LITMIR.BIZ

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he asked at length. “Are you going to tell me?”

      “I think I have to show you.” She nodded at a magazine that was rolled up and tucked into the cup holder between them.

      He sighed, about to argue with her, but when he met her eyes, he found her mind open, as well. Nothing hidden, no barriers, which was a very rare thing for his sister. He narrowed his eyes and felt only sincerity coming from her. No pretense, no hidden motives.

      “The end of the world is coming, bro. It’s coming—and we’re the only ones who can prevent it. That’s why we were born. To save our entire race. Read the article while I drive. The page is folded over. I just hope we’re not already too late.”

      “Too late?”

      “I think it’s going to start tonight,” she told him.

      He shook his head, still not following. “You think what’s going to start tonight?”

      Brigit licked her scarlet-stained lips and sighed. “Armageddon. At least for our kind, and maybe for theirs, too.”

      “We’re one-quarter human, Brigit. Their kind is also our kind.”

      “Fuck their kind.” Her eyes flashed.

      “Either way,” she went on. This might be it for everyone. Unless we do something about it.” She looked at her watch. “In the next forty-five minutes, as a matter of fact.”

      “And where, exactly, is Armageddon going to break out in forty-five minutes?”

      “Manhattan,” she said. “At a taping of the Will Waters Show.” She looked his way again and caught him staring at her as if she’d been speaking in tongues. “Will you just read the damned article? And buckle up. We’ve got to move.”

      Frowning, he buckled, then opened the copy of J.A.N.E.S. Magazine to an article about a recently translated Sumerian clay tablet, written by someone by the name of Professor Lucy Lanfair. He found himself stuck on the tiny head shot of the professor herself, almost unable to tear his eyes away to read the piece that had his sister so wound up. It seemed as if the professor’s brown eyes were staring straight off the page and directly into his soul.

      Brigit pressed harder on the accelerator, and the car’s powerful engine roared like a vampire about to feed.

       2

      Lester Folsom wasn’t enjoying life anymore, and he was more than ready to leave it behind. But he wasn’t willing to take his secrets to the grave with him. Those secrets were worth money. A fortune. And hell, he’d risked his life often enough while learning them that he figured he’d earned the right to spill his guts and reap the benefits before he checked out for good. So he’d spent the past year doing exactly that.

      He was old and tired, and he was damned achy. And it had happened all at once, too. None of this gradual decline one tended to expect from old age. Not with him. One week he was feeling normal, and the next, he noticed that it hurt to lift his arms up over his head. The balls and sockets in his shoulders felt as if they’d run out of lubrication, stiff and tight. And he felt something similar in his knees and wrists and even his ankles now and then. It had happened right about the same time his eyesight had gone to hell. And it had all been downhill from there. His hair had thinned, and what remained had gone silver. His back had grown progressively more stooped, his skin more papery, with every passing year.

      The beginning of his end, as nearly as he could pinpoint it, had been fifteen years ago, right after he’d retired from government work. His pension was a good one. But not as good as the advance River House Publishing had given him for his tell-all book. That money had allowed him spend the past twelve months on a private island in the Caribbean, basking and writing. Reliving it all, and yes, occasionally jumping out of his skin at bumps in the night. But they’d all been false alarms.

      They wouldn’t be, after tonight. If his former employer didn’t get him, the subjects of his life’s work would. Either way, he was history. And that was fine.

      He’d had that year in the tropical sun. Sandy beaches and warm saltwater made bifocals and arthritis a whole lot more bearable. And now the year was over. The book would hit the stands one month from today. He figured he’d be dead shortly thereafter. But he was ready. His affairs were all in order.

      “Five minutes, Mr. Folsom,” a woman’s voice said.

      He glanced up at the redheaded producer who’d poked her head through the door into the greenroom. It wasn’t green at all. Go figure. “I’ll be ready,” he replied.

      And then she opened the door a bit farther and allowed another woman to enter. “You’ll go on right after Mr. Folsom,” the redhead told her.

      “Thanks, Kelly.”

      Kelly. That was the young redhead’s name. You’d think he could have remembered that from twenty minutes ago, when she’d first introduced herself. Didn’t much matter, he supposed. She was gone now.

      The newcomer—he immediately labeled her an introverted intellectual—nodded hello, then looked around the room, just the way he had, taking in the table with its offerings of coffee, tea, cream and sugar, and its spartan selection of fruit and pastries. There was a television mounted high in one corner, tuned to the show on which they were both soon going to appear, but he had turned down the volume, bored by the host’s opening segment.

      The woman finished her scan of the room and looked his way instead, then lowered her eyes when he met them. Pretty eyes. Brown and flighty, like a doe’s eyes, but hidden behind a pair of tortoiseshell-framed glasses.

      “Well,” he said, to break the ice, “it seems Kelly isn’t much for introductions, so we’ll have to do it ourselves. I’m Lester Folsom, here to plug a book.”

      She smiled at him, finally meeting his gaze. “Professor Lucy Lanfair,” she said, moving closer, extending a slender hand. It was not a delicate, pampered looking hand, but a working one. He liked that. She had mink-brown hair that matched her eyes, but she kept it all twisted up into a knot at the back of her head.

      He took her hand, more relieved than he wanted to admit that it was warm to the touch. “Pleased to make your acquaintance.”

      “Likewise.” She withdrew her hand, wiping it on her brown tweed skirt. “Sorry about the sweaty palms. I’m a nervous wreck. I’ve never been on TV before.”

      “Nothing to be nervous about,” he assured her. “You look very nice, if that’s any comfort to you.”

      “I’ve never been too concerned with how I look, but thank you very much. I appreciate it.”

      A woman who didn’t care about looks. Well, now, that was interesting. “What is it you’ve come to talk about?” he asked.

      She sank into a chair kitty-corner from his and unrolled the magazine she’d been clutching in one hand. “A rather startling new translation of a four-thousand, five-hundred-year-old clay tablet.”

      He lifted his brows, his attention truly caught now. “Sumerian?”

      “Yes!” She sounded surprised. “How did you know?”

      “Not many other cultures had a written language in twenty-five hundred BCE. May I?” He nodded at the magazine, and she handed it to him. The Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Studies, J.A.N.E.S. for short, had a classic image of a ziggurat tower on the front, beneath which the headline screamed, New Translation Suggests Another Doomsday Prophecy for Mankind. He glanced from it to her. “This is your piece?” When she nodded, he said, “You made the cover. Impressive.”

      “Yes, of a scholarly journal with a readership of about three thousand. Still, it’s nice to get the recognition. Though I could do without the sensationalism. What the prophecy predicts is meaningless.”

      “Oh, don’t be so sure about that.” He shifted his gaze to the book he carried

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