She shrugged. 'They had the drop on me with guns. They didn't seem to care whether they killed me or not. So I went along.'
My drug-sensitized nose immediately bore an assault by a riot of scents. It smelled as if we were in a flower garden in spring. I felt safe, reassured, cozy.
'What is that smell?'
'Just some flowers and stuff. Come on.'
She led me through a hallway done up with the sort of knickknacks a woman accumulates. She sat me in the living room on a high-backed wing chair. The place had a few bookshelves with a fair amount of books. That's the way I gauge people, I suppose. The fewer the books, the stupider and duller the person.
She wasn't dull. Her actions revealed that much.
'Anyway,' she continued, clanking around in the kitchen, 'I snuck out of a window and into the courtyard and hotwired the first car I could get to.'
'You have good taste in cars.'
'I was on my way to call the police when I saw you.'
'Forget the cops-they're just priests with guns.'
I heard her laugh lightly. In a moment she appeared with a cup of coffee.
'Black?' she asked.
'Black.' I took the cup and let the hot liquid warm my insides.
'Feeling better?'
'Yeah.' I stretched and slid back in the chair. 'I saw a whole lot of bad things back there. In my mind. I've seen worse in real life. I'll get over it.' I let out a breath, took another sip of brew. My hair may have been getting younger, but I wasn't. I felt old and rattled.
Ann went back into the kitchen and reappeared with her own cup. She pulled up a chair next to mine and sat. A shaft of morning sunlight hit the lower part of her dress, shotgunning silver and gold pinpoints around the room. Her hair hung in straggles caused by drying sweat. She'd been through a lot and came out looking like an angel slumming it among mortals.
I felt a few degrees less than mortal. The house was too cheerful to reflect the way I felt.
'They mean business, Dell.'
'If they meant business, babe, we'd be under the churchyard by now.' I finished the cup and set it aside. 'Here I thought I'd just draw some pay for a few weeks from a flush eccentric. Next thing I know, someone's taking it seriously!'
'You took it seriously enough to accept the offer.'
'If God is worried about me, why doesn't He just hit me with a bolt of lightning?'
'They say he works in mysterious ways. Maybe he's softening you up first.' She grinned. Her eyes were mostly pupil. I understood why women used to put belladonna drops in their eyes. She looked achingly beautiful.
'Or maybe,' she suggested, 'the reactions to you are taking place through a network of consciousness.'
What she said didn't make much sense, but I was still stoned enough that her words carried a profound impact. I sensed that something important was trying to get through. I answered with appropriate awe.
'Huh?'
She leaned forward, suddenly emphatic.
'People such as those monks are acting on feelings that don't come from within them. They're operating on emotions impinging on them from outside-from a worldwide reaction to our activities.'
It was as if she'd stuck another hypo of junk into me. I felt a swelling tide of alarm flow over me. This was
