He stepped into the hall and disappeared from sight. She hurried out into the hall, only to find he was nowhere to be seen. “Trevor?” she called out, running down the stairs. She banged into the wall at the base of the landing as she turned the corner. But he wasn’t on the second flight of stairs, either. “Trevor?” she called again, running down those steps as well. He wasn’t in the living room. She ran to the kitchen. Empty. The dining room. Empty. The den. Nothing.
Jane ran back through the house and threw the front door open. She ran out to the front sidewalk and looked up and down in both directions, but the town truly was a ghost town. No sign of life. No sign anyone had ever been there. She raced to Trevor’s house and came up short as she approached the front door. It was boarded up completely and looked as though it hadn’t been entered in a dozen years. She backed out to the street, right out to the middle and only then noticed the huge potholes and chunks of old blacktop that were jutting up everywhere.
“I don’t understand,” she said, eyes filling with tears. “It can’t have been real, goddammit! Characters from a book don’t just come to life!” She turned in a circle, and then put her head in her hands as she sank to her knees in the middle of the street, in the town where she’d grown up. The town which had still been a town when she arrived. The town that was now deserted. She was alone here in the middle of nowhere. She’d discovered herself, discovered her past, only to lose everything she thought she’d found.
A few drops of rain fell and she looked up at the gray sky, arms wrapped around her torso. “They can’t come to life,” she cried as the rain began falling harder. Ibrahim’s daughter…she didn’t even know him. He wasn’t a character in her book. And what of Vasan, of her memories of him? Of what he’d done to her, of the kiss they’d shared in the church? Surely she hadn’t imagined that as well. And yet, perhaps it had all been part of the trickery of Trevor and his friends.
The fact that she couldn’t think of a good reason for them to play such a trick seemed unimportant, for it was the only explanation that even remotely made sense. The rain fell harder. She was already soaked, water dripping from her hair and nose. It was her imagination. It had always been vivid. She’d always retreated into it as a girl, a form of escapism. That had to be the explanation now. Had her life once again become so unbearable that now, as an adult, she was seeing the very things she had so long ago?
But her life wasn’t bad. She was successful, she’d just completed her third book, they were making them into movies…everything was going her way for the first time in her life. But Jane had to acknowledge that even so, she felt so empty in a way she couldn’t explain. That’s when Trevor came unbidden to her mind. How he’d looked when they were making love; how beautiful he was, how perfect. How he smelled, how he felt, how he tasted. She cursed herself. For she’d begun falling in love. And then to find out he’d been in on this thing from the beginning…how could he?
A crack of thunder brought her back to the moment and she shivered in the early morning chill, only just realizing that it was early morning. What day? What time? She didn’t know for sure. But she did know that she was cold. Her car was sitting next to the curb. She wondered about her clothes, were they still in Trevor’s house? Or the house Trevor had pretended was his? On impulse, she went and opened the trunk, only to find her packed suitcase and purse were sitting there. She closed it, frowning, and rushed into the driver’s seat, slamming the door shut behind her.
She sat there for a few moments, listening to the rain drumming on the car. Watching as it splashed onto the windshield, as small rivers ran from the top of the glass down and down, joining with other rivers in some places, disappearing on and around the wipers. Hands on the steering wheel, she let her forehead rest on them. And let the tears fall. Fall as her world was falling apart. A ghost town. No one left here. No one but someone she’d grown up with and honestly couldn’t swear for certain was the same person.
And what of the liquid doors? Special effects. Hollywood technology was amazing nowadays, they could do anything. It had to be special effects. The expense they must have gone to made no sense to her. What could they have wanted?
“What could you possibly gain from this charade?”
“Life?”
What had he meant by that? If he really were Trevor, maybe he’d just been trying to make her go crazy…but the big question of why remained. She couldn’t answer it. And if he had been Vincent? She shook her head. He wasn’t. He wasn’t! She leaned back, wiping her eyes on her shirt sleeve, and started the car. She looked back up at the abandoned homes one last time. Throwing the car into gear, her eyes returned to the road in front of her and her foot hit the gas. She was leaving Darvon, Iowa for the second time in her life. Only this time she was leaving a lot more behind than a town.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“My God, Jane, where the hell have you been? I’ve been calling your cell for two days, I was about to hop on a plane!”
“Sorry, Lor, I just…” Jane took a deep breath as she leaned back in her bed. “I just needed some time.”
“Is everything okay?”
“Yeah,” she lied. “Anyway, I’m home now. How’ve you been?”
“Worried about you, numbskull.”
Jane laughed. “Thanks, Mom.” But even as she said the word, her breath caught in her throat. Mom. Mother. Her mother. The painting in the Tanner home. It took a moment for her to hear her best friend’s voice on the other end.
“…me again I’ll have you hanged. You hear me, Janie?”
“Yeah, I hear you. Listen, I have to get out and get some groceries, all I’ve got is mac-a-moldy and cheese.”
Lori laughed. “Well, I see your sense of humor’s still around. Now listen, I’ll give you a day to recoup and then we’re getting together to go over Thunder and Lightning. You got it?”
“Yeah, I got it. Thanks, Lor. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
“Where’ve I heard that before?”
“Shut up,” she grinned. “Good-bye.”
“Bye.”
Jane rolled to her side, facing the large window on the wall nearest her bed, and sighed. There was so much she couldn’t explain about what had happened. How had the town seemed alive and then not? Where had that painting of Ibrahim, her mother and her come from? Her mother couldn’t have been holding her when she was that old anyway, she’d died when she was only four days old. The thought took hold of her mind and she sat up slowly. Her mother had died when she was four days old.
Hadn’t she?
“Wondering about what you saw over there, aren’t you?”
The voice startled her and she shrieked, whirling around on the bed so she was on all fours facing the door. “No,” she said, once she saw who it was. “You’re no more real than they were.”
“Oh, I’m not?” he asked, moving closer to the bed. “Come now, you’ve kissed me. Surely you don’t think that was a product of your imagination.”
“It has to have been. In fact, you’re not even here right now. Or if you are, you’re an…wait a minute. Wait just one damn minute!” She scrambled off the bed and came to stand right in front of him. “You look so much like Ibrahim,” she breathed. His expression changed immediately, features growing hard. “Except he’s not bald, but still…you could be brothers!”
“Of course we look alike,” he ground out through his teeth. “Our mothers were twins.”
“They…what?”
“Twins!” he barked, seeming to look right through her. “What did he tell you, exactly?”
“Only that you were his cousin. It didn’t occur to me how much you looked alike until now.”
“He told you more.”
“No. But John Tanner did.” Jane blinked and shook her head slightly. “Wait a minute, why am I even having this conversation?” Exasperated, she turned to head back to her bed, but hands stopped her.
“What must I do to convince you I am not from your imagination?”
&nbs
p; “For starters, you can tell me why. Why are you and everyone else playing this trick on me?”
“It is not a trick.”
“Oh, no? Then how did you know I was ‘over there,’ as you put it? You could only have known that if you were in on it with them.”
“I am in on nothing with them. Nothing other than taking that which they now need so desperately.”
“And that is?”
“You.”
“You’re not making any sense. And I’m one to talk, I’m the one standing here having a conversation with a character from my book.”
She turned back toward the bed, but he grabbed her again, turning her so fast she nearly fell over. And then his lips were on hers, crushing hers as his arms crushed their bodies together. Thought fled as she melted into him, her arms snaking around his neck, pulling him impossibly nearer. But then he moved his head away, eyes locking with hers.
“Could a character from a book do that to you?” he whispered, voice hoarse. His hand moved down between her legs and she moaned as their foreheads met. “Could a character from your book do this to you?” She steadied herself by holding his shoulders as his hand moved inside her shorts and panties, finding her sensitive spot. She bucked against him as his mouth moved to her ear. “Could someone from your imagination make you come?”
Jane gasped before his lips were on hers again. She shuddered against his body over and over, never coming up for air, clinging to his shirt as he toyed with her until she cried out. She felt so weak. He lifted her and carried her to the bed, where he gently laid her before sitting next to her.
“A figment of your imagination couldn’t do that to you, Jane. You know that.”
“But…” She licked her lips, breath still coming far too fast. “It can’t be true. It can’t be.”
“You should have listened to them. Now it’s too late.”
“What…what do you mean?”
Right before her eyes he transformed, his face changing from open and inviting to cold and hard. The smile that appeared was a smile that sent shivers up and down her spine and made the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. She felt fear. Pure, unadulterated fear. She quickly shoved herself up to the head of the bed, drawing her knees up in front of her and holding them tightly. Her eyes grew large as he came to his feet.
“They won’t be able to use you anymore for their purposes,” he said. “And at last, I will have them.”
“Have them? I don’t understand.”
“Of course you do, Jane! After all, you wrote it in Thunder and Lightning, did you not?”
“You mean…I…I wrote that you almost killed them. All of them. And almost got your hands on the secrets of the new aircraft they were building.”
“Precisely. I, however, am going to rewrite the ending of your book.” He snapped his fingers and in the middle of her room there appeared an oval. The oval grew and grew until it was slightly taller than Vasan. He snapped his fingers again and a reddish-gray light began to emanate from the oval. Then the liquid look, just like she’d seen in church basement, and behind the painting at the Tanner Estate. He held out his hand to her. “Come, Kedua-dua Sepupu. It is time we were leaving.”
“No,” she shook her head, moving off the bed and into the far corner of the room. “I’m not going with y—Kedua-what?”
“Kedua-dua Sepupu. It means Second Cousin. And yes, you will come with me. Look how good I made you feel. I can make you feel that good every day, Jane. You will want for nothing. You will rule at my side. Be a princess of the world.”
“This isn’t happening,” Jane cried, squeezing her eyes shut. “This isn’t happening!”
“Oh, it is!” Vasan crowed, running around the bed and grabbing hold of her wrists before she could move. “You’ve been undoing my plans long enough, little girl. It’s time you were stopped.”
“No! Please!” She struggled against him, but he was far too strong.
“If you won’t join me, it would be just as easy for me to kill you.”
She stopped fighting and looked up at him. “But I thought…”
“Of course you did. I planned it that way.” He cupped one of her breasts. “I can make you do anything. I took your virginity, but that was nothing compared to what I’m capable of.”
She began to tremble as tears filled her eyes. Had she been that wrong? Were the Tanners really real? Vasan certainly seemed to be. She was confused. Lost. And faced with someone who suddenly terrified her. “Please let me go. I’ll…I’ll stop writing the books. I promise I will. Please.”
“You would leave the Tanners and your father to their fate?” he asked, genuinely surprised. “Perhaps you have more of my blood than I originally thought.”
“Not likely.”
“I will ask one last time: do you come with me willingly or do you die?”
The Tanners. Ibrahim. They were real. Vincent. Oh, God, Vincent. She had started falling for him and then she’d gone and…she closed her eyes in silent pain as she remembered the tears falling from his eyes. The things she’d said. She’d refused them, refused to believe in them, to help them however it was they needed her. Hadn’t even listened and…her father. How could Ibrahim be her father? If he was, she’d rejected him as much as she had the others. She’d hurt him so terribly, she’d seen it in his eyes.
And now a man of evil stood before her, threatening her very life. And whether she went with him or not, somehow the Tanners…and Ibrahim…would be in danger. What was she going to do? What could she do? Shoulders slumping in defeat, her next words were barely whispered.
“I’ll go with you.” Vasan’s mouth sneered into a smile. “I’ll go.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“No.”
The word was spoken evenly. Without hesitation. Flat and quiet. Jane looked up. In her bedroom doorway stood Vincent Tanner. Vasan looked up, too, and snarled his greeting. He lunged across the room, hands wrapped around Vincent’s neck before Jane could even open her mouth. She watched them struggle. She walked slowly around the end of the bed as the men fell into her living room. She heard something smash. She heard something else crash. Running to the doorway, she was shocked to see Vincent rising to his feet and Vasan running toward her.
He knocked her out of the way. She hit her head on the wall when she went down and winced, hand rising as if to touch the unseen wound. There was a sizzling sound from the vicinity of her bed and then she knew nothing but darkness.
* * *
“Jane, wake up. Jane?”
She moaned, the back of her head pounding rhythm like a bass drum out of time. Slowly her eyes blinked open. The face that filled her vision was more than welcome. Crying out half in fright, half overjoyed, she launched herself at him, throwing her arms around his neck, tears falling unbidden to his blue long-sleeved shirt. He wrapped his arms around her there on the edge of her bed and rocked her slowly to and fro, one hand moving up to stroke her hair.
“Shhhh, it’s okay. It’s okay, I’m here now.”
“Wh-wh-what’s going on?” she sobbed into him, fisted hand beating his shoulder. “Vincent…”
“I never should’ve brought you back,” he whispered into her hair. She backed away and looked into sorrowful eyes. “Dammit, Jane, I never should’ve left you.”
He handed her a tissue and she wiped at her eyes, chest still heaving as she tried to calm down enough to speak. His hands never left her, touching her hair, her cheek, her shoulder, her arm. She finally tossed the tissue in the wastebasket next to the bed and grabbed one of his hands with both her own.
“I think you need to tell me the truth,” she said, her voice low, as she stared at his hand. “Vasan’s definitely real. And you.” She turned his hand over and traced the lines on its palm. “You feel as real as anyone could.” Jane looked up and saw his eyes full of unshed tears. “Vincent, tell me. I think I have a right to know.”
He nodded and rose to his feet, turning and making his way around the end of the
bed toward the door and stopping. For long moments it was silent enough to hear the faint ticking of the living room clock. Then, just as she thought she might go deaf from the roaring of blood in her ears, he spoke.
“Things are different where we live,” he began. “Time doesn’t work the same way it does over here. Thirty of your years ago, something terrible happened on our side.” He turned to look at her, offering a lopsided smile. “I guess maybe I should start at the beginning.”
“I guess maybe you should.”
She watched as he paced a few more times, then perched nervously on the edge of her pale yellow wing-back chair. His hands rubbed together like he was trying to wash something dirty from them as he continued.
“You already know our mother died a long time ago. What you don’t know is that she died when Johnny was only four days old.” A spark of recognition lit Jane’s eyes. “It was hard on Dad. Mom was his soulmate, I guess, that’s what everyone said. Steve was only seven years old. He sort of became our other parent, helped Father raise us.”
“Yes, I know that part of things. Of course, I thought I’d made it all up,” she finished with a nervous laugh.
He nodded and shook his head all at the same time, uttering a short bark of a laugh. “Well, Dad founded Lightning Enterprises after that. He wanted to make a good life for us. We were doing all right before then, him being a successful land broker. But he’d been itching to get out on his own, out from under the ‘the man,’ he used to call it, so he started the company.”
“Why did he name it Lightning? I never did explain that in my books.”
Vincent chuckled. “Because when he was a small boy growing up on an Iowa farm, he was standing out under a tree when a storm came up. Before he even knew it was there, lightning struck the tree and damn near killed him. Grandma always told him he was lucky he didn’t get hit, and I guess over the years Dad turned that into lightning being lucky for him. So that’s what he called the company.”
“Makes sense,” Jane smiled, half-shrugging.
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