Blood Ties

by Kay Hooper

  “Miranda? No. Almost always no, but definitely no here and now. I assumed it was because she and Bishop are apart, both shielding and guarding their connection, because it’s a vulnerability.”

  “Which it is, at least when they’re separated by physical distance.”

  DeMarco nodded. “And with Bishop worried about a possible traitor, he’d most definitely guard his vulnerabilities.”

  “Traitor. That’s… a strong word.”

  “It’s a strong thing. A dangerous thing. And you know it.”

  “I know every team member,” Quentin said. “And many of the active Haven operatives. And none of them is a traitor.”

  “Consciously, at least. Let’s hope not.”

  Reluctant, Quentin said, “If it’s unconscious, unknowing—if one of us is being influenced or at least tapped into—then it has to be on a level you telepaths obviously can’t reach, or one of you would have picked up on it by now.”

  “Probably,” DeMarco agreed. “And if it’s that deep, chances are it is below the level of conscious thought.”

  “So it may be only through our mediums that we find answers in this one. In the gray time, where we’ve seen the first real sign of some kind of deception. And if it is, we can’t risk shaking Diana’s confidence to the point that she’s unable to open that door. Because none of the rest of us can do it.”

  DeMarco drew a breath and let it out in a short sigh, a bit impatient but accepting. “Logical. Even practical. But… if it was me, I’d want to know there might be something hiding in the corner.”

  “She already knows that much. And I agree it’s a possibility that needs to be discussed. But leave the timing of it up to me, okay?”

  “All right, it’s your call. Just do us all a favor and remember that somebody took a shot at us, moving this case from investigative to actively dangerous. For us. I don’t know about you, but I hate wearing those goddamn vests.”

  “So do I. Though if you’re right about the skills of that sniper, he’s just as likely to go for a head shot.”

  “Nice thing to remind me before bedtime. Thanks.”

  “Speaking of, what the hell time is it anyway? I left my cell in my room.”

  “Quarter after two,” DeMarco replied, without looking at his watch.

  “You know or guessing?”

  “I know. Like Diana’s internal compass, I have an internal clock. Usually accurate to within five minutes.”

  “Then why wear a watch?”

  “Because I can. They don’t go dead on me the way they do on most of the rest of you; my shield apparently holds the energy in. At least until I use my abilities, and then only if I’m pushing full strength.”

  “Which I’m guessing you don’t often do.”

  “Without knowing whether it’ll blow a fuse in my brain one day? No, not often. I’m big on self-preservation.”

  “When it comes right down to it, we probably all are. Genetically hardwired for it.” Quentin took a step toward his room, then paused to add, “Interesting that within the unit you and Hollis have the highest levels of electrical activity in your brains.”

  “I’m sure it frustrates the hell out of Bishop.” When Quentin lifted a brow at him, DeMarco explained, “Another item on the growing list of paranormal inexplicables neither lab work nor fieldwork has provided answers for. Or, really, any basis to even begin comparing: My abilities and Hollis’s are very, very different.”

  “Almost opposite,” Quentin agreed. “Which raises the question—”

  “I think we’ve had enough questions for tonight, don’t you? We’re supposed to meet in the dining room at eight; it would be nice to get at least a little sleep before breakfast.”

  “Oh, yeah, you can say that again. I’m so beat I can barely think. See you in the morning.”

  “‘Night.” DeMarco made his way back toward his own room, pausing for only an instant outside Hollis’s closed door. Her light was on.

  He wondered if she’d sleep at all tonight.

  His hesitation was so slight he doubted she could have heard it in his footsteps. If she could have heard his footsteps at all, which was even more doubtful. In any case, DeMarco returned to his own room.

  Long habit made him check the windows, the closets, all the corners, even under the bed before he relaxed. The habit didn’t strike him as extreme; he had lived with it for too long.

  He sat down on the edge of his bed and pushed back the loose shirt cuff covering his left wrist. The watch was metal, with a buckle, and it took him several careful tries to pry it open.

  The metal was a bit melted.

  He grimaced slightly as he peeled the watch off his wrist, revealing scorched skin where the metal had touched it.

  Aloud, he muttered, “Note to self: Stop wearing a fucking watch.”

  He tossed the ruined watch toward his open suitcase and briefly examined his wrist. Not a bad burn, just painful enough to be annoying. He carried a compact first-aid kit with him when he traveled, another long-standing habit, but didn’t bother to dig it out of his bag. The burn was slight enough and would probably be all but gone by morning.

  They usually were.

  Not that it had happened very many times. He was a cautious man, after all, and rarely threw that caution to the winds.

  But this was the second ruined watch of the day, dammit. The first one had possessed a leather strap fashioned so that no part of the metal watch touched his skin; that watch was now tucked in a side pocket of his suitcase, its metal parts all fused and melted together—an event that had occurred at about the time DeMarco knocked Hollis to the ground to avoid a sniper’s bullet.

  At least it didn’t burn me.

  He wondered rather idly if a scan of his brain right now would show even more electrical activity than its previous high, which had occurred just after the final confrontation at the Church of the Everlasting Sin. In that deadly hour, during a battle that had been charged with sheer, raw power, the energies hissing in the very air around them had undoubtedly changed all of them in ways they hadn’t even begun to calculate.

  Maybe in dark ways. Dangerous ways. A sobering thought, but more than possible; Samuel’s energy had certainly been dark, and God knew there had been plenty of that blasting their way. It wasn’t as if any of them carried around some special protection against negative energy—the opposite, if anything. Energy affected them, period.

  Energy as black and negative as Samuel’s… God only knew how that might affect them.

  DeMarco had a hunch that was the major reason Miranda had kept Hollis with her since the investigation into the church ended; of them all, Hollis had shown the strongest—or at least most obvious—response to the attack against her, developing an entirely new ability, full-blown and extraordinarily powerful. DeMarco doubted that even she knew for sure how else she had been changed, for good or ill.

  Just like he didn’t know what that energy might have done to him. Maybe especially him, since he’d been close to Samuel, right there in the Compound, virtually every day for more than two years.

  How can I not be changed by that? All the roles I’ve played over the years… That role may have cost me the most.

  He hadn’t dwelled on it because that wasn’t in his nature, but he had to wonder how he had been affected. Changed. He had no doubt at all that he had been, because he felt… different. In some ways stronger, but in other ways just different. The certainty of that and the uncertainty of precisely how different he might be now lay uneasily in the pit of his stomach—the constant low-level dread of an unknown he couldn’t control.

  But he knew himself well aside from that and knew that, caution and training notwithstanding, he was a creature of instinct and always had been.

  No doubt always would be.

  He thought Hollis was probably going to have a hard time with that.

  Hollis stifled a yawn and then took another swallow of the B&B’s rather excellent coffee. She hadn’t slept very well a
fter returning to her room the night before, especially since she hadn’t even closed her eyes until after four, but at least the bone-deep weariness was gone.

  More or less.

  And breakfast, served by the B&B’s cheerful owner, Jewel, and by an equally cheerful young maid named Lizzie, had been both delicious and plentiful. So Hollis felt reasonably ready to face another day.

  Reasonably.

  She wasn’t so sure about Diana, however. The other woman was noticeably pale and hollow-eyed this morning and was definitely withdrawn. Quentin had been watching her closely, if unobtrusively, until he’d left the room just minutes before to go to Jewel’s office for an expected fax.

  Miranda and DeMarco were busy shifting a few tables around and setting up workstations, assisted by the still-cheerful Lizzie, so Hollis took the opportunity to speak quietly to Diana.

  “Did you sleep at all?”

  “Not really. Does it show?”

  “A bit.” Hollis looked around the pleasant dining room, with its big, bright windows and comfortable furnishings, then joined Diana at the small table where she sat with both hands wrapped around a coffee mug. “All this is mostly setup, you know. Just getting ready to work. Nobody’d mind if you went back to your room and took a nap.”

  “I’d mind. Besides, I don’t really want to sleep.”

  Hollis didn’t have to ask why. Instead, she said, “So I guess in all these years you haven’t figured out a way to keep yourself out of the gray time when you don’t want to visit.”

  “I might have.” A touch of bitterness entered Diana’s voice. “If I hadn’t spent so many of those years medicated, with virtually no control over what I consciously thought or did. My subconscious wasn’t looking for control, it was busy learning to function separately in order to provide an outlet for the mediumistic abilities. Or at least that’s what Bishop says.”

  “And he has an annoying habit of being right.”

  “Yeah, well, he also believes it may take a while—months, maybe even years—before my conscious and subconscious minds become… integrated normally. Or what passes for normal with psychics.”

  Slowly, Hollis said, “Did Bishop seem to consider the separation a strength or a weakness?”

  Diana frowned. “I’m not quite sure. He said he could envision situations in which there could be some benefit to having an independent subconscious. To be honest, the very idea sounded so unnerving that I didn’t ask him anything more about it.”

  “Can’t say that I blame you.”

  Keeping her gaze fixed on her coffee cup, Diana said, “Yeah, it sounded way too much as if my own subconscious is… an alien thing. Something not under my control. Listen, do you think Reese might also be right? That another medium could have been in the gray time with me all these years? Some of the time? Every time?”

  “I don’t know about that, but I have to admit, when he pulled me out, all I could think was that maybe Samuel’s pet monster had died and that his spirit was in the gray time—all ready to torture spirits the way he had bodies. Because that’s where we were, in the asylum where he did that.”

  “There’s a creepy thought.”

  “No kidding. But Reese said the killer is still very much alive. And he’s right; I looked it up later, just to be sure. He is still alive, still imprisoned. In a padded cell, actually.”

  “He… isn’t a medium, right? That pet monster?”

  “Far as we’ve been able to tell, he has zero psychic ability. And several of our psychics were able to read him, so we’re as sure as we can be.”

  “So it couldn’t be him in the gray time. But Reese’s theory still makes sense, doesn’t it? That somebody, another medium, could be in there, watching me?”

  Hollis kept her tone deliberate. “I think it’s easy to theorize—when you haven’t been there.” She waited until Diana looked at her, then added, “You’re comfortable and confident in the gray time. Strong. I think if another medium had been there, you would have known it, the same way you instantly knew that the fake Quentin was just that.”

  Diana drew a deep breath and let it out slowly. “That’s what I’ve been telling myself.”

  “Believe it. Trust your instincts.”

  “I guess that’s all any of us can do.”

  “True enough.” Hollis lifted her own cup in a slight salute. “So here’s to trusting our instincts. And to me finding an anchor on this side so I’m not yanked into the gray time against my will. Or, if I am yanked in, that an anchor here means I can pull myself back out.”

  Diana lifted her own cup, but said dryly, “Yeah, well, thing is… you have an anchor on this side.”

  Hollis felt suddenly uneasy. “I do?”

  “Uh-huh. Reese.”

  Now Hollis knew why she’d felt unease instead of relief. Because something inside her had known Diana would say that. She kept her voice low. “Look, just because he was able to pull me out—”

  Diana was nodding and kept her own voice low when she said, “Yeah, just because. Hollis, Reese isn’t a medium and wasn’t able to open a door to the gray time, but he was able to pull you out of there nevertheless. Find you and pull you out, neither of which is an easy or simple thing to do. We may not know a whole lot about how my connection to the gray time works, but one thing Quentin and I found out is that a nonmedium on this side can act as a lifeline—and an anchor. But that’s only if there already exists some kind of connection or tie between you and that person, and only then if he can touch you physically on this side.”

  Hollis could feel herself beginning to frown. “So that’s why you and Quentin had such an odd reaction when Reese said he pulled me out.”

  “That’s why. It was a bit… unexpected.”

  Shaking her head, Hollis said, “No, there has to be another reason. Because there’s no connection between us. I barely know the man.”

  “Well, there’s knowing… and then there’s knowing.”

  “I don’t know him like that either.”

  A little laugh escaped Diana. “I didn’t mean knowing in the biblical sense.”

  “Oh.” Hollis tried not to look too self-conscious. “Well, knowing how, then?”

  “You’ll have to tell me that. All I know is that a psychic’s strength has nothing to do with it. We experimented in the lab, and Bishop and Miranda together couldn’t connect with me in the gray time. None of the telepaths could. One seer—You know Beau Rafferty, right?”

  “Maggie Garrett’s brother? Yeah, a bit.”

  “Well, he’s the only nonmedium I’ve ever physically encountered in the gray time. There in spirit, I mean, but visible to me. And not dead.” She frowned. “Anyway, that was an extreme case, extreme circumstances, and he’s scarily powerful, so that probably explains how he was able to get in. And out. But Quentin… Quentin can connect with me there. I don’t see him or even hear him, but I know if I reach for him, he’ll be there. And he’ll pull me out.”

  “Oh.” Hollis hoped she didn’t look as unnerved as she felt. “Which means?”

  “What I said. There has to be a connection, a tie. Bishop believes a close blood relation, even a nonpsychic, could possibly do it given a strong enough motivation, though that’s a theory we haven’t tested.”

  “Because of your father’s attitude?”

  “Yeah, asking him to participate in a lab experiment exploring his daughter’s psychic gifts would not go over well at all. In fact, I suspect he’d go back to trying to buy a judge and have me committed.”

  Hollis blinked. “Buy a judge?”

  “He’s never let morals or ethics get in the way when there was something he wanted.” Diana shook her head. “Never mind him. The point is, failing a blood relation, and given what we know, the connection has to be something emotional or psychological. Or psychic, of course.”

  Hollis seized on the latter. “Must be psychic. Somehow.” Then she remembered. “Back in Samuel’s Compound that last day, there were weird energies all over t
he place; we were all affected by them, probably even changed. I know damn well I was changed. So maybe it happened then. Maybe while Reese was reaching out to try to dampen Samuel’s energies and I was trying to do my thing, some of our energies got… tangled.”

  Solemn, Diana said, “That sounds as likely as anything else. Maybe Reese, at a critical moment for each of you, tuned in to your frequency, as Quentin would say. Only it happened during a time when both of you were being exposed to unusual energies, and that made a fleeting contact something a bit more… substantial.”

  Hollis felt herself frowning again. “Yeah, I’d bet that was it. Something like that, anyway. Still, I’d… I’d rather not have to depend on him to drag me out of the gray time if I get in trouble there.”

  Diana smiled ruefully. “Believe me, I really don’t want to depend on Quentin either, not like that. But I don’t know if either of us has a choice, at least for now.”

  Hollis wasn’t at all happy about that and wasn’t sure she wanted to even begin to examine her mixed emotions on the subject. So she was relieved when Quentin returned to their becoming-a-makeshift command center then, fax in hand.

  “Things just got very interesting,” he announced, after a quick look around to make sure the agents were alone in the dining room.

  “Don’t you mean more interesting?” Diana shook her head. “Because I haven’t been bored yet.”

  “More interesting, then. Since we’re not completely up and running in the command center here, the sheriff faxed this through as soon as his office was notified. It looks like we’re being—you should excuse the word—haunted by Samuel. So to speak.”

  Miranda looked up from the laptop she was in the process of setting up and frowned. “He does seem to be a part of this, at least in spirit, doesn’t he? What now?”

  “If everybody recalls, we had one supposed church member AWOL and unaccounted for there at the end: Brian Seymour. Part of the security team.”

  “In his own mind, maybe,” DeMarco muttered.

  “Yeah, well, as we all know, he vanished without a trace. And we never found out for sure who, besides Samuel, he was working for.”