Hidden Salem

by Kay Hooper

  Finn considered his nephew thoughtfully. Only ten years separated them in age, and they had been more like brothers since Robert’s childhood. Especially since Robert had turned to Finn when he realized he had inherited the Talent that was solely of the Deverell family in Salem, a Talent Finn shared.

  Robert had the Talent in spades.

  He was an empath, strong enough to slip within the walls of others without even their awareness. And like Finn’s, that ability had not been blocked in him from childhood, which made him both powerful and in possession of a great deal of control.

  “Did he say why?” Finn asked finally.

  “Not that I’ve heard. But people are getting edgy, especially since that fourth body was found. I know his men in the militia tried to keep it all quiet, but word got out. Details got out. Some of the worst details. The kind that couldn’t accidentally happen to a guy just hiking along.”

  SEVENTEEN

  Finn wondered briefly if Geneva Raynor was responsible for that leak but dismissed the idea instantly. She was too professional.

  “He didn’t want townsfolk to know about that,” Finn said. “All the ugly details. Or even that it happened.”

  “He never does, does he? Or about the other three. What was—done to them. Why it was. Still no idea who let it get out, but it’s out. Just whispers so far, and that edginess. There are people arguing it can’t be true, others who want to believe that. Plenty who just don’t want to face it, like always. To pretend everything is normal here. But any way you look at it, people are getting jumpy. I’m guessing Duncan wants to clamp a lid on it, so nothing will interfere with his own plans.”

  “He’d want that. But the question is, can he do it?”

  Robert frowned slightly. “The preachers will say whatever he tells them to—they always do. He’s head of his family. And even if he is the only direct descendant Cavendish with the Talent, he has it all.”

  “Does he?”

  “Doesn’t he?” Robert countered. “His clairvoyance is incredibly powerful when it’s unshielded. He has the crows, and we both know they’d kill for him.”

  “At his command, not for him. There’s a difference.”

  Robert nodded. “I know, but the end result is the same. And even if he’s been cagey about it, we both know he has the other Cavendish Talents. He has a majority of the militia under his control, quite a few even among his devoted followers. And he has them. His . . . flock. The ones who believe every word he says like it’s holy writ. Or unholy writ. They’ll do whatever he tells them to; we both know that. Hell, we all know that, and I for one don’t have to see the evidence to believe it. He has them convinced he can recognize evil, only he. That the evil threatens Salem, threatens them, and he can . . . draw it forth and send it to hell.”

  “Hence his little ceremonies,” Finn said.

  “Yeah. Look, I’m close to finding out where he holds them, or at least where the next one will be, but I don’t have it yet. I can’t even find out what goes on there, except that what used to be mostly chanting and sex and maybe a drop or two of some willing participant’s blood mixed with God knows what herbs, is something he’s now built up to actual human sacrifice. I really don’t think there’s a question about that, Finn. Not now. Four tortured and mutilated bodies turned up is no coincidence. And if he’s killing them, we both know he can gain power, grow stronger, from that alone. Especially if he’s getting his own hands bloody.”

  “Maybe he can gain power through those acts.”

  “You don’t think so?”

  Finn was silent for a moment, frowning, then made up his mind. Robert was a strong empath and possessed strong shields, and he knew almost as much as Finn about what was happening and the dangers looming. In some ways, he probably knew more. He needed to know now that there were new players, that the balance was beginning to tip.

  And the deadly danger of a single wrong move.

  “Have a seat,” he told his nephew. “We need to talk.”

  * * *

  —

  NELLIE SAT IN a chair in Geneva’s sitting room at Hales B and B and eyed the two agents, still more than a little wary. She knew both were psychic—even though she was still wearing her gloves and thought her control was pretty good, at least for the time being—and she believed both were federal agents, Bishop’s people, here to investigate. Not because of their IDs but because they’d talked briefly about Bishop and the SCU as strangers to either wouldn’t have been able to.

  And because . . . she’d just known.

  She hadn’t known people had disappeared, including a little girl only a few days before, and she had definitely not known about the bodies—or remains—found.

  “How can that not be all over the newspaper? How can it not be on the news, at least statewide? Everything makes the news these days. That or gets posted on the Internet, somewhere.”

  “One of the mysteries of this place,” Geneva said from her position at the near end of the couch at right angles to Nellie’s chair. “According to Bishop, we’d never have heard a thing except that it came through the usual unofficial channels: Somebody who knew somebody who knew somebody who knew Bishop suggested they contact one of his contacts when the police refused to act, and he got the word. Since it was so unofficial, he probably had a few people, maybe Haven operatives, talk to those who insisted their friends were missing, and then started them nosing around the area outside Salem. They didn’t get much. Still only rumor and whispers, mostly, but it was enough to get us here. Unofficially.”

  Nellie didn’t ask how that was possible. She didn’t know Bishop well, but she thought she knew him well enough to believe that this was the kind of investigation he’d make possible, even if he had to go outside official channels to do it. “I know about Haven,” she said almost absently. “The last time I talked to Bishop he told me about it. In case I might like that option.”

  “He hates to waste a good psychic,” Grayson said. He was sitting on a chair across the coffee table from Nellie’s, her big dog Leo sitting at his feet, and he was gently pulling at the silky black ears. And working very hard to keep his shields up. It had been Leo’s idea to sit at his feet and gaze up at him steadily, and Grayson was still surprised and a bit unsettled by that, especially since he still wasn’t sure if the . . . emotions and senses he could get from Leo even with his shields up represented a new ability or the evolution of his empathy.

  Good . . . feels good . . . Graay-son . . .

  “I got that impression,” Nellie confessed, oblivious to the mental byplay between her dog and the agent. She was still frowning. “And he can be pretty convincing. But either the FBI or Haven is a step too far for me.”

  “You’re not alone,” Grayson said. “Plenty have turned him down, and all for very good reasons. Still, I think Bishop would make an even greater effort to recruit strong psychics like you, except that once he began putting the unit together, he discovered there were more of us out here than anybody had guessed. A lot more. Maybe because he was the first one to really go looking. To begin counting. Or maybe for some other reason.”

  “I always thought psychics were rare,” Nellie said.

  “Yeah, most people do, if they even believe in us. I know that’s what even Bishop believed in the beginning, but he found out pretty quickly that there are a lot of us, all ages, both genders, all races, belief systems, professions. All over the world. Latent psychics who’re adults when their abilities are triggered, and a lot born with them.

  “Nobody really knows why, or why now. The docs and scientists who study us from time to time have lots of theories, everything from natural evolution to interference at the genetic level from all the electrical and magnetic energy mankind has wrapped us all in, especially during the last fifty years and more.”

  “That’s a little scary,” Nellie said, slowly now.

  “Not th
eir scariest theory,” Grayson murmured.

  A little impatiently, Geneva said, “Theories we can maybe discuss when all the shouting is over? Nellie, I know you’re full of questions, and we hate to hit you with all this only a day after you got here, but bad things are happening and we need to stop them.”

  Nellie looked at her, then nodded. “So you guys believe the missing people are all dead?”

  “Except for Bethany Hicks,” Geneva answered immediately. Her voice was steady when she added, “I never touched her mind, so I can’t be absolutely sure. But that body found last week certainly wasn’t hers. My bet is he was a fourth person drawn here, maybe with fewer friends to worry and report him as missing right away.”

  “But you don’t know that for sure.”

  “I think we’d better assume it. Also assume this one was grabbed en route somehow, because he was never registered here at Hales. The other three were.”

  “About that,” Grayson said. “We had three missings, now maybe four, and we’re reasonably sure they didn’t get far from Salem alive. But we also have no crime scenes, no dump sites we could swear to in court, and that pretty much adds up to zip.”

  “I’ve been here two weeks,” Geneva said, sounding disgusted now. “I should know more. But this town . . . these people . . . Everything seems just fine on the surface, better than fine. Nicely flourishing little town, good economy, citizens doing well and content. They have what appear to be excellent schools, a decent-sized hospital that’s well equipped and well staffed, and trained first responders in EMS units, at least two fire departments—and the militia.”

  Nellie was watching her steadily. “But?”

  “But . . . there are those bodies, probably belonging to the people drawn or lured here to Salem who never really left. The reasons for which we still don’t know. A massive cover-up at the very least. And we have Bethany disappearing. And nobody in Salem seems very bothered, assuming they even know. About any of it.”

  “I can’t believe her parents wouldn’t know and wouldn’t care,” Nellie objected.

  “Maybe Bishop can find out where her parents went on that supposed vacation. I felt a sort of residual energy in their home that day, and got a sense of panic and worry that became something cheerful and happy all of a sudden, and vague thoughts of Florida, but nothing more specific. I don’t have a clue how that happened, or how reliable what I got is. Or what Bethany’s family knows now.”

  “And then there’s you.” Grayson looked at Nellie. “Like the three missings we know about, and maybe a fourth one, you were . . . drawn to Salem shortly before your thirtieth birthday. We don’t know what the others had as some kind of lure, but you had a message from your dead father, who by name at least belonged to one of the original five families here.”

  “A very strange message,” Geneva said, having read the letter herself. “You’re here to stop something, some kind of evil your father couldn’t stop, and he made sure you could be here under an assumed name. From which we can probably safely gather that whatever this is about, it has something to do with those five families who founded this town and who basically run it, possibly the Cavendish family in particular, and that it isn’t wise to identify yourself as such because you pose a threat to someone. Logically the longtime leader of the family, Duncan Cavendish, your uncle.”

  “And your father told you that you could trust Finn Deverell, that he’s the only man who can help you,” Grayson added.

  “Which is also odd,” Geneva said, “because he’s pretty high up in the militia, and I’m positive he’s the one who spoke to me just before I was grabbed.” Her tone left the others in no doubt that she felt she had a score to settle with that gentleman.

  “But he left you alive,” Grayson pointed out thoughtfully, “with food, water, and light. Do you get the sense he knew you could find a way to escape sooner rather than later?”

  “I didn’t get any sense at all from him then; I told you that. It all happened too fast. And the few times I was fairly close before he grabbed me, I couldn’t read him. At all.”

  Nellie was hardly aware of her fingers moving in her lap, compulsively smoothing the thin black leather gloves she wore. Reminding herself even unconsciously. Always reminding herself of what had to be controlled, contained. “He knows who I am. That I’m a Cavendish. He knows my father sent me here. He said he wanted to help me get out of Salem alive.”

  “Which,” Geneva said, “would sound really melodramatic, except that we believe at least four people have been killed here in only a few weeks.”

  “Were they here under assumed names?” Nellie asked.

  Grayson shook his head. “For the three we know about for sure, not unless they assumed them years ago. The names they used here when they registered were the ones they used before they left their homes to come here.”

  “Four people drawn here,” Nellie said slowly. “People who disappeared here or near here. Now I’m here.” She brooded a moment, then said, “I’m a Cavendish, and hiding that was important enough to my father that he made sure I could. Maybe the other four people were connected somehow to the other families.”

  Geneva looked at Grayson. “I don’t see how Bishop could have missed that, even with different surnames. Unless . . . Suppose they were descendants, but through the female lines?”

  “Possible.” Grayson nodded. “That would take a lot more digging to uncover, depending on how many generations ago those original women left Salem, and assuming it happened at all.”

  Geneva muttered an oath under her breath. “I hate assuming anything. The more we speculate, the more questions we have. And damned few answers. Sometimes I really hate profiling. Look, even if those three, maybe four, missings were descended from Salem families, why call or lure them back here, each just before their thirtieth birthday? Why call Nellie? Were those other three or four also supposed to stop something they may or may not have known more about? Are they dead because they weren’t able to do whatever was demanded of them?”

  Nellie clasped her fingers together tightly in her lap. “I’m not finding any of this very reassuring.” Leo got up from his place at Grayson’s feet and went to sit beside her, eyes fixed on her face and a faint whine reaching their ears.

  “He knows I’m upset,” she murmured, reaching to pet her dog.

  “Sorry.” Grayson smiled faintly. “Half our job seems to be sitting around speculating, adding bits and pieces of information as we’re able to find them. Until we figure things out. And usually we’re under a clock.”

  “My birthday,” Nellie said.

  Geneva shook her head a little, frowning. “The letter said before your birthday. And I’m pretty sure the others went missing before their actual birthdays. So if anybody makes a move against you, I’m guessing it’ll be sometime in the next few days.”

  “Great.”

  A faint rumble of thunder caught their attention, but before anyone could comment on that, Geneva, glancing automatically toward the nearest window, which was actually the sliders opening onto her balcony, said, “Don’t look now, but we’ve got company.”

  Grayson looked, and since the sheers there had been pulled open, he could clearly see the crow perched on the balcony railing, looking shiny black even in the grayish late-morning winter light.

  It was facing inward, gazing into the room, head cocked slightly to one side.

  Nellie didn’t look; she was frowning, automatically trying to tamp down the anxiety and stirrings of panic, draw in the threads of control. It was supposed to snow later, possibly not until Sunday, but lightly; there wasn’t supposed to be a storm.

  “The door’s closed,” Geneva murmured. “How good are bird ears? Assuming they report back to someone, that is.”

  “Just seeing the three of us together might put someone on their guard. Which might not be such a bad thing,” Grayson said quietly. �
�It might slow them down, give them something to think about.”

  “Or push them to move faster, which would be a bad thing. Paint giant targets on our backs. There were crows about when Nellie and I went out for our walk earlier.” Geneva kept her voice low. “I didn’t notice if one followed us back here, but I wasn’t trying to.”

  Grayson had done his best to shut out Leo’s emotions, especially when he’d been petting him, even though he liked dogs; now he deliberately tried to touch the crow’s mind, narrowing his focus as much as he could.

  Stirrings in his own mind, and that sense of a new muscle being carefully tried. Curiosity. Interest. And something else, something Grayson couldn’t quite define at first. Longing?

  “I don’t think he was sent,” he said slowly.

  Nellie looked up then, at Grayson, and when he met her gaze, even though he felt that her shields were up and her face was still, he also felt a kind of plea coming from her.

  “You know what they’re thinking?” she asked.

  “It’s . . . not that definite,” he replied. “And new for me, so I’m trying to get it all sorted out in my head. But I’m an empath, so what I’m picking up are more like emotions. Different from people, more primitive or more attuned to senses, concepts, something like that. It only started last night, with a few crows up in the woods. Then—Leo. When we passed your door last night, then again this morning in the dining room. Last night, he was mostly sleepy. This morning, I got the sense that he liked us, Gen and me, because we were like you. I assume he knew somehow that we were also psychics.”

  That clearly surprised Nellie. “I had no idea he knew. Or—would understand if he did.”

  “I think he understands a lot more than most people would ever give him credit for,” Grayson told her.

  A little impatiently, Geneva spoke then. “What about this crow right now? What are you sensing that makes you believe he wasn’t sent to spy on us?”