Knock, knock...

by Dale Mayer

  ***

  Roman had been deep in conversation with several clients when he glanced up and saw Shay enter the gallery. With a man. And damn if jealousy hadn't taken over. Her distinguished looking partner stayed close and was attentive the whole time. With their heads bent together, they walked the gallery, discussing his paintings.

  Then he'd realized the danger. Would she know? Did she see herself as he saw her? In his paintings?

  Having her here was incredibly personal, and invasive to his peace of mind. And it had the potential to be incredibly embarrassing, even catastrophic, if she recognized herself as his inspiration.

  He hated the nervous energy that filled him. He kept up an ongoing conversation with many people as he kept a quiet watch on Shay's progress and body language. Finally, he couldn't stand it anymore. She'd tortured him enough. He had to find out.

  He walked over and found out who her companion was.

  Stefan. Jesus. He'd heard so much about this man. Talented artist, tortured psychic. Shay's friend. Dr. Maddy's friend. But not until now had he understood just how good a friend he was to Shay. He studied the two of them, reading the caring, friendliness, even the loving, but...not – and he breathed a quiet sigh of relief – he somehow knew Stefan was not her lover.

  Just then Roman caught Stefan's gaze. Heat rose on his neck. Damn it felt like Stefan knew what he was thinking. Amusement simmered deep in Stefan's gaze and he just sat back as the scene played out. Roman shifted his gaze from the painting in front of him to the woman with the same jaw line. The same curve to her shoulder.

  How could she not know?

  He shifted his gaze quickly to Stefan.

  And there it was. It was in the knowing look in his eyes, the knowing curve of his lips. Damn. There was no fooling the man.

  Stefan knew.

  ***

  When they’d seen enough, she took a moment to say good-bye to the gallery hosts. Then, with Stefan at her side, she slowly did one more stroll past the paintings. Roman had returned to speak with his other guests and she was left alone to dwell on this sudden shift in her world.

  A nice shift, though.

  She'd gotten over the shock of discovering Roman was the artist. If she understood one thing, it was that seeing this amazing work made Roman even more attractive.

  How did that work? Was it that she appreciated the man's talents? That he had a softer side? That there was an honesty to his work, to him? She already knew that from their years of correspondence. Could it be that he reminded her of Stefan? She adored Stefan. They had a bond unlike anything else she'd experienced. But the bond with Stefan wasn't a lover-like connection.

  "Are you ready to go home?" Stefan asked gently.

  She smiled. "Yes. Thank you for bringing me. I don't know how long it would have taken before I found out about his art another way."

  "I thought this might be good for you." He nudged her toward the last painting and the large glass window. Shay stopped for one last look at the stunning woman.

  "She's very beautiful."

  "Yes, she is."

  "There's no way he could create these...gorgeous paintings, if he didn't love her," she murmured, casting a final long look at the picture.

  "No. Not likely."

  "I wonder if he knows," she mused.

  "I wonder." Stefan's voice was noncommittal, as if the answer was of no interest to him. And true enough, it probably wasn't.

  "Maybe a better question is this: Does she know how he feels? It would be terrible to love someone to that extent but for them to be oblivious."

  "True."

  At the large window, she stopped. She could see the huge painting behind her in the reflection.

  There was something familiar about the line of the woman's jaw, her neck. Shay couldn't place her. Recognition sat just outside her consciousness. Inside, she understood one thing – the woman was someone she'd met.

  Somewhere.

  But who?

  "Ready?"

  Turning back to Stefan, she smiled and nodded. On his arm, she walked out of the gallery without a backward glance.

  ***

  Shay crawled into bed that night in a smooth, happy state. She'd enjoyed the evening. Any time spent with Stefan was special and this had been no exception.

  Not to mention that their energies, when combined, always went to new heights. She'd often wondered what it would be like to have a lover that had psychic abilities like his, even if he only understood the way energy worked. And how combined energies changed, grew and melded.

  It could be incredibly special.

  And something she really wanted to experience in her life.

  And that was not likely to happen. Not with her trust issues preventing any real connection with someone.

  She pulled the bedding up to her chin and turned off the light. Peaceful, she dropped into a sound sleep.

  And woke up some time later, her heart pounding, her breath rasping as it fought its way up her throat.

  Shit. Something is wrong.

  What? She hopped out of her bed and ran to her living room and felt like she was once again caught in the panic she’d felt that night, a year ago, when Darren had broken into her place.

  The living room was empty. She ran to the front door. It was still locked. The bolt in place. She spun around and leaned back against the door, her body shaking with emotion.

  It was just a nightmare.

  Just a nightmare.

  Please, let this be just a nightmare.

  With a semblance of calm restored, she walked the apartment and searched, unconsciously imitating Roman's movements from the other night. As she finished, she realized what she'd done. She'd taken almost the same route that he had. Laying down another path of energy over his.

  And why was that significant?

  She didn't know, but patterns were just as significant in energy work as mathematics. She took a deep breath as she walked into the kitchen. A cup of tea. She needed a cup of tea. And some time to think this through. And as she walked from the kitchen to the living room and back to her bedroom, she saw the different energy field.

  She came to a dead stop. And crouched low.

  The energy was thin and low. Older. And covered in a soft black. Hidden in the shadows of her dark room. It was the oozing blackness of it that made her skin crawl. The only time she’d seen that same black was with Darren’s energy. True, she'd seen a few things that came close – after all black was a common enough color in energy, but never did anything else have the same oozing blackness. Not before Darren, and never since.

  Thank God.

  She studied the pattern of the dark energy in her apartment. It centered in her living room. She twisted and bent up and down, trying to see the path, to find the person behind it. But that was impossible. There were just wisps of something there. Not enough to read. Just enough to make her nervous... Very nervous.

  From all of this she knew one thing. Someone had been in her apartment. Again.

  And that someone had the same energy signature as her last intruder. How? Tonight. They’d probably entered as soon as she'd left… Yet the door had been locked when she came home. And there'd been no sign of any disturbance.

  Surely that meant her visitor had come in astral form. She knew she could walk through the memory of her apartment, in the time before she left for the evening and check.

  Moving back to her bed, she sat down, her tea long forgotten. Closing her eyes, she turned back the clock in her head and stepped out of her body – and into the vision.

  Giving herself a moment to adjust, she followed herself as she went through the preparations of getting ready for the evening. The room looked normal.

  This was her space. She knew this energy. Everything was as it should be. She went through the same clothes change and then watered the plants, picked up of her purse and phone, turning her head as the doorbell rang. She walked to the door. She watched herself greet Stefan and Stefan greet her. No
rmal.

  Everything was the way it was supposed to be. So now she was sure the visitor had come in after she'd left for the gallery.

  She stepped out of the vision and back into her own time in her own bedroom. She knew what she had to do, but could she do it? Now that was something else. She walked into the living room and stood over the energy wisps that littered the room.

  Then she picked one and jumped inside.

  Chapter 12

  Immediately, Shay was tossed into the turbulent emotional storm. Anger was the dominant sentiment. Whoever this person was, revenge powered all his actions. There were even threads of hate spinning through the wisps.

  For her.

  She shuddered at the completely unexpected emotional maelstrom.

  She hadn't thought this trip would bring any results at the beginning. Instead she'd been sucked in and washed away in the emotions left behind. Since it was energy, she could see the approximate time it arrived and anything that happened while the energy was active. But it didn't allow her to see the person. She could see and feel some of what the person felt, but since she was inside the energy, she saw nothing to identify the person.

  Neither could she read the person's thoughts. But the emotions stormed right through her.

  What could this person want? They'd come to Shay's personal space. Why?

  She followed the energy as it walked through her apartment. It stayed to the main areas. It never ventured into the bedroom. Odd. A psychic burglar would have gone after jewelry, money, something that was easily pawned, then plan a physical trip to take advantage of the loot they'd seen.

  This energy didn't travel around. It sat, as if festering. There was a faint throb to the energy. Even though it was cold and had almost dissipated, the throb was strong enough to be felt. Double odd. Shay looked around her apartment, hoping for something, anything to clarify the identity of her intruder.

  Another odd twist. Normally she could see the energy left behind by people…for a day at least, sometimes days. If the person experienced strong emotions, it should be even longer. This person had been driven by strong emotions, but the force of their feelings didn't keep this particular energy warm and heavy, allowing it to stay. Instead, it was as if this person had burned up all their emotional energy, leaving little trace behind.

  And what was with the cloaking layer of black energy? She'd seen something similar with Darren. She had to watch to make sure that fear didn't have her judging the energy and assume it would have the same behavior as Darren. Or having her afraid that it was Darren and that he’d somehow found a way back to taunt her.

  No. She knew Darren was dead. It was a fact.

  She'd heard horror stories from Stefan about various non-dead entities making last grabs for life through the living. If those stories didn't make one scared, then nothing would.

  She didn't think that trick was within Darren's capabilities, but she didn't know for sure. Thoughts that he might return haunted her sleep and kept her nightmares alive.

  Still, for all the similarities to this energy, it didn't feel the same as Darren’s. Close. But it wasn't him. So how were they alike? She just couldn’t say.

  She also wasn't prepared to have entities, living or dead, walking through her apartment at will.

  Tired, and knowing she'd need to rest, she added another layer of protective energy around her apartment.

  Returning to reality, she recognized that her body needed to be horizontal as soon as possible. In the morning, she'd call on Stefan's expertise yet again. Something was up. If he could help her guard her space then she needed him to do that for her.

  Whatever it was she needed protection from...

  The two of them had put a clean, soothing protective energy around last time. She believed it would be enough.

  She'd been wrong.

  ***

  Monday morning…

  The next morning Shay walked down the hallway toward her office and heard Jordan bitching to Rose about the state of her files. Shay winced. She'd left the files she'd pulled for Ronin on Jordan's desk. And Shay knew that for all her multi-colored hair and free-spirit clothing, Jordan was a neat freak. On the other hand, Ronin had needed the material, and Roman had set up some new security on her system.

  The good outweighed the bad.

  She opened the door with a bright smile. And kept it in place, while she pointed to the files in front of Jordan. "I'm sorry." She walked over to Jordan. "I had to pull the files at the request of the police. They didn't want to wait for Monday, and I figured that if I put them back in the wrong place you'd be even more upset, so I left them for you to file away."

  Jordan glared and then blew a strand of turquoise hair out of her eyes. "I hate people going into the files. Almost as much as I hate people touching my computer." She flung her multi-colored scarf over her shoulder and sat down with a thunk.

  "I know." Shay said meekly. "I'd have just given them a copy of the digital files, but they wanted to see the hardcopy stuff as well." She shrugged. "You know the paper files are more complete."

  "And now messier," groused Jordan as she reorganized the contents of the top file. "Did you have to mess up the order too? They were chronological…"

  Shay smiled at Rose, who gave a small eye roll, as Jordan slapped the file closed and then placed it in its proper spot in the huge filing system behind her.

  "Glad you can keep it all straight for me." Shay walked into her office to hang up her coat, relieved that moment was over. Jordan was incredibly efficient, and normally she was even-tempered. But disturbing the files was one thing guaranteed to piss her off. Shay sat down on her big chair and put her purse away in the bottom drawer of her desk. She turned on her computer and called out, "Are there appointments this morning?"

  "One." Jordan called back. "At eleven. Your ten o'clock cancelled."

  Good. But she didn't say that out loud. The less pulling on her today, the better. She needed a nap already. And she also hoped to stop at the hospital and see Tabitha today.

  No. Stay away from her.

  Stefan? Why?

  Keep her under the radar. As far as the world knows, she's in a coma. If you visit her, you'll be alerting her attacker. Because Tabatha’s alive, he might see her as a loose end.

  Damn. He was right but she was desperate to see for herself that Tabitha was okay.

  She is, but she's staying in the ethers. Don't contact her that way either. This person understands energy. Let's not give him a reason to go after Tabitha again. I've told her what happened and that she's still in danger. Ronin also knows. She did say that a force came from Sue, her assistant at the time of the attack. She also says she's known Sue for years and it wasn't her energy that did this.

  Damn. Shay knew Sue as well. She couldn't see her being involved. So someone else is hitching a ride with people in order to attack other people?

  Possibly. They'd have to stalk the victim enough to know who and what they'd be doing and with whom, in order to pick the right opportunity.

  Shay thought about that as a glimmer of something, perhaps understanding stirred in the back of her mind. She tugged it forward. Not if this person already had anchors in the victim. And that's easily done. They just have to be able to see the person and access their chakras. If they already had those, they could just use the anchors when they wanted, and pop in and view the world from the new perspective.

  Oh shit. Realization hit her in the heart. Like the extra eyes she'd seen in Bernice's gaze.

  Silence, while Stefan pondered that. It would take a lot of skill.

  Would it though, Shay agreed dryly. Think about it. Early on, they could have put hooks in to make their takeover of the unknowing individuals easier to do their will, yet again. Even better. They could even have already created a hook from the victim to the innocent bystander. Then used that as the highway for the energy to attack the victim. Even better it would look like a heart attack or rather it wouldn't look like anything hard scie
nce could figure out – and therefore investigators, medical and otherwise, would find nothing suspicious. They’d believe the person just dropped dead.

  Scary thought, Stefan murmured. But all too possible given we have no idea the limits of energy work – for good or evil. I guess I'll need to speak with Tabitha again. In the meantime, we're all working on this case. Stay safe.

  "Here's the file on the eleven o'clock appointment." Jordan came in holding a thick folder in her right hand. In her left she had a stack of papers. "And these are the new applications for you to go over."