Woman King (25 page)

“OK, I believe you,” I said, turning to face
the other three pairs of eyes watching our conversation. “It’s just
that it’s an incredible coincidence.”

Aidan sipped his drink, contemplating a
reply. I could see him formulating a response; his eyes gave him
away. Elsa was leaning in against him, watching him intently as he
began to speak.

“The world is a smaller place than you
realize. We all share common interests and similar talents,” he
said. “Our paths, while different, have led us all to the same
place. I, for one, am glad. After all, the best breeds travel in
small packs.”

“That sounds suspiciously like another
toast,” I said, cajoling the group to clink glasses for a second
time.

Afterward, Lily got up from the booth to
stand at the bar with William’s band mate John. The first time we
met, I was so nervous that I had not studied him closely. Now, upon
further inspection, I realized that he was quite striking. He was
as tall as Lily, with long brown hair and green eyes. Dressed in
skinny black jeans and a gray T-shirt, he was handsomely
disheveled. Lily must have liked what she saw, because she was
leaning quite close to him, hanging on his every word.

“Is John single?” I asked William, who had
been following my gaze.

He laughed. “Darlin, John is in a band in San
Francisco. Need I say more?”

I looked over at my best friend, a fairy
hiding in plain site of humans, and decided she could take care of
herself.

“Olivia,” Elsa said, breaking into our
conversation, “Aidan and I are going to leave. We’re going to look
for a place to grab a bite.”

I remembered that it was a full moon tonight
and wondered if Elsa would go running with her boyfriend in the
park. It was sort of a romantic vision, the two of them frolicking
in the moonlight.

“You should go to Stow Lake. It’s a good
place to swim at night,” I said. “Just don’t try to get on the
small island, it’s covered with sharp blackberry bushes.”

Aidan laughed, “Do you know this from
experience?”

I nodded. “Elsa gave me peyote tea when we
first met. I spent an entire evening running through the park,
seeing colors and hearing voices. Lily thinks I disappeared.”

“We all agreed I made the tea too strong,”
Elsa said. “But it worked. She regained her sixth sense.”

“It was extraordinary. All except the part
where I woke up in the lily pond next door to the de Young.”

“You spent the night sleeping at the pond?”
William asked.

“I was drawn by a voice in my head,” I said.
“What I thought was a voice, anyway. It was a hallucination.”

I noticed Elsa gently place a hand on Aidan’s
leg and I assumed she was anxious to leave, so I signaled for our
waitress to come over so we could settle our bar tab. William waved
her off, telling us that the drinks were on him tonight. Aidan
slapped William on the back.

“If I had known that, I would have stayed for
another round,” he joked, and bade us good night.

Not long after Elsa and Aidan left, we
gathered up our belongings to leave. I looked up to find Lily, and
saw she was still standing at the bar.

“Do you think Lily will be OK with John?”

“I think Lily can take care of herself,
Olivia. She isn’t some naïve human woman. I suspect it will be
harder on John when it’s over.”

I glanced one more time at the bar as we were
leaving. I caught Lily’s eye. She turned to me and waved, clearly
delighted to have a playmate for the night. We exited the club and
walked along Divisadero Street for a few blocks until we reached
William’s car. It didn’t take long to load his Subaru, and soon we
were on the road to my house.

“I’m sorry I can’t invite you in,” I said, as
he pulled into my driveway. “I have a busy day tomorrow and need
some rest.”

“Not a problem,” he said, walking me to my
door. We agreed that we would see each other soon, but I was
hesitant to make plans with all of the work I had coming in the
next few weeks.

William kissed me deeply on the lips.

“Remember,” he said, “I don’t sleep. You can
call me anytime

****

Although the campaign office was in Palo
Alto, I continued to spend a few days a week in San Francisco, or
at least part of the day. Most of the members of the campaign team,
including the pollster, had offices in the city. R.J. Klein ran his
company out of a small suite on Sutter Street near Union
Square.

As was my usual routine during campaign
season, I met with R.J. alone to map out the contents of a poll. In
politics, nothing is left to chance, even with skills like mine.
Polling is one tool consultants use to learn what voters want, so
they can win their support on Election Day. After asking a voter’s
opinion on a certain issue, we ask questions about their age,
income and even their education. With those kinds of demographic
details, I can ensure that Levi’s messages are targeted to various
audiences. It’s a backbreaking business, one that takes hours of
work to plan, analyze and execute. Our collaboration that morning
was successful, and by early afternoon, when I left his office in
search of lunch, I had a draft poll in my briefcase.

After grabbing a lentil and bean salad at a
French café next door, I headed back to my car, which was parked in
a nearby garage. It was a pleasant, sunny day in San Francisco, and
I enjoyed a stroll past some of the country’s most prestigious
boutiques and jewelry stores.

After living with my new skills for several
weeks, I’d decided that being an empath is a lot like a bad acid
trip. All of the colors and sensations that come zooming at you can
be a shock to your nervous system. Early on, there were moments
when I was barely able to enter a busy street without feeling
overwhelmed by the totality of people’s emotions and feelings. Now,
thanks to hours of training and focus, I have learned to shield
myself from most of the chatter of everyday life.

Today, however, it felt as though I was a
novice all over again. There was a terrible buzzing in my ears, and
it was growing worse as I neared Post Street. It took me a moment
to make sense of the sensation in my head: something very powerful
was nearby. As I approached Post Street, I could feel the force of
the energy vibrating through me. Behind the energy was a wall of
emotion: fear, anxiety, and excitement.

As I approached the corner of Post and Grant,
I carefully looked around for the source of the disturbance. I did
not want to meet whatever was throwing off such intense energy
until I had a chance to see it first. I pushed myself to pick up
the direction of the forces I was feeling. I did a visual scan of
all four corners of the intersection, but didn’t detect anything,
or anyone, out of the ordinary. The fact that I could not see them,
however, did nothing to diminish the sensation.

In addition to the vibration resonating
through my sternum, there also was a feeling of pressure building
behind my eyes. I realized I needed to redouble my focus on
shielding myself before it overwhelmed me. As I worked to get my
defenses in place, a sound in the road caught my attention. I
looked up to see a black sedan speeding toward me. The darkness of
the emotions traveling inside the car, which was careening down the
one-way street, left no doubt that its passengers were not human.
Despite the pressure on my skull, I felt drawn to the energy, and
began to walk toward the oncoming car. I had to get a peek at the
passengers inside.

Before I could glimpse so much as an eyebrow,
however, the sedan turned abruptly and jumped the curb, crashing
through the majestic gold-trimmed doors of a Peabody Jewelers
store. I missed being hit by the car, but collided with a man on
the street, throwing us both down onto the sidewalk with a horrible
thud. I felt the full force of the impact on my right shoulder as I
hit the pavement. As we lay there trying to untangle ourselves, my
shoulder throbbing, the car pressed its way further into the store,
sending shards of the glass picture windows and two stone planters
that had been smashed to bits onto the sidewalk.

Finally I was able to extricate myself. I
stood up off the ground and approached one of the store’s windows
to get a better look at what was happening inside. Peabody Jewelers
has occupied the corner of Post and Grant Streets since the Gold
Rush. Through all that time, it seemed safe to say their sales
people had never watched an automobile plow through their main
entrance. I’m also fairly sure they’d never witnessed four men exit
a vehicle parked in their showroom, fire off several rounds of
ammunition from semi-automatic weapons, and then smash the glass
display cases containing millions of dollars in rare jewelry and
timepieces.

As I peered through the window, another
thought was rapidly forming in my mind: the beings inside were
hoping to keep my experience limited. Someone inside the store, a
member of the robbery gang, had sensed me and was trying to blind
me. I couldn’t tell whether they were aiming for a temporary
condition or something more permanent, but the pain behind my eyes
now was excruciating. I tried as best I could to ignore the
pressure in my head, and continued to watch from the window.

The men were brazen. They wore no masks or
disguises, a detail that only reinforced my conviction that they
were Others, supremely confident they would never be found. The
thieves used small rock hammers, the kind geologists favor, to
shatter the glass cases and scoop the jewels into generic black
backpacks. It seemed to me that they could walk out of the store—or
maybe into a waiting car—and disappear into the crowd without a
single identifying mark. Each of the thieves was young, fit and
well coordinated. Four tall beings, each with olive skin; they
didn’t speak to one another, nor to the frightened salespeople and
customers cowering below the gold-plated display cases. And yet I
knew they were communicating, the same way I knew they were trying
to blind me.

I continued to squint through the window, my
right arm hanging awkwardly at my side. Maybe a minute or two had
passed since the crash. I could hear sirens coming, and decided it
was time to leave the area. My efforts to block the force against
my eyes was proving feeble: the pressure in my head continued to
build, my vision growing dimmer every second.

I felt the unmistakable warm trickle of blood
run down from my nose to my upper lip. I tried to wipe it away and
caught site of my hands, which were also covered in blood from the
fall. I searched around in my purse for some tissues. Having none,
I wiped the blood off my face with my fingers, and then cleaned my
hands on my pant legs. I knew I wouldn’t be able to drive with my
vision diminished; I was going to have to make it to the Chinatown
gate and use the portal. It seemed risky to walk the three blocks
covered in blood, but if I moved quickly, perhaps no one would
mistake me for more than the usual disheveled homeless person
wandering nearby.

I willed myself, despite the acute pain in my
head, to start walking toward the gate. I felt a bit like Richard
the III, limping up the street, hurling one side of my body as if
it were a deadened limb. I could feel my heart beginning to speed
up, my adrenaline finally kicking in. Whoever was in that bank did
not want me to see them, and I was worried that if they had their
way, I would never look upon anything again.

What a mad sight I must have been for the
tourists as I approached the stone lions at the foot of the green
tile gate on Grant Street. I managed to bump into a man, mumbling a
hasty “sorry” as I approached the lion’s mouth. I knew I was making
a bit of a scene with my appearance, and now I was going to
disappear from plain sight, but I had little choice. I had to get
away from the thieves.

I walked up to the statue and placed my
fingers inside the beast’s open mouth. This was my maiden voyage
using a portal. Elsa had practiced with me, but I had never
traveled alone. I managed to remember the instructions, despite
being rattled. I visualized the doorstep of my house and then
uttered one word:
Apěrio!

The moment the word left my mouth I was
transported into darkness, then light. I felt a gentle pull as I
dropped out of thin air onto my doorstep. I lay on the landing in a
crumpled heap, disoriented and unable to see. I wanted to scream
for help, but I was afraid to attract the attention of anyone on
the street. I didn’t need the police coming to my doorstep. I would
never be able to explain how I managed to leave the scene of a
robbery, injured and blinded, without the aide of a taxi or a
companion. Instead, I lay still, pushing my anxiety out to my
friends with all my might.

“Help!” I exclaimed at the top of my inner
voice, “I need help.”

Those were my last thoughts, before I lost
consciousness.

When I woke up, I was afraid to open my eyes.
The memory of the pain I’d experienced returned and I began to cry,
tears streaming down my face from my tightly closed eyelids. The
first voice I heard was Gabriel’s.

“Olivia, please try to open your eyes,” he
said. “We’re all here with you, you needn’t be afraid.”

I shook my head. “Too painful,” I murmured. I
felt someone sit down next to me on what must have been my bed, a
familiar set of fingers taking my hand.

“I heard you, darlin,” William whispered in
my ear. “I heard you call to me. So whatever happens, I am here.
You can open your eyes.”

I began by blinking to get myself ready;
slowly I opened and closed my lids until my pupils would accept the
light. The light! I thought to myself, thank God, I can see the
light. Eventually I opened my eyes and found myself staring into
the faces of William, Gabriel, Lily, Aidan and Elsa.