by Kay Hooper
He washed himself and got dressed in clean clothes, tossing the dirty ones into his washtub with more cold water and double the detergent and bleach he usually used, then returned to the cabin’s main room and stirred up the embers in the fireplace. There was just enough heat left to catch when he tossed in some kindling, and when that was burning, a couple of logs.
They were still watching him from their beds. Ace’s fur was standing up all the way down his spine, and both Lucy and Cleo were visibly trembling.
“You need to go out,” he said to them, holding his voice calm. “That’s what’s wrong with you. I should have taken you out first thing, instead of . . . Come on, guys, let’s go out and do your business before breakfast.”
He opened the front door of the cabin and waited for the dogs, clearly reluctant, to leave their beds and approach. He stood to one side, trying not to flinch at the way they sidled past, avoiding any contact with him. Half afraid they’d run if given the chance, he stood on the porch and waited, again giving them the command to do their business, the command they’d been raised to obey. Answer the morning call of nature and then come back inside for breakfast. That was the established routine, and dogs were very much creatures of routine.
All three eyed him, clearly uneasy, but they did as commanded, going no more than a few yards from the cabin. Ace found a tree to lift his leg against and the two girls squatted. There was no joyous running about, no hint of the morning playfulness that was usual for them. There was just obeying his command and relieving themselves, none of them wasting time for anything else before returning to the cabin and their beds, again almost sidling through the doorway, rubbing against the door frame rather than come close.
Close to him.
He felt a pang about that.
“Probably just hungry,” he murmured as he closed the door behind them. “I know I am.” More than that, he felt . . . hollowed out inside. Empty of everything except that dark pressure he was so starkly aware of. But he ignored that, and tried not to raise his voice when he said to the dogs, “I know I’m hungry. Starved. So we’ll eat. We’ll eat, and everything will be okay.”
Never mind that they’d never acted like this before.
Never mind the dark pressure.
Never mind.
The voices were silent, which made him feel grateful for a while as he briskly prepared the dogs’ breakfast and got eggs and sausage for himself from the ancient cold-storage box just outside the cabin’s back door.
He put the dogs’ bowls down as he usually did, spread out a couple of feet apart between the kitchen and living/sleeping area of his cabin, called them to eat with a cheery voice that sounded unnatural even to him, and went to start his own breakfast.
As he added fuel to the embers still burning in the old iron stove provided to cook on, he told himself he wasn’t looking to make sure the dogs were eating because of course they were.
Of course they were.
He waited until sausage was crackling and popping in his single frying pan and eggs were broken into a bowl ready for cooking before he finally forced himself to look.
The dogs were eating.
But the animals he had raised to healthy, happy, affectionate adulthood were almost hunched over their bowls, gobbling their food as if to just get it down quickly, their tails tucked tightly and ears flat—and their eyes fixed on him.
Fearful eyes.
He wanted to cry. But he turned back to his cooking, facing the realization only then that perhaps the dark pressure he felt inside himself might actually be worse than the voices.
He didn’t know how. He didn’t know what it meant. Where it had come from. All he knew, all he was really certain of, was that he was afraid.
And that he was changing.
* * *
“WHAT DO YOU mean, you don’t know what it means?” Hollis demanded, keeping her voice low as she used the house phone in the foyer.
“I mean I don’t know,” Bishop replied, patient. “You’ve always been able to tell the dead from the living before. Obviously something has changed.”
“I know that much. But what? And why?”
“I don’t know. I can’t see the situation for myself, or sense it firsthand. I’m not there, Hollis.”
“No, but you’re our Yoda,” she said with something of a snap. “You’re supposed to know this stuff.”
She was the only member of the SCU who dared call him a rather mocking nickname, and other team members had speculated as to why Bishop seemed more amused than annoyed by it.
Still patient, he said, “You said yourself you’re in what appears to be a very haunted house, filled with a great deal of spiritual energy. Aside from the hospital when Diana was injured, you probably haven’t been exposed to so much spiritual energy since your own abilities became so powerful.”
“So?”
“So . . . another psychic tool, perhaps.”
Striving mightily to hold her own voice calm, Hollis said, “I don’t see how on earth an inability to tell the living from the dead could possibly be of any use to me. The opposite, in fact, since it’s bound to add confusion to a situation. Besides, don’t you always say that our abilities come about because we have a use for them?”
“I have always said that.”
Hollis waited a few beats, then snapped, “Well?”
“I’m not there, Hollis,” he repeated. “And you know very well we don’t deal in absolutes. Energy changes us, often in unpredictable ways. Perhaps the energy there is changing you. Or perhaps you’re experiencing a . . . temporary glitch caused by that energy.”
“I’d rather this were temporary,” she announced. “It’s unsettling.”
“I imagine so.”
She let out a sigh. “And you haven’t seen anything in the future that might help me understand what’s going on here?”
“I’m afraid not.”
Hollis silently counted to ten, taking her time about it. “You didn’t just send us here so I could practice being a medium, did you?”
“You said yourself it’s a place with a great deal of spiritual energy, and what better location to use your abilities?”
“Bishop.”
“Just . . . carry on, Hollis. Try to make contact with Mrs. Alexander’s husband. Deal with what’s in front of you, with . . . whatever comes up. Follow your instincts. And talk to Reese about this.”
“I don’t have to talk to him, dammit, I broadcast, remember?”
“That’s not the same as having a conversation, Hollis, and you know it. Talk to Reese. Get his take on what’s happening. He may be able to help more than you realize.”
“You know, I don’t have to be precognitive to know that one of these days there’s going to be a real situation, and you’re going to be too damned enigmatic and uninformative for our good—and for your own. And very bad things are going to happen.”
“I’ve never asked for anything except that you do your best, Hollis. And you’ve never delivered less than that.”
She was caught off guard by the unexpected compliment—and not at all sure he hadn’t deliberately done it to stop questions he wasn’t ready to answer, something of which he was most certainly capable.
“Uh . . . thanks. I think.”
“Just keep going,” Bishop repeated. “Call if you need to. I’ll be here.”
“Where’s here this time?” she wondered.
“Outside Boston.”
Reminding herself that it was still very early, Hollis said, “I woke you up, didn’t I?”
“No. Serial killers don’t keep regular hours as a rule. Call if you need to, Hollis.”
“Okay. Thanks. I think. Be safe.” She cradled the phone slowly, absently wondering if places that served as hotels and inns clung to corded telephones simply because if they didn’t, handsets would be
lost by guests more often than TV remotes.
“Probably,” Reese said, joining her in the foyer.
“I would say stop reading me, but I guess that’s fairly useless.” Without pausing for a reply, she added, “Did you just come from the dining room? And do they have food in there yet? And coffee? I need both.”
He took her hand and led her back the way he’d come. “They have both. I gather we were heard stirring around, and the excellent staff here threw together breakfast more than two hours earlier than normal. A very nice buffet is waiting for us.”
“How did you get past me?” she wondered. “I was in the foyer and didn’t see you come down the stairs.”
“Rear staircase. One of several, I think. Found it while exploring. Although I think I’m going to study one of the maps a maid told me they have in that table back there in the foyer before I go exploring again. The staircase took me to the servants’ quarters, I believe, and from the reaction, that was a social faux pas even in these modern times.”
“Yeah? You catch somebody coming out of the shower naked or something?”
“No, just a maid still tying on her apron as she came out of her room. Which was awkward enough.”
“Wish I’d been there.”
“Sadist.”
“I like my entertainment twisted. Sue me.”
“You just want to see me . . . at a loss.”
“Well, it happens so rarely,” she explained, grave.
“I’d rather it never happened. I don’t like losing control.”
“No, really?”
“Smart-ass.”
Hollis was distracted a bit then by the enticing aroma of coffee and bacon as they entered the cavernous formal dining room, and inhaled thankfully. “Ahhh . . .”
“Sideboard’s over there.”
“They don’t have a little breakfast room somewhere?” Hollis wondered, looking around the huge room as they crossed it. “Maybe something too cozy for, I don’t know, more than thirty or forty people?”
“Breakfast tables are set up in the conservatory, according to Thomas. But it’s only used for breakfasts when the place is a hotel. When the family is in residence, meals are served here—or on a tray in the bedrooms.”
“Room service?”
“He didn’t call it that, but yes. I gather most meals are expected to be taken here, but breakfast on a tray is the norm for family and a large percentage of guests. Which also means I doubt we’ll see our host or hostess before lunchtime.”
“I’d already figured that much out. Neither of them struck me as early risers, and if they get breakfast in bed, there’s even less reason to stir themselves before they have to.”
“I didn’t know people still lived this way,” DeMarco said. Then he added, “Here, grab a plate.”
Food and coffee were kept hot on a long sideboard, and in the covered servers Hollis found a breakfast substantial enough to satisfy even her rather unusually strong appetite.
She didn’t really think about that until some time later, when she and DeMarco sat in lonely splendor at one end of the very long dining table and finished their meal, enjoying the really excellent food and coffee.
“Um,” she said, sipping the latter.
DeMarco sipped his own, eyed her for a moment, then said, “I could be a gentleman and not comment on the fact that you ate enough to feed three people, but I gather that’s on your mind.”
“Well, it’s unusual,” she pointed out. “You’re always trying to feed me, so you know I don’t generally have much of an appetite.”
“No, you don’t. Something new here, maybe. Or a gradual evolution; you’ve developed more abilities just in recent months, and abilities require energy. Physical energy, stamina. Maybe your body has finally figured that out.”
“Maybe. I just hope I don’t end up like Riley and have to keep those energy bars in my back pocket all the time.”5
“She only has to do that when Ash isn’t around,” DeMarco pointed out. “Which is almost never.”
Hollis’s mind shied away from the possibilities Brooke had mentioned and spoke hastily, hoping to deflect DeMarco at least from picking up on the discomfort she felt about that. “Well, if I can eat like a pig and burn it all off, I’m not going to complain.”
“You didn’t eat like a pig. You just ate with an appetite.”
“I won’t quibble.” Hollis drank more coffee, frowning. “The thing is, if a need for more energy is new, it’s not the only new thing.”
“What’s the other new thing?”
Surprised, she said, “You don’t know already?”
He looked at her with slightly lifted brows. “I assume it has something to do with you being a medium. You haven’t realized? Hollis, the only time I literally can’t read you even when I try is when you’re using your mediumistic abilities.”
“Seriously?”
“Entirely. I may well feel there’s something wrong if you’re in trouble, but no actual thoughts. I assume it’s because the energy of your thoughts is different, on a different frequency, when you’re using those abilities. And it’s not a frequency I pick up.”
Thinking back only then, Hollis realized that DeMarco had indeed always behaved as if he had no specific awareness of information or knowledge she gleaned from her contacts with the spirit world unless it was something she discussed out loud or thought about later.
She looked toward the sideboard, watching as the same maid she had encountered earlier checked several dishes, apparently to make sure nothing required replenishing, and casually said to DeMarco, “So I’m guessing you don’t see her over there by the sideboard.”
The maid turned, smiled at Hollis, and bobbed a curtsy.
“See who?” DeMarco had turned his head and frowned toward the sideboard.
Hollis watched as the spirit walked the length of the sideboard, turned, and again vanished, this time through what was clearly a solid wall.
“Although I suppose there could have been a door there once,” she mused out loud. “Had to be, I guess. When the place was first built and parties were huge, there were probably two places servants could enter the room. Carrying stuff in one door and out the other, so as to avoid traffic jams and a lot of broken china. Judging by the size of this table, there must have been some hellaciously big parties.”
“Hollis?”
She looked at him.
“What’re you talking about?”
“The maid you didn’t see. Just now.”
“A spirit?”
“Forgive a bad pun, but so it would appear. I saw her earlier upstairs. And thought she was alive. Spoke to her and everything.”
“You mean—”
“I mean I can’t seem to tell the living from the dead right now, or here in this place. Not sure which.” She drew a breath and looked at him. “It’s . . . unsettling. Bishop said I should talk to you about it. But you probably already knew that part.”
“That you were going to talk to me about something. Not about what.”
Hollis absently folded her linen napkin and placed it beside her coffee cup on the table. “Well, why don’t we do a bit of exploring outside while we talk? I need air. And to get out of here for a while. Because I can sense the others all around me.”
“Close the door.”
“Yeah, well, that’s the third new thing,” Hollis replied somewhat grimly. “I can’t seem to close the door. At all. And I’ve already been warned that that isn’t exactly a good thing.”
EIGHT
Luther Brinkman shifted slightly on the couch, adjusting his leg, which was propped on the coffee table and resting on a pillow, and trying to find a comfortable position.
“I told you it was too soon to get dressed,” Callie said.
“If you hadn’t given me that shot while I was unconscious
, I’d be fine,” he retorted.
“If I hadn’t given you that shot, the wound would likely have gotten infected. Is it my fault penicillin needs to go in the hip?”
He ignored that question. “Look, we both know I need to get on my feet and mobile as soon as possible. Especially after you found that blood.”
It was early afternoon, and Luther was more than a little disgruntled that he’d slept through the morning totally against his will, waking only when Callie had roused him for lunch. Already, he was itching to be up and doing things. Like his job.
“I told you, the only blood test kit I have is unreliable. Even testing positive for human blood doesn’t necessarily mean that’s what it was because of the high percentage of false positives. Could have been animal blood. And even if it was human, it could easily have been from a hunter careless enough with his tools to hurt himself. It happens.”
Callie told herself that there was no sense in telling Luther what she was sure of, that the blood was indeed human and the person who had shed it beyond their help. She told herself it was for his own good, that he didn’t need to be agitated more than he was, not when he was recovering from the wound and not when there was nothing he could do about it anyway.
She told herself all that.
And she knew she wasn’t being fair to him, or even just professional. He needed to know what she knew.
But . . . not now. Not yet.
“We need to know for sure, Callie. In case it has anything at all to do with Jacoby.”
“Yes. But it was more than half a mile from Jacoby’s cabin, and he’s shown no signs to date of venturing that far out.”
“Maybe he got curious about me.”
“Maybe. But if so, he wasn’t tracking you. That blood was nowhere near the path you took going to his cabin or the path I took getting you back down here after you were shot.”
“Look, you said Cesar didn’t pick up a trail from the point where you found the blood; if it was just a hunter, wouldn’t he have headed for town? Or for one of the cabins up here?”
“Not necessarily. Hunters often camp up on the mountain, and some would consider it completely unnecessary to have a minor cut looked at by a doctor. Could be, he realized he was bleeding and just went back to his camp to take care of it himself.”