“I can think of one or two reasons to change the past, or at least try to move into a timeline where it hadn’t happened the way you remembered it,” he said darkly.
She grimaced. “Point taken.”
She was getting close to her destination and so she reluctantly ended the call.
She found a parking space downtown, which was nothing short of a miracle. She walked two blocks to the spot where George Wakefield had suggested they meet. He was already there, and when she arrived, he smiled pleasantly and introduced himself.
As she was shaking his hand, though, she was overwhelmed by a sudden sensation of danger. Something was terribly wrong. She looked around quickly, expecting to see a witch coming after them.
There were just business people and tourists walking by, though.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
Am I okay? I don’t know. People have been asking me that a lot lately. She felt the urge to laugh but was pretty convinced that was one step further down the path of crazy.
“Yeah, sorry. I’m—”
She turned to look at him and stopped short. The clothes that he was wearing, the buildings outlined behind him. Everything about the scene was eerily familiar, and a moment later she realized why.
Everything was as she had seen it in her vision. The Big One was about to hit and thousands of people, including them, were about to die.
13
“We have to get out of here!” Samantha screamed.
“What? What on earth are you talking about?” George asked.
“The earthquake, the Big One, it’s going to happen right now. Everyone’s going to die!”
There was a beat as he blinked at her in astonishment. Then anger filled his eyes. “If this is your idea of a joke, I’m afraid it’s not funny. I’m afraid you won’t find it funny either when I report you to the authorities. I believe impersonating a police officer is against the law.”
Samantha pulled out her badge and shoved it in his face. “I am a police officer. Now, let’s go!”
She grabbed his arm and began to pull. He resisted, and she looked him in the eyes and commanded, “Follow me!”
And then they were running, practically knocking down people in their path. Her mind was racing. Where should they go? Everywhere around them were tall buildings waiting to fall. The city itself was built on a landfill, and the cement beneath their feet could open up at any moment and swallow them.
“Where are we going?” she heard George shout.
“Somewhere safe.”
“And where on earth do you think that is?”
His question brought her up short. She spun to face him. “The water. If we can get to the water and get out on it, in a boat maybe, we’ll be safe.”
“I can’t run that far,” he said.
She looked at him and realized he was wheezing, panting from the exertion.
“We have no time. We have to try.”
And then she heard a groaning sound that seemed to come from deep within the earth. A moment later, she fell as the ground began to shake. She screamed and reached out toward George. Between them a crack appeared in the cement.
And then it all stopped.
She lay still for a moment and then got up shakily.
“Not exactly the big one I was expecting,” George said wryly.
“I don’t understand,” Samantha whispered. “It was just like I saw it, but then . . .” She reached up and her hand closed around the cross necklace. It was still there. In her vision it had been gone. But in her vision, George had been wearing the same clothes as he was now and some of the passersby had looked the same as well.
“Maybe you should tell me exactly why you wanted to talk to me,” George said.
She nodded. “It’s going to sound crazy.”
He lifted an eyebrow. “My dear, crazy is my stock and trade. How about we go get a cup of coffee?”
“But what if another one hits? Maybe I’m just early.”
“Tell you what. Why don’t we drive down and get that cup of coffee at Fisherman’s Wharf. Fewer big buildings, okay?”
Samantha nodded.
His car was parked closer, and so she let him drive. She was too rattled anyway. San Francisco, with its plethora of one-way streets, crazy locals, and lost tourists, was just a bit too much for her to handle at the moment.
They ended up getting clam chowder in sourdough bread bowls at a little restaurant. Samantha always thought that particular meal was one of the most fundamental building blocks of San Francisco cuisine and culture. She could barely taste it, though, as she sat there with George and wondered why they were both still alive.
She finally broke down and told him she’d had a dream, unwilling to use the word vision. She explained how vivid it had been and how when she’d met him, it had all come rushing back to her.
“You are not the only one who dreams such things. You would be surprised. Sometimes they can turn out to be prophetic, though often not exactly how we pictured them. For example, had you not made us start to run, we would have been standing in the exact spot you dreamed during an earthquake. That much of your dream would have been true. It just wasn’t the Big One it was in your dream.”
We were lucky. The words kept ringing over and over in her mind.
“Why do you stay?” she asked.
“Why would I go?” he asked.
“If you really believe that there is a Big One and that it’s coming someday, why would you stay here?”
He smiled gently. “Because it is my home. I love it here. And not even I can yet say when that quake will hit. Maybe not even in our lifetimes. And besides, where would I go? The thought of tornadoes, now, that terrifies me.”
“I guess there’s something anywhere you go,” she said at last.
“It’s the great leveling of the playing field. Hawaii is beautiful, but every few years a hurricane causes massive destruction. That keeps many people from moving there. I think it’s easiest to cope with the disasters and problems that you were raised with. I think of an earthquake as just part of life, whereas to you it is something to be dreaded.”
“You’re a very smart man,” she said. “But there are things I grew up with that still terrify me.”
He shrugged. “That I cannot help you with. I can, though, bring you some of the data I promised.” He pulled a large envelope out of his overcoat and handed it to her. “I hope it helps.”
“I’m sure it will. Thanks. So, this sudden increase in runaway pets . . . Do you think it is indicative that another large earthquake is likely to hit?”
He shrugged. “If the numbers were smaller, I’d be more likely to think so. But these numbers are so staggeringly high, I’m not sure what to think. It makes me wonder if somewhere someone is blowing a giant dog whistle, or if the cats have discovered that the mice one county over taste better.”
“But if you had to guess?”
He sighed. “If I had to guess, I’d say something significant is happening or about to happen. And if I were a gambling man, I’d think this a perfect time to move to Las Vegas and place a wager or two when I got there.”
He glanced at his watch. “I should be taking you back to your car. I’m sorry, I did not plan this out well.”
“I didn’t help much with that,” she admitted.
They drove back in silence. When he dropped her at her car, she thanked him.
“You know, call me if you have any more of those dreams.” His face turned sad. “I had a friend who used to dream of earthquakes too. Sadly, she has passed.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Samantha said.
He nodded. “Winona was a good woman, and I will miss her.”
Samantha froze, halfway out of her seat. “Winona?”
He nodded.
“Winona Lightfoot?”
> “Yes, you know her?”
Samantha sucked in her breath. “I’m one of the detectives working on finding her killer.”
“Anything I can do to help, please let me know,” he said.
Samantha sat back down. “You say she dreamed of earthquakes too?”
“Yes. We talked several times over the years. But over the last month, she had dreams nearly every night. They terrified her.”
Samantha felt her mouth go dry. “Was she dreaming of the Big One, like me?”
“I don’t know, but I do know that in her dreams, the epicenter was nowhere near the city.”
“It was in Santa Cruz, wasn’t it?”
He looked surprised. “Yes. How did you know?”
“Lucky guess,” she whispered. “Did she tell you anything else about the dreams?”
“No.”
“Was that unusual?”
“As a matter of fact, it was. Before, when Winona would dream about an earthquake, she would tell me everything. She even would fax me pictures she drew of buildings or things she saw, just in case it would ever be of use. With these, though, she just told me she had them and that they centered on Santa Cruz. She would never say anything else.”
“Maybe she didn’t remember the dreams very well; that happens.”
He shook his head. “I could tell when she called the first time that something about the dream was really upsetting her. But when I asked her what it was, she refused to say, wouldn’t even acknowledge that she was upset about anything. And then afterward she’d just call to say she’d had the same dream and about what time it had been when she had it. There were never any details, no sketches.”
“Maybe there was something she didn’t want you to know.”
“I don’t know. It could have been something deeply personal to her.”
“Thanks for your time. I’ll call if I need anything else.”
As Samantha got into her own car, she wrapped her shaking hands around the steering wheel. Why did everything connect to Santa Cruz? She thought of the ritual she had seen the witches performing, the one with the large dirt mound and the lines on the ground. Trina had been looking for information about something to do with the mountains.
Were they trying to shake something loose? Expose something? She felt like the answers were there, just outside of her grasp. She was getting closer, though. And when she met with Trina in a few hours, she planned on getting the answers out of her, no matter what it took.
She drove back home and jumped on her computer to do a little research about the place where she would be meeting with Trina. When she was done, she forced herself to lie down and try to get a few hours’ sleep before the work ahead. Her mind kept racing, though, and she relived both the dream and the reality of the earthquake over and over. Why had they been different?
Why were so many things different from what she thought they should be or even remembered them being? After a while, Jill knocked softly on her door. She was going out to dinner with Lance.
“I’m going to catch up on my sleep. I’ll see you in the morning,” Samantha said.
Hopefully, Jill would take that to heart and not try to wake Samantha when she got home. She wouldn’t be there.
When she realized that sleep just was not going to come, Samantha got up and started reading the book she had gotten from the library. Given her recent experiences with questioning the right people about the wrong things, she didn’t want to miss anything. Something in the book was vitally important, but she didn’t want to make assumptions about what it was. So she started reading at the beginning.
It began talking about the development of Santa Cruz from a mission to a full-fledged town and seaside resort community. There didn’t seem to be anything in that section that would be of interest, but she kept reading.
When it was finally time to leave the house, she slid the book under her mattress. It wouldn’t survive more than a cursory inspection of her room, but she did put a glamour on the bed to cause people to want to avoid it. It wasn’t much, but there wasn’t much she’d be able to do to stop a really powerful, really determined witch from finding whatever she wanted to in her room.
She dressed all in black for the meeting. She wore flat black, no gloss on any of her clothes, including the button on her pants, which was fabric covered instead. It would help her fade into the shadows, keep people’s eyes off of her. She stuffed her badge in her pocket. She debated taking her gun and finally decided she should. She could tuck it into the back of her waistband and put her shirt over it so it wouldn’t attract attention.
Finally, she got into the car and checked her gas levels. The long drives back and forth were becoming frustrating, but at least she was going late enough that there were fewer cars on the roads than there had been earlier. Still, she was scheduled to arrive plenty early. She needed to do some reconnaissance of the spot, given that she’d never been there and the area would be home turf for Trina.
As she drove, she thought about calling Anthony but decided against it. She needed to be focused and calm when she met Trina, and if there were two words that she couldn’t connect to her discussions with Anthony, it was those two.
Even the thought of him made her pulse skitter a little bit. She mentally slapped herself. There would be time later to think about guys.
If she wasn’t dead, that was.
The drive seemed to take even longer than usual, and she was relieved when she finally made it. She parked in one of the parking lots and put a glamour on the car so that no one would pay any attention to it. The last thing she needed was a nosy security guard sniffing around it while she was busy dealing with Trina.
She settled back in her seat and tried to center herself as she prepared to wait. Trina, what is it you hope to accomplish tonight? she couldn’t help but wonder as she fingered her cross.
Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk was famous the world over for its rides and attractions steps away from a fabulous California beach. In January, the park was only partially operational on weekdays, with the game arcades and the bowling lanes open but none of the rides. By midnight the entire place was shut down. Samantha had been there for two hours, watching the last stragglers leave and memorizing the routes and schedules of the security guards patrolling the place. The bitter cold ensured that no one was lingering on the beach.
It was half past one when Samantha headed to the carousel, where she had been told to meet Trina. She moved silently, keeping to the shadows and staying close to the buildings. She walked slowly, her senses attune to everything around her. She didn’t know what Trina wanted, but she was sure that her well-being was not the other witch’s top priority.
She passed the Giant Dipper, the famous roller coaster’s track hulking in the darkness next to her. She’d been on one roller coaster in her life, when she was fourteen. It was with a group of others from her church. She remembered the experience in vivid detail. It had helped to underscore for her just how different she was from everybody else and how little she had in common with the kids her age.
The others had laughed and screamed and exited the ride with adrenaline rushes. She had been bored. The motions of the vehicle were entirely predictable, and the gravitational and centrifugal forces it exerted on her body paled in comparison to other things she had experienced. Standing there staring at all the others laughing and screaming as they relived their experiences with one another, she had never felt more alone in her life.
It was the day she had given up trying to fit in and had opted instead for being left alone by her peers. The first real friendship she’d had was with Ed, her former partner. She still missed him.
“No time to get sentimental, Samantha,” she told herself.
She kept walking and passed the Haunted Castle, a spooky ride. She knew that a little farther up the boardwalk was the Fright Walk, a walk-through haunted-hou
se type attraction. She shook her head. One of the memories she had recovered from her seven-year-old self had involved a haunted-house-like experience set up by members of her coven. It was used as a teaching tool, a training ground. Young witches were sent through with instructions that they must only react to things that were real threats. Things that were fake must be ignored at all costs.
Samantha remembered being frightened and knowing that terrible things waited, lurking in the darkness just beyond the door, ready to kill her. She had also known that the punishment for failure would be severe. So into the darkness she had gone. Inside she had encountered ghosts, both real and created special effects, real witches and costumed witches, things with eyes that glowed red in the dark and skeletons that would spring out of nowhere. She had hesitated before each new nightmare, wanting to be sure it was a real threat and not a staged one.
At the end, she had been scolded for hesitating more than once, but she had passed the test because she hadn’t used her powers on anything that didn’t merit them. Too bad she hadn’t shown the same restraint a year later, when she’d blinded the school bully.
She kept walking and came to the carousel, a genuine antique with beautiful hand-carved horses. The creatures stood frozen, still, eyes and mouths gaping open as lights glinted off them, making them seem almost alive. She was early. She got up on the platform and began to walk among them, trailing a hand along their smooth sides, feeling the wood and the years of joy that had been captured in the creatures.
She kept moving forward. Ahead of her, a particularly striking white horse drew her attention. The creature’s head was down, neck arched as though it were fighting the pull of an invisible rider on the reins. She moved forward, eyes fixed on it.
And then at last her fingers touched it, and she jumped back with a startled cry. The wood of that particular horse felt more like the petrified flesh of Winona Lightfoot. She reached out and touched it again and there, deep down, she felt the echo of life. This was not a horse carved out of wood. This was a horse who had been turned to wood.
She ran her hands over the creature, feeling, listening, trying to understand what had happened. Why would someone do this to any living creature, particularly a horse?