The First Prophet Read online

  Tell me my runaway daughter isn’t walking the streets somewhere, or lying dead in a gutter.

  Tell me I’m right to choose my lover.

  Tell me my mother didn’t suffer.

  Tell me there’s no hell.

  Tell me there is a heaven.

  Tell me I have a future.

  Tell me life doesn’t just end.

  Tell me…please tell me…

  Sarah had discovered for herself that hope was a fragile thing, difficult to hold on to in the harsh face of day-to-day living. She blamed no one for trying to hold on to it, or reach for it again after it had been lost or driven away. But she was helpless to offer hope to others when all she saw was bleak and dark and violent—and without promise.

  She had expected Tucker to ask her for hope. But that wasn’t what he wanted from her. He wanted the truth. He didn’t care whether it proved to be a dark and bleak truth. He didn’t care whether it caused him pain. He just had to know the truth.

  She could have given him most of what he wanted of her within the first hour of knowing him. That she had not was due to several reasons. Though he would doubtless disagree with her assessment, she knew he was not yet ready to hear the truth he needed to hear. Not yet ready to listen and understand. Proof of that had been his shocked reaction to the tiny glimpse of the truth she had shown him just after they said good night.

  And then there was his part in the sequence of events that all these new instincts of hers told her had already begun. His arrival told her that the countdown had started. With his truth revealed to him, he would no doubt turn away from her, and she knew it wasn’t yet time for him to do that. There was another reason for him to be here with her. They had…some place to go together. Some place where it was cold and…bleak.

  Her rendezvous with death.

  And that was the final reason why she had not offered him his truth. Because he had intrigued her with his challenge. With the possibilities of what he saw. He was so sure. So sure that fate could be changed. That destiny was merely the sum of one’s choices.

  Sarah needed his certainty. She didn’t want to die. There were things she hadn’t done yet, places she hadn’t seen, experiences that eluded her. She was not ready to leave life, at least not willingly. But she had no hope of her own left, no certainty that her path could be chosen by her.

  All she saw was darkness.

  If he was right—if there was even a small chance he was right—then Sarah needed his help to attempt to change her destiny. She needed his certainty to keep her going, his hope to replace the hope she had lost.

  It was thoughts such as these that kept Sarah awake long into the night, but when she heard Margo’s buoyant voice in the other room, thoughts of her own dim future were cast aside.

  Margo was home. In Richmond.

  The last place on earth she needed to be today.

  When Sarah came out of the bedroom to greet the other two, her first glance and tentative smile at Tucker met a somewhat guarded response. She knew why, of course. Even a brief glimpse into someone else’s soul left that soul feeling disturbingly naked.

  Psychic eyes aren’t so fascinating when they’re aimed at your soul, are they, Tucker?

  It hurt, though.

  “Good morning,” she said, impartially to both but shifting her gaze immediately to Margo. “You didn’t have to come running back here, Margo. You shouldn’t have.”

  “I was worried about you, kid. I didn’t want you to be alone.” Margo grinned suddenly, a pleased look that belied the anxiety in her expressive eyes. “Didn’t know about Tucker, obviously, or I wouldn’t have barreled back here to be a sixth wheel.”

  “Third,” Sarah corrected automatically. She looked at Tucker, caught the flicker of a laugh in his green eyes, and they shared a brief moment of silent amusement.

  “Oh, right, third.” As always, Margo accepted the correction amiably. “Breakfast, Sarah?”

  “Just coffee.” The pot was almost empty, and Sarah used that as an excuse to make fresh. Margo made the worst coffee in creation, and repeated instructions had done nothing to change that.

  “You should eat,” Margo protested. “Look, at least some toast, and maybe the bacon Tucker didn’t finish—”

  “All right, toast.” Her head was pounding, and Sarah really didn’t feel like arguing. Conscious of Tucker’s silent scrutiny as she moved past him on the other side of the breakfast bar, she tried not to think about him, something that required a disturbing amount of effort. Instead, she tried to think of a way to get Margo to leave as soon as possible. She didn’t want to frighten her friend, but even less did she want to lose her. For good.

  Unbidden, the image that had haunted her for weeks rose starkly in her mind, all too clear and without ambiguity. Tomorrow’s newspaper, with a headline that turned Sarah’s blood to ice…

  “Are you all right?” Tucker asked quietly.

  Sarah looked blankly at him for a moment before she realized she had been standing immobile with one hand on the breadbox for just that instant too long. “I’m fine.” She wondered idly what her expression looked like to make him look so doubtful. “Really.”

  She busied herself making toast, while Margo leaned back against the counter sipping her coffee and Tucker sat at the bar drinking his, and both watched her. She had no idea what they had discussed before she had gotten up, no idea whether either had confided in the other.

  Some psychic I am! I can’t even get this cursed thing to work for me when I need it to!

  Before she could think of something casual to say, the silence was broken by the distant sound of a bell ringing below in the shop.

  “I forgot to turn the bell on up here,” Sarah said. “It’s past opening time. I’ll—”

  “No, I’ll go down and see who it is.” Margo set her cup on the counter and headed for the door. “Whether we stay open today—well, we’ll see. In the meantime, you relax and eat your breakfast. Talk to Tucker. See you two later.”

  Sarah actually opened her mouth to warn her friend, then closed it even as the door closed behind Margo. What should I do? She had tried to warn David and had only gotten him killed. None of her other warnings had made the slightest difference. But this, this was so damned specific, maybe it was different…

  “Sarah?”

  She looked at him.

  “What did you see in Margo’s future?”

  She didn’t mean to tell him but heard her own frightened voice respond without hesitation. “Death.”

  Tucker didn’t look surprised, and his voice remained quiet. “Are you sure?”

  Sarah drew a breath. “I saw a Richmond newspaper with tomorrow’s date. The front page. Below the headline, there was a picture of Margo. The headline read, Local Antiques Dealer Killed. The first line began, Local businesswoman Margo James was killed yesterday afternoon in a bizarre accident that took place in her antiques shop.”

  Drawing another breath to steady a voice that shook uncontrollably, Sarah added bitterly, “Now you tell me if there’s any way to misinterpret that.”

  He was silent for a moment. “Which is why she’s supposed to be out of town now?”

  Sarah nodded. “I shouldn’t even have let her go down to the shop just now, but…I don’t know what to do. If I try to keep her out of the shop, if I warn her, I’m afraid I’ll bring about the accident I want to prevent. Like I did with David.”

  “You don’t know that you brought that about. He might have been killed at a railroad crossing if he had stayed here.”

  “Yes—or he might not have. And Margo…I made sure she’d be away, didn’t call her about the house burning hoping to keep her away, but now she’s come back. As if she’s fated to be here, today. It was very clear, what I saw. An accident, this afternoon, in the shop. But I don’t know exactly when it’s supposed to happen, or what happens.”

  “A bizarre accident,” Tucker mused.

  “I couldn’t see what that meant, what actually happene
d.” Sarah went to pour herself a cup of the fresh coffee, absently noting that the toast had popped up without her awareness and was now undoubtedly cold. Leaving it, she fixed her coffee and then turned back to face Tucker. “It isn’t afternoon yet, and newspapers try to be precise…but it could happen at any time.”

  Tucker frowned. “Wait a minute. Margo is supposed to be out of town, which means you’re supposed to be the one in the shop. Right?”

  She nodded. “It’s just her and me, no other full-time staff. A couple of guys from the health club nearby help us out moving large pieces of furniture when we need to, but we do all the rest. Why?”

  “Maybe it’s my writer’s imagination at work, but think about this, Sarah. Somebody’s been watching you recently. You, not Margo. Yesterday your house burns down, probably due to arson. Today, you’re here—which is where you’d logically be after losing your house. It’s even logical that you’d probably be downstairs working, to occupy your mind if nothing else. I mean, if Margo hadn’t showed up, wouldn’t you be down there now, in answer to that bell?”

  “Of course.”

  He waited, watching her.

  Sarah was a bit slow getting it, maybe because of her pounding head or because her mind was filled with fears for Margo. But, slowly, the possibility he offered came into focus. “You mean, me? Somebody could be trying to kill me, and got—gets—Margo by mistake?”

  “She’s a redhead too. Hard to mistake one of you for the other close up, but at a distance it wouldn’t be so unlikely. Especially if you’re likely to be down in the shop and Margo is supposed to be out of town. Maybe that bizarre accident you saw was a deliberate act intended to look accidental.”

  Sarah didn’t bother to ask him whether he actually believed she had seen the future; he was, as he’d said, suspending his disbelief, but only time and proof would convince Tucker that she could predict events that had not yet occurred. In any case, she was thinking more painful thoughts.

  “I told you—there’s no reason anybody would want to hurt me.”

  “And yet you predict your own death—at the hands of some mysterious them you can’t identify.” His voice was not in the least sarcastic.

  It had not occurred to Sarah either to connect Margo’s death with her own future or to consider her shadowy enemies apart from the ending she felt sure they planned for her. But now, thinking about it, she had to admit that Tucker had made a number of points. Looked at objectively, as he clearly could, it was obvious that Sarah was the target of whatever was happening.

  “But why?” Like any human being, she found it extremely difficult to even imagine that someone else might want to put a period to her existence, despite her own predictions. “I don’t understand why anyone would want me dead.”

  “The reasons people kill are usually simple,” Tucker offered. “Desperation. Greed. Jealousy. Rage. Fear.”

  Sarah shook her head, unable to connect any of those powerful emotions to her life. “I’m not…I’m not even close enough to anyone to inspire anything like that. My friends are casual—except for Margo; I have no family to speak of, just cousins who aren’t even a part of my life. How could I have roused those kinds of emotions in someone without knowing it?”

  “Even fear?” He looked at her steadily. “Sarah, your life changed dramatically six months ago. You became psychic. And as you said yourself, there are people out there who are terrified of the very idea of precognition. People very afraid of psychics—maybe even to the point of trying to start a witch hunt.”

  They burned my house. Witches were burned.

  “It wouldn’t be the first time someone perceived as different became a target of intimidation tactics,” he reminded her, and echoed her own thoughts when he added, “Suspected witches were burned; nearly the first thing you said to me was that you were the neighborhood witch.”

  “But there would have been warnings, wouldn’t there? Nasty phone calls, notes—or something worse—left in my mailbox. Isn’t that how it works? They wouldn’t have started by setting my house on fire. Would they?”

  Tucker shrugged. “I wouldn’t have said so. But in these days of stalkers and serial killers, the extreme gets more common every day.”

  Sarah accepted that reluctantly. “So it’s possible somebody wants me dead because I’m psychic.” She shied away from anyone hating and fearing that much to focus on her friend’s safety. “Then…then if I’m the target, Margo should be out of danger if I send her away. Right? If she’s nowhere near me, she won’t be an accidental target.”

  “That seems reasonable to suppose,” Tucker agreed.

  Sarah looked at her watch. “It’s after ten. I should go downstairs and try to talk her into leaving Richmond before lunch. Will…will you help me convince her?”

  “I’ll try.” He hesitated, then added, “If you’ll take my advice, I think you should tell her the truth. She knows you’ve seen something, Sarah. It’s worrying her.”

  “Yes, I know.” Sarah turned the coffeepot off, then looked around in sudden awareness. “Where’s Pendragon?”

  “Margo fed him his breakfast and let him out, she said.” He hesitated, then said, “I never did let him out last night; he disappeared on me. Was he with you?”

  “No, not unless he decided to sleep under the bed.” She shrugged. “Which he might have done. This is the first time I’ve spent the night here over the shop since he showed up, so I’m not sure about his nighttime habits.”

  “He’s been altered, right? So not as likely to want to wander at night like intact toms do.”

  Absently, Sarah said, “I thought you didn’t know much about cats.”

  There was a brief silence, and then Tucker said, “I guess most people know that much.”

  “I guess. Yeah, I made sure he’d been neutered, otherwise I would have taken him to a vet. Too many stray cats around for my peace of mind. They live dangerous lives, poor things.” With a shrug, she added, “He probably belongs to someone in the area, given his condition and that collar. He’s been somebody’s cat, obviously cared for.”

  “Then maybe he went home after his breakfast.”

  “Maybe so.”

  “Ready to go down to the shop?”

  “As ready as I’ll ever be.”

  They left the apartment and went downstairs to the shop, finding Margo occupied with a customer.

  “I had something a little more…economical in mind,” the attractive young woman was saying somewhat wryly as she studied the price tag of a beautiful early Victorian writing desk.

  Margo chuckled. “Antiques are always economical, especially if you’re looking at long-term investment, Miss Desmond. Just think of having something this beautiful to pass down to your children.”

  “You mean instead of the cash?” Miss Desmond grinned.

  Sarah recognized from Margo’s happy expression that she expected to make a sale, so she didn’t try to interrupt. Instead, she led Tucker through the maze of gleaming furniture to a back corner, where a stunning ormolu-mounted boulle bureau plat of Regency design acted as a desk where Sarah and Margo did the necessary paperwork for the shop.

  “Nice place,” Tucker commented.

  “Thanks. It’s taken us almost eight years to get the kind of stock and clientele we dreamed about when we started. A lot of long hours and hard work went into Old Things, to say nothing of every penny Margo and I could come up with.” She said it matter-of-factly but with a trace of wistfulness, filled with the conviction that this part of her life was ending. She didn’t know whether her prediction of a bleak future would be fulfilled, but she was sure, utterly sure, that her partnership with Margo was ending.

  One way or another.

  Sarah glanced back across the shop at Margo and the customer, then looked at her watch uneasily. It was still well before noon, but she wouldn’t feel that her friend was out of danger until she was out of Richmond and far away from this shop.

  “I think I’ll wander around a bit,”
Tucker told her. “I’ve always been interested in antiques.” He nodded toward Margo, adding, “Sing out when you need me.”

  “Okay.” Sarah sat down at the chair behind the desk and opened a file to go over several shipping invoices. It was busywork and nothing more; the clock in her head was ticking away minutes, and all she could think about was talking to Margo and getting her out of here.

  With that tense part of her awareness, she was conscious of Margo talking to the customer, leading her from piece to piece but always returning to that Victorian writing desk she clearly intended to sell the woman.

  “Let me just sit here and think about it,” the customer finally said, sitting down somewhat gingerly in a George III mahogany-framed dining chair.

  “It’s a tough decision, I know,” Margo said sympathetically.

  “I’ll say. I do love that desk, though.”

  “We have a layaway plan. Ten percent down, and you can take a year or more to pay the balance.”

  The customer groaned. “You’re an evil woman. Tempting me.”

  Margo laughed. “It’s something I’ve been accused of before. But what can I say? I like people to have beautiful things.”

  That, Sarah reflected absently, was true. Sales techniques aside, Margo did genuinely enjoy the thought of the beautiful things she valued giving pleasure to others.

  “My husband will shoot me,” the customer said with another groan. “He expects me to come home with a plain old desk, not an antique. I just stopped by here on impulse.”

  “Sometimes,” Margo said, “impulse is the best way to find the nice surprises in life.”

  “Yeah.” The customer frowned. “Look, give me a few minutes, will you, please? I want to think about this.”

  Her meaning was clear, and Margo smiled brightly. “No problem. Just call me when you’re ready.”

  “Okay. Thanks.”

  Margo turned and headed toward the back of the shop where Sarah waited.

  Sarah rose to her feet, anxious to warn Margo and get her out of the shop as soon as possible—sale or no sale. But before she could leave the desk, the phone rang.

  “Good morning, Old Things, this is Sarah,” she said as she answered automatically.