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“No. I believe in free will. I think we make our own decisions and carry out our own actions. And our actions have consequences. The world is what we make it. But I think sometimes we can ask God to help us and He will. Sometimes I think He looks down and says, ‘Wow, look what those idiots are up to now: I guess I better help them along a little.’”
“I’ll gladly accept the help,” Sam said.
“Just the same, I wish I had a gun.”
Sam shook his head. “I hurt my stepfather. I hurt Drake. I may have killed Drake. I don’t know. And I don’t know what’s going to happen next. But here’s what I do know: When I hurt someone it makes a mark on me. Like a scar or something. It’s like…” He searched for words, and she wrapped her arms tight around him. “It’s like my knee, where Drake shot me? That’s all healed up, thanks to Lana, like it never happened. But me burning Drake? That’s inside me, in my head, and Lana didn’t heal that.”
“If there’s a fight, others will feel that hurt.”
“You’re not others.”
“No?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because I love you.”
Astrid was silent for so long, Sam thought he must have upset her. Yet she never loosened her hold on him, never pulled away but kept her face buried in his neck. He felt her warm tears on his skin. And at last she said, “I love you, too.”
He sighed with relief. “Well, we got past that.”
But she didn’t join in the nervous laughter. “I have something to tell you, Sam.”
“A secret?”
“I wasn’t sure of it, so I didn’t say anything. It’s hard to separate it from IQ. Intuition is usually just the name we give to heightened but normal perception that takes place below the level of conscious thought.”
“Uh-huh,” he said, using his dumb-guy voice.
“For a long time I wasn’t sure it was anything other than normal intuition.”
“The power,” he said. “I was wondering if you knew. Diana said you were a two bar. I kind of didn’t want to, you know, force you to think about it.”
“I suspected. But it’s weird. I touch a person’s hand and I sometimes see what looks in my mind like a streak of fire across the sky.”
He held her out at arm’s length, the better to see her face. “A streak?”
She shrugged. “Weird, huh? I see it as bright or dim, long or short. I don’t know what it means, I don’t have any control over it and I haven’t really tried exploring it yet. But it feels like I’m seeing some measure of, I don’t know, significance or something? It’s like I’m seeing a person’s soul or maybe their fate, but in highly metaphorical terms.”
“Highly metaphorical,” he echoed. “Your power is the power of metaphor?”
That at last earned him a smile and a shove. “Smart-ass. The point is, I’ve known from the start that you were important in some way. You’re a shooting star across the sky, trailing sparks.”
“Do I shoot right into a brick wall tomorrow?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “But I know you’re the brightest shooting star in the sky.”
Computer Jack woke and felt her soft hand over his mouth. It was dark outside, but the room was bathed in the blue glow of a computer screen. He could see the outline of her face, her dark ha
ir. Her eyes glittered.
“Shh,” she cautioned, and put a finger to her lips.
His heart was already pounding. Something was wrong, no question.
“Get up, Jack.”
