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maggot infested sick.
    "Got to call 911," she mumbled, reaching into her
bag for her cell phone. "This isn't right. It isn't right at all."
    Julia hit the emergency button that would immediately dial
for help and brought the phone up to her ear, gazing into the playground at the
children all in the grip of sickness. They were all crying, some curled into
convulsing balls on the ground. Even the little girl at the fence now lay at
the base of the gate, trembling as if freezing.
    This was a nightmare, she thought as the voice on the
other end of the phone asked her to state her emergency.
    The worlds were about to leave her mouth when she noticed
that her son now gripped the black iron bars of the gate in his gloved hands. His
hood had fallen away to reveal his closely cropped hair and the condition that
had changed his face and the skin of his entire body. The bumps upon his
forehead seemed more pronounced, red and angry as though ready to burst.
    As he stared intensely through the bars at the children
overcome with illness, Daniel Ferrick made a sound the likes of which his
mother had not heard for number of years. In any other circumstance, she would
have paid a great deal of money for a chance to hear it again.
    Her son was laughing.
     
     
    Eve could smell the prominent stink of fear upon the
commuters milling around the main terminal of New York's Grand Central Station.
The city was freaked, but given the circumstances, could she blame them?
    The toad rain ended around thirty minutes after it had
begun, followed by random incidents of bizarreness that they had heard about on
the radio in the limousine on their way to the station: spontaneous human
combustion, stigmata, spectral rape, and myriad other claims that were coming
in seemingly by the minute. And if what Doyle was hinting about was even
remotely true, this was just the tip of a really nasty iceberg.
    Now, perhaps ninety minutes after sunup, she followed the
mage as they wound their way through the early morning commuters that seemed
paralyzed by the turn of events. Eve was careful to avoid any patches of
daylight coming in through Grand Central's high, ornate windows. Fortunately,
though the rain of toads had stopped, the more conventional showers continued
and the clouds outside meant she didn't have work on it that hard. She had
slipped her suede jacket back on, but been careful not to let it get wet.
    Announcements were made over the stations PA system,
departures and arrivals, but nobody seemed to be going anywhere. The crowd
teemed with people unsure of what they ought to be doing. Should they go on
with their day-to-day lives? Go to work and ignore the fact that toads had
rained down from the sky? Exposure to the preternatural had that effect on some
people. When they had gone to bed the night before their perceptions of the
world had been solid and clear, but now all that had changed. They had been
shown just a hint of the truth that she, Doyle and certain other unsavory types
in the paranormal circles had known for most of their lives.
    The world was anything but "normal."
    Some tried to laugh it off. She could hear them among the
crowds that milled about. But beneath their levity she could sense the tension,
smell the fear as it took root and prepared to blossom.
    Eve sympathized. They were in Manhattan, and thanks to all
the nasty shit going down she just knew she was not going to be able to stop at
Barney's for a little shopping expedition. It pissed her off. A visit to New
York always meant a Barney's trip for her. The last time she had picked up a
spectacular silk top and Prada boots that were totally out of fashion now. Doyle
dressed well, for a man, but this was because he was a product of his era and
not because he had any real appreciation for clothes.
    It was a weakness for Eve. She might even have gone so far
as to call it an obsession. There was no sin in wanting to dress well, she
always said. So few people caught the irony. After all,