The Flight of the Silvers (Silvers #1)(4)

The strangers studied the swirling pillar of smoke with casual interest, as if it were art. Soon the madwoman swept her slender arm in a loop, summoning an eight-foot disc of fluorescent white light.

The family glanced up from the grass, eyeing the anomaly through cracked red stares. The circle hovered above the ground, as thin as a blanket and as round as a coin. Despite its perfect verticality, the surface shimmied like pond water.

Before any Given could form a thought, the quiet man in the windbreaker pulled down the lip of his baseball cap and brushed past the family with self-conscious haste. He plunged into the portal, the radiant white liquid rippling all around him. Robert watched his exit with mad rejection. It was the stuff of cartoons, a Roger Rabbit hole in the middle of nothing.

The dark-eyed woman gave Amanda a sly wink, then followed her companion into the breach. The surface swallowed her like thick white paint.

Alone among his rescuees, the white-haired man took a final glance at the Givens. Melanie saw his sharp blue eyes linger on Hannah.

“Just go,” the mother implored him. “Please. We won’t tell anyone.”

The stranger squinted in cool umbrage, clearly displeased to be treated like a common mugger.

“Tell whoever you want.”

Robert stammered chaotically, his throat clogged with a hundred burning questions. He thought of his minivan, which no doubt stood a charred and empty husk on the road. Suddenly the father who’d cursed the gods for his horrible fortune knew exactly what to ask.

“Why us?”

The stranger stopped at the portal. Robert threw a quick, nervous look at Amanda and Hannah.

“Why them?”

The white-haired man turned around now, his face an inscrutable wall of ice.

“Your daughters may one day learn. You will not. Accept that and embrace the rest of your time.”

He stepped through the gateway, vanishing in liquid. Soon the circle shrank to a dime-size dot and then blinked out of existence.

One by one, the survivors on the freeway emerged from their vehicles—the injured and the lucky, the screaming and the stunned. In the smoky bedlam, no one noticed the family of mourners on the distant embankment.

The Givens huddled together on the grass, their brown and green gazes held firmly away from the turnpike. Only Hannah had the strength to stand. She was five years old and still new to the universe. She had no idea how many of its laws had been broken in front of her. All she knew was that today was a strange and ugly day and her sister was wrong.

Hannah moved behind her weeping mother and threw her arms around her shoulders. She took a deep breath. And she sang.





ONE




On a Friday night in dry July, in the Gaslamp Quarter of downtown San Diego, the Indian-dancers-who-weren’t-quite-Indian twirled across the stage of the ninety-nine-seat playhouse. Five lily-white women in yellow sarees flowed arcs of georgette as they spun in measure to the musical intro. The orchestra, which had finished its job on Monday and was now represented by a six-ounce iPod, served a curious fusion of bouncy trumpets and sensual shehnais—Broadway bombast with a Bombay contrast. The music director was an insurance adjuster by day. He’d dreamed up his euphonious Frankenstein three years ago, and tonight, by the grace of God and regional theater, it was alive.

The curtain parted and a new performer prowled her way onto the stage. She was a raven-haired temptress in a fiery red lehenga. Her curvy figure—ably flaunted by a low-cut, belly-baring choli—brought half the jaded audience to full attention.

The spotlights converged. The dancers dispersed. All eyes were now fixed upon the brown-eyed leading lady: the young, the lovely, the up-and-coming Hannah Given.

With a well-rehearsed look of sexy self-assurance, she swayed her hips to the rhythm and sang.

“Whatever Lola wants, Lola gets.

And little man, little Lola wants you . . .”

She shot a sultry gaze at the actor sitting downstage right, a handsome young man in a cricket player’s uniform. He was theatrically bewitched by her. In reality, he was mostly bothered. Her neurotic questioning of all creative decisions made rehearsals twice as long as they needed to be. Still, he was casually determined to sleep with her sometime before the production closed. He wouldn’t.

“Make up your mind to have no regrets.

Recline yourself, resign yourself, you’re through.”

A sharp cough from the audience made her inner needle skip, throwing her Lola and dropping her into a sinkhole of Hannah concerns. She fished herself out on a gilded string of affirmations. Your stomach looks fine. Your voice sounds great. Gwen Verdon isn’t screaming from Heaven. And odds are only one in ninety-nine that the angry cough came from the CityBeat critic.

You know damn well who it was, a harsher voice insisted.

She narrowed her eyes at the dark sea of heads, then fell back into character. The rest of the song proceeded without a hitch. At final-curtain applause, Hannah convinced herself that the whole premiere went swimmingly aside from that half-second skip. She figured the misstep would haunt her for days. It wouldn’t.

—

She wriggled back into her halter top and jeans and then joined the congregation in the lobby, where half the audience lingered to heap praise on the performers they knew. Hannah had given out five comp tickets, including two to her roommates and one to the day job colleague she was kinda sorta a little involved with. None of them showed up. Lovely. That only left the great Amanda Ambridge, plus spouse.