by Kay Hooper
“Help me?” she heard herself murmur.
To do what you must. To claim what was always yours. To use that within you to stop the evil here.
“But I don’t know—”
You will. Listen to your heart, your instincts. They will tell you who to trust. And those you trust will help you when the time comes, just as I will.
“Mother—”
No more nightmares, my daughter. Amusement like quicksilver in her mind. But the meditation techniques . . . those you must use to hold off the storm. Until you need it.
Nellie opened her mouth to ask something else but felt that door in her mind softly close. She knew somehow that it wasn’t locked, and that the promised help would come.
She still felt confusion, but it was less now, fainter. An odd new sensation welled up inside her as she wondered if she had come back to Salem, really, for that. To know her mother.
Thunder rumbled.
Nellie heard it, understanding somehow that this time the storm was coming not because she was upset, but because something in her called to it.
Strange thought.
Without thinking about that again, she slipped into the meditation techniques she’d been taught, heard her breathing slow, her heartbeat steady, concentrating on holding steadily inside her what wanted, waited, to escape.
* * *
—
GENEVA HAD TO stand on the lidded bucket, left obviously for sanitary purposes since there had been a roll of toilet tissue sitting on its lid, and it was not exactly a steady place to stand. But she moved it several times to get it in just the right place, where it seemed as stable as possible, then climbed up and concentrated on balance. She used one hand to steady herself as much as possible while the other held the single tool they had not found when they had searched her.
It was a very thin, very flexible strip of metal, easily and comfortably hidden between the insole and outsole of her shoes—and she had one for every pair of shoes and boots she owned, hiking boots included. Easily hidden, and very easily overlooked even during a thorough search.
But its uses were limited. It was stronger than it had any right to be, but it was small, slender. The sharpest end was too flexible to use as a sturdy digging tool—though Geneva knew from experience it could offer a nasty cut to an enemy, not fatal except at the carotid artery in the throat, but a deterrent for certain. It could be a lockpick—but there was no lock visible on this side of the door. Nor was there a handle, which made her balancing act on the bucket even trickier.
Still, Geneva gritted her teeth, balanced herself as best she could on the bucket, and carefully studied what all of the candles burning together had shown her.
That the door was so well fitted there was barely a seam showing its outline, she knew. But with her prison lit as much as possible by five candles placed carefully, she could now see, on the left-hand side opposite the hinges where normally there would have been a handle of some kind, a faint—very faint—glint of metal in the seam.
It was the latch mechanism: The piece of metal that originated in the door was embedded there but moved in and out of the doorframe when a handle or knob was turned. Normally there was at least a plate of metal on both sides of the door to hold the handle or knob and provide a secure seating for the latch, but on this door there was no sign of a metal plate.
But doors worked a certain way, and Geneva had to believe this one was no exception. There had to be some sort of metal anchor on the other side of the door, perhaps a plate bolted securely into only one side. That had to hold the latch in place, and it was what was holding the door securely closed, clearly designed to open only from one side. No sign of an additional dead bolt, but the worry she didn’t want to think about was that they might have barred the other side in a much simpler way—by using a stout wooden or metal bar, its brackets also seated into the door itself, since by the way the hinges were placed, this door opened inwardly.
If there was a bar, seated in such a way . . . that was something not even someone as expert a lock picker as herself could force with her little tool. But if it was only a normal locking mechanism . . .
She wouldn’t know until she tried.
She held her breath as she slowly forced the thin edge of her slender little tool into the seam where she could—barely—see the latch. She moved the tool carefully, sliding it up and down the approximately three-inch latch, close to the doorframe, hoping with everything inside her that on her side was a curved edge of the latch that might be maneuvered out of the frame and into the door. It was basically the way some people were able to use credit cards to unlock a door without a key.
Using a delicate, skilled touch mastered over years of practice in and out of the field, Geneva eased her tool between the frame and the latch halfway up its length, then carefully maneuvered the sharp edge until it slipped between metal and wood.
She paused, drew a breath, eased in another fraction of an inch, and then began to exert careful pressure to force the latch back into the thick wood of the door.
She wasn’t really afraid of the tool snapping off, but it had occurred to her that she had no real way of grasping the wooden door and pulling it toward her even if she managed to ease the latch free.
But . . . the latch was moving, slowly easing back into the door.
Still fighting to keep her balance on the bucket, Geneva managed somehow to get her free hand against the seam of the door, and, still holding the tool carefully against the latch, struggled with as little movement as possible to wedge her short nails into that murderously narrow crack. For the first time in her life, she wished she had long, elegant nails as sharp and strong as claws.
But at least her short nails were strong, and she did her best to force them to dig into the wood just inside the seam—and pulled.
Several things happened then. The door came toward her with astonishing ease, she lost her balance on the treacherous bucket, and she found herself lying on her back, the breath knocked out of her, on the cold, hard floor of her prison, having barely missed the candle burning in the center of the room, staring dazedly up at the door holding steadily half-open.
Trying to catch her breath and not start coughing in case there was a silent guard somewhere near enough to hear, Geneva managed to scramble up, right the overturned bucket before it could lose its unpleasant contents, and replace it so she could use it as a step. She kept hold of her wonderful little tool with one hand, held the door with the other, and climbed back onto the bucket so she could see out of her prison.
Despite the utter silence and her conviction that she was alone in this place, she half expected to see a guard outside, eerily silent, one she simply hadn’t been able to read telepathically, or another locked door, or some kind of alarm, or—or something designed to dash her hopes of escape.
But what she looked out onto was a short hallway, and, beyond it, dimly lit, was what she thought was a kitchen. Straining to listen, she didn’t hear a sound.
Without a backward look at her prison, leaving the pillar candles burning in all four corners and one in the middle, she hoisted herself up and through the doorway, being as quiet as possible. There was a doorknob on this side, and she closed the door, turning the knob so that the latch eased back into its place without even a click.
It struck her as a weird sort of prison door, not exactly barred or even locked, merely closed in such a way that anyone inside would—at least in theory—find it impossible to open.
Still, Geneva had the wary feeling that her escape had been too easy. She called on every extra sense she possessed to reach out beyond herself, guardedly exploring in every mental way she could even as her eyes searched for indications of alarms or surveillance. Still holding the precious tool that could also, in trained and skilled hands, be a lethal weapon, she moved forward silently and cautiously to physically explore the house.
> TWELVE
Grayson didn’t notice the crows until he was, perhaps, a mile from the B and B—and already out in the middle of nowhere. It had taken him nearly an hour to get this far because, just on the possibility he was being observed, even at night—maybe especially at night—he’d been careful not to walk with the purpose of someone searching but rather like an experienced hiker too restless to be still for long simply exploring his surroundings, pausing now and then as if to note landmarks even in the dark. Which he was doing, since this was unfamiliar territory.
Besides which, he was basically heading straight up a mountain, so the hike wasn’t an easy one despite the zigzag of his path, especially in the dark, and the changes in direction and pauses to rest as he gazed around with apparent idleness were welcome.
As soon as he’d gone some little distance from the B and B, he had done as Bishop suggested—or ordered, in so many words—and had dropped his shields completely. Even though his skin had been tingling almost beneath the level of his awareness the whole time he’d been in Salem, what he felt now was stronger. And for the first time he could remember, there was a faint interference—static was as good a word as any other, he thought—between his seeking and those individuals he could read. There were more of them than he’d expected, but the static was something that forced him to concentrate harder than was normal for him in order to get the emotions clearly.
That bothered him, not least because experience had taught them all to be cautious in touching the minds and emotions of others, especially during an investigation.
So he kept up what guards he could while still using his empathic sense, something that was difficult but not impossible. It was both lucky and unlucky that he’d waited until fairly late, when most people tended to be quietly settling in for the evening, especially on another cold, cold night.
So what he had mostly gotten was the sense of a few sleepy discussions, one rather fierce marital argument he had hastily shied away from when it became obvious makeup sex was on the menu, and most people relaxed and watching TV, reading, or otherwise getting ready for bed and sleep.
He had concentrated on the preacher first, trying to narrow his focus and find, sense, that worry and frustration. But it was gone, beyond his reach. At least for now.
But he had felt Geneva almost the instant he stopped focusing on the preacher. Mad as hell, just as Bishop had predicted. Frustrated, baffled—and more than a little scared.
He was fairly sure he had never before felt fear in Geneva, which had quickened his steps once he’d settled on the right general direction. North—she was north of where he stood. Away from town, which he was glad of. The farther he hiked, the fainter grew the emotional baggage he’d picked up from the B and B and surrounding homes.
But Geneva was clear in his mind, her frustration the strongest. The fear came and went, along with spurts of temper, with which he was familiar, and with those emotions a sense of . . . being alone. Being very, very alone. And she did not like it.
Then he felt something else from her, first a sense of urgency, then utter concentration, which very quickly severed any clear connection he had to her emotions. She had drawn them inward and held them under an iron grip because she needed . . . her senses. Because she couldn’t allow her emotions to color what she sensed.
For the first time, he wondered if that was why he had so seldom been able to sense her emotions when they had been partners. Not because she kept them deliberately shielded from him—him in particular, which is what he’d often believed—but because strictly controlling her emotions inwardly was part of the process she used to tap her telepathy and other senses.
He was pondering that very surprising new information when he became aware of the crows. Three of them, silent, on the low, winter-bare branch of a tree about twenty feet to his right.
Grayson knew one rather extraordinary telepath who could communicate easily with her canine partner, and he knew of at least one empath who picked up on the emotions of animals as well as people, though those emotions were so alien to the way humans felt that the experiences had been described to him as “damned disconcerting” rather than helpful.
Until this moment, Grayson had never picked up any sense of emotions from an animal. But those crows . . . He realized he had stopped dead and was staring at them, clearly visible even though the woods and their own coal black color should have made seeing them difficult.
But he saw them.
And they were . . . guarding?
With his shields down, that’s what he felt in them, a sense of . . . responsibility. Duty. They were guarding. No . . . keeping watch.
For a moment he had the urge to look around him frantically, because what he felt from the crows underneath the duty was something very deep and very dark, something threatening. It was their fearful knowledge of . . . master. One who commanded them. And that was a very eerie thought, especially since he didn’t think they were commanded because someone had trained them. This was something else, something very different and, even in this cold, cold place, chilling. But even as he felt that, he also felt that tonight, for whatever reason, they were alone out here.
Just keeping watch.
He wondered, then, what they would do if whatever they watched presented some kind of threat. Would they attack? Crows were carrion birds, he thought, but that wasn’t to say they wouldn’t be willing to tackle living prey for the right reason.
Sly amusement.
Okay, now, that was disconcerting.
He hesitated for only a moment, then turned his head, having to concentrate to break that very much damned disconcerting experience of too much knowledge in bird heads, never mind the sly amusement, and focus once again on Geneva. He was inordinately relieved when he picked up her emotions quickly and easily.
Ah. She no longer kept an iron control on her emotions because it wasn’t necessary. Because . . . because her senses had told her there was no threat. She wasn’t angry or frustrated anymore—though she was still very aware of being alone. She was . . .
What was she doing?
Searching?
He thought she had somehow gotten free of that place that had made her angry and frustrated, that had made her afraid. And, being Geneva, instead of getting her ass away from there and as far from trouble as possible, she was stealing the time and risking more danger so she could take a really good look at her surroundings.
Dammit.
He didn’t look back at the crows as he pushed on, aware that they remained where they were, silently watching him continue on without them.
He really didn’t want to find out if they were still amused by him for their own unknowable bird reasons.
Still, he went cautiously, calling on all the woodcraft he’d learned over an adventurous lifetime to move silently over long-fallen leaves that the winter cold had made crisp again. It was slow going even when he called on his spider senses to see and hear far beyond his normal range, and he didn’t even think, this time, that the migraine undoubtedly lurking once he was done was going to be a real wall banger.
He held on to the slender thread that was his empathic awareness of Geneva, of where she was still searching—and with a growing puzzlement. He couldn’t tell what she had expected to find, but whatever she did find baffled her.
Something else he’d really never felt in her.
His sense of distance, well honed, told him that even though he kept moving, his seeming rambling meant he had changed directions so many times that he was still little more than a mile from the B and B, which meant he wasn’t very far from town, and yet the woods were dense and silent.
So dense, in fact, that even with all his spider senses at full wattage, he didn’t see the house until he rounded one very large tree and found himself in a clearing that wasn’t really a yard.
But there was a house, looking absurdly norma
l, even to a pot of geraniums beside the front door. And inside, a single light was moving.
Geneva was inside—he knew that; he was also virtually certain there was no one else in the house or nearby.
Still, Grayson was cautious enough to make a slow circle of the house before approaching it, more than a little baffled to find neither driveway nor sidewalk but simply this old, country-type farmhouse in the center of a clearing, ringed by the forest, as if it had just been set down there, intended for isolation.
He did find one end of what appeared to be a very narrow footpath leading to the house through the woods from the general direction of Salem, but otherwise the house might as well have never been meant for occupants or visitors.
Except . . . there was that footpath. And there were filmy curtains at the windows he could see, and no visible weeds grew in the winter-short grass of the clearing. And there was that pot of geraniums on the front porch.
Silk geraniums, he discovered when he finally went catfooted onto the front porch and crossed to the front door. The moonlight, absent in the woods, was bright enough in this clearing to allow him to see clearly, especially with the aid of his spider senses, which were still on full.
He would definitely need the med from the doc to knock him out at some point tonight, or he’d be useless tomorrow.
Grayson’s sense of danger was hovering, ever present, but it was more a matter of his suspicious nature and caution born of experience than anything more tangible; all his senses told him he and Geneva were the only people in the area for a considerable distance around this house, probably as far away as the town.
He was somewhat irritably deciding whether to just knock on the front door when it was pulled suddenly open.
Geneva stood there holding a lit candle in an old-fashioned, tarnished brass holder.
“Took you long enough,” she said.
He eyed her, considering and rejecting various responses that would undoubtedly have started an argument. But he’d been genuinely worried about her, and even in the added glow of the candlelight, he could see that she wore the finely honed look of the weariness that came of too little sleep and too much stress labored under for too long, so his voice was milder than it might otherwise have been when he replied to her softly snapped statement.