CHAPTER 1

The strange, dark spell didn't give much warning before it dropped over me–not that they ever do. I tried to resist as a force, stronger than my meager powers, swept me out of the here-and-now of the gun shop and carried me into the past. The workroom blurred around me, as if I'd turned my head faster than my eyes could track, flickered, then faded to black.

It was night here, with a darkness almost suffocating in its density. I stood side-by-side with a woman whose name I knew to be Miranda; a woman distraught to the edge of madness and oblivious of my presence.

We sheltered behind a building–a barn, I think–or perhaps a chicken coop, judging from the animal smell surrounding it. She waited, I waited–so close beside her that I shared the warmth of her oversized woolen coat. Somehow I knew she had grabbed the coat off a hook beside the back door as she ran out of the house to take refuge in the night.

I heard words, an echo explaining her rage, playing again and again inside her head until the meaning spilled over into my brain.

"You can't," Miranda had said to the man. They had just finished a hurried supper. Hurried because he said he had an appointment. "You won't! If you want her then pack your things and leave. I won't have you for my husband. Just don't expect me to take you back when you crawl home come morning. I won't take you back this time. Not this time–or ever again."

And I heard his laughter, felt her cringe at the insulting way he clucked her under the chin and said, "Sure you will, darlin' You love me, remember? And you're too damn ugly to get a man without paying for his services. Well, my dear, you don't pay me enough to have exclusive rights. You'll have to learn to share."

He laughed all the way up the stairs when he went to change his clothes. He was going to her and didn't care if his lawful wife knew it. His derision followed Miranda outdoors even as she hid from his scorn. Hid from him.

But then she discovered the pistol in the pocket of the coat. His coat, carrying his scent, cocooning her in a false warmth. The pistol was the .44 caliber Colt Hartford Dragoon she'd bought him for their first wedding anniversary, back when she still believed he loved her. Before she learned he coveted the pistol only because it was rare and expensive, and because it had been designed as an exclusive presentation piece for the Czar of Russia.

He carried the gun around in his pocket, another trophy to show off to his cronies. Carried it fully loaded, as Miranda discovered when she felt the nipples around cylinder were capped.

The wind whistled around the corner of the shed, spinning a maelstrom of dying leaves from the trees. Leaves as dry and shattered as her dreams. And she waited, one black-gloved hand clenched upon the pistol she had given him, while her heart swelled and beat into a crescendo of rage.

I waited with her, watching, my own pulse accelerating as I felt what was in the other woman's mind.

He whistled as he came down the path toward the barn. The saddle horse tied in there pricked his ears and stamped his feet, recognizing the sound as a call to run.

Miranda went still. The blood pounded in her ears, dilating the capillaries in her head and filling her eyes with a red haze. The gun was in her hand when she stepped into the path in front of him.

I stood at her shoulder when she said, her voice trembling, "Don't go. Please don't go. I don't want to have to do this."

"You?" The smile in his voice told her he didn't believe her threat. "You won't shoot me, Miranda. Go in and go to bed. I'm late already."

He went to brush her aside and the first bullet, when she pulled the trigger, plunged first through his hand, then into his greedy black heart. The second bullet went in her own open mouth, and out through the back of her head.

The gun she'd used dropped from my slack fingers and clattered onto the wooden workroom floor.

"Boothenay!" My dad, Samuel N. Irons, looked around from his work and spoke in an aggravated tone. He walked over to retrieve the pistol and check whether the fall had damaged anything. "Watch what you're doing, child. Mr. Frye is paying a lot of money to restore this weapon for him. We can do without you making the job any harder."

"I wonder if Mr. Frye knows someone was murdered with this gun?" My heart was pounding. Then, with the aftermath of rage still inside of me, I cried.

Sometimes I get the feeling I'm in the wrong profession.

I was thirteen when this strange voyage of discovery all began. Oh, not with the Frye affair. That came later, when I already had some experience with this magic-carpet-ride thing I do. No. I started out a little less dramatically.

I remember I was helping my dad in the shop just as I did every day after school. Only on this day, between one minute and the next, my whole life changed. There I was, minding my own business, doing my regular chores, then I awoke–or came to–or something–to find myself standing stock-still in the middle of the workshop with my eyes bugged out and my mouth hanging open. Or so they told me.

"Hello," my dad said, hovering like an old mother hen and sounding worried. "Are you back with us now? Where have you been?"

I know I stood there, feeling space and the eternity of time whirl madly around me. A combination of amusement park, virtual reality ride, and immersion in an interactive computer game. Fun, in a different kind of way.

"Whoa!" I surfaced slowly, awed by the strange sensation I'd just had. Where had I been? Good question, though not complete. It had another part, like for instance, who had I been? "Golly, Dad. For a minute there I thought I was someone else. And I felt as if I got zapped somewhere, I'm not sure where, in some other time. It was like totally bizarre, man! We're talking really spooky."

Copyright © 2003 by Carol Crigger