Haunted

by Kay Hooper

  “Figures. Where’s Toby?”

  “Restroom.”

  Melanie stood there for a few minutes half listening to weather people discussing low-pressure areas and elevations and the abrupt and unusual dip of the jet stream, then felt a sudden jab of uneasiness. “How long’s she been gone?”

  Annabel frowned at her. “She went . . . right after you went upstairs,” she said slowly.

  Melanie left her bag at her feet and immediately crossed the lobby toward the restrooms, gesturing toward the rather confused-looking security man behind the desk.

  “Carl, there’s an emergency exit just past the restrooms, isn’t there?”

  “Yes, Miss James, but—”

  Melanie didn’t wait. She checked the ladies’ room quickly, coming out before either the guard or Annabel got there, then turned down the hall to the emergency exit.

  Even from several feet away, she could see that a brick held one of the doors just slightly ajar.

  “The alarm,” Carl said, somewhere between angry and bewildered. “The alarm is supposed to sound unless we buzz somebody through at the desk. With parking at the side, so many people come in and out that way—”

  Annabel said, “Toby wouldn’t have left, Melanie. We both know she wouldn’t have left. Not alone. Not unless . . .”

  Melanie pushed the heavy door open and looked outside anyway, but she didn’t expect to see Toby, and she didn’t see her.

  “Call the sheriff’s office,” she told Carl.

  “But, Miss James—”

  “Two people are dead, Carl. Call the sheriff’s office and report that Miss Gilmore is missing.” She turned back to Annabel. “We can check the hotel on the way, just in case.”

  “We both know she won’t be there,” Annabel said, her voice hollow. “But I thought it was me. That voice I heard . . . saying he was coming for me next . . .”

  “Come on.” Melanie grabbed her bag. “With this storm coming, there won’t be much time to search. We have to hurry.”

  —

  WHEN HOLLIS OPENED her eyes, she was utterly unsurprised to find DeMarco bending over her.

  “That was a first for me,” he said. “How about you?”

  Hollis realized she was lying back on the conference table. On top of files. And on at least two or three pens or markers, because she could feel them pressing into her.

  “I had a dream,” she said.

  “I know. I was there.”

  She frowned up at him. “I thought I dreamed that part, too. It hit me all of a sudden, so I can see how I could have just fallen back on the table when I apparently passed out. Where were you?”

  “Luckily, on my way back from getting coffee, I stopped by Trinity’s office, looking for those old maps of the town she said she had in there. Her couch kept me from hitting the floor. I’ve never gone out so fast in my life.”

  “Yeah, it was quick. One minute I was talking to Brooke, and the next—”

  “You saw Brooke?” Since DeMarco had been undercover in Samuel’s cult, he had actually known Brooke when she had lived as a frightened and traumatized little girl.

  “Uh-huh. Apparently, the spirits were being considerate and giving me some time off.”

  “They might have warned you.”

  “Yeah, I said something along those lines.” Hollis stared at him a moment, suddenly became aware of their positions relative to each other, and said, “Um . . . I think I’d better sit up.”

  His faint smile told her that he knew very well why she was uncomfortable.

  Damn telepaths.

  He straightened, offering her a helping hand.

  She accepted it.

  “We need to get up to the parsonage,” she said.

  DeMarco frowned at her. “Everything I felt in your dream says that’s a bad idea.”

  Bluntly, Hollis said, “So is possession. According to Brooke, Samuel picked a weak vessel—but one that still had his own personality. One with a few old grudges against some members of The Group, I think, which is why they’re being killed. The original personality was drawn back here for that, and then when we showed up, Samuel decided to stay.”

  DeMarco frowned. “Somebody from Sociable had a grudge bad enough to disembowel a man?”

  “I’m making an assumption here, but the degree of torture, at least with Torrance, that was all Samuel. I don’t know what the vessel planned to do, but I doubt it was all that. I’m guessing Samuel took control for the sick and showy bits. To gather more negative energy—and for us.”

  “It could explain why Abernathy’s neck was severed so quickly and cleanly. No torture at all. He could easily have been killed by someone else.”

  “And was, I think. The vessel. I think he’s mad at people, and I think that’s pretty much all that’s left of his personality.”

  “So that part is disintegrating.”

  “With every evil act Samuel commits, the original personality gets weaker, loses his grip. Because Samuel gets stronger. The original personality can surface now and then, but probably for briefer and briefer periods. Pretty soon, he’ll be gone for good.”

  “Why do I feel there’s more?”

  “It’s what Brooke said. Samuel picked a weak vessel. Or maybe any human vessel would have been weak when subjected to Samuel’s needs. Either way, the vessel can’t handle what Samuel spent his life learning to handle: all that raw energy. All the power he’s been trying to collect and hold is slowly destroying the other man’s body.”

  “I hope you’re not about to say what I think you’re about to say.”

  “Yeah, apparently he’s tried more than once to get himself a new vessel. I don’t know who else he tried to invade, but that was the cause of my pounding headache and nosebleed.”

  “And yet . . . you kept him out.”

  Hollis shook her head. “No idea how. Brooke said he discovered I had my own kind of shield. But that was as far as her helpful streak extended, because she didn’t explain what that meant.”

  “All that, and you still want to go back to the parsonage?”

  “We have to, Reese. This is going to end one of two ways. Either Samuel finds himself a new vessel and slips away from us again—to fight another damned day—or else we stop him. Here and now.”

  “There’s a storm coming,” DeMarco said.

  “I know. And we need to get this done before. I have an awful feeling that, if we don’t, when the storm is over there won’t be anything but wreckage in its wake.”

  “You were scared up there. In the dream.”

  “I’m scared now. But more scared of not going up there. Everything in me says we have to go, and we have to go now.”

  DeMarco studied her for just a moment, then nodded. “Okay. Here, take your coffee. It’s going to be cold up there.”

  He was right. It was freezing.

  “Are you sure about this?” DeMarco asked nearly ten minutes later as he came around the front of their vehicle to join his partner. He had parked on the topmost cross street in front of the church and parsonage, at a break in the overgrown hedge where a path meandered toward the graveyard.

  “Of course I’m not sure about it.” Hollis didn’t budge from her side of the SUV, just stood there outside the closed door, her hands in her pockets, and stared at the graveyard right in front of them.

  To their left was the church.

  To their right, the parsonage.

  “Trinity wasn’t kidding about freakish weather. That front popped up out of nowhere. Even the weather guy was baffled by it. We’ll have snow starting within a couple of hours, before nightfall, and by this time tomorrow, the only way we’ll get up here is to hike it. No telling how long this area will be all but inaccessible.”

  “You really don’t want to go in there,” DeMarco said.

  “Like Bishop, you have an annoying habit of usually being right,” she muttered, her gaze fixed on the graveyard. Before he could respond, she said, “One thing I checked on earlier. That
preacher who murdered his wife and baby and then killed himself, he isn’t buried here. None of them are.”

  “Because it’s sanctified ground?”

  “Be a good reason to deny him burial. But according to the newspaper account I read, his parents wanted them all buried back in the family cemetery in Kentucky. I gather it was a very, very private service.”

  DeMarco waited a moment, then said, “We both know that where the dead are buried doesn’t have a lot to do with where their spirits end up if they don’t move on.”

  “You think I was worried about bumping into them here?”

  “Are you?”

  Hollis shook her head. “Not really. That is . . . not unless he’s that shadow man who was standing in the window.”

  “You seemed to believe that the shadow man isn’t anything human. Not anymore, at least.”

  She hunched her shoulders against the growing cold, inside as well as out.

  “Hollis?”

  “I don’t know what it is. If I had to guess, and I do, I’d guess what I saw in that weird dream was the representation of Samuel. All dark evil. And since we don’t yet know who his vessel is, I couldn’t see him as a person. Maybe it was just that. Or maybe it wasn’t a representation at all. Maybe it was just evil.”

  Quite deliberately, DeMarco said, “Even in the dream I caught a glimpse only because I was touching you.”

  She didn’t look at him. Rather fiercely. “Well, we knew all that energy at Alexander House would . . . intensify connections. Miranda said as much. So that makes sense.”

  “Does it?”

  “Sure.”

  “She also said that connections were tools we could use.”

  Hollis thought that sounded . . . odd. But she didn’t say so. Instead, she said, “Maybe that shadow man was from my imagination.”

  “I don’t think our connection is quite that deep,” DeMarco said in a thoughtful tone.

  Hollis felt her cheeks growing warm and hoped he’d think the cold, fitful breeze was chapping her skin.

  Then she remembered he was a telepath.

  Damn telepaths.

  “Hollis, you don’t have to go into the parsonage. We’ve already been through it. And, so far, nothing about these murders indicates any connection. You saw a shadow in a window—in a dream.”

  “Yeah, right after talking to a spirit. A spirit who as good as told me I’d have to fight the devil.”

  “Samuel is the devil?”

  “Isn’t he? I think he’s up here, Reese. I think he’s been up here most of the time, maybe because of all the weird energy up here. And I think he killed Barry Torrance up here, the way he did, posed him like that, to make sure we’d have to come back. Because . . . he needs a vessel.”

  “He’s not getting you,” DeMarco said. “And he’s not getting me.”

  “I hope you’re right.” With both hands in her pockets, she chewed on her bottom lip. “That dream. Didn’t you find it odd that Trinity’s dog was in it?”

  “I found the whole thing odd,” he retorted.

  “Look, I can’t explain it. All I know, all I feel, is that what he was trying to tell me in that dream was that I need to go inside the parsonage again.”

  “It was your dream,” DeMarco pointed out. “Sparked, you believe, by the encounter with Brooke. Right?”

  “Yeah. I guess.”

  “So why would Braden be included?”

  “You want logic from a dream?”

  DeMarco raised his brows at her.

  “I think Braden is important. That he’s here, like we’re here, for a reason. Maybe it’s to lead Trinity to murder victims. Or maybe it’s something else.”

  “Do you want to go get him?”

  “I think he’ll be coming.” Hollis frowned slightly. “I am not a precog, so I don’t know where these hunches are coming from. But they feel awfully certain.”

  After a long moment, DeMarco said, “Okay.” He held his hand out and waited for her to take hers out of her pocket and slowly place it in his. “Then let’s go see what’s in there.”

  —

  DEACON SAID, “I have a headache.”

  They were standing outside one of the small cafés in town, where they’d had coffee and talked to another of The Group, this time one of the men. Caleb Lee, who was definitely no killer.

  Deacon still felt oddly calm from that encounter; the guy really was Zen.

  Even so, Deacon also had a headache growing worse by the second.

  Trinity looked at him in some surprise, because his tone wasn’t one of complaint or even of someone wishing to convey information. What he was saying meant more than the words.

  “Okay,” she said.

  “It’s not my headache,” he said.

  It took several seconds of bafflement before Trinity remembered that he was an empath. He could feel what others felt.

  “I thought that was just emotions,” she said, because it was the first thing she thought of.

  “Usually. For it to be pain . . .”

  “What?”

  “It has to be bad. It pretty much has to be from another psychic. A psychic not capable of shielding.”

  “Hollis?”

  “I think . . . yeah. Hollis.”

  She turned and looked back toward the sheriff’s office, only a few doors down. “Their SUV is gone.”

  Deacon rubbed his face with both hands. “Damn. I’m surprised she can even see. It’s getting really bad. I feel like my head’s going to fall off.”

  “Women have a higher pain tolerance than men.” Trinity reached for the walkie clipped to the shoulder of her jacket. “Base, this is the sheriff. Where are our federal friends?”

  The response, a female voice, came almost instantly from the other part of the device clipped to Trinity’s belt, crackling with static. “They . . . left a while . . . ago, Sheriff.”

  “They say where they were going, Sadie?”

  “Said if . . . came back . . . asked, I was . . . tell you . . . up the mountain.”

  “What’s wrong with the radios?”

  More static, and then, very clear, “. . . acting up like this for the last hour. Storm . . . probably.”

  “Thanks, Sadie.” Trinity looked at Deacon, her expression grim. “The parsonage. I could tell Hollis was . . . drawn to that place. That’s not a good place, Deacon. Especially not for a medium. I thought I’d told her enough to keep her away.”

  “Crime scene,” he reminded her.

  “One we’ve already checked out. Thoroughly.”

  “It’s probably because she’s a medium that she’s there. They’re drawn to the sort of places that would keep you and me away.”

  “Great, that’s just great. But why now?”

  Deacon glanced up at the sky, one hand rubbing his temple. “The weather? If they know about that storm moving in, maybe Hollis thought it’d be her last chance for at least a few days. And maybe she knows or feels we can’t afford a few days.”

  Trinity’s Jeep was parked right outside the bank, and she took a step toward it before halting to frown at Deacon. “If you’re in this much pain down here, what’s it going to do to you to be exposed to all that energy up there?”

  “I have a shield. What I’m feeling is Hollis’s pain, not mine. She doesn’t have a shield. She’s got Reese, but too much baggage to let him help her the way I think he can.” Deacon was reasonably sure he was talking way too much, but the pounding in his head made clear thought a tricky proposition.

  “Let’s go.” As soon as Trinity opened the driver’s-side door, Braden was in and hopping over the console to get into the back seat.

  Deacon got in the front passenger seat. “So he knows you don’t need guiding this time, huh?”

  “Guess so.” Trinity lost no time in backing out of the parking place and heading for the climbing side street that would take them straight up to the church.

  Deacon clutched his head with both hands.

  “Shield o
r no shield, it’s getting worse, isn’t it? We’re getting closer to that energy bubble.”

  “You mean the one Hollis and Reese are in?” He gritted his teeth. “Yeah.”

  “Why won’t she let him help her?”

  “Not my story.”

  Trinity glanced at him, then repeated, “Why won’t she let him help her?”

  “Not fair,” he managed.

  “Why won’t she let him help her?” Trinity repeated inexorably.

  “Because . . . she thinks she’s . . . damaged goods. Way down inside, buried, that’s how she feels. Damaged. Broken. Never be the same person she was. Doesn’t even realize it consciously most of the time. When she does . . . she thinks it’s why she keeps getting new abilities. To make up for . . . what he took from her. Balance. It’s all about balance. Evil did its best to . . . break her. And she survived. But she . . . was hurt. So badly hurt.”

  “When she first became psychic?”

  “Yeah. Her trigger. It was . . . horrific. The worst psychic awakening we have on record. It was a miracle she even survived that attack. I only heard a few details, but . . . what I’ve felt from Hollis once or twice is . . . beyond pain. Something there isn’t a word for. She’s buried it deep, and maybe she even believes she’s healed, but . . . it’s still there. Still . . . unfinished business. Reese knows it’s there. It’s why he hasn’t . . . pushed her.”

  Deacon wanted to yell, because the pain in his head was almost beyond bearing. But then, suddenly, it was gone.

  For a moment, he had no idea what had happened. The Jeep was climbing the side street at a faster-than-posted clip, getting closer to the energy rather than retreating, so he should have been feeling worse instead of better.

  Then he realized.

  He turned his head slightly to see the black muzzle resting on his shoulder. Heard a soft whine.

  “I’ll be damned,” he said.

  —

  THE HEADACHE STARTED abruptly just about the time they moved past the graveyard and stepped onto the walkway that led to the front door of the parsonage.

  Hollis stopped because she had to, drawing a deep breath and letting it out slowly, telling herself she could handle this. She had a very high pain threshold, for one thing, something that had come in very handy several times. She and pain were friends of a sort, she had thought from time to time with dark humor.