The Prophet by Amanda Stevens Page A

now lay in chaos.
    As I hurried along the shadowy street, something very strange happened to me. The night grew darker and colder, but I somehow knew it wasn’t real. None of it was real. Not the nightingale, not the ghosts, not even my ill-advised trip to Devlin’s house. I was home safe and sound in my bed, dreaming. How else to explain the sudden lethargy that gripped me? The shortness of breath and heaviness of limb that afflicted me in nightmares? How else to explain why the street before me now seemed endless, a frigid tunnel that cut through nothing but blackness?
    Fear exploded in my chest, and my footsteps slowed, dragged. I could feel eyes all around me, staring and staring as arms reached out to grab me.
    The sensation lasted for only a heartbeat. Then the arms morphed back into tree branches and the eyes vanished. I let out a slow breath. What had happened? I wondered. Had I just been warned?
    Shivering, I continued down the street. There was a bite in the air that I hadn’t noticed before, but the chill had nothing to do with the temperature. The first two weeks of October had been unseasonably warm, almost balmy in the afternoons, and the nights were mild. The icy draft came from beyond. The spirit world was suddenly very close. As close as I’d ever sensed it.
    I cast a wary glance from side to side. I saw nothing in the darkness now, but I knew entities were all around me, floating down the murky walkways and alleys. Hovering within the walled gardens and historic homes. They sensed my energy just as I felt their coldness.
    A gust of wind rattled the dry leaves in the gutter, and I could see the distant flicker of lightning over the treetops. Devlin’s house was just ahead, a lovely old Queen Anne that he’d bought for Mariama. My steps faltered, and once again I felt spellbound. It was in that house that I’d finally succumbed to my feelings for Devlin. It was in that house that the door to the Others had been opened.
    I told myself to turn back before it was too late, but I couldn’t. Not yet. I was already flashing back to my night with Devlin, to the way he had held me so tightly, kissed me so deeply, and to the way that I’d kissed him. As if I could never get enough of him. I remembered so vividly the primitive rhythm of the African music playing in his bedroom, the heat of his skin as I placed my hand over his heart…sliding my lips downward, downward…and then a glance over my shoulder into a mirror where I’d seen Mariama’s eyes staring back at me.
    I forced the disturbing image from my head as I crossed the street. Thunder rumbled out in the harbor, and I could feel moisture in the air, the bristle of static electricity along my scalp. Clearly, a storm was headed this way. The signs couldn’t have been more portentous.
    But still I didn’t turn back.
    Whether I would have had the nerve to climb the veranda steps and ring the bell, I would never know. As I hovered on the walkway, hair rippling in that eerie draft, the door opened and I heard voices in the foyer.
    I reacted purely on instinct, and, for the second time in as many nights, I ducked for cover in the bushes.

Chapter Nine
    “S torm’s coming,” I heard Devlin say as I huddled in the bushes like the stalker I’d become.
    “Seems fitting,” another man replied. “Bad weather, bad juju.”
    “If you believe in that sort of thing.”
    “Of course. How could I forget? Nothing exists beyond the five senses, right, John?”
    “I’ve learned to trust my instincts. Does that count?”
    As always, the sound of Devlin’s voice had a profound effect on me. My response was to shrink even deeper into the shadows beside the porch. But I couldn’t resist peeking through the turning leaves to catch a glimpse of him.
    Until last evening, I hadn’t laid eyes on him since our final parting in Chedathy Cemetery months ago. I’d avoided his phone calls and email because I’d known the only way to get over him was to cut him