The stranger’s smile vanished. Her stare turned cold and brutal.
“Be careful how you speak to me, cow. We spare you and your husband as a courtesy. Perhaps we should slay you both and rear the little ones ourselves.”
“NO!” Amanda screamed.
The white-haired man sighed patiently at his companion. “Sehmeer . . .”
“Nu’a purtua shi’i kien Esis,” said the other man, without turning around.
The madwoman pursed her lips in a childish pout, then narrowed her eyes at Melanie.
“My wealth and heart oppose the idea. Pity. Your flawed little gems would thrive in our care.” She tossed Amanda another crooked smile. “We’d make them shine.”
The Givens moved in tight-knuckled silence for the rest of their journey—past the turnpike, over the guardrail, and up a steep embankment.
The tall ones stopped at the peak and surveyed the falling truck in the distance. The fuel tank had just touched the concrete and was starting to come apart.
“Brace yourself,” said the white-haired man, for all the good it did.
In the span of a gasp, the bubble of time vanished and a thunderous explosion rattled the Givens. Robert covered Hannah as a fireball rose sixty feet above the overpass. A searing blast of heat drove Melanie and Amanda screaming to the ground.
The strangers studied the swirling pillar of smoke with casual interest, as if it were art. Soon the madwoman swept her slender arm in a loop, summoning an eight-foot disc of fluorescent white light.
The family glanced up from the grass, eyeing the anomaly through cracked red stares. The circle hovered above the ground, as thin as a blanket and as round as a coin. Despite its perfect verticality, the surface shimmied like pond water.
Before any Given could form a thought, the quiet man in the windbreaker pulled down the lip of his baseball cap and brushed past the family with self-conscious haste. He plunged into the portal, the radiant white liquid rippling all around him. Robert watched his exit with mad rejection. It was the stuff of cartoons, a Roger Rabbit hole in the middle of nothing.
The dark-eyed woman gave Amanda a sly wink, then followed her companion into the breach. The surface swallowed her like thick white paint.
Alone among his rescuees, the white-haired man took a final glance at the Givens. Melanie saw his sharp blue eyes linger on Hannah.
“Just go,” the mother implored him. “Please. We won’t tell anyone.”
The stranger squinted in cool umbrage, clearly displeased to be treated like a common mugger.
“Tell whoever you want.”
Robert stammered chaotically, his throat clogged with a hundred burning questions. He thought of his minivan, which no doubt stood a charred and empty husk on the road. Suddenly the father who’d cursed the gods for his horrible fortune knew exactly what to ask.
“Why us?”
The stranger stopped at the portal. Robert threw a quick, nervous look at Amanda and Hannah.
“Why them?”
The white-haired man turned around now, his face an inscrutable wall of ice.
“Your daughters may one day learn. You will not. Accept that and embrace the rest of your time.”
He stepped through the gateway, vanishing in liquid. Soon the circle shrank to a dime-size dot and then blinked out of existence.
One by one, the survivors on the freeway emerged from their vehicles—the injured and the lucky, the screaming and the stunned. In the smoky bedlam, no one noticed the family of mourners on the distant embankment.
The Givens huddled together on the grass, their brown and green gazes held firmly away from the turnpike. Only Hannah had the strength to stand. She was five years old and still new to the universe. She had no idea how many of its laws had been broken in front of her. All she knew was that today was a strange and ugly day and her sister was wrong.
Hannah moved behind her weeping mother and threw her arms around her shoulders. She took a deep breath. And she sang.
ONE
On a Friday night in dry July, in the Gaslamp Quarter of downtown San Diego, the Indian-dancers-who-weren’t-quite-Indian twirled across the stage of the ninety-nine-seat playhouse. Five lily-white women in yellow sarees flowed arcs of georgette as they spun in measure to the musical intro. The orchestra, which had finished its job on Monday and was now represented by a six-ounce iPod, served a curious fusion of bouncy trumpets and sensual shehnais—Broadway bombast with a Bombay contrast. The music director was an insurance adjuster by day. He’d dreamed up his euphonious Frankenstein three years ago, and tonight, by the grace of God and regional theater, it was alive.
The curtain parted and a new performer prowled her way onto the stage. She was a raven-haired temptress in a fiery red lehenga. Her curvy figure—ably flaunted by a low-cut, belly-baring choli—brought half the jaded audience to full attention.