Cold Fire

turn itself into a butterfly. That was her hope, anyway.
    Sometime between midnight and one o'clock in the morning, Holly fell asleep in her chair. She did not dream.
    He woke her.
    She looked up into his beautiful eyes, which were not cold in the dim light of the towel-draped lamp, but which were still mysterious.
    He was leaning over her chair, shaking her gently. “Holly, come on. We've got to go.”
    Instantly casting off sleep, she sat up. “Go where?”
    “Scranton, Pennsylvania.”
    “Why?”
    Grabbing up one of her uneaten candy bars, peeling off the wrapper, biting into it, he said, “Tomorrow afternoon, three-thirty, a reckless schoolbus driver is going to try to beat a train at a crossing. Twenty-six kids are going to die if we're not there first.”
    Rising from her chair, she said, “You know all that, the whole thing, not just a part of it?”
    “Of course,” he said around a mouthful of candy bar. He grinned. “I know these things, Holly. I'm psychic, for God's sake.”
    She grinned right back at him.
    “We're going to be something, Holly,” he said enthusiastically. “Superman? Why the hell did he waste so much time holding down a job on a newspaper when he could've been doing good?”
    In a voice that cracked with relief and with love for him, Holly said, “I always wondered about that.”
    Jim gave her a chocolaty kiss. “The world hasn't seen anything like us, kid. Of course, you're going to have to learn martial arts, how to handle a gun, a few other things. But you're gonna be good at it, I know you are.”
    She threw her arms around him and hugged him fiercely, with unadulterated joy.
    Purpose.