mockery. The security chief thought me a pretty boy only by comparison to himself, suggesting that his assessment of his somewhat unfortunate appearance was far too harsh, and that was where the sadness lay.
In this case, the term
pretty boy
might also mean other than what it seemed to mean. People sometimes speak in code, often without realizing they are doing so, as much a mystery to themselves as to others. Considering my average-guy looks, perhaps I enjoyed some other blessing that Mr. Sempiterno recognized but lacked—and that he envied. If I could puzzle out what that might be, maybe I would have a valuable clue to the truth of Roseland.
As the security chief receded across the meadow, I decided to continue following the property line but also to surrender myself to the third and final aspect of my extrasensory perception.
In addition to an occasional prophetic dream and my ability to see the spirits of the lingering dead, I have what Stormy Llewellyn called psychic magnetism. If I need to locate someone whose current whereabouts I don’t know, I concentrate on his name or face, give myself to impulse and intuition, wandering as whim takes me—on foot, on skateboard, in a car, whatever—until I find him. More often than not, I am brought to my quarry within half an hour.
The search is usually but not always successful, and I can’t either control or foresee where or when the encounter will occur. If my paranormal abilities had been purchased from a store, the vendor more likely would have been Dollar Mart than Tiffany.
In this case, I didn’t have either a name or a face on which to focus. I could only allow Annamaria’s words to run over and over through my mind in a memory loop—
there’s someone here who’s in great danger and desperately needs you
—and hope that I would be drawn sooner than later to that individual.
With everyone warning me to leave and giving me such curious advice as to look for death if I wanted to live, I suspected that what time I might have to save the nameless someone was pouring away like sand out of a fractured hourglass. I have in the past failed some people, including she whom I loved more than life itself. Every failure hollows out my heart a little further, and no success is able to refill any of that emptiness. I seem to be less likely to die at the hands of some villain than to fall dead when the walls of my heart collapse into the emptiness that they enclose. I couldn’t bear another failure; therefore, if time was running out, I would have to be faster than time.
… there’s someone here who’s in great danger and desperately needs you
.…
I returned to the property line, moving toward the place where the oaks overhung the stone wall.
Out of those tree shadows, the great black stallion suddenly rushed, reared over me, and carved the air with its hooves.
Astride the horse, the barefoot blonde pointed down at me as she had done the previous night. Instead of anguish, her face was now contorted with fear.
However afraid she might be to cross over to the Other Side, she had nothing to fear anymore in this world. I knew, therefore, thather terror must be for me, and that she had come to warn me of some threat more imminent than the vague danger of which Henry Lolam and Paulie Sempiterno had spoken.
As the jet-black stallion settled to all fours and whipped its long tail soundlessly from side to side, the woman shifted her attention from me to something behind me. Her face now seemed to be wrenched more with revulsion than with fear, and her mouth opened in a silent cry of horror.
I looked behind me, but I saw nothing more than the knee-high wild dry grass fired by morning sun and as golden as the woman’s hair, the land sloping down to the north, and the first grove of oaks, this side of which I had earlier climbed the estate wall.
But the creepiest feeling possessed me, similar to the sensation that shivers through any of us upon discovering a letter from
In this case, the term
pretty boy
might also mean other than what it seemed to mean. People sometimes speak in code, often without realizing they are doing so, as much a mystery to themselves as to others. Considering my average-guy looks, perhaps I enjoyed some other blessing that Mr. Sempiterno recognized but lacked—and that he envied. If I could puzzle out what that might be, maybe I would have a valuable clue to the truth of Roseland.
As the security chief receded across the meadow, I decided to continue following the property line but also to surrender myself to the third and final aspect of my extrasensory perception.
In addition to an occasional prophetic dream and my ability to see the spirits of the lingering dead, I have what Stormy Llewellyn called psychic magnetism. If I need to locate someone whose current whereabouts I don’t know, I concentrate on his name or face, give myself to impulse and intuition, wandering as whim takes me—on foot, on skateboard, in a car, whatever—until I find him. More often than not, I am brought to my quarry within half an hour.
The search is usually but not always successful, and I can’t either control or foresee where or when the encounter will occur. If my paranormal abilities had been purchased from a store, the vendor more likely would have been Dollar Mart than Tiffany.
In this case, I didn’t have either a name or a face on which to focus. I could only allow Annamaria’s words to run over and over through my mind in a memory loop—
there’s someone here who’s in great danger and desperately needs you
—and hope that I would be drawn sooner than later to that individual.
With everyone warning me to leave and giving me such curious advice as to look for death if I wanted to live, I suspected that what time I might have to save the nameless someone was pouring away like sand out of a fractured hourglass. I have in the past failed some people, including she whom I loved more than life itself. Every failure hollows out my heart a little further, and no success is able to refill any of that emptiness. I seem to be less likely to die at the hands of some villain than to fall dead when the walls of my heart collapse into the emptiness that they enclose. I couldn’t bear another failure; therefore, if time was running out, I would have to be faster than time.
… there’s someone here who’s in great danger and desperately needs you
.…
I returned to the property line, moving toward the place where the oaks overhung the stone wall.
Out of those tree shadows, the great black stallion suddenly rushed, reared over me, and carved the air with its hooves.
Astride the horse, the barefoot blonde pointed down at me as she had done the previous night. Instead of anguish, her face was now contorted with fear.
However afraid she might be to cross over to the Other Side, she had nothing to fear anymore in this world. I knew, therefore, thather terror must be for me, and that she had come to warn me of some threat more imminent than the vague danger of which Henry Lolam and Paulie Sempiterno had spoken.
As the jet-black stallion settled to all fours and whipped its long tail soundlessly from side to side, the woman shifted her attention from me to something behind me. Her face now seemed to be wrenched more with revulsion than with fear, and her mouth opened in a silent cry of horror.
I looked behind me, but I saw nothing more than the knee-high wild dry grass fired by morning sun and as golden as the woman’s hair, the land sloping down to the north, and the first grove of oaks, this side of which I had earlier climbed the estate wall.
But the creepiest feeling possessed me, similar to the sensation that shivers through any of us upon discovering a letter from
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