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"Especially the people whoweren't there. Do you realize, seven people from my graduating class have
died? Traffic accidents, cancer and fires! What are the chances that three separate women in the same
class would& ?"
Tomas had put the pieces together before Marcy's words petered off. Was it possible Marcy was
numberfour on someone's list? "Madre de Dios," he said.
The rest of the Bridges family looked from him to Marcy, blissfully oblivious to their connecting of
dangerous dots.
"Fires, you say?" prompted Marcy's father after a moment of awkwardness. "That's a bad way to go."
Marcy took a strangled breath, and Tomas found her hand under the tablecloth and squeezed it.
Nobody was going to hurt her.Nobody .
"Liz Carpenter," she said, squaring her shoulders as she returned the squeeze on Tomas's hand. "And
Judith Barstow. And Cassie Adams. Do you remember any of them, Sharona?"
Sharona made a face. "Not really, thank God. Wasn't Cassie a cheerleader?"
"I don't remember," said Marcy. "I wish I did "
"Happy birthday to you," sang a group of voices from across the restaurant, then, and their waitress
approached with a cluster of other staff, carrying a birthday cake, serenading Marcy.
"Oh, Dad," protested Sharona, when Marcy only stared in dismay. "You didn't!"
"It's her birthday," insisted Mrs. Bridges.
"So you put her through hell?" her sister demanded.
Tomas leaned closer to Marcy. "And here I thought we left Hell back in the elevator."
Marcy's smile came out crooked& but at least she made the attempt.
Someday, he thought, she would have to start standing up for herself. But the better he got to know
Marcy, the more he could see it wouldn't be over a birthday cake with her parents.
She was too afraid of hurting other people.
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He just hoped that didn't apply to people who deserved hurting.
Marcy didn't want to say goodbye to her family. She hadn't felt this kind of separation anxiety since
summer camp. But now she had a far better reason to cling to normalcy.
As her parents and Sharona drove away in their wonderfully normal minivan, they unknowingly left
Marcy to a world of demons, curses, possible fiery deaths& and definitely fiery maintenance men.
Managers, she corrected herself, still having trouble readjusting to that particular bit of reality.
"Let me guess," said Tomas beside her as the van rounded a corner and vanished. "Your yearbooks are
in the closet, right?"
"They're in the living-room bookshelf," she corrected him. "But going anywhere near that apartment is
too dangerous now. We should& just& "
There was no reason to finish her suggestion, since Tomas had paused by his own door and opened it,
but was now stalking toward the stairs. "You stay down here. Don't open any doors on your own."
"Wait!" she called.
"No," he called back, vanishing up the first flight.
She stared after him, annoyed and impressed and envious. What would it feel like to have an impulse
and justfollow it, right then, and damn the consequences? No comparison of pros and cons. No deep
worries about worst-case scenarios. Just pure, fearless action.
What could it possibly feel like?
"I hope," she murmured to herself, "that it doesn't feel like eternal damnation."
Then, hesitating a moment longer, she turned and went into his apartment, wondering only briefly how
he'd deduced that the demon seemed only able to get at them from doorways.
She would try to hunt down her magical stalker first. Then she would worry about Tomas Martinez's
fount of occult knowledge.
By the time he brought in the yearbooks, blessedly whole if a tad sooty, Marcy was on his computer,
perusing the Web site one of her classmates had created for the reunion. They'd already posted quite a
few digital pictures.
"I got them," announced Tomas, dropping the books on his coffee table.
Marcy said, "Good for you," without looking up. She was busy scrolling past pictures, after all. She
didn't want to miss a clue.
"No, really." Sarcasm gave Tomas a thick accent. "It was my pleasure."
She clicked ahead to yet another picture, using the computer's mouse. "I get that."
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