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angrily.
    “Oh, damn it!” yelled the banshee. “Shit!”
    “What?” He could hardly hear himself.
    “A Disturbance Paradigm . Keep holding on to me, Jared!”
    Gravity pulled from several directions. His grip on the banshee’s hand started to give. She swung around and grabbed his wrist with her other hand. They were floating now. Pebbles, rocks, bricks, and stones rained down, some bundling together before falling apart and then rebuilding again. The banshee pivoted, turned him away from the dangerous debris. A cluster of something that looked like a halved portion of a dentist’s office twisted down from nowhere. The banshee threw her arms around Jared and rocked him away, just dodging the office as it fell past.
    The sensation of being sucked through a straw overwhelmed him then and bile rose in his throat with a horrible wave of claustrophobia. A force pushed him and his protector forward into shards of hot white light and in the next moment—
    Jared sat on the curb of Eighth Street, just across from his favorite pho restaurant, which had to be at least five miles from the doctor’s office. He glanced back and saw the dentist’s office, unaffected, people waiting in chairs by a fake plant. Hadn’t that whole building just blown past them, as though weighing nothing? And yet it was here again. Nothing was fragmented or weightless. Everything was grounded and whole again. All of the madness of moving through space had ended like a dream.
    The banshee sighed and held her forehead. “Not what I counted on… damn it. We were supposed to make it to the beach. That Disturbance Paradigm really screwed things up. Oh… this so sucks. So sucks. So sucks.”
    Jared gaped at her a moment. Her agitation faded and she drew back and clapped him on the shoulder, successfully scaring the shit out of him. “Well, enough bitching I guess. We’ll get to the beach still. But that was a good job, Jared. I’m proud! You didn’t let go of my hand.”
    She helped him up and he searched his surroundings, dizzily. “What else would have happened had I let go?”
    She shrugged one shoulder, her metallic purple and brown tresses swaying with the motion. “Reality probably would have bent into a pretzel that ate it itself and then vomited… Best way I can describe it. Anyhow, we have much to discuss and little time to do it.”
    “By all means.” Jared brushed off his pants. “Start where I’m connected in all this.”
    “Great,” she replied. “So you’re ready to talk about your death?”
    Jared absently nodded.
    And then fainted on the sidewalk.
     

 
Chapter 2
     
The Banshee
     
    The banshee studied Jared as he sat there, searching the sidewalk in a daze. How many times had she watched him this way? Lost. Out to sea. Scared of what the future might hold for him. He’d spent most of his life that way, and she’d been there for it all. Still, she could never be inside his head, so there would always be more to learn.
    An old lady driving a brand new Cadillac slowed down and peered suspiciously over her sleeping husband in the passenger seat. The window slid down. The banshee smiled and the woman smiled back, a little embarrassed. “Is he okay?”
    “Tequila shooters for breakfast,” said the banshee.
    The woman shot them both a disapproving glare and pulled the car away. Neither of the older people in the Cadillac were her assignments, but she could still read their lives. They’d both be gone from this world by this time next year. The woman would break her hip next Saturday and die during surgery a month later. The man would give up on life, drink scotch and eat nothing but Del Taco for the year thereafter. In the end, relatives would say he died of a broken heart. And this would technically be the case, due to organ failure.
    Jared blinked up into the sun. Dark blonde hair, hazel eyes, just a slight shade of stubble on his jaw. He was incredibly handsome. She’d always thought so, even as a little boy. His