Twins by Francine Pascal

Author:Francine Pascal
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon Pulse
Published: 2002-11-22T16:00:00+00:00

Personal Angel of Death

WASHINGTON SQUARE PARK HAD NEVER looked more beautiful. The trees rustled gloriously from the strong winds, and the arch was lit to perfection, shining like a bright white beacon signifying that Gaia had in fact made it home. It was deserted but thoroughly unthreatening, as if all the skinheads and junkies had decided to give the Village bohemians and the NYU students a much-needed night off.

The chess tables were empty at this time of night, but they were the ultimate sight for Gaia’s painfully sore eyes. She stumbled to the tables, plopped herself down on a stone seat, and slid her hands back and forth across the board, savoring the tactile taste of the familiar.

“Gaia…”

“Ed?” Gaia popped her head up from the table. Someone had whispered her name. She hoped that perhaps Ed had come to her, understanding through deep emotional telepathy that her legs and feet were nearly out of commission and that he needed to meet her halfway. She looked around her, searching through the round bushes and the angular branches of the trees, but there was no sign of Ed.

“Gaia,” the voice whispered again. “Please.”

The whispers were anxious and short of breath. She didn’t know how she could have thought it was Ed. It was a girl’s voice. A girl in trouble. Perhaps not every park-dwelling scumbag had gotten the memo about taking the night off. Gaia’s spine snapped to attention as she pricked up her ears like a predator and chased down the voice with her eyes.

There, in the clearing by the brick rest rooms. A young woman’s form shivered in silhouette as her hands reached out to Gaia, beckoning her with quick snaps of her wrists. “Jesus, hurry,” the girl moaned.

Gaia didn’t waste another moment. She jumped from her stone seat and raced toward the desperate voice, cranking every ounce of energy out of her wobbly legs, leaping two park benches and landing with a flat thud on the higher level of the park.

“I can’t see you,” Gaia said through deep, winded breaths. She staggered the rest of the way toward the voice. She’d forgotten just how painfully tired her muscles were. She hardly had the energy to be a hero. But her old instincts were still intact, and that was encouraging. Whatever Loki had done to her, her obsessive savior complex was still fully functional. “Come into the light where I can see you,” she said.

The girl did as Gaia asked and stepped into a spike of light that cut through the branches from the street-lamps outside the park.

But when Gaia saw the face, her chest went numb. Every ounce of strength that was left in her heart began to crumble.

The vision of fiery red hair seemed to melt what was left of Gaia’s defenses. Long, tangled red hair. Red velvet lips. A curvy form in a skintight black miniskirt and a black Nirvana T-shirt … There was no way she could be standing there, yet she was. These two basic truths were in such pure contradiction, Gaia wasn’t even sure what to think.

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