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in the air. “I don’t mean just your stranger helping out. I mean the whole evening.”
    â€œHonestly, an earthquake in California isn’t strange,” Melanie said.
    Maggie let out a sigh of exasperation. “Not the earthquake. The drawings.”
    â€œThey were doodles,” Melanie said uneasily.
    â€œMuseum-quality doodles.”
    â€œWell, they’re gone now,” Melanie said.
    Maggie placed a hand on her hip. “No, they’re not. I took them with me. And I’m going to show them to Lucien. If anyone can figure out what’s going on with you, it will be Lucien.”
    â€œLucien is in New Orleans,” Melanie pointed out.
    â€œNo, Lucien is on his way here. I just talked to him.”
    â€œIs he—flying in?” Melanie asked.
    â€œOf course he’s flying in.”
    â€œBut the airport—”
    â€œSuffered no major damage. Limited flights will begin arriving tomorrow around noon.”
    â€œYou’re kidding. After all this?” Melanie asked.
    Maggie nodded. “As you said, an earthquake in California is nothing out of the ordinary. Your TV is working just fine, and a few local stations never even went off the air. Of course, one of them has been airing some kind of psychic who claims that this was just a warning. That the real quake is coming and it will be Armageddon.” Maggie rolled her eyes, then managed a smile at last. “The end of the world as we know it. He says this was a prelude to the cataclysm of 2012, as foretold by the Mayans.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œAre you telling me you’ve never heard of the Mayan prophecy?” Maggie asked.
    Melanie felt edgy and impatient, but mostly because Maggie seemed to be taking everything so seriously. “Sure, I’ve heard of it. For some reason they decided the world will end in 2012.”
    â€œIt’s not that simple. They based their calculations on a bunch of factors—the ancient Mayans were brilliant astronomers and mathematicians. They said we’re going through a cycle, a twenty-six thousand year evolution, and that culminates on the winter solstice, December twenty-first, 2012. It wasn’t just the Mayanswho thought so, either. Other societies had similar prophecies, including the Egyptians, the Etruscans, the Navajo and the Apache—and if you look at them closely, you can see hints of the same thing in Druid, ancient Semitic, Celtic, Norse, Greek and Roman beliefs.”
    â€œThe Egyptians worshipped cats, you know,” Melanie reminded her.
    â€œYou know, lots of people think cats rule,” Maggie said lightly. “But getting back to my point, the Hindus also speak of the stages of life, and the end of one of the stages coincides almost exactly with the Mayan beliefs.”
    â€œI would think, when you’re dealing with hundreds of thousands of years, someone might have mis-counted somewhere along the line,” Melanie said, her tone dry. “Seriously, Maggie, do you actually believe all this?”
    Maggie shook her head. “I was speaking with Jade—she called me before I had a chance to get hold of anyone, including Sean, back home. Lucien dreamed there was a quake right as it happened. He and Sean are going to fly out here, and Jade’s already working the Internet for everything it’s worth. But I didn’t get all my information from her. I’ve read a lot about this over the years. I find it fascinating. I was reading an article on the different roads men take to arrive at the same place. In every religion there’s a supreme deity, though often there are other gods and magical, even divine, beings. In Christianity you have angels, including one very bad angel—the devil, who has his own demons to control—and other beliefs have demonic beings, too.”
    Melanie stared at her blankly.
    â€œIt’s fascinating, really,” Maggie told her. “You, of all people, should see