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REVELATION 12:16

And the earth helped the woman. . . .

~ * ~

Amazing, Louise thought. Un . . . believable.

Sitting on the front steps of St. Peter's and waiting for Jo to return, Louise ignored the cold and held up her hands, turning both front and back, flexing each finger and enjoying the feel of the wind between each digit. It was, indeed, a miracle that they were healed, but this went even further—every single scar or blemish that had ever been present on her hands was totally gone.

The cold had seeped through her clothes and Louise hoisted herself up and went back inside, still peering at the side of her right hand. Before her fall onto the street grating, she'd had a twisted, inch-long scar there, caused by shattering the glass door in the foyer of her building with the heel of her hand the summer she was eleven. Now the scar was missing, and even her fingernails, always so cracked and bitten, were smooth and healthy—long, too, grown to manicure length past her fingertips. As she settled onto the front pew, voices drifted in from the vestibule and Louise glanced up. The sound was so fitting that for an instant she didn't pay any attention, then she realized it was voices, and not just Jo. She jumped to her feet, then stopped uncertainly as she heard Jo tell someone to follow her in.

"Good morning!" Jo called. "How do you feel?"

"Fine." Louise cupped a hand around her mouth to help carry her voice. "Where've you been?" The question was automatic as Jo led another person up the aisle and Louise strained to see. "Who's that?"

"His name is . . ." Jo glanced at the man walking next to her.

"C.J.," he said as he and Jo stopped in front of her. "That's what everyone calls me."

"Hi." Louise couldn't think of anything else to say. "This is Louise," Jo told C.J. "She came in the day before yesterday."

C.J. shifted his gaze back to her and Louise saw that his eyes were a discomforting golden tan. She tried to smile and knew immediately that it was more of a sick grimace than anything else. For the first time in a year she wondered what she looked like, and she couldn't stop her fingers from smoothing her hair. She'd started using her hunting knife months ago to hack off chunks of it, impatient with the care it needed just to keep it neat. Now her thoughts touched regretfully on the memory of four-inch locks of hair floating to the floor on a bright, long-ago afternoon. Her face—was it even clean? She was mortified; her eyes, an unremarkable shade of vague blue, were the only thing left. Big damned deal, she thought miserably.

Oh yes—and her brand-new hands.

C.J. cleared his throat uncomfortably and looked away, his eyes instinctively searching the darker areas of the church nave before returning to Jo. Louise blushed and realized that Jo had lost most of the neckline and front of her dress, and half her childishly formed chest was in full sight. C.J., however, regarded her with an almost clinical interest, much as a boy would watch a small and interesting pale frog. "So," he finally said. He slipped a medieval-looking contraption from his shoulders and placed it carefully on one of the pews. "You've only been here two days?"

Louise nodded and swallowed her nervousness. "Yeah."

"Where'd you come from?" He leaned against the side of one of the benches and folded his arms. "Were you with anyone else?"

Louise shook her head. "No, just me and Beau.”

"Beau?"

Louise couldn't wait any longer. "Jo, what happened to you?"

Jo looked at her strangely, then made only a semiconcerned effort to pull her dress together. Louise's mouth dropped open when she saw that Jo's hands, so terribly mutilated last night, were as white and unblemished as her own. "Your hands—"

"I think I'll go change," Jo interrupted. Her voice was muffled and sleepy-sounding. “And splash some water on my face." She smiled sweetly. "You guys get to know each other."

Louise quickly scanned the aisle. "Beau—“

"—is in the back," Jo said calmly. "I guess he's tired, too."

"Who's Beau?" C.J. asked again.

Louise had taken her gaze off Jo for only an instant, but the white-haired girl was gone. In another moment Louise heard a door close somewhere in the northern end of the church. C.J. was still waiting, his eyes like some bizarre pair of sparkling yellow stones. "My dog," Louise finally managed. "Beau is my dog."

"You have a dog? Wow." He sounded impressed. "That must've been a trick. Were you always by yourself?"

This time she answered his repeated question with a nod. "Were you?"

He shrugged. "Sometimes." Again he looked briefly at the dark rear of the church; it was a habit Louise understood well. "But . . ." He hesitated.

"But what?"

"There are . . . a few others now," he finished at last.

Louise's tense expression spread into pleasure. "Well, that's great! How many? And where are they? I was starting to think I was the only one left before yesterday, because I hadn't seen anyone else in so long, you know—" She stumbled slightly over the last word and stopped. She was babbling and he was staring at her like she had two heads. And why not? Her face turned scarlet. Where did I get off thinking I was the only person with brains enough to survive? She choked back the sudden urge to cry and closed her mouth.

C.J. grinned abruptly and the smile lit up his face and made him look like an impish little boy. "Hey, don't stop now—you're on a roll!" He glanced around the dim interior, lit only by the richly colored but feeble glow from the stained glass overhead. "Let's get out of here. I'm sure it's holy and all that, but I just don't like dark places." Louise followed him outside without speaking, then was shocked to feel the drop in the temperature in only the last quarter hour. She threw a worried glance at the sky.

"It's going to snow soon."

C.J. jumped at the sound of Jo's voice floating from just inside the door to the church, and Louise dredged up enough courage to touch the sleeve of his jacket reassuringly. The only living thing she'd touched for the longest time was Beau. "She's always doing that," she told him. "I think she likes to surprise people."

"Person could get killed that way," he muttered.

Louise thought of the dangerous-looking weapon inside and wondered just how badly Jo had startled him earlier in the day. "Not her," Louise said.

C.J.'s eyebrows lifted and Louise shrugged. She might sound as odd as Jo acted, but she believed every word. Jo rejoined them, wearing a white dress that except for the sleeves was the same as the ruined one. Her porcelain-tinted skin glowed when she lifted her face and breathed deeply of a swirl of frigid wind sweeping the thick sheet of her hair. She turned back to them, her gray eyes a strange reflection of the tightly layered clouds. "We have to get you back to Water Tower."

For the first time, C.J.'s iron composure cracked. "How did you know about that?" he demanded. "Who else knows?"

"I know a lot of things." Jo's soft voice was reassuring. “And only Louise knows—now. You're quite safe.” Watching Jo, Louise had the queer notion that the younger girl's eyes changed to a darker, brooding gray that had nothing to do with the snow clouds overhead, like some kind of optical chameleon. It was scary and Louise's belly gave a single, dreadful twist. "Let's go," Jo said. "I'll walk with you, but I cart stay when we get there."

"Why not?" Louise asked nervously. She was distinctly aware that she could be an uninvited intruder into C.J.'s life. He'd never invited her to Water Tower Place. What if—

"Of course you can," C.J. interrupted Louise's jumbled thoughts. "What're you going to do, hike all the way back? By the time we get there, it might be dark. No way."

Jo shrugged. "Then let's not waste time. Why don't you tell Louise about your . . . what would you call them? Family?"

"Whatever."

Louise bristled at C.J.'s snappish response but Jo didn’t appear to notice. "Get Beau and your things," she told Louise. "You won’t be coming back."

"I won't?" Confused again, Louise glanced at C.J., but he only stared crossly at Jo. A flicker of irritation stirred, warring with uncertainty and the sensation of homelessness she'd had ever since leaving the north side; had he and Jo planned this without even asking her? "Suppose they don’t want any more people?" Louise plunged on. "Or—"

"There's room," C.J. said. His tone made it clear that he thought her questions were yet another waste of time.

"I don’t want to impose," Louise continued stubbornly. She felt like the unwanted relative during the holidays. "I can take care of myself and I don't have to stay with Jo to do it." Louise was getting angry and embarrassed. What was happening here anyway? One minute Jo was saving her life and performing miracles, the next she was kicking Louise out on her butt.

C.J.'s expression was rigid. "Get your stuff."

"I refuse to be a burden!" Louise said hotly. "I'm not so stupid I'd go where I'm not wanted!"

"Oh, he wants you to go, all right." Jo's voice was smooth and sweet, like warmed honey. "He's just too shy to say so."

Louise was about to retort when she realized that despite his fighting stance and protectively folded arms, C.J.'s face was deep red. "I–I'll get my backpack," Louise stammered. "Here, Beau! Come on, boy!" She fled to the small confessional office where her dog and small cache of belongings waited; as the door closed behind her she could hear the tinkling of Jo's laughter, the sound light and not at all cruel.

A few minutes later and they were on their way, Beau tucked safely in his customary place inside Louise's jacket as the trio wound through the downtown streets. They were only four blocks from St. Peter's when the snow began to fall in thick, clinging clumps that immediately began to gather in small piles. Louise stopped. "We should go back," she said, struggling to make herself heard above the wind; when she halted, Beau poked his nose inquisitively from a fold in her jacket, then quickly retreated. "Before we leave tracks. It won’t matter if they lead back to the church." She looked at Jo knowingly. "We'll still be safe."

Jo shook her head and her companions gaped at her in disbelief. "No. Come on." The young girl resumed her steps, leaving small telltale depressions in the growing layer of snow. Louise and C.J. followed, knowing it would be useless to disagree, petrified about the footprints marking their progress like huge blotches of black paint on a white canvas. In the cold—something that apparently didn't affect Jo—their prints were becoming more defined with each quarter block. How much would it snow? It was barely past noon now; what if it snowed all day?

When the crystal-shrouded front of Water Tower Place was finally less than a block away, Louise shivered as C.J. planted his feet firmly on the snow-covered sidewalk and refused to go any farther. "I can't do this." The snowfall that had seemed so pretty now swirled ferociously around them and the sidewalk was crusted over with ice, leaving perfect depressions with each step. "The tracks will lead the vampires right to the front door."

Louise's voice was grim. "He's right." Although she was only three feet away, Jo seemed to blend into the harsh weather and Louise could barely see the white-haired girl.

"What tracks?" Jo asked gently.

Anger twisted C.J.'s dark-complected features. Are you completely crazy?" he demanded. A clot of snow tried to stick to one cheek and he slapped it away. “We might as well hang flags, for Christ's sake!" His black hair was sodden beneath a crown of quickly accumulating snow. When Jo smiled and touched his arm, he snorted in disgust and whirled to point at the indentations marking their passage, but his sound of derision ended in a shortened gasp.

There were no tracks.

The snow stretched along Michigan Avenue, unbroken and startling in its magnificent blanket of purity.

The blood drained from Louise's face and an absurd thought occurred to her: she and Jo must look like winter sisters right now, Jo, with her flowing mass of colorless, strangely dry hair, and Louise, with her snow-covered brown hair and shock-white skin.

"You two go in." Jo's voice was kind. "Louise was ill yesterday and shouldn't be out in this weather."

"What about you? Aren't you coming?" Louise grabbed

Jo's hand and clung to it; even without a coat in the subfreezing temperatures, Jo's skin was pleasantly warm. "But you'll die out here!" C.J. protested. "You'll—”

“I'll be fine."

C.J. and Louise stumbled after Jo as she crossed the final steps to the glassed-in entrance and pulled open the door.

"That's supposed to be locked!"

"It was." Jo brushed a new clump of snow from the young man's cheek and Louise's flesh crawled when she saw Jo's eyes darken again to that terrible, brooding shade of gray. For a moment the girl stared at them, then she turned back to C.J. "You just have to accept that. Sometimes you have to accept a lot of things." She glanced at Louise, and the brown-haired girl felt as though she'd been touched by a flash of love and . . . regret. Terror swept her for a second. Why would Jo look at her like that?

"Both of you be in Daley Plaza tomorrow at noon," Jo said suddenly. "Don't come earlier or you’ll miss him."

"Miss who?" C.J. demanded. He looked ready to explode. "What are you talking about?"

Jo's perfect smile, even in the midst of the surprise snowstorm, blanketed them with warmth.

"The key to the Mart."

Louise blinked at C.J. and his return gaze was perplexed. Both teenagers turned back to Jo—

She was gone.

And there were still no footprints.