Ping stood up. "Is this something you are doing?"

"No, I'm pretty sure this is not me." She shook her head. "Look, it's changing."

The sand coalesced, became denser. Chains of granules linked and rippled across the floor. They whipped together, merged into ropes of flagellating grit, grew into waving blankets of neon pumice. Yellow-green tides licked into the air, crested and spewed a sandy spray toward the center of the warehouse.

"Mara, it's converging on us," Ping said. He felt something on his feet. Looking down, yellow-green sand slid over his shoes, but it continued to shift past him. "Actually it's converging on you."

Mara turned in a circle. She could see only two feet of cement around her, the rest of the floor writhed with neon grit, and it was getting deeper, piling up around her. She kicked at the growing mound, sending a spray of grain into the air. It continued to build up, reaching waist high.

"What do I do?" she yelled over the dune piling up around her.

Looking down, she saw the granules flowing over her shoes. They weren't encircling her, they were burying her. She pushed out with both arms and thrust her right knee into the growing wall, causing it to collapse. She scampered through the gap.

The sands shifted, followed her. Now moving in vertical waves, they built up to a crest and leaped at her, spraying her with stinging grit. Each wave reached higher than the last. The sand over her feet shifted in the opposite direction. Mara lurched backward, waving her arms to maintain balance, falling into a seething mound b.u.t.t first.

"What is it?" she yelled over her shoulder.

"I have no idea," Ping said.

A loud slam came from the back of the warehouse. "It's something created by the pretender," Sam yelled from the dock entrance. "It's not real."

"Really? Tell that to the sand," Mara said, swiping wiggling granules from her palms.

On the far side of the warehouse, a wave rippled across the floor, growing taller and wider as it raced toward Mara. It grew to more than eight feet as it approached. Cresting at her feet, it dumped a wall of yellow-green grit over her. She raised her hands. The wave froze into a smear of pixels suspended above her. The sand behind the wave sloughed backward. She slapped at the pixels, and they exploded in a shower of tiny yellow cubes that quickly faded away.

The sand around her receded, oozed away from her. She jumped up and turned.

"Watch out!" Sam yelled, pointing to a burgeoning mound to her left as he ran toward her.

The yellow-green granules gathered into a mountain four times Mara's height, reaching halfway to the rafters of the warehouse. The floor vibrated, and the air resonated with the dry drone of grit shifting over grit. Mara raised her hands, and the yellow peak blurred into a large splotch of pixels suspended in the air. They exploded into a spray of yellow cubes as a large sandy tentacle pierced them, knocked them out of its path and thrashed down toward the floor between Mara and Sam. It swung toward Mara, undulating in the air, slithering toward her face. It grew thicker as it moved toward her. Bulbous swells of sand ran along its length as if it had swallowed boulders increasing its girth as it inched toward her.

"Mara!" Ping yelled and ran toward her. He pushed her out of the way as a second smaller tentacle rose up from the floor and swung toward her leg. She stumbled down to the concrete. The smaller tentacle whipped back at Ping, wrapping around his leg, encircling his torso and neck. It constricted, and Ping exploded into a cloud of dust. The coils of sand stood still in the air for a second, then melted away into the shifting sea that covered the floor.

The larger tentacle, now as thick as a tree trunk, dived for the floor and slithered by bending itself into ma.s.sive coils and pushing toward Mara. She tried to scoot away, but the shifting sands below her hands and feet made it impossible to get any traction. The tip of the tentacle, broadened and flattened into a diamond shape, twisted back and forth. It split into two hinged halves, a mouth that exhaled a dry hiss and flicked a sandy tongue at the soles of her feet. Two gritty blisters swelled from the top of the yellow-green serpent's head and opened, its eyes fixed on Mara.

Sam jumped onto its back several feet away from the rolling head. It reared up into the air, carrying him more than twenty feet off the ground. "Blow it up! Do something!" he yelled. The creature arched and undulated, tossing Sam up and down in the air. He bent forward hugging the gritty serpent with both arms and legs.

Mara jumped to her feet and raised her hands before her. The middle of the serpent, the portion under Sam's arms and legs, blurred and stopped moving fifteen feet in the air. The front portion of the serpent dropped to the ground and wrapped itself into a coil.

"Hey! Get me down from here," Sam shouted. He was suspended in the air, hugging a splotch of yellow-green pixels the size of a large car. Several translucent cubes tumbled away from the ma.s.s as he moved.

"Try not to move too much," Mara said. "You don't want to cause them to fall apart before we can get you down."

Sam's eyes widened. "Mara!" He pointed to the coiled serpent.

She turned. All of the sand had gathered itself into the serpent's coil. Its head hovered above, slowly arching left then right. It jutted and hissed as it rose up higher. It paused for a second, reared back and then flung itself into the air. As it reached its apex and the last of the sand had left the ground, the creature opened its jaws and dived down on top of Mara, swallowing her in an avalanche of neon yellow-green grit.

"Mara!" Sam pounded his fists and legs against the pixels. They crumbled away, and he fell onto the mountain of sand below.

A once-again-reconfigured Ping ran around the far edge of the pile. "Sam! Where is Mara?"

"She's buried in here." Sam bent over and began digging. As he tossed handfuls of sand away, it skittered back to the pile. "Come on, help me."

As Ping stepped up to the pile, a rumble shook the floor, and the mound seemed to bulge upward as if something expanded beneath. It rose higher and ballooned into a grainy sphere that shook, contracted and then exploded, throwing sheets of grit throughout the warehouse. Several fluorescent tubes in the light fixtures above exploded, sending sparks floating down to the floor. Only Mara remained where the pile had been. Heaving through gritted teeth, she stood upright, stretched out her arms to her sides and circled. Once.

Sam tugged on Ping's arm and said, "Uh-oh, I've seen that look before. You better find something to hold onto."

A tempest howled along the periphery of the warehouse, enveloping them, gaining speed and strength with each rotation. Ping and Sam ran to a support pole a few feet away, leaning into the gale, covering their eyes against flying sand. They wrapped their arms and legs around the pole, bracing against the windstorm.

Metallic clanging and shattering gla.s.s reverberated throughout the warehouse. The whiteboard flew past them and disappeared into the yellow-green swirl of airborne sand whipped up around them.

The neon cyclone tightened and intensified. Its circ.u.mference pa.s.sed over them, peppering them with more stinging grit. It spun to the center of the warehouse, growing darker and more defined, then elevated above the floor several feet. Spinning even faster, it condensed, grew smaller and inverted, into an upside-down funnel that lost none of its power. Ping and Sam strained against its pull.

Mara stood effortlessly in the maelstrom, her hair and clothing pulled toward the now-glowing vortex. She raised her hands into the air. Lightning arced from her palms, striking the spinning sand, freezing it in place. The stilled funnel stood red and gla.s.sy, shining like an abstract sculpture.

The wind was gone.

"She vitrified the sand. She turned it into gla.s.s," Ping said. He let go of the pole.

Mara glared at the funnel, and it shattered. A shower of gla.s.s rained down from the ceiling. As the shards touched the ground, they faded into nothing.

CHAPTER 52.

AS PING AND Sam walked up to her, Mara bent forward and placed her hands on her knees. Ping reached out to touch her shoulder, but his hand pa.s.sed through her. She flickered several times, disappearing twice. He reached out a second time and touched her arm. "Are you okay?" he asked.

"That takes a lot out of me," she said, straightening and waving her hair out of her face. "I guess I need to start carrying a brush." c.o.c.king her head, she dug grit out of her ear with a pinkie. Using the other hand, she untwisted her shirt so her collar opened in the front. A finger snagged on a rip in the garment. She bent forward again to examine herself. Both knees poked through rips in her jeans and the top right pocket flapped loosely below her hip, the white lining exposed.

Sam crouched beside her and said, "Looks like you dropped this." He picked up the Chronicle, hefted the copper medallion as he handed it to her.

She shoved it into her left pocket. "I didn't drop it. That pile of sand, or whatever it was, tore it out of my pocket. It was after the Chronicle." She looked to Ping.

He nodded. "It appears so. Are you hurt?"

"A little bruised and sore. I have sand in places where it doesn't belong." She shook her leg and winced.

Sam laughed and said, "b.u.t.t crack. That's the worst."

"We can do without the details." Ping smiled. "We need to figure out our next steps."

"I have no doubt it was after the Chronicle. When I was covered, it didn't try to smother or strangle me. It went directly for my pocket and pried it out."

"You definitely need to keep it with you from now on. There is no other way we can protect it," Ping said.

"I refuse to spend the rest of my life fighting off nightmares from this pretender. We need to find out who it is. How do we flush him out? Fighting these creations isn't going to resolve the problem, is it?"

"No. We may be forced to go through the pa.s.senger list. It'll be time-consuming to narrow it down, but it is the only way to identify the pretender. Perhaps we will get lucky."

"I downloaded the list onto my laptop. I can start reviewing it tonight. We can eliminate a few names, like the Gambles and Mr. Sandoval. What do we do then? Just start calling or visiting? Won't that tip him off?"

"Let's take the night to think about it and get some rest. Rushing blindly into this could be dangerous. Remember, we are at a major disadvantage. He knows who we are. That brings up two nagging questions. First, how did he find out you have the Chronicle? Second, how does he know you are a progenitor? Remember, the electricity guy at the shop knew both. The pretender has to know both."

"I can't see how anyone other than us knows," Mara said.

"My mom knows," Sam said. He had retrieved the whiteboard and rolled it toward them. "She knows you have the Chronicle, and she knows you've activated it."

"But she's over there, and we are over here. She couldn't be doing all of this from a different realm could she?" Mara turned her head back and forth from Sam to Ping and back to Sam, not caring who responded.

Ping shrugged. "I wouldn't think so, but I would not have thought she could communicate through the Chronicle either. She's obviously developed some abilities beyond those of a typical pretender."

"Don't underestimate her. She has performed dozens of extraction rites, stealing metaphysical abilities from other people for years. She's not a progenitor, but she has gathered enormous power. A lot of people follow her, have faith in her abilities," Sam said.

"So you think she did this? She sent the sand and the electricity guy and the slug man?"

"I don't think she could conjure something so complex across realms, especially when the Chronicle is not active. There's no connection for her to do it," said Sam.

"I agree," Ping said. "Without the Chronicle, it would be unlikely she would know which realm on which to focus. With all the possibilities, it simply would not be practical for her to locate us without its guidance."

"So what are you saying? Is she involved or not?" Mara asked.

"I don't know. Maybe I'm just being paranoid." Sam rubbed his face, leaned back and looked up at the ceiling. "If you knew her the way I do, you'd be paranoid too."

Ping, Sam and Mara walked out of the warehouse into the early evening darkness and a downpour. Mara and Sam waited under the loading dock overhang as Ping locked up. They stared into the mist-filtered lights on the narrow street.

"You up for dinner?" Ping asked Mara.

"I think a quiet evening at home would be best for me. It's been a long day." She hugged herself, shivered.

"Completely understandable," Ping said, turning to Sam. "You ready to make a run for it?" He pointed his key ring at the Camry. It squawked, and the interior lights came on. "Good evening." He nodded to Mara and jogged for the car, Sam immediately behind him.

As Mara pointed her own key fob at the Subaru Outback, she noticed the top of someone's head peeking over the hood of her car. Whoever it was stood still in the downpour half a block away under a streetlight. Mara rose up on her toes to get a better look.

A little blonde girl stared back, just standing there in the rain.

Ping drove away as Mara descended the loading dock steps and walked to her car. Instead of getting in, Mara flipped up her jacket hood and turned toward the girl. She appeared to be about five years old. Mara looked up and down the street for the child's parents, but Mara saw no one. She jogged over to see if the girl was okay.

When Mara approached, the young girl raised her hand, palm upward, as if lifting something. Mara felt a tug at the left pocket of her jeans, followed by a more insistent yank. It threw her off stride. Almost stumbling, she stopped.

Mara pressed her left hand over her pocket through the material of her outer jacket. The Chronicle wiggled, trying to wedge itself free. She slipped a thumb over the medallion's edge trying to block it from escaping. Thanks to her tenuous hold and the slickness of her jacket, it popped out of the pocket. It slid up the inside of her coat.

A set of headlights flashed across Mara's face, blinding her. She felt the Chronicle slide up her midsection and across her chest.

"Mara? Are you okay?" It was Sam. "Why are you standing in the rain?"

Mara twisted her upper body and grabbed at her chest, trying to wrest the medallion as it moved to the opening at her neckline. Drawn by her gyrations, Sam jumped from the car and ran to her. The Chronicle popped out and hovered in the air between them. Sam gaped at the floating medallion and asked, "Are you doing that? Make it stop."

"It's not me. I think someone is trying to take it," Mara said.

Drops of water and blue light bounced off the disk as it floated through the rain toward the little girl.

"Mara, make the Chronicle stop. Freeze it. Do something," Sam said.

"I tried. I think I'm out of juice or something."

Sam turned and ran after the floating medallion.

As it approached, the little girl held her tongue between her teeth, tiptoed up to it and plucked it out of the air. She hugged it to her chest and smiled. She turned toward a dark alley behind the streetlight, about to run away when Sam yelled, "Stop, you don't want to leave."

The girl paused midstride. She turned around, again hugging the Chronicle to her chest, on the verge of tears. Sam and Mara ran up to her, stopped short when they saw she was upset.

"What is your name?" Mara asked, fighting the urge to grab the Chronicle.

The girl stared open-eyed without responding.

"Tell her your name," Sam prompted.

"Missy. My name is Missy."

"What-"

An arm reached out of the darkness, wrapped itself around the girl and pulled her back into the alley.

Mara and Sam followed. After several steps, they slowed, realizing the alley was empty, silent except for the splashing of rain on asphalt. No shadows darted, no footfalls echoed. No one ran ahead of them.

It was as if the girl and whoever had grabbed her had escaped through an unseen door.

CHAPTER 53.

MARA PRINTED THE pa.s.senger list from her laptop on the shop's office printer while she waited for Ping to pick her up. Identifying Melissa Harrington, who had been on Flight 559 with her mother Kathy, had taken less than two minutes the previous night. Figuring out how Missy had disappeared so quickly and who had used her to steal the Chronicle would be more challenging. Mara's first guess was the mother, since both were pa.s.sengers on the flight. On the other hand, she was certain the arm that had come out of the alley to grab the girl had been a man's.

Clearly the girl could levitate objects, but Sam didn't think Missy was the pretender. He theorized it was the man behind the girl, using his ability to alter perception to avoid detection. Apparently hiding behind an invisible wall is a cla.s.sic pretender trick.

Mara had been skeptical; although, after all that had gone on, she wondered how she doubted anything anymore. She still challenged Sam's hypothesis.

"So you are saying the man was standing there the whole time, and we could not see him? Why didn't he just build an invisible wall and take the thing away from me himself?" she had asked.