Evie spluttered and almost choked on her pizza. Coughing, she reached for her ice tea. “Latent talents?”
“I’m psychic,” Loretta informed her coldly. “May I have another pizza?”
This would be a good time for a fairy godmother to fly by, or one of her interfering relatives, or even her know-it-all older sister Gracie. Gracie was a teacher. She knew kids. Evie talked toghosts, not kids. And so far, Loretta’s ghosts had only learned to manifest, not talk.
“I thought you just told me that your parents thought all psychics are frauds.” She got up, rummaged in the freezer again, and found a Haagen-Dazs chocolate bar. Loretta brightened considerably. So, there was a real kid behind the glasses somewhere.
“I lied,” Loretta replied. “I was testing you.”
Three
Present time:
Slipping out the back exit,Evie sighed over the image of bronzed and sculpted Camouflage Man. Unfortunately, it didn’t take a mind reader to know he liked to hunt.
After hearing Loretta’s terrifying story ofaccidentsthat had endangered life and limb, Evie still didn’t have a firm grip on what was lie and what was truth. She just knew the child and her ghosts needed help. When she’d heard the angry voice downstairs, she’d told the kid to take the fire escape and hide before she’d gone downstairs to check out the new arrival. Good thing, too, the Magician had an angry aura—never a good sign.
Having heard Loretta scramble down the fire escape, Evie didn’t stick around to hear who the Magician claimed to be. Instead, to divert him from her mother and give Loretta time to hide, Evie dashed out the back, deliberately leaving the door open so he would follow. She had twenty-five years of experience in dealing with skeptics, enough to know that men were incredibly dense, single-minded, and easily led astray.
Although, when coupled with Loretta’s fears of a killer, the intimidating bodybuilder could easily be a hired thug. His square shoulders had stretched his black knit to its limits, and his pecs would suit a superhero emblem. She favored the Hulk.
And he was chasing afterher. Evie could hear his boots pounding the pavement of the back alley. The fence should deter him. Shoving Loretta’s documents more securely into the back of her shorts, she ducked through the narrow break in the wooden planks behind Hank’s and darted across the parking lot to the tree-lined residential street behind it.
When her mother had entered the shop, Evie had taken advantage of the Magician’s distraction to examine his aura. His was a narrow band of deep dark red—an angry, aggressive color. Men like that could have violent or easily aroused tempers, but his aura was so compressed as to be more opaque than transparent, making it impossible to read all the hues. Was he or was he not a killer? He certainly wasn’t a warm fuzzy parental model.
It was her task to sort out the truth and decide what to do about those guardianship documents. Loretta wasn’t lying about being afraid. Unfortunately, she was lying about a lot of other things. It remained to be seen if the Hulk was a liar, too.
Despite all evidence to the contrary, Evie wasexactlywhat the child needed to solve this dilemma. Maybe the kid really was psychic. She was part Malcolm, after all.
Beside Great-Aunt Val’s house, Evie grabbed a familiar low branch on the pine tree. She had grown up here and called this house her own now. She could play hide-and-seek in the old Victorian all day if she chose, but she preferred not to have superhot-hero trashing the place. She simply needed to give Loretta time to escape. The kid seemed smart enough to accomplish that.
Flinging the guardianship papers through the open living room window and behind her couch with the rest of her mail, Evie clambered up the tree. With practiced expertise, she swung over to the porch roof. She wasn’t invisible. She only meant to distract and take a minute to think things through, so she settled down to watch the Hulk lookalike racing down the street. He’d not been able to fit through the fence and had taken the long route around—not lacking in intelligence then.
His head loomed higher than the overgrown gardenia guarding her front yard. He scanned the Victorian like a sniper hunting prey—as if heknewthis was her place. Evie couldn’t have hidden from that sharp gaze if she tried.
So she didn’t waste time trying. Her idiosyncrasies had insured that she suffered years of childhood bullying. In retaliation, she had developed many means of creative survival. She was quite good at leveling the odds. Unfortunately, this guy’s military buzz cut and menacing attitude had a chilling effect on her anticipated fun. He meant business.Bummer.
The instant GI Joe spotted her on the porch roof, he stalked past her gardenia, onto her property.Trespassing. Evie chose the ploy designed to deter her most dangerous opponents. She emitted the ear-piercing high C she’d perfected, one loud enough to alert her neighbors and accurate enough to reach a crescendo that set off car alarms. The mayor hated when she did that.
Her sharp-nosed nemesis merely crossed his arms and glared up at her, which ticked her off. Her operatic voice was a musical glory, to be treated with awe. Once she set it off, she knew she had nothing to fear. Nosy neighbors were already dialing 911. Sheriff Troy would arrive within minutes. She’d helped him find missing children over the years. He owed her.
In the meantime, Evie decided to teach the deaf mute below a little respect. She was damned tired of people thinking she was weak just because she was small-boned. She’d graduated with honors from her martial arts classes, but the element of surprise generally saved her from bruising.
Let’s see how a Magician took an attack from a Hummingbird.
Evie launched herself feet-first off the roof, aiming for the wide target of the intruder’s shoulders. With just the right trajectory, she could stagger him backward—before she hit the ground running, leaving the bully to the not-so-gentle mercies of her neighbors.
To her utter shock, muscled arms plucked her out of thin air before she could hit anything. None of her victims had ever moved that quickly or with such accuracy. Suspended well above the ground, Evie concluded she was too damned old for this trick.
He had arms like steel tree trunks. Pity she couldn’t find boyfriends with muscles like his. On second thought, she resented being hauled around like a sack of flour. She continued her high-pitched keening.
Distraction and running hadn’t worked. Time for Plan Three—physical assault. Not unskilled in dirty fighting, Evie debated gouging steel-gray eyes but lost her nerve. Since the Hulk was merely looking annoyed, she refrained from jabbing the carotid. Unfortunately, his high-and-tight cut hair was too short for yanking. Instead, she sank her thumbnails into the flesh beneath his square chin, but even his jaw was as hard as the carved bronze sculpture he resembled.
He scowled and waited for her to quit screaming, as if that would happen in his lifetime. Just because she was small didn’t mean she could be man-handled by any stray killer. Evie wrapped one fist in his shirt and swung the other at his nose.
He turned his head, and her knuckles collided painfully with his broad cheekbone.
“What the hell did you do that for?” he demanded, tightening his grip on her waist.