“you’re kidding.”
“I don’t kid. Josh, yes. Tease, now and then. Never kid.” She nook a sip of her wine and licked her lips. “Cause for celebration, don’t you think? Who would have thought you would end up writing speeches for the Wizard of Oz?”
Ross shook his head. “Who, would have thought 1 would have ended up living with Glinda the Good?”
Stef arched her eyebrows in mock horror. °Glinda the Good? Wasn’t she a witch?” “A good witch. That’s why she was called Glinda the Good.”
Stef gave him a considering look. “John, I love you deeply, madly, truly. But don’t call me Glinda the Good. Don’t call me anything that smacks of the Wizard of Oz or the Emerald City or Munchkins or Dorothy or the yellow brick road. I get quite enough of that at work. Our life is separate and distinct from all this Wiz business.”
He leaned back, looking hurt. “But it’s the date of my hiring. Isn’t the analogy appropriate under those circumstances?”
The waiter returned with their salads, and they began to ear. The sounds of the main dining room seemed distant and disconnected from their little haven. Ross thought about all the years he had dreaded night’s coming and sleep, plagued by the knowledge that when he slept he was condemned to dream of the future he must prevent and of the horror he must live if he failed. Once, he had thought he would never escape that life, and that even if he did, its memories would haunt hire forever. Stefanie had saved him from that, helped him find his way free of the labyrinth of his past, and brought him back into the light of possibility and hope.
“Have you finished your polish of the Wiz’s speech?” she asked. “Hmmm, good salad. I like the bits of walnuts and blue cheese.”
“It’s all done.” he replied with a sigh. Another masterpiece. Simon will be quoted for weeks afterward.” He grinned. “I Shall live vicariously through him, his words my own.”
“Yes, well, I don’t know how much of this vicarious-living business you want to indulge in.” she mused, lifting her wineglass and studying it speculatively. “He seemed pretty on edge after Andrew Wren’s visit.”
Ross looked up from his salad. “Really? What was that all about anyway, did you ever find out?”
She shook her head. “But it’s never good news for a public figure when an investigative reporter cones calling,”
“No, I suppose not.”
“Jenny told me Simon asked for the books cataloguing donations and expenditures to be brought up for Wren to loots at. What does that suggest to you?”
“Financial impropriety.” Ross shrugged. “Wren will hunt a long time before he’ll find evidence of that. Simon’s a fanatic about keeping clean books. He can account for every penny received or spent.”
He went back to eating his salad. Stef continued to study her wineglass, finally taking a sip from it. “I just don’t like the way Simon is behaving,” she said finally. “He isn’t himself lately. Something is bothering him.”
Ross finished chewing, kept his eyes lowered, then forced himself to look up at her and smile. “Something is bothering almost everyone, Stef. The thing to remember is, mostly we have to work these things out by ourselves.”
John Ross dreams. It is the same dream, the only dream he has anymore that he can remember upon waking. It is a dream of the future he was sworn to prevent as a Knight of the Word, and each time it reoccurs it is a little darker than it was before.
This time is no exception.
He stands on a hillside south of Seattle, watching as the city burns. Hordes of once-men and demons pour through gaps in the shattered defenses and drive the defenders steadily back toward the water that hems them in on all sides but his Feeders cavort through the carnage and drink in the terror and frenzy and rage of the dying and wounded. It is a nightmarish scene, the whole of the scorched and burning landscape awash in rain and mist, darkened by clouds and gloom, wrapped in a madness that finds voice in the screams and cries of the humans it consumes.