A superheroine, she was not. She was pretty sure she didn’t achieve slightly cool. Maybe she managed somewhat capable. Sometimes. She sighed and pinched her nose with thumb and forefinger.

The green Jeep pulled alongside her at the stop.

Michael paused long enough to catch her eye and nod. Then he accelerated and she pulled into place behind him.

They drove for perhaps fifteen minutes. She had stopped trying to guess his intentions some time ago. The labyrinthine route he drove had her lost within a couple of turns. She worked at keeping the Jeep in sight, the rest of her mind a blank, so that she actually felt surprise when he signaled, turned down a gravel road and pulled to a stop.

Tangled overgrown forest crowded either side of the gravel road. They could almost have been where they had abandoned her Toyota. Wow, a lot of water had flowed under that bridge. She stopped behind him, put the Ford in park and rested her forehead against the steering wheel.

Tension spilled out of her body. Exhaustion roared back in. She felt limp as a rag doll. Michael opened her door and put a hand on her arm. “Come on, Mary. Climb out.”

She tried. Her legs didn’t cooperate very well. “We’re fugitives in the age of information. Should we have worn gloves or something back at the house?”

He reached in the car, put his hands under her arms and hauled her bodily out of the car. She tried to get her rubbery legs to stiffen and support her weight. He pulled her into his arms and held her tight.

“We only used the bathroom and the kitchen. And I doubt the police will dust for fingerprints for a car theft and home invasion, but I still wiped everything down before I came out.”

“The front doorknob,” she said.

“I wiped that too, and the door to the garage, and the garage door switch.” He ran his hands up and down her arms. “I’ve taken care of everything. Stop worrying.”

She squinted up at him. “You’ve done this when you’ve had to, huh? How often was that?”

He grinned. “Often enough.”

“Ooh-kay. Okay.” She leaned against him. Words poured out of her. “Sometimes everything just hits me, you know? My house burned down a few days ago, and I called a dragon yesterday morning—who answered me—and I really think I would be okay if I could just take a little time and deal with it all.”

“It has all hit you fast.” He rested his cheek at the top of her head.

She slipped her arms around his waist and held on tight. “Only we can’t take any time, can we? I want and need to help you and Astra in whatever way I can, but I’m really scared of what’s coming next, and isn’t it funny after all this? I’m scared to die. Or worse. There’s much, much worse than dying.”

“Yes,” he said, very low. “There is.”

She sucked air. “And if by some miracle we don’t die, my job is gone, my life is gone and I don’t know how to survive as a fugitive from the law. I feel—I feel like I’ve turned down this dead-end alley, and something terrible is blocking the mouth of it. It’s coming for me, and there’s nowhere to turn.” She balled her hands into fists and said through her teeth, “And you don’t have to say anything. I already know I’m babbling.”

He steered her around the door to the hood of the Ford. “Sit here.”

She climbed onto the hood and watched as he retrieved the bags of food. “I’m sorry.”

“I know you’re sorry. Shut up.” He set the bags beside her. “Eat.”

She wrapped her arms around herself. “What about you?”

“I will in a minute. I have things I need to do.” He looked at her hard. “I mean it. Eat. Force yourself if you don’t feel like it.”

She nodded. The simple orders he gave her provided structure and purpose while she struggled with feeling overwhelmed. She recognized the technique. She had used it herself with trauma patients.

He opened the trunk of the Ford and the back of the Jeep, and he moved back and forth between the vehicles, transferring the contents from the car to the SUV. She couldn’t identify what was in some of the bags but she thought she saw a tent go by, along with other camping supplies, and also a toolbox.

She asked, “I thought we were hoping we could ditch the Jeep soon.”

He glanced at her. “I’m keeping our options open. You never know what may come at us.”

She said, “You know, I’m not usually such a beta.”

The sun fell into his eyes as he glanced at her, illuminating the pewter color to a pure keen light. “What do you mean?”

“Usually, I’m an alpha. Just wait until we get trapped sometime in a hospital.” She pointed at him and winked. “I will rule. Then you’ll see.”

Laughter creased his face. “I can’t wait.”

She rummaged through the contents of the grocery bags. There were apples, grapes, a couple of containers of low-fat yogurt, chocolate and peanut butter–flavored breakfast bars, a package of sliced turkey, three Tupperware containers, a partial loaf of bread, cheese, a couple packages of tuna, a box of crackers and two cans of Coke.

He even remembered to pack two forks, which she discovered at the bottom of one bag. She inspected the Tupperware containers and found homemade potato salad, a garden salad and sliced ham—real sliced ham, not packaged and processed meat. The garden salad had fresh spinach, leafy romaine lettuce, radishes, carrots and green onions and was tossed with a creamy Italian dressing.

The sights and smells slammed into her. The food was wholesome, and her whole body wanted it. She wolfed down potato salad and bites of ham, chewing while she popped open one of the chilled cans of Coke. While she ate, she watched Michael.

She started on the garden salad as he emptied out the backseat of the Ford. The long, black weapons bag went into the rear seat of the Jeep. When he had shifted everything to his satisfaction, he opened up the toolbox, pulled out a license plate and a wrench, and he changed the license plate on the Jeep. Fascinated, she tried to see what else was in the toolbox. All she could see from where she was sitting were more license plates.

“How many license plates do you have?” she asked, her mouth full.

“I like to keep a dozen or so on hand.” He tossed the wrench into the box, closed it and tucked the Jeep’s legitimate license plate under the camping gear. “They provide more options.”

Questions crowded her mind. Where had he gotten them? How many were stolen? All of them? He slammed the Jeep’s rear door. Then the questions flew out of her head as he joined her. She noticed how pronounced his limp had become. She handed him containers of food and a fork. Then she opened a Coke for him while he bent his head and ate with quick economy.

She gave him the drink, opened a container of yogurt and passed it to him when he was ready. She told him, “I packed the less perishable food into one bag to take with us.”

“Good,” he grunted.

He made an amazing amount of food disappear. At that moment he could have been any tired, hardworking man after a long day. Then he paused to strip off his flannel shirt in the heat of the early evening. She saw the bandages and bruises on his wide, taut torso, and the illusion vaporized.

She finished most of her own yogurt before she became too full to eat anymore. Taking a deep, replete breath, she sipped at her Coke as she looked around the scene.

The dense gathering of trees and underbrush shimmered with the Van Gogh effect that had started yesterday. She frowned. When had she last noticed it? She couldn’t remember. She had become too depleted to notice, and then she became preoccupied with other things.

“Michael,” she said. He looked up from finishing the ham. “Ever since I—what did you call it—ripped through the veil in the Grotto, something funny has happened to my eyesight. Everything has this transparent shimmer around the edges. Or it has whenever I’ve had the time to notice. I’ve been calling it the Van Gogh effect.”

“The Van Gogh effect.” He slanted an eyebrow at her.

“You know, because everything has rippling, wavy edges. It reminds me of his paintings. Do you know what it is?”

He studied the surrounding scene, then gave her a quizzical glance. “You’ve been coping with everything so well, I forget how new your memories are and how much you’ve yet to recover. What you’re seeing is energy.”

“Energy,” she repeated. She cocked her head and squinted doubtfully at a tree.

“Everything has energy and movement,” he replied. “Everything has a vibration, even things that most people think of as being stationary and immobile. Take a rock.” He bent and picked up a piece of gravel. “Even this has vibration and movement. Think of the basic elements contained in an atom.”

She squinted at him. “Do you mean electrons, neutrons, protons and a nucleus?”

“Yes. Do you know how the electrons and the protons rotate around the nucleus?”

“Sure.”

He pressed the piece of gravel into her hand. “Movement is present in everything in the universe. It’s our human senses that tell us that the rock is inert and stationary. The reality is quite different. The rock is in motion, just as the entire universe is in motion. The vibration of the rock’s energy is simply at a much slower frequency than other things.”

“Vibration,” she echoed. She hefted the rock in her hand as she thought back to the moment when the Deceiver had taken Michael. She looked up at him. “Back at the cabin, when the Deceiver had you pinned to the ground, he made some kind of humming noise. It was a horrible sound. I wanted to stab things in my ears to keep from hearing it, but it wasn’t actually a physical noise, was it? It was psychic, right?”

The angle of his mouth turned grim. “It was both psychic and physical. He was using vibration as a weapon. A vibration at a certain pitch and frequency can destroy us if it comes from both the physical and psychic realms at once, and if it is strong enough. Buddhist monks make use of physical vibration in their chants. Legend has it that with the right frequency they can cause a mountain to avalanche. When I’m fighting creatures in the psychic realm, I use the vibration of my energy to shape a weapon. A physical sword is useless in that kind of fight. It passes right through them.”

She thought back to the tall, blazing figure that she had seen with her mind’s eye. He had wielded what had looked like a spear of white light. “So you really were fighting psychically the same time that you were fighting physically?”

“Yes.”

She looked down at the piece of gravel she held. In her last life, she’d had a teacher who had taught her about Eastern dragons and astral projection.

As you know, there are four realms, her teacher had said. The inner realm, the physical realm, the psychic realm and the celestial or heavenly realm. Each realm is distinct, yet they are intricate in their entwinement.

Michael, Astra and the Deceiver were all adept in more than one realm. Michael had entered her mind when she had been locked in the past. Both Astra and the Deceiver had the ability to enter her dreams. She realized all over again how much she had to recover of her true self and her abilities.

She muttered, “That’s a whole lot more complicated than being ambidextrous.”

The grim line to his mouth eased. “When we have time, I’ll lend you my copy of Zen Keys so you can read more about it. To go back to your question, you’re seeing what you call the Van Gogh effect because you’re getting more attuned to the energies around you.”

She stared at the rock. “That’s also how I saw the golden stream you poured into me when you found me by my car. You were giving me energy.”

“Of course.” He smiled at the expression on her face. “You know all of this already. You just haven’t remembered it yet. Like you said, you need more time to process and connect all your dots.”

“I’m starting to realize how much work I have to do to catch up,” she said. She was struck by another thought. “In the recurring dream I’ve had, when all of us who were in the original group drank the poison, I could see colors all around us but they were really emotions. When I woke up, I wondered if we’d had the ability to see pheromones.”

“Maybe we did, or maybe we had an ability very like that. Are you feeling better?” She nodded. “We’ve had to push too hard. I knew eating good food would help. I have just two things to say.”

She looked up when he paused. She wasn’t the only one helped by the good food. He too looked better for having eaten, stronger and more vital. The marks of tension on his face had eased. “Yes?”

“First,” he said into her upturned face. “You are a talking, walking miracle. Don’t ever apologize to me again. I know how hard you’re working on all levels and I’m doing my best to help. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Second thing,” he said. He drew a light finger down her cheek. “You’re not in a dead-end alley. That was your fatigue and fear speaking. You may not know how to survive as a fugitive in the age of information, but I do. You have to keep reminding yourself I’ve been training for this my whole life. It’s what I do.”

She nodded and gave him a small smile. “Okay.”

He stroked her lower lip, his callused fingers gentle. “It is also a big mistake to discount Astra’s abilities. I know from your perspective it must seem like things have gotten really outlandish, but have faith.”

“I’ll try.” This was the first real chance they’d had to talk since the battle. She felt the tension ease from her neck and shoulders.