Free Boyfriend from Hell (Saturn's Daughters) by Jamie Quaid Page B

thinking I could go back in when the preaching stopped. I thought I caught a glimpse of Lily’s weirdo slipping out the front, and I followed, out of stupid curiosity. What would my wacko neighbor be doing at Max’s funeral? And why had I only noticed him after Max died? My paranoia was starting to show, and I decided I’d feel better if I confronted the problem instead of hiding.
    The moment I limped down the front steps, my vision disappeared in a blinding flash of cameras.
    I was teetering on the brink of exhaustion, frayedand distraught, with a mascara-streaked face. I’d had enough surprises for a lifetime. I could have reacted very badly. Instead, I swung to beat a hasty retreat to the pillared porch.
    Cutting off my escape by trespassing on the funeral home steps, a talking head from the TV station got in my face with his microphone.
    “How did the MacNeills react when you showed up this evening, Miss Clancy? Do they blame you for the loss of their son and heir?”
    Son and heir ?
    Unnerved and off guard, I did not behave with decorum. Lacking a gun and a fast draw, I yanked the microphone out of his hand and snapped it into wires. A cameraman raced to film the incident. From my position on the steps, I kicked his knee to unbalance him, grabbed his video camera, and flung it against a brick wall, shattering it.
    The crowd closed in, suffocating me. Some other jerkwad yelled and swung his mic too near my nose. I grabbed his wrist and may have broken it, from the pained sound of his cry. I was weeping too hard to care. I’d spent two years avoiding confrontation, for this?
    The shouts and altercation brought Max’s buddies running.
    I was nearly crushed in the abrupt melee of flying fists and boots. Before I could catch my breath, Lance had the pretty-boy newsman on the ground and was unprettifying his face. Horrified, I didn’t want the boys arrested for my sake, and I certainly didn’t needany more black marks on my record. I wanted a do-over, but fleeing was about the best I could arrange—if I could miraculously limp through the battleground without being noticed.
    In a fair world, a tornado would have blown the scrimmage across the lawn like autumn leaves.
    Even as I thought about it, an unnatural wind whistled through the stately elms, gusting through the pillared porch and shoving me forward. Huge trees dipped and bowed their heads. Leaves blew sideways and men toppled. With the fearful wind at my back, I fled down a path that amazingly cleared across the lawn. Maybe I was crying so hard, I wasn’t seeing straight. I just ran, head down, tears falling.
    Despite shouts of surprise and fright, I reached the Miata, gunned the engine, and got the hell out of there, too terrified to look back.

8

    I n bed, I cried my eyes out. Even Milo’s purrs and licks couldn’t comfort me. I think it was as much pity party as grief. I didn’t know what was happening to me, and I was terrified.
    I needed to know I was directing my life. For all my growing-up years, I’d had a flighty Fate in the form of my mother uprooting me from one home after another. Once on my own, I didn’t want anyone tugging my strings. I needed to make my owndecisions. But suddenly, I was being buffeted and redirected by strange winds. Literally .
    Mini-tornados did not drop out of the sky to aid my escape in any world that I knew. Maybe I’d just imagined my abrupt departure from the funeral home. Or maybe I could go completely around the bend and believe the weird guy I’d been following was a Harry Potter magician. I could take that idiocy further and believe that what had happened to Max had been unnatural, but that wasn’t easing the pain.
    And neither incident had happened in the Zone. They’d happened around me— unless I was a candidate for that aluminum colander hat, which was a very strong possibility. Maybe stress had fried my brain cells. I didn’t have time—or patience or money—for counseling.
    In the morning, after