The First Prophet (24 page)

He didn’t think she was quite so fragile as she had been days ago, but at times, especially
when she was tired, she still seemed to him too frail and shut in herself to be able
to go on much longer. When he looked at her, he had the sense of something almost
ethereal. Unreal. As if some delicate creature of myth and legend had drifted out
of the mist and into his life.

That’s the Celt in me.

Or maybe just the writer, steeped in mythology and legend, shaping daydreams in the
mind and giving them form on paper. That man could easily imagine Sarah as an elf
or faerie, native to some dreamy betweenworld and just visiting this one, vulnerable
to danger, terrifyingly fragile and lovely. Enchanting him because, in ancient times,
the current of love between humans and faeries
had run deep and strong, even though the price demanded for such joy had all too often
been death…

Definitely the Celt in me.

Her abilities might make her seem otherworldly, but Sarah was all too human, Tucker
knew. Human enough to be very afraid of what she could see and the fact that she could
see it. Human enough to be in pain, to want to withdraw even more when she was afraid,
to push him further away.

Especially when he pushed her.

He didn’t want to push her. He didn’t want to hurt her. Didn’t want to see her fear
and dread at the thought of deliberately trying to open doors she would much rather
keep closed. And he definitely didn’t like seeing her draw even further away from
him when he suggested she try. But Tucker was all too aware of time passing, and even
more conscious of how damnably little they knew.

They needed to—had to—use their only real ace, and that was Sarah.

If the other side was after her with such grim determination because they either feared
her or valued her, then Tucker thought the chances were very good that Sarah could
use whatever it was they feared or desired against them. The question, of course,
was whether she could do it. Whether she could even try to do it.

As much as he had learned over the years about psychic abilities and the paranormal,
Tucker still felt very unsure about what to tell Sarah, about how to advise her. He
was not psychic, and as he’d told her, he couldn’t
begin to feel what she felt. Not even his vivid writer’s imagination could help him
to help her.

Until he had met her, he had seen in the world of the paranormal very little he’d
believed to be genuine. And even the few psychics who had impressed him with their
abilities had been erratic not only in what they had been able to do but in their
interpretations of what they had seen and sensed. That was why he had, in the beginning
at least, questioned Sarah’s interpretations. But she seemed—so far—less erratic than
those psychics had been, and far, far less likely to try to “fill in the blanks” of
what she saw with hunches and outright guesses.

Maybe that would come in time. Maybe every genuine psychic learned to create a patchwork
of vision and guess and interpretation in order to present something complete and
understandable to those inquiring. Maybe it was simple human nature.

And then there were those things not so easily explained.

“She never wanted to be found, you know. That’s why you couldn’t.”

A quiet statement, offered in a quiet moment, as if it had simply come to Sarah without
her bidding. A reluctant glimpse inside the mind of someone she did not know, had
never known. Someone who had been gone for a very long time.

Sarah had simply known.

Her abilities, Tucker believed, were still new and raw. Unformed, in a sense. Unrestrained
by the checks and guards and filters her mind would no doubt struggle in
time to erect. They might at this point be beyond her ability to control, but they
were also undoubtedly powerful, and the force of them was undiluted by her conscious
mind. Where an experienced psychic might try to interpret what was seen, Sarah merely
reported it.

This is what I see. This is what I know.

When she looked—even absently without her full attention—she saw.

He had to make her look. No matter what it cost her.

No matter what it cost him.

The usual crowd populated Venice Beach, but it had been a slow day for Daisy Novak.
Plenty of curious looks were directed toward her kiosk, but not many seemed eager
to pay twenty bucks to get their fortunes told.

Absently, she polished her crystal ball with her sleeve and watched the people wander
past. It was nearly dark, but there were plenty of lights around, and still plenty
of people, and Daisy hesitated. She was stiff after sitting here so long. Damned arthritis.
But just another twenty bucks or so would mean she probably wouldn’t have to work
on Saturday. Another hour, then. But no longer; her cat, Moses, would be waiting for
his supper.

She reached under the draped table and flipped the switch that turned on the light
under her crystal ball. A nice effect, if she did say so herself. Especially since
her kiosk was in one of the dimmer areas of the boardwalk. The light shone upward
through the crystal, and she knew it made her face look nicely spooky and unearthly.

And it was effective too. Within minutes, a customer sat down on the other side of
the table.

“Twenty dollars for ten minutes?” She pushed a bill across the table.

Daisy smiled and slid the bill into her voluminous blouse. “Yes, indeed. Do you have
a preference, Megan? Tarot, palm reading, crystal ball?”

Megan blinked, then smiled. “You’re pretty good.” She was young, in her twenties,
and pretty, dressed as casually as everyone around her in shorts and a skimpy top,
and she had that I-dare-you expression that Daisy easily recognized. “Let’s try out
the ball.”

Automatically, Daisy cupped her hands around the base of the crystal and peered at
it intently. Now she regretted turning on the light; the damn thing made her eyes
water. “Past, present, or future?” she murmured. “The crystal shows all.”

“Suit yourself,” Megan said.

Daisy glanced at her, noted the challenging expression, and felt irritated enough
to reach a bit deeper than usual. So this one was a skeptic, was she? Well, then,
Daisy would just give her her money’s worth.

Briskly, Daisy said, “I see buildings, with young people walking all around—ah. You’re
a graduate student. Economics.” She sneaked a glance up and saw Megan blink again.
Good. A direct hit. “Single, but you have a boyfriend who is…a musician. You spend
weekends with him. Hmmm. Doesn’t like the missionary position much, does he? Wants
you to do all the work whenever
possible. And he just bought a book with more positions illustrated for next weekend—”

“All right, that’s enough about that.” Megan’s face was flushed. But there was an
eager light in her eyes now. “My future. What’s my future?”

Daisy peered more intently, but she wasn’t looking into the crystal. She was looking
inward. “I see…a man. He’s…he’s in the shadows. He’s giving you something. Money.
He’s paying you.” Daisy felt a chill spread through her and was only half-aware that
her voice had grown anxious. “Don’t, Megan. Don’t go to him for your money. He’s…there’s
something wrong with him. With all of them. Don’t become a part of their plans. He—they—want
you to do something bad. Helping them is a bad thing. Don’t do it—”

She reached across the table instinctively to grasp Megan’s hand and only then realized
that the girl had fled.

More than a little unnerved herself, Daisy turned off the crystal’s light and packed
up to go home. Jeez, what had she seen? A guy in the shadows, a guy she’d felt was
somehow not normal. This was California, for Christ’s sake—nobody was
normal
here. So why had it scared her so much?

Daisy tried to push it out of her mind, but she was still nervous as she walked home,
jumping at shadows and noises. She told herself to calm down, reminded herself that
this was a safe route home and always had been. But that reading bothered her.

She was half a block from home when a shadow loomed out at her from an alleyway, and
she didn’t jump quite fast enough. A hand like iron grabbed her arm and pulled her
into the alley.

Daisy should have screamed. But the moment he touched her, coldly terrifying images
flooded her mind so vividly that they stole her breath.

“Hello, Daisy,” he said gently.

She looked up at his shadowy face, and in the moment granted to her for understanding,
she suddenly knew what he was.

“Oh, my God,” she whispered.

She never saw the knife.

By noon the next day, Tucker’s laptop was sorting through the most recent download
of media information and official reports, which left him and Sarah with nothing to
do. They had both awakened early, breakfasted quietly, and said little to each other
during the hours since. It had been agreed that they would remain here until early
afternoon, leaving this hotel and continuing their journey to the next stop. Syracuse.

That destination was not so arbitrary as it might seem; one of Tucker’s tasks this
morning had been to begin putting together a list of psychics living in the northeast,
and the first name on that list belonged to a man who lived in Syracuse. Since that
city was along their general route northward, they had decided to make that their
next stop.

Whether they contacted the psychic would be decided later.

“Why don’t we go downstairs and have lunch in one of the restaurants?” Tucker suggested
as his laptop hummed quietly. “You must be more than ready to get out of this room.”

Sarah, who had occupied herself by restlessly watching the news and mostly not watching
one old movie on television, was definitely ready. “That sounds good.”

They left the
DO NOT DISTURB
sign on the door to prevent housekeeping from cleaning the room while they were gone;
Tucker didn’t want his laptop disturbed.

Sarah found herself looking around warily as they crossed the vast lobby to one of
the restaurants, but nothing awoke suspicion. Everybody around them looked and acted
normal and unthreatening.

But so did Sergeant Lewis.

“You’re very quiet,” Tucker said, after they’d given their order to the waiter.

“Am I? Sorry.” Her head no longer hurt, but that unsettling pulsing sensation was
still present, that heartbeat throb behind her eyes.

“You don’t have to apologize for it, Sarah.”

“Okay,” she said absently.

“Is anything bothering you? I mean, anything in particular?”

She looked at him for a moment, then smiled impersonally and allowed her gaze to slide
away and roam idly past the low wall defining the restaurant and out into the lobby.
“No, not really.”

The restaurant was fairly busy and the lobby more so. She watched people moving about,
many of them wearing business suits and name tags as they clustered in the various
seating areas and walked briskly toward whatever seminars they were due to attend
in the nearby meeting rooms.

“Are you sure? You seem a bit…preoccupied today.”

“Do I?” One man caught her attention, and it didn’t surprise her that he would have.
He was extraordinarily handsome, for one thing—and despite what she thought was a
scar down his left cheek. Very distinctively, his black hair sported both a widow’s
peak and a streak of pure white at the left temple.

He was clearly powerful physically, broad-shouldered and athletic, and more than one
passing woman did a double take. He was sitting alone in a seating area designed for
two, the second glass on his table mute indication that he was not as alone as he
appeared.

He was looking around idly much as Sarah was, and for an instant she caught his gaze.
His eyes were very pale in that almost coldly handsome face, and though they flickered
very briefly with interest when they rested on her, Sarah’s reaction was more ambivalent.

One of these things is not like the others.

“Sarah?”

She looked at Tucker, trying to ride out the fleeting surge of panic. She was not
afraid of the stranger, she realized. She didn’t recognize him as an enemy. No, her
reaction had been more nebulous than that. He was just…wrong. Out of place somehow.