Or weird.
Or terrifying.
Lucky me.
“You were saving yourself for marriage?”
I glanced at Chavez to find him staring at me. I suppose I was an oddity—in this century as well as the last.
I shrugged. “Or at least true love.”
“You should have been born in another age,” he murmured, eerily echoing my thoughts.
“Today I wish I had been.”
“Get your coat,” he ordered.
I gaped at the sudden change in subject.
“Zip your pants.”
I blushed to realize the flower boy had started undressing me, and I had barely noticed. Not only was I scared of the demon; I was starting to be scared of myself.
I closed my pants with an annoyed snick.
“Where are we going?” I asked as we stepped onto the street once more.
“To someone who can help us.”
“They couldn’t help us before?”
“I only use this source when I have no other choice.”
“Since when don’t you have a choice?”
“This demon is more powerful than any I’ve ever faced. I don’t know what to do.”
That Chavez, whose life had been devoted to ridding the earth of demons, would admit he had no clue how to kill the one that wanted to kill me frightened me more than anything else ever had.
I stopped and was nearly run over by the usual suspects—tourists, street people, locals—the throng of Manhattan. Someone cursed and gave me a little shove. There’s no place like home.
Chavez grabbed my arm and tugged me along. “I’ll take care of you.”
“You keep saying that, yet I’m still not feeling all warm and cozy.” I ignored the dark, warning glance he slid my way. “Where are we going?”
“Near the World Trade Center.”
I slowed, though I knew better than to stop. “There is no World Trade Center anymore.”
“That’s why my friend is so dangerous.”
“I don’t understand.”
“She lost her son there. She’s never gotten over it.”
Stories like those were far too commonplace. So many people had lost so much.
“Has she tried a support group?” I asked.
“She’s got her own way of dealing.”
“Which is?”
“She talks to him.”
The night shot an icy trickle down my suddenly sweaty shoulders.
“Talks to him,” I repeated dumbly.
“Samantha is a psychic.”
“Okay,” I said.
Why not? I thought.
“The anger and grief changed her.”
“Changed her how?”
As we walked in the direction of the water, the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, the crowd thinned.
“She channeled her pain into power. She wasn’t psychic before.”
“Is that why she’s dangerous?”
“She isn’t dangerous, but sometimes what she brings out is.”
“Brings out of where?”
“You’ll see.”
“What if I don’t want to?” I muttered.
Chavez just kept walking.
I’d only been to the World Trade Center site once—in broad, sunny daylight. The place had been cool, gray, haunted even then.
At night? I’d rather have a root canal.
Amazingly, there was no one standing at the fence that encircled the great, big empty. Maybe I wasn’t the only one who found that hole in the middle of all the skyscrapers obscene.
We were searching for a demon? I was of the opinion that several of them had knocked down these buildings one Tuesday morning in September.
As we approached, I heard a slight whisper. Half believing the dead spoke, I hung back.
A woman stood at the fence, staring into the crevice and murmuring. Her skirt was long, billowy, and black, her sweater loose and pale gray.
Had she been there the entire time and I hadn’t seen her, or had she just appeared? It didn’t matter. She was here now, and I knew without asking that she was the one we’d come to see.
Her hair flowed to her waist and shone stark white in the faint light of the moon. The air around her seemed to hum.
Chavez moved forward, leaving me behind. I didn’t mind. There was something about her that disturbed me almost as much as that hole.
“Samantha,” he murmured, and the air stilled.
“Chavez,” she said without turning around. “You have a question for the spirits?”
“Yes.”
She faced us, and I couldn’t help but stare. Samantha didn’t appear a day over forty. She might be well preserved, except for the hair. Premature electric white? Or had a terrible shock caused the change? I’d heard such things could happen but hadn’t believed them. Of course I hadn’t believed in demons, either, until yesterday.
“Who’s this?” she asked.