Because Eden was their guest, Chauncey dug up some old Django Reinhardt seventy-eights from the family's music library and put them on the Bose changer.
"Did I hear you talking in your sleep last night?" she asked Eden.
"Might've. I was restless." Eden couldn't stop yawning.
Chauncey's brother Roald trooped into the kitchen with a raiding party of his buddies, all of them carrying Toys "R" Us battle gear.
"Don't touch a thing," Chauncey warned them as they circled a large table filled with cooling pies. Mia McLain had been up since dawn to do the baking.
"We're starving."
"You can have the rest of this box of Ritz crackers. Eat them outside."
"What happened to all the Kool-Aid?" Roald complained, head inside the refrigerator.
A couple of the boys were staring at Eden.
"You're the one's been on TV."
"Yeah, I guess so."
"How did you know it was gonna crash?"
"She had a preshun, stupid."
"A what?"
"Premonition, Stevie," Chauncey said.
"Oh, yeah. I have those all the time."
"Oh, that's BS, Stevie," the other boy said.
"Put the milk back," Chauncey said to her brother. "We have barely enough for the cookout, and I don't feel like driving to the co-op to buy more."
"I'm thirsty!"
"It's not BS.
You're
BS and a ay aitch too."
"You don't even know what a prema, m-meshun is."
"It's like seeing stuff that didn't happen yet."
"Yeah? Tell me something that didn't happen yet."
Stevie screwed up his face, biting his lip. Nothing occurred to him.
The other boy had shaggy red hair and was missing his two front teeth.
He smiled broadly at Eden.
"He thinks he's a Jedi Knight and can put people to sleep with the power of his mind."
"I put my
dog
to sleep just by staring at him!"
"Oh, wow. Your dog sleeps all the time anyway."
Chauncey said to the redhead, who looked to be a year away from puberty, "Just knock it off, Sterling. Your mouth is way too big sometimes. Roald, there's sodas in the cooler on the patio, if I make myself clear."
Ignoring Chauncey, the redhead, eager to nail down bragging rights, said to Eden, "I can already do something none of the other guys can."
Chauncey rapped him smartly on the side of his head with her knuckles.
He pretended to sag into a stupor, then grinned impudently at her.
"What did I say about the big mouth? You're under oath. Save it for Tuesday nights. Eden's not interested anyway. She has more Talent than the rest of you put together."
Mia McLain came into the kitchen. She looked very much like her daughter, except her hips were bigger and her complexion rosier.
"Stop cluttering up the kitchen, boys."
"Sterling's angling for a reprimand," Chauncey said sternly.
"I am not," Sterling said with a sulky glare. "Besides, she's one of us, isn't she?" He glanced at Eden. "Or didn't you tell her nothing?"
"Anything. Eden knows all about Moby Bay," Chauncey said. "Bye-bye, Sterling."
When the boys had cleared the kitchen Chauncey looked at her mother. "He can be such a little shit."
"Well, when you're that Gifted at an early age, you hardly know how to behave." She smiled fondly at Chauncey. "Or do you need reminding?"
"Come on! I was an
angel
compared to Sterling."
"Whoa, Nellie. Not my recollection." Mia McLain looked at Eden, who was fitful, picking at the flecks of polish left on her fingernails. "How are you today, Eden? Sleep well?"
"I don't remember much," Eden said evasively. "Thanks for letting me stay over."
"Our pleasure. You gals have time for a nice swim before everybody gets here."
"How about it, Eden?"
Eden looked at the kitchen clock, wondering what had happened to her doppelganger, who had been gone for almost ten hours. "Sure."
"Gotta warn you," Chauncey said. "No suits. We're nature lovers here. If you're okay with that."
"No problem, long as the kids aren't hanging around getting an eyeful. What is it Sterling does that he's so proud of?"
Chauncey and her mother exchanged the fleetest of glances.
"Oh," Mia McLain said airily, "conjuration is probably the word that describes his Gift best. Chauncey can explain in more detail, if you're really interested. We're all conjurors in Moby Bay to some extent. It goes with the territory."
"Magic?"
"Call it that. White magic, of course."
"As opposed to black magic."
"That's a no-no around here."
"White magic is like making a playing card float in the air around the table? Stuff like that?"
"There you go," Chauncey said cheerfully. "Stuff like that. Come on, let's hit the beach."
"Don't forget your sunscreen," Mia reminded. "And take plenty of beach towels to bundle up in. That water's
cold
."
INNISFALL ⢠MAY 29 ⢠1:15 PM. PDT
T
om Sherard and Bertie Nkambe ate lunch at a Denny's on the outskirts of Innisfall. Sherard had rented a Ford Expedition in San Francisco for their trip to northern California.
"The less time we spend here, the better," he said.
"I know. Aren't you going to eat the rest of your BLT?"
"No, you can have it." Bertie had already put away a fruit plate and a Denver omelet. She was having a chocolate shake for dessert. She owned a metabolism as efficient as a blast furnace. But she needed to run thirty miles a week to keep the calories from ganging up on her. She was dressed for roadwork now.
"The stadium area will be sealed off," Sherard said. "I don't think you'll get very close to the crash site. Within a couple of hundred yards, possibly. Don't know why you think it's worth the risk."
"I'll be just another Sunday jogger on campus. After last night at Danny Cheng's the two of us are probably an item, but alone I won't be recognized."
"Those two-way radios we bought at Wal-Mart have a limited range."
"Worry, worry, worry," she said, chewing confidently and dabbing her lips with a paper napkin.
"What do you hope to gain by going there?"
Bertie glanced at the sports watch on her wrist. "The crash happened; let's see, about twenty-five hours ago. The imprint is still strong. The ether is swarming with impressions. Can't say what I'll visualize or feel. It could be scary. Overwhelming. But I might learn something important. The fact isâ"
Bertie looked up with a smile as the teenage waitress brought her chocolate shake to the table.
"Excuse me, but aren't you Whitney Houston? We've been sort of wondering, back in the kitchen."
"If only. Must be the hair and the cheekbones. I can whistle but I can't sing for sour apples."
"Miss, may I have the check now, please?" Sherard asked. He looked at Bertie again. "What were you saying?"
"Fact is, Kelane Cheng might still be around."
"Portia Darkfeather was the only survivor."
"Some of those who die unexpected or violent deaths don't pass on to the next plane that easily. They have a tendency to remain on our level.
For decades, or centuries, of earthly time. Remember the photo shoot I did at Gettysburg last August? You'd be amazed how many Union and Confederate soldiers there were, killed in battle but unwilling to accept their fate. Unable to leave. I saw a line of them on horseback, way off against the sky on the windy edge of nowhere. There was this boy, one-legged on a makeshift crutch, one of many ghosts rising like willows from a blood crevasse. He came closer than the others. He couldn't have been more than eighteen. We talked. His name was Hannibal Raines. From Ohio, I think he said. Wanted to know where his regiment was. So sad. I didn't give good picture that day. I told Len I had a stomachache, but it was my heart, not my stomach."
Sherard felt a sudden warmth, a flush to the head that momentarily dimmed his vision.
"Gillian is still around, isn't she? Like the souls of those Civil War dead. And you've seen her. Haven't you?" Her lashes flickered, but she didn't look away from him. "Why won't you tell me?"
"I can't, Tom. I can't talk about Gillian now. There are Mysteries I have to honor."
"If I had your power. If I could just see her, one last time!"
Bertie reached across the table, touched his cheek.
"You will, Tom. I promise you."
WESTBOUND/CALIFORNIA HIGHWAY 299 ⢠MAY 29 ⢠1:40 P.M. PDT
W
hy are we stopping?" Eden's doppelganger asked Geoff McTyer. They had pulled off the two-lane road into a riverside campground, most of which lay in shade beneath a canopy of huge trees at the noon hour. This was high green country of near wilderness on the eastern slope of the Coast Range. Fly-fishermen in waders were walking the knee-deep river, casting their lines through long shafts of sunlight. Those children immune to nature played video games beneath camper awnings. An old couple swayed gently together in a double hammock. Hamburgers and hot dogs sizzled on grills, smoke like a faint blue fog drifting above the campground.
"Thirsty," Geoff said.
"Me too, come to think of it."
Geoff looked at her. They'd been driving back roads with the top up, but her face had taken on a glow, as if she'd been exposed to the sun for an hour or more.
"You're turnin' red."
"I feel red."
"You haven't been in the sun."
"Still don't get it, do you?"
"Get what?"
"Eden must have gone swimming, or else she's sunbathing. She hasn't had much of a chance to be outdoors this spring."
Geoff looked at her thighs, then pressed down with his thumb, leaving a white mark. The dpg smiled at him.
"I am who Eden is. I know what she knows. The only difference between us is, she's left-handed and I'm right-handed. Mirror images. We each have our purpose but she runs the show, so to speak. How does that work? It's a dichotomy common in organic compounds, like stereo isomers. Did you take 0-chem? No? Let me see if I can explain. I'll use calcium eleonate as an example, just to prove doppelgangers occur as naturally as sunflowers or olive trees. Calcium eleonate is composed of two stereo isomers with identical chemical composition, and because of the way they're strung together one is the image of the other. Nature also gives us left- and right-handed molecules in amino acids. But it's the left-handed amino acids that make DNA, RNA, and other life proteins. What does the other guy do? Watches out for the health of the organism. There, now you have a perfect example of the doppelganger's role. Because I'm not needed all the time, it isn't necessary to be visible all the time. Now we get into mirage effects, and the optical properties of ellipses occurring naturally in the atomic substrateâ"
"Don't staht that again."
"You're being a weenie. Nothing to be scared of. I thought I explained, dpg's are here to serve. Like the R-molecule, we're very helpful in ways you never know anything about. The religious types call us 'Guardian Angels.' Isn't it beautiful here? Why don't we just stay awhile, maybe spend the night? Remember the general store a couple miles back, where you stopped for gas? I noticed camping equipment, canoes to rent. What do you say, Geoff, give your nerves a rest. You need to learn to kick back."
"My nerves are okay."
"Ha ha. If you say so. What are you looking at now?"
"I thought I saw a helicoptah."
"Another one? You still believe we're being followed?"
"I don't know. I don't see how." Geoff looked at the part of the sky visible through the canopy and suddenly smacked himself on the side of his head with his palm. "Oh, shit!"
"That must have hurt. What's the matter with you?"
"LoJack. I didn't think about it. I'm so stupid."
"Aside from that, what's LoJack?"
"Antitheft trackin' device for my cah. They could've gotten the frequency from Cal HP in Innisfall. But the range is limited, and I don't know if it works at all up here in the mountains."
Eden's dpg looked uninterested.
"Well, if they do have an idea of our location, and they've brought in helicoptahs, I don't think they can find us beneath these trees. I'll get rid of the LoJack, just in case."
"How long will that take?"
"Maybe half an hour. Gettin' to it is the difficult part."
She smiled. "Half an hour? Good. I'll just stroll around, if you don't need me for anything."
"Don't get lost."
"I can't get lost. I mean, I can return to my homebody in a flash, whenever she wills it. You're the one who would be lost."