* * * *

"Noah, this is Miranda. I met a woman who came to town to meet with you. Brianna Fox."

"I met her in Iraq and offered her a job."

"Doing what exactly?"

"Miranda, what's this about? Did you touch her?" Miranda Myers was a gypsy with the ability to see the true present of a person. There was no way anyone could lie to her. If Brianna Fox was up to something, Miranda would know.

"She has no present," Miranda told Noah.

"Say what?" How could someone not have a present. Even for the town of Spellfire where the abnormal was considered normal, this was unprecedented.

"She is in the moment only...no other time around her."

* * * *

"Molly, what did you discover about her past?"

"I'm not sure, Noah. She has a long past...a really long past. But it's tied up with time so I can't make sense of anything. I saw ancient carriages then modern planes and instruments of stone beside those of surgical steel. It's the oddest thing I've ever experienced."

"Funny, that's exactly what your sister said last night. How about you, Megan? Did you see her true future or was it as disjointed as what Molly and Miranda saw?"

Rather than the confused look her daughter wore, Megan's eyes were wide with concern. "Noah, I saw no future for her. Not even in the next hour. It's as if she lives in a bubble with nothing touching her."

* * * *

"I'm just a nurse. Plain and simple," Brianna told Noah Spellfire.

* * * *

Up the steps and into the shelter of the front porch, Brianna stood before a wide front door out of the nippy wind. An adjustment of her purse strap on her shoulder and both hands smoothed down her hair then she put her disquiet aside and rapped sharply on the sturdy portal, prepared for whatever came next. What she got certainly wasn't what she expected.

The door flew open, and a man barked out, "We don't want any. Go away!" Then he slammed the door in her face.

* * * *

Kaden Garrett stood on the other side of the portal, hand still on the knob and suffered the distinct impression he'd just closed the door on the most important thing in his life. More important than his heritage, his work or his family, what there was left of it.

Let her in. A voice filtered softly in his mind.