When I lifted it again, the world had miraculously righted itself and the bedroom was eerily silent. The strange indoor storm had abated. The glass wall was whole and unmarked.

And there was a dead man on the floor in front of me.

7

“Jo? Are you okay?”

I lifted my head. Olivia was huddled in a corner, cradling Luna, the cat’s head tucked protectively beneath her arm. I nodded, and turned back to where Butch lay sprawled at my feet like a giant toad.

“What happened?” My voice rasped like it’d been cut to ribbons by a tiny razor.

“Y-You did what you had to do, Jo,” Olivia said, misinterpreting my question. “He came at you with that big knife and I thought for sure he’d kill you. But you didn’t back up. You didn’t run. You didn’t even waver. I couldn’t believe it.”

I glanced at the clock next to her and did a double take. It was 12:01. I couldn’t believe it either. Only a minute had passed since the onset of that tempest? “What about the storm?”

Olivia looked momentarily confused, and glanced uncertainly from me to the window, where a patter of raindrops stroked the glass. “It stopped, I guess. I hadn’t noticed.”

Hadn’t noticed? Hadn’t noticed an electrical bolt had damn near sliced her sister in two? Hadn’t smelled my flesh burning?

“Help me up.” I held up my hand and she reached for it, but Luna whirled in her arms, hissed, and swiped at me.

“Fuck you,” I said to the feline, and pushed myself to my feet. I was a bit wobbly, but alive.

“That’s no way to talk to someone who just helped save your life!” Olivia scolded before burying her face in Luna’s furry nape. “Is it, my precious pookie?” Her voice came out muffled. “My pookster? You love Auntie Jo so much you risked one of your nine lives to save her.”

“What do you mean?”

Olivia didn’t answer at first. Then she turned her face toward mine, cradling the cat to her cheek. “Look at his eyes.”

My legs were shaky, but they held as I crossed to Butch’s body. I nudged him with the toe of my boot, and he rolled like a sausage to his back. He would have been staring sightlessly at the ceiling…if there hadn’t been four long scores across each eye. The lids had been shredded with scalpel-like accuracy, slim incisions but deep, lacerating each eyeball.

“I think I’m going to be sick.”

Olivia joined me next to the body. “You’d be dead if Luna hadn’t leapt when she did.”

But why would a cat attack a human? A man, no less, whom it was obviously afraid of? I turned to ask Olivia this just in time to see her eyes go wide with shock. The heroic feline was unceremoniously dumped on the bed. “Jo! You’re injured!”

I looked down and saw the blood seeping through the left shoulder of my blouse. Part of me was surprised I hadn’t felt the injury before. Another part knew it was a bad sign I hadn’t. “It’s okay,” I told her, knowing it wasn’t. “It doesn’t hurt.”

“Lie down. Let me get something to staunch the wound, and we’ll call an ambulance.”

I was in no shape to argue. Perhaps it was only psychosomatic, but I was feeling a bit dizzy all of a sudden. Luna hissed as I plopped down among the pillows, then leapt from the bed, over the corpse, and streaked away. I closed my eyes.

I must have drifted off because when I came to again Olivia was seated next to me, pressing a clean towel to my wound. I winced as fresh pain coursed through me, and was about to tell her she shouldn’t have used the good towels when the first tear fell.

“Hey,” I said, reaching up to wipe it away. “Hey, it’s okay. I’m going to be fine.”

“I know,” she said. Her face crumpled anyway. “I just keep seeing that monster—he really looked like a monster!—and he wouldn’t stop staring at you.” She shook her head side to side, as if to dislodge the memory. “I thought for sure I was going to lose you. Again.”

I tried to make my smile reassuring. “Well, you didn’t lose me, and you won’t ever lose me. It’s just a little scratch. See? The bleeding has already stopped.”

She sniffled. “I guess.”

We sat in silence, Olivia’s cell phone clasped on her lap, though she made no move to open it. Chaos would resume as soon as that call was made, and even though it was a false sense of normalcy surrounding us now—there was a dead man on the bedroom floor—I think we both felt once we made that call, our lives would never be the same.

“Gawd,” Olivia sniffled, and lifted the edge of the towel to see if the bleeding had stopped. “I just have the worst luck with guys.”

We looked at each other and for a moment neither of us spoke. Then we began to laugh, that crazed, hysterical laughter you see in people who’ve drank too much, or who’ve forgotten their lines on their wedding day. The laughter tore at my shoulder, probably starting the bleeding again, but it felt so good, much more acute than the pain, and I didn’t want to stop. Our bodies shook with it and tears rolled unheeded down our faces.

We were both gasping, dizzy, and breathless, when I felt Olivia jerk and inhale sharply. Opening my teary eyes, I too froze. There was a beefy arm across her throat, and her fingers clawed at it, her eyes wide and instantly somber. Butch wasn’t exactly choking her, but he wasn’t being gentle either. Hauling her to her feet, he squared himself behind her body in a position that made it impossible for Olivia to defend or escape the hold, even if she knew how.

“You’re dead,” I said dumbly, though all evidence pointed to the contrary. I’d killed him. Yet there he stood, blood staining his clothing out of a wound that no longer existed. How could that be? In fact, the only ill effect he still showed was the scoring about his eyes and a blind and total reliance on his other senses. Especially, I noted, his sense of smell.

“Not quite,” he said. “Not yet.”

The words fast healer burst through my brain, images of a wrist popping back into place on a dusty desert road, a crumpled body coming back to life. I knew then it was possible. Blindly, Butch backed away from me, dragging Olivia with him, his nostrils flaring widely with every breath. He was moving closer and closer to the blade I’d dropped. I had to do something quickly before it was too late to do anything at all.

“Let her go,” I said, pitching my voice to the right of the bed before easing myself up and to the left. “Y-You want me, fine. But leave her out of this.” My arm throbbed and the bedroom wavered as I stood, but I forced myself steady. I didn’t know how long I could stand, but passing out wasn’t an option. I’d save Olivia or I’d die trying.

“How’d you do that?” Butch asked, head tilted into the middle of the room.

“Do what?”

“Kill me. You’re supposed to be immobile during metamorphosis. How’d you move?”

Like I knew? Instead of answering, I advanced.

“One more step and you’ll watch your sister die.” He’d stilled and was focused on me despite his blindness. For emphasis, he tightened his grip. Olivia’s eyes bulged. “Now step back.”

Death rode his brow. I stepped back. Think, Joanna. Think!

Okay, so Butch’s sight was gone, but his other senses were flawlessly acute. It made me wonder at this transformation he’d talked about. It obviously meant something to him. He’d waited until then to try and kill me, and in that time all my senses had been shut down. But now that they were back, what about that “sixth sense” he’d spoken of? Was that what he was using to track me now?

As much as I hated to take my eyes from Butch and Olivia, I had to close them in order to transfer focus to my other senses. I did, and the difference was immediately discernable. Colors flashed behind my eyelids, accompanying scent and sound. By simply casting my mind in the direction of the objects I last remembered seeing, I could smell them.