Chapter Two

Taka drove the car he'd recently purchased—a late 90s Toyota—toward O'Hare and cursed traffic and fate in equal parts. Kaena had realized the conflict too late to change their plans, so she was off meeting with the cake people, discussing confections, while Taka was driving to the airport to pick up Mr. and Mrs. Gi, e.g., his ex and her husband. He was apprehensive, to say the least. He hadn't seen them since before he had proposed, and even though Kaena said that her father had given his congratulations, he still felt very strange about the whole thing.

Not about Kaena, of course. She was the one piece of this massive wiggling jigsaw puzzle that was his life that seemed to be stationary. She was right, and he knew it, but it didn't change the unresolved history between Taka's former lives and his fiancee's mother, not to mention her father, who he had once killed, and then saved. Nakago still scared the hell out of him, but Taka knew that was mostly psychological. And Miaka . . . was Miaka, and he still loved her, in some vague, distant way, not as a lover, but as a cherished friend. He hoped this marriage would make her happy, both for her daughter, and for him.

Gah, there was no use thinking about all this now. He needed to concentrate, he realized as somebody whizzed past him cursing and making obscene gestures, on his driving. I-294 was scary as hell under the best circumstances, with its perpetual construction and lunatic commuters, but it was 5:30 pm, and he was lucky they were moving at all. All in all, he probably would have preferred not moving. That was also kind of how he felt about his life at the moment. He was happy about the impending wedding, of course, but it felt like things were just moving and changing under him. He had lived the last ten years or so in an equilibrium state—not good, not bad, just there—and it had been comfortable, for all its flaws. He wouldn't trade Kaena for any of it back, but he did miss how normal his life had become, and how predictable. Now he was getting married, applying to graduate schools all over the country, looking at houses and condos, thinking about a pet, or children! It was pretty intense, and somehow he felt like everything was whizzing past him, and he was helplessly studying a map that didn't make any sense.

Life was good, and terrifying. His oldest brother Chuuei, who was to be his best man, was flying in three weeks early, and his sister Yuiren was actually planning on making a move to the area right before the wedding. He hadn't seen them in at least five years, and was anxious to catch up, but also nervous. They were adults now, really adults, not just adolescents or young adults, but full adults. Chuuei had a family, and Yuiren was in a pretty serious relationship herself. While he had stagnated for ten years, others had grown and blossomed around him, or without him. Well, now it was his turn to grow and change. He didn't have

Somebody swerved in front of him, making a bee-line for the next exit, and Taka realized that it was his exit as well. He carefully changed lanes and pulled onto the ramp, decelerating and looking down at his directions. He could see planes coming and going, and wondered if one of those planes was carrying his future in-laws. God, that was weird to think about! He made his way to short term parking, and headed for the terminal. They were scheduled to arrive at six, so he hunkered down on a bench to wait, staring at the exit of the baggage claim area. It had been a really long day. He had worked in the morning, skipped lunch to meet with a caterer, who did not actually feed him, which was a pretty big ripoff in Taka's book, went back to school to teach a few more hours of history, and then met with another caterer briefly before driving north to pick up his in-laws. He began to doze, dreaming of wedding cakes that ate him, angry relatives getting sick off the catering he'd chosen, and Kaena's dress shredding to pieces around her, not to mention losing the rings.

He woke up with a start as a firm hand started to topple him to his side. He looked up at his soon-to-be father-in-law and lifted his brows. The man looked exhausted. The attempt on his life had drained away what yellow had been left in his hair, and it was now a blonde so pale it was almost white. He looked like he had recently gained, and lost, a few pounds, because his skin was distinctly less tight around his jaw and neck area, but he was still an impressive height, and the few extra pounds on him only served to make him look more solid and threatening, rather than soft or old. Miaka was looking distinctly less round than she had, which made her soft skin look a little softer, but didn't detract from the attractiveness of her open, friendly face. She smiled and gave him a firm hug.

"Congratulations, son!" she grinned at him, and there was an edge of irony to her smile.

Taka reeled for a moment. Somehow it was easier to think of Nakago as his father-in-law than it was to think of Miaka as his mother-in-law. He laughed nervously. Nakago frowned judiciously at this exchange, and Taka was pretty sure he was thinking of the implications of Miaka's statement for himself.

"How was the flight?" he asked, pushing himself up and offering to take Miaka's bag from her. She handed over one of the smaller, flower-printed bags to him, still giving him a sweet, yet somehow sinister smile.

"It was fine," she said. "Long, of course, but the service was good, and the food was very good!" She burped as if to punctuate this statement with a demonstration.

"Where is Kaena?" Nakago asked, his frown not abating.

"She had to go meet with the cake people for some last-minute details. It was a cake-emergency, I'm told. A crisis of colors, or something," Taka explained. "But she'll be joining us for dinner."

"Nakago is just cranky because the seats were tighter than usual. He swears it's the seats that have changed, not his, ahem, assets," Miaka smiled and started for the automatic doors leading to the parking lot.

Taka muffled a laugh, and turned it into a violent sneeze at Nakago's glare. Nakago was a man of power, and slightly expanded or not, he was the type of man who expected things to work according to his wishes. Taka wouldn't be terribly surprised if they found him a roomier seat for the return flight.

"How were you able to take off so much time from your campaign? Elections are beginning soon, aren't they?"

"I've dropped out of this year's election. There are more important things than running for prime minister. Besides, after my supposed illness, people are beginning to mumble about my health. It's better to take some time off and come back stronger and more impressive than ever."

Knowing Nakago, that was just what he'd do. "Kaena is pretty excited to have you both here. Where are you staying? She didn't say."

"We've found a temporary sublet for the next three months. We certainly didn't want to impinge on your wedding plans, or time there after," said the woman.

"It's no imposition," he said, but secretly danced a little inside. Having Nakago and Miaka staying with them would certainly put a damper on their sex life. He knew Kaena well enough to know that she would not have sex with her parents under the same roof. He'd be lucky if they got to hold hands.

"You're getting married!" Miaka exclaimed. She smiled brightly, and he didn't detect any of her typical Miaka mask, so Taka smiled in return. Nakago, on the other hand, slipped his fingers around hers. "You don't need us underfoot. So tell me, what has been going on in your life lately? Aside from caterers and the like."

"Well, I've been applying to graduate programs in history. I had been thinking about it for a while, but seeing Kaena work on her doctorate made me feel a bit behind, so I thought I should continue my education. I have always thought it might be fun to get into archaeology or something along those lines. Investigative history, maybe?"

"Where have you applied?" Nakago asked, genuinely interested, it appeared.

"UC Berkeley, Stanford, University of Minnesota, University of Chicago, Boston College, and University of Indiana-Bloomington."

"Just a few!" Miaka cried as they approached the short term parking lot.

"I'm applying to doctoral programs, and they're really competitive. I've been out of the education game for a while, so I thought I'd spread my bets around a bit."

Truth be told, he doubted he'd get into any even if he applied to 20 different programs. Kaena had looked at his transcript thoughtfully, and said she thought he had a chance. His grades hadn't been perfect, but they'd been good, and he had gotten good letters, and of course having 10 years of teaching experience didn't hurt. He still felt far too old to be considering such a drastic career change.

"Where would you like to go?"

"Ideally, Chicago. It would be convenient for Kaena and I, since we already live here. Barring that, Stanford."

"Aim high," Miaka smiled as Nakago took her bags and loaded them into Taka's trunk. "Good thinking. You'll get in, I'm sure."

"Thanks."

They piled into the little car, and headed for his and Kaena's condo. The hour-long commute was silent and painful. Miaka dozed, or at least pretended to. Taka made strained attempts at conversation with his future father-in-law, who was sitting in the front seat, but his discouraging responses curtailed further conversation. Taka put on the news. There was an interview with a friend of a famous author who had recently died, and some discussion of the latest health care bill congress was pushing through, which served as a distraction, even if it wasn't all that interesting. The next piece was interrupted suddenly by an urgent news bulletin. Nakago reached over and turned up the volume.

"A deep sea earthquake about 200 miles from the Atlantic coastline between New York and Philadelphia has caused massive damage to coastal cities. The quake, which occurred at 5:45 Eastern was estimated at a magnitude 8.7. Residents of any coastline area are urged to take immediate shelter on higher ground, as the quake has spawned a tsunami, which could reach the cost in a matter of minutes. I repeat, residents of New York, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and New Jersey that live within 30 miles of a coastal area are urged to evacuate and move to higher ground."

The report detailed the scientific possibilities for a sudden, massive quake in an area that wasn't particularly close to the shore line, but Taka thought of his friends from New York, and hoped they were okay. Apparently, the quake itself had caused some serious damage to older buildings, and rolling blackouts were taking place all over the greater metro areas of Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Atlantic City, and others. The death toll was high, since East Coast cities weren't nearly as prepared for earthquakes as places on the opposite coast that had them regularly, and unfortunately, they expected it to get worse before the day was over.

Taka was speechless as he continued to listen to the reports. When they began interviewing a young girl who had seen her parents' building collapse while she was standing not a block away, he turned it off and glanced at Nakago. Miaka was not even feigning sleep now.

"That's unbelievable," the woman murmured. "How terrible."

"What an unusual situation," Nakago said. "And worrisome."

"Unusual how?" Taka inquired. "I don't know a whole lot about plate tectonics and the like."

"Earthquakes are common in Japan because it's right on the Pacific Rim, where two plates meet up. Two plates come together in the Atlantic Ocean, but it's hundreds of miles from U.S. Territory. Quakes are relatively rare there. The newscaster reported that the quake originated in the ocean, but there are dozens of faults on Manhattan Island. Boston's foundation is composed of two-thirds sediment, and the old buildings in Philadelphia would not fare will if a quake of that magnitude originated inland."

"Is that likely?" Taka frowned worriedly.

"No, I suppose not. But it is very strange. I don't usually associate the U.S. With earthquakes, but they have them here too, from time to time," he mused.

Nakago clicked the radio back on, and they listened for the remainder of the drive.

...

Nakago hugged his daughter as she met them in the foyer of her condo. They would be staying one night with her and Taka, and then moving off to their sublet in the morning, mostly because it was after business hours. They would have gladly gotten a hotel for the night, but Kaena had insisted, and Nakago wasn't going to argue with his daughter. She was as beautiful as when he'd last seen her, and she was positively glowing. She took Taka's hand as they entered the elevator.

The old warrior was having serious trouble reconciling his daughter's happiness with his ambiguous feelings toward the man who had once killed him. He was, without a doubt, one of the most trustworthy men that Nakago had ever known. He doubted the man even knew the meaning of the word deceit, let alone how to do it, and if he gave his word that something would happen, that was what would happen. He knew that, not only because the man had saved his life a little more than a year before, and not just because they had fought on the same side against Tenkou's servants, but because they had been enemies, and he had seen how the man had fought for his friends and for Miaka, with determination backed by his word. He couldn't fail. That same determination made Nakago very nervous for his daughter. He wondered if she was enamored of him mostly because of his initial perseverance.

He was a solid man, a tolerant, kind-hearted, worldly man. Nakago was begrudged to admit that he had thought of Taka as a friend, or at least one of the rare people that Nakago would be sad to see hurt, and somewhere along the way, that concern had turned into something more. Maybe love, like a brother, or a son. But Kaena was an extraordinary young woman, and she deserved an extraordinary man. Nakago just wasn't sure Taka was extraordinary.

Taka brought them to L20, one of the finest restaurants in the city. Nakago tried to pay attention to the dinner conversation, but used jet lag as an excuse to bow out of the conversation and listen. It wasn't jet lag that was distracting him, though—he couldn't stop thinking about the disaster taking place on the East Coast. He was not, nor had he ever been, a man of great empathy, so humanitarian emotion was certainly not the culprit. Something was bothering about him. It seemed unusual. There had been a greater number of natural disasters in the previous months. Cities in South America had been completely flatted by earthquakes, wild-fires were tearing through the Western states, Japan was suffering from flooding and volcanic eruptions, and parts of Europe had been affected by dangerous weather, bug infestations, and other issues. Nakago was not a superstitious man, but he was bothered by this. He was thankful, at least, that he was here with his wife and daughter, in a place that seemed to be somewhat of a haven. Logically, not so true, since Chicago suffered from tornadoes like any other midwestern city, and was at risk for flooding, should the river ever get so high, but it felt safe here. He was willing to rely on his intuition on the matter.

The rest of the evening flew by, and soon they were tucking themselves into Kaena's large bed, while she and Taka set up an air mattress on the living room floor.

"What's wrong with you tonight? That's not your jet-lag face," Miaka pointed out, pulling off her dress and folding it neatly into her suitcase. She turned to him in her bra and half-slip. It was a credit to his level of distraction that he didn't ravish her.

"Just a strange feeling."

"Me too," Miaka said unexpectedly. She brushed out her russet hair with her fingers and dropped her slip, pulling a practical cotton nightgown out of her suitcase. "It's strange, isn't it? The disaster on the coast. It feels strange."

"An unnatural natural disaster," Nakago murmured.

"Yes, exactly. You always had a way of pinpointing what I was feeling. It feels out of season, somehow."

"There's nothing we can do. It doesn't concern us." At the pointed look she gave him, he amended. "It doesn't concern us anymore than it concerns anybody else."

"And yet, it feels like it does."

Silently, Nakago nodded. Miaka tossed her bra into the suitcase and pulled on her nightie, climbing into bed. Nakago slid in beside her. He was jet lagged, albeit not as much as he had led his daughter and her fiancé to believe, but mostly he was just inexplicably troubled. He didn't like the sour taste he had in his mouth. His arms tightened around his wife. Her soft, slim body against his was reassuring. Slowly, her breathing became deep and rhythmic. It took another hour for sleep to find him.

...

Sam woke up panting and gasping for breath. He groped around to familiarize himself with an environment that his eyes, which were not with his body at the moment, could not see. He felt a door handle, a seat belt, a soft thigh. His body arched. Terror, pain, destruction. He saw a couple crushed to death as a building collapsed. He saw water flooding the streets, sweeping away people, pets, and cars. He saw fires, as the power plants caught fire from the transformers trying to power a disaster area sparked and blew. Each face he saw was written in his nightmares; a little girl or boy, crushed against a brick wall; a parent screaming for a child; a husband calling for his wife. He tried to force his eyes to open, to see what he knew in his mind was in front of him, but the images were rapid and confusing, yet painfully clear in his mind's eye. He heard himself screaming in terror, but could do nothing to stop it. It seemed like an eternity before he convulsed again, eyes snapping open. He wept in horror, and when he stopped, he saw the girl looking at him like he had lost his mind.

In a way, he had lost his mind. It had been elsewhere, in New York, in Boston, where people were dying, where homes were destroyed. He'd had the visions for as long as he could remember, and they had always been bad enough to prevent him from making many friends, or participating in activities that required him to be out for multiple hours. They had passed it off as a seizure disorder at his parochial school, but his frequent fits had kept him from holding a steady job. His high school education had ended a year early, when he had his most memorable fit in the middle of his junior English class and refused to return. He had taken his GED and tried some courses at the local community college, but his visions disabled him. If he wasn't having them, he was obsessing over them; planning possible futures, planning what he would do if he encountered situations like the ones he saw. He took a deep shuddering breath and forced his attention back to the young woman who had pulled over to the shoulder and was staring at him with her pale hands clutched tightly on the steering wheel.

"What was that?" she asked meekly.

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you," he said softly. "Sorry, I think I grabbed you. I couldn't control it. When it happens, I don't really have control of my body."

"You grabbed my thigh," she said softly, rubbing the spot unconsciously.

"Sorry," he mumbled. She was silent again as she pulled back onto the freeway. They were about a mile way from the main drag of Topeka, based on what his last driver had told him.

"Sorry to pry. My mom's a nurse. It looked like . . . some kind of seizure, with hallucination. Epilepsy, maybe? Were you ever, um, diagnosed with anything?"

He took a deep breath to prevent his voice from shaking. His hands were still trembling. "I saw lots of doctors as a kid. They labeled me with epilepsy, but the medicines only made it worse. They told me I was schizophrenic. I don't hear voices. They don't tell me to do things. They told me I was using hallucinogenic drugs when I got older. That was my favorite. As if I need to add to it. The latest one was that I was simply attention seeking. That one went over best with my dad, and he beat the shit out of me for it. Needless to say, it didn't stop."

"You sound like you have a theory on it," she prompted delicately, glancing over at him.

"Get off at the next exit, Wanamaker," he said offhand. "I know what I think they are. People think I'm even crazier when I tell them the theory."

She glanced at him, patiently waiting for him to continue. When he didn't, she gave up and hunched her shoulders down again, shrinking in on herself like some sad balloon losing all its helium. He could tell it had taken everything she had to ask him such personal questions.

"They're visions," he said at last. "That one was . . . I don't know what it was. Massive destruction on the coast. Flooding, fires, thousands of people dying. They're absolutely beyond my control."

"Like visions from God?" she asked in a quiet voice. She didn't seem to be writing him off as a lunatic, which was encouraging.

"If they're from God, he can go fuck himself," he frowned.

Rowan looked scandalized at this pronouncement. "Do you, you know, believe in God? Maybe they're from the other one . . ."

"Well, they're torturous enough to be from Satan, if that's what you mean. I don't know what the hell I believe. I was raised Presbyterian. Visions happened to prophets, not upper middle class kids."

"For what it's worth, it didn't look like you were faking it, whatever it was. It obviously . . ." she paused to glance over her shoulder and change lanes. "It obviously causes a lot of distress. You were crying."

He flushed. "That was just from relief that it was over." Which was absolutely not true, but he didn't need to tell her that. His father would say he was queer for crying. Now there was an old wound he didn't fancy exposing again.

Rowan's little car made it to the auto center at the mall, and she took the keys when she went inside to inquire about fixing it. She returned a few minutes later. It was almost five now. "They won't be able to get to it tonight, but probably first thing in the morning. I guess we should get a hotel."

She went to the trunk and pulled out a gym bag. He stepped out, and watched her as she grabbed a few things and shoved them in the bag. She disappeared inside to hand off her keys and set everything up and returned a few minutes later. They stared at each other. She was much shorter than him, and looked up at him while casting her gaze down, which was awkward.

"I guess I'll go find somewhere to crash. Thanks for the ride."

"Do you, um . . . want to get something to eat?"

His mouth watered at the suggestion, but he hesitated. "I don't have any money."

"It's okay, it's on me. What do you want?"

"You don't have to do that. I'll probably hunt down a church. They always feed you when you crash at a church. Especially Lutherans."

"My parents gave me this credit card for emergencies. This is an emergency. Let me at least feed you in thanks for changing my tire. I don't know what I would have done."

Reluctantly he agreed, and they started walking toward one of the many restaurants on this road. She paused, glancing at a Walmart store across the street. "Do you think, maybe we should get you some new clothes first?"

He was caught between anger and embarrassment, and stopped as well. "I don't need your charity. You don't have to feel sorry for me."

"I," she looked downcast, and he realized that this was a girl who was fundamentally incapable of ingenuous pity. She felt for him because she could see he was embarrassed by his ratty, stinky clothes. "I'm sorry, you're right."

"No, I'm sorry," he shook his head. "I can't pay for them, though. All I have is what I'm carrying, and that's approximately four dollars."

Rowan smiled and grabbed his arm with a very dainty grip, leading him across the street and into the super center. Twenty minutes later, and she had purchased him three pairs of jeans, a pair of nice khaki pants, and several brand new tee shirts and two button downs. After they had checked out, she realized he didn't have a belt, socks, underwear, or respectable shoes, so they went back for a second round. Considering how cheap the clothes were, they were remarkably tasteful. With embarrassment, he stood with her as she swiped her parents' credit card again. A few minutes in the men's bathroom produced him relatively respectable in the new jeans and one of the t-shirts she had purchased for him.

"You really didn't have to do that," he said quietly.

"If I were down on my luck, I would want somebody who had the means to do the right thing, too," she said firmly. Morals seemed to be an area where she was not shy. The shoes were amazingly comfortable. His old cast-off tennis shoes, which were now at the bottom of the men's room garbage bin, had been worn down to the rubber soles. The rest of the clothes hadn't fared much better, and they, too, had been discarded, except his army jacket, which he had folded across his forearm.

"Thank you."

"Where do you want to eat? There's a barbecue place over there."

He really didn't want to exploit her generosity. "Somewhere cheap."

"She looked at her phone, which now had reception and a very nice list of local restaurants. Um, there's a Chipotle up the road a little, if you don't mind hoofing it," she said.

"Fine by me. I walked across half of Colorado."

"You're kidding. Where are you from, anyway?"

"My family is from Idaho. I've been squatting in towns on the West side of the rockies for the last three years, and spent the last year traveling across Colorado and Kansas."

"It took you that long?"

"Well, no, I made quite a few detours along the way. The pedestrian route is long, but not quite that long." He briefly explained about how the visions sometimes led him to people with time enough to prevent disasters or help them, so he had spent a lot of time rescuing old ladies from burning buildings, or at least from buildings that would be on fire eventually. He had even been in the newspaper in some of the towns where he'd stopped.

"That's pretty amazing," she looked at him with something between awe and disbelief.

He shrugged. They walked on in silence, and Sam was pleased to learn about the wonderful world of Chipotle. He ordered a burrito, and was amazed when he couldn't finish it. Rowan picked self-consciously at hers.

"Aren't you hungry?" he asked, slurping the dregs of his soda.

Strangely, she flushed at this. She took a few bites, and then covered the rest up, folding her hands in her lap. She glanced nervously at his face, examining him carefully. "You don't seem like a drifter or serial killer or anything. You talk like everybody I know, though you have a bit of an accent. You have all your teeth, and they're, uh, really nice."

"This is three years of braces and headgear," he flashed his white grin, laughing a little. "My parents spent a fortune on my teeth. I figured it'd be a little ungrateful to let them rot out of my head just to give off the right maniac vagabond vibe."

She covered her teeth self-consciously when she smiled. He had seen them already. They weren't movie-star fake, but they were large and clean and mostly straight. He thought she was an adorable woman, actually. She seemed a lot younger than she probably was, and that made her seem somewhat charmingly innocent.

Their Walmart trip and dinner had taken them through most of the evening, and he supposed she was thinking ahead to her hotel room. "Do you think you could look up local churches on that phone of yours?"

"Why?"

"I have to sleep somewhere," he shrugged. "They usually kick you out of the parks if you try to sleep on a bench. It is a nice night, though."

"You're not sleeping outside!" she looked horrified by this. "Why don't I just rent you a hotel room? I was just going to go to the Super 8 or something."

"Absolutely not. That's ridiculous. You've already been more than generous."

"Well," she looked thoughtful. "Um, you're really not a rapist or anything, right?"

"Not a bit," he said. He was almost ashamed to admit how inexperienced he was. He was a lot of things, but rapist was not one of them.

"Well. I suppose maybe you could stay with me. I mean, obviously you will have to sleep on the floor or the other bed if it's a room with two beds, but I've been with you all afternoon, and it seems like if you were going to attack me, you probably would have done it hours ago, when we were in the middle of nowhere, and I didn't know your name and what you look like."

"That's very-" he wanted to accept her offer so badly. To sleep in a real bed, with real covers that had been washed, with a free continental breakfast, and TV. It was a dream. But it was so improper. "Are you sure you're comfortable with that? It's really all right, I don't mind finding something on my own."

She nodded, and it was settled. They walked another few blocks to the Super 8, and she tried to check in. They wouldn't take the credit card with her parents' names on it, and they said she had to be 21 to check in, which she was not. Dismayed, she turned to him."

"Go to an ATM and get a cash advance, and I'll pay," he advised.

"How old are you, anyway?"

"Twenty-four."

"Really? You seem older."

This plan was enacted quickly, and they were soon settled in a comfortable room with two double beds, a coffee machine, and, yes, cable TV. The first thing he did was take a shower. When he emerged in the jeans and t-shirt with wet blonde hair, she cursed. "I should have gotten you pajamas."

He laughed, sitting down on the edge of the bed and running his fingers through his wet hair. She watched him comb out his tangled hair this way for a minute, and then went to her bag and produced a small purple comb. He combed his hair and then flopped back. "I can't believe I'm in a hotel room. The last time I was in a hotel room was . . . damn, probably ten years ago."

"Oh?" she prompted, pulling out a bag of shower supplies and a pair of pajamas.

"My parents didn't like to take me on trips because of my condition, or whatever you want to call it. But they managed to pull together a trip to Las Vegas, which was really a lot more fun for them than it was for me, since I was obviously too young to gamble or drink or visit prostitutes," he laughed a little at this. Bad choice of words, but she laughed too, so he didn't feel so awkward about it. "I spent most of the trip in the hotel room playing with the little video game console they provide, except I didn't realize that it charged per game. While my parents were downstairs gambling, I was racking up a $200 video game bill. I think I also ordered room service at one point. They ended up spending all their winnings on my bill. I was grounded for about a month after that. The funny thing is that those games sucked."

Rowan giggled at this, and he warmed. He turned to his stomach and looked at her.

"Isn't that so strangely normal for somebody like me? Such an utterly usual memory. I imagine a lot of runaways have similar memories, but they don't talk about them. It probably reminds them of the bad times, too."

"When did you run away?"

"I was seventeen."

"Your father, he beat you?" she asked carefully.

"Not regularly. Just when he would get pissed off at me for having one of my little fits. He thought I was faking it, and assumed that the best way to stop it was to give me negative feedback. Great idea, except I wasn't faking, so it obviously didn't work. He'd beat me, and of course it would happen again, that day or the next day, and he'd just give up for a while. I was bigger than him by the time I was seventeen, but couldn't take him badgering me. Didn't have a lot of reasons to stay at school either, and I . . ."

"Yes?" she was on the edge of her seat, shower caddy all but forgotten.

"I had a vision that I should go to Colorado, so I made my way there. I did odd jobs, and hitched, and sometimes I sang for money on the street corners. I was pretty good, if somebody was around to play the guitar for me. But mostly I just went from place to place where ever the visions led, and then I had a vision that I should go to Chicago. Or I should say visions. I've been having it for a while."

"What is your vision about?"

"It sounds crazy."

"You're talking to a born and bred Christian school girl. We believe in that crap in my religion, you know. Maybe we're wary of impostors, but we do believe such things exist."

He took a breath. He had never actually tried to put it into words, to really describe what he saw. It was always just images, that sort of hung together in his head, but made less sense outside of it. He thought of a better way, and pulled out the notebook he kept with him at all times that contained his dreams and visions. He turned to the one he'd had a year and three months before in the little cabin in Colorado, the one where he had seen the new woman for the first time, and handed it to her. Their fingers brushed as she took it, but she didn't pull away. Her eyes scanned his sloppy, sleepy handwriting, and then she read it again more slowly. It described the destruction, the disasters that the woman he thought of as the Destroyer brought, and then it described the new woman he'd seen, with her tall, lithe frame, and long, golden-blonde hair, the woman he had dubbed the Savior.

"Do you know what it means?" she asked finally, looking up. He took the notebook back from her, and folded his hands in his lap, tapping his finger rhythmically on his new shoe.

"There is one woman who is trying to destroy the world, and another woman who has the potential to stop her."

"Destroy the world how?"

"I don't know. By magic. I don't know why. That's why I need to get to Chicago. The blonde one, the Savior, she's there. I know she's there, and I'm going to find her."

The woman looked at him carefully for a minute, but said nothing. She had that 'you're crazy, but I'm too polite to say it' look on her face. He knew that look. She excused herself to take a shower. Sam turned on the TV and flipped stations until he came across a news report. He stared, dumbstruck. He had had visions that had come true many times, but never like this. He watched numbly as the newscaster reported the death tolls reaching six thousand so far, with more expected over the night. Half the eastern seaboard had been declared a disaster area. He covered his face with his hands and wept for a long time.

"Sam?" he heard soft footsteps. "What's wrong?"

He looked up at her, shamefully wiping his tears. He nodded to the TV.

"Is this . . . what you saw earlier?" she whispered, a haunted look overcoming her features. She hadn't really believed him before, but he had had that vision long before either of them could have known about this disaster. He saw the horror and amazement on her face. She touched his shoulder gently. "There's nothing you could have done."

"I know, but this is the beginning. It's starting. The Destroyer has come."