There was something wrong with the little old lady. She was blurry. And then, in mid-stride, she morphed into a man clad entirely in black. A black ski mask covered his face. Instead of an umbrella, he gripped a military-issue knife.

Zack’s eyes were confused by the abrupt transformation but his psychic senses were fully jacked and had no difficulty whatsoever interpreting the situation. Intuitively, as he always did when the chips were down, he went with his parasensitive instincts. His mirror-talent abilities recognized a would-be killer regardless and telegraphed the assailant’s next move in a nanosecond.

He slid to the right, knowing that the attacker expected him to shift to the left. The ski-masked man blurred again. In the next instant the elderly woman reappeared. She adjusted with dazzling speed, whipping around to run down her prey.

The old lady was a para-hunter.

That was not good news. He had spent a lot of time in the gym and the dojo, sparring with his hunter relatives. He was good but he lacked the preternatural speed and lightning-fast reflexes of a level-ten hunter. Ski Mask was definitely level ten.

He yanked the gun out of his holster. The elderly woman lashed out with a slashing kick. He managed, just barely, to evade the killing force of the blow but the toe of the woman’s shoe caught him in the ribs and sent him reeling back. A second strike numbed his shoulder. The gun flew out of his fingers. He heard it clatter on the concrete. There was no time to search for it. He could not take his eyes off the old woman.

In the next instant she morphed back into Ski Mask. This time Zack’s mirror talent caught the cues just before the transition and telegraphed the information to his brain in a neuro-chemical way that was literally faster than the speed of thought. He suddenly understood something very important. The constant morphing came with a price. Switching from ski-masked killer to little old lady and back again slowed the guy down a little. So why was he wasting the psychic juice it obviously required to shift back and forth?

Even with the faint hesitations that occurred when he jumped from one identity to the other, the attacker was still hunter-fast. It was all Zack could do to avoid the slashing knife. There was no way to escape the assault. The wrought-iron gate was at his back. The assailant blocked the only exit out of the breezeway.

The old woman came at him again in another lethal charge. His mirror talent noted the way she was balanced and he knew without being able to explain how he knew that she expected him to dodge right. He waited until the last possible second and went left.

The old woman slammed into the iron bars. For a fraction of a second or so she seemed disoriented.

Zack seized the opening and ran toward the far end of the breezeway. If he could reach the parking lot, he could use the parked cars as shields.

Ski Mask was suddenly behind him, running him down the way a predator runs down prey.

Zack whipped around in a small, tight circle. When he came out of it, he had one foot extended.

Caught in mid-morph, Ski Mask stumbled over the foot and went down. But he rolled to his feet as the old lady with paranormal speed.

Zack grabbed the purple blanket that was lying on the concrete. He flung it at the woman’s face.

The blanket found its target, wrapping around the attacker’s eyes for a few critical seconds. The old woman leaped back, swiping wildly at the fabric with her free hand.

Lesson Number One from the gym and the dojo: luck and surprise beat even the best reflexes every time.

The woman switched back to the ski mask persona.

Zack made no attempt to close with him. There was no way he could win in hand-to-hand combat with a hunter. He had to stay out of reach. The gun was his only hope. He could see it out of the corner of his eye. It lay on the concrete about ten feet away.

He was edging toward it when headlights suddenly flared, illuminating Ski Mask and himself in a blinding glare. A car was pulling into a nearby parking slot.

The black-clad figure hesitated again. Then he whirled and raced out of the breezeway into the shadows of the parking lot. Zack scooped up the gun and went after him, but he knew that the fleeing man’s superior reflexes and speed were going to trump his mirror talent.

Ski Mask arrived at a dark SUV that had been sitting at the far side of the lot. The passenger door was already open and the vehicle was in motion when he leaped up into the passenger seat. The big engine roared as the driver stomped down on the accelerator.

The vehicle, running with the lights off, slammed forward, aiming straight at Zack. It didn’t take any high-grade mirror talent to figure out that if he stayed where he was he was going to get flattened.

He leaped into the safety of the narrow valley between two parked vehicles.

The SUV sped past him out of the lot and onto the street. It vanished around the next corner. He was not greatly surprised to note that there was no license plate.

He heard a familiar ring tone. He reached into his pocket, pulled out the phone and flipped it open.

“Jones,” he said automatically, his attention on the streetlights at the intersection where the SUV had disappeared.

“Zack?” Raine’s voice was tight and urgent. “Are you all right?”

The anxious edge in her voice distracted him immediately.

“What’s wrong?” he asked sharply.

“I’m not sure. I got a little panicky a few minutes ago. For some reason I thought you were in trouble.”

“Huh.”

“You’re breathing hard. Oh, good grief.” She sounded utterly chagrined. She cleared her throat. “Am I, uh, interrupting something?”

It took him a second to figure out what she meant. “No. What’s going on, Raine?”

“Don’t snap at me like that. Pisses me off.”

“Damn it, what the hell is wrong?”

“I went to the closet to get your number out of my purse and I found something weird. If I’m not hallucinating, then I may have a serious problem.”

“What kind of problem?”

She drew a deep, shaky-sounding breath.

“I think the Bonfire Killer may have followed me home,” she said quietly. “He was in my condo tonight. Left a little souvenir.”