Dust to Dust Read Free Page A

corner showed a fiercely blowing wind, sweeping away the cloud cover.
    She hadn’t even known that the wind could actually be drawn. Not without showing something blowing in it. But what she had put on the paper was the wind. And like the fire and the waterfall, it seemed to have life, to be real and almost tangible.
    The bottom left corner showed an earthquake, and it was amazingly realistic. It wasn’t a sketch of buildings toppling or a bridge crumbling. It simply showed the ground, but the ground split asunder. Once again, it was almost as if it were happening as she looked at the napkin. Something violent and almost mobile seemed to be captured on the fragile paper.
    She set the pen down.
    â€œI didn’t know you could draw like that,” Maggie marveled.
    Melanie clenched her hands in her lap. “Neither did I,” she admitted.
    Maggie looked at her as if she had just grown a third eye in the middle of her forehead. “Wow,” she said.
    Melanie waved a hand in the air and forced what sounded like an easy laugh. “I don’t think it’s such a big deal. They say that we only use about a tenth of our mental capacity at any time. We were talking, and I guess I was distracted, so part of my subconscious mind kicked in or some such thing. Who knows? Anyway, I’m sure I couldn’t do it again if I tried.”
    And she meant that. She couldn’t usually so much as draw a stick figure.
    She grabbed the beer in front of her and took a long swallow. She realized that she was barely keeping her cool, and that, too, was strange. She had learned longago how to hide her thoughts and emotions, to play it easy in any given situation.
    After all, she’d been around. Los Angeles wasn’t actually home for her. She’d spent a lot of time touring Europe, hung out in New York City for a while and lived for many years in New Orleans, which was really home for her. It was where she had found a sense of herself, and where she had made so many good friends. They called themselves the Alliance—and even far apart, they remained close, always ready to help one another out. Maggie was one of those friends, and she couldn’t believe she felt uneasy in front of Maggie, who knew everything there was to know about her. But she did feel ill at ease, and all because she could suddenly draw.
    Maggie sat back, arched a brow and took a long sip of her own beer. “I would have thought, if you were magically going to become a great artist, you—being you—would have drawn Lassie.”
    â€œVery funny,” Melanie said.
    â€œWell, you are a fabulous dog trainer.”
    â€œBecause I know animals respond to positive reinforcement,” Melanie said.
    â€œSo do people,” Maggie said, and set a hand on Melanie’s. “Seriously…those are great. Don’t look so worried.”
    â€œBut it’s so…strange that I, of all people, could draw something so good,” Melanie said.
    â€œI agree,” Maggie told her, and that was when Melanie realized her friend was as weirded-out as she was by the whole thing.
    They both had their day jobs, but it sometimesseemed that the Alliance, which operated totally beneath the regular radar of humanity, was the most defining force in their lives, one that made them react to even seemingly innocuous events with immediate suspicion. They dealt with the curious, from the slightly uncommon to the absolutely bizarre, which made sense, most of the members being rather unusual themselves. Their titular head, Lucien DeVeau, lived in New Orleans, where it seemed they most often gathered, since New Orleans seemed to attract the peculiar and mysterious. Then again, Melanie reflected, Los Angeles, where she was now living, could be most unusual itself. Back home, most of her friends were in relationships—married, for the most part. Lucien had a wife he adored, Jade, who of course was part of the Alliance, too. For