The First Prophet (9 page)

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 happened.” 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.”