"That was so wild, that really totally kicked*" she declared, still out in the hallway somewhere.

Deciding to load the breech last, I tried to insert the shell through what I believed to be the loading gate of the three-round magazine.

My fingers were sweaty, trembling. The shell slipped out of my grasp. I felt it bounce off my right shoe.

"Did you trick me, Odd Thomas?" she asked. "Did you get me to crank up old Maryann until she blew?"

She didn't know about Buzz-cut. There was some justice in letting her think that the spirit of a merely pretty-but-not-pretty-enough cocktail waitress had gotten the best of her.

Squatting in the dark, feeling the floor around me, I feared that the shell had rolled beyond discovery and that I would have to use the flashlight to locate it. I needed all four rounds. When I found it in mere seconds, I almost let out a groan of relief.

"I want a repeat performance!" she shouted.

Remaining in a squat, the shotgun propped across my thighs, I tried again to load the magazine, turning the shell first one way, then the other, but the loading gate, if it was the loading gate, wouldn't receive the round.

The task seemed simple, a lot easier than flipping eggs over-easy without breaking the yolks, but evidently it wasn't so simple that someone unfamiliar with the weapon could load it in the dark. I needed light.

"Let's crank up the dumb dead bitch again!"

At the window, I eased aside the rotting drapery.

"But this time, I'm keeping you on a leash, boyfriend."

An hour or two of light remained in the afternoon, but the filter of the storm cast false twilight across the drenched desert. I could still see well enough to examine the gun.

I fished another shell from another pocket. Tried it. No good.

I put it on the window sill, tried a third. In the grip of absolute denial, I tried a fourth.

"You and Danny the Geek aren't getting out of here. You hear me? There is no way out."

The ammunition I had found on the bathroom counter, beside the sink, had evidently been for another weapon.

For all intents and purposes, this couldn't be considered a shotgun anymore. It had become just a fancy club.

I was up the famous creek not only without a paddle but also without a boat.

FORTY-SEVEN

I USED TO THINK THAT I MIGHT ONE DAY LIKE TO WORK in the retail tire business. I spent some time hanging around Tire World, out near the Green Moon Mall, on Green Moon Road, and everyone there seemed to be relaxed and happy.

In the tire life, at the end of the work day, you don't have to wonder if you've accomplished anything meaningful. You've taken in people with bad rubber, and you've sent them rolling away on fine new wheels.

Americans thrive on mobility and feel shrunken in spirit when they do not have it. Providing tires is not only good commerce but also soothes troubled souls.

Although selling tires does not involve a lot of hard bargaining, as do real-estate transactions and deals brokered with international arms merchants, I am concerned that I might find the sales end of the business too emotionally draining. If the supernatural aspect of my life involved nothing more stressful than daily interaction with

Elvis, tire sales would make sense, but as you've seen, the favorite son of Memphis isn't the half of it.

Before I went to the Panamint, I figured that eventually I would return to work for Terri Stambaugh. If the griddle proved too taxing on my nerves, on top of everything else that was perpetually cooking with me, I might succumb to the lure of the tire life, working not sales but installation.

That stormy day in the desert, however, much changed for me. We must have our goals, our dreams, and we must strive for them. We are not gods, however; we do not have the power to shape every aspect of the future. And the road the world makes for us is one that teaches humility if we are willing to learn.

Standing in a moldering room in a ruined hotel, contemplating a useless shotgun, listening to a murderous madwoman assure me that my fate was hers to decide, having given away both my coconut-raisin power bars, I felt humbled, all right. Maybe not as humbled as Wile E. Coyote when he finds himself flattened under the same boulder with which he intended to crush the Road Runner, but pretty humble.

She shouted, "You know why there's no way out, boyfriend?"

I didn't inquire, confident that she would tell me.

"Because I know about you. I know all about you. I know that it works both ways."

This statement made no immediate sense to me, but it was no more mystifying than a hundred other things she'd said, so I didn't devote much effort to translation.

I wondered when she would stop squawking and come looking. Maybe Andre already had crept into the suite, searching, and her shouting in the corridor was intended to mislead me into thinking the ax was not already on the downswing.

As if she had read my mind, she said, "I don't have to come searching for you, do I, Odd Thomas?"

After putting the shotgun on the floor, I wiped my face with my hands, blotted my hands on my jeans. I felt six-days dirty, with no hope of a Sunday bath.

I had always expected to die clean. In my dream, when I open that paneled white door and get the pike through the throat, I'm wearing a clean T-shirt, pressed jeans, and fresh underwear.

"No way I have to risk getting my head shot off looking for you," she shouted.

Considering all the messes I get into, I don't know why I had always expected to die clean. Now that I thought about it, this seemed self-delusional.

Freud would have had a grand time analyzing my have-to-die-clean complex. But then Freud was an ass.

"Psychic magnetism!" she shouted, getting more of my attention than I had recently been giving her. "Psychic magnetism works both ways, boyfriend."

My spirits had not been high by virtually any measure, but at her words, they fell a little.

When I have a specific target in mind, I can cruise at random, and my psychic magnetism will often lead me to him, but sometimes, when I am thinking a lot about another person yet am not actively seeking him, the same mechanism operates, and he is casually drawn to me, all unaware.

When psychic magnetism works in reverse, without my conscious intent, I am without control… and vulnerable to nasty surprises. Of all the things about me that Danny could have told Datura, this might have been the most dangerous for her to know.

Previously, whenever a bad guy has found himself wandering into my presence by virtue of reverse psychic magnetism, he has been as surprised by this development as I have been. Which at least puts us on equal footing.

Instead of searching urgently room to room, floor to floor, Datura intended to remain alert but calm, to make herself receptive to the pull of my aura, or whatever the hell it is that exerts this paranormal attraction. She and Andre could cover the two staircases, periodically check the elevator shafts for noise, and wait until she found herself at my side-or at my back-drawn to me by virtue of the fact that, as in the Willie Nelson song, she was always on my mind.

No matter how clever I was about finding a way out of the hotel, before I got to freedom, I was likely to encounter her. It was a little like destiny.

If you've had a beer too many and are in an argumentative mood, you might say Don't be an idiot, Odd. All you have to do is not think about her.

Imagine yourself running barefoot on a summer day, as carefree as a child, and your foot comes down on an old board, and a six-inch spike spears your metatarsal arch, penetrating all the way through your instep. No need to cancel your plans and seek out a doctor. You'll be fine if you just don't think about that big sharp rusty spike sticking through your foot.