“Perhaps it is better if I show you.”

  My eyes widened at that, and I stared at the words spelled out before me for a heartbeat or two. Then I nodded, and said, “Yes, I’d like that. I’d like that very much. But how...”

  And just like that, I was no longer in my minivan.

  I was somewhere else, somewhere beautiful, somewhere majestic and free and untethered and light. It was somewhere not here, but it also didn’t feel much different either. I saw people and buildings and activity and excitement and love. Mostly I saw love. And by my side was a little man I remembered, a little man I had met years ago at a Denny’s, a little man who held my hand and pointed and spoke softly and laughed often and showered me with more love than I’d ever felt before.

  It could have been hours or days later when I found myself seated once again in the minivan, my face in my hands and tears streaming through my fingers.

  On the notepad before me were the words: “You are loved more than you know, Samantha Moon. Yes, you are loved very much indeed.”

  When I finally looked up, I noted the homeless man was gone.

  Chapter Eleven

  Tammy didn’t like her dad very much.

  Now, as she lay in her bedroom, with her mom in the next door office and her brother in his bedroom down the hall, she decided right then and there that she didn’t like her dad at all. Nope, not one bit.

  Tammy knew he had cheated on her mother. She had relived every lurid detail in her mother’s memory. Tammy liked the word lurid. It made her feel grown-up to use it. She very much wanted to be a grown-up. Yes, she had recently turned sixteen, but she had lived far more than her sixteen years, she was certain. Even if the lives she lived were through other people’s memories.

  A few months ago, when Kingsley had come over, she had dipped into his mind and relived nearly every worthwhile memory the man had had. And that man had lived—and fought and killed... and made love. The many, many women he had made love to! Tammy smiled. She was still a virgin, yes, but reliving some of Kingsley’s more titillating memories had been, well, wild.

  Too wild for a girl her age, she suspected.

  But, as she liked to believe, she was beyond her years, thanks to the thoughts and memories of these crazy-ass adults around her.

  Allison had been a stripper in her twenties. A stripper! The stories Allison could tell, if she chose to tell them. But Allison didn’t. She kept her past in her past. And, my oh my, the vampire boyfriend she’d had before meeting her mother. Wow wow wow! So hot. A boyfriend who was now dead, sadly.

  Tammy relived that too.

  Tammy could “relive” any memory of anyone around her, and she could do it quickly. She had developed an ability to “touch down” upon only the highlighted memories, so to speak. She’d never really explained this before, to anyone, but Tammy, when she dipped effortlessly into anyone’s mind, could see that certain memories were “highlighted.” She quickly learned to target these memories, as they were always the more interesting and worthwhile memories.

  In the beginning, Tammy felt bad about invading the privacy of others. And so she only did it sometimes. Maybe just a few of mother’s memories here and there. Maybe just a few of Kingsley’s—she loved Kingsley’s memories the best—and then some of Allison’s. Mary Lou, her aunt, had boring memories. The “reliving the memories” part was strange and exciting, and at first, Tammy hadn’t known what to make of it. In the beginning, she would find herself in the middle of the memory and be confused. Later, she learned to follow the trail of the memory to the beginning. After that, she learned to move “through the memory,” which was the only way she knew how to think about it. She saw herself as a spirit, moving forward within the memory. Memories, after all, were really just long comic strips, so to speak. She could touch down at any point and sort of hit the play button.

  Her mother could do something similar, but it took her more effort. Tammy, on the other hand, could lie in bed and do a number of things at once—and one of them was to relive memories even as she was doing homework. If, say, Mom was having wine with Mary Lou in the living room, Tammy needed only to dip into her aunt’s mind, and idly poke around for the highlighted memories. Her boring memories! Except for a few wild years in college, her aunt was one big bore-fest.

  Anyway, the fun thing about memories was that there were always more of them. Each day, each hour created new ones, and Tammy scanned them all, continuously and often. Yes, she knew she had a problem, but she also sort of saw herself as a kind of guardian, too. No one, but no one, was coming to this house without her knowing what kind of person they were.

  Her father had lucked out in the sense that he had died before Tammy’s gifts had fully matured. In a way, she was glad her father had died before she could dip into his mind. Quite honestly, she was afraid of what she might have found there.

  The problem was... now she was getting snatches of her father’s mind within Anthony’s mind. Snatches that filtered through her brother’s thoughts—a mind she rarely, if ever, dipped into her. Her brother’s seriously gross mind.

  After all, Tammy was certain that her brother had crushes on every female at his school, including some of their more curvy teachers. And not just crushes... but fantasies.

  She shuddered. So, so gross.

  The problem was—and this was why Tammy was currently not dating—her brother was not very different than all the boys at her school. Like all the boys. In fact, compared to some, her brother was tame!

  Tammy was turned off—no repelled—by the young males of her species. She literally wanted nothing to do with them. Certainly not now, and maybe not for a long time, if ever.

  Tammy had gotten quite good at letting feelings “slip away,” as she called it. She had to. She saw too much, relived too much, heard too much, knew too much. She recognized early on the need to let go of the unwanted thoughts. Only the very good ones were permitted to stay. After all, some memories were just too juicy to let go of!

  And her mom was full of them. Just packed with them. The good news was, Tammy had probed her mother’s mind so much that she now knew which memories to avoid completely. These were the highlighted and slightly pulsating memories. Such memories were bound to traumatize Tammy for days. Yes, these were the memories of her mother and Kingsley... being intimate. Which she avoided like the plague.

  Besides the gross memories, her mother was full of so many... wonderful and fantastic memories. In fact, just a few months ago, her mother had had the most amazing conversation with Dracula. Freakin’ Dracula! And Tammy loved the memories of her mother flying as the giant dragon, Talos.

  Cool stuff was always happening to her mom, and now tonight was the biggest whammy of them all.

  Tammy was like 99% certain her mom had had a conversation with God.

  But that wasn’t even the half of it.

  The memories of heaven that Tammy had relived in her mother’s mind were like nothing she had ever seen before. Like nothing anyone had ever seen before. It was a heaven that most people were destined for, even those who went to hell and had their hell experience. Yes, Tammy had also relived her mother’s conversation with the devil himself, and knew that hell wasn’t really real. Not the way people thought of it. Oh, sure it was as real as people allowed it to be—the same with the devil, who had been created out of the ether to fulfill a role. He was literally thought turned into creation by mass expectation. Tammy was pretty sure she understood this.

  She folded her hands behind her head and smiled.

  The devil and God all within three months.

  Wow, Mom!

  Tammy had reviewed all the conversations her mom had had with the Librarian—or the Alchemist, as her mom sometimes referred to Archibald Maximus, the cute guy who oversaw the secret occult reading room at Cal State Fullerton, and who also helped run a school for Light Warriors, of which Tammy may or may not be one of. She didn’t think she was, but there was always that possibility. The school took in kids her age, though usually younger than her—and trained them to fight the dark masters who sought to re-enter the world. Creepy stuff, all of it. She had yet to meet Maximus, and had yet to probe his mind. She suspected many secrets to the universe would await if she did so. He was, after all, a human who had found immortality. He didn’t have to drink all that nasty blood or host a dark master through some nefarious dark magicks that involved tainted blood, like her mom and Kingsley and Dracula and Fang had to go through. Like Allison, the Alchemist’s blood was clean. Unlike Allison, he was immortal.

  Tammy idly wondered if Allison had any new fun memories. Her last batch of them had been crazy as hell, and involved the world’s creepiest hunting lodge in Oregon. So, so creepy. But Tammy loved the memory, and loved watching how Allison and her triad of witches had overcome something very wicked indeed.

  But heaven?

  Holy sweet mama—it had been so beautiful! It had also been a lot to take in, even for her mother who had witnessed it firsthand. Her mother, who had been crying through it all, all while being led by the hand of God himself, a short man who just might also be a homeless man, too. Tammy wasn’t sure, although her mother did have a vague memory of meeting the man at a Denny’s years ago.

  She met God... twice!!

  Tammy was almost developing a newfound respect for her mother. Almost. Her mother was, of course, still her mother, and thus a dork. Like a royal dork. Her mother’s fashion was at least two years out of date. And her make-up was almost always a little off. Too much foundation here. Too much mascara there. Tammy knew her mother wore the make-up so that when her picture was randomly taken at any number of places—or security cameras the world over—her mother would, you know, actually show up in the picture, and not look like the invisible woman with animated high-cut mom jeans and sneakers that no one, but no one, wore anymore.

  Such a dork.

  But Tammy felt sorry for her mother, too.

  She thought about her mother’s conversation with God, and knew all over again that the heaven her mother had been shown was not meant for her—or any vampire, or werewolf, or Lichtenstein monster. While the dark masters who shared their bodies, and thus robbed them of heaven, fled back to wherever the hell they hid from the devil, the original host—her mom, for instance—would be reabsorbed back into the Source of all Life.

  Back into God.

  There was no heaven for Mom, and that made Tammy feel terrible. But didn’t God say something about heaven being here, on earth, for her mother? He had. He had told her to look for the good here, to see the good here, and she would catch a glimpse of heaven, every day. In effect, as long as her mother lived, earth was her heaven. And if mankind ever reached the stars, the stars would be her heaven, too. She wouldn’t have to be reabsorbed back into God, whatever the hell that meant.

  Tammy was not surprised to find the tears on her cheeks as she lay there in the dark, thinking of her mother dying, and becoming one once again with God; of her mother never, ever seeing that beautiful place called heaven.

  So beautiful, thought Tammy.

  She clenched her fist and decided right then and there that, dork or not, she would do all she could for the rest of her life to keep her mother alive, if possible. The problem was, her mother was, like, always putting herself in the world’s most dangerous situations to help others. It was like her mother was asking for it. Asking to die.

  No, thought Tammy. She wasn’t asking to die. Not ever. She was looking to help people—pretty much anyone who came to her, her mother would help them. Well, usually for a little money, of course—unless the client had none, and then her mom would do it for free. Free! Who did that these days?

  Her mom did. That’s who. Her mom who sacrificed her own eternity to help others.

  That put another lump in Tammy’s throat and she fought it, but lost and found herself weeping again.

  She was just drying her eyes when she heard her mother approaching. She could hear her footsteps—and her thoughts. Her thoughts were... interesting. It appeared her mother, who had been reading a manuscript all evening long, was sort of lost in this fantasy world. Although Tammy hadn’t read the book, she saw the vivid images in her mother’s mind as she relived her favorite scenes—and replayed her favorite snatches of dialogue. From what Tammy could tell, this was a damn good book. It also felt real to her, and real to her mother in particular. So real that she knew her mother was currently struggling with a rather audacious concept. (Tammy was certain she’d used the word audacious correctly.) The concept centered around a woman in the story—the heroine—a woman with whom her mother had come to love the way all bibliophiles came to love their favorite characters. Tammy saw the woman plain as day in her mother’s thoughts. The thing was... this was a woman forged from her mother’s imagination, cobbled together from the words of the book. Except...

  Except this woman looked so real, so very real.

  This confused her mother, too.

  And Tammy saw why. Boy, did she see why.

  Mommy’s gonna be busy tonight, she thought. She also knew her mother had secretly emailed the book to herself, without telling her client. And, further, that she had emailed the book to Allison, as well. Her mother was such a sneak.

  Speaking of whom, her mother paused just outside her door. Tammy could sense her mother collecting her thoughts before pushing aside her thoughts to give herself fully to her daughter. Tammy liked that about her mom, who always gave Tammy her full attention. And when her bedroom door cracked open, she knew what her mother was going to say before she said it.

  “I’m—”

  “Heading out. I know, Mom.”

  Silhouetted in the light of the door, she saw her mother’s head dip, noting her mom’s hair was slightly askew. She knew her mother couldn’t even see her own hair—part of the curse of that devil woman inside her. Tammy surprised herself by swinging her legs out of bed and hurrying over to her mother and throwing her arms around her.

  “Be careful tonight, okay?”

  Her mother blinked at that, then nodded, and smiled. “Of course, sweetie. You okay? Have you been crying?”

  “It’s nothing—”

  “You want to talk?”

  “No, no. You need to get to that guy’s house before midnight. The ghost and all.”

  “You know about that, huh?” asked her mom.

  “I know about a lot.”

  “What else do you know about the ghost?”

  “I know she’s not a ghost.”

  Her mother nodded. “Yeah, I’m thinking that maybe she’s not either.”

  Her mother smiled at that, but then the smile wavered, and Tammy knew her mother was thinking about what she’d seen today: her vision of paradise. Tammy wondered if catching a glimpse of heaven was worse than never experiencing it. Her mother said, “Not much escapes you, huh?”

  “No, Mom.” Tammy paused and then reached out and fixed her mom’s hair. The jeans and sneakers were beyond fixing, but there was at least hope for her hair.

  “Better?” her mom asked.

  “A lot better. But you’re still a dork.”

  “That goes without saying. You are to stay here, with your brother.”

  “You mean the Fire Warrior who can, like, kick seven or eight werewolves’ asses all by himself? Him?”

  “Yeah, him. Keep an eye on him, and an ear.”

  “A telepathic ear?”

  “Yes. I’m worried about him.”

  Tammy nodded and watched her mom move back through the hallway and open her brother’s door to let him know she was leaving. Tammy knew that her brother was in the middle of an internal conversation with their dad, a man who turned out to be a royal sleaze, for which Tammy wasn’t sure she could ever forgive him.

  When her mother was gone, Tammy went back to her bed and lay there, and relived heaven all over again.

  Again and again...

  Chapter Twelve

  I had a lot on my mind.

  Enough that I was certain I had gone through three of four red lights with nary a memory of passing through them. And was nary even a word? It was, I was certain of it. Okay, ninety percent certain. Maybe eighty.

  Anyway, it wasn’t often one met God. Then again, I had met him twice, hadn’t I?

  I had.

  I think.

  The homeless man on the street, yes, after much thought, I was certain I had seen him before, at a Denny’s years ago. A homeless man who had known everything about me. And I mean, everything.

  God, certainly.

  Then again, from what I could tell of my vision of heaven, God was in all things. In heaven, everything pulsed with light. God’s light. And everything was connected. The light touched everything and was everything, wove through everything, pulsated with everything, and I knew now that light was God. Or whatever you wanted to call him. Or her. Of course, the person I had met today was a man. But it could have just as easily been a woman. Or a floating ball of light. Or a voice from the sky. From what I understood, he appeared as we expected him to appear, which apparently made it easier for all involved.

  The devil, I knew, possessed his followers.

  God probably did the same. Or not. If you were the creator of all that is and will forever be, conjuring up a temporary flesh and blood body wouldn’t be much of a big deal. Besides, I was fairly certain angels did just that.

  But not demons. They were bodiless, I knew.

  Until they possessed a willing human. Or mostly willing. Or the cursed.

  The nature of God was a heady subject, and I had been given a glimpse of his magnificence. Then again, wasn’t the earth around me a glimpse of it as well? It was, and it was more than a glimpse.

  You can make heaven on Earth, Sam. Now, in this place.

  I thought about that as I drove steadily on into the night, toward a home with a ghost that wasn’t a ghost. I was pretty sure of that.