“There’s one way to find out,” Catty cut in as they reached the first garage sale.
Serena picked up a jeweled necklace with a small drop pearl surrounded by garnets. “Which is?” She held the necklace across her forehead.
“Looks hot.” Jimena admired it.
“Yeah, it’s looks like a headache band like they wore in the twenties.” Vanessa examined it.
“Excuse me,” Catty interrupted. “But I had a terrific idea.”
“What?” Serena pulled a dollar from her pocket to pay the lady holding the sale. She slipped the necklace into her pocket.
“It’s easy.” Catty smiled. “I’ll go back in time and check it out.”
Catty had the freakiest power. She could actually go back and forth in time. She missed a lot of school because she was always twisting time. But her mother didn’t care, because she knew Catty was different. She wasn’t Catty’s biological mother. She’d found Catty walking along the side of the road in the Arizona desert when Catty was six years old. She was going to turn her over to the authorities in Yuma, but when she saw Catty make time change, she decided Catty was an extraterrestrial, and that it was her duty to protect her from government officials who would probably dissect her. She still didn’t know that Catty was a goddess. Somehow it was easier for people to believe in space aliens than in goddesses.
“So who wants to go with me?”
“No, thanks.” Vanessa shuddered. “I hate the tunnel.” The tunnel was what she called the hole in time that Catty had to travel through to get from one time to the next. Besides Catty, Vanessa was the only one who had been in it.
“How ’bout you?” Catty elbowed Serena. “You’re always bugging me to take you back.”
Serena shook her head. “Not this trip.” She had wanted to try it out even after hearing Vanessa describe the dank, burnt-cabbage smell of the tunnel and thrill-ride feel of the travel. She wasn’t even afraid of the landings. Vanessa had told her that when they arrived at their destination, they fell back into time, which felt like falling on granite. Plus Catty was seldom accurate in her landings. They might land miles away, and near the ocean that could mean really bad news. Still, Serena would have been willing to risk it, if the memories of last night with the Followers hadn’t been haunting her.
“I don’t want to run into the Followers,” Serena said simply. “Go someplace else and I’ll go with you.”
“Please, your landings are way off, and you’d have to land next to the bluffs and the ocean,” Vanessa cautioned.
“Jeez, I’ve been practicing so much and you guys still don’t trust me,” Catty complained, and twirled the pom-poms on her cap, then looked slyly at Jimena. “You sure you don’t want to go?” Catty’s eyes began to dilate as if power were surging in her brain, and she reached out for Jimena’s hand.
“Look, the trip only takes minutes for you,” Serena said. “But the rest of us have to relive the whole night, and I know that’s something I don’t want to do.” But it was too late. She could already feel the change around her, as if the air pressure were dropping. She glanced at Catty’s watch. The hands started to move backward.
“Stop!” Vanessa yelled. Her hair stood out with a charge of static electricity.
When Catty didn’t stop, Jimena grabbed Serena and Vanessa. “Hold your amulets.”
They each grasped the moon amulet hanging around their necks.
“Meet you at Kokomo’s,” Jimena yelled before Catty disappeared in a blinding flash of white light. The air settled.
“Why didn’t we go back?” Vanessa looked around, baffled.
“Maggie told me holding the amulet is a way for us to stay in the present when Catty travels back in time,” Jimena explained. “I was supposed to tell you. Sorry. Forgot.”
“Why did you see Maggie?” Serena asked.
“Premonition,” Jimena answered. “I saw her just before she left.”
It wasn’t unusual for Jimena to have a premonition that she needed to discuss with Maggie, but this time Serena had an uneasy feeling that there was something more she wasn’t telling. But she let her suspicion slip away. Jimena had never kept anything from her before.
Vanessa was thoughtful for a moment, then she spoke. “Catty says all time exists at once. We just experience it one day at a time because that’s the way we’ve been taught to think about it. I guess she’s right. We’re here. She’s there. Kind of freaky.”
“It’s freaky, all right.” Serena thought of Catty back at the cold beach while they were safe in the warm sunshine. She wondered what Catty was seeing.
At the fourth garage sale, Vanessa’s stomach growled. “I’m hungry, and Catty should be getting back by now.”
Serena, Vanessa, and Jimena walked down Fairfax toward Farmers Market. Buses brought tourists to the open-air market for souvenir shopping and dining. There were so many places to eat that it was almost impossible to choose.
They found a table under an umbrella at Kokomo’s and sat down.
A constant procession of tourists wove in and out of the tables at the small open-air restaurant and gawked at the glossy autographed photos of celebrities on the wall over the counter. The tourists peered at the girls, hoping to recognize someone famous. Vanessa, Jimena, and Catty were used to it because they had grown up in Los Angeles. Serena had come from Long Beach, and tourists on the Queen Mary weren’t looking for movie stars.
Vanessa looked at her watch as the waiter came to their table. “Catty’s taking too long,” she whispered.
“We shouldn’t have let her go,” Jimena said.
“You girls decided yet?” the waiter asked impatiently.
“Give us a few more minutes,” Vanessa answered.
The waiter went to the next table.
Suddenly strange currents shimmered like heat waves in the air and a change in air pressure made people look at the sky as if they expected to see a storm brewing. Serena could feel the hair on the back of her neck rise.
Catty fell in a heap on the blacktop walkway next to their table.
People around them turned and stared.
“Where’d she come from?” a woman with thick dark glasses asked.
“Must have fallen off the roof,” a man commented.
The waiter looked at Catty as if he’d found a cockroach on the table.
“Hi.” Catty stood. She was soaking wet. A long strand of kelp wrapped around her arm. Without missing a beat, she turned and faced the gathering crowd. “Don’t forget to see Ocean Deep, coming soon to your local theater.”
Tourists clicked pictures, and some applauded.
“Hollywood.” Catty laughed even though she was shivering.
Vanessa, Jimena, and Serena gathered around her.
“What happened to you?” Vanessa pulled the kelp off Catty’s arm.
“Yeah.” Serena took off Collin’s sweater and placed it around Catty.
“More important,” Jimena said, “what did you see?”
“My landing was way screwed up,” Catty explained. “I landed in the ocean and had to swim for shore.”
“Why didn’t you just come back right away?” Vanessa asked.
“I couldn’t.” Catty shrugged. “I panicked.”
Serena pushed into Catty’s mind. She saw the dark and felt the cold water draining Catty’s strength as she swam toward the sound of the surf.
Vanessa hugged Catty. “You’ve got to be more careful.”
Serena shivered and came back from the place in Catty’s mind. “Let’s go to my house,” she suggested. “It’s closest.”
“Maybe we should go to my house,” Vanessa said, too quickly.
“You always do that,” Serena turned to face her. “Whenever Catty’s with us you never want to go to my house. What’s up?”
“That’s not true,” Vanessa said defensively.
“Yeah, it is,” Jimena piped up.
“True,” Catty added. “What’s at Serena’s house you don’t want me to s
ee?”
“Don’t be silly.” Vanessa waved them away. “You’re just imagining it.”
Catty and Serena looked at each other and nodded.
Serena crept inside Vanessa’s mind and tried to find the reason Vanessa didn’t want Catty to go over to Serena’s house. She pushed around memories of Michael, peeked at the homework—she had no idea Vanessa studied so much—and then she found the memories of Vanessa’s visits to her home, but she didn’t find anything to give her a clue. She slipped back out.
Vanessa was staring at her. “That’s creepy, Serena.”
“What gave it away?” Serena asked.
“I was suddenly thinking about all my homework!” Vanessa laughed. “You must have accidentally pushed the memories to the front of my brain.”
Serena shrugged. They turned down Beverly and soon they were in Serena’s warm kitchen. Serena gave Catty a pair of clean sweats.
“You can change in the downstairs bathroom, it’s right next to the washer and dryer. There’s a shower, too, if you want.”
“Thanks.” Catty disappeared into the utility room next to the kitchen.
“She’s lucky she didn’t drown.” Vanessa shook her head and took cocoa from a cupboard.
“We shouldn’t have let her go.” Serena placed a pan on top of the stove as Jimena pulled milk from the refrigerator.
That’s when they heard Catty scream. They ran to the utility porch.
Catty bumped into them. “There’s a wild animal in your bathroom!”
Serena pushed past her and ran into the bathroom. Wally leaned into the toilet, meticulously cleaning a grape.
“That’s just Wally.” Serena lifted her pet raccoon from the toilet. She wiped his paws with a towel and carried him back to Catty. “I should have warned you, but I just thought Vanessa would have told you.”
Vanessa got a strange look on her face. “Oops.”
“That’s it?” Serena asked. “You didn’t want Catty to know about Wally? Why not?”
Before Vanessa could answer, Catty spoke. “I can’t believe you took a wild animal out of its natural habitat and keep it as a pet. It’s drinking out of the toilet!”
“He would have died if I hadn’t taken him. His mom abandoned him. And he wasn’t drinking out of the toilet,” Serena corrected. “He was washing a grape.”
Catty shook her head. “They have shelters for wild animals who are deserted.” She turned to Vanessa. “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me. We’ve got to do something.”
Vanessa rolled her eyes. “See?”
“So what are you going to do about it?” Jimena joked. “Turn Serena in?” She took Wally from Serena and handed him to Catty. The raccoon licked her ear, then started grooming her wet hair.
Catty petted Wally. “Well, he doesn’t seem like he’s suffering. I guess living with Serena is better than being dead.”
“Thanks,” Serena said sarcastically.
“Sorry.” Catty smiled. “I didn’t mean—”
Then Catty looked really serious. “Just don’t anyone tell my mother. Ever!” She put Wally down and went back to the bathroom to shower and change her clothes.
A few minutes later Catty joined them, smelling of soap. They sat around the kitchen table drinking hot cocoa and Catty told them everything that had happened. “Once I swam to shore I hiked up the cliff near the seawall, but I didn’t see anything. No fire. Not even a smoky smell.”
“Then I must have fallen.” Serena focused on her memories of that night. “But it felt so real.”
“We better tell Maggie anyway.” Jimena looked around the group.
“When we have tea with her on Thursday,” Vanessa added.
“Okay,” Serena agreed, and tossed another marshmallow into her cocoa.
Catty picked up the deck of tarot cards that were sitting on the table and placed them in front of Serena. “Read our fortune. Do it for all of us at once.” There was too much excitement in her voice, as if she were trying to lift the solemn mood that had settled over Serena.
“I don’t know if it can work that way,” Serena said.
“Try,” Catty coaxed.
Serena shuffled the cards. “I’ll just do a three-card spread. Everyone think of their question while I shuffle.” She glanced up. They were all staring at her. She didn’t need to read their minds to know they were all asking about the cold fire. “Okay, so now each of you divide the deck so that we have three stacks that are facedown. One for past, one for the near future, and one for the final outcome.”
Each of them divided the cards, then Serena turned over the first card from the first stack. “The devil.” She frowned. “Not a good sign.”
“What does it mean?” Catty asked.
“It means that we’ve entered a negative cycle and our problems are going to multiply. We won’t be able to see the whole picture clearly.”
“Too weird.” Catty was hushed.
“Go on.” Vanessa nodded.
Serena snapped the card from the second stack and placed it on the table.
“The moon.” Jimena smiled. “That’s got to be a good sign for us.”
“No,” Serena whispered. “This card represents what is about to be. Things are not going to go smoothly because of some deception.”
“Yikes.” Catty’s eyes widened.
“They’re just cards,” Vanessa reassured them. “They don’t mean anything, really. Turn over the next one.”
Serena did. “The high priestess.” Her hand started shaking and she quickly dropped the card and hid her hand under the table.
They all stared at her.
“Well?” Catty demanded. “What’s the outcome?”
Serena scooped up the cards. “Let’s try again.”
She shuffled, then let them divide the stack. She took the first card, then the second and the third. The devil, the moon, and the high priestess came up again in the same order.
“Quit fooling around,” Jimena scolded.
Serena sighed. “I’m not.”
“What does the high priestess mean?” Vanessa wondered.
Serena tapped her finger on the card. “We’re at a crossroads and the outcome will be different from what we expect.”
“That doesn’t have to mean anything bad,” Vanessa said hopefully.
Serena cleared her throat. “Changes are taking place.” She didn’t like the way the high priestess card seemed to be warning her.
“Forget it.” Catty stood up. “Cards can’t tell the future anyway. Besides, I’m bored with cards. Let’s practice dancing.”
“That’s a good idea.” Jimena turned on the radio. “Hay que ser muy desinhibida para esto, Vanessa.”
“What’s she telling me?” Vanessa moved her feet with the beat of the music.
“You got to be uninhibited,” Catty teased.
“How’d you know?” Vanessa asked. “You don’t speak Spanish.”
“’Cause you always freeze up! And if you want to impress Michael you’re going to have to let your butt swing!”
Vanessa took a deep breath and followed Jimena’s lead.
“Con más sensualidad.” Jimena swayed her hips.
“I understood that one.” Vanessa smiled.
Serena was still staring at the cards.
“Come on.” Jimena took her hand and pulled her away from the table.
Serena fell in line behind Jimena but kept glancing back at the devil card. The creature drawn on the face of the card had the head and feet of a he-goat and the bosom and arms of a woman. “It’s the tarot’s mystery card,” she whispered. “It’s never good.”
“Stop,” Vanessa admonished. “We need to practice our new dance steps so our crew will look hot when Michael’s band plays at Planet Bang.”
“So you’ll look hot,” Catty corrected.
“Yup!” Vanessa answered with delight.
“All right.” Serena tried to concentrate on dancing, but the cards kept drawing her eyes back, as if to warn
her of something important.
CHAPTER FOUR
MONDAY AT SCHOOL Serena set her cello down and opened her locker slowly. Chopin’s Sonata in G Minor was still on her mind. She would need to increase her practice time if she was going to be able to play the sonata perfectly for the winter concert. She could mark the measures with which she was having the most difficulty and begin with those, exercising her fingers until they ran smoothly over the fast runs.
She held the locker door open, pulled out her algebra book, and slipped her music back inside.
Someone nudged the locker door shut.
She turned sharply and took in a quick gulp of air.
Zahi leaned against the row of lockers. He had moved to California from France two weeks ago. His black hair fell in his eyes and he casually brushed it back. A gold stud glistened in his left ear. She loved his angular face, his clear brown eyes, his French accent and European charm.
“And how are you today, Serena?” He had the most wonderful accent she had ever heard.
She wished she could control the blush rising to her cheeks. “Hi.” She tossed him an insolent smile. She might as well wear a neon sign: Serena Killingsworth has a major crush on zahi, new boy at school, incredible looker who is also smart and speaks French and—
“I heard that you can read my future in your tarot cards.” He looked at her with open interest.
“Who told you that?” she teased.
“Morgan told me.”
“Morgan, huh?” Serena tilted her head. They had been talking to each other a little more each day and she was sure that he liked her at least half as much as she liked him. Did he want her to read the cards so he would have an excuse to visit her? She glanced at his eyes. She couldn’t pull away. The only other guy this good-looking at school was Michael Saratoga, and he was totally devoted to Vanessa.
“If you can see the future, should I be scared of you?” He rested his hand on the top of the lockers so that his arm was close enough for her to feel the heat radiating from his body.
“Maybe.” She leaned toward him, daring him to put his arm around her. She loved the way he looked at her. “You don’t have to be afraid of me.” She spoke the words like an invitation. “It’s just for fun. I’ll read your spread for free.” Did that seem too desperate? Guys usually couldn’t get to her like this. What was it about him that made her feel so strangely wonderful?