To Cuz
and T.R.
for the inspiration

Thanks to the Green Mountain Goddesses
for their enduring support

Thanks also to the army of
friends and professionals
who have helped in ways
large and small over the decades

Part One

1

Damsel in Distress

The universe punished me for doubting its powers by arranging a special demonstration. It dropped me, blindfolded and hamstrung, into a room with locked doors, and gave me four weapons: my paints, my doubts, my figure, and a library.

Then it said: “If you can find the right door and open it with the right key, then you can have your heart’s desire. Oh, by the way—There’s a psychic lunatic running around out there. If you can free yourself before the sands in the hourglass run out, then you can prevent him from corrupting a critical mass of humanity and plunging the world into a new dark age. Have a nice day!”

Okay, the universe didn’t actually say this to me. If it had, I would have answered, “Forget it! I’ll live without my heart’s desire.” After all, I’d been doing so for twenty-seven years.

I expected more of same as I backed out my driveway one August evening, heading for New Atlantis. A cryptic call from my identical twin sister, Blanche, had changed my weekend plans. Unaware I was launching on a preordained journey to entrapment and a psychic battle, I zoomed northward in altruism. Two hours later found me steaming along a fire road through the Green Mountain National Forest. Literally steaming: me in a perspiration cloud from heat and humidity abnormal for the Vermont mountains; my convertible steaming from the hit it had taken a few miles back.

It had begun the drive as a pristine vintage roadster—a ’66 Sunbeam Tiger, my pride and joy and special toy that had taken me from novice driver to winner in autocross. Now it bled coolant and oil as it limped and thumped on a shredded tire, two bent rims, and damaged suspension. Its V8 motor shook the dense woods around us, as half my custom sport exhaust lay behind in the puckerbrush while the other half dragged beneath the car, carving a trail in the dirt.

Please, please! I chanted internally. Hang in there another mile!

No way would I walk alone through the wilderness in a sundress after dark. Even if the Tiger kept going, at ten miles an hour I’d still be out here when the looming thunderstorm broke and twilight fell. Already, beneath the foliage canopy, I needed headlights. But one was broken and the other gouged out. I could probably hold my flashlight in one hand and steer with the other. Then again, the increasing flares of lightning could guide my way.

Please, please—c’mon, baby, hold it together—

Aha!

The forest pulled back to reveal a stone wall blocking my travel. Front and center loomed an iron gate backed by chain link and bracketed by cameras, set into masonry taller than I could reach. Along the top, barbed wire coiled like a lethal hairdo. Inside the gate, a guard shack squatted in the murk.

“Trespassers Will Be Teleported to a Hostile Planet!” said signs in four languages. And welcome to New Atlantis to you, too! I thought back. I couldn’t blame the owner, Dru Montclair, for needing to live in a fortress. That happens when you’re a mega-superstar, as was Blanche now that she shared his stage and his bed.

Approaching the gate, I didn’t bother braking—the car wouldn’t have stopped, anyway—sure that the guard could hear me coming and would be ready on the release switch. Indeed, the gate scraped open when my passage tripped a motion sensor and switched on floodlights within and without.

Once safe inside, the Tiger ground to a halt and expired. I dropped my forehead against my knuckles atop the steering wheel as the gate scraped shut behind.

“Hell of an entrance, Miz LaRue!” came a voice from beside me. I jerked my head up and around to find a guy standing halfway between me and the guard shack, backlit by the floods. My brain, still sludgy from adrenaline overload and dehydration, couldn’t manage a snappy comeback. I must have taken too long to respond, for he strode forward and changed his tone to an authoritative calm.

“Ignition off?”

He stood at the driver’s door, hand on the latch, ready to pull if I didn’t answer.

“Um, no, it stalled.”

“Don’t try to restart it. Just click off and give me the key.”

I obeyed, at loss for words, at loss for thought. When he said, “How many fingers?” I counted three. That seemed to satisfy him. He pulled open the Tiger’s door and asked, “You ready?”

“Um, a little gummy in the knees, but I think I’m okay.”

I pivoted in the cockpit and stuck out the legs that had earned me a six-figure income. The rest of the package emerged disjointedly, making me glad that Blanche the Dancer wasn’t around for comparison. The gate guard noticed everything without reaction, just offered a hand to help me stand.

At that, my synapses resumed firing. Those hands! Oil-stained fingers with nicked knuckles, curved around palms callused and thickened from years of turning wrenches. A mechanic! At New Atlantis! Oh joy, the day’s bad luck had just reversed!

I leaned against his solidity, vaguely noticing that we stood the same height, as he walked me across packed dirt to a log bench outside his guard shack. I flopped my weary derriere atop it while he nipped in and came right back out with a water bottle. I took, gulped, then poured the rest over my head, neck, and chest.

“Ahh. Thank you. I had a gallon in the car, but it went into the radiator.”

“And right back out, from the look of things.”

“Oh god, I hope the engine hasn’t seized!”

“Mm. We’ll see.”

He stood before me and finally asked, “What happened?”

I wiped my wrist across my mouth.

“Deer. Two. Right in the middle of the road.”

He returned to the Tiger and walked around it, scowling. “Doesn’t look like you hit them.”

“No. I missed them, that’s the problem. Landed in one of those rock-lined drainage ditches along the road. Took out half everything underneath, and punched out the lights on a boulder and a sapling on the other side.”

He nodded. “How’d you get in that deep, then get out?”

“In? Overconfidence, and being mad at my sister. Out? A winch.”

His brows jumped and he stopped circling the car to stare at me.

“A come-along,” I amended, pleased to demolish his expectations. “Between that and jacking the nose I got the rear tires on the ground and was able to back out of there. That messed up anything left that hadn’t been crunched.”

He continued to stare, reminding me of a hawk with his expressionless intensity. Then he returned to the bench and sat at my side. The lights caught his eyes, revealing a clear, sky blue often found in pilots and sailors. They regarded me so frankly, so honestly, that I did a double take and looked straight in.

Instantly, a familiar and dreaded rippling began in the atmosphere around us, until his visage was overlapped by a face I knew but had never seen before, with a voice I’d never heard before yet recognized and which warmed my heart. My vision heightened and blurred at the same time, with a golden shimmer around the edges, forming into white and silver curtains like an albino aurora. An ache resonated through my body, swelling until I was paralyzed. I recognized him. I loved him. He belonged to me.

Then the scene snapped back to the wooded gateyard of New Atlantis.

The guard stood and stepped away.

Panting, I shook off the vision and wondered how many seconds had passed while I’d been overcome. The flashes I normally experienced were as quick as the lightning still blinking above us. A big vision like this one, which had occurred only once and not for a decade, warped time enough to alert other people that something was awry.

He had noticed, judging by his stiff stance at arm’s distance and that stare through his hawk mask. Now he stood lit so I could see that he was not only my size but my age. He wore scruffy cut-off jeans and a holey T-shirt. His hair, unevenly trimmed, brushed his neck and jaw. It gleamed a tawny bronze, as did his skin over lean muscle. He was a perfect specimen for the Men At Work series I was painting for a gallery feature. However, this was not the moment to invite him to my studio!

After regarding me in turn, his eyes veiled and he pulled us back into the moment. “I’m supposed to tell them when you get here.”

He escaped into the guard shack, almost long enough for me to recompose myself, swatting at mosquitoes. Upon return he declared, “Dru said—this morning—that if you weren’t here by eight-thirty I had to go find you.”

He waited for me to gush, “Oh, Dru must have had a premonition!” When I didn’t, he added with a twitch that could have been a suppressed smile, “You missed by two minutes.”

“Damn. You mean I could have just sat there and the cavalry would have come?”

“Well, just me on an ATV. If you weren’t anywhere on the fire road, we’d’ve sent somebody out your route with a truck and trailer. No cell reception ’til a coupla towns down.”

He paused for a beat then spoke the question that was bugging him. “What the—heck—were you doing out there in the race car?”

I stifled a knee-jerk anger. Of course he knew the Tiger was a competition car. Who didn’t, when the tabloids tracked your sister’s every move, including her estrangement from an eccentric twin?

So I answered, “Trying to avoid the groupies at the front gate.”

“Nobody told you about the road conditions out back?”

“Blanche said it was ‘rough’ when she gave me the bar-gate code a few years ago, but only the first mile to discourage sightseers.” I snorted a laugh. “It looked more like a landmine field after everything had exploded!”

“She’s never been out there herself. Neither has Dru.”

“I doubt she’s even driven since she moved here. And she sure doesn’t know anything about suspensions!”

“And you don’t know much about tires if you went off like that on dirt!”

Throughout this exchange, we played peek-a-boo with our gazes, trying to catch the other out around our facades. I welcomed the earthbound topic, though, and rewarded him with the embarrassing truth.

“I was practicing four-wheel drifts.”

Again he stopped and stared. I explained. “That nice smooth stretch after the landmine holes but before the two-track? The ess-turns? They’re perfect.”

He kept staring until I finished, “There’s an autocross tomorrow I was hoping to win, which would have given me my first championship. I was planning to get up early and drive there from here.”

Awareness of lost achievement and huge expenses settled like a cement cloak around my shoulders.

He concluded, “So you tried your nice, wide tarmac tires on nice, slick dirt then came around a corner sideways and met Bambi.”

“Yep.” I sighed. “Giving me the fun choice of a bucking bronco ride off the shoulder, a bloody hood ornament, or a cockpit full of guts and hooves.”

He dropped his gaze and shook his head, then grinned and barked out in laughter. It changed his face so dramatically that my breath stuck in my throat. I almost blurted, “I’ve got to paint you!” but he pressed onward with reality so I swallowed back my words.

“I’ll check it out tomorrow.” He gestured at the car. “But for now we gotta get you to the show. It’s already started.”

“I figured.”

I glanced at my wristwatch, surprised to find a shattered face. I hadn’t felt my arm hit anything during the bronco ride, though surely bruises would emerge by tomorrow. Already my sternum ached from slamming against the belts. And my dress was sweat-soaked, with oil smears augmenting its floral pattern. Thankfully, I had packed two changes of clothes along with tools and driving gear for the event-not-to-be.

When I looked morosely at the Tiger, the gate guard said, “It will be safe here.”

“I know. Better put up the top, though.” I glanced at the sky, still grumbling and flaring above the treetops. While I might make it to the amphitheater after all before the storm broke, I doubted the show would run its course. No point changing if I was going to get wet again.

Stiffly I rose while he stepped inside the shack to set gadgets on automatic. Movement chased away the hollow feeling in my limbs, and the simple tasks of unfolding and securing the top, extracting and organizing my baggage, freed me to replay the vision he had stunned me with minutes before.

My mind still reverberated like a bell that had been walloped by a sledgehammer. The visuals had already melted away, but the lingering … certainty … struck as hard as it had the first time, with Buck. Back then, the vision had convinced me I’d found my soulmate after millennia of reincarnation. Subsequent years of emotional torture had proven me wrong.

I was cured now, though sometimes I saw past people’s skin to their true colors in a snapshot moment that seemed supernatural. But after Buck had left I’d figured it out. The artist’s eye I’d been born with simply interpreted my five senses in textbook intuition. Blanche, however, considered it a sixth sense, which she called “soul-seeing” to avoid annoying me with the term “ESP.” Nevertheless, my gift was why she had called me here tonight.

Nothing strange or sparkly happened when the gate guard approached me again. I wanted to ask him, Why you? Why now? What for?—but he kept us firmly on task.

“We figured you’d drive yourself in, so all I’ve got is an ATV. If you want, I’ll call a car down to take you to the amphitheater. Or the house.”

A polite way of asking if I would I turn into New Atlantis royalty and refuse to ride a spine-jarring open vehicle up a rough road in a dress.

I chirped, “I’m fine,” and followed him to the ATV, mounting it behind him. I just had time to wedge my tote bag between us before he took off so fast I almost tumbled off the back.

What remained of my French twist unraveled as we churned uphill, spitting dirt behind us, the machine making a prolonged flatulent noise. Too soon my driver slowed, when our road merged into another that linked the compound’s main driveway to its residential lodges, The Glen and Valhalla. These I recognized from my previous visit.

Tonight the dirt loop served as a parking lot, with one-way passage between cars jammed along the mowed shoulder. We rode through sounds that shaped into music, then stopped at the loop’s reverse point where sawhorses and traffic cones marked an opening into the woods.

“Here ya go!” he announced with a heartiness that rang hollow.

I swung off the ATV then paused for a long look at him, which he returned without blinking. Who are you? I wondered at him. He didn’t answer. Of course he wouldn’t. Couldn’t. But a new thought blossomed: Might this be the person Blanche wanted me to scope?

In her call, she had said only, “If you know why, Madeline, it won’t work. Just come to the finale and tell us what you see and feel. We need to know if it’s real or I’m hallucinating. The finale is our last chance.”

Click.

I couldn’t call back because she had timed her lure for the last moment before stepping on stage in New York City. That show had run until midnight, followed by parties, interviews, then hours of travel to New Atlantis for rest, rehearsal, and the finale underway right now.

Her only other words, disrupted by people dragging her away from the telephone, had been, “I need—tomorrow—back gate—please—”

—leaving me to think she’d offered “back gate” privilege in delayed remembrance of my vow to never run the front-gate gantlet again. Now I wondered if she’d directed me here in order to “see” this guy. If he were hired security for the tour, then this would be his final night on duty. If he lived at New Atlantis, then tonight’s show would be the last chance—for what?—forever.

I could already tell her, thanks to the vision, that he had a lion’s heart, a warrior’s courage, an artist’s passion, an artisan’s skill, and a teenager’s hormones. If I were in the market, he would be an intriguing replacement for Buck. Blanche probably thought I was still looking, since we had stopped confiding after Dru entered the picture. So was her drawing me to New Atlantis a matchmaking mission in disguise?

Pah! As Buck had taught me, cosmic visions did not identify a soulmate. I was still waiting to find out what did. Blanche had spotted hers on TV when she was twelve and redirected her song-and-dance interests into music videos until she was in the right place when Dru was producing. They had mated instantly. No such luck for me.

I had been celibate, other than a few smooches and gropes with select autosport buddies, since Buck had dumped me three years ago. Yet my appearance and former career led people to assume I slept with a different guy—or three—each night. In truth, I had abandoned hope that anyone would make my loins quiver again. So why had this gate guard triggered a vision just like the one I had with Buck?

For now I could only translate his face and physique into blocks and planes to sketch later. Then I waved him away and applied myself to the next ordeal.

2

An Enchanted Evening

Obstacle number one stood just beyond the sawhorses: a wooden Indian.

Correction: a white wannabe with a good suntan, who didn’t breathe or blink. He wore no headdress but otherwise played the part with a breast plate over bare chest, fringed leggings, and beaded moccasins. His dark hair was cut short save for a skinny braid down his neck ending in a turkey feather. Like my gate guard, he was lean and muscled. I presumed he served as a bouncer, since he also carried a spear.

The spear remained upright as I passed. Beyond him, torches led toward a glowing crater. From within it came a cacophony shot through by a banshee wail. I recognized the band’s heavy-metal satire from their Millennium Magic album. That award-winner had borne my first cover painting, and won me an award, too. Enough commissions had followed to launch my true career.

The path leveled to become a gravel walkway rimming the amphitheater. Marble logs separated it from the first tier of seats. I observed this from the wrong side of obstacle number two: a rope barrier between trees. Here a nymphet with jaw-length black hair and Asian eyes intercepted me. Despite my credentials, she inspected my bag for booze, drugs, weapons, or cameras, while stage lights danced a kaleidoscope across our clothes. She wore a scarf tied into a halter top over fluid, translucent trousers. Must be nude night, I mused, marveling at the amount of skin I had seen since arriving. For once it was somebody else’s skin than mine.

We both shuddered at a crashing chord that made my fillings hum in the pause before the audience erupted. Applause and whistles rang for minutes, during which the girl pulled aside the rope and directed me down one of four aisles radiating from a vertical half-shell at the bottom. The amphitheater could seat a thousand but that would come later. Tonight three hundred Chosen clustered in the terraced wedges opposite the shell. VIPs sat under a striped canopy in the center. A seat among them waited for me.

One had to be very VIP to attend this concert. Tonight the Dru Montclair Band was retiring from the road for good. After a career starting in a ghetto basement and ending in the stratosphere, Dru could retire from the world if he wanted. For now, it was business as usual while the band shuffled instruments and sipped water before the next number.

Initially, I had tossed my invitation without RSVP-ing. I had loved Dru as a voice on the stereo, but couldn’t accept him as a reincarnated Atlantean prince with psychic powers, fated to lead the world into the next golden age through his mystical music and model community. Because Blanche had bought the package, I had endured a visit to the compound, attended any performances within an hour’s drive—including the tour launch nine months ago—and maintained contact through vague e-mails. Clever Dru had hired me to paint his portrait and album covers, enabling me to change careers without crashing and rebuilding.

Yet I declined his invitation to live in their ivory tower or travel the world with them on tour. And I would have skipped this finale because it impinged on tomorrow’s autocross. But after Blanche’s SOS, I had fished my invitation from the trash.

No sign of her distress now as she posed beside a woman as ebony as Blanche was golden. Blanche burst into a grin upon seeing me, which I returned, forgetting my pique. She looked fantastic—an hourglass sheathed in turquoise from mid-thigh to cleavage, her hair a gleaming gold cap. Stage makeup enhanced her tapered eyes and bow lips and sculpted cheekbones. If she wiped off the paint and donned a long auburn wig, we would be interchangeable. But I could never match her presence or dance in three-inch spike heels, even though I’d worn them on many a photo shoot.

We could do nothing more than exchange signals as she received her cue for the next song. The fanfare diminished, and the four players and two backup singers took position. Dru whipped back his hair and stepped forward to the lip of center stage. The lights dropped, Dru gestured a countdown, and Pete Davidson started a kick beat on his drum set. Then Adam Hillary added an under-rhythm on his bass guitar. Troy Powers sprinkled synthesizer notes during each cycle of the introduction. Finally Dru, clutching lead guitar, fingered the theme then began to sing.

His voice sprang forth like an arrow and pierced my solar plexus. That voice, even though rasped raw after countless performances, struck true every time. Whether he was snarling or crooning, he vibrated and I resonated. My heart filled my body. My body craved his touch. My mind opened until I saw energy crackling around him—a charisma few could see but millions felt.

I sat back on my bench, grateful to be cocooned for a while. During the next two numbers, Dru acknowledged me with a wink and a nod. So did the other players. All wore a slender headset with microphone above jeans and a three-inch gold medallion against bare chest. Given that the troupe had worn opera-scale costumes for the tour, I presumed the finale’s theme to be Revelation. Dru even revealed his natural hair color. I had never seen it in a hue that came with the human gene pool. Now cornsilk flew around his neck and jawline, sweeping back and forth across his eyes.

He strutted across my view, his fingers blurring on the guitar strings and skin gleaming from sweat and drizzle. The other performers and equipment were shielded by the shell or smaller canopies, while he postured on the exposed strip of stage. Lightning strobe-flashes froze his moves for half a heartbeat; seconds later, cloud kettledrums drowned out his voice. Between numbers, he eyed the sky warily. The audience urged him to carry on.

Nonetheless, he shortened the program, as I could tell from glances and nods among the performers. The music became gloomily romantic, prelude to the closing: a mythic anthem describing a man’s transformation from suicidal loser to supercharged healer—Atlantis Rising, Dru’s autobiography, a fact he denied. The symphonic album sharing its name had taken him so far beyond the top of the charts that the record industry had created a new category for him. “Quadruple Platinum” no longer served. The devotees around me gushed adoration at him. He absorbed it, enhanced it, and sent it back.

I marveled that he had kept sane under such pressure. Not bad for a man who put his pants on one leg at a time.

As passion filled the amphitheater, my mind switched back to where it belonged. Okay, Blanche … I’m here and my eyes are open. What do you want me to see?

I scanned the amphitheater as she danced. Dru traversed our line of sight. Throughout his saga-song, spotlights featured the players during solos, the beams tunneling through a thickening mist. Three men directed lights from around the amphitheater, while a fourth ran a console a few tiers behind me. The remaining lights were automated and bolted onto trees. All were connected by underground cables. This allowed the New Atlantean cameramen to dart around speakers and amplifiers. All crewmen covered their bodies with jeans and T-shirts. I guessed we were supposed to ignore them as in a regular show.

That was hard to do when one of them looked so much like Buck Williams that my heart did a fandango. I squinted at him through the shifting colors, hoping, fearing … no, it couldn’t be him. Bluegrass-Buck hated Dru’s music and had worn a beard since he could grow one and wouldn’t look like that without facial hair. And he knew my twin lived with Dru—she would report him instantly if he stuck his head above her horizon.

Wait a minute. She wanted me to verify something she wasn’t sure about seeing. A beardless Buck would qualify. Given the odds against him becoming a roadie for Dru Montclair, she would not believe her eyes if she saw him. Only I would recognize him anywhere. And if she told me he’d turned up at New Atlantis, I definitely would not put a toe inside the place.

So I had been right! A matchmaking venture was in process, only not with any gate guard. Blanche had somehow uncovered the missing Buck and lured me here to give us another chance!

My head snapped up and I glared at her, lost in her minor-key harmonies. Then I beamed the thought: You duplicitous, conniving … !

I jumped to my feet, ready to yank her off the stage and shake her. That popped my head into a spotlight so I plopped back down. Still sputtering, I grabbed my tote for a hasty departure. Stopped halfway through the motion, recalling I had no vehicle to depart in. Arrgggghh!

I boiled in my seat while everyone around me grooved to the crescendo. Presently I came aware of a cold prickle in the center of my back. I shrugged the clammy dress off my skin; the chill persisted. Ick, must be insects or raindrops crawling in. I levered my arm to brush them away, feeling no bugs or droplets. But my hand passed through a draft, as if I were seated in front of a vent discharging cold air.

My skin puckered into goosebumps. I peeked over my shoulder, wondering if the guy behind me held a battery-powered fan. Nothing there except bodies and packs and coolers and umbrellas, plus the console, backdropped by forest and roofed by flashing clouds. I couldn’t see every seat because of the canopy angle, but most people sat in range or boogied in the aisles. Whatever had set the chill on me shut it off when I twisted around.

Turning back to the stage, I tried to attend to the merging musical themes but couldn’t focus. The cold prickle locked on my back again, swung to the side and above, then returned, like a searchlight. It seemed to be tracking Dru. Dear gods, was it some high-tech aiming device, like an invisible laser? Should I stand up and shout? Was there anyone near me in security? How could someone get a weapon past the gates and the bag search? And why would they bother trying?

I stared at Dru, willing his attention. His gaze skipped over me across the audience. Before, he had panned smoothly, holding eye contact, to personalize his message. He had the better viewpoint to scan from but presented a bull’s-eye for anyone with good aim.

I turned again to search the tiers. People behind me cursed and shifted to watch around me. I peered between them, seeking any oddness among the rapt figures.

Finally spotted it on the last tier before the canopy cut off my view, next to an aisle. Not a refrigerator exhaust pipe, but a void in the lineup. Not an empty seat, but a darkness shaped like a man.

What the … ?

Lightning etched jagged afterimages into my retinas. Before I could blink clear and relocate the weird silhouette, lightning flared again. Between flashes I saw a black shape emanating blackness. I stared until my neck cramped and people commanded me to settle down. I faced forward just as rain began a tattoo against the canopy. Suddenly I felt cold inside and out.

Both Dru and Blanche caught my eye, to signal query without changing expression. They performed on automatic pilot, eyes no longer glazed from stage-high but jumping to me when a glance could be spared.

I realized then that Blanche’s mystery contained a subplot. They must have been feeling this thing in the audience during the tour.

No wonder Blanche had been cagey. At her description I would have said, “That’s what you get for living with New Age fruitcakes!” But if I saw for myself, she knew, then she could rule out hallucination. Which didn’t leave appealing options.

I glanced at the light man who looked like Buck. Maybe, maybe not … how could it possibly be?

But if it was him, either he was linked to the weird blackness or his presence was one of those flukes that tempt people to believe in destiny. At least I could check out the spook without disrupting the show. A trip to the portable toilets near the sawhorses would take me right by it. Also to a guy with a spear.

The people I squeezed past, bumping with my tote bag, were happy to lose me. I got as far as the aisle before the brewing storm reached a climax and preempted my plan.

Cannon fire, electric tridents, and a deluge erupted. The wind surge sent me staggering and battered me with my dress and hair. Whirling gusts ripped umbrellas inside out and shattered spotlights with projectiles; snapped cables from their moorings; toppled limbs out of trees. The main canopy billowed, popped its stakes, then flapped upward like a Portuguese Man o’ War. Two of its spiked tentacles snared the drum set and cartwheeled it into Pete’s chest.

A resounding crack stunned us into statues as lightning reamed a tree along the upper walkway. When the splintering fireworks subsided, screams rose in the blackout as people stampeded. I found myself on the stage shrieking, “Blanche! Blanche! Where are you!” with other audience members right behind me. We lurched through the dark bellowing for our loved ones, trying to unscramble our senses from flashing, cursing, scorched sap and ozone, sparking wires, shouts and splashes, elbows and upended gear.

“Madeline—over here!”

I followed Blanche’s cry and nearly tripped on Pete, still entangled with cymbals and guy wires. Then I collided with someone helping him, who grabbed my arm before I stepped on Adam, out flat from a power spike through a cable. Another lightning bolt illuminated us for sizzling microseconds. In them I saw Buck’s face at the end of the arm clutching mine.

No mistake this time—with our eyes bugged and pretenses shattered, we knew each other at the same instant. Then a roaring black waterfall killed sight and sound.

Buck thrust me aside and shouted for someone to help him lift the drum set. People elbowed me out of the way since I couldn’t move.

“Mad, where are you?” came Blanche’s voice behind me.

Buck’s voice in front: “C’mon Pete, easy does it.”

Then Adam at my ankles: “Jeez, what hit me?”

From out in the tiers: “I thought it was a bomb!”

Dru commanded, “Blanche, get to the car—I’ll find her.”

That released me. I whirled and flailed between people, through jumping flashlight beams, until finding Blanche. When I grabbed her wrist, she fell into me to hug, but I pushed her back, hissing, “You bitch, you tricked me!”

“What—?”

“C’mon girls, get moving!” yelled the band’s manager.

“We’re taking the scenic route,” I snarled at him, tugging Blanche off the stage. We landed with a splash. Blanche yelped as her ankle turned. “Damn it, Mad—I’ve got spikes on!”

“Kick them off. You must have six-inch calluses on your feet by now!”

Her curses were cut off by a thunderclap so close it warped the air. Wind whiplashed the trees and machine-gunned us with hail. We followed the pack up the tiers in a dazzle of blue-white zigzags. Some people continued down the slope to the driveway loop, others sheltered under trees. Not a good idea, considering the toasted maple beside the walkway. Raised veins snaked from its base where voltage had boiled the root system beneath the gravel. Fortunately, the closest tier had been empty. In a full house, people would have gotten hurt or killed.

The storm subsided as abruptly as it had started. Rain settled back to a patter, and the booming and flashing moved on. The dripping woods filled with voices, and tree trunks and bushes became shadowy people. Flashlight beams flicked in all directions. Torches along the trail were relit and some carried sputtering back to the amphitheater. Camera flashes declared that rules had been blown away with the show.

Blanche and I skidded down the trail then fetched up short at the bottom. The loop now resembled rush hour in New York City. Men in slickers waved lights and shouted; among them I saw the Indian hip deep in traffic, and a woman on horseback herding people on foot. Good thing this was a small, invited crowd, else mayhem would become a riot.

Pedestrians divided into a down-loop flow to the parking area and an up-loop flow to the mansion. Only passholders could get inside the house. The rest watched from their cars, creeping through a cloud stained red by taillights. We passholders would leave them behind when the loop joined a paved drive that continued uphill toward the mansion or downhill to the front gate.

A sloppy half-mile hike between here and there—we needed to regroup, first.

I gestured Blanche into an empty parking slot on the verge and thumped my tote bag onto the hood of a bracketing car to signal, Right here, right now.

She slicked back her hair and demanded, “What do you mean, I tricked you? I only—”

“What the hell is Buck doing here!”

“What!”

Her astonishment stalled my next outburst. We stared at each other like two fighting cats that had been doused by a hose.

I slumped against the nearest car. She shook her head. “Buck? Here? Where?”

“In the amphitheater. He’s one of your stage crew, Blanche! How could you miss him?”

Her face puckered. “Are you sure? I mean, the lighting could’ve—”

My expression answered.

She wiped away makeup streaking down her cheeks. “I can’t imagine—I have nothing to do with arrangements, Mad. We could hire King Kong for all I’d know! But I did hear … there was one new guy—turned out to be Pete’s cousin. Some hard case they tripped on in Montreal but I never met. We paid off the roadies after last night’s performance. I thought tonight’s crew was New Atlantean.”

“Well, Buck would die before joining that club. I can’t believe you missed someone traveling with you for two weeks! Granted he shaved, but—Blanche! He used to cook breakfast while we sat at our table in bathrobes. I’ve had him plastered all over my walls for a decade. How could you not recognize him!”

“Sorry, Mad, but we don’t travel with the crew, and on stage I don’t notice them. And I haven’t seen Buck in so long I doubt I’d recognize him with or without a beard. He’s got nothing to do with why I asked you here. But him popping up makes it a lot more interesting!”

I inhaled to retort then bit it off as a background sputtering grew into the sound of an ATV. It stopped then backed up after the gate guard spotted us. He unholstered a radio, muttered into it, then drove into our niche.

“Hey, ladies. Your presence is requested at the manse.”

He dismounted. I tensed, half expecting him to shimmer. He looked me in the eye and asked, “You know how to drive one of these?”

“Sort of. I—”

“Good.” He gave me a five-second overview then ordered, “Take her up to the house. Leave it in the circle with the key in the ignition. I’ll catch you later.”

His slicker flapped after him as he plunged back into the traffic jam. I stood with my mouth open then clapped it shut.

Blanche paid him no heed. “So did you see anything besides Buck?”

I approached the ATV and fiddled with its controls. “Yes. Just before the storm broke.”

She nodded, wide-eyed, hoping for more.

“Okay, you’ve got yourself a talented practical joker disguised as a spook. I don’t know how he did it. Is that what you want?”

Blanche closed her eyes, tipped her head back, and mouthed, “Thank you!” to the sky. Then she leveled her head and opened her eyes. “Did you see who it was?”

“No, I was hoping you’d tell me!”

She shook her head. “I’ve got my suspicions. If you can ID him alone, then I’m right.”

“I know him, then?”

“By sight and name.”

“So you’re not going to tell me the story?”

“Not yet. You should see now why I can’t lead you.”

“Yeah. But tell me this: Is that gate guard part of it?”

“Who, Kit? No, he’s just staff.”

“Didn’t tour with you?”

“No.”

“Did you assign him the back gate because I was coming?”

“No. What happened, Madeline?”

“Who did? Or did he volunteer?”

“I don’t know. Ask Mark—he handles security. What happened with Kit, Mad?”

“I’ll tell you my secrets if you tell me yours!”

I shoved my tote into her hands and straddled the ATV. Blanche, after rolling her eyes, mounted with the bag clutched in her lap. “You driven one of these before?”

“No.” I lurched and stalled to prove it. Blanche squeaked at each jerk.

Presently I figured out the controls and zoomed off, dodging cars and trees and people. Having something within my control settled my pulse. Traffic thinned as the line inched uphill, then split at the paved intersection. More New Atlanteans sent the stream toward the gate; a second Indian pulled aside sawhorses and directed a trickle toward the house.

I bypassed them by heading across sloping turf in a straight line. The ground leveled to become a landscaped prelude to the marble mansion. It regarded us through yellow-lit panes. A chain of solar walk-lights connected the manse to its carriage house, off on the left from our viewpoint. Opposite it across the driveway stood a stone circle like something in ancient Britain. In front of the house, at least twenty vehicles including a bus packed a crushed-marble driveway. This circled from the slope crest, through a porte cochère, then back to where we idled on the ATV.

“House or carriage house?” I asked over my shoulder.

“Carriage house. I’m freezing.”

I nodded then putt-putted across the lawn to Dru and Blanche’s private dwelling. Other New Atlanteans roomed in the mansion or houses around the estate. For tonight many had doubled up to make guest quarters available. Out of the hundred now converging on the mansion, two dozen would stay for the weekend, while some family would linger into the week. Eventually core members would be left to their own devices. Last I’d heard, thirty-five lived here full time.

“We’ve still got a press conference to get through,” Blanche said as we parked, “then the bus’ll get out of here. After that it’s a few hours playing hostess and tucking people into bed.”

I followed her into the squat timber-and-stucco cube footed with marble. We entered at basement level beside a garage originally used for carriages that now housed exotic cars amassing investment value, half buried under stacks of junk.

Narrow stairs took us up to the apartment, whose eclectic clutter was overlaid by unicorns and pyramids and crystals. Plus a cork-walled bedroom devoted to photographs of Dru Montclair and the Sisters LaRue.

Blanche strode past it all to fling open a wall-length closet. “Here, what do you want—sweats? A caftan? Jeans?”

“A towel and a drink will do.”

“There’ll be booze in the ballroom, towels in the bath. You’ll have to help me out of this dress, it’s stuck.”

She continued jabbering while tossing clothes over her shoulder. This explained the open luggage spilling garments onto the floor, bed, and chairs.

I extracted a micro-fleece zip-front hoodie and yoga pants from my tote, guessing that the temperature would drop another ten degrees in the next hour. Then I stepped into the marble bathroom to effect repairs.

Blanche managed, while I was in there, to peel off her Lycra tube and wrap herself in a bulky lemon sweater over matching leggings. She was freshening her face and hair when I emerged.

“How long can you stay?” She watched me in her mirror.

“Whenever. I trashed the car in the forest, avoiding deer.”

She pivoted on her vanity bench and fixed emerald eyes on me. I looked back through a pair just slightly more hazel. These, plus larger hands and feet on opposite sides, and “inny” versus “outy” navels, comprised our only physical differences. Yet somehow her skin looked better with blonde hair while mine looked better with our natural red-brown.

Internally, our differences rose from whatever gene controlled intro- and extroversion. But we both knew that once we scrambled over our barriers, we’d be twins again and not stop talking for hours. Tonight, unfortunately, her public waited. One more night, then she would be free to talk for months.

We tacitly agreed to let this night play out and start fresh on the morrow. Blanche rose to hug me and put it into words. “I’m so glad you came, and gladder you’re staying. Sorry it’s costing you—let me know how we can help. For now, we need to put Dru in the picture.”

“And pose for a few while at it, I suppose!”

She grinned. I returned it, then shouldered my tote strap and followed her into the moist but clearing night.

Engine noise in the background confirmed my guess, prompted by a blinking clock in Blanche’s bedroom, that generators had kicked on after lightning blew out the power. The solar walk-lights carried on undisturbed. They led us into the porte cochère—a glorified carport made of marble—toward the main entrance. Blanche, back in heels again, took two strides to my one.

With music and voices within earshot, we refrained from talking. As we started up the front stairs, a man stepped out of shadow so that the door lights revealed his face.

“Evening, ladies,” said Buck without expression.

We halted in step and gaped at him. My heart congealed into a rock and clunked to my feet. Then Blanche exclaimed softly, “By god, Mad, you’re right. Hello Buck, nice to see you again.”

Turning to me she commanded, “Meet us in the ballroom,” before marching inside.

3

Prodigal Lover

We waited in silence until a door closed behind her. Then Buck opened with, “So … fancy meeting you here, I guess.”

“Hah!” escaped me, and suddenly I could speak and move. “Given that my sister lives here, you can’t be too surprised to see me!”

“She didn’t even notice.” He rolled his eyes after her.

“She’s got better things to do. Anyway, that was a cheap shot, expecting her to pass word to me. I see you haven’t lost your cowardice!”

Anger rushed in where sensibility feared to tread. Buck ignored it. “I figured you’d hang up on me. Or your brother would run me off. I decided that if you didn’t show up tonight, maybe I’d try to contact you.”

Gack! What would I have done if he had surprised me at the cottage? All those paintings I had put up after he left … a shrine to what had been, what could have been, and what would never be. I had even portrayed our reunion, images ranging from me as a dragon roasting him with breath of fire until he was a charred and mewling penitent, to him as a winged god swooping me away to eternal bliss. Either would be better than this chat with a stranger.

I pushed it along. “You must be the hard case they picked up in Montreal.”

“Yeah, I was in town when the band passed through, so hitched a ride.”

“How’d you get there from Colorado?”

His voice hardened. “It’s a long story.”

“I’ll bet. And an even longer road to here. I remember comments about deluded do-gooders and hating all rock music ’cause of too much drums.”

“They’re still true.”

“Then—”

I broke off at the sound of laughter. A raft of people approached from inside the door. Buck dropped his voice. “This isn’t the best place to talk.”

“Forget it, I don’t have anything to say to you.”

“No? C’mon, I’m sure you’ve stored up some fabulous curses. Step into my parlor …”

He gestured across the lawn to the stone circle. At that moment, five visitors streamed out the door around us, calling farewells. We waved them away and stood immobile until their taillights disappeared down the hill.

Into the quiet Buck asked, “Coming?”

No, no, no, I instructed myself. There’s nothing you can accomplish here, Madeline. You got your wish: You’ve learned what became of him. Move forward now!

I tilted my head to look him in the eye while refusing. Instead, I just stood there and looked. Light from the door lit half his jaw and shoulder. I had not seen that corner of throat and wedge of bone for ten years. The cheekbone above them I had drawn many times, as well as drawn my fingers across it, and traced that upslanted indent from the corner of his eye. His hair, still straight and chestnut, was cut shorter than I had seen it. Like the performers on stage, he seemed to have stripped down to basics. His white T-shirt and weathered jeans downplayed yet highlighted his physical fitness.

He took my hand and towed me across the lawn, bisecting light bars that stretched from the mansion windows but didn’t reach the circle. Unlike Stonehenge and its ilk, the New Atlantis circle carried no capstones and was not aligned with the sun. Dru had scavenged twenty-one flawed marble blocks from quarries scattered throughout the state and set them upright in a circle. Presto! New Atlantis became known as a sacred power point.

Tonight it was lit from within by gleaming marble and from above by emerging stars. Distant thunder still drummed and distant branches rustled. I could hear blood rushing inside my head. Buck stood closer this time, though I could barely see him. He released my hand and turned away.

“I sort of hoped you’d come tonight,” he said toward the stones, “since I take off tomorrow. After mopping up the amphitheater, it’s back on the road.”

I went hollow. All the questions I wanted to ask jammed in my throat. The worst one to voice broke free before I could stop it. “Back to your ski bunny?”

“Not unless I want a load of buckshot in my face!”

“Ah, so that’s why you were in Canada—evading a warrant?”

“Not quite. Just … touring.”

“Sure. So how come you never told me Pete’s your cousin?”

“Because I didn’t know. Well, I knew he existed, but on opposite coasts—I never met him ’til two weeks ago. And even if we’d been buddies all along, I wouldn’t have said anything. With your sister screwing the big guy, who cares if my cousin plays drums in the band?”

“Ten million groupies would find that good enough!”

“Yeah, but you’re not one of them. Though I see you’re doing covers. Hell, I see your portrait of Dru everywhere I go!”

I wanted to tell him how that portrait and the album covers had bought me a sportscar and racing, plus horseback-riding lessons shared with my brother, Colin. But memory of the ruined Tiger and a glowing gate guard checked the urge.

Buck showed no sign of glowing. Part of me wanted him to, while the rest of me hated both him and Kit for doing it in the first place and scrambling my perception of the world.

I brought my mind and mouth back to the present. “So you’ve worked your gig and now it’s back to aimless drifting?”

“I don’t know about aimless.” His tone sharpened again.

“Then what are you doing besides chasing babes?”

“Tilting at windmills, what else?”

“Hah! Then why not stay at New Atlantis?”

“Not invited.”

“Trade places with me—they’re holding a berth I don’t intend to fill.”

He chortled. “You’ll have to, for a while.”

I hesitated then exclaimed, “My, news travels fast around here!”

“Why not? Up ’til that cloudburst, you were the most exciting thing to happen tonight!”

“What do you mean?”

“Blanche’s evil twin finally deigns to put a toe inside the compound! The only outsider allowed in the secret entrance!”