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you. I do. It’s just …”
    “Oh, Colin, I know. And I told you, that was so unfair of me. I shouldn’t have even let him sit down even if it was just to have someone to talk to. If a pretty girl had sat down with you at a bar, God knows what sort of things would have come out of my mouth.”
    Colin smiled at her. He had no intention of testing out this theory that her jealousy could get her to act just as badly as he had. But something else was troubling her. Colin watched her, waiting for her to tell him about this dream she couldn’t stop thinking about.
    “It was so weird,” Anna said as she tore little strips off her paper napkin, “we were chasing a jade colored demon through Petrograd in 1920 and I followed you around a street corner, and there was Jas. But not like Jas would have looked in 1920 in Russia, but Jas as she looked one of the last times I saw her. And she knew she was dead, but was warning me to hurry up to help you, which doesn’t make sense either because the only reason I stopped is to see my dead friend standing in the street.”
    Colin reached across the table to take the napkin away from her before their table was filled with paper strips. “Anna, dreams are always a bit like falling down the rabbit hole. They don’t mean anything, other than you’re grieving the loss of your friend.”
    Anna nodded. She wanted to tell him how real it had felt, though, but the waitress arrived with their food, and as they started picking through it, Colin finally brought up the email. “They named us, but they don’t know who we are.”
    Anna glanced up from her chicken shawarma salad. “I know. Something’s up.” She took a bite of lunch. “ Not being able to sense the power of that demon the other night; our separation here; this email. They didn’t put two and two – or I guess, one and one – together. Colin, do you think we’re in hiding?”
    Colin’s mind was racing. He’d had that thought, too. “ I think it’s possible. But what’s scaring the shit out of me right now, if that’s true, is that apparently, no one has a clue what’s going on. How can that be possible?”
    Anna was starting to lose her appetite and started picking at her salad. “ Let’s assume it’s true then. We need to be more careful than ever. We can’t assume anything anymore.”
    Colin agreed. “ Does this mean you’ll stop objecting to me being so overprotective?” He couldn’t help being overprotective. It was ingrained far too deeply within him and Anna knew that. She just smiled at him, but he suspected that she meant it as a yes.
    He didn’t want their lunch to end, but they both knew they couldn’t let it last too long. There was always a danger of being recognized, or just spending too much time together and falling into temptation, so they went their separate ways after lunch, but Colin stood in the parking lot for a long time, watching Anna get in her car then drive away, wishing he could follow her home.

Chapter 5
     
     
    Anna’s ringing phone woke her from another bizarre, terrifying dream. This time, she had been dreaming about Paris, but not Paris today. This was an old Paris. A dirty, smelly, crowded Paris and she was standing in the middle of the street watching mobs of men and women pass her by. She was trying to follow the conversations as they buzzed past her, but she was still learning French and so much of it didn’t make sense to her. Who were the Jacobins? What had they taken over? This seemed to worry some people, though, so it made her worry, too. She had already seen enough violence.
    The crowd swept her along down the street and she picked out words, phrases, just enough meaning to know this revolution had taken a deadly turn. Accusations were being made, summary trials held throughout the country, sentences handed down with no recourse. There was no time for second chances or appeals anyway. Somebody bumped into her and she tripped into the rough texture of the street.