that at fair market value that much land, even being inland, is worth a fortune.”

Alex stared off in thought. “I could paint all I want.”

Ben smiled. “You know that I think a person should prepare for the worst but live all they can of life. You could sell the land and then paint the rest of your life and never have to sell one of them. I hate to see you having to sell your paintings. They hold such love of life. I hate to see you part with them.”

Alex frowned as he came back from imagining. “Why would this trust want to buy this particular piece of land?”

Ben shrugged. “They already own all of the surrounding land. None of it has ever been developed. Most of it is virgin timber that’s been in trust for ages; they want to keep it that way. Our family’s piece is the last remaining part to the puzzle.

“The land owned by the trust is closed to people. No one is ever allowed onto the land — not even hikers. The Nature Alliance is a little miffed that they aren’t allowed in. They think they should have special access since they’re so devoted to preserving nature and all. I guess they went along, though, since the conservation group’s purpose seems so high-minded.”

“Well, what if I decide I don’t want to sell it? What if I want to keep it and build a house on it?”

Ben tapped the papers again. “Can’t. The deed comes with a conservation easement. That’s why we’ve never had to pay any property taxes. It’s some kind of special state wilderness area act that exempts land from taxes if it has a conservation easement constructed in the way this one has been drawn up.”

“So, then, the land is of no use to me. I can’t use it for anything?”

Ben shrugged. “You can enjoy it, I suppose. It’s your land if you want it. You can walk it, camp on it, things like that, but you can’t build any permanent buildings on it. You also must abide by the trust bylaws that you won’t allow strangers — hikers, campers, and such — on the land.”

“Or I can sell it.”

“Right. To the Daggett Trust.”

It was all so unexpected and overwhelming. Alex had never owned any land, other than the house that had been his parents’. The house, just down the street, the home where he’d partially grown up and now lived, was now in his name. In a sense it still felt like it belonged to the ghosts of those long gone. With his home on an ordinary lot Alex had a difficult time imagining how much land fifty thousand acres was. It seemed enough land that a person could become forever lost there.

“If I can’t really do anything with it, maybe I should just sell it,” Alex said, thinking out loud.

Ben pulled his soldering project closer. “That sounds wise. Sell it and buy yourself that car you want.”

Alex suspiciously eyed the back of his grandfather’s head. “I like the Cherokee. I only want a starter motor.”

“It’s your birthday, Alex. Now you can buy yourself a proper present. The kind none of us could ever afford for you.”

“I never really wanted for anything,” Alex said in quiet protest as he laid a hand gently on his grandfather’s shoulder. “I always had everything I needed, and what I really needed the most.”

“Kind of like my coffeepot,” his grandfather muttered. “Never wanted anything better.” He abruptly turned back, looking uncharacteristically stern. “Sell the land, Alex. It’s just trees and rocks — it’s good for nothing.”

Trees and rocks sounded good to Alex. He loved such places. That was his favorite thing to paint.

“Sell it, that’s my advice,” Ben pressed. “You’ve no need of Castle Mountain.”

“Castle what?”

“Castle Mountain. It’s a mountain that sits roughly in the center of the land.”

“Why’s it called Castle Mountain?”

Ben turned away and worked for a time bending the tubing on his essence extractor to some plan known only to him. “People say it looks like a castle. Never saw the resemblance, myself.”

Alex smiled. “I don’t think Indian Rock looks much like an Indian.”

“There you go. Same thing. People see what they want to see, I guess.” Ben didn’t look back as he handed the papers over his shoulder. “Get the deed transferred, then sell the place and be rid of it, that’s my advice, Alex.”

Alex slowly made his way to the stairs as he considered it all. He paused and looked back at his grandfather.

A dark look shadowed Ben’s face. “This is one of those things that I mentioned before, Alex, one of those things that doesn’t make proper sense.”

Alex wondered at seeing such a forbidding look for a second time that day. “Thanks, Ben, for your advice.”

His grandfather turned back to his soldering. “Don’t thank me unless you take the advice. Unless you heed it, it’s just words.”

Alex nodded absently. “I’m going to go see my mom.”

“Give her my best,” Ben murmured without turning.

His grandfather rarely went to visit his daughter-in-law. He hated the place where she was confined. Alex hated the place, too, but his mother was there and if he wanted to see her he had no choice.

Alex stared down at the envelope in his hand. It seemed that such an unexpected birthday present should make him happy, but it didn’t. It only reminded him of his dead father and his mother lost to another world.

Now this unknown connection to the past had found him.

Alex ran his fingers lightly over the age-dried label made out to his father. A faded pencil line ran through the name. Above, in the same nearly vanished, ghostlike pencil, was written his mother’s name. Her name was stricken through with a dark, angry line drawn in black ink.

Above that, in his grandfather’s handwriting, it said “Alexander Rahl.”

When Alex reached the landing on the stairs he thought that he saw someone out of the corner of his eye.

He turned only to see himself looking back from a mirror.

He stared for a moment; then his cell phone rang. When he answered it, he could hear only weird, garbled sounds, like disembodied whispers churning up from somewhere deep on the other side of the universe. He glanced at the display. It said OUT OF AREA. No doubt a wrong number. He flipped the cover closed and slipped the phone back in his pocket.

“Alexander,” Ben called.

Alex looked back, waiting.

“Trouble will find you.”

Alex smiled at his grandfather’s familiar mantra. It was meant as a world of love and concern wrapped in a call for vigilance. The familiar touchstone made him feel better, feel resolute.

“Thanks, Ben. I’ll talk to you later.”

Alex picked up the painting that he had brought from the gallery and headed up the stairs.

6

ALEX HAD BEEN FORTUNATE. His Jeep Cherokee had started on the first try.

After the long drive to the older part of downtown Orden, Nebraska, he parked near the end of a side street that sloped off downhill. That way, if his Jeep wouldn’t start, he could let it roll to get the engine to turn over.

In this older section of town there wasn’t much parking other than on the tree-lined streets. The needs of a hospital, parking being only one of them, had long ago rendered the facility obsolete and so it had been converted to a private asylum: Mother of Roses. The state paid for patients, like Alex’s mother, who were placed there by the order of the court.

In the beginning Ben had tried to get his daughter-in-law released into his and Alex’s grandmother’s custody. Alex had been too young to understand it all, but the end result had been that Ben had eventually given up. Years later, when Alex had pursued the same course, he had likewise gotten nowhere.

Dr. Hoffmann, the head of the psychiatric staff, had assured Alex that his mother was better off under professional care. Besides that, he said that they could not legally give him the responsibility of caring for a person who in their professional opinion could still become violent. His grandfather had put an arm around Alex’s shoulders and told him to come to terms with the fact that while there were those who went to Mother of Roses to get help, to get better, his mother would likely die there. It had felt to Alex like a death sentence.

The mature trees on the streets in that part of town and on the limited grounds of Mother of Roses asylum made the place look less harsh than it was. Alex knew that the somewhat distant hill where he’d parked made a convenient excuse to delay walking into the building where his mother was imprisoned. His insides always felt like they knotted up when he went into the place.

On the way over he had been so distracted by scattered thoughts competing for attention that he’d nearly run a red light. The thought of Officer Slawinski scowling at him had dissuaded him from trying to make it through the yellow. As it turned out, the light had switched to red before he’d even reached the crosswalk.

For some reason it felt like a day to be careful. Staring up at the glow of a red light that had come quicker than expected had felt like cosmic confirmation of his caution.

Walking beneath the enclosing shade of the mature oaks and maples, Alex headed around the side of the nine-story brick building. The front, on Thirteenth Street, had broad stone steps up to what he supposed was a beautiful entrance of cast concrete meant to look like a stone façade of vines growing over an ornate pointed arch framing deep-set oak doors. Going in the front was a lot more trouble because it required going through layers of bureaucracy needed for general visitors. Close family were allowed to go in through a smaller entrance at the rear.

Grass under the huge oaks in back thinned to bare dirt in patches where the ground was heaved and uneven from massive roots hidden beneath. Alex glanced up at the windows all covered with security wire. Flesh was no match for that steel mesh. The back of the building was more honest about what it was.

The sprawling lower floors of the hospital were for patients who went to Mother of Roses for treatment for emotional disorders, substance abuse and addiction, as well as rest and recovery. Alex’s mother was imprisoned on the smaller ninth floor, a secure area reserved for patients considered dangerous. Some of them had killed people and had been found to be mentally incompetent. Several times since Alex’s mother had been confined at Mother of Roses there had been serious attacks on other patients or staff. Alex always worried for her safety.

He scanned the top row of almost opaque windows, even though he had never seen anything more than shadows in them.

The steel door in back had a little square window with safety wire crisscrossed through it. When he pulled open the door he was hit by the hospital smell that always made him resist taking a deep breath.

An orderly recognized him and nodded a greeting. Alex flashed a wooden smile as he tossed his keys, pocketknife, change, and phone in a plastic tub on a table to the side of the metal detector. After he passed through without setting off the buzzers, an older security guard, who also knew Alex but didn’t smile, handed over the phone and his change. He would keep the knife and keys until Alex left. Even keys could be snatched from a visitor and used as a weapon.

Alex bent at the steel desk beyond the metal detector and picked up a cheap blue plastic pen attached by a dirty string to the registry clipboard. That string was the most lax security in the entire building. The woman at the desk, Doreen, knew him. Holding the phone to her ear with a shoulder, she flipped through a ledger, answering questions about laundry deliveries. She smiled at Alex as he looked up from signing his name. She’d always been nice to him over the years, sympathizing with him at having to visit his mother in such a place.

Alex took the only elevator that went to the ninth floor. He hated the green metal doors. The paint had been scratched off in horizontal patches by med carts hitting into it, leaving dirty metal to show through. The elevator smelled musty. He knew the tune of every clunk and clatter it made on the way up, anticipated every shimmy in its labored travel.

The elevator porpoised to a stop and finally opened before the ninth-floor nurses’ station. Locked doors led to the women’s wing on one side, the men’s on the other. Alex signed his name again and put in the time: three p.m. Visitors were carefully monitored. He would have to sign out, with the time, when he left. The elevator door at the top was kept locked and no one would unlock it without a completed sign-in-and-sign-out sheet — a precaution against a patient talking his way past a gullible new employee.

An orderly in white slacks and smock came out from a small office in the back of the nurses’ station, pulling his keys out on a thin wire cable extending from the reel attached to his belt. The orderly, a big man who always hunched, knew Alex. Just about everyone working at Mother of Roses knew Alex Rahl.

The man looked through the little window in the solid oak door and then, satisfied that the way was clear, turned the key in the lock. He yanked open the heavy door.

The man handed over a plastic key for the buzzer on the other side. “Ring when you’re finished, Alex.”

Alex nodded. “How’s she doing?”

The man shrugged his rounded shoulders. “Same.”

“Has she caused you any trouble?”

The man arched an eyebrow. “She tried to stab me to death with a plastic spoon a few days back. Yesterday she jumped a nurse and would have beaten her senseless if another orderly wouldn’t have been ten steps away at the time.”

Alex shook his head. “I’m sorry, Henry.”

The man shrugged again. “Part of the job.”

“I wish I could make her stop.”

Henry held the door open with one hand. “You can’t, Alex. Don’t beat yourself up over it. It’s not her fault; she’s sick.”

The hall’s grayish linoleum floor was struck through with darker gray swirls and green speckles, presumably meant to add a little bit of interest. It was as ugly as anything Alex could imagine. Light from the sunroom up ahead reflected off the ripply floor, making it look almost liquid. The evenly spaced rooms to each side had varnished oak doors with silver metal push plates. None had locks. Each room was home to someone.

Cries coming from dark rooms echoed through the hall. Angry voices and shouts were commonplace — arguments with imaginary people who bedeviled some of the patients.

The showers at the rear of the bathroom were kept locked, along with a few of the rooms, rooms where patients were placed when they became violent. Locking a patient in a room was meant to encourage them to behave and be sociable.

The sunroom, with its skylights, was a bright spot in a dark prison. Varnished oak tables were neatly spaced throughout the room. They were bolted to the floor. The flimsy plastic chairs weren’t.

Alex immediately spotted his mother sitting on a couch against the far wall. She watched him coming without recognizing him. On rare occasions she did know who he was, but he could tell by the look in her eyes that this time she didn’t. That was always the hardest thing for him — knowing that she usually didn’t have any idea who he was.

A TV bolted high on the wall was tuned to Wheel of Fortune. The gaiety and laughter from the TV struck a stupefying contrast with the somber dayroom. A few patients laughed with the TV audience without comprehending what they were laughing at. They only knew that laughter was called for and so they laughed out of a sense of social duty. Alex guessed that it was better to laugh than cry. Between the laughter, some of the younger women glared at him.

“Hi, Mom,” he said in his sunniest voice as he approached.

She wore pale green hospital-issue pajama pants and a simple flower-print top. The outfit was hideously ugly. Her hair was longer than the other residents’. Most of the women had their hair cut short and curled. Alex’s mother was protective of her sandy-colored, shoulder-length hair. She threw fits if they tried to cut it. The staff didn’t feel it was worth a battle to cut it short. Occasionally they would try, thinking she might have forgotten that she wanted it long. That was one thing she never forgot. Alex was glad that she had something that seemed to matter to her.

He sat on the couch beside her. “How are you doing?”

She stared at him a moment. “Fine.” By her tone, he knew that she didn’t have a clue as to who he was.

“I was here last week. Remember?”

She nodded as she stared at him. Alex wasn’t sure if she even understood the question. Sometimes she would say things that he knew weren’t true. She would tell him that her sister had visited. She didn’t have a sister. She would say that she had gone shopping. She was never allowed to leave the confines of the ninth floor.

He ran his hand down the side of her head. “Your hair looks pretty today.”

“I brush it every day,” she said.

An overweight male orderly wearing shiny black shoes that squeaked rolled a cart into the sunroom. “Snack time, ladies.”

The top of the cart displayed a few dozen plastic cups half filled with orange juice, or something that resembled orange juice. The shelves in the cart held baloney-and-lettuce sandwiches on wheat bread. At least, Alex assumed it would be baloney. It usually was.

“How about a sandwich, Mom? You’re looking kind of skinny.

Have you been eating?”

Without protest she rose to take a sandwich and glass from the man with the cart when he rolled it near. “Here you go, Helen,” the man said as he handed her a plastic cup of orange juice and a sandwich.

Alex followed as she shuffled to a table off in the far corner, away from the other residents.

“They always want to talk,” she said as she glared at the women clustered on the other side of the room, where they could see the television. Most of the people in the place talked to imaginary people. At least his mother never did that.

Alex folded his arms on the table. “So, what’s new?”

His mother chewed a mouthful for a moment. Without looking up she swallowed and said under her breath, “I haven’t seen any of them for a while.”

“Is that right?” he asked, playing along. “What did they want?”

It was hard to make conversation when he didn’t know what she was talking about half the time.

“What they always want. The gate.”

“What gate?” He couldn’t imagine what she imagined.

She suddenly looked up. “What are you doing here?”

Alex shrugged. “It’s my birthday, Mom. I wanted to spend it with you.”

“You shouldn’t spend your birthday in this place, Alex.”

Alex’s breath halted for an instant. He could count on the fingers of one hand the times she had called him by his name except when prompted.

“It’s my birthday. It’s what I want to do, Mom,” he said quietly.

Her mind seemed to drift away from the subject. “They look at me through the walls,” she said in an emotionless tone. Her eyes turned wild. “They look at me!” she screamed. “Why won’t they stop watching me!”

A few of the people on the other side of the room turned to look at the screaming woman. Most didn’t bother. Screaming in the institution wasn’t an uncommon occurrence and was usually treated with indifference. The orderly with the cart glanced over, appraising the situation. Alex put a hand on her arm.

“It’s all right, Mom. No one is looking at you now.”

She glanced around at the walls before finally appearing to calm down. In another moment, she went back to her sandwich as if nothing had happened.

After she took a sip of orange juice, she asked, “What birthday is it?” She put the sandwich up to her mouth.

“My twenty-seventh.”

She froze.

She took the sandwich out of her mouth and carefully set it down on the paper plate. She glanced around, then seized Alex’s shirtsleeve.

“I want to go to my room.”

Alex was a bit puzzled by her behavior, as he frequently was, but he went along. “All right, Mom. We can sit in there. It’ll be nice, just the two of us.”

She held his arm in a tight grip as they walked back down the depressing hall. Alex walked. She shuffled. She wasn’t an old woman, but her spirit always seemed broken.

It was the Thorazine and other powerful antipsychotic drugs that made her that way, and made her shuffle. Dr. Hoffmann said that Thorazine was all that kept her functioning as well as she did, and that without it she would become so violently psychopathic that she would have to be restrained twenty-four hours a day. Alex certainly didn’t want that for her.

When they went into her simple room she shut the door. The doors didn’t lock. She opened it and checked the hall three times before she seemed satisfied. Her roommate, Agnes, was older. She never spoke. She did stare, though, so Alex was glad that she had stayed in the sunroom.

The TV, bolted high on the wall, was on, but the sound was muted. He rarely saw the TV turned off. The sound was usually muted, though. He’d never seen his mother change the channel. He didn’t understand why she and Agnes wanted the TV on without the sound.

“Go away,” Alex’s mother said.

“After a while, Mom. I’d like to sit with you for a time.”

She shook her head. “Go away and hide.”

“From what, Mom?”

“Hide,” she repeated.

Alex took a deep breath. “Hide from what?”

His mother stared at him for a time. “Twenty-seven,” she finally said.

“Yes, that’s right. I’m twenty-seven today. You had me twenty-seven years ago, nine in the evening on the ninth of September. That’s the date today. You had me here, at this very place, back when it was a regular hospital.”

She leaned close and licked her lips. “Hide.”

Alex wiped a hand across his face. “From who, Mom?” He was tired of the pointless, circular conversation.

His mother rose from where she sat on the edge of the bed and went to a small wardrobe. She pawed through the items folded on the shelf. After a brief search she came up with a shawl. At first, Alex thought that she was cold. But she didn’t put the shawl around her shoulders.

She stood before the small dresser and draped the shawl over the polished metal square, bolted to the wall, that served as a mirror.

“Mom, what are you doing?”

His mother turned back with fire in her eyes. “They look at me. I told you. They look at me through the windows in the walls.”

Alex was starting to feel creepy.

“Mom, come sit down.”

His mother sat on the edge of the bed, closer, and took one of his hands in both of hers. It was an act of affection that unexpectedly brought a tear to Alex’s eye. She had never done such a thing before. Alex thought that it was the best birthday present he could have gotten, better even than fifty thousand acres of land.

“Alex,” she whispered. “You must run and hide before they get you.”

It was startling to hear his name from her lips for the second time in the same day. It took a great effort to summon his voice.

“And who is it that I should hide from, Mom?”

She glanced around and then leaned closer so he could hear her whisper.

“A different kind of human.”

He stared at her a moment. It made no sense, but something about it sounded serious, sounded sincere.

Just then something on the TV caught his eye. He looked up and saw that it was the local news. A police spokesman was standing before a cluster of microphones.

A news crawler moving across the bottom of the screen said “Two Metro officers found dead.”

Alex reached over for the remote and turned up the sound.

“Do you know why they were there, in behind the warehouses?” a reporter asked through the clamor.

“The Center and Ninetieth Street section was within their patrol area,” the official said. “Alleys throughout there provide access to loading docks. We check them often, so there was nothing unusual about them being there in that location.”

Alex remembered when Ninetieth Street, about ten or twelve miles from his house, used to be the outskirts of town.

Another reporter shouted the others down. “There are reports that both officers were found with their necks broken. Is that true?”

“I can’t comment on such stories. As I’ve said, we will have to wait for the coroner’s report. When we have it we will release the findings.”

“Have the families been notified?”

The man at the microphone paused, obviously having trouble getting words out. Anguish shaped his features. He kept swallowing back his emotion.

“Yes. Our prayers and sympathy go out to their families at this difficult time.”

“Can you release their names, then?” a woman waving her pen for attention asked.

The official stared out at the tight knot of reporters. His gaze finally dropped away. “Officer John Tinney, and Officer Peter Slawinski.” He started spelling the names.

Alex’s whole body flashed as cold as ice.

“They break people’s necks,” his mother said in a dead tone as she stared at the TV. He thought that she must be repeating what she’d just heard. “They want the gate.”

Her eyes went out of focus. He knew; she was going back into that dark place. Once her eyes went out of focus like that she wouldn’t speak again for weeks.

He felt his cell phone vibrate in his pocket. Another text message from Bethany. He ignored it as he put an arm tenderly around his mother’s shoulders.

7

ALEX SAT FOR A WHILE just holding his mother, trying to imagine what madness haunted her. She no longer seemed to know that he was there.

The worst part was that he had no hope. The doctors had said that she would never get better, never be her old self again, and that he needed to understand that. They said there was brain damage that couldn’t be reversed. While they weren’t exactly sure what had caused the damage to her brain, they said that, among other things, it caused her to sometimes become violent. They said that such damage was not reversible. They’d said that she was a danger to herself and others and always would be.

After a while Alex gently laid her back on her bed. She was as limp as a doll — just a bundle of bone and muscle, blood and organs, existing often without conscious awareness, without anything other than a vestigial intellect. He fluffed up the pillow under her head. Her empty eyes remained fixed on the ceiling. As far as Alex knew, she didn’t know where she was, or that there was anyone there with her. She was for the most part dead to the world; her body just hadn’t fully caught up with that fact.

He pulled her shawl off the mirror, folded it, and replaced it in the wardrobe before sitting again on the edge of the bed.

When his phone rang he pulled it out and answered.

“Hey, birthday boy,” Bethany said, “I have a big surprise for you.”

Alex made an effort to keep the annoyance out of his voice. “Well, I’m afraid that—”

“I’m sitting outside your house.”

He paused a moment. “My house.”

Her voice turned flirtatious and lilting. “That’s right.”

“What are you doing there?”

“Well,” she said in an airy, intimate whisper, “I’m waiting for you. I want to give you your birthday present.”

“Thanks for the thought, Bethany, but I really don’t need anything, honest. Save your money.”

“No money involved,” she said. “Just get your tail home, birthday boy. Tonight you’re going to get yourself laid.”

Now Alex was really getting annoyed with her. He thought it easiest not to say so, though. He didn’t want to have a fight with a woman he hardly knew. There was no point to it.

“Look, Bethany, I’m really not in the mood.”

“You just leave that to me. I’ll get you in the mood. I think you ought to get lucky on your birthday, and I’m just the girl to make it special.”

Bethany was an attractive woman — in fact she bordered on being voluptuous — but the more he got to know her the less and less attractive Alex found her to be. She had nothing more than a superficial allure. He couldn’t talk to her about anything meaningful, not because she wasn’t intelligent enough, but because she didn’t care about anything meaningful. In a way, that was worse. She was a living, breathing example of superficial, and willfully so. She seemed to have no interests other than that she had a kind of odd, narrow focus on him and the two of them having a good time — or, at least, what was a good time by her definition.

“I can’t, right now,” he said, trying not to sound angry, even though he was getting angry.

She let out a low, breathy chuckle. “Oh, I’ll make sure you can, Alex. Don’t you worry about that. You just get yourself home and let Beth take care of everything.”

“I’m visiting my mother.”

“I think I can throw a better party. Promise. Just come give me a chance to make your birthday something you’ll never forget.”

“My mother is in the hospital. She’s ill and not doing well. I’m going to be sitting with her.”

That finally threw Bethany into silence for a moment.

“Oh,” she finally said, the sexiness gone from her voice. “I didn’t know.”

“I’ll call you later,” Alex said. “Maybe in a few days.”

“Well,” she said, sounding uncertain and reluctant to end the conversation so quickly, “I’m sure your mother is going to need to get her rest. Why don’t you call me later today, after your visit?”

Somehow, it didn’t sound quite like a question. It sounded more like an instruction. He hadn’t wanted to have this conversation — not at the moment, not sitting there with his mother — but Bethany was giving him no choice.

“Look, the truth is I don’t think I’m the guy for you. You’re an attractive woman, you really are. There are a lot of guys who like you. I think you’d be better off with one of them instead of me. You’d have a lot more fun with them, with guys who are interested in the same things that interest you.”

“But I like you.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.” She paused a moment. “You get me hot,” she finally said, falling back on her lusty voice, as if lust was magic that could banish any objections. He imagined that it very well might with most men, but he wasn’t most men.

“I’m sorry, Bethany. You’re a nice enough person, but we’re just not right for each other. It’s as simple as that.”

“I see.”

He didn’t say anything, hoping that she would leave it at that and not decide to make it ugly. It wasn’t like they’d been seeing each other for any length of time. There was no reason to make a big deal out of it. It had been a couple of dates, nothing more. He’d kissed her a few times. That was it. She’d made it clear that he was welcome to go farther, to go as far as he wanted, but something had made him keep her at arm’s length. Now he was glad he had.

“Alex, I’ve got to go. I need. . I need to think about this.”

“I understand. You think about it, but I think it’s best if we go our separate ways.”

He could hear her breathing for a moment; then, without a further word, she hung up on him.

“Good,” he said under his breath as he used his thumb to push the phone back into the pocket of his jeans.

He glanced over at his mother. She stared unblinking at the ceiling.

Alex picked up the TV remote when he saw another report about the two murdered Metro officers. The place they’d been found was a good dozen miles from where he had met Officers Tinney and Slawinski earlier that day.

It shook Alex to realize that the two men were dead. If he found it shocking, he could only imagine how horrifying the news had to be for those close to them.

Both men had seemed so competent, so in control. He’d seen them for only a few minutes, but it seemed impossible to think that both of those men could be dead. The swiftness of such a thing left Alex feeling shaken and even more depressed.

He envied people who enjoyed their birthdays.

Just then his phone rang again. He was reluctant to answer it, thinking it would be Bethany with a list of grievances over her hurt feelings and wanting to rant at him, but when he checked the small exterior display window it said OUT OF AREA.

Alex flipped open the cover and put the phone to his ear. “Hello, this is Alex.”

Weird, garbled sounds and disembodied whispers crackled through the receiver. The sounds made his mouth go dry.

Alex immediately flipped the cover closed. He stared at the phone a moment, then finally slipped it back in his pocket.

The sounds had been so unusual, so haunting, that he distinctly remembered hearing them before. It had been the call he had gotten earlier, just as he had been about to leave his grandfather’s house, just after he had learned about the land that came to be his on his twenty-seventh birthday.

He remembered that he’d gotten the call right after he had thought that someone had been looking at him through the mirror. It had also been shortly after he had asked if Ben thought he would end up crazy like his mother.

Alex glanced at the polished metal mirror before looking around at the mint-green room. He wondered if he was destined to end up spending the rest of his life in a place like this, like his mother.

He wondered how he would know if he had gone crazy. He didn’t feel crazy.

He bet that his mother didn’t feel crazy, either.

8

WHEN MR. MARTIN CALLED out of the blue, Alex could hardly believe the news. All six of his paintings had sold.

Holding the phone to an ear with a shoulder, Alex had swirled his brush in a jar of murky water and then wiped it on a paper towel as Mr. Martin asked him to come collect his money. Alex had been deeply absorbed in the work of painting an eerie evening mist along a shoreline of a mountain lake and didn’t want to stop, but Mr. Martin had seemed unusually anxious that Alex get there as soon as possible. He wouldn’t say anything about the person who had bought the paintings, only that they had paid cash and he wanted to give Alex his portion. He had made a weak excuse that he knew Alex needed the money.

Alex hadn’t talked to Bethany since she’d called him while he had been visiting his mother two days before. Things seemed to be looking up in more ways than one. His truck even started on the first try.

When he pulled into the parking lot at Regent Center it was early afternoon. The gray sky looked to be a harbinger of an approaching storm. The air had an unusual chill to it, a first breath of the coming change of season.

Alex parked next to a new Jeep, hoping that his would start again later without a lot of difficulty. With the sale of the six paintings he could certainly afford to get the starter fixed. He had thought to replace the starter himself but he reconsidered; he would need to finish up the painting he was working on when Mr. Martin had called. The gallery would need to have more of his paintings if the buyer should decide to return and collect more of Alex’s pieces, or if another buyer came along. It was far easier to sell paintings and get commissions if there was something on display.

Before he locked his truck, Alex picked the small painting wrapped in brown paper off the floor of the back seat. He didn’t want to give it back to Mr. Martin to sell or display, but he was afraid of it being stolen out of his truck. He’d brought the painting with him because he wanted to give it to the woman if he ever saw her again.

The halls of Regent Center were more crowded than they had been the last time he’d been there, the day he had seen the woman. With the painting tucked under his arm he quickly made his way toward the gallery, checking the faces of people along the way just in case she was there. He thought that it was a baseless hope, even a silly hope, but he couldn’t help himself from hoping to see her. When he caught sight of himself in a mirror displayed in the window of a boutique, he stepped a little quicker to get out of sight of it.

As he walked in front of the gallery window Alex spotted Mr. Martin pacing near the rear of the shop. He had on a dark suit with a bright orange tie, an odd choice that on Mr. Martin somehow worked. The bells on the door softly rang their familiar strain as Alex went inside. Mr. Martin, dry-washing his hands, stepped briskly among the pieces on easels.

“Ah, Alex, thank you for coming so quickly.”

“It’s been a while since my last payday,” Alex said with a smile as he tried to figure out why the man wasn’t smiling.

“Indeed,” Mr. Martin said without catching Alex’s attempt to lighten the mood.

Alex followed the gallery owner to the rear of the shop, where Mr. Martin sat on a rolling swivel chair and nervously worked a key to open a locked drawer. Once he had the drawer open he unlocked a metal box inside and pulled out a thick envelope. Inside was a stack of cash. He stood to count out the payment.

“Wait a minute,” Alex said, holding up a hand. “You usually give me the story, first. I’ve never sold six pieces at once before. It must have been an unusual sale. Who was the buyer? What happened? How did you convince them to buy six paintings? Did they just love the paintings and have to have them all?”

Mr. Martin gazed into Alex’s eyes for a moment as if overwhelmed by the barrage of questions. Alex realized that he was probably spooking the man. Alex frequently found that he made people nervous with his questions.

“Well,” Mr. Martin said at last, seemingly trying to recall it in exact detail, “a man came in. He glanced around but I soon realized that he wasn’t looking at the things that were on display — wasn’t looking at different pieces the way people usually do. He seemed to be searching for something specific. I asked if I could show him something special.

“He said yes, that he would like to see the work of Alexander Rahl. Naturally I was only too happy to show him your paintings.

Before I could begin to talk you up, he said that he would take them. I showed him that I had six of your paintings and asked which of them he would be interested in. He said he would take them all. I was momentarily stunned.

“The man asked how much he owed. He never even asked the price. Just asked what he owed.”

Mr. Martin licked his thin lips. “I was overjoyed for you. I knew how much you need the money, Alex, so as I regained my wits I took the opportunity, as the gallery owner and your representative, to get the best possible price for you. I quickly considered the dated, low price we were asking and then, in view of the man’s interest, added some to it.”

Alex was slightly amused at his good fortune, and Mr. Martin’s quick thinking. “So how much did you add?”

Mr. Martin swallowed. “I doubled the price. I told the man that they were four thousand apiece — and a good investment in an up-and-coming contemporary artist.”

“That’s twenty-four thousand dollars,” Alex said in astonishment. “You certainly earned your commission, Mr. Martin.”

Mr. Martin nodded. “That makes your portion, after commission, fourteen thousand four hundred dollars.”

Without delay he started counting off hundred-dollar bills. Alex was a bit dumbfounded and just stood there as the man counted out the money. When finished, the gallery owner took a deep breath. He seemed to be glad to be rid of the money. Alex straightened the thick stack of hundred-dollar bills before returning them to the envelope. He folded it in half and stuffed it all in the front pocket of his jeans.

Alex couldn’t understand why the man seemed so nervous. Mr. Martin often sold paintings for a great deal more than Alex’s work. One of R. C. Dillion’s paintings would have gone for well over what Alex had just earned for six. Maybe it was just that it had all been in cash.

“What then?” Alex asked, his suspicion growing. “Did the man say anything else?”

“There’s a little more to the story.” Mr. Martin straightened the orange knot at his throat. “After he had paid — in cash, the same cash I just gave you — he said, ‘These are mine, now, right?’ I said, ‘Yes, of course.’

“He then picked up one of his paintings, pulled a fat black marker out of his pocket — you know, the indelible kind — and started writing all over the painting. I was stunned. I didn’t know what to do. When he had finished, he did the same to each in turn. Wrote all over them.”

Mr. Martin clenched his hands together. “I’ve never had such an experience. I asked the man what he thought he was doing. He said that they were his paintings and he could do any damn thing he wanted to with them.”

Mr. Martin leaned closer. “Alex, I would have stopped him, I swear I would have, but, well, they were his, and he was very. . insistent about what he was doing. By his change in attitude I was beginning to fear what would happen if I were to interfere. So I didn’t. I had the money, after all — cash at that.”

Alex stood with his jaw hanging. He was overjoyed to have the money from the sale but at the same time he was incensed to hear that his work had been defaced.

“So he finished marking all over my work and then just took his ruined paintings and left?”

Mr. Martin scratched his jaw, his gaze turning aside. “No. He set them down and said that he wanted me to give them back to you. He said, ‘Give them back to Alexander Rahl. My treat.’ ”

Alex heaved a sigh. “Let me see them.”

Mr. Martin gestured to the paintings sitting against the wall in the corner of the office area. They were placed face-to-face, and no longer in frames.

When Alex lifted the first one and held it out in both hands he was struck speechless. In fat black letters sprawled diagonally across the painting it said FUCK YOU ASSHOLE.

The painting was covered with every other hateful, vile, vulgar name there was.

“Alex, I want them out of here.”

Alex stood, hands trembling, staring at his beautiful painting covered with ugly words.

“Do you hear me, Alex? I can’t have these in here. What if a customer should happen to see them? You have to take them with you. Right now. Get them out. I want them out of here. I want to forget all about this.”

Through his fury Alex could only nod. He knew that Mr. Martin didn’t fear a customer seeing them. Many of Mr. Martin’s artists routinely spoke like this in front of customers. The customers took the artist’s “colorful” speech as an indication of social sensitivity and artistic introspection. The more times an artist could drop the F bomb in a sentence the more visionary he became to them.

No, Mr. Martin was not offended by the words — he was used to hearing them in the gallery — he was frightened by the man who had written them, and by the context of those words: raw hatred.

Mr. Martin cleared his throat. “I’ve been giving the matter a great deal of thought, and I think it best if for now we don’t display any of your work.”

Alex looked up. “What?”

Mr. Martin gestured to the painting. “Well, look at it. This kind of man could get violent. He looked like he was ready to break my neck if I dared lift a finger to stop him.”

Alex’s first thought was that it was Bethany’s doing, but he dismissed the idea. He was pretty sure she didn’t have that kind of money to spend on a grudge.

“What did this guy look like? Describe him.”

“Well,” Mr. Martin said, taken aback a little by the heat in Alex’s tone, “he was tall, and good size — about like you. He was dressed casually but not expensively. Tan slacks, some kind of bland shirt, not tucked in. It was beige with a vertical blue stripe of some sort down the left side.”

Alex didn’t recognize the description.

He felt sick with anger. He ripped the canvas off the stretcher, then did the same with the other five. He only briefly saw the insults and obscene words desecrating the scenes of beauty. The range of profanity turned his stomach, not so much because of the words themselves, but because of the naked hate they conveyed.

They were just paintings of beauty. That’s all they were. Something to uplift people who looked at them, something to make people feel good about life and the world they lived in. To harbor hatred for beauty was one thing, but to go to great expense just to express that hate was quite another.

Alex realized that Mr. Martin was right. Such a man could easily become violent.

Alex hoped to meet him.

9

WITH THE ROLLED — UP RUINED CANVASES under one arm and the painting that he’d carefully wrapped in brown paper tucked under his other arm, Alex left Mr. Martin’s gallery without an argument. Despite how much he was fuming, there wasn’t any point in arguing. Mr. Martin was afraid.

Alex couldn’t really blame the man. Alone as he was most of the time, he was a sitting duck in the gallery. The stranger could come back at any time. What was Mr. Martin supposed to do? Alex couldn’t expect the gallery owner to have it in him to be able to handle an altercation that could become violent.

Conflicting emotions raged through Alex’s thoughts as he made his way out into the elegant halls. He was depressed, he was furious. He wanted to run home and lock himself away from a world where such people roamed free. He wanted to find the guy and shove the black markers down his throat.

When Alex looked up, the woman was standing not far off in front of him, watching him approach. He slowed to a stop.

She was in the same black dress, with the same green wrap draped over her shoulders. He thought that he saw wisps of vapor — a hint of steam or smoke — rising from her fall of blond hair and her shoulders, but as soon as he focused on it, it was gone.

As impossible as it seemed, she looked even better than he remembered.

“You come here often?” he asked.

Her gaze never left his as she slowly shook her head. “This is only my second time here.”

Something about the serious set of her features gave him pause. He knew that she wasn’t there to shop.

His grandfather’s old mantra, Trouble will find you, echoed through his mind.

“Are you all right, Alex?” she asked.

“Sure.” The sound of her voice made him all right. “You know my name, but I don’t know yours.”

A small smile softened her features as she glided a step closer. “I am Jax.”

Her name was as unusual as everything else about her. He could hardly believe that he was really seeing her again.

“I’d give anything to paint you, Jax,” he said under his breath to himself.

She smiled at his words, smiled in a way that accepted them as a compliment, but didn’t reveal her view of them or her willingness to be the subject of a painting.

He finally pulled his gaze away to check around, to see if anyone was close. “Did you hear the news on the TV?”

Her brow twitched. “News? No. What news?”

“You remember the other day when we first met out on the street? When that truck nearly ran us over.”

“The pirates, as you called them. I remember.”

“Well, later that same day those two cops who stopped the truck were found dead.”

She stared at him a moment. “Dead?”

He nodded. “The news said that both men had been found with their necks broken.”

The method of murder registered in her eyes. She let out a long sigh as she shook her head. “That’s terrible.”

Alex suddenly wished he hadn’t started the conversation with grim news. He gestured to a bench set in among a grouping of large round planters.

“Would you sit with me? I’d like to show you something.”

She returned the smile and at his bidding sat on the small mahogany bench. Huge split-leaf philodendrons created a green roof over the bench. The planters overflowing with plants to either side and behind made it resemble a forest retreat for just the two of them. The planters and vegetation blocked them off from most but not all of the shoppers strolling the halls.

Alex set the rolled-up canvases on the bench to his right, on the side away from her. He placed the painting on her lap.

“What’s this?” she asked.

“A gift.”

She stared at him a moment, then pulled off the brown paper.

She looked genuinely stunned to see the painting. She lifted it reverently in her hands. Her eyes welled up with tears.

It took her a moment to find her voice. “Why are you giving me this?”

Alex shrugged. “Because I want to. You thought it was beautiful. Not everyone thinks my work is beautiful. You did. I wanted you to have it.”

Jax swallowed. “Alex, tell me why you painted this particular place.”

“Like I told you before, it’s from my imagination.”

“No, it’s not,” she said rather emphatically.

He paused momentarily, surprised by her words. “Yes it is. I was merely painting a scene—”

“This is a place near where I live.” She touched a graceful finger to the shade beneath towering pines. “I’ve spent countless hours sitting in this very place, gazing off at the mountain passes here, and here. The views from this hidden place are unparalleled — just as you’ve painted them.”

Alex didn’t know what to say. “It’s just a painting of the woods. The woods can look much the same in one place as another. A species of tree all look pretty much the same. I’m sure that it simply reminds you of this place you know.”

With the edge of a knuckle she wiped a tear from under an eye. “No.” She swallowed and then pointed to a spot he clearly recalled painting. For some reason he’d put extra care into the trunk of the tree. “See this notch you put in this tree?” She glanced up at him. “I put that notch there.”

“You put it there,” he said in a flat tone.

Jax nodded. “I was testing the edge I’d put on my knife. The bark is thick there. I sliced paper-thin pieces of it to test the edge. Bark is tough, but is easier on a freshly sharpened blade than other things, like wood, might be.”

“And you like to sit at a place like this?”

“No, not a place like this place. This place. I like to sit at this place. This place is Shineestay.”

“Shineestay? What’s that mean?”

“It’s an ancient word that means ‘place of power.’ You have painted that exact place.” She looked again at the scene and tapped a spot to the side of the sunlit glen. “The only minor difference is that there is a tree, here, near the side of this open area, that you have not painted. This is the exact same spot, except for that one tree that’s missing.”

Alex felt goose bumps tickle the nape of his neck. He knew the tree she was talking about. He had painted it.

He had originally painted it exactly where she was pointing, but while it might have been right in such a forest, it had been compositionally wrong for the painting, so he had painted over it. He recalled at the time wondering why he’d painted it in the first place, since it didn’t fit in the composition. Even as he looked where Jax was pointing, he could see the faint contour of the brushstrokes of the tree beneath the paint that now lay over it.

Alex was at a loss to explain how it could be the place she knew. “Where is this place?”

She stared at him a moment. Her voice regained a bit of its distant, detached edge. “Alex, we need to talk. Unfortunately, there is a great deal to say, and like the last time, I can’t stay long.”

“I’m listening.”

She glanced at passersby. “Is there somewhere not far away that’s a little more private?”

Alex pointed down the hall. “There’s a restaurant down there that’s nice. The lunch rush is over, so it would be quiet and more private. How about if I buy you lunch and you can tell me what you have the time to tell me?”

She pressed her lips tightly together a moment as she considered the place he’d pointed out. “All right.” He wondered why she was being so cautious. Maybe she had a grandfather like Ben.

As they stood, she held the painting tightly to herself. “Thank you for this, Alex. You can’t possibly know what this means to me. This is one of my favorite places. I go there because it’s beautiful.”

He bowed his head at her kind words. “I painted it because it’s beautiful. That you like it is a greater reward for me than you could know.”

He still wanted to know how he could have painted a place she knew, a place she knew so well, but he sensed the tension in her posture and decided to go easy. She’d said that she wanted to explain things, so he thought it best if he didn’t intimidate her out of wanting to do so.

Alex picked up the rolled canvases and then tucked them under an arm as they started down the hall.

“How did you come by the name Jax?”

She brightened, almost laughed, at the question. “It’s a game. You toss jax on the ground, throw a ball up in the air, and then try to pick up the jax and catch the ball in the same hand after it bounces once. It’s a simple child’s game but as you try for ever more jax it requires a sharp eye and quick hands. Certain people were amazed at how quick I am with my hands, so my parents named me Jax.”

Alex frowned as he tried to reconcile the story. “But when you were born you couldn’t have played anything yet. A kid has to be, what, five to ten years old before they can play that kind of game? How could your parents know you were going to be quick with your hands when you were just born?”

She stared straight ahead as she walked. “Prophecy.”

Alex blinked. “What?”

“A prophet told them about me before I was born, told them how everyone would be amazed at how quick I would be with my hands, how it would first be noticed because I would be a natural at the game of jax. That’s why they named me Jax.”

Alex wondered what kind of weird religion her parents belonged to that put that much stock in the words of prophets. He thought that if her parents expected her to be quick with her hands then they would encourage her to practice and as a result she would end up quick. He wanted to say so, to say a lot of things, ask a lot of questions, but a growing sense of caution reminded him to take it easy and let her tell her own story. So he kept his questions on the light side.

“But Jack, like in jacks, is a boy’s name.”

“The boy’s name Jack is spelled with a k. My name is spelled with an x. J-A-X comes from the game of jax, not the boy’s name.”

“But the game is called jacks, J-A-C-K-S.”

“Not where I come from,” she said.

“Where’s that?”

“You wouldn’t know it,” she said after a moment. “It’s a long way from here.”

For some reason she had avoided answering his question, but he let it go.

As they strolled down the hall he watched her out of the corner of his eye. He often watched people, studied their posture, their natural way of moving, their attitude expressed through the way they carried themselves, to help him accurately paint the human form.

Most people when in public conveyed either a casual or a businesslike attitude. People were often focused on the place they were headed, never really aware of anything along the way. That tunnel vision affected the way they moved. Those projecting a businesslike attitude held their bodies tight. Others, being self-absorbed and out of touch with their surroundings, moved in a looser fashion. Most people were self-absorbed, unaware of who was around them or of any potential threat, and their body language betrayed that fact. In some cases that casual attitude drew dangerous attention. It was what predators looked for.

Most people never consciously considered the reality that bad things happened, that there were those who would harm them. They simply had never encountered such situations and didn’t believe it could happen to them. They were willfully oblivious.

Jax moved in a different way. Her form, unlike the tight businesslike posture, carried tension, like a spring that was always kept tight, yet she moved with grace. She carried herself with confidence, aware of everything around her. In some ways it reminded him of the way a predator moved. Through small clues in her posture she projected an aura of cool composure that bordered on intimidating. This was not a woman whom most men would approach lightly.

In fact, that awareness was what he found the most riveting. She watched the people moving through the halls — every one of them — without always looking directly at them. She kept track of them out of the corner of her eye, measuring each, checking each one as if for distance and potential threat.

“Are you looking for anyone in particular?” he asked.

Absorbed in thoughts of her own, she said, “Yes.”

“Who?”

“A different kind of human.”

In an instant Alex yanked her around a corner and slammed her up against the wall. He hadn’t intended to be so rough about it, but the shock of hearing those words tripped something within him and he acted.

“What did you say?” he asked through gritted teeth.

He held her left arm with his right hand. The painting was pressed between them. His left forearm lay across her throat, his hand gripping her dress at her opposite shoulder. If he were to push, he could crush her windpipe.

She stared unflinching into his eyes. “I said I was looking for a different kind of human. Now, I suggest that you think better of what you’re doing and carefully let go of me. Don’t move too fast or you’ll get your throat cut and I’d hate to have to do that. I’m on your side, Alex.”

Alex frowned and then, when she pushed just a little, realized that she was indeed holding the point of a knife to the underside of his chin. He didn’t know where the knife had come from. He didn’t know how she had gotten it there so fast. But he did know that she wasn’t kidding.

He also didn’t know which of them would beat the other if it came down to it. He was fast, too. But it was not, and had not been, his intent to hurt her — merely to restrain her.

He slowly started to release his hold on her. “My mother said the same thing to me a few days ago.”

“So?”

“She’s confined to a mental institution. When I visited her she told me that I must run and hide before they get me. When I asked her who it was that was trying to get me, she said ‘a different kind of human.’ Then the report came on about those two officers being murdered. It said they were found with their necks broken. My mother said, ‘They break people’s necks.’ Then she retreated into that faraway world of hers. She hasn’t spoken since. She won’t speak again for weeks.”

Jax squeezed his arm sympathetically. “I’m sorry about your mother, Alex.”

He glanced around to see if anyone was paying attention to them. No one was. People probably assumed that they were two lovers whispering sweet nothings to each other.

His blood was up and, despite her calming voice and her gentle touch, he was having trouble coming back down. He made himself unclench his jaw.

Something between them had just changed, changed in a deadly serious way. He was sure that she felt it as well.

“I want to know how it is that you said the very same thing my crazy mother said. I want you to tell me that.”

From mere inches away she gazed into his eyes. “That’s why I’m here, Alex.”

10

THE DOOR TO THE REGENT GRILL, covered in tufted black leather, closed silently behind them. There were no windows in the murky inner sanctum of the restaurant. The hostess, a pixie of a woman with an airy scarf flowing out behind, led them to a quiet niche that Alex requested. With the exception of two older women out in the center of the room, under a broad but dimly lit cylindrical chandelier, the restaurant was empty of patrons.

Empty or not, Alex didn’t want his back to the room. He got the distinct feeling that Jax didn’t, either.

They both slid into the booth, sitting side by side, with their backs to the wall.

The padded, upholstered walls covered with gold fabric, the plush chairs, the mottled blue carpets, and the ivory tablecloths made the restaurant a quiet, intimate retreat. The location in back felt safe in its seclusion.

After the hostess set the menus down and left and the busboy had filled their water glasses, Jax again glanced around before speaking.

“Look, Alex, this isn’t going to be easy to explain. It’s complex and I don’t have enough time right now to make it all clear for you. You need to trust me.”

Alex wasn’t exactly in an indulgent mood. “Why should I trust you?”

She smiled a little. “Because I may very well be the only one who can keep you from getting your neck broken.”

“By who?”

She nodded toward the rolled-up canvases on the bench on the far side of him. “By the people who did that to your paintings.”

His brow twitched. “How would you know about that?”

Her gaze turned down to her folded hands. “We caught a glimpse of him doing it.”

“‘We’? What do you mean, we caught a glimpse of him doing it?”

“We were trying to look through the mirror in Mr. Martin’s gallery. We were trying to find you.”

“Where were you when you were ‘looking’ through the mirror?”

“Please, Alex, would you just listen? I don’t have the time to explain a hundred different complicated details. Please?”

Alex let out a deep breath and relented. “All right.”

“I know that the things I’m telling you might sound impossible, but I swear that I’m telling you the truth. Don’t close your mind to what is beyond your present understanding. People sometimes invent or discover things that expand their knowledge so that they accept as possible what only the day before they had thought was impossible. This is something like that.”

“You mean like how people used to think that no one would ever be able to carry around a tiny little phone without it having to be connected to wires.”

She looked a little confused by the analogy. “I suppose so.” She turned back to the subject at hand. “One day I hope I can help you better grasp the reality of the situation. For now, please try to keep an open mind.”

Alex slowly twirled the stem of the water glass between his thumb and first finger, watching the ice remain still in place as the glass spun. “So, you were saying how you were looking for me.”

Jax nodded. “I knew that you had a connection to the gallery. It’s how I knew where you were today. I had to hurry if I was to catch you. Because we had to hurry we couldn’t prepare properly and as a consequence I don’t have much time here.”

Alex wiped a hand across his face. He was starting to feel like maybe he was being played for a fool. “You need a room with my mother.”

“You think this is some kind of joke?” She looked up at him with fiery intensity. “You have no idea how hard this is for me. You have no idea the things I’ve been through — the chances I’ve had to take to come here.”

She clenched her jaw and swallowed, trying to keep her voice under control. “This isn’t a joke, Alex. You have no idea how afraid I am, how lost I feel here, how alone, how terrified.”

“I’m sorry, Jax.” Alex looked away from the pain in her brown eyes and took a sip of water. “But you’re not alone. Tell me what’s going on?”

She let out a calming breath. “I’ll do my best, but you have to understand that for now I simply can’t tell you everything. It isn’t just that I don’t have the time to explain it all right now, it’s also that you aren’t yet ready to hear it all. Worse, we’re in the dark about a lot of it ourselves.”

“Who is this ‘we’ you keep mentioning?”

She turned cautious. “Friends of mine.”

“Friends.”

She nodded. “We’ve been working for years, trying for years to figure some of it out. They helped get me here.”

“Get here from where?”

She looked away and said simply, “From where I live.”

Alex didn’t like her evasive answer, but he decided that there was no harm in just letting it play out for the moment.

“Go on.”

“We finally came to a point where we thought it would work, so despite the risk we attempted it, but we don’t yet know how to make it work reliably. Not like the others do.”

“You mean work to get here, to where I live, from where you live?”

“That’s right.”

“What would have happened if you hadn’t gotten it right, if it didn’t ‘work’?”

She stared into his eyes for a long moment. “Then I would have been lost for all eternity in a very bad place.”

Alex could tell by the tension in her expression how real the peril was — to her, at least — and how much the thought of failure frightened her. Considering that this woman was not easily intimidated, that in and of itself gave him pause.

He was about to again ask who the others on her team were when a waitress came up to the table and smiled warmly. “Can I get you two something to drink? Maybe a glass of wine?”

“I could really use some hot tea,” Jax said.

The tone of that simple request revealed how weary she was, and how close she was to her wits’ end.

“I’m fine with water. The lady doesn’t have a lot of time, though.

Maybe we could order?” He turned to Jax as he picked up a menu. “What would you like? Chicken? Beef? A salad?”

“I doesn’t matter. Whatever you’re having is fine.”

It was clear that she didn’t care about food, so Alex ordered two chicken salads.

As the waitress left, Alex’s phone rang. He reflexively asked Jax to excuse him a moment as he pulled the phone out of his pocket.

“Hello, this is Alex.”

He’d thought that maybe it was Mr. Martin calling to say that he’d changed his mind. Instead, Alex was greeted with garbled noises. He heard a strained, disembodied voice torn by howling that sounded like it said, “She’s there. She’s there.” Otherworldly whispers and strange, soft moans underlay the crackling static.

And then Alex made out his name in the background whispers.

Jax leaned in. “What’s wrong?”

He was going to flip the cover closed and tell her that it was nothing, but for some reason he decided that maybe she should hear it. He held the phone up to her ear.

She leaned in closer, listening.

And then the blood drained from her face.

“Dear spirits,” she whispered to herself, “they know I’m here.”

“What?” Alex asked. “Do you recognize it?”

Stricken with alarm, she stared wide-eyed at him as she listened to the sounds. “Make it stop.”

Alex took the phone back and closed it.

“They’re tracking you with that thing.”

“Tracking me?”

Her face still ashen, she said, “From the other side.”

Alex frowned. “The other side of what?”

When she only stared with a haunted look, Alex turned the phone off. Before putting it in a pocket, just to be safe, he popped out the battery and put it in a different pocket.

The waitress swooped in and set down a cup for Jax and a pot of hot water along with a small basket of tea bags.

After the waitress left, Jax poured herself some hot water. Her hands were trembling.

For a moment she sat staring at the cup of hot water, as if she expected it to do something. She finally picked up the cup, brought it close, and peered down into the water. She set the cup back down.

Jax nested her hands in her lap. Her brow wrinkled as she fought back tears.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

For a woman who had the presence of mind to put a knife to his throat when he had unexpectedly shoved her up against the wall, she seemed pretty shaken.

“How do you make the tea work?” she asked in a broken voice on the ragged edge of control.

Alex was baffled. “Make the tea work? What do you mean?”

“I never imagined how hard this would be,” she said, more to herself than him.

“The tea?”

She crumpled her napkin in a tight fist as she fought back tears.

“Everything.” She swallowed and then with great effort summoned her voice. “Please, Alex. I want some tea, but I don’t know how to work it.”

Seeing her genuine distress made his heart hurt. He wouldn’t ever have imagined that this woman would let herself be seen as helpless. Something was bringing her to the edge.

Alex gently touched his fingers to the back of her hand. “It’s all right, Jax. Don’t let it get to you. We all have days when we’re overwhelmed. It’s no big deal. I’ll help you.”

He pulled a package of tea from the basket, opened the paper flap, and pulled out the tea bag. He held it up by the square paper at the end of the string.

“See? The tea is in here, in the tea bag.” Her gaze tracked the tea bag the whole way as he lowered it into the cup and draped the string over the edge. “Just let it steep for a little bit and you’ll have tea.”

She leaned in and looked down into the cup. As she watched, the water started darkening.

Jax’s sudden smile banished her tears. Her face took on the look of a child who had just seen a magic trick for the first time.

“That’s how it works? That’s all you have to do?”

Alex nodded. “That’s it. You obviously don’t have tea bags where you come from.”

She shook her head. “It’s very different here.”

“You like it better where you live, don’t you?”

She considered the question only briefly. “Yes. It’s home. Despite the trouble, it’s home. I think you would like it there, too.”

“What makes you think that?”

She reached over and trailed her fingers tenderly across the painting. “You paint such places. You paint beauty.” She looked back up at him. “This will help me convince the others.”

“Convince them of what?”

“Convince them to trust my choices.”

“Who are these others, Jax?”

“Others something like me.”

“They live in this other place? Where you live?”

“Yes. Do you remember the two men when you first saw me?” she asked, seemingly changing the subject. “The two that the authorities stopped?”

Alex nodded. “The pirates. Do you know who they were?”

“Yes. They were a different kind of human. Different from you. Different from your mother. Among other things, they will break the necks of anyone who gets in their way. Those are the people your mother feared.”

“What do you mean they—”

The waitress appeared with two plates. “I had them put a rush on it, since you haven’t much time.”

“Thank you,” Jax said with a sincere smile.

After the waitress had hurried off to her work, Alex went back to his questions. “What do you mean—”

“Do I have to do anything to this so that I can eat it?” Jax looked up from the salad. “Is there anything I need to do first?”

Alex held up a fork. “No. Just dig in.” He stabbed a piece of chicken with the fork. “The chicken is cut up so you don’t even have to use a knife.” He realized that if a knife was needed she would have that knack down pat.

He ate the bite to demonstrate.

She smiled. “Thank you, Alex, for being patient. For understanding that patience is needed in this.”

If she only knew how impatient he was, but he didn’t want to spook her.

“Why?”

“Because if I were to tell you everything right now you wouldn’t believe me, and you need to believe me. But, on the other hand, time is slipping through my fingers, so I have to tell you at least some of it.”

Alex almost smiled at the curious dance they were doing, both trying not to spook the other.

“Jax, how did my mother know those things — know about a different kind of human, about men who break people’s necks?”

“I think in part because we tried to warn her.”

“About what?”

“That people were hunting her. But we couldn’t get here, yet. The others could. They’ve been coming here for some time now. We tried to warn her through mirrors, but they apparently got to her. We tried to warn you, too.”

The hair on the backs of Alex’s arms stood up on end.

“My grandfather showed me some papers about an inheritance. Does that have anything to do with these other people you tried to warn my mother about?”

She stared down at her plate for a time before answering. “All we know at the moment is that there are some very dangerous people who are up to something. We haven’t yet managed to fit the pieces together.”

Alex wanted a better answer. “My grandfather said that the inheritance was supposed to go to my father on his twenty-seventh birthday, but since he died before then it was reassigned to my mother. She had to be put in an asylum before the inheritance could go to her on her twenty-seventh birthday. It seems logical that this inheritance might be connected with what happened to her.”

“I don’t know, but it’s possible. I’m sorry we weren’t able to help her, Alex. I’m sorry your family has had such trouble.”

Alex ate silently for a moment. “My grandfather, Ben, says that he thinks that the whole troublesome matter has something to do with the seven — the seven in twenty-seven.”

“The seven?” She looked incredulous. “That’s just crazy.”

“That’s what I thought.”

She shook her head to herself. “The seven. How could he ever come up with something like that? It’s the nine.”

Alex’s forkful of chicken paused on the way to his mouth.

“What?”

“It’s the nine. It’s not the seven in twenty-seven — it’s the nine. Two plus seven. Nine. Nines are triggers.”

“That doesn’t make sense. I was nine, once. My father was. My mother was. We were all eighteen. The one plus the eight in eighteen equals nine, just like the two plus the seven in twenty-seven equals nine.”

Alex couldn’t believe he was arguing such a point.

Jax was shaking her head. “Yes, but the nine and the eighteen are the first and second occurrence of a nine. Twenty-seven is the third nine. It’s the third that’s important.”

Alex stared at her. “The third nine.”

She nodded. “That’s right. Threes are pivotal numbers — spells of threes and such.”

Alex blinked in disbelief. “Spells of—”

“Three is a base component of nine. The multiplying element.” Jax gestured with her fork, as if to imply that it was self-evident. “That’s why twenty-seven is key: it’s the third nine. It’s called the Law of Nines.”

“The Law of Nines,” Alex repeated as he stared. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

“It’s easier than tea.”

“Somehow, I don’t think so,” Alex said.

The woman believed in numerology. Alex thought that Ben should be the one sitting there having such a conversation.

Alex couldn’t believe that a number could have any kind of real meaning. A thought came to mind. He almost hated to mention it.

“I was born on September ninth. Ninth month, ninth day, at nine in the evening.”

“To be precise, you were born at nine minutes after nine.”

A chill tickled up between his shoulder blades to the nape of his neck. “How do you know that?”

“We checked.” She took a sip of tea as she watched him over the rim of her cup.

“What else do you know about me?”

“Well, you don’t remember your dreams.”

Alex’s frown deepened. “How in the world would you know that?”

“You’re a Rahl.” She shrugged. “Rahl men don’t remember their dreams.”

“How do you know about Rahl men? Are there Rahls where you come from?”

“No,” she said with a suddenly wistful look. “Where I come from the House of Rahl has long since died out.”

“Look, Jax, I’m only getting more confused.” He refrained from using a stronger word than “confused.” “You’re making me think all kinds of things about you that I’d really rather not think.” He was starting to think that she was crazy — or maybe that he was. “Why don’t you clear it up for me.”

“I’m not from your world,” she said in quiet finality as she looked into his eyes. “I’m a different kind of human than you.”

11

ALEX STARED FOR A MOMENT. “You mean you’re an alien. From Mars, or something.”

Her expression darkened. “I may not know what Mars is, but your tone is all too clear. This isn’t a joke. I risked my life to come here.”

“Risked your life how?”

“That isn’t your concern.”

“What is my concern?”

“That there are people from my world, dangerous people, who are likely to come after you for reasons we don’t yet fully understand. I wouldn’t like you to be unprepared.”

He wondered how one prepared for people from some other dimension or time or twilight zone or something — he couldn’t imagine what — who were liable to come looking for one.

Alex tapped his fork on a piece of chicken in his salad as he considered her words. If there was ever a look that meant business, she was giving it to him.

Still, he just couldn’t bring himself to take seriously such talk of people coming from a different world. He wondered yet again if his lifelong worry was coming to pass: he wondered if he could be going crazy like his mother had. He knew that she believed things that weren’t real.

He pushed the thoughts aside. He wasn’t crazy. Jax was real enough. It actually made more sense for him to believe that she was crazy. Yet, despite how absurd her story was, she simply didn’t strike him as crazy.

Even if he couldn’t believe that this woman was from some other world, something seemed to be going on, and it was serious. Deadly serious, if he was to believe her.

He wanted to ask her exactly how she had traveled from this other world, but he instead checked his tone and started over. “I’m listening.”

She took a sip of tea. “Someone is meddling.”

“With my family?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Most likely because you’re a Rahl. We believe that unless you have children you will be the last in the Rahl bloodline.”

“And you think someone is interested in the Rahls?”

“If I had to guess I’d say that they may have killed your father to prevent him from getting to his twenty-seventh birthday.”

“My father died in a car accident. He wasn’t murdered.”

“Maybe not.” Jax arched an eyebrow. “But if you had been run down the other day don’t you suppose it would have looked like an accident?”

“Are you saying that was intentional? That those men were trying to kill me? Why?”

She leaned back and sighed as she dismissed the suggestion with a flick of her hand. “I’m only saying that if they had been trying to kill you it would have looked like an accident, don’t you think?”

He stabbed a piece of chicken as he recalled the murderous look the bearded man had given him. He looked up at her. She was watching him again.

“Why are these people so interested in the Rahl bloodline?”

“We’re not entirely sure, yet. Like I said, we don’t fully understand their reasons or what is going on.”

She seemed not to be sure about a lot of things. Alex didn’t know if he believed that she was as in the dark as she claimed, but he decided that since she chose not to tell him yet she must have her reasons, so he let it go.

Jax sat back a little as she went on. “When I was but a child, a few people started to get an inkling that something was going on, something nefarious. They dug into things, followed people, spied on them, and eventually, along the way, as one thing led to another, they found out that your mother was in danger. They tried to help her. In the end they weren’t able to do so. They didn’t yet know enough.”

“If twenty-seven is so important, what with the Law of Nines and all,” he asked, “then why didn’t these dangerous people do anything to my grandfather, Ben? He’s a Rahl.” There were just too many holes in her story. He gestured with his fork to make his point. “Or, for that matter, why not come after any of the previous generations?”

“Some of my friends believe that these other people simply weren’t able to get here yet.”

“But you think differently?”

Reluctantly, she nodded. “I think that important elements of the prophecy weren’t yet in place. It was too soon. Up until now it had been the wrong time, the wrong Rahl, for the prophecy.”

“I don’t believe in fortune-telling.”

She shrugged. “It could be that you’re right, that it’s nothing more than some kind of baseless lunatic idea they came up with. They would hardly be the first group of people who acted on a completely deluded idea.”

He hadn’t expected her answer. “That’s true enough.”

“Whatever their reasons, some time ago they found a way to come here. These are people who, in my world, kill for the things they believe in.”

Alex again thought about the plumbing truck that had nearly run him down. He thought about the two dead officers, their necks broken. He remembered his mother saying “They break people’s necks.” He didn’t want to ask the question for fear of lending credibility to a subject he didn’t think deserved it, but he couldn’t help himself.

“What is this prophecy?”

She glanced around the empty room, checking that no one was near. The two women had already paid their check and left. The waitress was at a distant wait station, her back to them, folding a stack of black napkins for the dinner setting.

Jax leaned in and lowered her voice. “The gist of the prophecy is that only someone from this world has a chance to save our world.”

He bit back a sarcastic remark and asked instead, “Save it from what?”

“Maybe save it from these people who are coming here to make sure that the prophecy can’t come to pass.”

“Sounds like a dog chasing its own tail,” he said.

She opened her hands in an empathetic gesture. “For all we know, it could be that they don’t believe you’re a part of this prophecy. Maybe they want something else from you.”

“But you think I’m involved in this in some way.”

She laid her fingers on the sunlit place in the painting beside her before looking up at him. “You may live in this world, be a part of this world, but you have links, no matter how insubstantial, to our world. You proved it by painting a place in my world.”

Or so she said. “It could just be a place that resembles it.”

She remained mute, but the look she gave him was answer enough.

Alex ran his fingers back through his hair. “Your world, my world. Jax, I hope you can understand that when all is said and done I can’t really believe what you’re telling me.”

“I know. I couldn’t believe it when I first came here and saw what looked like huge metal things floating in the air, or carriages moving without horses, or any of a dozen other things that to me are impossible. It’s not easy for me to reconcile it all in my own head. This will not be easy for you, either, Alex, but I know of no other way if there is to be a chance to save our world.”

He felt as if he had just seen a sliver of light through the door she had opened a crack. This was a mission of desperation as far as she was concerned. She meant for him to help her save her world.

He wasn’t sure if she had intended for him to see that brief glimpse of her purpose. Rather than try to pry at that door and have her slam it shut in his face, he asked something else, hoping to put her at ease.

“How is your world different from mine? Is it that they don’t have advances like airplanes, cars, and the technology we have?” Were he not sitting with a woman who seemed deadly serious, he doubted that he could have asked such questions with a straight face. “What makes the people there, what makes you, a different kind of human?”

“This is a world without magic,” she said without a trace of humor.

“So. . you mean to imply that there is magic in your world? Real magic?”

“Yes.”

“And you’ve seen it? Seen real magic.”

She studied his eyes for a moment before a slight but intimidating smile grew at the corners of her mouth.

“Among other abilities, I am a sorceress.”

“A sorceress who can’t make tea.”

“A sorceress who in my world can do a great deal more than make tea.”

“But not in this world?”

“No,” she finally admitted, her daunting smile fading. “Not in this world. This is a world without magic. I have no power here.”

He found that to be rather convenient.

“So, we come from very different worlds, then.”

“Not so different,” Jax said in a way that sounded like it was somehow meant to be comforting.

Alex studied her placid expression. “We don’t have magic. You say your world does. How much different could our worlds be?”

“Not so different,” she repeated. “We have magic, but so do you, after a fashion. It’s just that it manifests itself in a different way. You do the very same things we do, if with different methods.”

“Like what?”

“Well, that thing in your pocket.”

“The phone?”

She nodded as she leaned back and pulled something out of a pocket near her waist. She held up a small black book.

“This is a journey book. It works much like that phone you get messages on. Like your phone, we use this to get messages from people and to convey information to others. I write in my journey book and through magic the words appear at the same time in its twin. You say words on your phone device and words come out somewhere else. I am accustomed to writing messages, not speaking them. But you can also make your phone device function as a journey book, make words appear in it, am I right?”

Bethany’s text messages sprang to mind. “Yes, but that’s all done through technology.”

She shrugged. “We do the same things you do. You do it by means of technology, we use magic. The words may be different but they do basically the same thing. They both implement intent and that’s all that really matters. They both accomplish the same tasks.”

“Technology is nothing at all like magic,” Alex insisted.

“Technology itself is not what’s important, is it?”

“What do you mean?”

“Do you really know any better than I do how a phone device works? Can you explain to me how the message gets from one place to another”—she waggled her fingers across in front of them—“how the words come invisibly through the air and end up here, in the device in your pocket, in a way that you can understand them? Do you really know what makes all that technology work? Can you explain all the unseeable things that happen, the things that you take for granted?”

“I guess not,” he admitted.

“Nor can I explain how a journey book works. What’s important is that the people here used their minds to create this technology in order to accomplish their ends, much like those where I come from think up ways to create things using magic to accomplish what we need to accomplish. It’s as simple as that. It’s second nature to both of us. We both use what has been created. For all you know, your phone really could work through magic and you would never know the difference.”

“But there are people here who understand the technology and can describe exactly how all of the parts work, how the phone works, how the words appear.”

“I know people who can describe exactly how a journey book works. I’ve even sat through long lectures on the subject, but while I get the general nature of it I still can’t tell you exactly how to align the fibers within the paper with Additive and Subtractive elements to give them the sympathetic harmony needed to make words appear. It’s not my area of expertise. What matters most to me is that someone somehow did create it and I can use it to help me accomplish the things I need to do.

“We simply say that it works by magic and leave it at that. How it works isn’t so important to me. That it does work is what matters.

“If you wish to describe what we do in our world as merely a different form of technology rather than use the word ‘magic,’ if that makes it easier for you to accept, then call it by that name. The name makes no difference.

“Magic and technology are merely tools of mankind. If you called that phone a magic talking box, would you use it any differently?”

“I concede the point.” Alex gestured. “So, do something. Show me.”

She leaned back and slipped the little black book back where she kept it. “I told you, this is a world without magic. I can’t use magic here. Magic doesn’t work here. Believe me, I wish it did, because it would make this a lot easier.”

“I hope you realize how convenient that excuse sounds.”

She leaned in again with that deadly serious look she had. “I’m not here to prove anything to you, Alex. I’m here to find out what’s going on so I can try to stop it. You just happen to be in the middle of it and I’d not like to see you get hurt.”

That reminded him of what he’d said when he had pulled her back from getting run over by pirate plumbers — that he’d not like to see her get hurt.

“A little difficult, isn’t it, if you can’t use your sorceress powers, considering that you don’t know how this world works. I mean, no offense, but you didn’t even know how to make tea.”

“I didn’t come here thinking it would be easy. I came out of desperation. There is a saying in our world that sometimes there is magic in acts of desperation. We were desperate.”

Alex scratched his temple, unable to contain his sarcasm. “Don’t tell me, the people who sent you are sorcerers. A whole coven of sorcerers.”

She stared into his eyes for a moment. Tears welled up.

“I didn’t risk eternity in the black depths of the underworld to come here for this.”

She set down her napkin, picked up the painting, and stood. “Thank you for the beautiful painting. I hope you heed my warnings, Alex. Since you don’t seem to need my help, I’ll attend to other concerns.”

She stopped and turned back. “By the way, covens have to do with witches — thirteen of them — not sorcerers. I’d not like to even contemplate thirteen witch women all together in one place at once. They’re known for their rather rash temperament. Be glad they can’t get here; they’d simply gut you and be done with it.”

She marched away without a further word.

Alex knew that he’d blown it. He’d crossed a line he hadn’t known was there. Or maybe he crossed a line that he should have known was there. She had wanted him to listen, to try to understand, to trust her. But how could he be expected to believe such a preposterous story?

The waitress had seen Jax leaving and headed for the table. Alex pulled out a hundred-dollar bill — the only kind of cash he had — threw it on the table, and told the waitress to keep the change. It was the biggest tip he’d ever left in his life. He rushed across the quiet room, weaving among the tables.

“Jax, wait. Please?”

Without slowing she glided through the door and out into the halls, her black dress flowing out behind like dark fire.

“Jax, I’m sorry. Look, I don’t know anything about it. I admit it. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be so flippant — it’s one of my faults — but how would you react if the situation were reversed, if before today I told you how we make tea?”

She ignored his words.

“Jax, please, don’t go.”

He broke into a trot trying to catch up with her. Without looking back she turned down a small, dimly lit hall toward a side exit. Long skeins of wavy blond hair trailed out behind her like flags of fury. An exit sign cast the hall in hazy red, otherworldly light.

Jax reached the door before he could catch up with her. She stopped abruptly and turned to him in a way that made him stop dead in his tracks. He was almost close enough to reach out and touch her. Something warned him to stay where he was.

“Do you know the meaning of the name Alexander?”

Alex wanted to say something to her, to apologize, to talk her into staying, but he knew without a doubt that he had better answer her question and no more or he would cross a line. . forever.

“It means ‘defender of man, warrior.’ ”

She smiled to herself just a little. “That’s right. And do you value your name, its meaning?”

“Why do you think I sign my work, my passion, ‘Alexander’?”

She gazed at him a long moment, her features softening just a bit. “Maybe there is hope for you. Maybe there is yet hope for all of us.”

She abruptly turned and threw open the door. Without looking back she said over her shoulder, “Heed my words, Alexander, defender of man: Trouble will find you.”

Harsh afternoon light flared into the hall, turning her figure into nothing more than a harsh fragment of silhouette twisting the shafts of light.

Alex reached the door just as it slammed shut. He threw it open again and ran out into an empty side parking lot. Trees grew in a green band close to the building. Beyond grassy hillocks waited parked cars that in the flat gray light of the overcast afternoon no longer looked nearly so lustrous.

Jax was nowhere to be seen.

Alex stood staring around at the quiet, empty surroundings.

She’d been out of his sight for only a few seconds. She couldn’t have been more than a half-dozen steps ahead of him. It seemed crazy, but she had vanished. The woman had just vanished into thin air.

Just like she had vanished the last time.

He wondered if this was how it had been for his mother.

12

ALEX REALIZED THAT it was dark and that he had been driving around in a daze for hours. He found it unnerving that he hadn’t even noticed that it had gotten dark.

Jax’s final words, her warning, kept echoing in his thoughts. He didn’t know if she had meant them literally, or in the way his grandfather always meant them. He was beginning to wonder if his grandfather had always meant more than Alex had thought. While Ben had the seven wrong — according to Jax — he had been on to something, or close to it, anyway.

But that was only if the things she had been saying were true. If not, then it made Ben just the eccentric old man most people believed him to be. But Alex knew him to be a strong and wise man, a man in many ways shaped, perhaps haunted, by his years in special forces, doing only god knew what back before Alex had been born.

Alex had learned only obliquely, from his parents’ conversations, the shadowy shape of Ben’s history. Alex had on occasion seen medals usually kept out of sight. Twice he had heard phone calls from men Ben only addressed as “sir.” Ben would smile in that distant way he had and thank the caller for letting him know. Ben never talked about the things he had done, dismissing them as his past, as his time away.

But he did pass on lessons from those times. Ben thought it was important for Alex to know certain things that few others could teach him. Those lessons spoke volumes about the teacher.

Alex again wondered about Jax’s warning, and about Ben’s.

Alex didn’t know what to do. He didn’t know how to handle such a strange situation. It just didn’t fit any template he knew of. No one, not even Ben, had ever told him how to handle a person who said they were from a different world.

He felt foolish taking such a story seriously, but at the same time he wanted to believe her. She had needed him to believe her. He felt trapped in a situation where if he believed her he might end up being a fool, a dupe, but if he didn’t believe her, and what she was telling him actually was true, then he might end up being responsible for some undefined but terrible consequences.

But how could such a story be true? How could he even consider believing such a story about visitors from other worlds? It simply wasn’t possible.

Yet his mother had warned him of some of the very same things Jax had tried to warn him about. He couldn’t make that add up. How could he not take such a thing seriously?

Jax was the key to finding the truth. More than that, even, it felt to him like she was somehow the key to his life.

He felt drawn to her in a way he’d never been drawn to anyone else. She was a mesmerizing woman. For Alex, her insight and intelligence amplified her beauty. Despite all of her mystery and the strange things she had to say, he felt comfortable with her, more comfortable than he had ever felt with anyone. She had the same inner spark — some way of looking at the world — that he had. He could see it in her eyes. He almost felt as if he could look into her eyes and see her soul laid bare to him.

Gloom crushed him for having driven her away.

In his mind, he again ran through a speech he would like to make. He would like to ask her to imagine how she would feel if he were to abruptly show up in her world and tell her that he talked into a metal device and people anywhere in the world could hear him. How would she have taken the news if he told her that people in his world flew in metal tubes tens of thousands of feet in the air? He couldn’t stop his racing mind from coming up with examples of technology that she would surely find impossible to believe. If he had come to her in the way she had come to him, would she have believed him?

It troubled him somewhat that even thinking of what he might say to her might be taking her story too seriously and falling into some kind of con game.

He wanted to tell her so much, to find out so much. Some of the things she’d said were just flat too eerily correct to discount, but at the same time her story was beyond hard to swallow. Other worlds. Who was she trying to fool? There were no other worlds.

Did she expect him to believe that some sorcerers had boiled up a magic brew and somehow beamed her to the Regent Center? And that yet others had placed a call to his phone from a different universe, or planet, or dimension, or something?

He wondered why, if her story was so hard to swallow, he had smashed his cell phone.

He realized that he needed to talk to her more than any other person in the world. Or in both worlds, if it really was true.

But if it wasn’t true, then what had he seen? What about the things she knew, the things she could tell him that she shouldn’t be able to know. How in the world could she know that he didn’t remember his dreams? That was just plain creepy. Was she simply taking a wild stab in the dark? Guessing? After all, a lot of people probably didn’t remember their dreams.

Or did she really know?

Yet again he worried that the whole thing could be some kind of elaborate trick. There were stage magicians, after all, who could make a woman, an elephant, or even a plane disappear. Even though they made it look completely convincing he knew that such things weren’t real, knew it was all a trick.

Alex didn’t like being tricked by magicians. It always struck him as a form of dishonesty about the nature of reality. Maybe that was why he didn’t like magic tricks — and magic, real magic, simply didn’t exist. He’d always felt that reality was better than magical; it was wondrous. That was part of the reason he never tired of painting the beauty of the world.

But why would Jax try to trick him? What reason would she have for doing such a thing? What was there for her to gain?

The fifty thousand acres came to mind.

He couldn’t stop wondering if it could be some kind of trick to con him out of the inheritance. That much land was worth a fortune.

She claimed to have watched through a mirror as someone had gone into the gallery and defaced his paintings, but wouldn’t it make more sense that it had been done by someone working with her? It seemed like a lot of money for a con, but if she was really after the land, the cost of the paintings would be a pittance in comparison to what they stood to gain if they could somehow trick him out of a fortune likely to be worth millions.

Such a motive easily made more sense than that she had come from some distant world, that she was a different kind of human, a sorceress with magical abilities. Who was she kidding? A sorceress. What kind of fool did she take him for? Did she really expect him to believe her?

But he did.

Against everything, he did. He couldn’t explain why, but he believed her. There was something about her that struck him as not only sincere but desperate.

Either she had to be the best con artist ever born, or she really was a different kind of human from a different world. He couldn’t imagine how it could be anything other than a trick or the truth. It came down to one of those two choices, and that was what was driving him crazy.

If she really was telling him the truth, then maybe his father, who had died in a car accident, had really been murdered and his mother’s brain damage wasn’t anything natural, like a stroke, as the doctors had thought. If Jax really was telling the truth, that meant that there really was something going on, something deadly serious.

But instead of telling her that he believed her, or at least listening respectfully, he’d chased her away. He desperately wished he hadn’t done that, but he hadn’t been able to help himself.

Maybe he’d just been afraid of being a sucker, of being the dupe of a beautiful woman. Wasn’t that how con artists worked? Use a beautiful woman to lull a guy into believing anything, doing anything?

But he did believe her.

Right then, more than anything, lacking Jax, Alex decided that he needed to talk to Ben. His grandfather, strange as he could sometimes be, seemed like the right person to help unravel what had become a tight knot of doubts.

Alex smiled at the thought of explaining that it wasn’t the seven in twenty-seven, but the nine, a number powered by threes, that was really what was important. His grandfather would be astounded. His grandfather would take such talk seriously. His grandfather might even be able to put it all into some kind of context that made sense.

As Alex turned onto Atlantic Street, headed home, he saw a red glow in the sky. Within a few blocks it became clear that it was a fire. A house in the distance was burning. A red glow lit billowing black smoke.

He soon realized that the blaze was in the direction of his house. Alex gripped the steering wheel tighter and tighter the closer he got to home. Could someone from this other world already be trying to cause him trouble, maybe even kill him? He sped up, suddenly eager to get home, hoping that it wasn’t his house that was burning — there were valuable paintings there. Valuable to him, anyway.

When he spotted flashing lights in the rearview mirror he pulled over. An ambulance raced past. He suddenly felt guilty worrying about mere paintings and hoped no one was hurt in a fire. He couldn’t imagine the horror of being burned.

His heart in his throat, Alex pulled around the corner, accelerating up the street, past houses with lights all on and people standing out in their yards looking toward the blaze.

With a jolt, he realized that it was his grandfather’s house that was burning.

Alex slammed on the brakes as he pulled to the side of the street and parked crookedly at the curb. Cars with onlookers had parked to watch.

Fire trucks crowded the street, all parked at cockeyed angles. Amber lights on the fire trucks strobed the night. A police car, blue lights flashing, was parked crossways, blocking traffic.

Alex set the brake and leaped out. He ran with all his strength toward his grandfather’s house. His vision narrowed down until all he saw was the familiar home engulfed in a terrifying glow of yellow and orange flames. He didn’t even see all the firefighters in heavy yellow coats and helmets striped with reflective tape. Panic powered his legs as he ran.

An arm suddenly hooked him around the middle, spinning him around, stopping him cold. He pushed at the arms that came around and encircled him.

“Let me go! It’s my grandfather’s house! Let me go!”

“Hold on there,” a big cop said. “You can’t get any closer.”

“I have to! We have to get him out!”

Two firemen stepped in around him.

“He’s already out, son,” the older man said.

Alex stared at him. “He is?” He looked around as the cop finally released him. “Where is he?”

The senior fireman put an arm around Alex’s shoulders and walked him toward one of the two ambulances. All the flashing lights up and down the street made the scene seem surreal, otherworldly. One red-and-white ambulance was parked, all its doors closed. The back doors of the other were spread wide. Paramedics stood around, not looking at all in a hurry.

Even at a distance the heat was so intense that it hurt the side of Alex’s face. Acrid smoke burned his throat. Hoses snaked all over the street. Streamers of water arced off into the furnace of flame. It was easy to see that there was shortly going to be nothing left of his grandfather’s house.

As they got closer, Alex saw a gurney with the slight form of what might have been a body entirely covered in a gray blanket. Two paramedics stood over it on the far side.

“I’m sorry,” the man holding Alex’s shoulders said as they approached. “He was long gone when we got in there.”

Alex stood staring at the gurney. He ran the words through his mind again, and then again. They didn’t seem real.

“He’s dead? Ben is dead?”

“I’m afraid so. From the looks of it, the fire started downstairs in a workshop. That’s where we found the gentleman. One of my men looked in the basement door and spotted him reflected in a mirror. He was on the floor not far to the side. There wasn’t much left of him by then but we were at least able to use the hoses to cool the doorway enough to manage to recover his remains. I’m sorry, son.”

“I’m his only family,” Alex said in a distant voice, somehow feeling that it all couldn’t be real. “The only family left. I always told him to be careful with torches and soldering irons down there.”

“It very well may be that he passed on from a heart attack or stroke and then something hot left unattended started the fire. I’ve seen it happen that way with older people.”

“But he was burned?”

“I’m afraid so, but it’s very possible that it was after he was already gone. We don’t know yet.”

“Ben,” Alex said in a tearful voice as he knelt beside the remains covered in a gray blanket, “please don’t leave me like this. I need you so much right now.”

It felt like the world was falling in on him.

Some of the rafters gave way and the entire roof came crashing down. Huge flames roared up into the air. Columns of sparks and billowing smoke lifted into the night sky.

Alex laid an arm over his grandfather and broke down in tears.

13

THE CORONER’S OFFICE HAD BENN unable to determine the actual cause of death. They said that the remains were too badly burned to make that determination, but that since he had been found on the floor down in his workshop, rather than in bed, it was improbable that Alex’s grandfather had been overcome by smoke in his sleep. The fire extinguisher, hanging nearby on the foundation wall, was charged and in working order, but it hadn’t been used. There was an exit door not far away.

Considering those factors and the lack of any evidence to the contrary, the coroner’s finding was that Benjamin Rahl had most likely lost consciousness or died of natural causes before the fire started, and the fire had been the result of something hot left unattended at his workbench while he was either unconscious or already deceased.

Alex had his grandfather’s remains cremated. Ben had always said that he didn’t want his corpse rotting in the ground, that he’d rather have the clean purification of fire consume his worldly self.

Still, considering what had happened, having Ben cremated seemed insensitive. Alex knew, though, that it was what his grandfather had wanted.

But more than that, Ben, who Ben was, was gone. The remains were not Ben, not to Alex, anyway. Those remains had been released by the fire to return to the elements of the universe.

The house was gone as well. Even much of the foundation had collapsed and what hadn’t was unstable, leaving a hazardous sight. After the fire marshal and the insurance company adjuster finished their investigation, they had turned the property over to Alex. At the city’s insistence Alex had hired a company to haul away the debris and fill in the hole.

Since then, whenever he walked up the street to his grandfather’s place, the journey felt dreamlike. Even standing there staring at the open gap in the neighborhood, at the smoothed-over lot, he couldn’t believe it. His mind filled in the empty hole with a ghostlike memory of the home. It seemed impossible that it was all gone — both his grandfather and the house where Alex had been raised for the last half of his childhood.

In the weeks that followed, that wasn’t all that felt dreamlike. Alex at times wondered if it was possible that he had imagined Jax.

In the beginning, under the choking weight of grief, he hadn’t thought a lot about her. He lost himself in the routine of his daily workouts. All he could really think about was Ben. He had real issues to deal with and there was no one else to handle things, no one else to help him.

But over time, nagging thoughts of Jax returned. With his mother in a mental institution it was only too easy to imagine that he was falling prey to the same sort of delusional madness that had overcome her. It sometimes felt like that madness was lurking just out of sight, ready to smother him, too.

He tried hard to keep such fears in perspective, tried hard not to give them any power over him, tried hard not to let his imagination get the best of him. Yes, his mother was sick, but that didn’t mean that the same thing would happen to him.

His mother hadn’t spoken since his birthday, when she had told him to run and hide, when she had warned him about a different kind of human who broke people’s necks. He worried at times that he’d somehow built upon his mother’s strange words to come up with Jax and her story — created a delusion of his own.

On one hand he knew that it wasn’t possible that he could have imagined Jax, but on the other hand it often seemed easier to believe that he had dreamed her up, much the way he did the scenes he loved painting. He knew, though, that such thoughts were most likely born of his dejection that she had never tried to contact him again. He was just beating himself up over having driven her away, just feeling sorry for himself.

For a time his desire to believe Jax’s story had been bolstered when he had spotted a popular science magazine in the store. On the cover had been a star field strewn with galaxies. The headline read “Our universe and multiplicity theory; maybe we’re not alone.”

That night Alex sat in his quiet house and carefully read the series of articles revolving around the possibility of other universes beyond what was called the “Light Horizon,” the term used in Big Bang cosmology to describe the edge of the observable universe, the farthest distance astronomers could see. Since the light beyond the Light Horizon had not yet arrived to be seen, it was not known how large the universe actually was or what, if anything, might be beyond it.

Astrophysicists speculated how the universe, made up of space, time, and matter, might be able to bend back on itself through wormholes so that the most distant parts of the universe would be but a step away. They went further to talk about how the universe itself might not be singular, not everything there was, and that there might be others out beyond. Through theories that touched on black holes, white holes, dark matter, dark energy, the nonlinear oddities of the space-time continuum, string theory and superstring theory which suggested as many as ten dimensions, it was hoped that physicists would eventually be able to come to understand if and how other universes existed beyond our own.

Some astrophysicists postulated that the universe was like a bubble, and the events that created the bubble of the universe created others, a whole mass of them, each bubble a separate universe sparking into existence, growing, and expanding in a larger mass of universe bubbles. Other scientists believed that the universe was in fact like a sheet of time, space, and matter — four dimensions — floating in a greater void of a fifth dimension along with other universes, other four-dimensional sheets of time, matter, and space.

These physicists believed that there were dimensions beyond the four familiar dimensions, and that these additional dimensions were membranes that when they touched threw matter into the four dimensions we know. In other words, created universes that floated in this fifth dimension.

They even proposed that these other dimensions might be gateways between the universes.

Alex couldn’t help wonder if Jax had come from one of those places. Perhaps she wasn’t so much from another world as she was from another universe and had traveled through a gateway of other dimensions. While it gave him chills to ponder the possibilities, he felt in his heart that it was nothing more than daydreaming, a mere hook upon which to hang his hope that she was real and that she had been telling him the truth.

He needed her to be telling him the truth, or his entire impression of her, what he thought of her — her intelligence, her passion for life, her presence — would crumble. He didn’t want to believe she was from another world. How could he believe such a story?

But if she was lying to him that would be worse.

Alex felt trapped in that dilemma, not wanting to believe her story, yet not wanting her to end up being nothing more than a scheming con artist, a liar.

But Jax was gone. He didn’t really have any reason to hope that she would return. Alex knew that he’d missed his chance to ever find out more, to ever solve the riddle.

By the time he’d finished reading, it was dark in the house beyond the single lamp beside his chair. He felt not only alone but lonely in that enveloping darkness. The information in the articles hadn’t convinced him of anything, as he had hoped. In fact, in an odd way it only left him feeling more convinced of the impossibility of it all. It seemed to him that the physicists were seducing themselves into ever more grand, fantastical theories. The science, if it really was science and not the projection of wishes, was beyond him.

As the rhythm of life demanded his attention he increasingly lost interest in the magazine articles. He had real life to deal with.

A week after finally cremating his grandfather, Alex had gone back to painting. At first it had seemed like it was only something to do to try to fill the emptiness. The world felt so quiet, so dead, so sad. It had never seemed that way before. He had talked to Ben almost every day. In many ways it was Ben who had made the world all the more alive for him.

As time wore on, Alex found that painting at least took his mind to other places, other worlds, and helped him forget his grief. He was alone most of the time, gone into those worlds that came to life on his canvases, and that suited him.

He supposed that he could at least find some solace in the fact that Ben had led a full life. He had relished every day he’d had. That was more than most people ever did. A lot of people merely marked time until a holiday, until they could go on vacation, until they could retire, always waiting for their life to begin. Ben never waited. He had lived each day.

After a few weeks, when Alex thought that maybe enough time had passed, he had called Mr. Martin to see if he would consider taking some paintings for the gallery. Mr. Martin was apologetic but said that he didn’t feel comfortable doing so. The man was insistent. Alex saw no point in pushing. It was the way it was.

Rather than dwelling on the problem, Alex decided that he needed to find a solution, so he made the rounds of galleries where he thought he would feel comfortable showing his work. He finally managed to find one down in the old market district that agreed to take on a few smaller pieces. The shops were less expensive there, but they drew a variety of people and within a week the gallery had managed to sell a small painting for nine hundred dollars. The gallery had been pleased and asked Alex to bring in a few more paintings, one or two a little larger, so they could try to sell some of his more expensive work.

Before the month was out Alex had also contacted Lancaster, Buckman, Fenton, the law firm in Boston, and asked if they could see to transferring the title to the land to his name. They assured him that they could handle it and in fact, according to the stipulations in the will, they were the only law firm legally allowed to handle anything to do with the land.

It also turned out that there were hefty legal fees involved if he wanted to take title to the land, but considering the money he had from the six paintings that had been defaced at Mr. Martin’s gallery and the settlement check for his grandfather’s house due from the insurance company, Alex would have no problem handling the legal fees. The land would be his and the matter would be settled.

He hadn’t yet decided if he wanted to sell the land, but he figured that he had the rest of his life to decide. Mr. Fenton from the law firm assured Alex that he could sell the land to the Daggett Trust at any point should he decide to do so. Alex asked if Mr. Fenton thought they could afford to pay fair market value for so much land. The man went out of his way to assure Alex that the Daggett Trust was well funded and would be able to handle such a purchase without any difficulty.

If Alex died without ever deciding to sell, and if he had no heir, the land would revert to the conservation group without them having to pay a penny, so in a way it made sense to sell the land, because then the money would be his no matter what happened. But, on the other hand, if he died he wouldn’t be able to spend money from the grave.

Mr. Fenton told him that the Daggett Trust had made inquiries, hoping for Alex’s decision on selling sooner rather than later. Something about it riled Alex and made him come to a decision. He asked Mr. Fenton to tell the people at the trust that he was taking title and had every intention of keeping the land. The lawyer had then gone to great lengths to make certain that Alex understood the restrictions to the deed, and that any violation would result in him losing the land, even after he had title. Alex had assured the man that he understood.

Alex was looking forward to the transfer of title being completed. He wanted to spend some time alone in the woods painting. He was warming to the idea of such a vast place being his, of having a world to explore and call his own.

As he sat in his studio listening to the rain beat against the window, he realized that after nearly a month he was finally starting to feel better, to get beyond his grief, to again find satisfaction in his work and at least a little quiet pleasure in life. He had a new gallery that wanted his work, and he was starting to think about a trip to Maine to begin to explore the wilderness and fill his mind with impressions to paint.

It felt like things were getting back to normal. Things were moving forward. In a sense, it felt like a new beginning, like his life could at last really begin.

Jax, as well, was becoming a distant — if haunting — memory. Whatever the real story with her was, she hadn’t made any attempt to contact him again. The more time that passed the more his hopes faded. If she was real, if her story was for real, she surely would have done something by now. She would have contacted him, sent a message. . something.

He couldn’t be sure that she hadn’t been involved in some scheme with people trying to con him. He didn’t think that was true, but the possibility existed and it troubled him.

He’d seen no evidence of otherworldly people. In fact, he didn’t like to dwell on her revelations because the whole idea was seeming more absurd with each passing day and he didn’t like to think of Jax in such an unflattering light. He didn’t like to think of her as playing a part in a con game, but neither did he like to think of her being a wacko who imagined she was from a different planet. Having a mentally ill mother was more than enough craziness for Alex.

In the end he didn’t know what to think, so he tried to put thoughts of Jax aside and devote himself to his painting.

Outside, in the blackness, lightning ignited in staccato flashes, giving ghostly form to the glistening trees. When the wind blew and the lightning strobed and flickered, it made the branches seem to move in abrupt fits, almost as if the trees were staggering through the inky blackness. At times the rain pattering against the window became heavy, turning the soft sound to a low roar. As the night wore on, the rain at times came down in curtains that swept over the house as if trying to beat it down and wash it away.

The storm suited Alex as he painted mountains with clouds stealing in among the towering peaks. The thunder brought nature in to him in a visceral way as he worked on the gloom in the forest beneath towering clouds.

Near midnight the doorbell rang.

14

ALEX FROZE FOR A MOMENT, brush in hand, as the echo of the bell slowly died out. His first thought was to wonder if it was possible that it could be Jax.

He quickly discounted the notion. It was foolish to think it was her. But then he realized that if by any chance it was her it would be even more foolish to keep her standing out in the rain.

He stuck the brush in the jar of water on the table to the side of his easel and wiped his hands on a towel while rolling back his chair. As he stood a reflection caught his eye. He glanced briefly in the mirror across the room to rake back his disorderly hair. He didn’t take the time to do any more to clean up, fearing that if it was Jax she might leave before he got to the door.

The only lights on in the house were the ones in his studio. As he ran down the dark hall, his way was lit sufficiently by the flickering flashes of lightning, so he didn’t pause to fumble for switches and instead rounded the turn into the dark living room without slowing. Thunder following each crackling bolt of lightning rumbled through the structure of the house. The rain outside rattled against the windows. In the living room the flashes of lightning coming in the tall window threw a glaring slash of light across the hardwood floor.

Alex stopped before the door. His heart didn’t. Hope kept it racing.

When he took a quick look through the peephole he saw what he hadn’t at all expected.

Bethany stood near the porch light, just in under the overhang and out of the rain. She was alone.

Standing in the dark living room, Alex’s heart sank. It wasn’t Jax after all. He let out a heavy sigh.

He hadn’t talked to Bethany in weeks. After Jax had warned him that a different kind of human was tracking him through his phone, he’d smashed it and thrown it in a dumpster at a convenience store. At the time it had made sense.

He bought a generic phone from a rack inside the store. It had a different telephone number, of course, so he left the new number with his new gallery and a couple of other places that might need to get ahold of him, like Lancaster, Buckman, Fenton. The simple phone was enough to serve his needs. Not one for long phone conversations, he hadn’t yet even had to buy more minutes.

In the case of Bethany, having a new number had been an advantage; she couldn’t call him or send him text messages. He had thought that if she couldn’t contact him she would soon forget about him and move on with her life. Apparently, he had been wrong about that.

He could see through the peephole that she was wearing a slinky silver dress cut rather low. The dress was designed to make clear what lay beneath. In Bethany’s case that was near perfection. She was a gorgeous woman, but that was all and it just wasn’t enough for Alex. There was no substance to support the looks. There was nothing about her that inspired Alex to desire her. She seemed to be a living example of the saying that looks weren’t everything.

The only lights on in the house were those in his back studio. The rest of the place was dark. The thought occurred to him that he could simply not answer the door and pretend he wasn’t home.

But that would be cowardly, and worse, dishonest.

Since he really didn’t want to start up another conversation with her — or worse, get in an argument — he decided he would state his feelings briefly, but clearly. Tell her the truth but keep it short and to the point.

Alex pulled open the door to face her.

As soon as he did, before he could open his mouth to say a word, Bethany lifted her arm, pointed a gun at his chest, and pulled the trigger.

15

BEFORE ALEX WAS ABLE TO DODGE more than a few inches to the side, the gun went off.

At the same time that he heard the bang, it felt like a bolt of lightning slammed into him. Instant, overwhelming pain drove out a scream.

Every muscle in his body abruptly went rigid. It was all so sudden that he couldn’t make sense of what was happening. He knew he’d been hit, but he couldn’t tell where. Paralyzed by a shock of enormous force clamping down on him, his body wouldn’t respond to his wishes.

Alex toppled backward. Try as he might, he couldn’t even lift an arm to break his fall. Somehow, it didn’t seem to matter.

As he fell back he saw twin coils of fine wire unspool from the gun.

It wasn’t a regular gun, he realized, but a Taser. As he shuddered under the grip of the pain, it seemed that it might as well have been a regular gun. He was surprised that, despite the agony that made his body unresponsive, his mind worked.

Bethany stepped into the room to stand over him.

Alex could hear himself screaming in unendurable agony, but he could do nothing other than endure it.

He’d had time to move only inches before she’d pulled the trigger. One of the steel darts had stuck in his left pectoral muscle. At the same time the other dart, going lower by design in order to spread the electrical charge through the largest muscle mass, had firmly lodged in his lower abdomen. All his muscles had cramped iron stiff with all-consuming pain. It felt like a mountain was crushing him.

Regular stun guns caused pain. Because he had no control of his body, he knew that it wasn’t one of those older models, but one of the newer Shaped Pulse generators. The way they interrupted muscle control in addition to causing pain was enough to take down an angry bull. He could hear the snapping, clicking sound of the electrical discharges.

There was nothing he wanted more than for the torment to stop.

After a five-second eternity, it finally did.

When the voltage abruptly cut off, the pain also vanished. When it did, Alex lay on his back, panting, trying to recover not just from the physical ordeal but the sudden shock of it. Mere moments ago he had been absorbed in painting the quiet beauty of a forest scene. Now he was flat on his back, disoriented, trying to catch his breath, and scared out of his wits.

He knew that a Taser could deliver countless hits. He moved his arms a little just to make sure he could, but not enough to look threatening. At that point, he didn’t know what Bethany was capable of. He saw that she still had her finger on the trigger. With the darts already stuck in him, she had but to pull the trigger to deliver another charge. Until he decided what to do, he thought it best to do nothing and let her think he wasn’t going to put up a fight.

Glaring flashes of lightning illuminated her figure standing over him. When the bright flashes flickered out and the rumble of thunder died away, only the faint light of the streetlamp off through the rain beyond the open door softly lit the curving edge of her figure.

“Hello, Alex,” she said in a silky voice.

Alex thought that she looked remarkably calm. She looked like she had complete control and knew it.

“Bethany, what do you think. .”

Two big men stepped out of the dark night and through the open doorway into his living room. A few cracks of lightning backlit wisps of vapor, like mist rising into the humid night air off the heat of their hulking forms.

Alex didn’t recognize the men, but they certainly looked like a nightmare come out of such a night. He noticed that, despite the rain, none of the three was wet.

“Now, Alex,” Bethany said, “if you know what’s good for you, you’ll be a good boy and not cause me any trouble — you’ve already caused me enough. If you’re good, I think you will find this far more pleasurable than you ever imagined.” She flashed him a self-satisfied smile. “And I bet you have imagined it often enough.”

Alex couldn’t make sense of what she was talking about. He wondered if a Taser could scramble a person’s mind. He didn’t think so. Everything else seemed ordered and logical. Up was up, down was down. He recognized her. It was only what she said that didn’t fit into any context.

Bethany glanced briefly at the men. “Get him into a bedroom.”

Alex couldn’t imagine what in the world Bethany and the two men intended to do with him. But whatever they intended, he had no illusions that it was going to be anything other than bad. He wondered if Bethany, in her anger over his rejection of her, had hired a couple of thugs to beat him senseless.

He wondered if it could be something worse than a beating. He wondered if she intended for them to murder him.

Such a vendetta carried to the point of violence would be absurd, but people did absurd things all the time.

Ben had taught him that you had to consider any attacker as having deadly intent, because once you were dead it was too late to wish you had defended yourself. Alex knew that if he was to survive he was going to have to use his head. He knew that he couldn’t afford to wait and hope for an opening.

He was going to have to make his own opening before things got any worse. He could not afford to be restrained.

The men stooped over him at a steep angle to lift him up. Alex feigned limp, groggy compliance. When Bethany glanced briefly toward the back bedroom, he acted.

In a sudden and violent burst of motion Alex whipped an arm around one man’s head and used their off-balance weight to pull them both the rest of the way over. In the same instant that he clamped his forearm around the man’s neck he grabbed his own wrist to lock his arms tight together and flexed his fist back, bulging the muscle in his forearm against the side of the man’s neck, making the muscle hard in order to help shock the carotid artery.

He knew, though, that he wouldn’t have the several seconds needed to bring the move to a lethal conclusion, so instead, as they plunged backward toward the floor, he planted his foot to break his fall. As the three of them came crashing down Alex added all his muscle to the man’s falling weight, bringing the man’s head down over his knee as if it were an anvil.

The man’s neck snapped over with a loud pop. His muscular bulk immediately went limp, sprawling atop Alex’s legs as they both hit the floor. The second man rolled and sprang to his feet.

Bethany spun back and pulled the trigger.

Alex instantly went rigid again as the voltage from the Taser hit him. He screamed under the agony of overpowering pain as his muscles shuddered uncontrollably. The man’s dead weight lay sprawled over his legs, but even without the weight it would have been impossible for Alex to move his arms or legs the way he wanted, impossible to do anything. Despite monumental effort, his muscles would not respond. The electrical charge was in control of his body.

Bethany stepped close. He expected her to launch into an enraged lecture at the least. Instead, she appeared calm, as if she were accustomed to administering agony.

When the timed voltage from the gun abruptly halted, Alex sagged with a moaning sigh of relief.

Bethany gestured to the man with her. He understood and lifted the dead weight of the other man to get him off the coils of wire. Once clear, he let go of the man, allowing him to slump to the side. It wasn’t hard to tell that the man was dead. From the corner of his eye, Alex watched, gauging the distance to the one still alive.

Alex had thought that the steel darts would pull out in the brief but violent battle. He was wrong. They were stuck fast.

When the dead man had been moved out of the way and safely off the wires, Bethany squatted down beside Alex. Her blond hair, lit by lightning, slipped forward over her shoulders.

“If you want to cause me trouble, Alex, I can keep pulling this trigger all night long. Is that what you’d like?”

Focused on trying to find even a fraction-of-a-second opening in which to act, he wasn’t paying close attention to what she’d said. Fast as he could, he reached up to snatch the wire connected to the barb stuck in the left side of his chest in order to yank it out.

He wasn’t even close to quick enough before she pulled the trigger.

Another lightning shock of pain crashed through him. She jammed the Taser down into his thigh, adding a third electrical contact to make the charge going through him all that much stronger. Despite how desperately he tried to move, to skitter away, it proved impossible. He cried out as tears of pain rolled down his face. He wanted to draw up into the fetal position. His arms and legs flailed, but not in response to his conscious direction. In that moment, Alex thought that he would do anything to make it stop. When it finally did, his screams again trailed off to a groan.

“If you want to keep trying to pull out the wires, go ahead, but I guarantee you that I can pull the trigger faster and I can keep pulling it all night. Is that what you want? I’ve already asked you once, Alex. Do you want me to keep pulling the trigger?”

Alex immediately shook his head. He desperately didn’t want that. The ordeal already had him at the edge of exhaustion. His muscles were aching from the repeated strain. From what he knew of Taser guns sold to law enforcement, they advised that several hits were often needed to gain compliance from combative individuals.

He knew that as long as her attention was on him he wouldn’t be able to move fast enough. Her finger on the trigger would beat any move he could make.

She smiled in satisfaction as she patted his cheek. “You look good, Alex. As good as I remember. I couldn’t stop thinking of how hot you get me.”

At first he thought she couldn’t have said what he’d thought she said, but the suggestive smile she was giving him told him that he’d heard her right. Alex couldn’t imagine what crazy scheme she was up to, but he thought he’d better keep his mouth shut.

“Now, Alex, I want you to be a good boy. If you are, this will all be over soon enough.” She kissed the end of a finger and pressed the finger to his lips. “Don’t worry, I’ll make it good for you. Really, really good. You’re going to enjoy it. I promise.”

Alex couldn’t keep from asking. “What are you talking about?” She rested her forearm on her knee as she leaned closer in darkness punctuated occasionally with the harsh illumination of lightning. She arched an eyebrow. “Why, your birthday present, Alex. Don’t you remember what I promised you for your birthday? Pretty little Beth always keeps her promises.”

16

THERE WAS A DEAD MAN lying next to him, there was another big man glaring murderously down at him, and there were two barbed steel Taser probes stuck in the flesh of his chest and abdomen. Alex couldn’t imagine anything less conducive to romance.

“Bethany, you can’t possibly be serious.”

“Oh, but I am,” she said with a wicked little grin. “Now, as I said, if you’d like I can keep pulling this trigger until you wish you were dead, even if it won’t actually kill you. Sooner or later, though, the agony will be too much and you’ll give in. Your other choice is to forgo the drama, accept what is going to happen one way or another, and just lay back and enjoy yourself.”

She arched an eyebrow again. “What’s it going to be, lover boy?”

Alex didn’t want to agree, but he was sure that he didn’t want her to pull that trigger again. When she lifted the stun gun, making a display of waggling it in front of him as she cocked her head in a questioning manner, he reluctantly nodded.

“Good boy.” She rose up. “Get him in the bedroom,” she told the man.

He reached down with a big hand, seized Alex’s arm, and hauled him to his feet. The man spun Alex around, careful not to get tangled in the wires, and shoved him in the direction of the bedroom. Bethany warned Alex to keep his hands up and well away from the wires. He didn’t try to stall or protest as they made their way down the dark hall. He was sure that any pleas would fall on deaf ears. She’d already proven that she could pull the trigger faster than he could snatch the wires.

Brief but bright lightning flashes made his two captives seem to be nothing more than a procession of garishly lit statues. Whenever the lightning died out they turned into unseen ghosts pursuing him.

As Bethany followed Alex through the bedroom doorway, lightning flickered again. Rain beat against the two windows like a thing alive wanting in.

“Nice,” she said, glancing around in the sporadic fits of illumination. “Not what I’m used to, but nice.”

More distant flashes of lightning lit her again, but less harshly. She reached out and ran a finger along the metal bedpost as she smiled. “I especially like the iron bed.”

She gestured to the man. He shoved Alex to topple him backward onto the bed. The wicked steel barbs, still solidly lodged in the meat of his muscles and connected to the Taser by fine wires, were starting to hurt in earnest.

The man pounced on him, straddling his hips, using his weight to hold Alex down. He pulled out some beefy nylon zip ties, pressed one against Alex’s wrist, and then looped it around a stout piece of the iron headboard. He stuck the loose end through the little ratchet block and pulled it tight enough to cut painfully into the flesh. Alex had used such ties before. He knew they could be cut without a great deal of difficulty, but pulling on them to try to break them would accomplish nothing except to cut his wrists down to the bone.

The man zip-tied Alex’s other hand to the headboard, then bound both ankles together and fastened them to the footboard.

“Double them up,” Bethany said to the man as she watched Alex’s eyes, “just to be sure.”

Alex fought back rising panic as the man added more ties to both wrists and his ankles. One tie would be impossible to break; more than one was meant to reinforce the message that not only did he have no chance to get away, but that Bethany was the one who dictated his fate.

Alex imagined that Bethany intended to torture him in some fashion before killing him. He fought back gnawing dread.

He could hardly believe that he had just killed a man. He wished he could kill the other one as well. He wished he could get his hands around Bethany’s throat.

“That should do it,” the man said. “There’s no way he can break those.”

Bethany again waggled her Taser as Alex watched. “Well, just in case he gives me any trouble, I’ll leave the barbs in him. If he doesn’t cooperate. .” She shrugged as she flashed him a meaningful smile.

The man stood at ease behind her and folded his arms.

Bethany tilted her head, indicating the door. “Why don’t you go wait outside. This is rather private business. I don’t think having you as an audience will help him get it up.”

Alex wasn’t sure that he’d heard her correctly.

“All right,” the man grumbled. “Just don’t be long.”

Bethany turned a glare on him in a way that seemed to cause him to shrink an inch. “Who do you think you’re talking to?” she growled through gritted teeth. “How long have I planned, have I worked, have I waited? How dare you presume to tell me to rush through it? It takes as long as it takes.

“It only matters that I get what I came for. To that end I intend on staying here the whole night to be sure that when I leave I leave pregnant.”

She planted her fists on her hips and leaned toward the man. “Got it?”

“Got it,” the man answered in a contrite tone.

“Now, get out. I’ll let you know when I’m done, then you can have your fun with him. You just wait outside until then.”

The man nodded and then pulled a knife from a sheath behind his back. After he licked the blade he gave Alex a grim grin.

“When she’s finished with you, then I settle the score for what you did out there in the other room.”

As he left he turned once to glare back over his shoulder at Alex. Bethany watched through the doorway until the front door slammed behind the man.

She turned back, her tone becoming airy again. “Better, lover?”

“Why is it better? I still have to look forward to having my throat cut.”

“Well,” she said with a shrug, “at least you get me first. You should be thankful that it’s me who found you and not Jax.”

Alex’s breath caught with the shock of that name. His mind reeled. Regaining his senses, he hoped that the flickers of lightning had hidden his reaction. He thought he ought to help cover his surprise by sending her off topic.

“Who’s Jack?”

“Not Jack, Jax. Lucky for you I’m the one who found you first — I’ll at least make sure you die with a smile. Jax would simply have bled you out.”

“Why? Who is she?”

Bethany’s smile ghosted away. “Jax is a diplomatic assassin.”

Alex’s brow tightened. “Diplomats are the opposite of assassins.”

“No, no, dear boy, she’s an assassin.” Her gaze focused a million miles off. “A very special assassin, for very special targets.”

Alex didn’t want to believe her. But he remembered all too well the way Jax had pulled a knife on him, remembered how fast she had gotten it to his throat, though she’d had just cause at the time. He had, after all, just slammed her up against the wall and had his arm against her throat. He couldn’t really fault her reaction. Still, Bethany’s words gave him pause.

“Special targets. What do you mean?” he asked. “What kind of special targets?”

“Jax kills those who seek peace.”

He finally grasped her meaning. “Like diplomats.”

“Among others. She’s a specialist. She is sent after only the most exceptional individuals, individuals, like diplomats, who are seeking unity, order, and prefer peaceful resolution to conflict.”

In the softer flickers of lightning, Alex could see the distant look in Bethany’s eyes, as if she were looking into another world. Dark animus colored her expression. “She’d love nothing more than to get her blade into me.”

Alex said nothing.

Bethany’s gaze, along with her smile, returned, almost as if to reassure him. “But she never will. I’m too well protected, even for Jax.”

“Why would this very special assassin want to kill you?”

What he really wanted to know was what made her think she was so special, but considering his circumstances he thought better of phrasing it that way.

All the things Jax had told him about being from another world raced around in his mind, trying to find a proper fit with what Bethany was saying.

Bethany ran her fingers through his hair. It almost seemed a deliberate attempt to distract herself from what were obviously troubling thoughts of Jax. “Let’s not worry about such unpleasantness. Let’s just worry about you and me. This is a special night for both of us.”

She leaned even closer, trailing a finger along his cheek. Her seductive tone returned. “Time for what Bethany promised you.”

Alex couldn’t see that he had any choice in the matter. He tried to think of a way he could get a hand free, but there wasn’t anything within reach of his fingers. He knew that twisting his hands would accomplish nothing. Even if he tried she would use the Taser to take the fight out of him.

A thought he’d had before returned. If she was touching the steel darts when she pulled the trigger, the Taser would do the same to her as it did to him. He wondered if she knew that. He wondered how he could manage such a thing. He wondered what it would accomplish even if he could. Nothing, probably.

She had it all planned out. She was in control of the situation. When she was finished, the man with the knife would have his turn.

Bethany unbuckled his belt, then unzipped his pants and started tugging them down. When she had them down to his knees she smiled wickedly and slunk on all fours up the length of him.

Straddling him, she reached around with one hand and unzipped the back of her dress before pulling it off over her head. She wasn’t wearing anything underneath. Everything the dress had advertised about what lay beneath the silver sheath was true.

“You spoiled this on your birthday, Alex, and caused me a great deal of trouble. I had to wait another whole moon until the correct time in my cycle came around again.”

Things were starting to make sense to him. Crazy sense, but sense.

She leaned down to kiss him on the mouth. When he turned his face away she lightly kissed his cheek instead. “But now I’m told that I’m as ready as ready can be. I’ve had experts confirm that tonight’s the night, lucky boy.

“Time to make an heir.”

17

BETHANY PRESSED HER NAKED THIGHS tight to either side of him as she leaned forward. She tenderly kissed his neck as he stared up into the darkness. He found her tender advances revolting.

He was enraged at being bound up and helpless. He was angry with himself for allowing it to get this far. He didn’t know what else he could have done, but he should have done something. Worse, he didn’t delude himself about what was in store for him when she had finished getting what she wanted. The mental image of the big man licking the blade before delivering his threat was not something Alex could easily put from his mind.

“Are you ready to take our relationship to the next level?” Her intimate whisper in his ear sounded as if she was ready. “Or are you going to need Bethany to help get you in the mood?”

The situation was so absurd that he couldn’t find words. The only thing he was in the mood for was breaking her neck.

His sense of panic had already melted away under the heat of anger.

She leaned forward, pressing herself against him. Her firm breast pushed the steel barb harpooned into the left side of his chest deeper into the muscle. It felt like it was bottoming on rib bone. He gritted his teeth against the sting of pain.

As she nibbled his ear, caught up in what she was doing, Alex tried to pull away, tried to stall. “Bethany, why in the world are you doing this?”

“Why in the world.” She laughed softly in his ear. “That’s funny, Alex. Which world do you mean?”

The magnitude of her words shook him to his core. He wished he had believed Jax. He had thought her story was crazy. Now he wished he had listened to her. He remembered the last thing she had told him: “Trouble will find you.”

It was the last thing his grandfather had told him as well.

Alex struggled to focus. “What I mean is, I don’t know why you are doing this, since you can’t seriously think that you’re worthy of bearing my child.”

That shocked her into sitting up — not what he had wanted.

Her brow tightened. “What?”

“You’re hardly suitable. Let’s face it, considering all of your undesirable traits you’re not really fit to bear a Rahl.”

When the illumination of lightning flared in through the window he could see her indignant glower.

“Is that right?”

“If you weren’t so stupid you’d know it is. My offspring deserves better than the likes of you for a mother.”

“You arrogant bastard,” she hissed. “You’re wrong. You will give me a child — your heir — and I will be the one to guide him, not you. After you do this much of it there will be no further need of you. That child will be devoted to me. Your only part in his life is that you are going to father him.”

He looked up into her eyes. “I’ll see you dead, first. You have my promise on that.”

“How dare you!” When the lightning cracked again he could see that her face had gone scarlet. “How dare you talk to me that way, you little bastard.”

She lifted the Taser in her fist and pulled the trigger.

The shock of the high-voltage arc slammed into him. He couldn’t believe how much it hurt. He flailed helplessly. The zip ties holding his arms ripped into the flesh of his wrists.

With Bethany sitting up, her skin wasn’t touching the probes, so she felt none of it. She glared down at him as he screamed incoherent curses. She wasn’t bothered in the least by his agony. She seemed incapable of empathy.

When it finished and he sagged back on the bed, she gave him a moment to recover before leaning over again to whisper in his ear. “We have all night, Alex. Would you like me to pull the trigger a few more times just to get it through that thick head of yours that I’m going to have my way? I would rather you just give in without all the drama. It really is getting quite tedious, you know.”

In the darkness he could feel her belly pushing against the lower probe and her breast pressed firmly onto the other. When he didn’t argue she writhed a little, rubbing herself against him seductively, as if to show him the benefits of her better side. His sweat from the ordeal made her skin slick. She started nibbling on his ear as she got down to business.

“You’ve got to be pretty stupid, Bethany, if you think that that fat ass of yours is ever going to get a guy hot for you. You’re really making a fool of yourself trying to be sexy, if you want to know the truth of it.”

That had the desired effect. She growled in rage and without bothering to sit up pulled the trigger.

She didn’t realize that with her flesh touching the steel probes the Taser would give her the same paralyzing shock it gave him.

Through his helpless grunts of pain he could hear her cries of terrified torment. He’d known what to expect, at least. He’d known it was coming. The shock of it was far worse for her because she hadn’t been expecting it.

Bethany didn’t know what was happening to her. She screamed not just in pain, but in panic.

Alex didn’t think she was all that familiar with technology.

In the throes of agony, her arms flailed. Alex heard the Taser hit the floor and bounce a few times. When the five seconds passed and the pain ended, she sagged limp atop him.

He decided that whatever her long-range plan was, he wasn’t going to go along willingly. She would just have to pick up the Taser gun and pull the trigger all night long if that was what she wanted to do, but he wasn’t going to cooperate.

As she regained her wits, she pressed a hand against his chest to push herself upright. With her other hand she swept her hair back off her sweaty face.

She looked down into his eyes. “Where I come from, that’s nothing.”

“It’s nothing here, either,” he lied.

A smile stole its way back onto her face. She lay back down against him, her warm breath in his ear again.

“I know what you’re doing, Alex,” she whispered, “but it isn’t going to work. I’m not falling for your little ploy. I’m not going to let you get me angry enough to cut your throat. I came here to accomplish what needs accomplishing and I intend to see it through.

“Be as stubborn as you want, but it won’t do you any good. You’re going to get me pregnant tonight. There isn’t anything you can do about it — it’s just the way men are made.

“Afterwards, I’m going to use a knife on you myself and make sure that you regret every word you said.”

In the darkness of the room lit only occasionally by flashes of lightning filtered through the sheets of rain, Alex felt the gloom of his situation settle back in on him. He had been momentarily euphoric that he had been able to trick her into getting a jolt from the Taser, but what good did it really do him? He wasn’t going to be able to trick her into it again and he wasn’t going to be able to free himself from his bonds.

It might have been satisfying to see her take such a jolt for a change, but it didn’t stop her. He knew she was going to get even and then some.

He turned his gaze off into the darkness as he gave in to despair.

18

ALEX THOUGHT OF BEN,and the lessons his grandfather had taught him. Ben had been in terrible, desperate situations. He had faced death. Those were the kinds of situations Alex’s grandfather had wanted to prepare him for. Ben had wanted him to be prepared to face death with resolve, should he ever find himself in such a situation, in order to survive.

Ben had framed it in the mantra “Trouble will find you.” It was a way of reminding him to always be ready, that trouble of any sort could come at any time. His grandfather had often said that trouble usually came when you were alone. Ben had been right.

Alex reminded himself not to give up. Ben had taught him better than that.

He decided that if all he could do was to make Bethany angry enough to kill him rather than follow through with her plan, if that was the only success he could have, then he was going to take that option. He didn’t have only the choices she had given him. He didn’t have to abide by her rules.

He knew that above all else he could not let her have what she wanted or in the end more people would die. He didn’t know how that would come about, but he was certain of the eventuality.

This was not an absurd battle with a headstrong woman. This wasn’t simply a matter of her wanting his child. This was something much bigger, something she and the people with her were willing to kill to get. This was something that he knew he couldn’t allow her to win — even if it meant that he had to die to prevent it.

Jax had come to this world because there was something terribly wrong. She had said that to get here she’d risked being lost in eternal darkness. No one would take such a risk without a powerful reason. This was in some way connected with the trouble that had so concerned Jax.

She had been telling him the truth. If only he had believed her at the time.

Bethany impatiently reached down between her legs to grab hold of him. He held his breath.

“You might as well relax, lover boy. I’m going to have my way and you know it.”

He didn’t answer. He focused on how angry it made him that she thought she could have her way by trying to get him to give in to lust.

To divert his mind from Bethany, from the soft warmth of her, from her insistent attempt to engender that lust, he thought about the night Ben had died.

His mind drifted to thoughts about his mother locked away for the rest of her life in that awful place. She knew something about this, he was sure of it now.

Dread of what was going to happen to him when Bethany used a knife on him to make him regret his words also lurked in the back of his mind. He could imagine lying there with his arms and legs securely restrained as she started cutting him. He would be helpless. He knew that Bethany had no empathy for pain.

In light of such things, it wasn’t hard to ignore her insincere cooing.

“I think I’m actually going to enjoy this,” she whispered in his ear. “Make me enjoy it, Alex.”

It wasn’t at all hard to wish her dead.

In a distant flickering of lightning he saw her back abruptly arch. The movement caught his attention because there was something very odd, very unnatural, even alarming, about the swift, upward curving movement of her naked body and the sudden breath she sucked in.

He was about to hurl an insult at her in an effort to take her off track when another bolt of lightning crashed to ground not far away. As the harsh light coming in through the window fell across Bethany’s face, Alex saw her blue eyes go wide. Thunder shook the house.

Before the light died out he thought he caught the glint of a blade.

For an instant he wondered if she had finally had enough of his resistance, if she had become enraged enough that she had decided to slaughter him right then and there in his own bed and be done with it. Visions of her stabbing him as he lay restrained and helpless ran in a sudden panic through his mind. Even though there was nothing he could do to stop her, he reflexively tensed for the expected thrust of a knife slamming down into him.

Instead, Bethany’s chin lifted even farther as her neck curved back in line with her arched spine.

As the lightning flashed again Alex was stunned to catch just a glimpse of a fist holding Bethany’s hair, pulling her head back. The odd, unnatural arch of Bethany’s back and neck suddenly made sense. His immediate thought was that the man had come back in and had decided to take matters into his own hands.

A bloody blade swept around in front of Bethany’s throat. It sank in deep as it was pulled from ear to ear.

Gouts of blood from severed arteries pumped out through the horrific gash. The fist held Bethany’s head back. Her arms flailed weakly as her chest heaved, her breath bubbling out of the gaping wound with a scream unable to be delivered.

Lightning again flared and thunder rumbled. Founts of thick blood running from the yawning cut funneled down between Bethany’s breasts. Her hands flexed, clutching weakly at the air to her sides. Her mouth worked as she tried to gasp for a breath. Bloody froth from her severed windpipe sprayed everywhere.

Alex was paralyzed by the sight of this woman in her death throes. The killing was so grisly it didn’t seem real.

When light from the storm ignited in a long fit of flashes he could see Bethany blinking in confused desperation as she convulsed.

Her whole body went limp as her last breath of life gurgled from her failing lungs.

The fist holding her by the hair tossed her off the side of the bed. She hit the floor with a bony thud.

In another flash of lightning Alex saw Jax standing before him holding the blood-slicked knife.

She was gazing into his eyes as if there was nothing else in the room, nothing else in existence.

19

YOU JUST WOULDN’T BELIEVE how long I’ve wanted to do that,” Jax said in a voice that sounded better than he remembered, and he remembered it as mesmerizing.

Alex wondered if she could have hunted Bethany from another world and followed her to his bedroom in order to catch her without all of her protection.

“She mentioned something about that.”

In a flicker of lightning he saw a hint of satisfaction curve her mouth.

Alex had wanted Bethany dead, and he grasped that she was involved in something that would result in harm to a great many people. She had promised the thug with her that he could cut Alex up, and then changed her mind and decided to do it herself just because he had insulted her. Still, he had never seen anything as gruesome as her death.

Jax must have read the look on his face because she addressed his unspoken thought. “Alex, it was quick. What she would have done to you with her knife would have lasted hours. In the storm no one would have heard you screaming and crying. She would have enjoyed your suffering.”

Alex swallowed and nodded. He was relieved that she had put it in perspective.

“Jax—” He glanced to the rain lashing at the window. He turned a puzzled frown on her. “How come you aren’t wet?”

“It wasn’t raining where I came from.”

He saw wisps of vapor, silhouetted by the flashes of light coming in the window, curling up from her arms and shoulders just as they vanished.

The last time he’d seen her she had basically told him that he was on his own and that she was going to go tend to her own business. She had warned him that trouble would find him.

He wondered why she’d had a change of heart. “What are you doing here?”

Her gaze was still locked on his. “We happened across some of what they had planned. I got here as fast as I could.”

“I’m really glad to see you. I mean, really, really glad.”

“Well, since you’re finished with your sick little part in this coupling, pull up your pants and let’s go. We need to get out of here.”

“I didn’t take any part in it, and don’t you think that if I could pull my pants up I would?” When she didn’t answer he signaled with his eyes toward his wrists. “Cut me free. Please?”

The thought of what Bethany had told him about Jax crossed his mind. Watching Bethany die in such a brutal fashion left him shaky and sick to his stomach. In his whole life he’d never seen anything so horrific. He was covered with splatters of her blood. Only moments before, her living, breathing body had been pressed up against him. Now she lay on the floor dead and he was covered only in her blood.

With the way Jax was staring at him, he wondered if he might be next.

At last withdrawing her gaze from his, she glanced up at his wrists. In flashes of lightning she could see that he was tied to the bed and finally grasped the reality of the situation. She looked back at him and at last smiled just a little.

“Sure.”

As she bent close to him to cut the zip ties, distant flickers of lightning lit her growing smile. By the nature of it he thought that it revealed how happy she was about his helpless condition — not because he was helpless, but because it told her that he was telling her the truth that he hadn’t been a willing part of it.

As she leaned across him to cut the tie on the far side, he caught a hint of her fragrance. It complemented everything else about her.

Alex would have given just about anything not to have been this close to Bethany. He would have given just about anything to stay this close to Jax.

“Thanks for coming, Jax,” he said softly. “I guess I owe you one — in addition to an apology.”

She paused to look down into his eyes from only inches away. She was pressed lightly against his chest. He could feel her steady heartbeat.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t have gotten here sooner, Alex. I really am.”

“You got here in time.”

She slowly shook her head. “Not in time to save your grandfather.” Her words hit him like a blow. “You mean that Bethany had something to do with that?”

Jax stretched farther to finish cutting his wrist free, then straightened. “I wasn’t there, but I was able to catch a glimpse through the mirror in his workshop. I saw Queen Bethany and I saw fire.”

Alex sank back against the bed. He’d buried his grief, but hearing that Ben had likely been murdered not only resurrected the anguish, it also awakened a smoldering fury.

Ben hadn’t died from natural causes. He would still be alive if not for Bethany. Maybe Ben would still be alive were Alex not somehow involved. But how could he have avoided being born a Rahl?

As Jax cut his ankles free, Alex yanked out the barbs and pulled up his pants. It was a great relief. She had the grace not to make a point of his embarrassing situation.

“Queen Bethany? What do you mean, ‘Queen’?”

“In our world she was a queen. A very troublesome queen. She hurt anyone she didn’t like, and she didn’t like a lot of people. I had to come to this world to get close to her.”

Her words caught him by surprise and reignited his sense of caution. He wondered if he had been part of some grand scheme after all — a scheme to assassinate a troublesome queen. He wondered if he had been nothing more than human bait.

“What’s a queen from your world doing in my world?”

Jax considered him for a moment. “She apparently had some use for the House of Rahl.”

“What use?”

Jax arched an eyebrow. “Don’t tell me you didn’t understand what she was intent on doing here tonight in this bed.”

“I get that much of it.”

Alex reminded himself to cool the heat in his voice. It wasn’t her fault that Bethany had tied him to the bed and intended to kill him after she finished getting what she wanted. It wasn’t Jax’s fault that Bethany had murdered Ben.

He buckled his belt as he collected his thoughts. This woman had, after all, just saved his life. She could have just as easily let him spend the last few hours of his life being cut up by Bethany.

Somehow Alex couldn’t think of Bethany as a queen. He could barely think of her as an adult.

“What I mean is that I don’t know why she had a use for the ‘House of Rahl,’ as you put it. I don’t know what’s going on.”

“We have that in common,” Jax said under her breath as she glanced down at Bethany’s corpse lying in a spreading pool of blood.

20

ALEX PULLED THE PHONE out of his pocket. “I’d better call the police.”

With his thumb he flipped it open. Jax snatched his wrist before he could dial. She used the tip of the bloody knife in her other hand to flip the phone closed.

“You’re not going to alert anyone. The last thing we need is the authorities giving us trouble. We already have enough trouble. We need to get out of here, and we need to get out now.”

He tried not to take too deep a breath, because the smell of blood was gagging him. “But the body is going to be found sooner or later. When it is, the police are going to think that I murdered her. I’ve got her blood all over me.”

With a finger and thumb, as if to prove his point, he lifted his blood-soaked shirt away from his body for her to see. He wanted the sodden shirt off of him. He needed to change it. He needed a shower.

“If I run it will only make me look guilty. Attractive women who end up dead are usually killed by their husband or some other man in their life. The police will naturally think that I murdered her.”

Jax glanced down at the body. “Did you really think she was attractive?”

“Yes — no—” Alex raked his fingers back through his hair. “Yes, she was obviously attractive, but no, I wasn’t attracted to her.”

“Calm down, Alex.”

As he gathered his thoughts he realized that she was right. Calling the police would be a problem. What was he going to tell them? How could he possibly explain it?

“How in the world are we going to get rid of her body — and not be found out?”

“I’ll take care of it,” Jax said.

“There’s blood everywhere!” He swung his arm around at the room. “You can’t possibly clean up all this mess. The police have ways of finding even the tiniest speck of blood. They have technology that makes blood glow in the dark so that they’ll still find the tiniest specks of blood that you miss no matter how well you clean it up.”

“They’re not going to find any blood, even with their technology.”

Alex didn’t think that she grasped how good technology could be or the way it was going to look to the police. He had dated Bethany. People had seen them together. She had been killed in his bedroom. She was naked. What else were the police going to think? He certainly couldn’t tell them the truth, and lying would only get him in deeper trouble.

“Jax, they will find traces of blood, and then what am I going to tell them? That she was from another world? That she wanted to have sex with me so that I would get her pregnant with my Rahl heir and then she was going to kill me? They’ll never believe me. I’d be lucky if they thought I was crazy, but they won’t. They’ll think I murdered her.”

Jax gripped his arm. “Calm down, Alex. Let me handle it. I know what I’m doing.”

“Let you handle it? In five minutes you’re liable to vanish again.” How could he tell her how much he feared being locked up? “You’ll be gone again and I’ll be left here alone to handle it.”

“Not this time,” she said in a somewhat haunted voice.

Alex looked up. “What do you mean?”

She gazed into his eyes for a long moment. “If I hadn’t gotten here in time you would have been lost.”

“Lost? You mean I would have been killed when she was finished?”

“Yes. I had to get here as fast as possible. I wasn’t able to take certain. . precautions.”

“Precautions?”

“I had to forgo the procedures I used before.”

“What procedures?”

“I didn’t have time to establish a lifeline this time.”

“A lifeline. .” Alex paused a moment. “Do you mean that you can’t get back to your world?”

Her gaze broke away. “Not for now.”

He suddenly realized the magnitude of what she had done in order to save his life. His worry about everything else evaporated in his sudden concern for her. “When will you be able to get back to your home?”

“You let me worry about that. For now I’m stuck here.”

“For how long?”

“Maybe a day or two.”

“But maybe longer?”

She swallowed. “Maybe forever.”

The lightning died out again, plunging the room into gloom lit only by the faint glow of streetlights, but it was enough to see the worry in her eyes.

“It’s all right, Jax. You won’t be alone. I’ll help you.”

She gestured with her knife to the still body on the floor. When lightning crackled again a flickering rectangle of light coming in the window fell across the curve of Bethany’s naked hip. “Yes, I can see that you have everything well in hand.”

Despite everything, Alex was able to smile just a little.

“Do you think your friends will send anyone to help you?”

She shook her head.

“Why not?”

“Because right now I’m the only one able to undertake such a journey. We’re on our own.”

He let out a deep breath. “Jax, I need you to know how sorry I am for the way I treated you the last time.” He discarded the speech, the excuses, that he’d rehearsed in his mind a few hundred times. “You came to help me and I didn’t listen. I didn’t mean to belittle what you and others have done. I just didn’t understand. It was so hard to—”

She lifted a hand to keep him from going on. “When I went back the last time I told people about some of the things I saw here, some of the technology I saw. They reacted much the same way as you. They didn’t believe me, didn’t believe that I had succeeded in coming to this world. Many of them thought I was making it up to cover failure.

“It made me realize just how hard it had to be for you. I suspect that were the situation reversed and were it you who had come to my world instead, I wouldn’t have believed you, either.

“For now let’s both try to be a little more understanding of the gulf between us. We need to help each other if we’re to survive what is coming.”

Alex didn’t know what was coming, but he nodded. It felt as if a weight had been lifted from his shoulders, a weight that he’d been carrying since she’d left the last time.

Still, it was profoundly difficult to get his mind around the idea that this woman had actually come from another world.

“Where is this world of yours? Your home? Is it across the universe? In another universe? Through some wormhole in space that allows you to step out of your world and into mine?”

“I can only tell you that the place I come from is on the other side of darkness, on the other side of nothing.”

“I don’t understand.”

“We don’t either.” She lifted a hand in a helpless gesture and then let it drop to her side. “There’s a lot I can’t explain. All I know for sure is that they are very different places, but at the same time they are very much the same. Right now, though, that’s not our problem. Right now, our problem is that if we’re going to find answers we first of all need to stay alive and to do that we need to get out of here.”

Alex nodded. “What are we going to do with Bethany’s body?”

“Send her back to my world,” Jax said as she squatted down beside the dead woman.

When next the lightning flashed Alex was shocked to see Jax using the tip of her knife to cut strange symbols in Bethany’s forehead. “What are you doing?”

“I’m sending her back to my world.”

“But before you said this is a world without magic. How do you expect to do such a thing if there’s no magic here?”

“She came here with a lifeline, the same as I did the two previous times. I’m merely activating it.”

He gestured to the bed. “Jax, there’s blood everywhere — it’s all over me. Even if you get rid of Bethany’s body, her blood is still going to be everywhere just waiting to be discovered.”

Working at the grisly task, Jax spoke without looking up. “The blood is hers and not from this world. It will return with her.” She looked up and grinned. “I wish I could be there to see their faces when I send their queen back to them like this.”

As lightning flashed, the room lit for a moment in its harsh glare only to plunge back into shadows as a cracking boom of thunder shook the house. Outside, branches clattered together in the wind. Rain beat steadily against the windows.

Jax swiftly cut two more mysterious symbols. Despite Bethany being dead, blood oozed from the strange network of lines. Alex couldn’t help taking in the design with an artistic eye, seeing the sense of movement in the lines’ composition.

“There,” Jax said to herself as she stood.

“There what?” In the harsh illumination of another flash of lightning he peered down at the dead woman. “What’s supposed to happen?”

Bethany might have been beautiful in life, but in death, with the way the wound across her neck gaped open, she was grotesque. The sight turned his stomach. In the next flash of lightning he noticed a stab wound in her lower back. Jax’s blade had been bloody when he’d first seen it. It dawned on him that she must have stabbed Bethany first to disable her.

As Jax stood, the flickers of lightning died out and the room again went dark. Rain thrumming against the window made the darkness feel altogether creepy.

When the lightning crackled again, there was nothing at their feet. No body, no blood.

Alex blinked in surprise and disbelief. Bethany was gone.

Just. . gone.

“There,” Jax said. “Feel better?”

“How did you do that?” he asked in shock, pointing at the empty place on the floor.

“I told you. I activated her lifeline to pull her back.”

Unable to believe his own eyes, Alex backed up until he bumped into the bed. “No, I mean, really. How did you do that?”

He turned and in the next flash of lightning saw that the sheets were pristine white. There was no blood. Not a speck. He looked down at himself, then ran his hand over his clean shirt. There was no blood on it.

It was as if Bethany had never been there.

Jax leaned in. “Are you all right?”

Alex nodded dumbly. “It’s impossible, but I saw it.”

“I’ve told you every word true, Alexander.”

He could only nod.

She let out a sigh. “This must all be hard for you, Alex. Later on maybe I can help you understand it better, but right now we have to get out of here.” She cast him a suspicious look. “By the way, what happened to that fellow out in the other room, out near the door?”

“What—” Alex remembered then. “Oh, him. I broke his neck.”

“Really?” Jax arched an eyebrow. “Well done, Alex. Well done.”

“There were two. After I broke his neck the other one tied me to the bed. Then Bethany sent him out to wait until she was finished with me. He’ll be out there in the rain somewhere, waiting.”

Jax looked unconcerned. “I already took him out and sent him back. I need to send back the one you killed; then we can get out of here.”

“Well, if the threat has been removed, maybe we don’t—”

She gripped his arm. “Alex, we need to get out of here.”

“You think Bethany’s people might send others after us?”

“That, too.”

He wondered what she meant. “How long will we have to be gone?”

She gave him a heated look, then relented a little, her expression softening. “Alex, you need to listen to me.

“Dangerous people have been coming here, to this world, for some time now. While I know some of what’s going on, I’m in the dark about much of it. I don’t think, though, that they’re coming here for a holiday.

“Many innocent people have already died. This is a matter of survival for us. A matter of life and death.

“But that’s my world, not yours. You enjoy peace here in your world. You have your own life. We believe that it’s each person’s right to choose to live their own life as they see fit. You have no obligation to help us.

“But if that’s your choice then please tell me now. I don’t have any time to waste.

“Someone from my world killed your grandfather and tried to kill you tonight. Your family has probably long been involved, possibly even been a target, though they’ve been unaware of it. Prophecy from my world suggests that you’re involved in this. The Law of Nines confirms it.

“You can choose to ignore my warning. You can choose not to believe that prophecy from my world applies to you. You can choose to do nothing and see what will happen, to stay out of it and just worry about keeping yourself safe.

“You are free to run and hide, if you so wish.

“But when they come after you, and I believe they will, you will have to face it alone. I can’t wait for you. I won’t.

“You have to make a choice, not because I say so, but because of the things that are happening. No matter what you choose to do, nothing is ever going to be the same — not for you, not for me.

“I will respect whatever choice you make, Alexander, but I will not come back for you again. You will be on your own.

“If you choose to come with me, then you must understand that we’re fighting people who don’t belong in this world, and those people are killers. Make no mistake, if you choose to come with me, then you are choosing to fight them. The man you killed tonight will likely not be the last.”

“But maybe we could get help, get the authorities to understand and to help us—”

“No. Their involvement would only end up costing more lives. Remember the two officers who detained those men when I first came here? Those officers ended up with their necks broken. If we call authorities to help us, those two will hardly be the last. I don’t know who is here from my world, or even if some from your world might be involved.”

He hadn’t even considered that. “You think people in this world might be cooperating with those who have come here?”

“We can’t ignore the possibility. Evil people, and those willing to help them, exist everywhere. We can’t risk being betrayed. Our only safety lies in no one knowing about us.

“The authorities in this world wouldn’t believe that there are people from another world among them. I don’t have the time to try to convince them, and besides, I don’t have any way to do so. I can’t do magic here. I’ve already used precious time convincing you.”

“But maybe I could help convince people—”

“No one will believe you. You have insanity in your family. They will assume you’re crazy, too.”

Alex knew that she was right. How many times had he questioned his own sanity since first meeting Jax?

“Your grandfather was one who knew that sometimes the best way to fight is a small covert force, not a big battle involving a lot of men.”

“How do you know that?”

“We learned a little about him, that long ago he served with such shadow forces. Did he tell you some of it?”

Alex nodded. He stood in the darkness for a time listening to the storm rage all around, thinking about Ben’s lessons.

“And if I choose to come with you, what then?” he asked.

“If you come with me you might have to face dangers I can’t begin to guess. In my world I would know what to expect, but in this world I don’t. We will have no help. Whatever comes we will be facing it alone. We very well might die.”

“You make it sound pretty hopeless.”

“I can promise you only one thing,” she said with grim intensity. “If you come with me I will protect you with my life.”

Alex blinked in surprise. “Why would you do that?”

“This is not the time to get into it, but know that I will lay down my life before yours is lost.”

She had already saved his life. Her solemn oath seemed like a portent of some grim future lurking in the darkness waiting to envelop him.

“I could really use your help to try to figure this out,” she finally said, “but I have to know that if you come with me you won’t be a liability. A lot of people, a lot of lives, are depending on me. I won’t risk my life lugging along dead weight. I need to know that if you come with me I can count on you.”

He had protected her life the first time he’d seen her. He couldn’t imagine ever allowing harm to visit her.

“This may not be a choice you want to make, Alex, but it is the choice you face. We have spent too long here already. Are you coming with me or not?”

She leaned closer in the darkness. “Decide.”

Alex gazed into her eyes, feeling as if he could see into her soul. He had always had the vague feeling that he never really knew who he was. It had always seemed like he had been waiting for something. It seemed now like he had been waiting his whole life for this moment.

“I knew from the first instant I saw you tonight — when I saw that you had come back — that I’m in this with you. Something is going on, something I don’t understand, but something deadly. This involves me. Somehow we’ve been thrown together from worlds apart. I can’t turn away. I won’t. I’m in this.”

A small smile softened her expression. She reached out and gently grasped his arm, giving it a squeeze as if in sympathy for all the trouble that had found him, trouble she couldn’t shelter him from.

Her voice turned intimate and gentle. “Let’s go, then.”

“Wait a second,” he said as he hurriedly knelt down and threw the bedcovers back out of the way.

He reached under the bed, letting his fingers settle into the four tabs of the gun safe bolted to the floor. He pressed the proper sequence and the door popped open.

He reached in and pulled out the gun and all six spare magazines.

“What’s that?” she asked.

“A Glock 17.”

Jax frowned. “A weapon made with technology?”

“Yes, technology that will help protect us.”

In the dark, he ran his index finger over the tab behind the ejection port, making sure that it was raised, indicating that a round was chambered. He always kept the gun loaded, but this was no time to find out otherwise.

“What makes the three dots glow?”

“Tritium. The sights are made with it so you can aim better in low light.”

“In my world I can make a substance that glows much like that.” He noticed that she paid close attention to the weapon. He recalled how well she handled a knife. This was a woman who knew the value of weapons in staying alive. He retrieved the molded polymer paddle holster and pushed it down over his waistband. When he holstered the gun, the retention lock clicked into place. He threw on a light jacket to hide the gun, then took several boxes of hollow-point ammunition from a drawer and put them in the jacket pockets along with the loaded magazines.

He retrieved all the cash he had in the safe and stuffed most of it in his pockets. He handed some to Jax. She looked at it as if she were seeing some otherworldly secret.

“It’s money,” he told her. “We’ll need money. You should have some on you just in case.”

Without questioning, she folded the cash and slipped it into a pocket at her waist.

“We’re going to need to get you some clothes.”

“I’m wearing clothes,” she said.

“Yes, but you kind of stand out in that black dress and cloak. If we’re trying not to be found, then I think it would be best for you not to stand out. We need to blend in, be invisible among people.”

She smiled. “Good thinking. Hurry, now. It would be bad if we were trapped here.”

The whole idea of people from another world chasing them seemed like some crazy waking nightmare to him. At the same time, it felt more real than anything in his life had ever felt.

“Do you know who is after us?” Alex asked.

“Yes,” she said. “Pirates.”

21

WAIT HERE UNTIL I MAKE sure it’s clear and I start the truck,” Alex said, gesturing out at his faded red Cherokee sitting in the drive.

Jax glanced back into the dark house from the kitchen doorway. “All right, but hurry.”

She was clearly more focused on what might be behind them in the darkness. The intruders had come through the front door the last time. He wondered if she expected more of them to arrive and come up behind them through the house.

Alex carefully ducked his head out, took a quick look, then pulled back in. The rain wasn’t letting up. He looked out a second time, checking the other direction. The Jeep was parked right outside in the driveway that ran along the side of the house.

“I don’t see anyone,” he told her.

She turned back from her survey of the darkness within. “That doesn’t mean a lot. It’s dark and hard to see in the rain. They could be hiding anywhere. But more than that, just because you don’t see anyone right now doesn’t mean they couldn’t show up at any moment.”

That was a disturbing thought. “Can they do that anywhere they want?”

“Theoretically, yes, but as a practical matter, no. Queen Bethany and her thugs knew this location. They came to this world right here, in this place. It only makes sense that others might have this point plotted as well.”

“You mean that to come here you have to know specifically where you want to go?”

“Not exactly. It’s not so much that it’s a problem having to do with coming here as it is knowing specifically where you want to be when you get here. The worlds — yours and mine — are big places. Imagine if you were to go to my world, not knowing anything about it. How would you find me, one person, in that whole world, among millions of people? Coming here is one thing, knowing where you want to be when you get here is quite another.”

“I see what you mean. Sounds like it must be difficult.”

“When I was trying to find you the second time I watched the area of the art gallery because it was a place I knew you went. It was where we first located you and at the time the only known place I had for you. That’s why we need to get away from your known locations.”

“That complicates things.”

“I didn’t promise you it would be easy.”

“I guess not.”

With his index finger he absently pressed the release lever on the side of holster and lifted the gun just enough to make sure that it was clear. He let the weapon drop back and click into place.

“Best if we stick to the plan, then. You stay hidden in the shadows and keep a lookout until I start the truck. And pull the door shut behind you when you leave the house,” he added. “I’d like to have a home to come back to one of these days.”

Jax smiled sympathetically. “I know how you feel.”

Alex slipped out the doorway and into the rain. It felt to him like stepping out of his old life and into a new one.

Everything felt new to him, different, as if he were seeing the world with new eyes.

It seemed he could feel each individual muscle in his body as he moved. He thought that he could have counted every cold drop of rain that fell on him. He was aware of the different sensations of the rain on his face, of it matting his hair, of it wetting his pant legs, and of it spattering on the backs of his hands. He could smell the wet dirt, the concrete, and the trees. He could hear the rain beating against the roof of the house, gurgling down the gutters, splashing in puddles, whispering against the leaves of the big maple tree at the rear corner of his house, and drumming on the metal panels of the Jeep. Clouds lit from within by lightning revealed their greenish, roiling shapes before going dark again. He could feel the thunder in the distance rumbling through the ground. Lightning flickered closer in the west, illuminating the glistening, wet scene in stark, colorless contrast.

All of his senses were firing. The world was not just new to him, but an alien place.

He swiftly unlocked the driver’s door and popped it open only enough to turn on the interior dome light. He looked in the windows, checking that no one was hiding in the back. Once he knew the truck was empty he hopped in and hit the unlock button so that Jax would be able to get in on the passenger side.

When he turned the key in the ignition he heard only a click. His pounding heart seemed to skip a beat. He tried again, and again it only clicked. The starter was resting in a dead spot. He knew from experience that he could turn the key all night and it wouldn’t start the engine.

Alex was furious at himself. He could hardly believe that he hadn’t replaced the starter when he’d had the time. With everything surrounding Ben’s death he had ignored the matter of the starter. The excuse was pointless. An excuse wouldn’t undo the mistake.

Jax ran from the house to stand in the open door of the truck. “What’s wrong? Does it always take this long?”

“It won’t start.”

“Magic is a lot more dependable than technology,” she said as she leaned in a little under the shelter of the roof.

“Really? How’s your magic working for you right now?”

She sighed when she realized she had no argument.

“I just need to roll it down the driveway to get it to start.”

He always backed the truck up the sloping drive for just such an eventuality.

“I’ll push it to get it going. I do it often enough. It will be fine. Run around and get in the—”

Alex looked up just as a dark form slammed full force into Jax from behind. The breath left her lungs in a grunt. The violence of the impact drove her onto Alex, knocking him back over the center console. The armrest jammed painfully into his kidneys. His shoulders were pressed down against the passenger seat, his neck bent at a torturous angle. In such an awkward position, the full weight of both Jax and the huge man atop her prevented him from drawing a full breath.

Time seemed to stop.

The growling man had a meaty arm around Jax’s neck. Lethal rage lit his dark eyes. He was only an instant away from twisting her neck and snapping it like a twig.

Alex held his breath against the strain of monumental effort.

His gun had already cleared the holster.

He drove his fist past Jax’s head and rammed the end of the barrel into the man’s left eye socket.

Without an instant’s hesitation, before the man could react, before he could jerk back away from the gun, before he could snap her neck, Alex pressed the trigger.

The hot glare of the muzzle flash lit the inside of the truck. The sound of the gun going off was deafening. In the darkness Alex could also see the flash of the muzzle blast coming out the back of the man’s head, lighting a cloud of blood, bone, and brain as the hollow-point round blew through. The recoil snapped Alex’s hand back.

Most of the debris went out the open door, but some of it splattered against the inside of the windshield and side window in the back seat. The ejected brass shell casing ricocheted off the headliner, then pinged off the passenger window.

The instant the bullet tore through his brain, the hulk of a man went as limp as mud. He wasn’t thrown back like in the movies; he simply dropped dead in place. The man, who an instant before had been a blur of ferocity, was suddenly stone still.

Jax gripped the bottom of the steering wheel for leverage and with a growl of effort arched her back. Alex helped push her up. The dead man slid off her back and down into a heap at the side of the driveway. One arm splayed over his head, as if trying to hide the ghastly wound.

Alex at last drew a needed breath. His ears rang from the sound of the gunshot. The gun had been right beside Jax’s head when it had gone off. He hoped it hadn’t deafened her.

He hoped, too, that the gunshot hadn’t roused the neighborhood. On any regular, quiet night it would have awakened everyone within a couple of blocks, but with the thunder booming enough to shake the ground, a single gunshot was lost in nature’s mayhem.

It had all happened so fast. The night was suddenly back to normal. The rain droned on. In a blink the killing was over and done with, a man’s life ended.

Jax rubbed her neck with both hands as she twisted her head around experimentally. Blood dripped from sodden strands of her blond hair.

“Are you all right?” he asked, checking the darkness. “I was afraid that he might have broken your neck.”

“He would have,” she said, still catching her breath. “I guess that answers the question of whether or not I can count on you. Your Glock technology works pretty good.”

“That’s a Glock for you. Pull trigger go boom.”

“Thank you, Alexander. That was quick thinking.”

He nodded. “Just returning the favor.”

He holstered his gun as Jax bent down to the dead man and swiftly began cutting symbols that Alex recognized as the same design she had cut into Bethany. Ordinarily a gory sight like the aftermath of such a shooting might have made him sick, but he was too angry to be anything but angry.

Jax stood as soon as she had finished. She was getting faster at it. It had taken mere moments this time. He supposed that practice at magic that invoked travel to another world was just like any other practice that helped make one faster, like drawing a gun and firing at a threat.

Somewhere between the sporadic flashes of lightning the man wasn’t there anymore. It still seemed impossible the way he simply vanished. Alex glanced into the truck. The blood that had been splattered all over and running down the side of the dashboard was gone as well. It looked as if it had never been there, as if nothing had happened.

“Alex, we need to go. Men like that usually travel in pairs. The second will be here any—”

There was a soft thud to the air that Alex felt as a thump deep in his chest. For an instant it seemed like there was a dark smudge swirling in the air right beside Jax. As soon as he saw it, the indistinct, dark stain in the night changed into a vortex of vapor in the humid air.

The vapor almost instantly condensed into a shape.

Alex was already starting to draw the gun even as he could still feel the thump deep in his chest. The shape came into being before his weapon had cleared the holster. Jax was already spinning toward the threat.

There was no question in Alex’s mind; he had just seen a man step out of another world and hit the ground running, charging at them out of the downpour. The vapor rising from his beefy arms evaporated into the rain as he came at them.

Before Alex could get the gun up and on target to fire, Jax spun, slashing open the man’s abdomen.

As the man stumbled to a stop to stare down in shock at his insides erupting out of the long gash just as he had appeared in a new world, Jax rammed her knife up through his eye. The blade went in hilt-deep. It was as effective as the hollow-point round had been.

The man went down before he’d known what happened.

In the quiet whisper of rain, Jax looked up at Alex. “Like I said, usually in pairs.”

Ben had always said that in close-quarters combat, a knife was often faster than a gun. Alex was a believer.

As she hurriedly squatted down to repeat her task of activating the man’s lifeline, Alex holstered his Glock. “Let’s get away from here before we find out they travel in quads.”

Jax glanced up, giving him the oddest look. She then gestured. “You said that you had to push the, the. . what did you call that thing?”

“Truck. I have to push it down the drive to get it to start,” he said as he ducked in and released the parking brake. He leaned his weight into the windshield pillar to get the truck rolling. “Hurry with him while I get the truck started. When I do, jump in.”

The truck rolled down the drive, picking up speed. Alex ran beside it, pushing, then when it was going at a good clip he hopped in and put it in gear. As he turned to the right out into the street, in the downhill direction, he lifted his foot off the clutch. The engine caught. He pumped the gas a few times to make sure it wouldn’t stall, then put it in reverse, spinning the wheels on the wet pavement as he backed to the drive. Jax ran down the driveway to meet him. The second man was gone.

Alex rolled his hand, urging her to hurry.

Jax pressed up against the door. She slapped the palms of her hands against the passenger window as the truck started rolling forward.

“Alex! Wait! How do I get in?”

Rather than try to explain where the handle was and how to push the button, he leaned across and popped open the door. The woman had opened a doorway between dimensions or worlds or something, and yet she couldn’t open a truck door.

Jax jumped in. “Sometime you will have to teach me how to do that on my own.”

As he shifted into second, leaving his house in the distance behind, he noticed that she had a death grip on the console and the door’s armrest.

“Do we have to go so fast?” she asked in a breathless voice.

Alex glanced down at the speedometer. “We’re only doing thirty.”

“Can you make it go slower, please?”

For someone who had just gutted a man three times her size and given him a lobotomy for good measure, she suddenly seemed pretty squeamish. He guessed that he was starting to feel pretty squeamish himself. He slowed down a little to let her get used to the sensation.

With her blond hair plastered against her head she looked half drowned. He noticed, too, that her hair was no longer stained with blood. Her wet dress was a shambles from the brief battle. Seeing her alive, though, he doubted that she could have looked any better to him. At least she also looked like she was starting to relax, if only a little.

“I’m sorry, Alex.”

“About what?”

She waited until he looked over at her. “That you had to kill that man.”

“I’m just thankful that he wasn’t able to hurt you.”

As they raced away slowly down the street, he noticed her hands fisted in her lap. She looked like she wanted to pound rocks.

“What’s wrong?”

She stared off through the passenger window. “I should have been paying more attention. It’s not like me to be so careless. I almost got us both killed.”

Alex was angry as well, but for a different reason. He was still in the grip of rage — rage at a man who had tried to hurt her and had come so close to doing so.

“Don’t be so hard on yourself. We’re both alive and they’re both dead. That’s what matters.”

“Not to me,” she said under her breath as she looked away. “I didn’t come here to be stupid.” He could detect a catch in her voice when she said, “People are depending on me.”

“Jax, look at me.” Reluctantly, she did. “We survived. I don’t think those people depending on you would give you points for style. They’d only care that we survived so that we can find out how to stop this.”

She smiled a bit at last. “You’re right. We survived. I would lecture you for being so sloppy, Alexander Rahl, but I was no better. Let’s hope that we both are more careful so that the next time it isn’t nearly so close.”

He returned the smile. “Deal.”

22

ALEX SLOWED AS HE TURNED the truck into the well-lit parking lot. Even in the middle of the night it was half full.

“What is this place?” Jax asked.

Alex pointed off to the right. “That’s a gambling casino over there. Gambling isn’t legal on land, but it’s allowed on boats, so they build the whole place on big barges and tie them to docks at the edge of the river.”

“Do you spend time at this place?”

Alex knew what she was getting at. He remembered her admonition about places he was known to frequent. He had been afraid, though, that if he simply parked in a strange neighborhood or an empty lot they would draw unwanted attention.

“I know of it, but I’ve never been here before.”

She pulled a strand of hair back off her face. “Good.”

“This place is always busy, so we won’t look suspicious parked here. We can pull the cargo cover over the back and sleep under it.

It will be cramped, but it will keep us out of sight for the rest of the night.”

“I’m not so tired. I’ll stay up and stand watch.”

Alex shot her a look. “Stand watch? Anyone sitting in a parked car might attract attention. You, in that dress, with that long blond hair, this time of night, are bound to draw a crowd. That’s the last thing we need.”

“I look a mess,” she said as she glanced down at her dress. “Besides, I wore this dress so that I wouldn’t draw attention.”

“Trust me,” he said. “A crowd.”

Out of the corner of his eye he saw her start combing her fingers through waves of her damp hair, trying to coax it back into place. Alex thought that her disheveled condition somehow made her look all the more alluring. He had always thought that if he saw a beautiful woman with her clothes and hair in disarray and he still thought she was beautiful, then she truly was beautiful. Jax was more than that. She was gorgeous.

A thought he definitely didn’t like crossed his mind. He wondered if her looks helped her get close to men she intended to kill.

He forced his thoughts off of how attractive she was and pulled into a parking place between a couple of minivans. They would make the Jeep harder to spot for anyone looking for it. Centered between towering light poles, it was as dark a place as he could manage in the casino lot.

He knew that casinos had cameras that watched their parking lots, but as long as no one approached his Cherokee he doubted there would be any reason for security to notice them. People darted through the rainy night, hurrying to get to their cars or into the casinos. He hoped that none of those figures hidden by shadows and rain were looking for him and Jax.

Once he had turned off the wipers, with the way the rain was coming down, it was hard to see much in the blur of water flowing down the windows. Alex gestured off to the left.

“Over there are some outlet stores. We can get some more clothes there, but they don’t open until morning.”

She gazed into the distance where he pointed. “Morning is still hours away.”

“So we’d better get what rest we can.”

“But I—”

“Didn’t you say that you weren’t paying good enough attention and you almost got us killed? You need sleep to stay alert.”

Jax sighed. “I suppose you’re right. Maybe we should try to get some rest while we can.”

Rather than go out in the rain and get wet going in through the tailgate — and risk being watched by security — they both climbed over the seats into the rear cargo area. With the way the rain was coming down he was pretty sure that any security camera that happened to be pointed in their direction wouldn’t be able to see anything inside the Jeep.

Alex kept a blanket and a small duffel bag filled with emergency gear in the back. He spread the blanket over the floor, then pulled the cargo shade over them and hooked it in place. Once it was secure he turned on a small LED light from the bag. It wasn’t bright, but in the confined space it was more than ample. Jax watched him as he squirmed out of his jacket.

“Lie down,” he told her.

She didn’t object. He put the duffel bag under her head for a pillow, then draped his jacket over her, covering her as best he could. She had to pull her knees up to fit in the small area.

“Thanks,” she said as she watched him.

Alex nodded as he leaned back against the wheel arch. It wasn’t very comfortable, but he found it far preferable to being someplace where guys from another world could suddenly pop up and break his neck.

Once they were settled he turned off the light. Yellowish lamp-light from the tall poles leaked in around the edges of the cargo shade. The rain running down the windows made the light waver softly on her face. She was still watching him.

“We need to figure out our next move.”

Alex shrugged. “Maybe not. Maybe it’s over.”

Her face was a picture of incredulity. “Over?”

“Maybe we’ve finished it, tonight. Bethany is dead. Once they all realize that they’ve lost their leader, isn’t it likely they’ll quit? Maybe you’ve already accomplished what you came here to do.”

Jax twisted a thread sticking out from the edge of the blanket for a moment as if trying to find words, or maybe trying to decide how much she wanted to tell him.

“I can see why it would seem that way to you, Alex — I really can — but it’s more complicated than that. Queen Bethany wasn’t the real problem.”

She certainly had seemed like a problem to Alex. “What are you talking about? She came here from your world. You said that they have probably been interfering with my family for a long time. She killed Ben — you said so yourself. She wanted a Rahl heir for herself, and then she planned to kill me.” Alex folded his arms. “She even had some guy buy my paintings and ruin them.”

“The man who did that had no connection with her.”

Alex frowned. “How do you know that?”

“Because when I was looking for you through the mirror in the gallery I saw the man who ruined your paintings. His name is Sedrick Vendis. He had nothing to do with Queen Bethany.”

“Sedrick Vendis? Who the hell is he? And what do you mean he had nothing to do with Bethany? What’s this all about?”

Jax lifted a hand, urging him to calm down. “Queen Bethany was on the same side as these people, but lately she’s been operating outside of areas where she belonged.”

“You lost me.”

Jax sighed. “Bethany was a petty queen, but she was ambitious, so she aligned herself with powerful people. In the course of helping them she apparently learned about you and saw an opportunity for herself. Somewhere along the line she hatched a scheme to gain more power. She snuck here behind their backs.

“The people who have been coming here, who have caused your family trouble, the people who are endangering both our worlds, weren’t aware of what she has been up to. If Sedrick Vendis had known that Queen Bethany had taken to meddling — especially if he had known what she was trying to do with you — he would have killed her himself.”

“So who is this Vendis character?”

“He’s the right-hand man to Radell Cain, the real power behind all the trouble. I could hardly believe it when I saw Vendis here that day. It’s a bad sign that Vendis himself would come here, and that he was that close to you. Vendis is the one Cain sends to do his dirty work.”

“What do you mean about them endangering your world? What’s Cain after?”

Jax sighed. “Power. In the end it’s nothing more complicated than that. Just like other people throughout history, he lusts for power. He doesn’t care what or who is destroyed in the process, as long as he gets what he wants. It’s hard to believe, but deaths in the millions mean nothing to men like that. They only care about power for themselves.

“For the longest time we had peace and prosperity. People valued hard work and achievement. Most of us had a sense of the goodness of life. Over time, though, those kinds of things came to be seen as outmoded by more and more people who felt entitled to prosperity without effort. They resented being told that their desires were a recipe for ruin.”

“You mean they blamed the messenger.”

Jax nodded. “There are always people like Radell Cain who are ready to take advantage of public resentment. He played on people’s emotions by blaming everything on those who were still productive and prosperous, saying that they were uncaring and insensitive. People swooned at Cain’s simplistic, populist notions. He made what was really nothing more than simple greed sound somehow morally righteous. He made taking what others had worked to earn sound like justice. People ate it up.

“In the middle of unrest and difficult times, Cain won people over with promises of change — a new vision, a new direction. He made change sound like a miracle solution to all our problems. People mindlessly embraced the notion of change.”

“I guess people love hearing that nothing is their fault,” Alex said, “that other people are to blame for their troubles.”

Jax nodded. “For a lot of people it beats hard work and personal responsibility.”

“So, what was the great change that Radell Cain wanted?”

“He made magic into a scapegoat. He said that it tainted everything it touched because it was unfair. So, to solve all our problems, he called for bold change: a world without magic.”

Alex shrugged. “I live in a world without magic. What’s wrong with that?”

“But you live in a world with technology. In many ways technology and magic are interchangeable. You could almost make the case that for all practical purposes they’re really the same thing. Most of us don’t really understand the complexities of magic, like with my journey book, we simply use it. In your world there must be people who understand the complex technology of phones, but I bet that most people using phones don’t really know how they work.

“Technology, like magic, helps everyone live better. It doesn’t merely help you to survive, it helps you to be prosperous and healthy, to live longer, to live better. But because magic is used by everyone, and actually understood by so few, that knowledge has become distrusted and viewed as somehow sinister. Radell Cain plays on those common fears.”

“How is it that you know so much about the technology we have and yet you didn’t know how to make tea?”

“We’ve studied things here as best we could, learned what we could, but it’s only a dim overview captured in small snatches. We partially grasp the great sweep of how technology applies to life here, but we never understood all the details.

“We know, for example, that you somehow use cars and trucks to help you get places, deliver food and goods, but we don’t understand how those machines work. We know they’re important only because we see them all the time. We’ve seen people talk on phones, and while we never understood exactly what they were, we got the general idea. We once saw a red vehicle arrive to help an injured person, saw hoses and boxes and strange technology used to save their life. While we don’t know what was being done or how it worked, we grasped that it was something like a healer in my world would do.

“What little we know is mostly a result of trying to learn about the Rahls in your world as we tried to figure out what Radell Cain is after, here. During that search we saw things, learned a little about the technology you use. Our view, however, is profoundly limited. It’s like a deaf blind man trying to recount a visit to a new place.

“While our tools are limited, we did the best we could. It took decades just to isolate the Rahl line here. That’s why I know a little about your grandfather’s history and how technology is woven into your lives. We know a few random, isolated things. Making tea just wasn’t one of them.”

“So you’re saying that what Radell Cain wants to do in your world is the equivalent of stopping us from using technology?”

Jax nodded. “It’s not the same, exactly, but it’s a good enough comparison. And he doesn’t merely want to stop people from using it — he wants to entirely strip the world of it, take it entirely out of existence. He paints it as a utopian world.”

“Do you think it would be as bad as you fear?”

“Some of us understand exactly what it would mean for us, and we’re terrified.”

“Why?”

“Well, imagine life here without technology. Imagine life without the technology that heats your buildings, helps grow food in abundance, makes your lights glow. What would your lives be like without your phones, your trucks, your medicines and cures, without the means to supply the people in your cities with goods and services?

“Imagine all the people in cities deprived of every kind of technology, technology that they use every day to survive. Imagine everyone suddenly having to find a way to grow their own food, to preserve it, to store it safely.”

“People are pretty ingenious,” Alex said with a shrug. “I’m sure it would be hard but I think they would cope.”

“Cope? Think of the reality of your world, tomorrow, suddenly stripped of your technology — no phones, no computer devices, no way to find out anything. Think it through, Alex.

“Without your technology the fabric of civilization itself would come apart within days — if not hours. Everyone would be on their own. One city wouldn’t know what the next was doing, or if they were even alive. There’d be no planes or cars or anything else. You couldn’t travel to other places unless you walked. Do you have any idea how long it takes to walk just a few dozen miles? A distance that in your cars takes a brief time would be days of hard travel on foot.

“There would be no way for people to know what had happened to their far-flung loved ones. No one would know what had happened to their government. No word would come about anything. Everyone — everyone — would be in the dark, literally and figuratively. You would all be sitting there with no phones, no electrical devices, no heat, no way to get anything or summon help. Your world would fall silent.

“It wouldn’t be long until supplies of food started to rot and run out. How long would it be until roving gangs started to loot what they wanted? Who would stop them? How would the police know when and where crimes were being committed? How would they hear anyone cry for help? How would they get there? Law and order would quickly become a thing of the past.

“When it turns cold, then what? Millions of people will rush to cut wood to try to keep warm, that’s what. Makeshift fires used to keep warm will inevitably get out of hand. Your technology to fight the fires would be gone. Once fires catch hold, they will rampage unchecked, growing to firestorms that will gut cities and leave tens of thousands homeless.

“Disease will spread like a plague with no means to stop it. Life will be not merely cheap but short.

“When all the food is gone you will begin dying by the millions. Those still alive will not have the strength or the will to bury all the dead. In the end, in the grip of starvation, the living will eat the dead.

“The only law will be survival.

“Those who once held idyllic notions of how simple and clean life would be without the demon of technology — like those in my world who believe the same thing about life without magic — will die filthy, terrified, and confused. Their idealistic notions will crumble in the cold face of reality. Like those in my world, they will be unprepared for the consequences of their pompous beliefs.

“What before had been simple will become tremendously difficult or impossible. The ignorant, the frightened, the weak, the criminal, will defecate in runoff areas, in streams, and in rivers, wanting their waste to be washed away. They won’t care about anyone downstream. Finding water will be a monumental chore. Finding clean, disease-free water will be impossible.

“Sewage and garbage will lie in the open. Vermin will multiply into a nightmare of filth. The stench of human habitation will be unbearable, but you will live in it, sleep in it, have sex in it, bear children you cannot care for in it. Without technology, the product of your minds, mankind will be marked by the stench of sickness and death.

“Schools, of course, will be a thing of the past. Learning will be stopped in its tracks; knowledge will wither daily. Survival itself will be an all-consuming struggle. As people die in droves the aptitude for technology, the skills, the expertise that was so common and taken for granted, will be lost. Without it your world will plunge headlong into the depths of a bottomless dark age of filth and misery. Millions upon millions of lives will be cut short as they are born into profound ignorance, abject poverty, backward superstition, and the rule of the most brutal.

“That is the reality of a world without technology — brief lives of unimaginable misery, filth, and savagery.”

Only the rain droning on filled the sudden silence. Jax sat quietly for a moment, letting it all sink in, letting the horror of understanding settle over him.

Alex knew that the Dark Ages had been a time much like she described. The knowledge built up by past civilizations had been lost as mankind plummeted into a black abyss. Survival was such a struggle that there were stretches of centuries about which next to nothing was known. That mankind emerged in the Renaissance was a testament to the nobility of the human spirit. It was only when mankind rose up and began to develop technology to shape the world that light came into their dark existence.

But it had taken a thousand years for that light to return.

“That is what Radell Cain’s ideas mean to our world, Alex,” she said softly. “That will be our fate. We will be stripped of everything we’ve made of our world and our lives.”

Alex sat sobered by such a description. He’d never really considered the far-reaching ramifications of such a thing. He now realized that Jax had. If anything, she was painting a kinder picture than what would be the horrifying reality.

If technology were suddenly taken away, the suffering and dying would be beyond imagining. Without all the factories and common technologies that people whined about, they’d be lucky to be able to grub enough worms to keep them alive.

Alex gestured vaguely. “You could use technology instead — build things, make things, create the things you need — just like we did. Mankind here developed what we have from nothing.”

She cast him a reproachful look. “And how many millennia did you live in a world of darkness lit only by fire?”

He knew she was right.

“It took the people here centuries to create, invent, and discover things to improve your lives. We, too, have spent countless eons developing parallel abilities that enable us to live without suffering the most common afflictions and wants. We use those abilities to tell us the best time to plant, the best time to harvest. Without those methods, thousands would starve. There are endless examples of how abilities developed over a long history help us live — help us live in an unnatural and evil way, according to Radell Cain.

“Because he wants to rule, because he needs something to blame simply so that he can gain power, everything we have will be forever lost, and once lost, it can’t be recovered.”

“But why would Cain want to do that? He would rule a wasteland.”

Jax arched an eyebrow. “You just said it. He would rule. He is willing to lay waste to civilization just to gain immense power for himself.

“If he really cared what became of people under his rule he wouldn’t incite such hatred for values, hold the victims responsible for the crimes against them, and shift blame to the innocent whenever anything goes wrong. He would work to solve problems instead of using them to seize complete power for himself.

“After Cain gets what he wants, no one will be able to challenge him. He will rule the world — a cold, dead, starving world — but he will rule it nonetheless, living in lavish excess with all the trappings his heart desires. What little of everything there is, he will control. That’s all that really matters to him. He is a man completely without empathy for others. It only matters to him that he gets what he wants. If a few million die he doesn’t really care — the dead don’t eat.”

Alex stared off as he listened. “It seems impossible to believe that people would go along with such a thing.”

Jax sighed. “I know. It’s hard for us to believe, too, but every day people willingly undergo a process called ‘the Cleansing’ to remove any gifted ability — that means magic. Afterwards, after this rebirth, the magic they were born with and learned to master is forever gone. They tell other people that they feel free for the first time in their lives and pressure them to give up their ‘tainted’ abilities as well. Crowds wait in lines to have it done, to go along with everyone else, to prove their virtue.”

Jax looked away, her eyes filling with tears. “That’s the worst part, that so many would not value their own unique abilities, not value themselves, much less respect those who have fought and died so that they could live free to make the choice to surrender that precious right of choice — along with their gift and their individuality.”

She gripped the blanket in a fist. “I often think that they deserve everything they’re going to get. I only regret that those of us who value what we have will suffer the same fate. They’re the ones I fight for. The rest of them be damned.”

Alex swallowed at the pain so clearly evident in her voice. “We have people like that in our world, too. People who say that freedom is no longer practical, that we must surrender it for a greater common good.”

“Fear them,” she whispered. “They are the heart of evil. They tolerate tyranny, excuse it, compromise with it. In so doing they always bring savagery and death upon the rest of us.”

Alex listened to the rain drumming on the roof for a time. There was something about the power in her voice, the fierce intensity, the conviction, the passion of purpose, that added to his impression that this was no ordinary woman. This was a woman who knew what she was talking about.

This woman was not a follower of anyone. She was a leader.

“If Sedrick Vendis is Cain’s right-hand man, and important in his own right, then why would he travel to this world and buy my paintings just to deface them?”

Jax glowered with dark thoughts for a moment. “I don’t know,” she said at last. “At the time I thought it seemed rather strange, to say the least.”

“So,” he finally asked, “you really think that Radell Cain wants something from me?”

Her eyes turned back up to lock onto his gaze. “The Law of Nines says that you are central in this.”

He didn’t budge from her steady gaze. “Bethany told me that you’re an assassin, and that you would kill me.”

23

JAX DIDN’T SHY FROM THE QUESTION. “If I came to kill you, then why aren’t you dead?”

Alex didn’t like her evasive answer. He chose his words carefully, but kept it simple and sincere. “Back at the house you said that if I came with you, you had to be able to depend on me. I deserve no less, Jax. I think you owe me the truth.”

“Now you sound like a Rahl,” she said.

His voice took on an edge. “I am a Rahl.”

She let out a long, deep breath and looked away from his eyes again.

“Well, the truth is I did come here expecting that I might end up having to kill you.”

Somehow, that didn’t surprise him, but it did surprise him that she so freely admitted it.

“But you said that I’m the one named in this prophecy of yours—”

“It’s not my prophecy. It’s an ancient core prophecy, well known in certain circles.”

“Well, if I’m the one the prophecy pertains to, then why in the world would you want to kill me, and why am I not dead?”

“You are not dead because I chose not to kill you.”

Alex decided to wait for her to explain. She picked at a loose thread on the blanket for a time before doing so.

“The prophecy says, ‘Someday, someone born not of this world will have to save it.’ That’s all that it says.

“Short prophecy, such as this, is often the most troublesome and the most dangerous. While it may sound simple, you can’t assume it is.

“Since it’s so obviously important, the prophecy has been studied extensively, but it still remains one of those great unsolved questions that frustrate the experts. From the beginning it’s been a prophecy associated with the House of Rahl.

“In certain circles it has been known for just as long that there are members of the House of Rahl in this world who—”

“How could there be members of the House of Rahl in your world and in my world? They’re separate worlds, separate places, maybe not even the same universe or dimension. How can there be the same line of people in both worlds?”

Her eyes had a timeless look of authority, or perhaps wisdom, about them. “Because your ancestors and the ancestors of a great many other people here once lived in my world.”

Alex stared at her. He wasn’t even sure that he had heard her correctly.

“That’s impossible.”

Her serious expression was unwavering.

“The ancestors of people here at one time lived in my world. This world was born from mine, or at least some of the people were.”

He had seen things that proved she was telling the truth that she had somehow traveled here from some other place, or time, or dimension. But this? This was just plain crazy.

Alex realized then that maybe he was taking her too literally.

“You mean that ancient stories say this. That it’s a legend, a myth, some kind of Dark Ages fairy tale.”

“It’s the reason that there are Rahls in both worlds — or, at least there used to be. There are no longer any Rahls in my world. At one time they were only in my world. Long ago some came here, to this world, to start new lives.”

He thought then that he could see how the whole thing had started and how it might have come to be misunderstood. “All right, I get it. All you’re really saying is that long ago some people named Rahl came to this world, much like you came to this world, and started lives here living among the people here. That’s why there are Rahls here. The Rahls here are descendants of a few people who once traveled here — sort of like you did.”

“No, it’s more than that. History says that long ago our world was engulfed in war. There were many people who didn’t want magic in their lives — didn’t want it to exist. They believed it was evil. They were adamant that they wanted to live in a world free of it. They were willing to die for that cause. They were unwilling to allow anyone with magic to live free. They were unwilling to allow anyone with magic to live at all.

“Because there could be no peace with them, because they refused to coexist peacefully with the gifted, because they were fanatically committed to killing any gifted and wiping magic from existence, they were granted their foolish wish to live in a world without magic. But they weren’t allowed to undo our world. They were all banished here, to a world where magic didn’t exist.”

“You mean, they didn’t want magic back then, either? The same as now? The same problem all over again?”

She paused for a moment, thinking. “No, it’s not the same. Before, it was a movement, a fundamental religious belief that was larger in its scope. It was a fanaticism that would not tolerate any other point of view. They believed that this was the will of the Creator and that they would be rewarded in the afterlife for killing the gifted.

“Now it’s nothing more than a cynical ploy Radell Cain is using to cover a grab for power. Tyrants don’t want their subjects to possess weapons. Eliminating magic takes a weapon away from anyone who might resist. That’s what Cain is really after — taking away the ability of people to resist his rule.

“Those who didn’t want magic back then got their wish; they were sent here. Some of the Rahl line who weren’t born with the gift chose to also come here to start new lives.”

“So we’re aliens? Our ancestors traveled here from your world?”

Her nose wrinkled as she thought it over. “They didn’t exactly ‘travel’ the way you’re thinking, the way I did or the way Cain and his people do. The worlds were said to have been joined together — at least for an instant they were at the same place at the same time — then they split apart, with the people who wanted to live without magic left in this world. I don’t know how many were banished, but vast numbers, well over half the people in our world, were gone after the parting.”

He thought the whole idea was too far-fetched to take seriously, but he decided not to debate it for the moment. Instead he asked something else.

“How long ago is this supposed to have happened?”

“Our scale of time might be different from yours, so I can’t be certain, and we have only the bones of history left, but that history suggests that in our world it was long ago.

“There would be virtually no record of the event here in this world. The memories of the people who came here degraded. The breakdown of memory was part of the process. The loss of magic would have been for the most part instantaneous, though some of it might have lingered for a short time. After a while it would have faded, along with any memories of its origin.

“It would have been a very dark and terrible time for those who came here. Even starting a fire, which with our ability is simple, would have been a struggle.

“As a result, generation upon countless generation would have lived in savagery and ignorance that would have been ruled by superstition and hardship. Recording events would have been a luxury beyond the scope of people struggling just to survive another day. There would likely be no real record of it here.

“The era would now seem a black hole in your history.”

“So that’s why we don’t have magic and you do?”

“Yes. Your ancestors — like mine — were people who lived lives with magic as a routine part of everyday life. The difference is that the people in our world still have their magic; the people who came to your world don’t.”

Alex wiped a weary hand across his face. He tried his best to keep the impatience out of his voice. “I guess that I can imagine that there is magic in your world, Jax. It’s a different place. For all I know, the laws of nature could be different there. But here things don’t work that way. It isn’t just that magic doesn’t exist here — it can’t exist here. The laws of nature don’t permit such a thing.”

He had almost said “such a silly thing” but restrained himself.

“So?”

“So, I can’t believe that it was ever part of reality for the people of my world.”

“It wasn’t, once they were here.” Seeing that the answer didn’t satisfy him, she looked up, thinking for a moment before asking a question. “You don’t have have wizards, witches, sorceresses, dragons, or magic here in this world?”

“No, not real ones.”

“Then why are those things part of all cultures, all peoples, throughout your history? Why do different people in different places in different times speak of them? Why do they even have the words for things that can’t possibly exist?”

“It’s just ancient legend, myth.”

Jax arched an eyebrow. “Why has this myth always been basically the same in every culture, in every corner of your world? Why do they all have the same words for the same imaginary things — myths — that can’t exist? Where do you suppose such common myth was born?”

Alex didn’t have an answer.

She leaned closer. “It was born in my world. The reality was left behind in my world. Why is magic such a universal part of your language, your culture, even though it does not exist here, cannot exist here? Why?

“Those who came here could bring with them only the fading memories of those things. As you say, magic is not part of the reality of nature here. It can’t exist here. I’m sure that those who resettled here soon came to deeply regret ever having wished for a life without magic. There could have been nothing worse for them than getting exactly what they had wanted.

“Those things lost lived on in this world but only as a ghost of what once was, of what is now gone.

“That myth, that legend, is all the history that’s left from those who came here from my world.

“They left magic behind, yet it still haunts you.”

24

ALEX COULDN’T BRING HIMSELF to accept her story as true — it just seemed too far-fetched and there were too many things that didn’t seem to fit with what he knew of the history of the world. Yet at the same time it had a haunting quality to it, some kind of lingering whisper that he couldn’t entirely banish. There had been vast dark stretches in human history about which virtually nothing was known.

“I don’t have an answer for you, Jax, but just because I don’t know the answer doesn’t mean that there isn’t one. For all I know, it could be that your history is really the one based on legend and myth.”

“Have it your way, Alex,” she said with a sigh. “If it’s too much for you right now, then let it be. Besides, that isn’t what matters at the moment. What matters now is that the Law of Nines indicates you are the one named in the prophecy from my world, where prophecy is magic and magic is real.”

He knew that she was right about at least some of it. He knew that what was going on now was real. His muscles ached from the shocks Bethany had given him with the Taser. He’d seen bodies vanish. He’d seen a man appear out of thin air.

He didn’t know the truth about the past or if he could ever believe the whole far-fetched notion, but he did know that something was going on now, and it most definitely involved him.

“All right, I’m listening,” he said. “What matters now?”

“We believe that Cain’s people have been coming to this world to find something that will help them tip the balance to their side once and for all. We don’t know what it is they’re after, but they’re expending a lot of resources on it, so we fear that if they find what they’re after, we’re finished.”

Alex lifted his hands in exasperation. “But if your people believe in prophecy and that I’m the one who can save your world, then why would they want me dead? I die, you all die.”

She regarded him with the kind of expression that made him a little uncomfortable. “Prophecy can mean something very different from what you think it does. What if you were to cooperate with Cain’s people? What if you were tortured into helping them? What if you helped them without realizing what you were doing? Any of those would result in the same end. You would be directly responsible for the deaths of millions.

“If any of those things turned out to be true, then the only way you could be our salvation would be if you died before you could help Radell Cain.

“The prophecy, you see, does not say that you must be alive to save our world. It could mean that you must die if our world is to be saved.”

Alex ran his fingers back into his hair and held his head. He wanted the whole nightmare to be over. He hated the deliberately vague nature of prophecy. Prophecy always tried to make any outcome look like a prediction or else it spoke of war, floods, and droughts because there would always be war, floods, and droughts. As far as Alex was concerned, prophecy, like magic, was childish nonsense that depended on the gullible.

“Why then,” he finally asked, “didn’t you kill me?”

“If I believed that version of the prophecy you would already be dead.”

“So you believe this prophecy, but the other way around?”

“We have a saying: ‘The House of Rahl is not ruled by prophecy; the House of Rahl reigns over prophecy.’

“The first time you saw me, you pulled me back to save me. It was a test. My test. You passed that test. Had I judged you to be the kind of man to help the enemy I would have killed you on the spot and have been gone before you hit the ground.”

“So, because I pulled you back from getting run over by pirate plumbers, you decided not to kill me?”

“In part. I subscribe to the Rahl view of prophecy, that it needs the balance of free will in order to exist. Free will in the House of Rahl meant that they did not abide by prophecy.”

That bit of common sense made him feel better. “So the Rahl line in your world didn’t believe in prophecy, either.”

She laid a hand on his forearm. “I came because of prophecy — not because I believe it, but because Cain does. I believe that you, Alexander Rahl, are the key to solving what’s going on. Radell Cain believes it as well.”

“If he needs me, then why hasn’t he acted? You said they’ve been coming to this world for some time. Why haven’t they done what they came to do? Why haven’t they snatched me?”

“I asked myself that same question,” she said. “What I finally decided is that he must not know enough about what he’s looking for. I’m sure that he knows in general, but I don’t think he knows nearly enough, yet, to act.”

“How could he be here looking for something and not know what he’s looking for?”

“Well, let’s say, for the sake of argument, that when the worlds were parted, besides sending people here, an important book was also sent here. Things like that have been done before to keep dangerous information out of the wrong hands.”

“You think he’s looking for a book?”

“I’m just using that as an example. How would he find it here? He couldn’t use magic here to help him — magic doesn’t work here, remember? Where would he look?”

“So for some reason he’d try to find it through a Rahl?”

“Do you know where to find such a book that came from my world and didn’t belong here? How would you know where it was, or even what it was? You couldn’t. Maybe he’s already killed members of your family trying to make them tell him and he found out that that didn’t work. So, what’s he to do, now?”

“I’d like to know the answer to that question,” Alex said.

“He knows that you’re involved in all this — that’s why he has been watching you through mirrors, tracking you with your phone. He’s trying to find answers. But since you’re his last lead, he has to be careful.”

For the first time since they had fled his house Alex felt a bit of optimism. “So if Cain needs me, then those men who tried to run us down when I first saw you must have been Bethany’s men.”

“No, they were Cain’s men.”

Alex lifted his hands in frustration. “That doesn’t make sense. If he needs something from me, if he’s been watching me, then why would he suddenly have his men try to run me down?”

“They weren’t trying to run you down. They were watching you. When they saw me, they recognized me. They were trying to run me down. You prevented them from doing so.”

Alex paused a moment. “You recognize them? You know them?”

“I know the big one, the one who was on the side closest to us. His name is Yuri. I killed his brother.”

Alex sighed. This was one determined woman.

“That was my first, brief visit here. I wasn’t able to stay long.

When I returned home we immediately began making preparations so I could come back again, but it takes time. It was while I was watching the gallery through the mirrors, looking for you, that those preparations were finally completed. That was when I saw Vendis. When I returned to this world you gave me that painting.

“You have no idea what it meant to me.”

“I think I do,” he said softly.

She smiled a little but shook her head. “When I saw that painting I knew that you are central to solving what is going on. So, I thought that if I told you some of the nature of the trouble, you might be motivated to help me. But. .”

“But I made you angry instead.”

Jax smiled as she nodded. “When I went back I told people how you so faithfully painted the Shineestay, the place I told you about. People understood, then.”

“Just because I painted a forest that looked similar?”

“No. Because I told them how you painted the exact place, down to the placement of every tree — except the one tree I mentioned that was missing from the scene.”

Alex remembered. He had painted over that particular tree because it didn’t fit the composition. He didn’t say so, though, as he listened to her go on with her story.

“You see, it’s said that long ago the Rahl leader at the time — the one who is said to have separated the worlds — believed that magic involved art, that the creation of new magic in some ways involved the application of artistic principles at the least and maybe even artistic ability.”

“Oh come on. Now you’re telling me that art is magic?”

“No, not at all, but Lord Rahl believed—”

“Who?”

“The man who was the leader at the time of the separation event was a Rahl, the last Rahl we know anything about before the House of Rahl vanished somewhere in history. Back then he was called simply ‘Lord Rahl.’ He fought and won much the same battle of survival that we find ourselves fighting now. The title of Lord Rahl has since come to represent the preservation of magic and individual liberty, to represent for us the very concept of freedom.

“We don’t know a great deal about the time back then, but it is known that Lord Rahl’s victory against all odds ushered in a period of peace and prosperity known as the Golden Age that lasted hundreds of years. This man was its architect. His victory over tyranny and the banishment of those who wanted to eliminate the gift made it all possible.

“For this reason the very concept of the Lord Rahl is hated by Radell Cain and his ilk.

“Anyway, Lord Rahl believed that new forms of magic are acts of creation that necessarily involve elements of artistic visualization. Art — good art — involves principles of balance, flow, placement, and composition, among other things. These elements must be in harmony, each element working with all the others, in order for art to have deep meaning to us, for it to truly touch our souls. So magic and art, he believed, were inescapably linked. When you painted a picture of my world, you were somehow tapping into that elemental concept that he used to bridge worlds, time, and space.”

“Does this mean that you’re not going to try to kill me?” he asked with a smile.

She returned a sleepy smile. “I’m here to protect you, Alex. I need your help if we’re to solve this. Other than finding you and trying to keep both of us alive, I don’t know what to do next. That part is up to you.”

Alex blinked in surprise. “Me? How should I know? These people came here from your world. I’m in the dark about the whole thing. Why would you expect me to know what to do?”

She stared at him as if it should be self-evident. “You’re Alexander Rahl.”

“Jax,” he said at last, looking away from her eyes as he considered how to put his thoughts into words, “I don’t know if you really have the right person.”

“The Law of Nines says you are the right person.”

“That’s not what I mean.” He lifted a hand in a weak gesture. “I think that maybe you’re putting too much faith in me. This Law of Nines business is just superstition. I fell into the prophecy by chance, that’s all. None of it says anything about me as an individual. I’m just a guy who paints pictures for a living. I don’t know about any of this. I don’t know how to fight people from another world.”

“You’ve done all right so far.”

He shrugged off the notion. “I was just trying to stay alive. That doesn’t mean you should put your faith in me. Even if people from the House of Rahl really did come here, exactly as you say, that was an awfully long time ago. I can’t live up to what they could do in your world.” He ran his fingers back through his hair in frustration. “I just don’t think you—”

“Alex, listen to me.” She waited until he looked at her. “There is a mirror in the room where you paint. When I was waiting for the preparations to be made for me to make a longer visit here, I sat for hours at a time watching you paint, wishing I could find a way to warn you through that mirror of all the forces homing in on you.”

Alex had remembered well her advice when he’d first met her that people could watch him through mirrors. He had been careful with mirrors even before that warning. And he had purposely placed that one in his studio, hoping he would be watched — hoping that Jax would see him through that mirror and decide to return. He had placed it there specifically for her.

“I learned a lot watching you through that mirror.”

He smiled a little. “A lot about how to paint, maybe.”

“No. A lot about you. When you watch a person for a long time you come to understand their dedication, their focus, their moods, their emotions — the way they think, or don’t bother to think. You come to learn what’s important to them.

“One day, as you turned to wipe your brush, I saw a picture catch your eye. It was the picture of your grandfather that you kept on the desk beside you. You laid down your brush and picked up that picture and sat staring at it for a time until tears ran down your face.”

“It’s human to grieve,” Alex said. “There’s nothing meaningful about that, nothing special.”

She nodded. “I know. It’s natural to grieve, to be sad, to pine for one lost, to have a broken heart. But as you wept, your other hand fisted. Your jaw clenched. Your face turned red with rage. You pounded your fist on the desk as you wept.”

Alex swallowed at the memory of the heat of that emotion. “What of it? I was angry.”

“You were angry at death for taking him. You were raging against death itself. You raged against death because life means that much to you. You’re the right man, Alexander Rahl. You’re the man I came here to find.”

Alex listened to the rain as he thought about her words.

“Then that bell rang,” she said. “I saw Bethany’s reflection in a window.

“In that instant I saw all that was about to be lost.

“We’re still struggling to learn to come here. It’s very difficult and takes us quite some time to craft a lifeline. Passing into the great void is daunting beyond imagining.”

Alex couldn’t picture such a thing. “In what way?”

Jax stared off into the memories for a moment. Flashes of lightning cast her face in an otherworldly bluish light.

“It’s like leaping off a cliff into eternal night. . falling without end. Every second you expect to hit the bottom. Your muscles and nerves ache in expectation of a sudden, bone-shattering impact. An eternity of fear is compressed into every one of those moments that you exist in a place without anything but that fear.

“At first you may feel like you have leaped into endless night, but a point comes when you realize that there is no up, no down, no hot, no cold, no light, no sensation of any kind, not even breathing, not even your own heart beating. You are without anything that makes you feel alive.

“In that moment comes panic.”

When lightning hit nearby, giving off a loud crack of thunder that shook the Jeep, Alex jumped. Jax didn’t. It was as if she was in another place beyond the reach of the real world.

“How long does it take?” Alex finally asked after she had been silent for a time. “How long must you endure such a thing?”

Her haunted eyes stared unblinking into memories. “You feel as if you have somehow plummeted into eternity. You feel alone beyond anything I could explain.

“There comes a time when you begin to believe that you’ve died. You can’t see anything, you can’t hear anything. You feel as if you must be dead.”

Jax seemed to force herself to abandon the memory, as if staying there any longer might cause the place to snatch her back. She took a purging breath and looked over at him.

“When I start for this world I have a reference point found with the aid of magic, so from here there is no way for me to find a reference point in my world, no way to know where to return to. That’s why I need a lifeline to pull me back through that eternal void to my world. Without a lifeline there is no way to return.

“When I went back the last time I took the painting you gave me, but I lost it in the void. I loved that painting and wanted more than anything to take it back with me for others to see. I held it as tightly as I could, but I lost it. I don’t remember where or how it was gone, it just was. That experience proved what we had thought — things can’t be brought back from this world to ours.

“I’m sorry, Alex, that I lost your beautiful gift.”

He offered her a smile of comfort. “I’ll paint you another.”

She nodded her thanks for his understanding.

“When I saw Bethany and her thugs at your door I knew that I didn’t have a moment to lose. I had to come immediately, even though I had no lifeline ready.

“I had to come because you are the right man, Alex.”

Alex listened to the rain drumming steadily against the roof of the Jeep and the distant rumble of thunder. He remembered the day in his studio that she had described. He had forgotten all about the mirror by then; he thought that he would never see her again. That hadn’t been the only day he had raged against death for taking Ben. If she had been watching him, she would know that, too.

Ben wouldn’t be dead were it not for these people coming to his world, coming for his family, coming for him.

If he didn’t stop them, who would? How many more would die?

Jax laid a hand on his arm. “Are you all right, Alex?”

He nodded. He wondered how she could be all right, knowing that she had no way to get home.

“We need to stop them,” he said with quiet resolve. “I don’t know if I’m the right man, but I’m the only Rahl you’ve got. If I can do anything to help, I will. If we can figure this out and stop them, then maybe other people won’t needlessly lose their loved ones.”

“Thank you, Alex,” she whispered. She again gently rested her hand on his arm, as if to say she understood all that his words conveyed, and was sorry to have to ask so much of him.

He knew that, for her, there was no turning back. There wasn’t any turning back for him, either. No matter what happened, they were now committed.

Her face brightened with a small smile. “So, any ideas?”

“Well,” he said, “Bethany knew something about what these other people were after. She wanted to bear my successor. That could only gain one thing: the inheritance that came to be mine when I turned twenty-seven. I think we need to find out about this land that I’m inheriting.”

“I suppose that it makes sense for us to look into it. But I can’t see how it would have anything to do with what they’re after. What do they need with land?”

“I don’t know, but Bethany sure seemed intent on having it.”

“Not necessarily. It makes more sense to me that what she was really after was your child, a Rahl child.”

“What good would a Rahl child do her?”

“A Rahl in my world would be currency of immense value. A Rahl heir would have made her far more important than she otherwise was.”

“You think she intended to get pregnant and return to your world? You just said that you can’t take anything back.”

“But if she got pregnant, the child would have been hers as well. It would have been a part of her. That, I’d be willing to bet, she could have taken back through the void to my world.”

“I was sure it had to be something to do with the land,” Alex muttered.

“It may be,” Jax said. “I’m only saying there are other important reasons she would have wanted you to get her pregnant. I can see why she would want a Rahl child, but I can’t imagine what she would want with land. She has land — a lot of it.”

“So you’re convinced it’s not the land they’re after?”

Jax shrugged. “I’m only pointing out that there are other reasons people from my world might be interested in you.”

Alex let out a sigh. “Well, as far as I know my mother is the only other living Rahl. I’ve heard her say that people always want to know things from her.

“The land is far away, but my mother is close. Before we consider the land angle I think we should go ask my mother what these people want to know from her. I’m not sure if she’ll be able to talk, but we can try.”

“You said she was crazy.”

“Maybe she isn’t as crazy as I thought. Maybe they’ve driven her crazy. Anyway, it’s a place to start.”

Jax watched his eyes for a moment. “That makes sense. Tomorrow, then, we go see your mother.” She lay back and yawned. “You were right, we’d better get some sleep.”

Alex nodded as he yawned in turn. He watched as she rearranged her duffel-bag pillow. Her eyes closed.

“Jax, you’re someone important where you come from, aren’t you?”

“I’m just a woman, Alex. A woman who has no powers here. A woman who is afraid that she will never see her home again. A woman who is afraid for the lives of those she loves.”

“Those you love. Like a man you love?”

“No,” she whispered, her eyes still closed. “Not that kind of love. I have no one like that.”

He watched her breathing slow for a time. She looked bone-tired. Traveling from a distant world through that void had sounded like more than merely an exhausting experience.

“Jax,” he asked softly, “are you like a queen or something?”

She smiled sadly without opening her eyes, “In my world, queens once bowed to those like me, but not anymore. Now they bow to Cain.” Her voice seemed halfway into the world of sleep. “Now I’m just a frightened, desperate woman a long way from home. A woman who often fears she is foolish to think she can win against these people.”

He watched her for a time. “I don’t think you’re foolish in the least,” he whispered as he tucked the jacket around her, “I think you’re the bravest person I’ve ever met.”

She was already asleep and didn’t hear him.

25

THAT’ S FINE,” MR. FENTON SAID. “I shouldn’t have any trouble having the final title documents ready for you in a few days.” “Thank you,” Alex said into the phone. “That should work out. I’m not sure of my travel plans yet, but I imagine that it will take me at least a few days to get there.”

“I’ll give you a call, Mr. Rahl, and let you know when the documents are ready.”

“Uh, no. . don’t bother,” Alex said, his mind racing for an excuse. “I’m having trouble receiving calls on my phone. There’s something wrong with it. When I get time I’m going to have to see about getting it fixed or replaced. I’ll let you know when I do. In the meantime I’d hate to miss your calls and I wouldn’t be aware that you were trying to reach me. Tell you what, I’ll call you in a few days and let you know when I’ll be in Boston.”

“I look forward to seeing you. Thank you for calling. Oh, and the people at the Daggett Trust were quite pleased with your decision and are eager to meet you.”

Alex wondered why.

“All right, then, I’ll call you as soon as I know something about my travel plans.”

“Thank you, Mr. Rahl. I’ll talk to you soon.”

Alex flipped the phone closed and then dropped it in his large cup of water. Bubbles rose from the phone as Alex carefully folded over the top of the paper cup several times to seal it. He placed the cup upright in a trash container so that the water wouldn’t spill out, at least for a time.

He clearly remembered Jax saying that people on the other side had been using his phone to track him. He didn’t have any sure way to know if the same people had somehow locked on to his new phone or not. For all he knew, placing a call to the lawyer’s office could somehow enable Cain’s people to find him through the phone.

Possible or not, he wasn’t going to take any chances. It was a cheap generic phone. He would buy another. The number would be different, but he’d told the lawyer not to try to call him. There was no one else he needed to talk to, at least not enough to risk his life.

His new gallery might want to get in touch with him, especially if they sold one of his paintings, but in light of all that had happened that wasn’t important for the time being. He had new concerns. He had a new life, it seemed. He wondered how short that life might be.

Alex glanced down the hall, toward the restrooms. He had already finished washing up. Jax was still in the ladies’ room. An outlet mall was not the best place to clean up, but it was better than nothing.

They’d already had a breakfast of sausage and egg sandwiches in the food court. Jax had devoured three.

Remembering that she hadn’t been able to open the door of the Jeep on her own, he had carefully explained the faucets and toilets to her, just in case she didn’t know how to use them. She’d listened with interest, like a student paying attention to a lecture in a course she needed to pass.

The morning had dawned with bright blue skies, but it was windy, a remnant of the violent storms that had passed through the night before. At least the rain had moved on. Seeing the bright blue skies as they had emerged from the cargo area of the Cherokee had made the night before — the lightning and thunder, the desperate fights, the killing, the blood — seem like a distant nightmare.

The next time he glanced down the hall, he saw Jax coming. She smiled when she saw him. It was a smile that sparkled in her warm brown eyes and lifted his heart. After the night before they both knew that they only had each other to depend on. They had a bond of purpose.

Surprisingly enough, she looked for the most part to be back to her normal self. He didn’t know how she had accomplished such a feat after how soaked they had been, and after sleeping in the cramped quarters of the Jeep, but she had. He smiled to himself when the thought crossed his mind that it seemed like she had to have used magic to restore her lush fall of blond hair to full glory.

The only problem with the way Jax looked was that she looked too good. In Regent Center she fit in. In an outlet mall near the casinos, where fancy dress was too-short skirts or muffin-top jeans, a tank top, and flip-flops, she stood out.

With most of the men in the mall looking her over from top to bottom, he didn’t know how to tell if Jax was being watched by someone from another world or not. Alex was eager to get her something else to wear so that she wouldn’t draw quite so much attention.

“You look very nice,” he said as she joined him.

“Yes, I know what you mean. Let’s get me some other clothes so that I don’t look so very nice.”

Alex wondered if such a thing was even possible. He was sure, though, that different clothes would at least draw less attention. Jax was apparently well aware of how different her attire looked from that of other people in the mall. Being a target as she was, she had to worry about standing out.

“Did you have any trouble using the faucets or anything?”

“No, but a thin girl in the washing room was a little too curious about me.”

“Why? What did she say?”

“She said, ‘So, like, are you a supermodel or something?’ ” Jax quoted, mimicking the adolescent voice. “I wasn’t entirely sure what she meant, but I think I got the idea. When I told her no, she said, ‘So, like, what do you do, then? Like, for a living.’ ”

Alex smiled at the story, and the predicament Jax had found herself in.

“What did you tell her?”

“I told her that I killed people for a living.”

Alex lost a step. “You told her what?”

“That I kill people. I’m not familiar enough with your world to come up with a credible lie, so I told her the truth.” Jax flicked her hand, dismissing the alarm on his face. “People usually don’t believe the truth. They’d rather hear a good lie.”

“What did the girl say when you told her that you kill people?”

“She said, ‘Like for real? That’s so cool.’ ”

“Good. I thought for a moment you might have scared her.”

“No, she seemed rather preoccupied with death. Her fingernails and lips were painted black. What’s the purpose of trying to resemble a corpse?”

“I think it’s a phase some girls go through,” Alex said. “Didn’t you ever, I don’t know. . rebel against adults when you were young? Want to be different?”

Jax frowned up at him. “No. Why would I do such a thing?”

Alex sighed. “I guess you really are from another world. What did you do, then, when you were her age?”

“I studied and practiced.”

Alex frowned over at her as they walked among the scattering of people all looking at them on the way by. “What did you study and practice?”

A little smile curved one side of her mouth. “How to kill people.”

He watched her for a moment. “Is that one of those truth tricks of yours, or a lie you think I might believe?”

“Both,” she said.

“What does that mean?”

She smiled to herself. “I studied languages. I speak a lot of the languages in my world. Feel better?”

He decided not to press her and changed the subject. “Considering that other people are likely to ask questions, too, and we might find ourselves questioned when we’re not together, I think we’d better come up with a believable story, something we can use if need be.”

“Don’t tell me,” she said, fanning her face as if feeling faint, “we’re madly in love, I am betrothed to you, and we’re to be married.”

Alex winced a little. “Well, as a matter of fact, that is what I came up with — the engaged part. I thought it would be a useful story. I mean, if I’m to take you into the hospital where my mother is locked up I should have some kind of plausible story. They don’t let just anyone in. You need to be someone close, like a relative, a spouse, something like that.”

“Why is your face red?”

“Look, I just figured that if we said that you were my fiancée it would satisfy people and avoid a problem. I didn’t realize that you’d object.”

“Relax,” she said with a smile. “I thought of that same story myself.”

“Oh. You did?”

“Of course. What else could we say to people where your mother is held? That I’m a woman who dropped in from another world and I would like to speak with the crazy lady?”

“Is my face really red?”

She glanced up at him. “A little.”

“So, you’re my fiancée? You’re all right with that story?”

She arched an eyebrow at him. “Unless you’re planning on us going through with the marriage.”

He slowed and gestured to a window filled with female mannequins dressed in casual clothes, glad to have a change of subject. “We should be able to get you something in here.”

He held the big glass door open for her. She looked back over her shoulder. “Your face is still red, Alex.”

“Well, actually,” he said, “I was thinking that maybe it would be best if we did actually go through with it and get married. If it was legal it would solve a lot of problems. When we get to the lawyer’s office, already being married would help the transfer of the title to the land go smoothly. . ”

He was pleased to see her freeze and stare at him. “Just kidding,” he said. “Your face is red.”

She shook her head to herself. “I imagine it is.”

Round racks with pants, tops, and skirts crowded the floor of the store. Alex directed Jax toward a rack with jeans. As they made their way through the islands of clothes, he leaned close.

“Jax, is there any way to tell if someone is from your world? A way to tell if they’re a different kind of human?”

“No. They’re the same as you, except that in my world they have magic. Here they don’t. I only know they’re from my world if I recognize them.”

“Or if they try to kill you.”

“Well, in my world we would call that a clue.”

“My world too,” he said, disconcerted to realize that there was no way to tell friend from foe.

When they reached the rack with the jeans he found the size-8 section and pulled out a pair.

“This looks like it might fit you,” he said.

Jax glanced around at the circular racks stuffed with clothes. “To think, there are so many things already made that you have a good chance to happen across some that will fit.”

“They’re sized,” he said. “They come in standard sizes.”

She shook her head in wonder as she took the jeans from him. Her brows drew together. “These are worn out. Are they a donation for the poor? Is that what this place is?”

Alex laughed softly. “No, no, they’re new. They’re made to look used. Believe me, they’re not for the poor.”

Jax appraised him suspiciously.

“It’s the fashion,” he assured her.

She looked like she suspected that he might be putting her on again. “The fashion is to look destitute, with holes in your clothes? Why would anyone choose to look that way?”

“I don’t know.” He scratched his temple. “I guess the fashion is to look as if you’re wearing comfortable old clothes. It’s meant to look casual.”

“Like making yourself look like a freshly dead corpse?” She sighed as she laid the jeans over the rack. The saleswomen were all acutely interested in Jax. In such a shop her graceful black dress and blond hair made her look like a queen visiting a dump.

“Please, Alex, can we get clothes that don’t have holes in them? I want to fit in, but. .”

“Sure.” He pulled out another pair that he thought might be more to her liking. “These aren’t even as expensive as the ones with the holes already worn in them.”

“Now you’re joking at my expense.”

“I’m telling you the truth, the ones with holes cost more. Would you like me to tell you a lie that you’d rather believe?”

When she still looked skeptical he pulled out another pair and showed her the price tags.

She took the jeans from him. “I like these better.”

“You won’t be as fashionable.”

“Will I fit in?”

“Yes.”

“Then may I have these instead? Please?”

Alex smiled. “Of course you can. We’ll get you whatever you feel comfortable wearing. You pick.” He gestured with his chin. “Over there is a fitting room where you can try them on to see if they fit and how they look.”

“I can try anything I want?”

“Sure.”

She looked relieved and started searching through the rack herself. With a critical eye she appraised the different styles and picked out several pair that didn’t have holes and cuts already put in them for the convenience of the busy, fashion-conscious woman. As she searched, she handed him jeans to hold.

Along the way to the fitting room they stopped at several more racks with slacks and several with tops. She wasn’t interested in skirts; she thought they would show too much of her legs and draw attention. From what Alex had seen of her long, muscular legs, he had to agree. In the end, though, she changed her mind and decided to try one.

She was picking up the knack for shopping pretty quickly. Alex didn’t think that the saleswomen would find anything at all odd about the way she shopped. They would think that she was a woman who knew exactly what she wanted.

As Jax went in to try on her armload of clothes, Alex found a chair and casually pulled it out to the side so that he could have a view of the fitting-room door and also the entrance to the shop. He wanted a clear view if anyone unwelcome came in.

He hoped that no one like that showed up. Firing his gun at night in the middle of a thunder-and-lightning storm was one thing; having to fire the weapon in the middle of a shopping mall was quite another. If the bad guys didn’t get him, the good guys were sure to.

Jax soon emerged from the fitting room wearing a pair of low-rise jeans and a black top. “How does this look?”

“Hot.”

She frowned. “Not really. I think I would need my cape over this to keep me warm if it gets at all chilly.”

“No, I mean it looks hot — attractive, beautiful. Hot.”

She got the picture. “Well, I’m glad you think I look hot, but is it good enough to serve the purpose of fitting in?”

“Yes. It’s perfect. Try on some more. You’ll need a few outfits. Try on the black pants, the ones that look tailored.”

When she came out in a simple white blouse and the black pants, he nodded. “Good. That’s the right look.”

The lawyer said that the transfer of title would be ready in a couple of days, but Alex would have to sign the papers in person. As meticulous as the lawyer sounded, Alex didn’t want Jax to raise eyebrows. He was hoping the lawyer might be able to give them some information, or at least a clue, that could help them. If they were to put a man of such orderly nature at ease, Alex thought, he and Jax needed to appear respectable.

They picked out a few more outfits, mostly jeans, that would look normal in most situations and be good for traveling. After they paid for the clothes they sat at a table in the food court so he could cut off the tags. He used his pocketknife for the task, warning Jax not to pull her knife out in public. After he was finished with a pair of jeans and the black top that she liked, she went to the bathroom to change while Alex removed the rest of the tags and labels.

He noticed that when she came out she still attracted attention, but it was a little different. It was admiring glances rather than frowning curiosity.

She came to a halt before him as he picked up the bags with their purchases. She handed him a bag with her black dress. He felt a little guilty about asking her to wear clothes she wasn’t accustomed to.

“Well, what do you think?” he asked.

She gave him a crooked smile. “I think I look hot.”

Alex heaved a sigh of relief, glad that she was taking it well. “You’ll get no argument from me. Better yet, you look like you belong in this world. Hopefully, Cain’s people won’t recognize you now.”

“That may be too much to hope.” She took his arm as they started back to the truck. “Thank you, Alex, for helping me fit in better here. It will make it easier to find answers.”

On the way through the mall back toward the parking lot, Jax abruptly pulled him to a halt. He looked over to see her staring into a store window.

The shop was called Pandora’s Treasure Box. The place sold an extensive variety of figurines and such. They had a lot of wizards and dragons from what Alex could see.

Jax shot him a meaningful look. “What is this?”

Alex shrugged. “Some people are interested in that kind of thing.”

Without further word, she marched in the door of the shop.

26

PANDORA’S TREASURE BOX SPECIALIZED in items that, for the most part, looked to be related to some aspect of magic. They had everything from board games with flying creatures, to amulets, to fairies, to gnomes, to dragons of every sort, to wizards and witches, to crystals, to intricate handmade magic wands that cost hundreds of dollars. Glass shelves in the center of the shop held more elaborate collectible figurines. Books on the shelves against the far wall had titles about spells, wizards, and magic.

Alex had seen places like Pandora’s Treasure Box before. As a boy he had visited such shops a time or two. He’d outgrown them in his early teens.

A smiling, overweight woman in a baggy maroon sweatshirt came out from behind the counter. A small dragon comb adorned her short, curly brown hair. Reading glasses hung around her neck on a chain festooned with delicate winged fairies. She looked to be in her fifties.

“I’m Mary, welcome to Pandora’s Treasures. May I help you two find anything special?” she asked in a warm, friendly voice.

“We’re just looking,” Alex said before Jax could say anything. It didn’t help.

“Why do you have these things?”

The woman’s face creased with a perplexed smile as she glanced around. “They’re treasures. People love to collect them. There’s nothing like a wizard sitting on your desk to brighten your day.”

“Depends on the wizard,” Jax said.

The woman chuckled. “You’re right, my dear. Some of them can be quite mischievous.”

“What makes you think so?”

Mary held a hand out to a display in the center of the shop. “Well, just look at them. We have all sorts. Some wizards are very serious, but there are some — like this fellow here — who love a bit of mischief.” The wizard was levitating a dog.

The woman was right about the variety. There were jolly-looking wizards in peaked hats, wizards with long pointed beards pondering books or crystal balls, and wizards in black robes with glowering, hooded eyes that looked like they really could cast spells. Some were plain pewter while others had been painted in elaborate detail.

Alex thought they had better things to do and wanted to leave.

The woman gazed lovingly at her display. “These figures are reminders to people that magic is in the world all around us.”

“No, it’s not,” Jax said.

She did not look at all pleased. Alex was beginning to worry.

“Why, of course it is,” the woman said with a jovial chuckle. “We may not be able to see it, but magic is very real. You just have to be attuned to it.” She heaved a sigh. “It would be a sad world if we didn’t have magic.”

“Yes,” Alex said before Jax could say anything, “I can see why people would want to collect these, but magic isn’t real.”

Mary winked at him. “Oh, don’t let the magic go out of your life. That would be a sad thing, wouldn’t it, to become so cynical? We all have the capacity to tune in to magic if only we pay attention. We have but to open ourselves to it.”

She lifted a delicate chain off a stand. “We have these crystals on necklaces you might like for your lovely lady. They would be beautiful on her, don’t you think? People say that the crystals help them feel the waves of magic emanating up all around us.”

Jax wasn’t listening. “These things are dead wrong,” she said to herself under her breath. Mary, showing Alex the necklace, didn’t seem to notice.

Jax leaned in a little to peer intently at the items displayed on the second shelf down. A card read “exclusive pieces.” When the woman saw Jax’s area of interest, she put the necklace back and turned her attention to the center display.

Jax carefully pulled a figure out from the back.

The woman looked pleased at the selection. “Ah, you have good taste.”

Jax lifted the figure, an acrylic casting of a nicely sculpted woman with long flowing hair and a simple white dress cut square at the neck.

“Woman of mystery,” Mary said softly.

Jax looked up. “What?”

“They call her the Woman of Mystery.”

“Is that right?” Alex put in, trying his best to sound cheery. He wanted out of the shop. He could see how quietly upset Jax was getting. “Well, we—”

“She’s an ancient figure.” The woman leaned a little closer. “I’ve owned this shop for twenty-seven years and I rarely come across examples of this particular personage.”

“Twenty-seven years,” Alex said. “Isn’t that something.” He saw Jax cast him a sidelong glance.

“Yes, that’s right. In that time I’ve seen the Woman of Mystery offered for sale in a few different forms. Always fine pieces, though, like this one. I like to keep one in the shop. That distinctive dress is a hallmark of the Woman of Mystery. It’s how you can identify her.”

“Really,” Alex said, paying more attention to Jax.

“Yes.” Mary sighed. “Not a lot of people seem to be interested in collecting her. I usually end up having each figure for quite some time before they sell, but I still can’t resist always getting another so that I always have one in stock.”

“Why don’t people usually collect this piece?” he asked.

“Maybe because so little is known about her. I know a great deal about all of my better pieces, but even I am not sure of her powers.”

“Her powers?” Jax asked, looking up sharply.

“Yes,” Mary said. “It’s not known if she’s a sorceress, a white witch, or some other figure of mysterious magic. For that reason she’s always called the Woman of Mystery. I know her when I see her — I recognize her by that dress and her long hair. I’ve never seen her called by any other name, except by people who don’t know her.”

“What do you mean, ‘know her’? ” Jax asked, heat evident in her tone. “How could anyone possibly know her?”

The woman reverently lifted the small statue from Jax’s hands.

“The figure was originally found in a few very old books. Very old — and they were from different places. Though she looked somewhat different in each of the books, the plates in those books always depicted her in this dress.” Mary ran a finger along the neckline of the dress. “Always white, always cut square at the neck. That’s how I know her as the Woman of Mystery when I see her. She’s very special.”

“Why?” Alex asked, caught up in the story.

The woman’s smile broadened at having interested customers. “Well, she’s mysterious. No one knows her origin or who she is.

And, like I said, no one knows her powers. But she has them, that much is sure.”

“How do you know that she’s even supposed to have powers?” Alex asked. “Maybe those pictures were of a queen, or a famous woman from the time — a saint, a patron of the arts, something like that.”

“Alex,” Jax whispered, “can we go, please?”

Mary was talking and didn’t hear Jax. “What little is known from those ancient books is sketchy, however they do say that she had great power, though they never say what those powers were. Some translations hold her in reverence, while others indicate that she was greatly feared.” Mary sighed. “She’s a woman of mystery.” Her smile turned sly. “But she has magic.”

“I don’t see how you can say that,” Alex said.

The woman peered into his eyes for a time. “I know, because people are afraid of her. I have customers who collect figures of every sort — even some of the most frightening wizards. Not a lot of those people, though, will have her in their collection.”

“Superstitious nonsense,” Alex said. “If they don’t know anything about her, why would they be afraid?”

The woman shrugged. “I don’t know. To tell you the truth, she’s my favorite.” She gazed proudly down at the statue as she turned it in her hands. “For as long as I’ve owned the shop, the Woman of Mystery has always been my favorite.”

She at last remembered herself and lifted the statue out to them. “Are you interested in having a Woman of Mystery in your life?”

Jax, looking a little ashen, deliberately turned away.

Alex already had a woman of mystery in his life, but he didn’t say so. “Possibly another time.”

The woman smiled sadly. “I understand. A lot of people are afraid of her.”

“I’m not afraid,” Alex said, defensively.

“Good.” The shop owner set the figure back on the shelf, where a little spotlight shone on it. “The Woman of Mystery needs friends in this world today.”

“Alex, I want to go,” Jax whispered again, more insistently this time.

Alex put a hand on her back, reassuring her, letting her know that he’d heard her.

“Well, thanks for your time, but we have to be on our way.”

Alex had to hurry to catch up with Jax.

“What’s wrong?” he asked as he leaned toward her. She didn’t answer as she marched on through the halls.

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Jax, what’s the matter? Are you all right?”

“No, I’m not all right. That was an awful place.”

“What do you mean it was awful?”

“They have everything all wrong, yet in some of it I can see the specter of its origin.”

“All right, but why are you letting that get you so upset?”

“Because they have the trappings but not the humanity behind it all. It’s a fixation on the wrong things. Those things don’t care about the life behind the magic. They have a wizard waving a stupid wand to lift a dog, while the real man, the real wizard, would touch someone who is suffering and lift a burden from their heart. Instead, they show people like game trophies on display.”

“But they mean no harm, Jax. They’re just knickknacks.”

“It’s more than that.”

“Like what?”

She halted abruptly and turned to gaze up at him as if pleading not merely for understanding, but for her very life.

“Don’t you get it, Alex? Don’t you see what was lost? Can you begin to imagine the wonder of what it must have been? People here can’t remember it, yet they can’t forget it. After all this time this whole world still longs for it, still mourns what they lost. It was such a remarkable, magnificent, glorious part of life that they ache to have it back, even though they don’t remember what it was.”

“But that’s past. If it really was lost, as you say, what difference does it make now? We are who we are.”

She tapped a finger against her chest. “The difference it makes is that it’s going to be my world, too. That’s going to happen to us. We’re going to lose it all, just as the people here lost it all. The wonder this world misses we have, but we’re going to lose it just so a few people can seize power for themselves. Everything we have is going to be taken from us. It’s all going to be destroyed at the cost of millions of lives just so a few people can grab power.”

It was heartbreaking to hear the anguish in her voice and to see the torment in her eyes.

Alex put a hand on the side of her neck and with a thumb wiped away a tear as it ran down her cheek.

When another tear followed, and then another, he leaned back against the inside corner of a projecting wall of a shoe store and pulled Jax into his sheltering arms.

Once in his protective embrace she dissolved into tears. He tightened his arms around her as she wept softly.

Alex glanced down the hall at the shoppers going about their day. Most didn’t notice Jax and Alex. Those who did thought that they were simply a couple hugging in a nook — not all that uncommon in a mall. The passersby were polite enough not to stare.

“Jax, listen to me,” he said in a quiet but firm tone. “The people you’re fighting are coming here because they need something. We’re not going to let them get what they need. We’ll stop them, then the people in your world will have a chance.”

“You don’t know these people, Alex,” she said as she wept. “I couldn’t begin to describe their brutality. If we don’t find out what they’re after, then the people in my world will lose everything. I’m only one person with no power here.”

He ran a hand down the back of her head. “Jax, we’ll stop them. That’s why you came here. That’s why you found me. We’ll stop them. I’m not going to give up or let you face it alone. I’ll help you. We’ll stop them.”

“But I feel so alone, so homesick. . And I can’t ever get home.”

“I know,” he whispered as he held her.

Her fingers finally tightened on his jacket, gathering it into her fists. “I’m sorry,” she said through tears, “forgive me.”

“You don’t have anything to be sorry for.”

“Yes, I do. So many people are counting on me. So many people need me to be strong. Sometimes, though, I’m afraid that I’m not strong enough for them. I’m terrified that I’ll fail them.”

Alex smiled despite how much it hurt his heart to see her miserable. “Jax, if I had to pick one word to describe you, it would never be ‘weak.’ ” He rubbed her back as she quieted a little. “We’ll figure it out. We’ll stop them. Whatever they came here to do, we’ll stop them. I promise.”

She nodded against his chest, content to be there for the moment, content to be in the shelter of his arms, relieved for the moment not to have to face a world that was alien to her.

Something about the way she clung to him told him that she wasn’t used to ever getting that kind of protective comfort, of ever having the shoulder of a friend, or anyone who would simply put an arm around her.

Something told him that she also wasn’t used to ever showing weakness of any sort. He couldn’t imagine the strength it took to be in an alien world, to know that you couldn’t get home, and be able to remain as composed as she usually was. Alex didn’t know how long he would be able to maintain his cool under that kind of stress.

“Thank you, Alex, for being strong, for reminding me to be strong.”

“That’s what friends are for — to be strong for you when you need a moment to find your own strength.”

“I guess I never had a real friend before.”

“You haven’t?” When she shook her head against him, he said, “Well, you have one now. Sometimes, one is all you really need.”

“Tell you what,” he said after a time. “How about if I take you to meet your future mother-in-law.”

That made her laugh. It was a good sound, as beautiful as everything else about her.

“All right,” she said, sniffling. “Let’s go meet Mom.”

27

IT WAS EARLY AFTERNOON when they arrived at Mother of Roses in the older section of Orden. As was his custom, Alex found a parking place on a hill and at the end of a block so that if he had to he could let the car roll to get it started. The spot was only a few blocks from the hospital.

He cocked the wheels against the curb, set the brake, and then turned to Jax. “We can’t take weapons into this place.”

“They won’t see my knife.”

“They don’t have to see it. They have technology that detects metal. The machine will set off an alarm if we have any weapons on us.”

Jax sighed. “We have ways of detecting weapons, too.”

“I have to leave my gun here. You have to leave your knife.”

“Knives,” she said.

“How many do you have on you?”

“Three.”

“Well, you have to leave them all here.”

She didn’t appear to like the idea one bit. “Without my knives I can’t defend us as well.”

“I understand, but we have to go through the detector in order to be allowed in to see my mother. If we set off an alarm they won’t let us go in, period. Worse, if they find the kind of knife on you that I saw the last time, then we’re going to have problems we don’t need.”

When she hesitated he asked, “Do you want to wait here? I can go alone and see if my mother can tell me anything. You could wait here until I—”

“No,” she said emphatically. “Your grandfather’s place is gone, you don’t go to that gallery anymore, and you’ve left your house. Not being able to find you at places they know — the patterns of your life abruptly changing — may spook them into changing their plans. You come here regularly. They could be watching the place to find out where you are. I have to be there to protect you.”

“All right, but since we have to go unarmed let’s try to make it as quick as possible. If my mother is out of it, then there’s no need to stay anyway; she won’t answer anything when she’s in that state.

“I’m hoping, though, that if she sees you with me that might draw her out. I’m hoping that you might have a positive influence.”

Jax frowned. “Why would that make any difference?”

“She’s my mother. You’re going to marry her baby boy. She’ll want to wring your neck.”

Jax smiled as she hooked a stray lock of wavy blond hair behind an ear. “Maybe you’re right that a new face will get her attention. Maybe I can help get her to talk.”

“I sure hope so, since we’re pretty much in the dark and we need some kind of answers. I really don’t want to have to come back every day until she’s aware enough to talk to me. Sometimes that can take months.”

“We don’t have months. With the things that have been happening, I’m not even sure that we have days.”

Alex let out a sigh. “Let’s hope she can tell us something, then.”

He wrapped his gun, safely in its holster, in one of the old T-shirts he kept in the truck. He used them as rags for cleaning brushes when he went on painting excursions to the countryside. He reached down and stuffed the bundle under the driver’s seat where it would at least be out of sight.

He had also stashed nearly all of his money farther back under the seat. He didn’t like walking around with large quantities of cash, so he had placed it beneath the carpet in a depression in the floor.

When he looked up, Jax handed him three knives. He wondered where she’d been keeping them.

Two of the knives, with leather-wrapped handles, were in simple but well-made brown leather sheaths. The third sheath was a fine-grained black leather, trimmed in silver that matched the knife’s silver handle. Elaborate, beautifully engraved scrollwork decorated the silver handle. Not wanting to take the time to admire it, Alex hurriedly rolled the three knives up together in another old T-shirt from the bag on the floor behind him and stuffed the bundle under the passenger seat.

“What about your pocketknife?” she asked.

“It’s more of a common tool. It doesn’t look scary like those knives you carry — especially that silver one. They don’t want anything that could be used as a weapon going into the hospital, so I have to give them my pocketknife and keys for safekeeping when I visit.

“I’ve been coming to visit my mother for years. I know most everyone who works here. This isn’t a place like when we went shopping for clothes where there were strangers coming and going all the time. I know most everyone here.”

Jax looked at him out of the corner of her eye. “That’s all the more reason to be careful.”

“You said that Cain’s people don’t know enough yet and they’re just watching me.”

“These people are killers, Alex. I’m only making guesses about what they’re doing and what they may be thinking. We can’t count on that assumption. I could have it all wrong.”

“All right, I get it. We still have to worry about getting our necks broken.”

“We should be so lucky if they catch us.”

Alex cast her a suspicious look. “What do you mean?”

“They only break people’s necks when they don’t have the luxury of time and the person isn’t important enough to warrant closer attention.”

“What do they do if they have time?”

“Any number of things,” she said. “They’re pretty inventive.”

Alex wondered why she was being evasive. “What do you mean?”

Jax looked away, staring out the window for a time. She finally turned a serious look on him.

“One of the things Sedrick Vendis likes to do to get people to talk is to hang them up by their wrists, stretched up high enough so that they can just barely touch the ground with their tiptoes. Suspended by your wrists like that, you have to stretch on your toes to take some of the weight off your arms in order to breathe. It’s an agonizing effort to pull air into your lungs. After a short while, if you don’t use your toes for support, it’s impossible to breathe.

“I’m told that it feels rather like you’re drowning. You struggle for every breath as you slowly suffocate. It takes all your strength and effort to help keep enough weight off your arms so that you can get each breath. As you become exhausted, panic sets in, heightening the terror of it.

“After a night like that, alone, unable to sleep, having great difficulty breathing, exhausted from the effort of taking enough weight off their arms so they can get each breath, people are only too eager to tell everything they know, eager to believe that if they cooperate they will be let down.

“Talking, though, doesn’t do them any good. Once the person has confessed all they know, they are of no further use. Strips of skin are peeled down their back and left hanging to attract animals. Birds, ravens especially, will clean the meat right off the exposed ribs. Maggots start growing in the exposed flesh while the person is still alive.

“Dehydration, shock, blood loss — it’s not a pretty way to die, nor is it fast. Unless, of course, they grant you mercy and break your legs so that you can’t support your weight. Then you suffocate and death comes quickly.”

Alex didn’t know what he had been expecting, but it was nothing like this. He couldn’t have imagined such a thing.

He had to remind himself to breathe. “I can’t imagine anyone being that inhuman, that barbaric.”

“Then I won’t tax your imagination by telling you the things they do that are worse.” Her brown eyes turned to focus on him. “You think about that before you let yourself get caught.”

Alex hadn’t been thinking about not getting caught. He’d been thinking only about not letting them catch her. That was the thought that truly terrified him.

He finally took a full breath. “Jax, I’m sorry. . I shouldn’t have asked such a question.”

He wiped a hand back across his face. He felt hot and a little sick to his stomach.

“I didn’t mean to sound angry at you for asking,” she said. “I’m angry at the people who do these things. You were right to ask — after all, it’s you they’re interested in. You need to know what these people are really like. You need to understand the consequences of hesitation.”

Alex clenched his jaw as his revulsion began to melt into smoldering rage.

Her expression softened into regret. “I’m sorry I have to bring such things into your life, Alex. I’m sorry that I—”

“You didn’t bring them into my life,” he said as he held up a hand to stop her. “The truth is the truth. Only a real friend would warn me about the kind of people who are after me.”

She smiled sympathetically, relieved that he understood.

“Now,” he said, “let’s get in there and see if we can find out what these bastards want from my world.”

28

WITH A CASUAL BUT CAREFUL LOOK, Jax scanned the entire area before opening her door. He saw her appraise the same older couple walking up from behind them that he’d noticed in the rearview mirror. Jax returned a smile when the couple smiled as they passed by. He noted that she trusted no one, not even an old couple shuffling along the sidewalk.

He wondered how she could summon a smile. He couldn’t.

Alex tossed his jacket in the back seat and then locked the Cherokee. He checked the back hatch to make sure that it was locked as well. He didn’t like leaving a gun in the truck that a thief could discover and steal, but he had no choice. Even though he was licensed to carry a concealed weapon, they still couldn’t be taken into a mental institution.

He wondered what he was going to do if they ended up having to leave the state. While he was licensed to carry in Nebraska, that license wasn’t valid in other places, especially Boston, where the law took a dim view of people protecting themselves.

Alex had a very clear-cut belief about his fundamental right to his own life. He didn’t think that he should have to die just because a criminal wanted to take his life. He had only one life and he believed that he had the right to defend it, simple as that. Ben had taught him how.

In light of the kind of people they were up against, the kind of animals Jax had just told him about, he knew that he would rather risk facing a gun charge than be without a means of protecting himself, and more than that, protecting Jax. He wasn’t willing to die because of the dogmatic principles of imperious public officials. It was his life, not theirs.

From bits and pieces Jax had revealed, he knew that Cain would love nothing more than to have her in his clutches. Alex knew that if they ever got their hands on her they would do those things that she’d said he couldn’t even imagine. Whatever those things were, he didn’t want to know. He was already angry enough.

The limbs of the maple and oak trees lining the residential streets whipped back and forth in the gusty wind, filling the bright day with a rush of noise. Jax had to use one hand to hold her hair back off her face as they made their way quickly along the sidewalk. She used the other to hold on to his arm, playing the part of his fiancée.

The storms had left the ground littered with leaves so that it looked a little like autumn, except that the leaves were green instead of bright colors. Here and there limbs that had been torn off during the storms lay on lawns and at the sides of the street. The air had an odd, dry feel to it, as if hinting at the looming change of season.

Jax silently eyed the imposing front façade of Mother of Roses as they walked down Thirteenth Street. Many of the people climbing the broad bank of steps on their way to visit patients carried flowers or small boxes wrapped in bright paper and decorated with ribbons.

As they continued past the front entrance, without turning up the steps, Jax frowned questioningly up at him. “Family visiting the ninth floor can go in the back,” he told her. “It’s easier.”

“The ninth floor,” she repeated in a flat tone.

He knew what she was thinking. “I’m afraid so.”

Around the side, the usual collection of service vans were crowded into the small lot that was really nothing more than an irregular blacktopped area off the alley. The back of the building was virtually deserted compared with the activity in front. That had always added to Alex’s feeling of alienation; he wasn’t visiting a normal patient, someone who would eventually get better and go home, he was visiting someone who was imprisoned because she was a danger to society and would never be released.

He guessed that in the back of his mind he had always felt a sense of shame over that, not to mention anxiety that he might end up the same as his mother. Now he felt a sense of anger, because it was seeming more and more likely that her condition was the fault of strangers meddling in their lives, strangers who wanted something and didn’t care who they had to hurt to get it.

Out of habit, as they took a shortcut across the grass and patches of bare dirt beneath the shade of the huge oaks, Alex glanced up at the windows on the ninth floor. He saw nothing more than shadows through the nearly opaque glass.

“Are all the windows covered with wire?” Jax asked as she noticed him looking up at the top floor.

“All the ones where we’re going.”

When he pulled open the steel door at the back entrance, Jax paused and wrinkled her nose at the unfamiliar hospital smell. She stole a quick glance to each side before stepping through the doorway.

Inside, the smell of food mixed unappetizingly with the hospital smell. The kitchens were back off the entrance area. Often-times smaller supplies were taken to the kitchen through the back entrance.

As he did at every other visit, Alex tossed his keys, change, and pocketknife in a blue plastic tub on a table to the side of the metal detector. His phone was taking a bath in the outlet mall. As he had coached, Jax walked slowly through the metal detector. With her hands hooked in her back pockets, she looked completely natural, as if she did it every day. Wearing jeans and the black top she looked completely normal, as if she belonged with him. Except that he had never been with any woman as breathtaking as Jax.

The older security guard, Dwayne, who never smiled at Alex, smiled at Jax. She returned the smile. As well as Alex was beginning to know her, though, he recognized that her smile wasn’t sincere.

After Alex had gone through the metal detector, Dwayne reached in the tub as he usually did to hand back the phone.

He looked up. “You don’t have your phone.”

Alex snapped his fingers. “Must have left it in the truck.”

The guard, with no phone to give back, simply placed the tub on a table against the wall that he used as a desk. He would return the keys, change, and pocketknife when they were on their way out. There were no other blue tubs on the table against the wall. The rest of the empty tubs were stacked together beside the metal detector. As was often the case during the day, Alex was the only visitor to the ninth floor.

At the steel desk beyond the metal detector he picked up the registry clipboard and blue plastic pen attached to the clipboard by its dirty string. He signed his name, paused, and then wrote “Jax, fiancée” in the guest column.

Doreen, who had been paying close attention to Jax, took the clipboard from him and turned it around to see how he’d filled in the “guest” portion. Alex had never brought a guest with him when he went to see his mother.

Doreen looked up with a grin. “Fiancée! Alex, I never knew. I’m so happy for you.”

Alex returned the smile and introduced Jax. They shook hands. Doreen seemed unable to look away from Jax’s mesmerizing eyes. Alex knew the feeling.

“How long have you two been together?” the beaming Doreen asked.

“It all happened pretty fast,” Alex said. “She just dropped into my life out of the blue. Surprised the hell out of me, to tell you the truth.”

“Oh, that’s so exciting, Alex. When’s the big date?” she asked Jax.

“As soon as we work out the details,” Jax said.

Alex was relieved that Jax had handled the question with such simple grace.

On their way to the elevator, Alex leaned close. “That telling-the-truth trick of yours works pretty well.”

She gave him a smile at their inside joke. He noticed that she smiled differently at him than she did at anyone else. There was something special about it, something he liked very much.

When the green metal door of the elevator opened, Alex took a step in. Jax balked, her hand on his arm dragging him to a halt.

“What is this?” she asked.

Before anyone noticed them stopping, he put an arm around her waist and ushered her inside. “It’s an elevator. It takes us up to the ninth floor, where my mother is held.”

She turned around the way he did and faced the front as the door glided closed. “I don’t like being locked in a metal box.”

“I can’t really blame you, but it’s fine, honest. It’s just a device that goes up and down, nothing else.”

“Aren’t there stairs?”

“There’s a fire escape on the outside of the building, but you can’t use it except in an emergency. The regular stairway is kept locked to control access to the ninth floor.”

Jax tensed at every clunk and clatter of the elevator’s ascent through the building. She only seemed to relax when it wobbled to a stop and the doors opened.

As she stepped out, her gaze swept the nurses’ station, taking in everything, noting the position of everyone working behind the counter. There were four nurses, three female and one male, plus a woman at the computer. Back down the hall Alex could see an orderly getting a mop and bucket out of a utility room. He was sure that Jax was also checking to make sure that she didn’t recognize anyone.

Standing at the high counter at the nurses’ station, Alex signed his name and wrote in the time. Not a lot of people visited the ninth floor. He saw his signature from previous visits several places higher up on the sheet. He slid the clipboard over and motioned Jax to step up to the counter.

“You need to sign your name and write down the time,” he said under his breath. “Sign your name on the line below mine and copy the time I put in.”

Alex watched her sign her name. He hadn’t known her last name before. When she had finished he slid it back across the counter to one of the nurses on duty. The big, hunched orderly spotted the two of them through the large window in the pharmacy and came out to greet them.

“Alex, what have we here?” Henry broke into a rare grin as he stared at Jax.

“Henry, this is Jax, my fiancée. Jax, this is Henry.”

She didn’t blanch at the size of the man the way most people did. “Nice to meet you, Henry.”

Henry smiled at the sound of his name coming from her lips. “I had begun to worry about Alex, but I can see now that he was just waiting for the right woman to come along.”

“You have that right,” Alex said. Eager not to be pulled into a “How’d you two meet?” conversation, he changed the subject. “How is my mother doing?”

Henry shrugged. “Same. You know the way she is. At least she hasn’t been causing a ruckus lately.”

“That’s good,” Alex said as he followed Henry to the solid oak door leading to the women’s wing.

In her sweep of the area, Jax noted a man — a patient — staring at them through the little window in the door to the men’s wing. She turned back and watched as the orderly pulled his keys out on the cable extending from the reel attached to his belt and then unlocked the door. He ducked and glanced through the window before tugging open the heavy door.

“Your mother was in the sunroom last time I did rounds. You two have a nice visit.” Henry handed Alex the plastic key for the buzzer. “Ring when you’re finished, Alex.”

Alex had probably heard the man say “Ring when you’re finished” a few hundred times. It seemed he should realize that Alex would know the routine.

Jax glanced at the varnished oak doors to each side as they made their way down the long corridor toward the sunroom. He knew that she was calculating every threat, watching for any source of trouble. Of all the places that concerned him, Alex didn’t really think this was a place they had to worry about. Still, Jax’s attitude was making him jumpy.

“We’re locked in here?” she asked. “There is no way for us to get out on our own if we have to?”

“That’s right. If we could get out, then so could the patients, and they don’t want that. We have to go back out the way we came in. There’s a fire escape that goes downstairs on the side of the building,” he said as he gestured surreptitiously ahead to the fire exit, “but the door is locked. A nurse or an orderly would have to unlock it. There’s a stairway in the back of the nurses’ station. It’s kept locked along with the elevator.”

When they reached the sunroom, Alex spotted his mother alone on a couch against the far wall.

She saw Alex coming. He could tell by the look in her eyes that she recognized him.

29

"HI, MOM,” ALEX SAID in a sunny voice as he came to a stop before her.

She was wearing powder-blue pajama pants and a flowered hospital gown tied in the back. He sometimes brought her nice things to wear but she rarely wore them. She was seldom connected to reality enough to be aware of what clothes she had put on, or to care. On the occasions when she had been aware, she had told him that she was saving her good clothes for when she got out.

Some of her lack of interest in what she wore, he knew, was her mental condition, but a large part of it was the result of the drugs. It was the Thorazine syrup they gave her that left her so heavily sedated, largely indifferent to what was going on around her, and made her shuffle when she walked. It weighed her mind down and made her seem twice her age.

Fortunately, they had arrived not long before she was due for another regular dose of medication. Alex had learned over the years that he had the best chance of seeing her a little more aware when the drugs had started to wear off a little before it was time for her next dose of medication. He often wondered what she would be like, how much better she might be able to communicate, if she were not on such powerful drugs. It was frustrating in the extreme not to be able to have a normal conversation with her.

Alex had often asked the doctors if she couldn’t be taken off the Thorazine, or at least put on something less powerful. Dr. Hoffmann, the head psychiatrist at Mother of Roses, insisted that in her case there was no other antipsychotic drug that was as effective. He claimed that it was the only thing powerful enough to suppress her violent psychosis. He said that it was all that was keeping her somewhat human, keeping her from being a raving lunatic.

Dr. Hoffmann had said that he was sure Alex wouldn’t want that for his mother, nor would he want to see her physically restrained twenty-four hours a day. He’d said that he was sure Alex would want her to have as much human dignity as possible. The drugs, he said, were what made that possible.

Alex had never been able to argue against that.

His mother rose from the worn-out brown leather couch. She didn’t smile. She almost never smiled.

She took in Jax with a quick glance and then frowned up at him. “Alex, what are you doing here?”

Alex was gratified that she not only remembered his name, but used it. She almost never did that. He wondered if maybe Jax was having a positive influence. He hoped so.

“I came to visit you. I wanted you to meet—”

“I told you to run and hide. Why are you here? You should be hiding.”

“I know, Mom. You’re right. But I had to come here first.”

“You should be hiding from them.”

Alex gently grasped Jax’s elbow and guided her forward. He realized he had butterflies. He wanted his mother to like Jax.

“Mom, listen to me. I want you to meet my friend. This is Jax. Jax, this is Helen Rahl.”

Jax extended her hand. “I’m so very pleased to meet you, Mrs. Rahl,” she said with a warm smile. “Now I know where Alex got those penetrating gray eyes of his.”

His mother looked down at the hand for a moment, then took it. She put her other hand over the top in a less formal manner.

“You are Alex’s friend?” she asked without releasing Jax’s hand.

“I am. We’re good friends.”

“How good?”

Jax smiled. It was a broad, genuine smile. “I care for Alex a great deal, Mrs. Rahl. That’s the truth of it.”

“Jax is about as good a friend as anyone could have,” Alex put in.

His mother stared at him a moment. “You should be hiding.” She pulled Jax closer by her hand. “You should be hiding, too.”

“I think that’s pretty good advice,” Jax said. “As soon as we have a visit with you I’m going to help Alex hide.”

His mother nodded. “Good. You both need to hide.”

Alex checked the other women in the sunroom. Most were watching the visitors rather than the TV.

“Mom,” Alex said, taking her arm, “we really need to talk to you. How about if we go to your room?”

Without protest she let Alex and Jax hold her hands and lead her out of the bright sunroom into the darker corridor. Most of the women on the other side of the room watched them leave. A few were engaged in conversations with no one in particular. One woman waved her arms in a loud argument with someone who wasn’t there.

Alex was relieved to see that his mother’s older roommate, Agnes, was watching the soap opera on the TV and didn’t follow them. While she never spoke, she did often sit in the room and stare at him when he visited his mother.

As they went through the doorway into his mother’s room, Jax first casually glanced in both directions down the hallway to see who might be watching them go in. A nurse, with an orderly to assist her, was at the far end of the hall, taking a tray of medications into the sunroom. Two orderlies coming down the hall in the other direction smiled as they went by.

Alex guided his mother to a leather chair against the wall beneath the window. The nearly opaque glass let in only a frost of light. He and Jax sat on the side of the bed, facing her.

Before they could ask her anything, his mother rose from the chair and shuffled over to a small wardrobe. After a brief search she pulled a shawl from the shelf. When his mother draped the shawl over the polished metal square screwed to the wall that served as a mirror, Jax glanced over at him out of the corner of her eye. He knew what she was thinking.

“They look at me,” his mother muttered on her way back to them.

“We know,” Jax said. “I’m glad that you know to cover your mirror.”

His mother paused to stare at Jax. “You know?”

Jax nodded. “They’ve been watching Alex the same way. That’s why we’re here. We want to stop them from looking at you, and from looking at Alex.”

There wasn’t a lot of room between the bed and the chair against the wall. As she shuffled by, she rested a hand on Jax’s knee for support.

She paused, then reached out and ran her thin hand down Jax’s wavy blond hair. “You have such long, beautiful hair.”

“Thank you,” Jax said. “So do you.”

As she sat, Alex’s mother reached up and ran a hand down over her own hair. “I brush it to keep it nice. I won’t let them cut it.”

“I never let anyone cut mine, either,” Jax said.

Satisfaction at Jax’s words brought a small smile to her thin lips. “Good.” She turned her gaze to Alex, as if she had forgotten he was there. “Alex, why aren’t you hiding, like I told you?”

“Mom, we need to know about these people who are looking at you.”

“They ask me things, too.”

Alex nodded. “I remember you saying that. That’s why we’re here. We need to know what they want.”

“What they want?”

His mother, when she was lucid, or lucid after a fashion, became easily confused. Alex also knew that she wasn’t likely to remain aware of the real world around her for long. If they didn’t get answers soon her mind would very likely turn inward. On the other hand, he knew that they needed to be gentle in their questioning or she would simply switch off. In years of trying, he was rarely successful at walking the razor’s edge with her.

There was also the problem that when they brought in her medication she would quickly get groggy. Her speech would begin to slur. Soon after, nothing she said would make sense. But that was the drugs, not her mind switching off. As far as Alex was concerned they simply needed to get answers before she couldn’t answer, no matter what the cause.

“That’s right, Mom. The people who watch you want something.

You told me about it before. You said that they want something from you. We need to know about that.”

She touched a slender finger to her lower lip. “They ask about, about. . the way they talk, it’s not easy to remember. I don’t understand what they want from me. Always asking things, such confusing things. I don’t understand.”

“I know. It’s confusing for us, too. But we need to know what they want from you. Please, Mom, just try to remember what it is they want to know.”

When his mother only frowned, as if she didn’t understand what he was asking her, Jax leaned in, resting her forearms on her knees.

“Mrs. Rahl, they probably say something like ‘Tell us about. .’ and then they say something. Remember? When they say, ‘Tell us about,’ what’s the rest of what they say?”

His mother smoothed down her hair for a moment as she considered. She looked up suddenly.

“They say, ‘Tell us about the gate,’ I think. Is that right?”

Jax didn’t so much as blink.

“That can’t be it,” she whispered to herself as she slowly stood. “That can’t be what they mean.”

“What?” Alex stood up next to her. As her gaze cast about distantly, he could almost see her mind racing. “What does that mean?”

Jax didn’t seem to hear him. She abruptly looked back down at his mother, her voice becoming insistent, almost demanding.

“Is that what they say? ‘Gate’? Is that the exact word?”

His mother shrank back into her chair a little. “The exact word?”

Alex could tell that she was getting confused by the pressure to come up with an answer. Seeing the grave look on Jax’s face, though, he decided not to interfere.

“Maybe you’re thinking that’s the word they meant,” Jax said, “but maybe that’s not the word they used. Could it be a longer word that made you think of the word ‘gate’?”

She puzzled up at Jax. “Longer word? Maybe. .”

“Maybe what?” Jax pressed.

Alex thought that Jax looked like she was about to grab his mother by the collar and haul her to her feet.

His mother’s eyes brightened a little as she suddenly seemed to remember.

“Not ‘gate.’ ‘Gateway.’ That’s the word.” She held up a finger. “They say, ‘Tell us about the gateway.’ ”

Jax went ashen.

“Dear spirits, have mercy on us.”

Alex put a hand on the small of her back to steady her. “What’s wrong?”

“I know what it is they want,” she whispered. Her fingers trembled as she pushed her hair back from her face. “Alex, we’re in a lot of trouble.”

Just then the door opened. “Time for your afternoon medications, Helen.”

It was a nurse. Alex was so rattled he couldn’t recall her name. She was middle-aged, big-boned, and wore white from head to toe. Her white nurse’s hat had a small red stripe around the edge, but her crisp dress was pure white. It went to midcalf, where it covered opaque white hose. Her thick white shoes were spotless.

“I don’t want them!” Alex’s mother shouted.

“Now, now, Helen,” the woman said as she came closer, “you know that Dr. Hoffmann wants you to take your medications so that you’ll feel better.”

“No! Leave me be!”

The door opened again as Henry pushed his way in. He saw Alex’s mother waving her arms, trying to keep the nurse at bay.

“Helen, you be nice, now,” Henry said. “You don’t want to be making a ruckus in front of your nice visitors.”

Alex’s mother sometimes tackled the nurses when she got the chance. The orderly was there to make sure that that didn’t happen. Alex considered taking the medication from the nurse and giving it to his mother himself so that maybe she wouldn’t become so agitated that Henry would have to intervene.

“We won’t be a minute, Alex,” the nurse whispered to him.

Alice. That was her name. “Thanks, Alice. I understand.”

He watched Jax out of the corner of his eye as she moved out of the way so that Alice could squeeze in between the bed and the chair. He was worried about Jax.

Alex wanted Alice and Henry out of the room so that he could find out why Jax had become so upset at hearing the word “gateway.”

Henry looked embarrassed to have to intrude and cause a scene. “I’m sorry, Alex,” he said as he came closer. “We’ll be out of your way as soon as we make sure she takes her meds.”

Alex nodded, moving farther down the bed, trying to give the nurse room. As she stepped closer she held the tray up out of the way, in case his mother took a swing at it.

Jax, deep in thought, turned away. Upon hearing the word “gateway” she’d said that she knew what they wanted. Alex wanted to know what she’d figured out, what this was all about. He wanted to find out what had her so upset and distracted.

Whatever it was, it appeared that they had found the answer they’d come for.

“Leave me be!” his mother yelled, snatching for the tray.

“Come on now, Helen,” Alice said, holding it out of reach, “settle down.”

The next time Alex glanced over, he saw Henry with a syringe held partially out of sight. He knew that the orderlies sometimes brought a syringe along when they thought there was the possibility of trouble. They’d told him in the past that they would rather give his mother a shot when she became violent than try to restrain her physically and risk hurting her.

“I told you before, Alice,” his mother yelled, “I don’t know anything about a gateway!”

Jax looked over sharply.

As she did, Henry snatched her by the hair. At the same time he stabbed the syringe into her rump. Before she knew what had happened or could react, he jammed the plunger home.

Alex was already diving over the corner of the bed toward the man. Henry turned and swung a meaty fist at him but Alex blocked the blow with his forearm as he dove inside the man’s defenses.

Behind him, as he crashed into Henry, the nurse swept another syringe off the tray she had been holding up out of sight and rammed it into Alex’s behind. Alex felt the hot stab of the drug cocktail being injected into his backside as Alice shoved the plunger all the way into the syringe. Having his hands full with Henry, he hadn’t been able to turn in time to stop the woman.

Jax landed a full-force side kick in the woman’s ribs, sending her flying. Alice knocked his mother back into the chair before crashing headlong into the wall by the headboard. The tray clattered against the floor. The lamp attached to the wall broke off as she snatched it for support on her way down. The bulb shattered with a pop, sending glass everywhere.

As he struggled with the big man, Alex saw Jax reach for a knife at her waist. There was no knife there. She faltered, stumbled, and then started to go down even as she tried to swing at Henry. She missed by a mile.

Alex was lost in rage. Grappling with the powerful orderly, he growled in fury as he swept a leg around behind the man’s legs to take him off his feet. It upended Henry and they both went down, Alex on top of him. They hit hard, Henry on his back. Alex followed up immediately with a blow from his elbow that crushed Henry’s nose.

Henry cried out in pain. Out of the corner of his eye Alex saw another orderly charging into the room.

Alex tried to swing his fist as the second man jumped him and swept an arm around his neck, but his own arms were tingling and going numb. They wouldn’t respond to his wishes. He tried harder. When Henry punched him in the middle Alex reflexively rammed his knee up into the man’s groin. Henry cringed in pain. Alex struggled to get up, but the second man at his back had him securely by the neck.

Out of the corner of his eye Alex saw Jax trying to crawl toward him to help. Alice planted a white shoe on Jax’s neck, pinning her to the floor. Jax moved as if she were mired in mud. She cried out his name, but it came out as a slurred murmur.

The world began to blur. Everything looked small, as if it were at the distant end of a dark tunnel. Alex yelled Jax’s name, but only a whisper made its way out.

His fingers found hers, then. Both of them held on for dear life as the room dimmed.

Alex felt himself being engulfed by thick, tingling blackness. It was all happening too fast.

His last thought, before thought ceased to exist, was of Jax, of the terror in her eyes.

30

ALEX DIDN’T REMEMBER OPENING HIS EYES. He didn’t remember waking. He merely became gradually aware that he was awake. After a fashion.

Everything looked soft and fuzzy, unreal, distant, dim. He could hear snatches of sounds but he didn’t know what they were. Figuring out what the sounds were didn’t strike him as at all important.

He was aware of the world all around him, but it seemed far away, not something he was a part of. He was alone. . somewhere else.

His whole body tingled in a thick, numb, twilight way.

With the way that everything seemed less than real, it occurred to him that he might actually be asleep and only dreaming that he was awake. He couldn’t decide which was true. He didn’t know how to find the solution to such a puzzle.

Try as he might, Alex could not, simply could not, form a complete, coherent thought.

Fragments of ideas, bits of things that seemed as if they might be important, floated beyond his mental reach. He couldn’t pull them in, couldn’t make those fragments come together into a complete thought. He knew that he should be able to, knew what he wanted to do, but his mind wouldn’t make it happen. He could not exert enough willpower to bring himself to think.

It felt like his brain was shut off. He struggled to form a complete sentence in his mind, but his mind could not pull anything together. He would start a thought, but it would trail off into nothing as his brain simply failed to complete the task. He could not coax it to stay on track, to work, to think. Monumental effort didn’t help.

Somewhere in the back of his mind his inability to form complete thoughts, to think deliberately, was giving rise to a vague, distant, claustrophobic panic. Those feelings, even as they began to surface, sank back down into the black depths of indifference, never to fully surface, leaving only fuzzy emptiness.

The panic somewhere inside him could not manifest itself into something solid enough to concern him.

Alex wanted to be angry, but there was nothing there to form anger.

Every time he struggled to feel emotion, he only fell back into feeling nothing.

He turned his dim perception away from the futile effort and realized that he was sitting in a chair. He tried to get up, but his body didn’t respond. With great effort he looked down to see his hand resting on the arm of the chair. He tried to lift it, but it only levitated a few inches. He couldn’t make himself care enough to accomplish the simple task.

He squinted, trying to make out the fuzzy white shape not far away, trying to understand what it was doing.

“You awake, Alex?”

He thought it was a woman’s voice.

Answering was too unimportant to even try.

“I’ll have your bed made in a jiff. Then I’ll let you be so you can get your rest.”

That was what she was doing: making up a bed. She was tucking in sheets. Just grasping that much of the mystery around him felt like a profound accomplishment, but the accomplishment failed to be satisfying.

He didn’t know if he knew the woman in white. He couldn’t make himself concentrate on her face long enough to tell. His gaze kept sinking to the floor. The gray swirls in the linoleum echoed his thoughts.

He wanted to break down in tearful despair at not understanding any of it, but there was nothing in him that knew how to cry, so he could only sit and stare.

“I’ll let the doctor know you’re awake. I’m sure that when he makes his rounds he’ll want to stop in and see you. Okay, hon?”

The woman came closer. She pulled a tissue from the box on the windowsill, then leaned toward him and wiped the side of his mouth and chin.

“That better?” she asked as she threw the tissue in the wastebasket beside the chair.

Alex wanted to say something, but nothing came to mind.

She touched his shoulder sympathetically before moving away. The square of light darkened. He wondered distantly if maybe she had gone out and shut the door.

Snippets of things echoed through his head, fragments of conversations, flashes of sights. He sat unmoving as the obscure turmoil tumbled inside him.

He wondered where he was and how he had come to be there. He couldn’t think it through, couldn’t come up from the depths toward the distant surface. He wanted to get up out of the chair, but it seemed too monumental a task.

The world kept going dark. Each time he again became aware, he realized that he must be nodding off.

As he sat staring, going in and out of consciousness, the daylight behind him gradually went dark.

“Alex?”

It was a man’s voice. Alex lifted his head a little and realized that he must have been asleep again. He blinked slowly, trying to clear his vision. It took great effort to blink, but it didn’t help.

The man leaned down toward him. “Alex, hi, how are you doing?” The man had a clipboard in one hand. A stethoscope hung around his neck. He had on a white coat and a blue tie. Alex couldn’t muster the will to look up enough to see the face.

The man picked up Alex’s hand and shook it. Alex was too limp to participate.

“I’m Dr. Hoffmann, Alex. I’ve met you before. Remember? In the past we’ve discussed your mother.”

Alex didn’t remember much of anything. He remembered that he had a mother, but he couldn’t remember what she looked like. The effort to remember details about her was simply beyond his ability. He could do little more than stare at nothing.

“Well, I can see that you’re still pretty out of it. It’s the Thorazine. After a while, when you get a little more acclimated to your medication, you’ll be able to function better. You won’t sleep so much, either.”

As Alex finally managed to turn his eyes up, the man smiled. He looked nice. Alex hated him. At least, he guessed that maybe he hated him. Somewhere inside he wanted to hate him, but he couldn’t feel any hate. He couldn’t feel anything.

“Best thing to do is just take it easy for now, maybe get up in bed and take a nap. You’ve been through quite an ordeal, from what I’ve heard.”

With all his strength Alex managed to say, “What?”

Dr. Hoffmann looked down to search through his papers. He lifted a page on his clipboard, then another.

“Well, from what I’ve been told and from this report, you became violent, apparently convinced that the staff was trying to harm your mother. Seems you hurt one of the orderlies, Henry, pretty badly. Alice was shaken up as well.”

Alex remembered only foggy flickers of a fight. He thought that he remembered being afraid — not afraid for himself, but afraid for someone else.

“The staff here would never hurt your mother, Alex, or any patient, for that matter. They’re dedicated to helping people who are ill.”

The man looked through the papers on his clipboard again. “With your mother’s history, I’m afraid that your violent outburst is not entirely surprising.” He let out a sigh. “Sometimes this sort of psychosis runs in families. In the case of your family, it seems to lead to violent aggression.”

Alex managed to lift his back away from the chair a few inches. “What about. .”

The old bed squeaked as Dr. Hoffmann leaned back against it. He clasped his hands together as he held the clipboard in them and stared down at Alex.

“I’m sorry, Alex, but I don’t understand what you’re asking.”

“Someone. .”

“Someone? Who are you asking about?”

Alex didn’t know.

“Your mother? Is that who you’re asking about? Helen is doing fine. She was understandably frightened by the whole episode, but she’s fine. I saw her earlier. She’s resting comfortably. I don’t think she even remembers the incident.”

Alex wanted to talk, but he couldn’t. He could feel drool running down his chin again.

“Here, let’s have your arm before I go, make sure you’re doing okay.”

The doctor pulled Alex’s arm out and wrapped a black blood-pressure cuff around it. He put the stethoscope to the crook of Alex’s arm as he pumped the bulb in his other hand. He concentrated, remaining still for a moment as he watched the dial, then turned the knob to release the rest of the air.

“It’s pretty low,” he said as he wrote on the chart, “but that’s to be expected with Thorazine. We’ll need to keep an eye on it. As I said, you’ll acclimate to the medication over time.”

“Over time?”

The man looked up from the chart. “Alex, I’m afraid that you’ve had a full-blown psychotic episode that requires aggressive intervention. Considering what happened, along with your family history. .” He peered down at his chart, reading for a moment. “As a matter of fact, your mother was the same age, twenty-seven, when her psychopathic symptoms first manifested themselves.”

Alex was dimly aware of his nearly lifelong fear of ending up like his mother.

“Well,” Dr. Hoffmann finally said with a sigh, “let’s hope for the best. Often, with the right balance of medications, people like you don’t have to live with the delusions and mania of such an illness.

“But I’m afraid that you’re going to have to be here for a while.”

“While?” Alex mumbled.

“With the violence of the assault there is the possibility that charges will be brought.”

The doctor patted the side of Alex’s knee. “But I don’t want you to worry about that at the moment.” He smiled. “If it comes to that we’ll ask the court to have you confined here, under our care. Jail wouldn’t be the proper setting for a person with a serious mental condition. I’m afraid that it might be necessary to have you placed here indefinitely — for your own safety, of course.”

Alex was not able to form a response, but somewhere deep inside he felt a distant sense of alarm.

With a thumb the doctor clicked the cap on the end of his ballpoint pen and slipped it into his coat pocket, all the while watching Alex.

“Once you get used to your medication, once it settles you down, we’ll talk more about all of this. I’m going to want to know about the thoughts you have that seem to control you and make you do the things you do.”

There was a soft knock at the door. Someone with a tray poked her head in. “Am I interrupting, Doctor? It’s time for his medications.”

“No, no, come in. We’re done for today.”

A woman in white came close. She held the tray out as if she expected Alex to do something. He could do little more than focus his vision on it.

“I think he’s going to need some help until he’s more used to the medication,” the doctor said.

The woman nodded and set the tray on the bed. She held a small paper cup up to his lips. Alex didn’t know what to do. It seemed so unimportant. With her other hand on his forehead she tipped his head back and poured syrupy liquid into his mouth. She pushed his chin up with a finger, closing his mouth.

“Swallow. That’s it. There you go.”

When she removed her hand Alex’s jaw hung from the effort of drinking.

“I’ve got rounds, Alex,” Dr. Hoffmann said. “I’ll check up on you in a day or two. For now try to take it easy and let the medication do its work, all right?”

Alex sat unable to form a response as the man patted the side of Alex’s knee again before leaving. The room darkened a little when the door closed.

The woman in white tipped another cup up. This time pills rolled into his mouth. She poured water from a third cup into his mouth. He swallowed to keep from drowning.

“Good,” she said in a soothing voice as she swabbed his chin with a tissue. “Soon you’ll be doing it on your own.”

Alex just wanted to go to sleep.

“Soon,” she said, “we’ll have you talking up a storm.”

31

ALEX SAT ON THE EDGE of the bed, exhausted from the effort of getting dressed. Every day they told him to get dressed. He wasn’t sure why he had to get dressed, but they had told him to, so he did.

Whatever they told him to do, he did.

He didn’t want to comply with their orders, but he didn’t have the will to fight them and couldn’t think of a reason why he should. He knew that he had no choice, no way out. He was at their mercy.

At the same time, his imprisonment seemed unimportant. What difference did it make? Confinement seemed trivial.

The thing that concerned him the most, in fact the only thing that concerned him, was his inability to think, to form complete, coherent thoughts. That was the most exasperating thing of all to him. He would sit for hours staring blankly at nothing, the whole time trying his best to form a sentence in his head, but nothing would form. It left him feeling hollow, empty, and distantly frustrated.

He knew that it was the drugs that were causing him to be unable to focus. More than anything he wanted out from under the mountainous weight of what those drugs were doing to him. He couldn’t envision a way to bring that about.

One time when he had turned his face away, saying that he didn’t want them anymore, they had warned him that if he refused, if he became difficult, they would strap him down to his bed and give him injections.

Alex knew he didn’t want that. He knew that it was hopeless to fight them. After they threatened to strap him down to his bed, he took his medication without further complaint.

But more than anything, he wanted out from under the dark weight of the drug-induced stupor.

He had the sense that he had been confined for a couple of days. He couldn’t figure out how many, but he didn’t believe it had been long. He vaguely recalled the doctor coming again to talk briefly with him.

The doctor had wanted to know about the things that Alex thought about. Alex wasn’t able to identify any thoughts. The doctor had then asked if Alex was guided by voices. Alex asked what kind of voices. The doctor said that perhaps he heard the voice of the devil, or maybe even people from another world who haunted him, wanted things, told him things. Alex had felt a vague sense of alarm at the question, but he didn’t know what the doctor was talking about.

The doctor had left, then, saying that he would return another day and they would talk more about it then, adding that Alex was not going to be going home anytime soon.

Home. This was his home now.

A fleeting thought flashed somewhere deep in his mind. It was about his mother. He felt that he needed to know if she was all right.

Although the drugs suppressed any emotion, every waking moment Alex felt unsafe in the place, even if it was only a vague concern, and so he felt that his mother was in some kind of trouble as well. He was completely helpless to do anything about his fears.

When the door opened, he saw a big man lumber in.

Alex looked up and saw white bandages over the middle of the face.

“How you doing, Alex?”

“Fine,” Alex answered by rote before he stared off at the floor again.

“They put my nose back together for me. Said it’s going to be fine.”

Alex nodded. He didn’t like the man standing as close as he was, but he couldn’t imagine what he could do about it.

“I wanted to come back to work as soon as possible and see how my patients are getting along. Everyone here knows how much I love my work and how concerned I am for the patients.”

Alex nodded. In the back of his mind he felt a sense of danger in the pleasant voice, the casual conversation.

“The doctor said that you need to start going out and sitting in the sunroom. He wants you to get accustomed to being around other people without becoming violent — get used to fitting into society, I guess you could say. The only society you’re ever going to see again, anyway.

“But before I walk you down to the sunroom, I want you to tell me about the gateway.”

Alex blinked slowly as he stared up at the man with the bandaged face. “What?”

“The gateway. Tell me what you know about it.”

“I want to see my mother.”

“Your mother?”

“I want to see her safe.”

Henry, that was his name, Alex remembered.

The big man sighed. Then he chuckled softly to himself. “All right, Alex, let’s go for a walk and see your mother. Might do you some good to see for yourself that she’s fine — as fine as she’ll ever be, anyway. Then, after you see that she’s fine, I guess you’d better think real hard about telling us what we want to know — if you want your mother to stay healthy.”

“Please.” Alex managed to look up. “Don’t hurt her.”

Henry leaned down toward him and smiled. “I guess that’s pretty much up to you, now, isn’t it?”

Alex saw to each side of the bandage that both the man’s eyes were blackened. A few of the pieces came together. Alex thought that he had done that to Henry, that he had hurt him, broken his nose. Try as he might, he couldn’t remember why he’d done it.

Henry plucked a tissue from the box and wiped Alex’s chin. “Okay, let’s go see your mother.”

Alex began slowly levering himself to his feet. He immediately got light-headed. Henry stuck a big hand under Alex’s arm to keep him upright.

“The doctor said that your blood pressure is pretty low, so you have to be careful or you’re liable to pass out. Got to take it easy, he said, or else you could get hurt.”

Holding him up with one hand under his arm, Henry suddenly punched Alex in the abdomen.

Alex doubled over from the shock of the blow and fell back into the chair. He covered the cramping pain with one arm, even though the ache seemed remote. With his other hand he gripped the arm of the chair. He looked up to see Henry grinning.

The big man reached down and pulled Alex to his feet again, then punched him twice, both blows harder than the first.

Alex crashed back into the chair, moaning.

“Do you want to fight back, Alex? Take another swing at me?” He chuckled again. “Guess not. Thorazine takes the fight right out of you, doesn’t it? Makes it impossible to work up any aggression at all. That’s what it’s for, you know. It’s to keep dangerous psychopaths like you from hurting anyone.”

Alex was aware of the pain, but it was only a distant awareness. It seemed inconsequential. Even though he knew he should, he simply didn’t care. He couldn’t imagine how to care.

“Thorazine represses aggression so well that you can’t even work up a little anger when you need to. But I guess you know that.”

Henry pulled him up, held on to him, and in rapid succession pounded his fist into Alex’s middle. The blows staggered him back, but Henry was big and strong enough to keep Alex from falling.

Alex couldn’t get his breath. He knew that he was struggling to breathe, gasping, but the drugs were preventing him from being able to react. It felt like they were preventing him from being able to breathe as fast as he needed to.

Henry released his hold on Alex’s arm and gave him another mighty punch. Alex crashed back down into the chair, holding his middle. He couldn’t pull in a breath. He thought he might throw up. He sensed desperation in the way he gasped, but he felt like he was no more than a distant observer.

With his nose all bandaged up, Henry was looking a little winded, too.

“All right, let’s go for a walk and see your mother. Get it over with.”

Alex couldn’t get up. He was having great difficulty drawing each breath. Henry pulled him to his feet and rammed a knee into his groin. Alex collapsed to the floor, curled up, moaning.

Henry watched a moment, pleased by the sight, then yanked Alex to his feet again. He had great difficulty straightening up. Henry spun him around and shoved him, getting him moving toward the door. Alex tried to walk, but his legs wouldn’t move fast enough to walk. He could only shuffle in a hunched posture.

Henry followed close behind. “Don’t you think that this is over, Alex, or that we’re even. I haven’t even begun to get even.”

32

AT THE HEAVY DOOR Henry pulled his keys out on the reel attached to his belt and used one of them to turn the lock. A few people looked up when Henry led Alex into the central nurses’ station, but after satisfying their curiosity they went back to what they were doing.

Alex could see several women in the back, down the aisle between the tall shelves, either pulling file folders or putting them away. Beyond the wide window in the pharmacy room a lone nurse worked at taking inventory. A couple of other nurses behind the front counter were drinking coffee and discussing their home life, their conversation animated from time to time with laughter. None of them gave Alex and Henry any more than a passing glance.

Alex felt invisible.

He shuffled along, unable to move any faster, not caring if he did or didn’t. He wanted to care, somewhere deep inside he desperately wanted to care, but he could not bring forth concern. His mind was mostly occupied with the single, simple task of following Henry.

He noticed the elevator, remembering that he used to use it when he left the hospital. He couldn’t entirely recall how he had come to be locked in the place, to be a patient with his own room. He couldn’t focus his mind enough to put the sequence of events together, to grasp it all. It was frustrating to be so in the dark about what had happened and how he had come to be there. Even that frustration, though, failed to rouse emotion.

At the next locked door, Alex waited for it to be unlocked in order to go into the women’s wing and see his mother, to see if she was all right. He followed the burly orderly through the door and waited as he locked it behind them.

He watched the light from the room up ahead reflect off the ripples in the polished gray linoleum floor as he shuffled down the endlessly long corridor. Henry stopped to poke his head in one of the doors to the side.

“She isn’t in her room,” he said before continuing on toward the sunroom at the end of the hall.

When they finally entered the big, bright room at the end of the corridor, several of the woman clustered near the television looked up, but then went back to their show. There were a few other woman scattered around the room but Alex didn’t pay any attention to them as he followed Henry.

“Helen, you have a visitor,” Henry said.

She was sitting in a plastic chair at a table, her hands nested in her lap. She stared straight ahead, not seeming to hear the orderly.

“Helen, your son is here to see you.”

She looked up at the orderly, blinking slowly. When Henry pointed at Alex she looked over. There was no recognition in her eyes. She didn’t know who she was looking at.

Alex knew that she, too, was on heavy medications to suppress her aggression. He knew just how she felt in that regard. But he knew, too, deep down inside, that with her it was more than just the medication. There was something fundamentally broken in her.

Alex had wanted to know that his mother was all right, but once seeing that she didn’t look hurt, his mind began sinking back into the meaningless static that served for mental activity.

It occurred to him that maybe he should say something.

“Mom, how are you?” His own words rang hollow in his mind. He knew they were the right words, but they contained no meaning for him. He could summon no emotion to pair with the words.

She stared. “Fine.”

Alex nodded. He didn’t know what else to say.

“Satisfied?” Henry asked.

Alex looked up at the man. “Yes. I want her to be well.”

A smile broke out beneath the white bandages. “Good. You remember that. You remember that you want your mother to be well.”

Alex knew that Henry was threatening him but he felt no emotional reaction to that threat. It was frustrating that he couldn’t find a shred of anger within himself.

“Well,” Henry said, “now that we all know that Mom is fine, let’s get you back to your room. It won’t be long until it’s time for your medication.”

Alex nodded.

As he turned, he saw someone sitting not far away on a couch against the wall. She was wearing jeans and a black top, but it was her long blond hair that had caught Alex’s attention.

It was Jax.

Alex froze. He felt a rush of emotion welling up within him, coming close to breaking the surface of awareness, but the too-distant feeling remained mired in a wilderness of nothing.

Jax was sitting alone on the couch. Her hands rested limp at her sides. Her brown eyes stared straight ahead. She didn’t seem to be aware of anything. Alex distantly thought that she was achingly beautiful.

Henry, who had noticed Alex stop and stare, grinned.

“Good-looking woman, eh, Alex?”

For the first time that he could remember, Alex felt the presence of the dark shadow of anger somewhere within.

“Do you want to say hello?” Henry asked. “Go ahead. Might as well as long as we’re here.”

Alex shuffled closer and came to a stop before her.

“Jax?”

She looked up. She blinked slowly.

Alex saw within those beautiful eyes a spark of recognition.

That spark was layered over with the same numbing weight of drugs that he knew so well, the same drugs he hated, but he still saw it there.

If Jax recognized him, and he was sure she did, she didn’t act like it, showing no more sign of recognition than had his mother.

Alex realized that it had to be deliberate. She didn’t want to betray that she recognized him. As drugged as she was, she was trying to protect him by not acknowledging that she knew him.

“Well,” Henry said, “looks like she isn’t interested in a date.” He nudged Alex with an elbow as he leaned a little closer. “Maybe she’d like a date with me later tonight after lights-out. What do you think, Alex? Think she might like that?”

Through the unfeeling haze, Alex knew that Jax was in great peril. He again felt the shadowy presence of anger, but this time it was closer, darker, stronger, even if he couldn’t reach it, couldn’t connect with it.

He managed to muster deception. “Maybe.”

Henry chuckled. “Maybe she’d like you to tell us all about the gateway. Think so, Alex? Think she would be relieved if you did what we want?”

“I suppose,” Alex said in a flat, distant tone, deliberately playing dumb. It wasn’t at all difficult.

Henry turned him and shoved him, getting him moving. As he shuffled away, Alex glanced back over his shoulder. Jax’s head didn’t move. Her hands stayed limp at her sides.

But her eyes followed him.

He knew the private, lonely hell she was in. He knew because he felt the same way.

If Alex was in a daze before, he was even more dazed as they made their way back across the ninth floor to the men’s wing, to his room. He was beginning to remember pieces.

He recognized, if distantly, that he had to do something.

He knew that no one was going to show up to save him.

He knew that he had to help himself or things were only going to get worse. Henry had made that clear enough. His mother was going to suffer, but the worst of it would be reserved for Jax.

If Alex wanted to prevent that, he had to do something.

“Here we go,” Henry said as they finally made their way across to the men’s sunroom. “You should sit here and enjoy the sunshine while you think things over.”

“All right,” Alex said.

The orderly guided him over to the couches against the wall. Alex sat without protest. On the other side of the room men stared at the television. Alex stared at the floor.

When he heard squeaking he looked over and saw that the squeak was coming from shiny black shoes. “Snack time, folks,” the overweight orderly said as he pushed the cart into the room.

“You should have yourself a sandwich, Alex,” Henry said.

Alex merely nodded.

“And in the meantime, you think about things. You think real hard on the answers we want because we’re running out of patience. Do you understand?”

Alex nodded again without looking up.

Henry handed him a paper plate with a whole-wheat sandwich on it and a plastic glass of orange drink from the cart. “We’ll talk later.”

Alex nodded again without looking up. As he watched Henry walking away, he took a sip of orange juice, holding the cool liquid in his mouth under his tongue as his mind frantically tried to summon action. It was like trying to push the dead weight of a mountain.

He ate a few bites of the tasteless sandwich to the sounds of contestants in a game show giving answers to questions. Frequently the television audience broke out in laughter. The men watching didn’t react.

Alex needed answers.

Not at all hungry, he set down the plate with the sandwich. He sat for a time staring at nothing, his mind hopelessly blank, feeling overwhelmed with frustration at his inability to think.

The only thing that he seemed able to keep in focus was the image of Jax. The emotion connected to that image was buried somewhere deep within him.

He finally got up and began making his way back toward his room, the whole way struggling to reason out what he could do. But under the dampening fog of Thorazine, his thoughts would not crystallize. Shuffling his way down the hall, he knew that the drugs were preventing him from thinking of a way to fight back.

From somewhere, realization suddenly seemed to be there. Being able to think was not the immediate solution, it was the problem. He’d been focusing on the problem, rather than the solution. The real solution was to eliminate what was preventing him from thinking: the drugs.

In his room, he sat in the chair. Light coming in the frosted window behind slowly faded away to blackness. After a time he smelled food and heard the dinner cart being wheeled down the hall to the sunroom, where they fed the patients. When one of the women from the cafeteria stuck her head in to remind him that it was dinnertime, Alex only nodded. He wasn’t hungry.

As he sat listening to the buzz of the overhead lights, he held tight to the core of the real solution: getting off the drugs so that he could think. He worked at that notion like a mental worry stone. He grasped that if he was to solve anything, he first had to find a way not to take the drugs they gave him. After that, his mind would work.

He didn’t know how he could manage such a thing. They made him take his medication. They waited and made sure he took it. If he didn’t, they would force him. He couldn’t fight them off.

And then, the answer was simply there.

He had to somehow make them think that he had taken his medication. He had to trick them. But how in the world could he do such a thing?

He sat for hours as the evening wore on, struggling mightily to come up with a way to do it. If he didn’t somehow accomplish what he needed to do, Jax was going to suffer.

He wasn’t aware of the idea coming to him. But he realized that it had. Some part of him, some inner will, held on to that solution for dear life so that it couldn’t slip away from him.

He knew that if he could pull it off, then without the drugs his mind would begin to work and then maybe he would be able to come to his own rescue.

He got up and turned on the smaller reading light over the bed, then shut off the main ceiling lights. The smaller light gave off a muted illumination, but it was plenty of light to see by, and it made the room dimmer than the hall. The partial darkness would help cover what he intended to do.

Exhausted from the effort of plotting and adjusting the lights, he flopped back into his chair to wait for the nurse to arrive with his evening medications.

He nodded off twice before she arrived.

He woke with a start when she knocked and announced “Medication time” in a musical voice. She was one of the nicer nurses, a top-heavy woman with at least a dozen moles on her face and more on her plump arms. She always had a ready smile.

“I have your medications for you, Alex.”

Alex nodded and reached up for the cup of Thorazine on the tray before she had a chance to wonder if he might need help.

He tipped his head back as he poured the syrupy medication into his mouth, then brought his head back down, making a face as he swallowed. He crushed the paper cup in one hand and tossed it in the wastebasket beside his chair.

He hadn’t swallowed the medication, though. He held the Thorazine syrup in the hollow under his tongue.

She held the tray out for him. He dumped the second cup with the pills into his mouth and immediately captured them under his tongue as well as he tossed the cup in the trash.

The nurse yawned while she waited for him to wash down the pills. Alex had to repress his urge to yawn in sympathy with her as he immediately took the third cup with the water. He drank it down as he tipped his head back, pretending that he was swallowing the pills with the water, and then as his head was coming back down after swallowing the water, he used his tongue to push the syrup and pills out and into the cup.

Alex immediately crumpled the paper cup with the Thorazine and pills in it as he had done with the previous two and tossed it in the wastebasket.

“Have a good night, Alex,” the nurse said as she hurried away.

Alex sat in the dimly lit room, unable to summon joy, exhilaration, or triumph.

But he knew that when the drugs in his system began to wear off, he would feel all of those delicious things and much more.

33

BY THE NEX MORNING, Alex was noticeably more alert. While not entirely out from under the numbing influence of the drugs, he did feel as if he was coming out of a long, dark sleep. He knew it would take more time for the drugs to get out of his system. Also, even though he had spit out the last dose of Thorazine, it wasn’t possible to spit out one hundred percent of it. At least he’d been able to completely eliminate the pills.

The first thing he did when he woke was to take the cup from the night before, the one with the medications in it, and crumple it up inside a paper napkin just to make sure that there was no chance the people who collected the trash would see any syrup or pills and alert the staff.

If anyone found out that he wasn’t being controlled by the drugs, they would put him in physical restraints. These people were only posing as medical professionals, after all. They were hardly interested in his well-being. He didn’t know how many of the staff were involved in the scheme, so he dared not trust any of them. For all he knew, the whole place could be in on it.

When a nurse came in with his morning dose of medications, Alex acted the same as he had been acting for days — lethargic, uninterested, sleepy — and repeated his trick of spitting the Thorazine and the pills into the water cup and throwing it away.

Almost immediately after the nurse left, Dr. Hoffmann strolled briskly into the room. Alex concentrated on sitting still and staring. He finally looked up, blinking slowly as he met the doctor’s gaze.

“How are we doing this morning, Alex?”

“Fine.”

“That’s good to hear,” he said as he pulled the blood-pressure cuff from a pocket.

He wrapped the cuff around Alex’s arm and pumped up the bulb, then read the dial as he let air out. When finished, he pulled the stethoscope from his ears.

“Just as I promised, you’re getting acclimated to the medication.” He wrote on his chart as he talked. “Your blood pressure is coming back up. It’s a little surprising, but everyone reacts differently. You’re young and strong, so your body is handling it well.”

Alex stared without answering.

“Feeling any more alert?”

“A little,” Alex said, trying to sound distant.

The doctor’s face took on a serious set. “Good, because it’s about time for you to start answering questions. Some people are going to be arriving soon for a visit, and they’re going to want to talk to you.”

“All right,” Alex said as if he didn’t care.

“These people think it’s time for answers. They aren’t going to be as indulgent as we’ve been in the past.”

Alex let his gaze wander to the floor. “All right.”

“You had better be prepared to give them those answers or things are going to became rather unpleasant. Especially for other people. You don’t want that, now, do you?”

“Please,” Alex mumbled, “don’t hurt my mother.”

Dr. Hoffmann stood, sliding his pen into his breast pocket. “That’s going to be up to you, Alex. If you don’t want people hurt, then the easiest thing to do is to simply answer their questions. Understand?”

Alex nodded.

“Good.” He started away, then turned back. He stood near the door frowning as he studied Alex’s face. Alex stared off without blinking, without moving.

“I’ll see you soon,” he said at last.

Alex nodded. The doctor tapped his palm against the doorframe for a moment as he watched Alex, and then he was gone.

Once alone, with the door closed, Alex paced. It felt good to pace, to move his muscles. He also hoped pacing would help to work more of the drugs out of his system.

Until he could figure out what to do he needed to avoid raising suspicions, so when it was time for lunch he shuffled down to the sunroom with the other patients. He ate about half of the beef-and-noodle casserole even though he was too excited at being able to think to be hungry. Afterward, he stayed in the sunroom for a couple of hours, sitting and staring and keeping up appearances as he kept an eye on the staff, the whole while trying to come up with a plan.

As he sat pretending to be in a stupor, he let anger course through him. It felt good to be able to feel angry at the people doing this, to embrace that rage and focus it.

He was worried about his mother, but he was far more worried about Jax. She was the one from another world, so she was the one in the greatest danger. She had said that she recognized people from her world, like Sedrick Vendis, and Yuri, the passenger in the plumbing truck that had almost run them down. It was likely that some of these people would recognize her. Icy dread washed through him at the thought of what they might do to her.

Alex returned to his room, where he paced some more as he ached with worry for Jax. He missed her. He missed being with her, talking to her, seeing her smile. He wanted her safe. He felt responsible because she wasn’t. He’d brought her to the hospital and right into a trap.

He returned to the sunroom when a woman from the cafeteria told him it was time for dinner, and after dinner waited in his room for the nurse to bring his evening medication. As before, he sat with only the reading light on and when she came in he repeated his trick of disposing of the medication.

Not more than an hour later, when he was thinking that maybe he should go to bed so that no one would be suspicious, Henry showed up.

“How you doing, Alex? Doc says that he told you about meeting some new people.”

Alex only nodded.

“Well, don’t just sit there staring, let’s go.”

Alex hadn’t been expecting it to be this soon. He hadn’t come up with a plan yet. He blinked slowly up at Henry. “What?”

Henry huffed in irritation and marched over to haul Alex up out of his chair. “Come on. People are waiting.”

Alex followed behind the orderly, shuffling along in imitation of the way he had walked when under the influence of the drugs. He had to force himself to go slow. Henry whistled to himself as he led Alex down the hall and through the nurses’ station.

It was late, long after visiting hours, so there were fewer people on duty. Several of them talked about charts and changes to medication orders, paying little attention to Henry and his charge. They were cooking something on a hot plate sitting on a small counter at the head of the aisles with the charts. It smelled good, like chicken soup.

Alex was puzzled as to where Henry was taking him. He did his best to make it a slow journey. Rather than go into any of the patient rooms, or to the sunroom, Henry surprised him by turning him in to the women’s bathroom.

Alex couldn’t imagine what was going on, but he had to play along, not ask questions, and act uninterested. His only safety was in everyone thinking he was drugged. The bathroom looked almost identical to the one on the men’s side, only reversed. They passed the row of sinks and empty stalls. The place was deserted. At the back of the room Henry pulled out his keys and unlocked the door leading to the showers.

Alex could see that inside the entrance area it looked just like the men’s side, with benches bolted to the wall. The entire entrance was done in white tiles. The grout was old and discolored. Pipes, covered in what looked like dozens of layers of white paint, filled one corner from floor to ceiling. The showers were around a corner and Alex couldn’t see them.

Henry shoved him through the doorway. Dr. Hoffmann was waiting in the entrance area. There were a couple of other men there as well, orderlies, and Alice, the nurse.

A man came out from around the corner. He was bigger than the doctor, about Alex’s size. He wore tan slacks and a beige shirt with a vertical blue stripe down the left side.

He had the eyes of a predator. He moved like one as well.

The hair on the back of Alex’s neck stiffened. He knew who the man was from the description Mr. Martin, the gallery owner, had given. It was the man who had bought six of Alex’s paintings and then defaced them. Jax had also told him about this man.

He was Sedrick Vendis, right-hand man to Radell Cain.

“This him?” Vendis asked.

Henry nodded. “Alexander Rahl.”

Sedrick Vendis glided close, until he stood almost toe-to-toe with Alex. He studied Alex’s face before gazing into his eyes. Alex didn’t like how close the man was standing. It was a violation of physical space intended to challenge and intimidate. He forced himself to stay still and act numb.

Alex knew that, being this close, he could probably kill the man before anyone would be able to react. He gave serious consideration to doing so. The rage within wanted him to act.

But if he did, it wouldn’t help Jax. It was the wrong time and place. It would gain him nothing in the bigger picture. He had to use his head. At least now his mind was working.

He blinked slowly, keeping his eyes out of focus as he stared at nothing, trying to look completely passive.

“Tell me about the gateway,” Vendis said in a quiet tone of undiluted threat.

Alex shrugged, but didn’t answer.

Vendis smiled. It was as wicked a smile as Alex had ever seen.

“I’m not here to play games, as you will soon learn,” Vendis said, just as quietly, just as menacingly. “Come with me. I have something to show you.”

“All right,” Alex said in a slur.

He shuffled along behind Vendis, the rest of the people following behind Alex.

As he rounded the corner, the long row of showerheads sticking from the white tile wall came into view. Just like the men’s shower, there were no partitions. The showers were in one long, open room with a drain beneath each showerhead.

Alex went numb with dread.

About in the middle of the row, Jax, blindfolded, her hands bound together, was hanging by her wrists from one of the shower pipes projecting from the wall. She had to stretch in order for her tiptoes to reach the floor.

She was naked.

34

STANDING NEXT TO JAX was a man Alex instantly recognized. He was the burly passenger from the Jolly Roger Plumbing truck that had almost run over Jax the first time Alex had seen her. He was still wearing the same dark, dirty work clothes.

Jax’s clothes, the clothes she and Alex had bought together, lay where they had been carelessly tossed to the side as they’d stripped her.

The bearded man’s grin displayed crooked, yellow teeth. His dark eyes remained fixed on Alex, giving him a meaningful look while putting an arm around Jax’s waist in a familiar manner. She flinched slightly at his touch. In her drugged state she probably wouldn’t be able to understand it all, or to care a great deal.

“Glad you finally made it for the show,” the pirate said as he reached over with his other grimy hand and rubbed Jax’s bare belly. “We didn’t want to start in on this fine bitch until you was here.”

Alex could see Jax’s muscles tense at the man’s rough touch. She held her breath.

Alex put all his effort into keeping the rage off his face. It was a monumental task. More than anything, he wanted to kill everyone in the room and get Jax free. Most of all, though, he wanted to get his hands on the man who had his on Jax.

He knew, though, that if he did the wrong thing Jax was going to pay the price. He had stopped taking the drugs so that he would be able to think. That was what he had to do. As Ben had always said, it was his mind that was the real weapon.

“Now,” Vendis said, “I want you to tell me all about the gateway.”

Alex didn’t reply. He simply blinked dumbly, as if he wasn’t sure what they wanted him to say.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Vendis said in mock apology, gesturing to the filthy man with his arm tightly around Jax’s waist. “I forgot to introduce you. This fellow here is Yuri. As it so happens, Yuri knows this young lady. In fact, she killed his brother. Isn’t that right, Yuri?”

The look on Yuri’s face darkened. “Sure is. But I’m about to settle the score.”

“As you can see,” Vendis said, “Yuri has a rather unsympathetic attitude toward the young lady’s predicament. That’s why I invited him to come along. Men with grudges tend to be much more focused on getting revenge.”

Alex judged that he and Jax would have little chance to get away as long as she was so heavily drugged. She wouldn’t be able to help him and she wouldn’t be able to run. Trying to carry her and fight off pursuers at the same time would never work. He needed her at least partially alert in order to change the odds enough that they would have any real chance.

“All right,” Alex said in a slur. “Can I go now?”

“I didn’t come here to have you play games,” Vendis snapped.

“Don’t act stupid with me. We’re finished with all this nonsense of gentle pretense to coax answers forth. I’ve put up with games and the promises of results for long enough!

“You are going to tell me what I want to know, or else Yuri here is going to start cutting on her. Nothing fatal, you understand, but definitely disfiguring and, more importantly, agonizing. If you don’t want to cooperate and tell me about the gateway, I can tell you from experience that she is going to quickly become a rather gruesome, bloody sight.”

Alex shrugged. “All right.”

Vendis glowered. “What do you mean, ‘All right’?”

“Go ahead. Cut her up.”

A curious smile came to Vendis’s face. “You want me to start cutting her up?”

“If you want to,” Alex said.

When the man’s frown returned, Alex went on, slurring his words slightly. “She’s drugged. She won’t feel it. I know. I’m drugged the same way and I don’t really feel much of anything or care. If you kill her, you will be doing us a favor.”

“A favor?” The man looked truly puzzled. “What favor?”

Alex shrugged. “She will die without really suffering. She won’t feel it much or care. It will all be over.”

Vendis stepped closer. His voice became louder. “You’re making no sense.”

“I only know part of what you want. She knows the other part. Without the half she knows about the gateway, my half is of no use. If you kill her you will be doing us both a favor because you will fail to get what you want from this world and I won’t even have to feel sad about her death because, with the drugs, I can’t feel sad.

“The way she’s drugged, she won’t really feel it when you cut her, so go ahead. Cut her, let her bleed out and die. Then it will all be over and done with and you won’t get any of what you want.”

“You both will die, though. Die an agonizing death.”

Alex blinked slowly. He wavered a little on his feet for effect. “If we are to die a horrible death, what better way? This drugged up, neither of us will really feel it or care. That will be the end of it. Finished.”

Vendis turned to the doctor. “Do these potions you gave them do as he says?”

The doctor spread his hands. “The drugs are how we control them. It keeps them in a stupor.”

“And she won’t feel it if we cut her? He won’t care?”

“Well, not exactly. She’ll feel it.” The man cleared his throat. “But perhaps. . not as much as you would like. It would be only a distant pain. She may cry out a little, but it’s as he says. She really won’t be that aware of the pain, or care. Being on the same drugs, he can’t feel any anger or sadness about it. The drugs’ actual purpose, after all, is to prevent patients from feeling either hostility or emotional distress.”

Vendis ground his teeth before turning away from the doctor. He stalked to Jax. Yuri backed away.

Vendis lifted the blindfold to peer into Jax’s eyes. They were half closed. She didn’t look like she was much aware of anything. Alex knew only too well how out of touch she was with what was going on.

The thought crossed his mind that if what he was doing didn’t work, then it probably was just as well that she was drugged. He ached for her and what she was going through. He wanted nothing more than to break the necks of these people, but he had to mask his anger if he was to have a chance to save her.

Vendis reached out then, and viciously twisted her left nipple. She should have cried out. She didn’t flinch or try to pull away. She only hunched her back a little in a dull response to the pain. No more than a whisper of a moan came from her lips. Her glassy eyes showed virtually no reaction.

Vendis pulled the blindfold back down. He turned to see Alex staring off, his eyes out of focus, not reacting. He let out an angry breath.

“You are being paid for results,” Vendis growled at the doctor. “This is hardly producing results.”

The doctor shrugged apologetically. “Well, I don’t think that this kind of approach can be expected to be compatible with—”

“If you stop these potions you’re giving her,” Vendis cut in, “how long until she will be fully awake?”

“Within twenty-four hours she would be largely back to herself,” Dr. Hoffmann said. “But I would respectfully advise that we not do that. Need I remind you how dangerous she is?”

“I don’t need reminders of anything from the likes of you.”

The doctor swallowed at the look in Vendis’s eyes. “Of course not. I only meant to point out. .” When he saw that his attempt at an explanation was only darkening the glower on Vendis’s face, he changed his approach. “With your approval, I could cut the dose enough so that she will be aware, yet still be controllable. I think we can strike a balance that will work to our advantage.”

“Will she be awake enough to scream her lungs out when Yuri starts cutting her?”

“Absolutely. If we reduce the dose enough, absolutely.” The doctor fiddled with a button on his white coat. “I can adjust the dose to still take some of the fight out of her, but leave her awake and aware enough to feel the pain and scream when you cut her.”

The smile returned to Vendis’s face. “Good. How long?”

The doctor looked relieved to have been able to redeem himself. “She should be the way you want her by tomorrow night at this time.” He gestured to Alex. “What about him?”

Vendis turned to study Alex’s face a moment. “If he is left like this, are you sure that he won’t care when she screams?”

The doctor scratched his temple, then answered reluctantly. “He’s not bluffing. With as much Thorazine as we’re giving him he can’t bluff. With as much as we’re giving him he doesn’t have the ability to care about anything. I believe he really would rather we kill them both right now while he’s drugged. He knows it would be an easy way to go compared to what’s in store for them. Maybe it would be best if I also cut back on his Thorazine. Maybe that would be a good idea.”

Vendis’s glare slid from Alex to the doctor. “Maybe it would.”

“The drugs will be worn off for your purposes by tomorrow night,” the doctor assured him. “We’ll wait for your return, then.”

“I have matters I must attend to.” Vendis’s gaze shifted to the others. “See to this. Any of you knows how to cause agony and make it last until you get what you want. I don’t need to waste my time standing around while a couple of troublesome people bleed and scream and cry for mercy. I only need the information once they give it up.”

Everyone except Alex bowed.

Vendis gestured to the doctor. “Show me out.”

After they had gone, everyone let out a sigh of relief.

“Well,” Alice said, “I guess we’ll have to wait and do this tomorrow night.”

Henry gestured to her and the two orderlies. “You three get him back to his room.” He grinned as he glanced back at Jax hanging naked from the showerhead. “Yuri and I will take good care of her tonight.”

Alex’s knees went weak.

One of the orderlies seized Alex’s arm, turning him around. “Let’s go.”

Alex’s mind raced. He had to do something to buy Jax time. He dug in his heels and looked back over his shoulder.

“I know that tomorrow, once you reduce our drugs, you’ll be able to get us both to talk. I also know that after you get what you want you’ll kill me. When I’m dead I won’t be able to know or care about anything anymore.

“But if either of you touches her tonight, before I’m dead, then once I’m off the drugs I will care and I will have plenty of reason not to talk. If you touch her, I swear on my life you will be trying to explain to Vendis why you failed to get anything from me.”

“Well, well,” Alice said. “I think we just found out how much he really cares for her. He’s going to make this easy for us.”

Yuri’s eyes glinted with menace. “And if he cares for her so much, once off the drugs we won’t have to disfigure her too much before he’s eager to tell us everything he knows.” He glanced over at Henry. “Then we can have her, and we won’t have to be concerned about what damage we might do. Besides, the way she is right now it wouldn’t be much better than screwing a corpse. It would be a lot more satisfying if she was awake and kicking.”

At first displeased, Henry considered a moment. “I guess you may be right. Alice, I don’t trust our patient, here. And I don’t trust a nervous doctor to adjust the dose correctly. He’s worried about his own neck but it’s our necks on the line. We take orders from His Excellency, not a doctor from this world. You make sure that Alex gets enough so that he can’t fight, but not so much that he won’t care about her screams.”

Alice coldly appraised Alex. “I would have to agree with you about the doctor.” She smiled crookedly. “I’ll make sure that my patient is able to be terrified, but not able to fight back. In the meantime, if you two do anything to ruin her so that she can’t talk, or he won’t, I’ll have you both hanging there in her place when Vendis returns. Got it?”

Henry made a sour face. “Got it.”

Yuri folded his arms and finally nodded.

She shoved Alex. “Let’s go.”

35

THE NEXT MORNING,after an endlessly long, sleepless night of staring up at the ceiling in the dark, Alex got dressed and sat on the edge of his bed to wait. All he could think about was Jax hanging there, alone, no one caring how much agony she was in. Alex was the only one who cared, and he couldn’t do anything about it. Not yet, anyway.

Not long after he’d gotten dressed, Henry showed up. The big man looked to be in a foul mood. It became obvious just how bad his mood was when he pulled Alex to his feet and began punching him in the abdomen. Henry apparently didn’t want marks that would be obvious. Maybe the others had told him not to damage their prize.

Alex could do nothing but take it. He knew that such a beating to the abdomen could cause dangerous injuries. He also knew that he couldn’t fight back if he was to keep Henry believing that he was drugged. They had to believe that, if he was to have a chance to help Jax.

This time, though, as Henry slugged him, Alex didn’t have the benefit of drugs to dull the pain. This time it hurt in earnest and left him gasping on the floor. He fought back the urge to vomit. For a time as he lay on the floor convulsing in agony, Alex was hating life.

“You know, Alex,” Henry said as he stood with his fists at his sides, towering over Alex, catching his breath, “you would think that we would be even by now. But I have to tell you, when I woke up this morning and my nose was bleeding again, I realized that we’re not even close to being even.”

The big man unexpectedly kicked Alex in the side of the head. It caused Alex to bite the inside of his cheek. He swallowed the coppery taste of blood. He struggled to stay conscious, and to stay quiet, to act thoroughly sedated.

“Since I have to wait to screw the bitch, I figure you owe me even more. One way or another you two are going to end up talking up a storm for me.”

Henry squatted down to be close when he delivered the rest of the threat. “Tell you what else. Your day is going to end badly. I’m going to tie a tourniquet here, and here.” Henry used a finger to mark a place on each of Alex’s upper arms. “Then I’m going to cut off your arms, right here. Then I’m going to do the same things to your legs. The tourniquets will keep you from losing so much blood that you miss the show.

“You’re going to tell us everything you know or we’ll be doing even worse things to your lady. And let me tell you, when it comes to using a knife, Yuri is a real artist. Once he gets started he gets inspired and you just can’t stop the man. I think he’s kind of sick in the ways he enjoys hurting women, but maybe that’s just me. You’re going to be eager to tell me everything you know to keep Yuri from getting started on her.”

Alex lay curled up on the floor gripped by pain and rage. He pretended to be gripped by neither.

Henry stood. “Alice will be in with your morning medication any time now. Last night’s dose will be wearing off by tonight, and this morning’s dose is being reduced. You’ll be clearheaded enough to hear Jax screaming and begging you to tell us what we want to know.”

Even if he wanted to, Alex couldn’t tell them what they wanted to know. He didn’t know what a gateway was or anything about it. He didn’t think, though, that they were going to believe that.

“You understand?” Henry demanded.

Alex, curled up on the floor holding his arms across the cramping pain in his middle, could only nod.

Henry seized Alex’s shirt and hauled him to his feet, then heaved him into the chair. “You sit there and have a nice rest. Alice will be in with your medication in a bit. Got that?”

Alex nodded as if he didn’t care.

Henry paused at the door to look back and smile. “You just got to love a world that comes up with Thorazine. Just think, I can pound the crap out of you and the Thorazine keeps you helpless to lift a finger to defend yourself. What a great world.”

After Henry left, Alex put his throbbing head in his hands, recovering, trying to clear his vision from the brutal kick. His neck muscles hurt so much that he could hardly move his head.

He let the anger rage through him. He held his hand out to see his fingers trembling. He knew that he needed to get them under control or someone might get suspicious.

He wanted the day to be over. He wanted to see Jax. She would still be drugged, but not nearly as much. He needed her to be more alert if he was to have a chance of helping her.

He hated to see her doped up with Thorazine and whatever else was in the pills. He didn’t know if they would stop the pills. Since his mother was on Thorazine he’d long ago asked questions about them. Thorazine, he had learned, greatly amplified the effect of whatever pills were taken with it.

Alex leaned back in the chair and drew deep, even breaths, trying to calm himself as he waited for his morning medications to arrive.

One more dose of drugs to dodge.

He was pretty sure that they wouldn’t bother with the evening dose, since the morning dose wouldn’t be worn off that soon and they surely intended to kill him that night after they got the information they wanted.

Except Alex didn’t have any information to give them. He didn’t know anything except that Jax had figured out what they were after. She hadn’t had time to tell him what that was.

Still, even that much information was dangerous to them both. That information in and of itself might be all they needed. If Alex couldn’t find a way to stop them, they would be able to get him to reveal that Jax knew what they were looking for, and then torture her to get her to tell them everything she knew. Alex’s grandfather had told him once that everyone had a breaking point and everyone would eventually talk under torture.

These people were obviously experienced at torture. They knew what they were doing. He couldn’t expect either Jax or himself to be able to hold out forever.

Alex knew that he couldn’t let it go that far. He had no option but to try to do something before it got to that point. He’d been awake most of the night trying to come up with something, but it was next to impossible to plan when he didn’t know exactly what it was that they were going to do. If they came to get him and first bound his hands or put him in a straitjacket before taking him to Jax, it would be all over. He needed them to believe he was drugged enough that he couldn’t fight them. He needed to keep up the act and put them at ease.

If they tried to restrain him, though, he would have no choice but to act.

If he had to fight them in his room first, he didn’t know how in the world he was going to get all the way across the ninth floor of Mother of Roses. He couldn’t break down the heavy doors. They were designed to keep mental patients from breaking them down.

If he could get keys he could unlock the doors, but not all the staff carried keys. Even if he managed to get his hands on a set of keys, he couldn’t simply stroll through so many locked doors, or through the nurses’ station, without being seen and an alarm being raised.

His head spun as he tried to think through the different scenarios. His thinking was beginning to become mired in panic.

Just then the door swung open. It was his morning medications. Except that this time it was Alice who marched in with a med tray. Alex sat limp, staring off at nothing.

Alice glared down at him a moment, then lowered the tray with the three cups. “Time for your medications. Don’t give me any grief. I have things to do, other patients waiting for my caring touch, so hurry it up.”

Alex nodded and took the cup with the Thorazine. He trapped the syrupy liquid in his mouth under his tongue as before, then added the pills to it. He spit the whole thing into the water cup after drinking down the water. He crushed the cup and threw it in the wastebasket with the first two.

Alice had watched him the whole time. Her gaze moved to the wastebasket. She stood for a moment, then tossed the tray on the bed and bent to retrieve the larger of the three cups, the one that had held the water and now contained the discarded drugs.

She looked in the cup and then angrily threw it in his lap.

“Nice try. You have ten seconds to drink it all down or I’m going to go get a couple of orderlies and we’re going to put you in a straitjacket.”

Alex blinked as he had when he’d been heavily drugged. “But I’ll need water to swallow this.”

“Clock’s ticking, Alex.”

He caught a glimpse of her other hand behind her back. She had a syringe.

Alex exploded out of the chair.

A brief, clipped cry of surprise was all that made it out before he broke her jaw.

He immediately grabbed her throat with both hands. He saw her hand with the syringe come up. He kept hold of her throat with one hand and with the other seized her hand and bent it downward until her wrist snapped. The syringe dropped to the floor, bouncing several times.

Alice couldn’t cry for help, not only because he was crushing her windpipe, but because her jaw was broken and hanging crookedly. Blood ran in strings from the side of her mouth, leaving a bright red stain that spread across the shoulder of her stark white dress.

Her back arched as she tried to get away, but Alex had her throat in a death grip. She beat her good fist against him to no effect as he took her to her knees. All the while she tried to lean back away from him.

Alex was lost in a life-or-death rage. He could see as well as feel his thumbs crushing her throat closed. He put every fiber of his strength into squeezing harder yet. He gritted his teeth, letting out a low growl with the effort.

Alice’s eyes bulged. She frantically swung her arm, trying to beat him back. Alex was immune to her impotent blows. She began turning blue. Her tongue swelled from her mouth as she desperately tried to gasp a breath, but it was impossible.

Alex followed her to the ground, straddling her as he choked the life out of her. He held her head against the floor, using his weight to help crush her throat. Her arms flailed weakly. Her mouth moved as if she was trying to say something, but her distended tongue prevented her from even mouthing words for which there was no air.

Alex let his anger rage at this woman who intended to be a party to torturing Jax. He wanted this woman dead. He wanted them all dead.

Alex had for so long been holding back his rage, his need to strike out and fight back, that it felt exhilarating to finally be able to let that fury loose.

He didn’t know how long she had been dead before he even realized it.

He finally sat back on his heels, catching his breath. With the back of his wrist he wiped sweat from his brow.

She was purple. Her eyes were wide open, staring at nothing. Her tongue bulged from her mouth, lying over to the side. Saliva and blood trickled out.

Alex raked his fingers back though his hair. He thought he might be sick.

He finally got up off the corpse. He saw the syringe and picked it up. The cap was missing. He realized that she must have popped it off with a thumb. He cast about and finally found the cap under the bed. He replaced it and put the syringe in his pocket.

In the eerie silence, the bed squeaked as Alex leaned back against it. He stared at the dead woman sprawled in the middle of the floor.

He’d had no choice, of course, but this complicated things. He had to figure out what he was going to do with her now. He considered stuffing her in the wardrobe, but when he opened the door to check its size, he realized that there was no way she would fit. He could push her under the bed, but the bedcovers didn’t hang down far enough to hide anything under such a high hospital bed.

He paced, trying to think. Soon, someone was going to come in and they would see her. If nothing else they would come that night to get him and take him over to their private torture session in the women’s shower.

He considered putting Alice against the wall, behind where the door opened, cleaning up the mess, and then going down to the sunroom to wait. It would probably be Henry who came looking for him. If Alex only left on the reading lamp over the bed, Henry might pop his head in, not see Alex, and go to the sunroom.

He realized that that was a lousy plan. Any number of things were likely to go wrong. People were soon going to wonder where Alice was and start searching for her. The orderlies were quick to pick up on such things. Some of the patients could be dangerous and they didn’t allow staff to go unaccounted for. They knew that she was doing med rounds. It was probably only a matter of minutes before they came looking for her to make sure she was all right.

Alex paced, frantically trying to think of what he could do, glancing over at the corpse every time he turned to pace in the other direction. He needed to somehow make Alice disappear.

He stopped suddenly and stared down at the woman. She was a mess. Blood from when he had struck her and broken her jaw lay in a long string halfway across the floor. Alice had lost control of herself as he had strangled her. There was a spreading puddle of urine under her sprawled legs.

He needed her to disappear.

Alex wondered if it was possible.

He could try. At this point he had no other ideas and nothing to lose.

He ran to the bed. It was old and squeaked whenever someone leaned against it. When things squeaked like that it usually meant that screws had worked loose. He ran his fingers along the metal bars and quickly found a self-tapping metal screw sticking up at the end of the side rail. He used his thumb and the side of his first finger to loosen it. He gritted his teeth with the effort. Had he not been so frantic he might not have been able to unscrew it with his bare hands.

The screw wasn’t long — certainly not long enough to be an effective weapon — but it had a relatively sharp point and was long enough for his purpose. He hurried over to Alice and squatted down beside her purple face.

He held the screw over the dead woman’s forehead as he thought. He closed his eyes as he worked to remember. He had seen Jax activate a lifeline several times. The first time it had been shocking to see her carving in Bethany’s forehead. Such surprise helped indelibly fix the picture in his mind.

More than that, though, he was an artist. Designs stuck in his head. He remembered forms, spatial relationships. He clearly recalled that every time Jax had drawn the design it looked the same. He was pretty sure that he remembered the way Jax had cut that design into foreheads. He let himself see it in his mind.

He could hear orderlies talking as they walked along the hallway outside his room. He had no choice but to try.

With the point of the screw Alex started carving the lines into Alice’s forehead. He made the arc that Jax had done first, then added two angled lines on the right and one on the left. He cut each line in turn, concentrating on the mental picture he had of the lines in Bethany’s forehead, making them precisely the same angles he remembered.

Alex lost himself in the task, just as he lost himself in painting. He made each stroke with confidence, the way Jax had. The point of the screw dragged against bone as he pulled it across the skin of Alice’s forehead. He finished with the pattern that overlaid the beginning arc, just as Jax had done.

Alex sat back on his heels, holding the screw in his fingers, looking at the thing he had drawn. Blood covered his fingers and ran down his wrist.

Unexpectedly, Alice ceased to be there. She didn’t become transparent and slowly fade away like in a ghost movie. It didn’t look like some spooky special effect. There was no drama to it. She was there one moment, and the next instant she simply wasn’t.

Alex blinked in astonishment. He looked around. The blood across the floor was gone. The puddle of urine was gone. He looked at his bloody fingers holding the screw. There was no blood. He sat still for a moment, taking it in.

He had just drawn a spell and made someone disappear before his very eyes. He had done it. It was so astonishing, and such a huge relief, that Alex laughed.

He heard orderlies coming down the hall. By their brief, muffled words, he could tell that they were putting their head into each room along the way, asking if anyone had seen Alice.

Alex scrambled to his chair and sat, working up a dazed look. He stared ahead, waiting for the door to open.

That was when he saw the med tray on the bed.

Alex jumped up and snatched the tray. He shoved it under the mattress. He wiped his sweaty hands on his thighs as he looked around the room. Everything looked normal. Nothing looked out of place.

He plopped down in the chair, letting his hands lie limp at his sides.

The door opened partway as an orderly leaned halfway in and glanced around the room. “Have you seen Nurse Alice?”

Alex gave the man a stuporous look. “She gave me my medicine and left.”

The orderly nodded and hurried away. When the door shut, Alex let out a sigh of relief.

Now he had to wait for night, when they would come to get him. They would expect him to be more awake but they would also believe he would still be sufficiently sedated that they could torture answers out of him and he wouldn’t fight back.

Alex allowed himself a smile of triumph for this much of it. The next part would be vastly more difficult, and he didn’t know if he would succeed, but he had finally taken back control of his life.

As he sat waiting, he worried about Jax, hoping she could hold out. He couldn’t fail. The price of failure was unacceptable.

He had promised her that as long as he could help it, he wasn’t going to allow them to hurt her. He meant it.

36

LONG AFTER DARK ALEX WAS STILL WAITING. He worried that they might have hatched some new plan. A thousand different terrors ran through his mind as he waited. As the night wore on, there might have hatched some new plan. A thousand different terrors ran through his mind as he waited. As the night wore on, there was nothing he could do but wait. He had no way to get to Jax on his own.

Henry and Dr. Hoffmann finally showed up long after lights-out. The doctor was without his usual stethoscope, although he was wearing his white coat. Henry, looking smug — as smug as he could look with bandages covering his nose — waited back near the door.

Before the door had closed, Alex had seen two more orderlies fold their arms and take up posts just outside. They apparently were going to be ready if his reduced medication had rendered him more alert than they expected. They expected him to be at least aware enough to care what happened to him and Jax, but rather slow and submissive. Alex wanted them to see what they expected to see, so that was the part he played.

He rose from his chair as the doctor approached, trying to do it in a way that would look dull and a little awkward.

“Alice gave you your medication this morning?” the doctor asked as he smoothed thin strands of hair over his bald patch.

“Yes.” Alex gestured to the wastebasket. “I threw the cups away after I took the medication.”

The doctor glanced toward the trash. Alex didn’t think that the man would actually go through the trash and inspect the discarded paper cups, and fortunately he didn’t. He instead looked back at Alex’s eyes.

“Throughout this entire thing I’ve tried to do this without people having to get hurt. I believe that such methods are the best way of actually getting the truth. Torture is a poor way to get good information. It isn’t reliable. People being tortured will say anything they think the questioner wants to hear. People being tortured will confess to witchcraft if that’s what is expected. But whether I like it or not, the time for trying to find answers my way is past.”

He pressed his lips tight for a moment. “Take my advice, Alex. Answer their questions.”

“Did they touch her?”

The doctor glanced back over his shoulder at the big orderly waiting by the door. “No. But she’s been hanging there since last night. The drugs are wearing off and she’s coming around, but that may only be making it worse for her. Hanging by your arms like that is dangerous in and of itself. She’s having trouble breathing.”

Alex’s insides roiled. He remembered Jax telling him about how Sedrick Vendis liked to hang people up by their arms and how it slowly and painfully suffocated them. He was so angry that it was making him dizzy. Rage strained to be let loose.

Instead, he kept quiet as he waited. He knew that the doctor was working up to something.

“I have a deal to offer you, Alex.”

Alex frowned a little. “What kind of deal?”

“If you cooperate and tell us everything we want to know, right now, right up front, I’ll see if I can’t get them to let me give you both an overdose.”

“An overdose? You mean to kill us?”

Dr. Hoffmann nodded as he looked into Alex’s eyes. “One way or another, after you both give up what you know, you’re both going to die. They’re pretty adamant about wanting you dead and being rid of the Rahl line — after they get what they need from you, of course — but they’re especially eager to waste Jax.”

“Do they know you’re making such an offer?”

“No,” he admitted. “But if you cooperate and tell me everything, I’ll see if I can’t talk them into letting me give you each an injection. They want the information, and they want you both dead. Give me the information without having to resort to torture and I can make it a peaceful death for both of you. You’ll just go to sleep and never wake up.”

Alex knew that Vendis, Yuri, and Henry would never go for such a deal. They were looking forward to what was coming and they had well-founded confidence that they would get all the information they wanted in their own way.

“You’re in the wrong line of medicine, Dr. Hoffmann. You should have become a veterinarian.”

The doctor frowned. “Why do you say that?”

“Because veterinarians get paid for performing euthanasia. When you do that to people it’s called murder. Murder is punishable by death.”

A small, cruel smile touched the corners of his mouth. “But if you don’t let me help you, I won’t be committing murder — they will.”

Alex tried to act a little slow in his response, as if he had to work to talk. “The nurses’ station is filled with records. You’ve no doubt been billing the state for care while trying to extract information from people. After all, you have to justify the patient count and all the drugs you’ve been using. I’m sure that you’ve been going through large quantities of controlled substances.

“Sooner or later when the state authorities audit the hospital’s drug records they’re going to discover that something strange has been going on here, that the numbers don’t match. They’re going to want to talk to your patients, but your patients, listed in those records, will be dead.

“By the way, what do you plan to do with the bodies? Are you experienced at disposing of dead people? How many deaths have you been party to, Doctor? What are you going to do if corpses of your patients are found? The authorities will certainly have a lot of questions for you.” Alex let him wonder how he would explain it, let him worry about all the evidence sitting there in those records that would tie him to murder.

The doctor glanced briefly in the direction of the nurses’ station, where the files were kept on shelves.

“They aren’t going to learn anything,” he finally said.

He didn’t sound confident. He sounded concerned.

“How much are they paying you to be a party to murder, Doctor? Or were you a killer before they ever came along? Did you become a psychiatrist to hide your need to kill? To hide your urges? Did you think that being a doctor to psychopaths would be the perfect cover for your own perverted needs?”

Dr. Hoffmann’s expression soured. “Have it your way. You can’t say I didn’t offer to help you out. Maybe if you give up the information quickly enough you’ll get lucky and they’ll cut your throat before they start in on Jax. I would have thought you would have taken the offer for her sake if not your own.”

Alex almost grabbed the man by the throat the way he had Alice. With the greatest of effort he restrained himself. He had to get to Jax. After what he had just heard about her condition, that was more important than ever.

“Let what they do to her be on your conscience, since that’s the choice you made for her.” The doctor gestured toward the door. “Let’s go.”

“Any ideas?” Henry asked as they approached.

“Alice must have gotten cold feet and taken off,” Dr. Hoffmann said.

He sounded annoyed and short-tempered. Alex knew that he had gotten to the man. He wanted him distracted and preoccupied.

“Just as well.” Henry’s face betrayed anything but worry for the woman. “She was too uppity for my taste. I often suspected that she was planted here to watch us. Maybe now that it’s being wrapped up she was recalled. We have more important things to worry about. Let’s go.”

Alex fell in behind Henry as they turned down the hall. The lights were mostly off, leaving the corridor to gloomy shadows. Two more orderlies that Alex hadn’t known were part of the scheme shadowed the doctor. He wondered if the whole place could be a front for their activities.

The nurses’ station was staffed by three nurses, all engaged in a light conversation with an orderly sitting at a desk to the side. Charts and a jumbled stack of files sat on the desk. When they saw the somber group enter their station on the way through, they made themselves busy.

The women’s ward on the ninth floor was just as dark as the men’s wing had been. The small group paused when Alex’s mother unexpectedly shuffled out of the bathroom. She was wearing pajamas and a pink robe that Alex had given her. She only briefly glanced in their direction before yawning and turning back toward her room. She had looked at Alex, along with the rest of the party, but he didn’t think she had recognized him.

When she had shuffled down the hall and turned in to her room without looking back, Henry shoved Alex into the women’s bathroom. It was better lit than the hall so that patients could use the bathroom in the night if they needed to. A sign saying “Out of Order” was taped to the shower door.

A nurse leaning against the wall unfolded her arms and looked down at her watch. “You’re early.”

“What difference does it make?” the doctor snapped.

She shrugged. “Just that Yuri isn’t here yet. I had Dwayne stay late to let Yuri in when he gets here.”

Dwayne was the security guard inside the back door Alex always used. As he waited, Alex stood slump-shouldered, trying to act passive. With the way the orderlies stood at ease, it seemed to be working. If only he could slow down his galloping heart.

Henry came forward, pulling out the keys attached to the reel on his belt. “We don’t need Yuri to get started.”

“What was Helen Rahl doing in here?” the doctor asked as Henry worked the lock.

“Taking a pee,” the nurse said.

As the doorway leading into the shower opened, Alex could see that only one light was on. The cavelike room beyond had a ghostly cast to it. He thought that it looked like a place where death itself waited.

His heart felt like it came up in his throat when he saw Jax still hanging there. In addition to the blindfold, she was now gagged with a cloth through her mouth and tied behind her head. She trembled slightly. It was clear that she was having a lot of trouble breathing. She had to push up on her toes as best she could to draw each ragged breath. Her arms shook with each effort.

Alex was so enraged that it was hard for him to focus on where everyone was around him. He reminded himself that he had to keep track of where everyone was or he could be blindsided. Surprises could be deadly. He had to take a measure of the situation and not make a reckless mistake. He couldn’t afford a mistake.

Jax couldn’t afford a mistake.

The nurse dragged a straight-backed wooden chair from the side. The chair’s feet stuttered across the tile floor, the sound echoing around in the shower. She set the chair in the center of the room, not far in front of Jax. Alex remembered seeing Jax’s clothes thrown to the side, but he didn’t remember seeing the chair before.

Henry, grinning with anticipation, pulled off the blindfold. Jax squinted and blinked at the sudden light, even though the light wasn’t bright. She took appraisal of everyone in the room. When she met Alex’s gaze there was a world of meaning, a shared understanding, in that silent connection.

Henry slid his hand down her belly and between her legs. “Getting eager for me, aren’t you?”

Alex thought the deadly glare Jax gave him should have backed him up a few steps, but it didn’t.

Henry, obviously enjoying his control over her, probed further as he used his other hand to pull the gag from her mouth. He let it hang around her neck. “Oh, sorry.” He chuckled. “I couldn’t hear you.”

“You’re already dead,” she told him. “You just don’t know it yet.”

Henry removed his hand from between her legs and put it over his heart in mock alarm. “Really? Don’t tell me, you intend to kill me?”

By the look in her eyes Alex could see that her rage easily matched his. She let that lethal look be her only answer.

“Did you find Alice?” the nurse asked, tiring of the game Henry was playing.

The doctor gestured irritably. “No one has seen her.”

“We looked everywhere,” Henry said as he turned his attention away from Jax, “and like the doc says, there’s no sign of her. She’s vanished.”

Jax’s gaze immediately sought Alex. He smiled the smallest bit in answer to the question in her eyes. A hint of a smile came to the corners of her mouth. In that smile he could see that she grasped that he’d had something to do with Alice’s disappearance.

But then she had to close her eyes with the effort of pulling herself up with her arms as she stretched on her tiptoes to get a breath. Alex could see how mightily she was struggling to fight back panic at not being able to breathe.

“Maybe she went back for some reason,” Henry suggested.

The others started speculating as to why Nurse Alice would have left without saying anything. It seemed to be common consensus that the woman typically did things without telling others what she was up to, so, as far as they were all concerned, it wasn’t entirely out of character.

No one was looking at Alex as he stood submissively. He wanted Jax to be ready. When her eyes turned to look at him again, he gave her a small wink. The smile grew and stayed on her lips as she returned the wink. He didn’t know if she grasped his full meaning or if she was merely heartened by the wink.

Losing interest in the talk about Alice, Henry pulled a folding knife from his pocket, letting everyone know that it was time to get on with it. Pressing on the thumb stud, he flicked his wrist and snapped open the blade. One of the other two orderlies did the same. Alex saw that the nurse had a syringe.

Henry used the point of his knife to back Alex up a few steps. “Have a seat.”

The nurse shoved the chair against the back of his legs. Alex flopped down in the chair. In his peripheral vision he tried to keep track of the syringe.

His level of alarm rose suddenly when the other orderly stepped up close behind, pressing against the chair to hold it in place. The orderly in front of him with the knife pulled a handful of zip ties from his pocket.

Alex realized what they intended to do.

37

HURRY UP AND SECURE HIM to the chair,” Henry said. “Thorazine or no Thorazine, I don’t want to have to worry about either of them being loose and getting difficult to handle when we start cutting.”

It appeared that they weren’t going to wait for Yuri to show up. While that was one less man to worry about, Alex knew that he had to remain aware that Yuri could show up at any moment. The nurse had said that they were early, though. Maybe Henry had decided to grab the glory, and Jax, for himself.

Alex kept an eye on the knife hand of the orderly in front of him. He knew that it was the hands that were the killers.

“Put your arms behind your back,” the big orderly growled as he seized Alex by the hair.

Alex knew that if they restrained him he would have no chance at all. Jax would have no chance.

He had run out of time and options.

He remembered lessons Ben had taught him from a young age, warnings that you couldn’t always choose the fight. The best thing to do was to avoid a fight, if you could. But the way that it all too often happened, his grandfather had told him, was that you would find yourself in a fight you didn’t want, outnumbered, and outmatched in weapons. That was because people would generally only attack if they felt confident enough in their superiority to feel sure of the outcome.

Alex recalled, as a boy just entering adulthood, being troubled by the warning. It didn’t seem fair. He asked Ben what he should do if he ever found himself in that situation. That question was the gateway to a whole new level of training.

Ben had told him that in such a case there wasn’t any such thing as fair. His only chance was speed, surprise, and violence of action.

Henry stepped up beside the orderly facing Alex. “Come on, let’s get this over with so we can get to her.”

As the man with the zip ties took a step forward, Alex pushed his shoulders back against the man behind him, as if trying to back away from the two knives in front of him. The man behind leaned in to keep Alex from sliding the chair back. That was exactly what Alex had wanted him to do.

There was no choice now. He had only one chance.

Alex pressed his shoulders against the man behind him. The man pushed back.

In an instant of exquisite, unrestrained rage, Alex put all his force into screaming a battle cry as he uncoiled, throwing a mighty kick squarely into Henry’s chest.

The blow was powerful enough to break ribs. It drove a grunt from the big man as it knocked him back.

The orderly in front of him was so surprised by the sudden burst of movement that he stood motionless for just an instant. An instant was all Alex needed. With Henry clear, in that instant when everyone else was frozen in shock, before the man behind could get a better hold on him, Alex bounded out of the chair and seized the wrist of the hand holding the knife.

With an iron grip on the man’s wrist, Alex dove under the arm and came up behind. As he sprang up he used all his momentum and strength to violently twist the arm up in a way it wasn’t meant to go. The shoulder popped out of its joint. Sinew separated with a sickening rip. Alex spun around, taking the arm with him. In less than a heartbeat the man’s shoulder was torn apart enough that the arm was useless.

Jax was the only one who had been ready for the sudden attack. At the same time as Alex was taking out the orderly with the knife, before Henry could recover, Jax threw her legs around him, pinning his arms to his side. She locked her ankles.

The man with the ruined arm let out a shriek of pain that echoed through the shower. Alex wrenched the knife from his dangling hand. The shock and pain — the violence of action — had immobilized the orderly. Without giving him any time to recover his wits, Alex immediately rammed the captured knife three times in rapid succession into the small of the man’s back, aiming for the kidney.

By the way the orderly’s mouth opened with a scream that couldn’t make its way out, the blade had found its mark. He twisted toward the floor, the torn arm hanging, the other reaching blindly back toward the fatal wound. On his way down, Alex ripped the knife across the man’s neck, severing arteries, to be sure of the kill.

At the same time the second orderly dove in toward Alex before the first had smacked face-first onto the floor. Alex dodged to the side. As the man missed, slipped on blood, and crashed headlong into the wall, Alex wheeled around, stretched up, and slashed the ties holding Jax to the shower pipe. Her hands sprang free.

She kept her legs tightly locked around Henry as she gripped his hair with both fists to keep from being thrown off his back. As exhausted as she had to be, Alex knew that she couldn’t last long. Fortunately, the violent kick, besides breaking ribs, had taken enough of the fight out of Henry that she was able to keep him immobilized — at least for the moment.

Alex knew, though, that the big man would recover his senses and wind all too soon and become a raging bull turning on her. Even so, Alex could do no more than free her before he had to turn to the man bounding back off the wall and coming at him, slashing with his knife.

Out of the corner of his eye, Alex spotted the doctor scrambling away toward the door.

Alex ducked under a wild swing, the knife missing his face by a good foot. As he sprang up, Alex punched a quick thrust of the blade in under the man’s armpit, hoping to hit the space between ribs. He felt the blade slide over bone on the way in. The orderly cried out and jerked back. Alex had wanted to puncture a lung, but as heavily muscled as the man was, he wasn’t sure the relatively short blade had gone deep enough.

It slowed the man for only a second. He came back at Alex, swinging with a vengeance. Alex had to dance back to avoid a half-dozen savage thrusts. He waited and picked his spot, and when the man thrust again, Alex stepped inside the attack and slashed down across the wrist. His blade cut cleanly through tendons drawn tight. Once parted, they snapped back up into the man’s forearm. His fingers instantly lost their ability to grasp. The severed veins gushed blood at a prodigious rate.

The knife clattered to the tile floor. As Alex went for it, the nurse swung the chair. Alex ducked. The chair shattered across his back. In the grip of rage as he was, the pain seemed distant.

The orderly used the opening to roll under Alex, knocking his feet out from under him. The nurse dove in with the syringe. Before she could stab it into him, Alex threw an arm around the orderly’s neck, getting him in a headlock that also served as an anchor point. He used the man’s weight to brace himself as he kicked the nurse’s hand before she could stick him. The blow broke her fingers. She let out a cry. The syringe went flying.

Alex had his hands full with the big orderly. It was like trying to hold on to a big, powerful, twisting, thrashing alligator. The injuries weren’t enough to put him out of commission; if anything they made him fight all the harder.

Alex seized his own wrist to lock his arm tight around the bull neck, applying pressure to the carotid arteries. At the same time he leaned back, pulling the man back over the top of a hip, arching his back to keep him off balance and under control, and to use the man’s weight to add pressure on his neck.

Above him, it was obvious that Henry was recovering. He twisted away from the grip of Jax’s legs. She landed on her back not far from Alex. Henry went for her. Jax kicked up into his groin. The blow staggered the angry orderly.

As Henry reflexively bent over from the pain, Jax snatched the keys on his belt. Alex couldn’t figure out what she intended to do with his keys, but he hoped she did something fast, or despite his obvious pain Henry would have her and start breaking her bones. He was big enough to break her neck with one meaty hand if he ever got it around her throat.

Jax scrambled away, staying just out of his reach. He called her every vile name in his vocabulary as he took swings, trying to grab her.

Jax pulled the keys out, gathering up the wire hand over hand as it unspooled, turning Henry, keeping him off balance. When it reached the end she scooped up a couple of broken chair legs. In a flash she twisted the legs into the wire, wrapping several loops of it around each stick of wood.

When Henry lunged at her, she dodged to the side and, with a good grip on her improvised wooden handles, gave the wire attached to his belt a mighty yank. It jerked him around. He stumbled a few steps. In a blink she circled around behind him.

Jax whipped a loop of wire over Henry’s head as she bounded up onto his back, compressing her body as she planted a foot between his shoulder blades. She let out a mighty cry of rage and effort as she used all her strength to straighten her coiled body while at the same time pulling on her improvised wooden handles.

For an instant, as he realized the danger, Henry’s meaty hands clawed at the wire around his throat. It was too late. As Jax screamed with effort the wire sliced cleanly down through his throat. Henry’s eyes bulged.

As Jax, her foot on his back, pulled the wooden handles she’d made, the wire knifed down through the carotid arteries as well as the esophagus and windpipe. It sliced all the way through everything but a bundle of the tougher tendons.

With most of the supporting neck muscles severed, his head flopped to the side. Alex could see that the wire had to have hit perfectly between two vertebrae, rupturing the disc.

The nurse screamed at the sight of Henry toppling over. Jax, a foot against his back and her hands holding the wooden handles as if she were holding the reins to a monster, rode the towering orderly all the way down. He hit the tile floor hard. His head smacked the hardest, making a sickening crack on impact. A thick red pool spread across the white tiles.

The instant Henry landed, Jax snatched the knife from his hand and sprang catlike up off the man, using him as a launching pad to make a dive for the nurse.

Just as the woman turned to run, Jax landed on her back. They both sprawled forward. Before they hit the floor Jax sliced the woman’s throat just as efficiently as she had once sliced Bethany’s throat in Alex’s bed.

Alex had been holding the orderly in a headlock for only a moment, yet already the man’s arms moved slowly, blindly, as he tried to fight for his life. When his arms swung, the hand with the severed tendons flopped without control. As he lost consciousness the fight was going out of him.

Alex used the opening to swiftly reverse his hold and throw a leg over the man. He used the leverage to give power to a quick twist that snapped the big man’s neck.

As the orderly went limp, Alex untangled himself and scrambled across the floor to Jax. She was just pushing herself up off the back of the dead nurse.

When she saw Alex her look of lethal rage instantly switched to tears of deliverance. She threw her arms around his neck. He felt a lump in his own throat. With the strength of her hold on him she wordlessly conveyed her profound sense of relief.

In the sudden silence, their breathing echoed softly in the shower room.

“Are you all right?” Alex asked as he held her head to his shoulder.

“I’m not sure. I felt like I’d become lost in some dark nightmare. I couldn’t understand it. I’m better, but I still feel strange, like I’ve lost my mind, lost myself.”

“You’re going to be fine. It’s the drugs they gave us. The rest of them will wear off in another day or so. Just stay with me. It will get better, I promise.”

She nodded against his shoulder. Now that the desperate fight had abruptly come to an end, the adrenaline rush was fading. Her arms loosened around his neck as her strength ebbed. Her voice, too, was weak.

“I thought it was over. I thought I was going to die hanging there. But when I saw you I knew it would be all right.”

He smiled as he held her shoulders and lifted her away from him. “We’re not out of this yet. I need you to stay strong a little longer. Get dressed. Hurry.”

Alex found the keys at the end of the wire cable that had nearly decapitated Henry. He hurriedly worked to disconnect the keys from the fitting at the end of the cable.

“I guess now I know how you felt,” Jax said as she pulled the jeans up her muscular legs, trying to cover herself as swiftly as possible.

“How I felt? What do you mean?”

“When I came to save you at your house and caught you with your pants down.”

Against all odds, despite the blood everywhere, despite the way his heart still pounded from the terror and rage, Alex laughed.

38

HURRY, ” ALEXSAID, avoiding looking at Jax in her half-naked condition. “Hoffmann is probably raising an alarm, getting together help. The last thing we need is to get trapped in here.”

“Yuri is due to show up, too,” Jax reminded him as she pulled her boots on. “Yuri is not someone to mess with. He’s not like these two in here were, or even Henry. He’s better than good with a knife.”

“Let’s see if we can get out of here before we have to worry about him.”

Jax was already moving before she finished pulling the black top over her head. Alex put a hand to the small of her back not only to guide her as she was frantically trying to finish dressing while they headed for the door, but to be ready if she faltered from exhaustion. He couldn’t imagine how she could even stand after having to strain up on her tiptoes all night just to get each breath. She had to be running on fumes.

“What happened to the nurse they were saying disappeared?” Jax asked as they both carefully peeked around the corner.

“I strangled her.”

“I expected something like that,” she said, still struggling to get her breath. “What I want to know is why they couldn’t find her body? How were you able to hide it in this place?”

Alex squatted beside the door that had been left open when the doctor had run out. He looked out into the well-lit bathroom and then under the row of stalls. It seemed to be clear. He turned back to Jax as she pulled her long blond hair out of the neck of the black top.

“I activated her lifeline.”

Jax froze. “You what?”

“I cut those symbols in her forehead, like I saw you do. When I finished, she vanished.”

Jax stared at him. “Alex, that was a complicated spell form. It has to be done precisely right.”

“Well, I guess I was precise enough. It worked. Why are you looking at me like that?”

“I practiced for months before I was able to do it properly. Not only does it have to be drawn exactly right, but each part of it has to be added in the correct order, at the proper time. How could you remember it?”

Alex shrugged. “I remember visual things.” He winced a little as he leaned closer. “I didn’t do magic, did I?”

“No,” she said with a bit of a smile that put him at ease. “You merely activated a lifeline that was already there within her. It doesn’t take magic to do it, just the precise form to activate it.”

She looked back into the shower room at the four dead people sprawled on the tile floor. Blood was running toward the shower drains. “I think that maybe I ought to activate the lifelines of these people. I don’t think that we want the bodies left lying there to be discovered. It would be better for us if people wondered what happened, wondered where they were. Until word is sent here about their return we’d have the advantage of the others here in this world being in the dark about what happened.”

When she pulled her hair back from her face he saw that her hands were shaking. He didn’t know how much strength she had left.

Alex agreed with her but he feared they couldn’t spare the time. “I think it would be worse if we were to get trapped in here and have it start all over again.”

“Yes, but what if—” She paused and frowned. “Do you smell smoke?”

Alex realized that he did. “Yes. That can’t be good.”

He put an arm around her waist to help her as he started through the bathroom. At the outer door they squatted down again, pressing up tight against the wall to the side in case anyone burst through the door. With a finger, Alex slowly eased the door open a few inches. He carefully checked out into the hallway but could effectively look in only one direction: back toward the nurses’ station.

The partially opened door allowed a stronger smell of smoke into the bathroom.

“We’d better find out what’s going on. Are you ready?”

Jax nodded. “Which way are we going?”

Alex looked out again. He pointed with a thumb.

“Toward the nurses’ station. I want to know what’s burning. There are a lot of people locked in this place. Fire in here could end up being a disaster.

“Let’s stay to the side of the hall and stay low. If there’s anyone waiting in ambush, I don’t want to give them an opportunity to surround us.”

When Jax nodded, Alex took her hand to keep her close as he slipped out the door. Staying low, they moved quickly along the edge of the dimly lit corridor. He didn’t see anyone in either direction. The lights were on in the nurses’ station. He could see a gray haze of smoke beyond the glass windows. He wondered why the smoke alarm wasn’t going off.

Jax pulled him to a stop. She was breathing heavily. “I’m sorry. I need to rest a moment. I can hardly move my legs.”

Alex helped her sit and lean back against the wall. “I can’t believe that you can move at all, after what you’ve been through.”

She closed her eyes and worked at getting her breath. Besides the physical ordeal, she was still on a partial dose of the Thorazine meant to take the fight out of her. He had stopped taking his, but she was still far from clearheaded.

Alex pressed a hand to her shoulder. “Rest here a moment. I’m going to go take a peek into the nurses’ station. I want to know what’s going on.”

“No.” She seized his arm, holding on as if her life depended on it. “We need to stay together. I’m better now. Let’s go.”

She looked exhausted but he realized that in her drugged condition, in a strange place, in a strange world, she had to be terrified to be left alone, especially as weak as she was. He wanted nothing more than to take her in his arms and hold her tight, protect her, and keep her safe. But they weren’t safe, not yet, anyway.

He realized that she was probably right, they should stay together. If anything happened, he didn’t know if she had enough strength left to defend herself. Although she never failed to amaze him.

“If you need to stop to get your breath just say so. All right?”

Jax nodded as she rose up into a crouch. They stayed low enough as they approached the nurses’ station to be under the bottom of the window. He could hear flames crackling on the other side of the door.

When he carefully rose up to get a glimpse, he didn’t see anyone at the counter inside. He tried different keys until he found the one that fit the lock. He turned the lock slowly, trying to be as quiet as possible.

Once he had the door unlocked, he again snuck a quick glimpse in the window. He still didn’t see anyone, so he opened the door and slipped inside. The smoke stung his eyes. He had to resist the urge to cough. They stayed low as they went in.

Alex peeked over the top of the counter and saw that way in the back the doctor was frantically throwing liquid on the fire already raging in the aisles between the files. An orderly pulled files off the shelves and threw them on the burning pile as the doctor doused them with yet more liquid.

Alex went back to the wall beside the door, out of sight of the two working to torch the place, and pulled the lever of the fire alarm. Nothing happened. He looked up at the sprinklers. They remained off. He snatched up the phone to dial 911. The line was dead.

Jax slipped in the door. Alex squatted down beside her.

“What’s going on?” she whispered. “What’s burning?”

“They’ve started a fire to destroy the files.” He kept his voice low even though the noise of the fire covered it. “The fire alarm doesn’t work and the phone is dead. They were obviously prepared to destroy the whole place to cover their tracks if anything ever went wrong. The doctor panicked and is implementing those procedures.”

They both rose up just enough to take a look over the counter. Alex could see that the fire was already burning strongly and spreading fast. It would be hard to put out.

He looked around and spotted a fire extinguisher on the wall, but he doubted it would be big enough. He was sure that the hospital had to have fire hoses. He didn’t know where they were, but assumed that they were in the back of the nurses’ station.

Alex knew that he had to put out the fire or the whole building would go up in flames. He tried to think of where there would be more extinguishers. There weren’t any out in the wards, because they couldn’t trust the patients. The extinguishers were heavy and could be used as weapons.

The doctor threw more of the flammable liquid on the burning mound of files on the floor until the bottle was empty. It appeared to be a bottle from the pharmacy, probably alcohol. The doctor pulled another from his pocket and threw it against the shelves. The bottle shattered against the steel shelving, spilling the liquid all down the files. Fire erupted up the side of the shelves, the flames roaring and crackling, lapping at the ceiling.

As he started to turn, Alex saw Jax on the floor. His first thought was that she had passed out from exhaustion. She tried to push herself up on her arms. It looked to be a struggle.

Realizing that something was wrong, Alex started to bend down to help her. Just then, out of the corner of his eye, he caught sight of a nurse behind him.

Almost at the same time as he saw the nurse, Alex felt a sharp stab in his left hip. With an icy flood of dread and alarm he instantly knew what she had done.

Almost at the same time, before he could react, a heavy office chair arced through the air, crashing into the nurse, sending her sprawling.

As Alex yanked the syringe from his backside he was shocked to see that it was his mother who had thrown the chair. She had thrown it just in the nick of time. The nurse had only started to push the plunger in before the chair had clobbered her. Alex had gotten some of the drug, but not nearly all of it.

His mother had just saved his life.

“The nurse hit her,” his mother said, pointing at Jax on the floor.

“Mom—”

An orderly loomed up out of the darkness behind her and threw an arm around her neck. As she screamed, Alex dove for the man. Even as he was still in midair he saw that it was too late.

His mother collapsed dead to the floor as he sailed over her, crashing into the orderly who had just broken her neck.

The man made the mistake of trying to catch Alex. He expected a fight. He wasn’t expecting a knife.

His eyes widened with surprise as the blade plunged deep into his lower abdomen. Alex gave it a mighty pull, slicing up until the blade hit ribs.

Alex shoved the suddenly stiff, gravely wounded man to the side and fell to his knees beside his mother. He stared in shock at her lifeless form for a moment, unable to think what to do. His mind went blank.

Jax appeared beside him. Her hand urged his face away. “There’s nothing you can do.”

39

ALEX KNELT BESIDE HIS MOTHER’S BODY, in shock that she was dead. As Jax turned his face away from the terrible sight, he looked up into her sad eyes, eyes that seemed to understand all he was feeling, to sympathize with the long, dark journey that had started when she first showed up in his life.

Seeing bright red blood matting the right side of her blond hair brought Alex abruptly to his senses.

He reached out, putting a finger to the side of her chin, turning her head a little so that he could take a look.

“I’m sure that it looks worse than it is,” she said. “It stunned me for a moment, that’s all.”

It wasn’t bleeding heavily, and her eyes weren’t dilated. She didn’t look disoriented or confused. He wasn’t an expert, but it looked to him that she wasn’t badly hurt. The ordeal of hanging in the shower was much more of a continuing worry.

Alex knew that he couldn’t sit there mourning his mother or they would die, too. His mother had just saved his life. He couldn’t let that sacrifice be for nothing.

He had to fight against the dulling effect of the drugs that he’d gotten from the syringe. It was only a portion of the dose that had been in the vial, but it was enough that he could feel it slowing his thinking. He had to force himself to focus, to move, to act.

The immediate problem returned with clarity. It was night. Patients were asleep. He had to alert all the people in the hospital or they would likely end up trapped in a burning building.

The man on the floor not far away lay on his side, both arms across his abdomen, holding the grievous wound closed.

“Please,” the man moaned, “help me.”

Alex ignored him, stood up, and snatched the fire extinguisher off the wall. As he did, Jax straddled the nurse who had blindsided her and tried to inject Alex with whatever was in the syringe. Before the woman came to, Jax sliced the artery on each side of her neck so she would quickly bleed to death.

Jax flipped the woman over and swiftly cut symbols in her forehead. When the woman vanished, Jax looked up at him.

“I guess that answers that. There seem to be a lot of people from my world working here.”

He wondered how deeply the tentacles from another world reached into his. There was no time to consider the problem, though. Fire extinguisher in hand, he headed for the blaze.

Alex yanked the pin out of the extinguisher as he rounded the corner and raced toward the shelves. He knew that if he was to have a chance to knock down the fire he would have to act quickly. He doubted that one extinguisher would be enough, but one was all he had at the moment.

He pointed the nozzle and squeezed the lever. Nothing happened. The extinguisher was dead. It was a sickening, helpless feeling to be facing leaping flames with a dead extinguisher.

When he looked up he came face-to-face with Dr. Hoffmann.

The doctor held his hands out, urging Alex to stop and listen. “Alex. . you don’t understand.”

Alex gritted his teeth and rammed the bottom of the extinguisher squarely into the man’s face. Grunting in shock, the doctor put his hands over his face as he staggered back. Blood in his eyes blinded him and ran out between his fingers. One arm waved blindly, trying to find something for support. He stumbled and fell backward into the pile of burning files.

An alcohol bottle in his pocket broke when he hit the side of the shelving. His pants, soaked with the alcohol, burst into flames. As he scrambled to his feet, fire ascended his white coat with a whoosh. The roaring orange flames engulfed his face. His screams went up an octave.

The orderly who had been working at pulling down the files heard the screams and came running from behind the next row of shelves, where he had been working to burn files. Alex swung the extinguisher. Even over the sound of the fire, he could hear the clear ring of steel on bone as the heavy extinguisher caved in the side of the orderly’s skull.

Jax seized his arm and pulled him back. “Alex! Hurry! We have to get the people out of here or they’ll all burn to death.”

“Wait. Maybe there’s a fire hose and I can put it out.”

Without waiting for her to answer, he ran around the outside of the shelves, making his way toward the back. The growing flames leaped and lapped at the ceiling. He found the hose on the wall near the stairway.

He yanked the hose off the wall and spun the wheel to turn on the water. No water came out. He spun the wheel until it came to the stop at the limit of its travel. No water. They had shut down the fire hoses along with the sprinklers.

Growling in anger, Alex ran back to find Jax kneeling beside his mother, closing her eyes. She looked up at him.

“I’m sorry, Alex. I wish we didn’t have to leave her.”

He nodded as he took her by the hand. “I know. Come on, we need to open the fire-escape doors and get people out of here or they’ll be trapped.”

Alex left the door leading to the men’s side closed for the moment in the hope that it would keep the fire from spreading. Together, they ran into the darkened corridor of the women’s wing.

“Wake the people in every room. Tell them there’s a fire and they have to get out. I’ll go unlock the fire-escape door. Send them down there.”

Jax nodded and turned in to the first room as he continued on. He screamed “Fire!” at the top of his lungs, hoping that it would wake at least some of the women. It did. By the time he got to the door he could see women in nightgowns emerging from their rooms to see what the shouting was about.

Alex worked frantically at the door, finally found the right key, and got the door unlocked. He threw it open and waved his arms, signaling to the women farther back up the hall.

“Come on! Fire! Everyone out!”

A few of the women started down the hall, but more simply stood staring. Jax came out of a room, pushing two women. She gathered up others along the way, shoving them, urging them to hurry.

Alex started going into rooms on the opposite side of the corridor from Jax, pulling women out of bed and herding them toward the fire escape. In short order they had most of the women moving out of the fire-escape door.

Alex took Jax by the arm. “Come on, we need to get the men’s wing opened.”

“I don’t think we have all the women out. Some ran from me and hid.”

Alex could see the flames leaping out toward the counter in the nurses’ station. “There are nine floors in this building. We don’t have time to do more than what we’ve done. We need to keep moving and get as many people out as we can. I’m hoping that as we go down to the other floors, where the people aren’t as mentally ill or as heavily sedated, we can get some of them to help us. But we’re running out of time.”

Alex unlocked the fire-escape door at the end of the corridor on the men’s side as Jax started rousing the male patients. All the while he screamed, “Fire!”

When the two of them had ushered the men out onto the fire escape, telling them to go down to the ground where they would be safe, Alex and Jax turned back in to the heart of the building. The fire, already racing through the ceiling, had jumped over the walls of the nurses’ station into the wards on both sides.

Gritty black smoke billowed along the ceiling. As they ran toward the center of the building, Alex could see bright yellow and orange tongues of flame licking out through the greasy black smoke. Paint on the walls bubbled and crackled and curled.

Alex couldn’t believe how fast the fire had gotten out of control, or how hot it was. Just since they got the men out the fire escape, the smoke rolling along the ceiling had lowered to half the height of the hall. He worried about being caught by the flames, but he knew that smoke was deadly, too. It could render a person unconscious.

Pulling Jax by the hand he headed for the nurses’ station. He could tell by how much effort he had to put into urging her along that she was well beyond exhausted. She stumbled several times. The drugs were making it difficult for him to hurry. He hoped Jax didn’t simply pass out. If that happened he didn’t know what he would do.

Beyond the front of the counter, on the other side of the nurses’ station, he could see the body of his mother. There was nothing he could do for her now. There were people still alive who would die if he didn’t leave her and try to get people to safety. He knew it was the logical thing to do, but he hated how cruel it felt.

“Help me,” the orderly lying near her pleaded. “Please. . don’t leave me.”

He was lying on his side, holding his guts in with both arms. He lay stiff and still, fearing to move.

This was the man who had killed his mother. He had no trouble killing a helpless woman. Now, fearing for his own life, he was reduced to begging for mercy. Alex only briefly met his beseeching gaze and then hurried on. He was in anything but a merciful mood.

They had to skirt the far side of the utility room to get past the flames to make it to the internal stairway in the back. Alex stopped Jax as he reconsidered the plan to go down to each floor alerting patients to the fire. Jax leaned back against the wall, closing her eyes as she caught her breath.

Alex realized that he had no way of knowing how many of the staff were involved in Dr. Hoffmann’s plot. For all he knew, everyone could be involved.

They could be rushing down into an ambush.

For all he knew, Hoffmann had alerted the staff before starting to set fire to the files. They might be torching the place on the floors below.

“Do you think that all the people working here could be from your world?” he asked Jax.

She opened her eyes, struggling to focus. “I don’t know, Alex. I suppose it’s possible. We know they’ve been coming here for a long time. It’s possible that over that time they’ve infiltrated the whole place. But why would they do such a thing?”

“Dr. Hoffmann was taking orders from Sedrick Vendis. Maybe they weren’t just trying to get information from my mother. Maybe they used this place to get information out of other people when they needed to. After all, they kept you and me here in an attempt to find out what we knew.”

“That’s possible,” she said, running her fingers back into her hair as she tried to think. “We know they’ve been working on things here in this world for a long time, but we don’t know the extent of their meddling. They would have had plenty of time to set up this hospital as a place for questioning people. From what I’ve seen it would certainly have given them the seclusion, anonymity, and cover they would have wanted.”

“So then there’s no telling how many of staff could be involved,” Alex said, thinking out loud. “For all we know, they could all be involved.”

Jax wiped a weary hard across her face. “I can’t answer that.”

“From what I can tell, it seems most of the people working up here on this floor were from your world. Others, like Hoffmann, were cooperating with them. This is a large facility. The top two floors are relatively small, but below that the hospital extends along the whole block. It has a lot of different mental-health services. It could be that they confined their activities to this floor and maybe the unit below. Being locked down as they are they could control everything easier. Dr. Hoffmann could have seen to that control.”

Jax gave him a look. “But we’d better not take that for granted.”

“I think you’re right.”

If there were other people involved, they could be looking for him and Jax. Going down to the next nurses’ station could get the two of them captured. But without an alarm to warn them, a lot of innocent people could die in the fire. He tried to think of what to do.

Struck with an idea, Alex went into the utility room and snatched a couple of the longer white coats off the rack. They looked like lab coats that went to mid-thigh. He handed one to Jax. “This might help fool them.”

They buttoned up the coats on the way to the stairs. It took Alex a frustratingly long time to find the right key out of the dozens on the fat key ring. He was finally able to unlock the stairway door. Once in the stairway, he shut the door tight, hoping it would slow the spread of the fire.

Jax followed close behind as they raced down the stairs to whatever waited.

40

ALEX UNLOCKE THE DOOR on the eighth floor and raced past the utility room and the shelving area with the files. He didn’t see any fire. That much of it was a good sign. Several nurses turned when they heard Alex and Jax coming. One of them, frowning, stepped toward them to block their way. “Who the hell are—”

“Fire!” Alex screamed. “The top floor is on fire! It’s already spread through the ceiling. The whole upper floor is involved. We opened the fire-escape doors and got everyone we could out of the place.”

“I’d better go check it out,” one of the other nurses said.

“You need to evacuate your whole floor! Do it now!”

“There’s been no alarm,” the first nurse said. “We can’t evacuate a secure facility without an alarm — especially when we don’t know who you are.”

Alex, gritting his teeth in frustration, ran to the wall and yanked down the lever on the fire alarm. Nothing happened.

“See? The alarm doesn’t work. Hurry! The fire is spreading out of control. You need to get everyone out, now!”

One of the nurses at the counter picked up the phone. She pressed the line of buttons one at a time.

“The phone lines are dead.” She sounded stunned.

Alex snatched the fire extinguisher off the wall. He pulled the pin and squeezed the handle.

“Dead.” He held it up, squeezing the lever, demonstrating. “See? The extinguisher upstairs was dead, too. The sprinklers don’t work. There’s no way to fight the fire or even slow it down. The people in here have only one chance — they have to get out and they have to get out now!”

The first nurse frowned at him. “What department do you work in? Who are you?”

“Get moving or you’re all going to burn to death!” Alex yelled.

His tone of voice changed their attitude and sent them scrambling into action, rushing to the locked doors to each side. One of the nurses ran for the stairway Alex and Jax had come down. As two of the other nurses pulled keys from their pockets and unlocked the doors, Alex spotted a purse on the lower working counter behind the higher public counter.

He grabbed the purse and dumped the contents out onto the desk. A cell phone slid across the counter. Alex snatched it up. As soon as he had the power on, he punched the buttons.

“Nine one one. What’s the nature of your emergency?”

“Mother of Roses Psychiatric Hospital is on fire.”

“What address?”

“It’s the old hospital on Thirteenth Street.” Alex pressed his fingertips to his forehead, trying to think. “I don’t know the exact address.”

“Can you see flames, or smoke?”

“I’m inside the building. The fire is on the top floor.”

“How extensive is the fire?”

“The entire top floor is ablaze. The fire alarms don’t work. The sprinklers and the fire hoses don’t work. Get the fire department here now!”

“They’re on their way, sir. Please stay on the line. What is your name?”

Alex ignored the question. “I have to help the staff get people out of here! Hurry — get the fire trucks here!”

He tossed the phone on the counter without hanging up. He saw the nurses out in the wards rousing the patients. He headed for the stairs in the back to go down to the next floor. Jax was right behind him. At the doorway into the stairwell he met one of the nurses coming back down. Her face was nearly as white as her dress.

“It’s a solid wall of flame up there!”

“A building this old is going to go up in a hurry,” he told her. “Help get everyone out. There’s not much time. I’m going to warn the floors below.”

She nodded. “All right.”

Alex pointed toward the front counter. “Nine one one is on the cell phone. Tell them your name and that you work here. Confirm what I told them about the fire being out of control. Keep the phone with you, keep them on the line, but help everyone get out the fire escape and then follow them out and help the people from the ninth floor already down there.”

The woman scooped up the phone and with barely contained panic in her voice started telling the operator about the fire and how many hundreds of people were in danger. She told the operator to send ambulances as there were bound to be casualties. Alex didn’t wait to hear the rest of it. He raced for the stairs, pulling Jax along behind.

As they burst through the stairway door, a red-faced orderly, nearly out of breath, was just arriving at the top step. Alex skidded to a halt and drew back as the man slashed wildly with a knife.

Alex seized the knife hand and twisted the man’s arm at the same time as he spun him around, then shoved him face-first down the stairs. The tumbling man stopped at the middle landing between floors, smacking into the far wall. Jax bounded down the steps after him and rammed her knife into his back half a dozen times before he had a chance to get up. As soon as she had dispatched the orderly, the two of them raced down the last half of the stairs to the next floor.

On the seventh floor the nurses were equally surprised, but perhaps because people in their ward weren’t locked down, they were more easily convinced. At seeing that the alarm, phones, and extinguisher didn’t work, they wasted no time springing into action. One of the nurses started calling 911 on her cell phone as the others enlisted a staff of orderlies and aides to help them clear the wards.

Unlike the top two floors, the doors weren’t locked. The wards on the seventh floor were also much larger, extending out past the footprint of the eighth and ninth floors into the rest of the old hospital complex. The staff was also larger.

“The fire department is on its way,” the nurse on the phone reported.

“Do you know people in other parts of the hospital?” Alex asked. She nodded that she did. “Call them. Get anyone with a cell phone to call people as well. With the alarm not working people in the rest of the hospital need to be alerted. Call everyone you can and tell them to get the patients out.”

Before she had a chance to ask any questions, Alex headed back to the stairs. He and Jax slid to a halt at the top step. He could hear, just out of sight around the turn of the landing, what sounded like a lot of men racing up the stairs. By the things they were saying Alex instantly recognized that the men were looking for him and Jax. One of the men called them “Vendis’s prisoners.”

Without pause Alex spun Jax around and pushed her out ahead of him, back the way they had come. Once out of the nurses’ station, he took her hand and ran with her down the dimly lit corridor. She was having trouble keeping up. Her legs weren’t working in a coordinated manner. He knew that her muscles were so spent that they were failing.

“Hold on, not much longer,” he said, trying to encourage her and keep her moving.

As they raced down the corridor, he glanced back over his shoulder and saw men spilling out into the hallway, but they were too far away and it was too dark to make out their faces. Alex knew by their numbers, though, that they had to be orderlies he hadn’t met before. That confirmed his suspicion that there were more people involved than just those he had seen working on the ninth floor.

Alex slowed a little to try to make it look like they were urgently helping people and less like they were running. He was counting on the white coats they were wearing to help throw the people hunting them off track.

He and Jax helped the nurses by rushing into rooms and pulling people out of their beds, then guiding them to the fire escape. Jax was swift and decisive in getting people moving, while managing to also be compassionate and supportive. It was all the more impressive to him because he could see by the look in her eyes that she was fighting the effect of the drugs in her system. He knew all too well what that was like; he was having to work past them as well.

The people followed directions as Alex calmly but forcefully urged them to hurry. These patients were far more alert and coherent than the people up on the ninth floor had been. He guided the growing throng to the fire escape, letting himself and Jax become lost in the mass of frightened people. He saw the men coming down the hall, searching in each room along the way.

Out on the fire escape they were greeted by cool night air. Fresh air had never felt so good. Alex was a little surprised to find himself giddy with relief to be out of the place. For a long time he had feared that he would never again be free. He wished that his mother could have tasted freedom with him.

Jax leaned closer to him so she could whisper as they made their way down the metal steps along with what seemed like hundreds of other people. “When we get to the ground we need to run before those men can find us. I don’t think that I have enough strength left to fight them.”

They slowed at a landing, inching ahead, waiting for the congested line of people to start moving more quickly again. “I need the keys to the truck,” he reminded her.

“But the keys are inside.” She knew what he was thinking and clearly didn’t like the idea. “We’d have to go back in. Now that we’re out, when we get to the ground, let’s just run.”

“You can hardly stand anymore. How far do you think you can run? Where will we go on foot? How can we get away? We can’t hide — they’ll be looking everywhere for us. We need the truck to get away — as far away as possible.”

As the line started shuffling ahead a little faster, Alex heard glass breaking. He glanced up and saw flames roar out of the windows on the top floor. Thick smoke swirled out into the darkness.

He also saw two men dressed in white pushing past people to get down the stairs faster.

“We need to get down, now,” he whispered to Jax.

She glanced up and, seeing the men coming for them, stayed close behind him as he started gently nudging people aside so that the two of them could get by. He needed to keep distance between them and the men coming after them, but at the same time he didn’t want to make it too obvious lest the men spot him and Jax running.

Alex excused himself to the people on the stairs, repeating along the way that he needed to help patients on the ground.

The descent of the seven flights of metal stairs, even pushing past people, seemed like it was taking forever. Alex kept track of the distance back to the men hunting them. The men were getting closer all the time, because they were far rougher about pushing people out of the way. At least most people, when they saw the white coats he and Jax were wearing and heard his repeated explanation, did their best to let them by.

A lot of the patients were petrified to be up on the rickety metal fire-escape stairs at night. They held on to the railing for dear life, inching along at a snail’s pace. They bottlenecked the people above them trying to get down. Jax gently but firmly lifted the hands of more than one person from the railing and with encouragement and reassurance got them moving.

From his vantage point up on the stairs among the confused people making what they considered to be a terrifying descent, he gazed out over throngs of people screaming, crying, running, wandering aimlessly, even sitting down, in the middle of a near-stampede. The thought occurred to him that he couldn’t imagine a scene any more chaotic than mental patients trying to escape a fire.

Irrational people in the hundreds were unable to cope with the necessary but simple task of getting away from a burning building. Half of them, it seemed, were crying for help and waiting for it to show up rather than escape the area.

Pushing past the frightened people on the stairs, Alex and Jax finally made it to the ground. They found themselves in the rear of the hospital among hundreds of people all rushing about in confusion. In the distance people were also pouring down emergency stairs from other areas of the institution.

There were a few orderlies and nurses trying to organize the patients and tell them where they needed to go. There were patients who were staying at the hospital for less serious conditions and some of them, too, were trying to help their fellow patients away from the burning building. There were a few people, driven by insanity, who, like salmon trying to swim upstream, were trying to push their way up the stairs against the flow of people coming down.

The lights suddenly went out as the electricity failed. The emergency generators should have kicked in. They didn’t. Two battery-backup security lights did come on, but they were far from adequate to light the whole back area of the hospital.

In the near darkness the fire looming above them seemed all the more frightening. The eighth floor was now also fully involved. Alex could see flames making their way across the roof from there to the main part of the hospital. He also saw fire on the fifth floor. He suspected that it had been set, just like the fire on the top floor had been.

Panicked people cried out and rushed faster to get away from the building as glass blown out of windows by the fire rained down on them. People on the ground were speared by shards of falling glass. Bloody people cried out for help. Some people stumbled and fell in the darkness. Alex and Jax helped a number of them to their feet so that they could get away.

All the while, they steadily and silently made their way across the flowing current of people coming off the fire escapes and running away from the building. Alex had walked over the uneven ground that rose and fell over the roots of the big old trees often enough that he could probably have done it with his eyes closed, so the near darkness wasn’t a hindrance.

Over the bobbing heads of people, he spotted a couple of the orderlies coming through the back parking lot. They pawed through the escaping people, searching, looking at everyone.

Alex rose up on his tiptoes and waved an arm to get their attention. He figured that they wouldn’t be able to recognize him in the flickering light of the flames, and they would only key in on his white coat. When they saw him, he pointed urgently away from the hospital.

“They’re over there!” he yelled. “They went that way!”

The bluff worked. The two men turned away and took off in the direction he had pointed to.

Jax arched an eyebrow at him. “That was risky.”

“Not as risky as them catching up to us.”

At the metal entrance door, he gently pulled, testing it. It was locked. He searched through the keys, trying each in turn, not knowing if Henry would have had a key to unlock an exterior door. The fourth key worked.

Alex paused to glance back over his shoulder at Jax.

She gave him a look. “I’m not waiting here,” she said before he could suggest it. “Hurry up. Let’s get what you need and get out of here before those men find us.”

Alex opened the door just enough for them both to slip inside. There was one emergency, battery-powered light some distance down a hall to the side. The exit sign above them over the door was lit up, casting the room in an eerie red glow that gave them at least a little light to see by. The sudden silence inside the place was unnerving.

Alex smelled gas.

He looked down the dark corridor toward where he knew the kitchens were, but he couldn’t see anything.

“They must have opened a gas line,” he whispered to Jax.

“What does that do?”

He looked at her, realizing then that she wouldn’t know, and realizing, too, how much the drugs were affecting him. He explained as he made his way through the dimly lit room toward the metal detector. “Natural gas is used in the kitchens, in the ovens and stoves, to make fire. It’s highly flammable. If it isn’t controlled, and enough of it escapes out into the air, it can easily explode.”

“Then we should get out of here, now.”

“You’re right. I just need to get the keys first.”

Jax skirted the metal detector and stood at the desk where Doreen usually sat, waiting as Alex groped around in the dark and finally located the table against the wall. He felt along the back of the tabletop and found a lone tub. He reached inside and to his relief his keys were still there along with his pocketknife.

“Got it.”

“Alex!”

He spun around to see Dwayne silhouetted against the red exit light. He came out of the dark swinging a nightstick. As Alex ducked, Jax snatched the blue pen attached to the clipboard and yanked it off, breaking the string.

Before Alex had finished ducking the swing of the nightstick, she used the pen to stab the side of the guard’s neck three times in rapid succession. He cried out. His hands flew to the puncture wounds in his throat. At the same time he turned to attack her. That was a mistake. As he lifted his nightstick Jax stabbed his eyes out with two lightning-quick jabs.

Before he could let out much of a scream, Alex had him from behind. He gripped the man’s jaw and twisted with all his might until he heard a sickening crunch of sinew and bone. He let the limp Dwayne slip to the floor.

“Why didn’t you use the knife?” he asked as she dropped the bloody pen.

She looked on the verge of frustrated tears. “My fingers are numb. They’re not working very well.” She gestured vaguely. “I must have dropped the knife out there somewhere.”

Alex put an arm around her waist when he saw her start to sink. “It’s all right. You’ll be able to rest as soon as we get to the truck. You’ll be all right after the drugs wear off and you get some sleep.”

“I’m not sure I can make it, Alex.”

“Sure you can. I’ll help you.” He tried to sound more confident than he was.

She glanced back toward the door. “I remember them saying that Dwayne was waiting to let Yuri in when he came back.”

Alex nodded. “I remember. I’ve got my keys. Let’s get out of here before Yuri gets here or the place blows up. We’ve done everything we can.”

41

SIRENS WAILED IN THE NIGHT as Alex hurried Jax along the sidewalk. It seemed like dozens of emergency vehicles were converging on Mother of Roses. Reddish orange light from the blaze reflected off the low overcast. Through the trees Alex could see crackling streamers of hot yellow sparks ascending through billowing black smoke. From time to time great gouts of flame lashed up toward the clouds.

The noise of all the sirens had sleepy people emerging from their houses to see what was going on. Leaves were lit by red, blue, and yellow strobes of emergency vehicles racing toward Mother of Roses. People stood in their nightclothes on front porches watching in shock.

Many more people, patients in pajamas and nightgowns, ran down the street past Alex and Jax. Police cars rushing in toward the hospital had to slow in places for the throngs to part. He didn’t know where all the people were running. They probably didn’t, either. They were simply filled with fear and wanted to get away. Their terror over being awakened by fire and the uncertainty of what would happen to them now had many sobbing as they wandered aimlessly.

Alex kept a constant lookout over his shoulder to see if anyone followed them. So far he hadn’t seen anyone who looked overtly suspicious. It was dark, though, and there were a lot of people flooding through the streets. He hoped that in the throng of people escaping the hospital they had lost the men chasing them, but he had no way to tell if any of the people in the darkness were from another world.

Alex turned down a smaller side street as he made his way toward where his truck was parked. He didn’t know if they would be safer out on the streets with all the people, or if it would be better to cut through alleys and backyards.

Once they were off the streets, they wouldn’t know their way. That would slow them down. Worse, they might find themselves trapped in a box canyon of fences when the men chasing them caught up. And cutting through yards would draw attention.

In the end, he decided to stay on the streets.

As they made their way along the broken sidewalk, Jax was becoming dead weight. Her legs kept giving out. Fortunately, they weren’t far from his Cherokee.

Alex was having difficulties of his own. It took a great effort to focus enough to work past the drugs the nurse had gotten into him. His vision was blurred. He hoped he could see well enough to drive. He didn’t know if his racing heart would ever calm down.

With everything that had happened he didn’t think that he would have to worry about falling asleep — at least for the time being. But he did need to find them a safe place where they could both get much-needed rest.

If he felt dulled by the drugs, Jax was laboring under an even heavier dose. She hadn’t been able to stop taking the Thorazine and pills the way he had; they had only reduced her dose enough so that she could feel pain and terror, yet not fight back. After her ordeal of hanging in the shower for over twenty-four hours, he was amazed that she could move at all.

“It’s just down the block. We’re almost there. Hold on.”

She nodded. “I’m fine.”

“Yeah, right.”

She smiled a little. Her right foot was dragging. He wasn’t sure she was even aware of it. He was holding most of her weight so she could keep going.

Alex kept thinking about his mother being burned up in the fire. Ben had burned up in a fire, and now his mother had as well. He couldn’t stop wondering what would have happened if he’d gotten her out. He wondered if when the drugs wore off she’d have been able to communicate with him, talk about everything that had happened in her life, in his, or if her mind was long gone. Now he would never know.

At least she’d had the presence of mind to stop the nurse. In the end, she had fought back against her captors. In the end she’d won a battle against them. That was something.

“Here,” Alex said. “We’re here. Hold on. I’ll have you inside in a minute and you can relax.”

Jax forced herself to stand straighter as he unlocked the passenger door. “Don’t let yourself get complacent, Alexander,” she reminded him. “Carelessness with these people will get you killed.”

That was why she refused to give up, why she forced herself to stay as alert as she possibly could. To relax was to die.

Alex helped her step up into the passenger seat. He folded her right leg up into the truck.

“Once we’re away from the hospital, you could get some sleep.”

“My knives. Please, I want my knives.”

As Alex reached under the seat and pulled the bundle out, a horrific explosion shook the night. The sky lit with the orange and yellow fireball.

As Alex turned to the explosion, he saw an orderly dressed in white barreling at him out of the darkness. The man was huge, and he had a knife.

Without even thinking, Alex grabbed a handle of one of the knives in the bundle and pulled it out. Despite the adrenaline rush of his sudden alarm, the balance of the knife, the feel, made an impression somewhere in the recesses of his mind.

As the man charged toward him, with no time to do anything more than simply react, Alex thrust the knife straight into the man’s center mass.

It didn’t stop him. The big man crashed into him at full speed, knocking Alex back.

As Alex rebounded off the side of the truck, the man swung his own knife. Alex ducked, seized the arm, and took it with him as he circled around the orderly. Once behind him he rammed his blade into the man’s lower back several times in rapid succession. He didn’t hit anything immediately vital, and his stabbing only made the man angrier.

The man twisted around, driving Alex back with his feet as well as his fists. More than one connected, staggering Alex back. The man was a fury of nonstop lunges and slashes. With the drugs, Alex had difficulty focusing.

The man was a good head taller than Alex and must have been sixty or seventy pounds heavier. Despite his size, he was quick. Not only was he hard to handle, but his size seemed to help keep the knife wounds from slowing him.

Alex made another attack. The man threw him back. As he rebounded, Alex ducked under a swing, threw a shoulder block into the man, and at the same time grabbed a leg. He pulled with all his strength, upending the orderly. The man landed flat on his back, but bounded back up as if on springs.

His arms seemed to be everywhere at once. Alex was having trouble keeping track of the furious attacks. He picked his openings and cut whenever he had the chance. One slashing cut across the man’s thigh halved the muscle, making him stumble.

Alex used the opening to dive in to try to finish the fight. He seized the man’s knife-wielding arm and stabbed again, but the man was strong enough to push him back. Alex felt like a child trying to fight a grown man.

When the man spun around, pulling out of Alex’s grip, his arms were spread in an angry fighting stance. He looked like a bear on its hind legs about to charge. Seeing the opening, Alex used all his strength to drive his knife like a punch straight into the middle of the orderly’s throat.

He felt the blade sink in and hit bone.

The furious fight seemed to freeze in place.

Then the man started to corkscrew toward the ground. As he collapsed, his weight pulled him off the blade.

Panting, catching his breath, his exhausted arms hanging, Alex tried to gather his wits. He was so drained, so bone-tired from the fight, that he was ready to drop.

Jax was suddenly there beside him, putting her arm around him, holding him up.

“Almost there,” she reminded him. “Hold on.”

He smiled at her words, words he had used to encourage her not to give up.

Alex felt like he was watching himself in a dream. He realized then, by the way Jax was bent over, that he was on his knees. He didn’t remember going to his knees.

“Stay still,” she said.

Jax turned away to the open door of the truck for a moment. She was frantically doing something. He couldn’t figure it out. It finally dawned on him that she was ripping cloth. It was the rag the knives had been in. She was tearing off a long strip.

She put the strip around his upper left arm, wrapping it tightly around several times. She used her teeth to split the end and then tied a knot. She made another knot and drew it tight.

“What are you doing?”

“He cut you. I’m tying a bandage around your arm to keep the wound closed. I need to stop the bleeding.”

Alex only then realized that blood was dripping off his fingers. He wondered how bad it was. He didn’t really feel any pain, but at feeling a warm, wet sheath of blood running down his arm he suddenly began feeling sick.

“It’s all right,” she assured him. “You’ll be fine.”

By the way her voice sounded, though, he didn’t know if he believed her.

“How bad is it?”

“It’s dark. I can’t tell,” she admitted. “But I don’t think it’s too bad. Can you move your fingers?”

Alex tried. “Yes.”

“Then you’re fine. As long as your arm still works, it can’t be too bad.”

“Thank you,” he said in a numb voice. “I don’t understand why he was trying to kill me. If I’m dead they can’t get the information they need.”

“He wasn’t trying to kill you. He was trying to capture you. If he had wanted to kill you I think he could have.”

“Well, from my side of it it sure felt like he was trying to kill me.”

She only smiled as she adjusted the bandage on his arm. Alex liked the feeling of her taking care of him. It made him feel calm, feel like everything would be all right.

She gently took the knife out of his hand. “I don’t ever let anyone use my knife. Not this one.”

Alex saw in the dim illumination of the dome light in the Jeep that it was the knife with all the elaborate engraving on the silver handle. Now it was covered in blood as well.

“It seemed rather important at the time,” Alex said. “Do you think you could make an exception to your rule this one time?”

“Well,” she said, glancing down at the dead man, “I guess that, in this case, I could.”

With a concerned, gentle look, she smoothed the hair back off his forehead. Her face warmed with the special smile she gave only him. Her hand cupping the side of his face made everything better.

“Considering who used that knife,” she said in an intimate voice, “I guess it’s all right. You’re welcome to use it anytime you’d like.”

Alex swayed on his knees. “I think I’m going to throw up.”

“Do it in that direction, will you? I need to send him back to my world.”

Alex was going to tell her not to bother, that they could just drive away and leave him. But as his mind started working again he realized what a bad idea it would be to leave a body lying in the street. With so many people around, the man would be discovered in short order. Alex could see people off in the darkness. Fortunately they didn’t see what was going on.

The dead people they had left in Mother of Roses would be burned up. There would be little evidence of what had really happened. But if they left this man’s body out on the street it would look like murder and raise a lot of questions.

By the time he had come to the conclusion that Jax was right, the man had already vanished. Her knife was shiny and clean.

Jax put a hand under his good arm to help him up. “Come on. Let’s get away from here before any of his friends show up.”

Alex was regaining his senses. He helped boost Jax up into the truck. The adrenaline of the situation seemed to have given them both a shot of strength. He didn’t know how long it would last. He ran around to the other side and hopped in.

When he turned the key in the ignition and the truck didn’t start, he wasn’t the least bit surprised. Trying the key had been nothing more than a token gesture. He had expected it not to start. That was just the way the world worked. For some reason it seemed that things tended not to work when you needed them the most.

Fortunately, he had planned for the eventuality. He’d parked on a hill, and he’d parked at the end of the block so that no one could park in front of him and block him in.

He turned the wheels away from the curb as he put in the clutch. The Cherokee started rolling, gathering speed. When it was going downhill at a good clip he let the clutch out. The engine turned over and caught. With a minimum of fuss, he had the truck running, but he was more determined than ever to get it fixed as soon as they got the chance.

Alex drove slowly down the hill through the residential neighborhood. There were no cars, but there were people wandering all over the place. Here and there a person in pajamas or a robe would walk out into the street without looking. In the darkness it was difficult to see them all. Alex kept a sharp lookout for any of the staff who might be hunting them.

When he turned right onto Sixteenth Street, traffic was moving slowly, pulling over at intervals for emergency vehicles. Fire trucks, ambulances, and police cars raced through the night toward the hospital.

Alex stayed in the right lane, pulling to the curb and stopping for every one of them. He didn’t want to be stopped by police and have to answer any questions. At that moment, he couldn’t imagine what he would tell them about what he was doing there at that time of night. He couldn’t say he was visiting his mother, not at night.

He was too tired to think. Best to avoid the problem altogether.

When the traffic cleared, he stayed close to the speed limit of forty-five as he headed toward the interstate. The interstate would be the fastest way to put some distance between them and anyone who might be looking for them. The older part of town was quiet that late at night. He kept an eye on the rearview mirror, checking to make sure that they weren’t being followed. The road behind was empty. Most of the people out that late were interested in seeing the fire.

Alex was sure that the fire department had shut off the gas to the hospital and that had minimized the explosion. It had been bad enough, but not anything like it could have been. He hoped everyone had gotten out safely. He guessed he knew that not everyone had.

Jax was slumped in her seat, leaning against the door, her hand resting on her leg. He reached over and squeezed the hand.

“We’re safe now. If you want you can crawl in the back seat to lie down and go to sleep.”

She pulled her hair back off her face and hooked it behind an ear. “Where are we going?”

“I want to find us a motel or something, some place we can rent a room for the night. We’re near the interstate highway. It shouldn’t take long to get safely away from here before we stop. We both need rest and time to let these drugs wear off.”

“I’ll wait, then,” she said. “Before we sleep, though, I’m going to need a needle and thread.”

“What for?”

“To stitch up that gash on your arm. It needs to be closed up.”

Alex nodded, but he didn’t like the thought of having her sew on his arm, at least not without some kind of local anesthesia. He didn’t want to stop in at an emergency room, though. They would have questions. He wasn’t in the mood to think up answers to questions.

He tested his injured left arm a little. It was beginning to ache in earnest. The pain throbbed with each beat of his heart. He couldn’t hold the wheel with his left hand alone. The pressure needed to turn the wheel hurt.

He glanced in the rearview mirror to look back at the fire.

Just as he did, there was a soft thud to the air that Alex felt as a thump deep in his chest. He’d felt that thump before.

In the mirror he saw a dark smudge swirl in the air behind them in the back seat. As soon as he saw it, the indistinct, dark swirl of night changed into a vortex of vapor.

The vapor condensed into a shape.

A man in a dark leather vest and no shirt lunged at them from out of the back seat, from out of another world.

42

THE MAN IN THE BACK SEAT threw an arm around both Jax’s and Alex’s necks at the same time, pulling them back against the seat, choking them both. His bare arms were massively muscled. Alex’s vision dimmed down to a narrow, dark tunnel. The powerful arm was cutting off his blood supply as well as his air. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Jax’s arms and legs flailing and he knew the man was hurting her even more.

Alex tried to reach the steering wheel. The way the man’s arm had him around the throat, pinning him back to the seat, Alex couldn’t pull away. Try as he might, he couldn’t reach the brake, either.

He was only able to sporadically get his fingertips on the steering wheel. The truck slowly started taking an arcing course across the road, toward oncoming traffic. As Alex brushed the wheel with his fingertips, it started back the other way, toward the right side of the road. He struggled to correct with the wheel to keep them from crashing into a light pole.

He couldn’t get a breath. He tried to twist enough to steer with his left hand and pull at the arm with his right, but the fingertips of one hand weren’t enough to steer. Alex used his knees to steady the wheel and switched to using both hands to try to pry the arm away. He reached back, trying to get ahold of fingers, but couldn’t reach them.

His lungs burned for air. He was starting to have difficulty focusing his vision. He knew that if he didn’t do something, and soon, he would lose consciousness. If that happened, it was all over — they would have him.

He could hear strangled sounds coming from Jax as she desperately struggled to breathe. Out of the corner of his eye Alex could see her face turning red. He could also see that her arms were hardly moving anymore.

The powerfully built man growled with the effort of keeping his arms clamped around them both. In the position he was in, Alex had no chance to gain the advantage.

He tried again but couldn’t reach the brake. He couldn’t reach the gas pedal, either, but since they were going down a slight grade the truck wasn’t slowing.

In his rush to get away from the hospital, he hadn’t retrieved his gun. He had figured that once they were safely away he would then get it out from under the seat. He had thought that if any of Vendis’s men tried to stop them he would have enough time to get the gun out. He hadn’t figured on a man materializing in his back seat.

He could think of nothing else but to try to reach under the seat for his gun. Try as he might, though, he couldn’t get to it. It might as well have been a mile away.

He abandoned his attempt to get the arm off his throat. He pushed back against the man behind them to force him to change his hold a little. Just as the man loosened and moved his arm a bit to improve his hold, Alex lunged forward with all his strength.

Alex managed to grab the steering wheel with both hands.

He immediately cranked the wheel to the right. They were going slow enough that the front tires stuck and the truck cut violently to the right, hitting the curb and going up over it.

Between the sudden right turn and bouncing up over the curb, the man was thrown hard to the left. He probably didn’t know anything about riding in a truck; it didn’t appear that he was prepared for such a maneuver. He had such a hold on Jax that as he was thrown to the left he took her with him, pulling her by the neck, half between and half over the seats.

As he slid across the back seat, his head slammed into the metal of the door along the bottom of the window. The blow caused his stranglehold around both of them to loosen a little. He didn’t let go, but it was enough that they both could at last get desperately needed air. He could hear Jax gasp several times.

Being pulled up out of her seat as she was, and with enough air to regain her wits, Jax was at last able to reach around and pull a knife from the small of her back. When the man had fallen over to the left, he not only pulled her back, but turned her a little, facing more toward Alex. She brought the knife around and sliced cleanly through the upper ligament of the biceps of the arm holding Alex. Their attacker cried out in pain and rage as his slack arm slipped off Alex.

Alex immediately slammed on the brakes. The man, already off balance, slid off the seat, down onto the narrow floor area. He lay sideways, stuffed into a space that was too small for him, but despite everything, his beefy arm remained locked around Jax’s neck.

Pulled over as she was on her back, between the seats, and held by the throat, she was unable to maneuver. He had pressure on her throat again, cutting off her air. Her movements slowed as she started to lose consciousness. The man was obviously intent on breaking her neck, but being on the floor with her partly on top and somewhat behind him, he was having trouble accomplishing that task. He appeared perfectly willing to simply strangle her.

As the man fought to gain his balance and get up, Alex yanked the syringe from his pocket and popped the cap off with his thumb. In one swift movement he turned and thrust the needle down into the side of the man’s bull neck. He pushed the plunger home.

The man kicked and bellowed in rage, struggling to get up. Alex stabbed the gas and slammed on the brakes, jerking the truck to keep him off balance. With his injured arm, he still managed to grab Alex’s hair in his fist. Alex could tell that he was slowing from the drugs, his movements becoming less coordinated.

Still, Jax was in desperate trouble. She, too, was hardly moving as she lost consciousness.

Alex stripped the silver knife out of her hand. He pulled away from the fist holding his hair, turned, and leaned over the back of his seat to stab down at the man. As the man came up from the floor he met Alex’s blade on its way down. Alex added all his strength to thrusting the knife through the side of the man’s throat.

By the sudden spurts of blood, Alex knew that he’d hit an artery — the same one he’d managed to hit with the syringe. By the sounds of the man’s breathing, he knew that he’d also hit the windpipe. The heavy volume of blood pumping from the severed artery flowed down into the deep gash and into his lungs as he gasped for air. The man started drowning in his own blood.

In the grip of the drugs and the throes of death, he finally let go of Jax. She gulped in air. Even as she was gasping and regaining consciousness, she took the knife back from Alex. As the man’s arm flailed weakly about, his hand trying to grab her, she stabbed it. He reflexively, slowly, pulled the hand back and pressed it against the gaping wound in the side of his neck and throat. It appeared he was trying to stop the bleeding.

Alex was sickened by the messy act of killing a human being. It was a difficult, gruesome task.

As the man’s struggles slowed, Jax began cutting symbols in his forehead. She wasn’t waiting until he was dead. He managed to get out a gurgling curse as she gouged the lines of the design into his flesh.

Alex turned his attention to getting the car off the grass and back on the road before anyone came to see what was happening. With all the police cars in the area that was all too real a risk.

He didn’t see what Jax did, but the burbling curses died out in muffled grunts.

In mid-grunt, it suddenly went silent inside the Jeep. A glance back between the seats confirmed what he thought: The man was gone, along with all the blood.

Jax let out a huge sigh as she flopped back into her seat. She held her throat as she coughed.

“Dear spirits, that hurt,” she said in a hoarse whisper.

Alex had the Jeep back up to speed.

“Stop!” she suddenly cried out. “Stop the truck right now!”

Alex, surprised by her screamed command, slammed on the brakes. The Cherokee slid to a stop. He pulled off the road onto a thinly graveled parking area on the shoulder.

“What? What’s the matter?”

“I’m an idiot!” Jax growled.

“What are you talking about?”

Jax reached up, grabbed the rearview mirror, and twisted it until it ripped off the windshield.

“What the hell are you doing?”

She threw open the door and heaved the mirror into the bushes. “Saving our lives.”

She retrieved her silver knife from the floor and used the pommel to smash the glass in the side mirror on the truck door. The glass broke into a spiderweb of cracks. She bashed at it over and over with the butt of the knife handle until all the pieces of glass were knocked out. A black socket with an adjustment cable was all that remained.

She ran around the front of the truck and did the same thing to the driver’s-side mirror. When she had finished she rushed back around and got in.

“Let’s go,” she said as she slammed the door shut. “Get us away from this last spot they saw us! Go, go, go!”

Alex checked over his shoulder and then dumped the clutch, spinning the wheels in the gravel as he pulled the Cherokee back out onto the street.

“You think they found us by the rearview mirrors?”

She slumped back in her seat, comforting her neck. “How else?”

He turned to look out the back window to make sure they weren’t being followed.

He saw a big man in a leather vest running after them from the graveled parking area.

With a cold wave of shock, Alex realized that the man must have arrived in this world right where the Jeep had been only a moment before. She had told him once, in the driveway of his house, that they usually arrived in pairs. That was the partner of the man they had just killed and sent back.

Alex stepped on the gas. The next time he looked back, they were too far away for him to see the man. He would never be able to follow or find them on foot. Alex let out a sigh of relief. He gripped the steering wheel tighter to try to stop his hands from shaking.

Jax, also watching the man vanish in the distance behind, looked over at Alex out of the corner of her eye, as if to ask if he understood, now.

“That was close,” he admitted. “But how am I going to drive without mirrors?”

“Would you rather drive with new passengers arriving from my world every few minutes?”

“I guess not,” he admitted. He glanced over at her. “Are you all right, Jax?”

Her brow wrinkled as she fought back tears while rubbing the muscles in her neck. “I think I will be after I get some sleep.”

“Close your eyes,” he said in a gentle voice. “I’ll wake you when I get us a room. Sleep until then.”

She didn’t answer. He didn’t know if she’d fallen asleep or if she had passed out.

Alex looked back over his shoulder. The road behind was empty. He wasn’t much comforted.