Roxy snickered. I was stunned by Miranda's outrageous, and patently false, claim. I stood up, saying, "You're making that up. There is no such word as cataclysient, and even if there was, I'm not it. I'm just a simple woman trying to do you a favor, and I resent the fact that you can think something so ridiculous about me. Sheesh!"
"Oh, I don't know," Roxy started to say. I mouthed that I'd get her later. She just grinned and continued on. "There's just something about you that shrieks cataclysmic disaster. I think Miranda's dead on."
"You would."
"Ladies!"
We stopped sniping and looked at our friend. She shook her Invocation candle at us. "I don't know what exactly the Goddess chose to reveal to your eyes, but I do know this—you are taking her gift far too lightly. There is purpose behind everything she reveals, and if you do not take careful heed of her warnings, you will suffer."
"Are you trying to scare us?" I asked.
"If she is, she's doing a good job," Roxy muttered sotto voce. I agreed wholeheartedly.
"Yes, I am, if that's what it will take to bring you to your senses. The Goddess did not share her vision of your future with me, Joy, but this I sense: If you continue down the path you have started, you place your life, your very soul, at risk. Please keep the Goddess's words close to your heart, and make no foolish decisions."
It wasn't so much Miranda's words, but the almost tangible sense of fear surrounding her that remained with me, still palpable almost an hour later as we drove through the winding roads toward the small town on the southern Oregon coast where we lived.
"What are you going to do?" Roxy asked.
"About what?"
She shot a fast glance at me out of the corner of her eye as she turned down the street where I lived in a tiny studio apartment. "About our trip. I know you think I'm an idiot to spend my two weeks in Europe hunting down a Dark One, but I was hoping you'd come with me because I think we'd have a lot of fun. Now… well, now you have a really good reason to go to Paris instead."