Chapter 10

"Elena?" There's a light knocking in addition to the voice. "Can I come in?" Laura's voice.

The bed clothes are twisted around her, and she has to struggle for a moment before she's able to thrash her way free and sit up. Her breathing is ragged, as though she's just finished running a marathon in hundred degree heat, and she's drenched in sweat.

"Hold..." She pulls in a huge lung full of air, and tries to slow her breathing down to something normal. "Hold on a second."

Gavin! Oh my god, Gavin! It's trying to kill him too!

She wants to run, to throw herself through her bedroom window, slide down the roof, vault into the back yard, and get to him as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, Gavin never told her his address, and her chances of being able to find him quickly, or at all for that matter, are probably zero. Still there has to be a way to track him down, to help him somehow.

The light knock comes again, "Elena?"

"Yes, come in!" she snaps.

Her door slowly opens, revealing Laura's worried face. "Um, your mom and mine sent me up to get you." She surveys Elena and the chaotic bed. "Sorry, wake you up?"

Elena pulls her feet free from the tangled sheets, sits up, and waves her friend inside the bedroom. "Yeah, but it's not a big deal." She waits until Laura walks inside and closes the door, and then leans forward. "Look, I know this is going to sound crazy, but I need to get out of here right now."

Laura's right eyebrow twitches upward. "Uh, whatever. Both our mom's are waiting for you down stairs. You pull a disappearing act, and there'll be Hell to pay!"

"Look, I cant..." Unable to sit still any longer, Elena jumps up, walks to the bedroom's window, and spins around to face her friend. "I had a viewing, okay. There was Gavin, his father, and that guy Bill Duncan. Bill was leaving in his car, and some ... Some sort of shadow thing took over his body." The torrent of words leaves her speechless, and gives her a moment to see Laura's expression. "Fuck it!" She turns, and slams her right fist into the wall beside her window. "I don't have time for this stupid shit. It's happening right now, do you understand that? It's trying to kill him right now!"

A pair of arms slide around her, and Laura's voice says, "Elena, Jesus Elena, calm down!"

Her hand aches dully, and cradling it in her left, she wonders distractedly if she's managed to break anything. Realistically, how much time does she have? It's not as though her viewings come with a time stamp, but she ordinarily has an idea of approximately when they will take place. This one, this one had felt so immediate. Was it happening right now?

"What did you see?"

"The three of them were talking," Elena explains, trying to modulate her voice and force down the hysteria she's feeling. "Bill said something to Gavin's dad about Gavin having some questions for him, and then walked to his car."

She pulls free from Laura's arms, not wanting to feel confined, and turns to face her friend, still cradling her injured hand. Laura does not meet her gaze, perhaps feeling ashamed, as she has every right to be.

"The viewing focused my attention on Bill, so I was watching when whatever it was happened to him. He went into convulsions after starting his car, his eyes locked on Gavin and his father, and he drove right at them!"

"So, you didn't see either one of them get hit?"

"No," Elena admits, "but my God, Laura, he floored the accelerator."

"Okay," Laura says, raising a hand, "Do you know where he lives?"

"No," Elena sighs, "I was trying to figure that out before you came in."

"Yesterday, he told me his last name was Young," Laura says, walking to Elena's desk, "I don't suppose you know his father's first name?"

"Uh, Al," Elena answers, "but I don't know if that's Albert, or Alfred, or something completely different."

Laura flips open the laptop sitting on the desk, and is reaching for the power button when the screen lights up. "You ever shut this thing completely down?" Laura asks, sounding a bit exasperated.

"Not really," she answers, experimentally flexing the fingers on her right hand, "it takes too long to start up if I do that. What are you going to search for?"

"Well," Laura mumbles, fingers rattling across the keyboard, "it's probably too early, but ... Yeah, even if they have a land line, it's not been out there long enough to find yet."

"Okay, any other ideas?" Laura's fingers are still typing.

"My mom's always looking at recent real estate purchases," her friend mutters. "If I go here, and then ... Yeah, there were eleven in Pflugerville this past month."

"Hey, I know what the street looks like," Elena exclaims, gesturing with her injured hand before thinking about it. "Shit, I saw the house too. Google Earth the addresses, and I can probably pick it out."

"Actually," Laura says, straightening up from the keyboard, "most of the ones I've found online have pictures already.

"Well, come on, start pulling them up."

"Elena, your hand looks like you slammed it in a car door."

"That's not..."

"And," Laura rides her down, "if we don't go down stairs pretty soon, my mom, or yours, or one of your sisters is going to come up to get us."

Elena sighs. "Get the crazy girl to stop screaming, and maybe you can talk sense to her, huh?"

Laura nods. "Something like that. The screaming didn't bother me that much though, it was the hitting walls that freaked me out." She reaches for Elena's hand, "Let me see that."

Elena reluctantly offers her hand, and then winces as Laura begins gently moving the fingers. "I always said the Ramirez family was a bunch of quacks," she growls, grinding her teeth.

"Just a hypothetical question," Laura murmurs, ignoring her, "say you're right, say something in this dreamscape of yours is trying to kill Gavin, to kill you both, what exactly are you going to do about it?"

"Be there, warn him, something." She hesitates, "Laura, most of what I see, I can't do anything about. This time I have to. Whatever this thing is, it wants to keep Gavin and me apart."

"You just had the vision?"

"Yeah." She wants to yank her hand free from Laura's examination, but manages to resist the temptation.

"You said it was trying to kill him right now, do you know how much time you have before it happens?"

"No, I don't know," Elena shrugs unhappily, "but it felt, immediate. Like it was just about to happen." She does try to pull her hand free this time, and Laura releases it.

"Your hand'll be fine," she pronounces, "gonna swell though."