Glen watched Lexi for a while as she pinballed unsteadily around the kitchen, working on baking another of her delightful, uneven loaves of bread.  When she rushed out of the kitchen again to check on her TV shows, he waited for her instead of following, grateful for a moment to pull a chair up to the table and lay his notepad down.  Table and chair both appeared to be thrift-shop refugees dragged in for lack of anything better.  Some of the rooms in Lexi's big old house still contained dusty but solid antique furniture, presumably left by the previous tenants and spared rot by the cold northern Michigan winters.  Other rooms were filled with unpacked boxes, empty, or sparsely furnished with Salvation Army stopgaps like the kitchen, which was at least made twenty times more friendly by the smell of freshly baked bread.  It was cool in spite of the huge Depression-era gas stove that took up most of the back wall.

Most of the staff at Late Apex had more or less written Lexi off once Warren died and she shuttered the company.  The court fight had been of only trivial interest to the hard-core car guys, most of whom had met Ren at one event or another and spoken highly of him as a collector who drove his toys instead of shrink-wrapping them.  True, she drove the cars too, but old preconceptions died hard, and old cars were a "guy" thing.  Period.  As proof, here it was, eight months after Ren's death and Lexi was auctioning off the collection.  Two of Glen's editors were here for the sale too, but neither of them had wanted to talk to Lexi.  She wasn't interested in keeping the fantastic collection; that was all they needed to know about her.

But there had been a funny phone call, as they'd been making plans to come to the auction, from a friend of Langdon Quimby's named Curve.  Glen knew Curve and some of Quimby's other friends, but had never met Quimby himself.  Quimby wasn't interested in cars, but for some reason he was interested in Lexi, and suggested that Glen ought to be as well.  Quimby's "suggestions" often had journalistic merit; he had mailed Glen Kirk Kerkorian's business card in a Baggie the day before the '95 New York Auto Show, before Kerkorian's surprising hostile takeover attempt of Chrysler.  With that in mind, Glen had told his editors he was interested in doing a sidebar on Lexi, and they had dispatched him with skepticism as to its chances of seeing print in Late Apex.  Fair enough.

Things had gotten strange once he'd found her.  She wasn't anywhere near the auction, which was taking place at a warehouse some distance from the house, and Ian Warnock had insisted on okaying the interview, as if he was Lexi's lawyer.  Agreeing to cooperate seemed like the quickest way to talk to Lexi, as only Ian knew where she was.  Before he'd left Glen alone with her, Ian had taken him aside and asked him not to grill Lexi about Ren, or about the collection, especially the auction that was going on, and something definitely wasn't kosher about that.  Ian's explanation that Lexi was having the auction so that she wouldn't have to think about the cars or Ren was a little weak, too.  It made more sense that he didn't think the house was a good venue.  Lexi's house, while beautiful in its unrestored state, was downright creepy.  Even early in the afternoon when the sun was at its height the house had more than its fair share of dark corners and shadows.  There was also the sense that something was watching him all the time.  Glen almost wanted to say that it felt like the house was watching him.  Lexi lived in one of those houses that adolescents in small towns snuck into only on the most desperate of dares.  Glen wouldn't have been surprised to find that some of the kids in Arcadia had done exactly that in her house, either before or while she lived here.

The oddest thing was Lexi herself.  She was clearly stoned out of her mind.  She had freely apologized for being "off," so she wasn't being drugged against her will, Glen didn't think, but there you were.  He had written off the interview for Late Apex as soon as it became clear they couldn't talk about the auction, but judging by her emotional state he might be able to sell the story to someone else.  No one had ever interviewed Lexi Crane by herself since she'd broken apart after Warren's death, but she was kind of a character once you talked to her a little.  Cute, too, in spite of a haggard appearance born of not going outside or feeding herself well for the better part of the year.  She was wearing a pale blue T-shirt with a picture of a hearse on it and a pair of well-worn jeans.

And, contrary to the other car guys' opinions of her, she knew her stuff.  As she came back into the kitchen, he got her talking again by asking, "TR-6 or Tiger?"  He didn't even have to tell her that the TR-6 was a Triumph, or that the Tiger in question referred to a sporty little Sunbeam.

Her misty, distracted air vanished when they were talking about cars.  It was uncanny.  "Not entirely fair.  Of course I like the TR better; it's closer to my age.  And it looks better."

"Matter of opinion," Glen said, grinning.

Lexi shrugged, transferring her dough to a loaf pan and covering it with a towel so it could rise.  "Daimler SP250's a fairer comparison to the Tiger anyway, since they're both V8 beasties and about the same age.  And I like the Daimlers better, too."  She even pronounced it correctly:  "dame-ler," referring to the British company that had no connection to the German manufacturer, which was spelled the same but pronounced "dime-ler."

"Oh, my God, you're kidding?  That ugly thing?"

"Some things are so ugly they're cute," Lexi said with a secretive smile.  "And they make good noises."

It happened as she opened the oven's door to take out the bread that was finished.  Glen later guessed that the rush of oxygen had somehow ignited a cloud of unburned gas inside the ancient stove.  Lexi put her hand on the door and it blew open in a flash of orange-blue and a rolling blast of noise that shook the walls.  All of the burners and pots on top of the stove were blown into the air; one of them put a sizable dent in the tin ceiling.  A roiling curl of flame enveloped Lexi, lifted her off her feet, and threw her five feet into the wall next to the refrigerator.  For a moment it seemed as if the stove had reached out a giant flaming hand and slapped her away...

And then it was gone.  The fire blew itself out before the pans and burners had finished crashing to the floor, before Glen had quite reached his feet to begin looking for the fire extinguisher.  From somewhere else in the house he heard a male voice cry out, "Jesus H. Christ!" and running footsteps beginning to approach.

Lexi was sitting in a heap next to the wall.  Glen took two steps forward, swept the stove's dials to make sure the gas was off, then went to her.  Eight years of amateur racing and track work showed in his crisis management skills, and he realized that he was ready to throw himself on top of her with a blanket if her clothes were on fire.  Luckily, there was no need.  She didn't even look scorched.  Her eyes were closed, her feet splayed, hands limp on the floor at her sides.  The kitchen smelled heavily of spices and burning paper.

"Lexi?" he asked.

Ian had just gotten Dobie Cassarell back into his Mercedes, safely out of the house and on the way to the auction with the promise that they'd talk more when they got there, when he heard the noise.  It sounded like something heavy had fallen from a great height and crashed through the roof, and a rush of cool air from the back of the house seemed to support this theory.  It must have been some kind of explosion.  Panic burst in his stomach, and Ian was running for the kitchen without a second thought, the auction forgotten. 

The scene was disarmingly normal, except that Lexi was sitting by the wall next to the refrigerator.  No hole in the ceiling.  No flaming fragments of flesh rended to bits by an explosion.  The journalist was hovering over Lexi, touching her wrist lightly.  "What happened?"

"The stove blew up," Glen told him.  "I don't know if she's--"

Ian was already kneeling next to Lexi, calling her name softly, taking her other wrist in his hand.  Glen thought that he looked more like a farmer tending to a prized cow than a concerned friend, but maybe that was just shock warping his perceptions a little.  Lexi didn't respond to the touch.  "What happened?" Ian asked again.

Before Glen could answer, Lexi's eyes popped wide.  She took in a long, drawn-out breath through her teeth and recoiled from Ian, banging her head against the wall.

"Lexi?" Ian said softly.  "It's me.  Are you okay?  The stove--"

With a garbled noise, she started twitching and kicking in jerky, violent bursts, her eyes unfocused.  The flailing took Ian by surprise.  She kicked his feet out from under him and he tumbled backward.

"Shit," Glen said, "she's having a seizure."

Ian crawled forward again and knelt next to Lexi.  He grabbed her wrists hard, trying to hold her still.  When that had little effect, he pulled her into a bear hug.  Lexi threw her head back, hitting him hard in the cheek, and he squeezed tighter.  The violent spasms shot through her body as if she was being electrocuted, and he couldn't hold her still despite his weight advantage.  When had she gotten so strong?  "What do I do?"

Glen pulled the trash can away so she couldn't kick it, making more clear space.  "Let her go!  Don't hold her down.  Roll her onto her stomach and leave her be.  She'll fall asleep when she's done, and then you can carry her upstairs and put her to bed."

"Shouldn't I put my belt in her mouth or something, so she doesn't choke?"

"No, just let her be," Glen said with a great deal more calm than he felt.  Some large part of his mind was standing back to watch what happened next, ready to act.

Ian watched Lexi beat limp hands against the floor, then looked at Glen.  "How do you know she'll be okay?"

"Seen it happen a lot.  My cousin has epilepsy."

"Lexi doesn't."

"Are you sure?" 

"Positive.  I'd think her doctor would have told me.  She's not taking any medication for that."

"She's taking medication for something," Glen said, a hint of accusation in his voice.  He didn't mean for it to be there.

"I beg your pardon?"

"Nothing."

Ian was silent for about five seconds, and then he kicked the floor.  "I can't stand here and watch this.  I'm going to move her."

When Ian took a step forward, Glen put a hand on his shoulder.  "No.  Let her be."

"She doesn't have epilepsy.  You have no goddamn idea what's wrong with her and I'm not going to let her kill herself!"

As Ian's level of agitation rose, Glen felt calmer still. "A grand mal seizure is a grand mal seizure," he said.  "Once she's done, we can move her.  If you try to before that, she's going to hurt herself.  She's going to turn her wrist or her ankle, or break her hand hitting the floor, or break her own nose hitting the wall.  Is it possible she's having a reaction to whatever she's taking?"

Ian took a long breath, and let it out slowly.  Glen was right.  He'd have to get Lexi checked out.  Damn this woman for being so difficult!  The silence was broken only by Lexi's sharp, erratic breathing and the sound of her hands and feet pounding against the floor.

After a few minutes Lexi's twitching and kicking subsided.  Her breathing relaxed.  "Now," Glen said.  Ian suddenly realized that Glen had been holding him the whole time.  "She's probably asleep."

He was right.  "I'm going to have to call her doctor to observe her again," he said with a sigh.

"Tell you what," Glen said with a smile, "I'll check on her bread for you.  She'll probably be out for a few hours.  I'll conclude the interview some other time, if that's okay."  Next time he intended to ask Lexi straight out if he should be deferring to Ian or not, too.