Prologue
Whenever Zander Randalls took the stage, you could be sure something magical was going to happen. An electric presence with shining silver hair, with a face that gleamed with wisdom and understanding, with an aura of passion and purpose ever-emanating, Zander Randalls spoke words so powerful, so powerfully spoken, he made a considerable impact every time he made an appearance. He was majestic, like an eagle. He was massive in stature and presence and form. He was very much a god to those who followed him, his message the very scripture that guided millions of lives.
On this night, he paced the stage at the Nassau Coliseum in Uniondale, New York, pontificating to a fully packed house of 17,686 (and then some, if you counted the awestruck stage hands, Coliseum staff, and members of the press who took in the show from the sidelines and backstage). But it wouldn’t be accurate to say the seats were filled; the devout, frenzied and frenetic, generally took in the Word on their feet so they could proclaim their praises that much more powerfully. Indeed, the followers hung on every word that sprang from the silver tongue of the modern messiah. His message was so simple, so accessible. So very much theirs.
“If you can hear it, you can believe it!” Zander proclaimed. And the followers parroted back at astounding volumes. (Even the deaf emphatically signed their replies after taking in his message, signed by the many translators who circled the stage.)
“If you can feel it, you can believe it!” he cried out. And droves of audience members, tears in their eyes, began beating their chests with great passion and fury as they echoed back this sentiment to him.
“If you can believe it . . . ” he began, and he paused.
“We believe it! We believe it!” came the cries from the audience. “We BELIEVE IT!!!”
“If you can believe it,” he started again, and then more loudly, “if you can believe it, then you can know it to be true!” he screamed out, and they praised and screamed and fawned and shook their fists in a frenzied dance of ardent air-punches and frantic fist-bumps. The crowd lapped up his message like doctored fruit drink, slurping up every last word.
Somewhere in the tenth row a woman fainted, but that was okay. Someone always fainted. Somewhere in the balcony, a woman removed her blouse and threw it into the crowd, but that was okay, too. Not unexpected by any measure. Both women and men, in fact, were known to get so caught up in the religiosity of the Zander experience their passion could not be constrained by their clothing.
But that doesn’t mean that all was right in this earthly paradise of self-affirmation. For somewhere in the sidelines, someone was plotting something foul, something that would soon bring down the House of Zander.
Because everything has a price.
1
It was the kind of day that made Mina Clark feel every breath of her forty-two years—and then some.
It was bad enough that the hot water heater was now broken and that neither she nor her three-year-old daughter, Emma, would be able to wash up properly. A problem for Mina, who hadn’t taken a shower since Tuesday . . . or Monday? And it was already Thursday. Or Wednesday? No, Thursday.
But a bigger problem for Mina’s tastefully decorated home had come when, during a regrettable moment’s distraction on Mina’s part, Emma, with her improbably nimble fingers, had managed to trip the lock on her father’s cabinet of ancient art supplies. Delicious and dear, dark and demonic, Emma had not only managed to open the long-locked cabinet, but had also been able to unscrew all the tops of Jack’s acrylic paint tubes, and was now awash in color from head to toe. And, alas, so were myriad walls and carpets, fixtures and furnishings. It was as if a Jackson Pollack painting had come to fiery life and burned through the bedroom, the hallway, and the living room of the Clark home leaving a trail of destruction that, like the water heater, there was no budget to correct.
