Deathless by Scott Prussing

gasp escaped her throat. Had she just seen what she thought she had seen? She couldn’t have.
    She stared at the Red Bull, now grasped firmly in her right hand. She could swear the can had just slid the final few inches across the desk into her hand. But that was impossible, right? She must be even more tired than she thought. Her mind was playing tricks on her. It had to be. She had probably just zoned out for an instant, and didn’t see her hand cover those last couple inches. Yeah, that was the ticket. She had just zoned out.
    What other explanation could there be? Even Rave couldn’t move quickly enough to be invisible, and he wouldn’t play that kind of trick on her even if he could. Maybe it was the work of a ghost, she thought, though she didn’t really believe in ghosts. Of course, she hadn’t believed in vampires either, until a few months ago. And now she was entertaining the idea that the dead could climb out of their graves, so why not ghosts, too? What the heck—the more the merrier. Ghosts, goblins, witches…lions and tigers and bears, oh my! She shook her head at her silliness as the famous refrain from the “Wizard of Oz” echoed in her head. Even if ghosts did exist, why would one push a can of Red Bull into her hand? She doubted any ghost would be interested enough in her studying to help her out by moving the energy drink for her.
    Maybe it had been an earthquake that moved it, or a sudden shift of the earth’s axis or magnetic field. She found herself looking around the room to see if anything else had moved, and then chastised herself for her foolishness. No, her mind was simply playing tricks on her. She was overly tired, and that was it.
    She gulped down an extra couple swallows of Red Bull and got back to work.

 
     
    14. DOMINIC’S FRUSTRATION
     
    D ominic was frustrated. He sat hunched forward on a diamond-shaped cement block in front of the Pacific Beach branch of the San Diego Library. There were plenty of people around, some browsing though used books at an outdoor book sale, others who were obviously homeless and taking advantage of the public facilities offered by the library. One guy in a brightly colored tie dye T-shirt was banging on a pair of bongo drums with surprisingly good rhythm. His tangled black dreadlocks bounced on his shoulders as he bobbed his head to the driving beat.
    Dominic had been in San Diego for two weeks now, but with precious little to show for it. The city was beautiful, but he had scarcely noticed the palm trees, blue skies and all the brightly colored flowers that had no business blooming in December. Likewise, he paid little attention to the pleasantly warm days and the nights that could barely be described as cool. Back in his home country it would be cold and dreary right now, and the only colors would be dismal shades of brown and gray.
    He had spent his first couple of days here riding the city’s three trolley lines, getting off the train at every stop and trying to sense Leesa’s vibration. When he failed, he hopped back onto the next trolley that came along and repeated the process all over again at the next stop. The trolley provided excellent coverage of central San Diego and the southern coastal strip of the county, but his search produced no results. Next, he risked a small bit of his anonymity by spending a week crisscrossing the rest of the county in a series of taxis, stopping every mile or two and getting out of the car to try to sense Leesa. He changed taxis every few hours to prevent any of the drivers from wondering in more than an idle fashion what their strange passenger was doing.
    His was certain his painstakingly thorough search had taken him within a mile or two of every residential section in the sprawling San Diego area, with no luck. Either Leesa was not in San Diego, or he was completely unable to sense her. He wasn’t sure which he hoped was true.
    Next, he had visited several public libraries to use their computer