by Кей Хупер
“He’ll forgive us. I hope. And Bailey?”
“She knows. It goes against the grain for her to leave Ruby unshielded, but there’s no other way. Powerful as she is, Ruby won’t be able to maintain the illusions we’ll need tomorrow if she’s behind Bailey’s shield.”
Miranda drew back just far enough to look up at him. “As much as she’s our edge, Ruby is also a potential danger. To us—and to herself. Galen knows what she can do, so they have to be wondering where she fits in.”
“Maybe not. Bailey says Galen’s locked up tight. Maybe tight enough.”
“And if not?”
“The unpredictable variable. There’s always at least one.”
She nodded. “Brisco?”
“On his way to the hospital. Maybe there by now. I had a slight head start only because my jet was fueled and ready to go.”
“Are they okay up there? At the hospital? I haven’t been able to sense a damn thing outside our connection.”
“Yeah, I felt the effects as soon as we touched down. Samuel had some very apt pupils.” He shook his head, then added, “Quentin’s holding on. I think Hollis and Reese are trying to help Diana.” He shook his head. “I’m still not sure whether alerting her to possible deception in the gray time was a good idea.”
“It put her on guard. And she needed to be.”
“Yeah. But assuming all that ends well, when she finds out I sent a strange psychic into the gray time with her, she’s liable to be… a little upset.”
Miranda smiled ruefully but said, “I wish we could see how it turns out, for Diana and Quentin. So we’d know.”
“That one’s out of our hands, love.”
“I know. Still.”
He kissed her, and they stood there for a long time just holding each other. Finally Bishop said, “You didn’t get any rest at all last night. You need to sleep. Especially now, you need to sleep.”
“I’m fine.” She smiled up at him. “And I’ll sleep. Later.”
Hollis wasted no time in grabbing Diana by the hand and pulling her into the nearest alleyway. “We can circle around the back while he’s checking the front. He’ll never see me.”
“Sooner or later he will. And then he’ll know you came through a door. He’ll know you can get out even if I can’t.”
“You’re going to get out,” Hollis told her, keeping her voice low. “I’ll be damned if I’ll leave you here after all this.” She was pulling Diana along.
“You don’t understand. That’s Samuel. He wants out of the gray time. He wants to live again. And we can’t let him do that.”
“He wants to live again? You mean in the flesh? Is that possible?”
“Yes,” Diana replied simply. “If he gets out. If he can possess a living host.”
“Possession is real too?” Hollis shook her head. “Damn, I love my job. Learn something new every day.”
“Hollis—”
“Diana, all we have to do right now is get out of here without Samuel seeing us use the door. Right?”
“But someone else could—”
“What, come here and let him out? If nobody’s come in all this time since he died, I think we can probably feel safe in leaving him here for another week or two. Until you’re stronger, until you’re healed. And, in the meantime, we’ll figure out how to keep his ass here for good.”
“Not for good,” Diana murmured, thinking. “Only until his energy is… pulled apart. Forced out of here. As long as the door to our side is closed until that happens, he’ll have to cross over.”
“Great. Then we just have to keep our door closed.”
“By making sure I don’t go to sleep?”
“We’ll think of something. The point is that you need to leave here, get back to your body. I didn’t pour all my energy into healing you just so you’d look good in a coffin.”
As intended, the words shocked Diana out of her lethargy. “Damn, you can be hard-nosed.”
“When it comes to saving my friends, you bet I can.” She pulled Diana into another alleyway and crept toward the front of the building. Peeking around quickly, she saw the fake Quentin. “Okay, he’s more than a block down and still moving away. We should have time to get out of here.”
“You can’t leave yet.”
Hollis started, then stared at Brooke. “Where’d you come from? Never mind, never mind.”
“Diana can’t leave yet. She has truths to uncover.”
“She has a body to get back to,” Hollis told her.
“No,” Diana said. “Brooke told me when—when I was shot that I came here to uncover truths. If that’s the rule, I can’t leave until I do it.”
Hollis bit back a sigh of impatience. “This is more your world than mine, that’s for sure. Okay, so which truths?” She took another quick peek around the corner to make sure Samuel-as-Quentin was still moving away from them.
Diana was staring at the guide. “I know the truth of my relationship with Quentin; I can’t deny that, and I don’t want to hide from it anymore.” She looked down at her free hand, still feeling him holding it.
Brooke said, “That’s one truth.”
“The truth at the heart of the investigation is Samuel. Not just here but out there as well.”
“What?” Hollis demanded.
Diana nodded. “The sniper is his man. Maybe all of it was planned before Samuel died, or maybe he’s able to reach out through some kind of connection he formed before he died. That’s why I was shot. Samuel realized it was the quickest way to get me back here. To open the door.”
“Son of a bitch,” Hollis said blankly. “I never even thought about him affecting you or going after you—like that, I mean—because he was always so afraid of mediums.”
“Until he needed one to get out of here.”
“Irony, I suppose. Or just the twisted humor of the universe. Do Bishop and Miranda know this?”
“I have no idea.”
Brooke said, “That’s two truths.”
“Three,” Diana protested. “You said one truth was the truth of why I was shot.”
“Three, then. You still have two truths left to uncover. The truth of who is trying to deceive you, and the truth underneath it all.”
“Jesus,” Hollis muttered. “Diana, we have to hurry. I’m not at all sure I can get us to the door, let alone through it—but I have a hunch Reese will pull me back before much longer. You have to be ready to go too.”
Diana leaned a little harder against the cold brick wall behind her, trying not to make it obvious how hard it was to breathe now and how very weak she felt. “Who’s trying to deceive me. I don’t know who’s trying to deceive me. Is it you, Brooke?”
“Why would I want to deceive you, Diana?”
“I don’t know. Maybe… maybe to protect this almighty truth underneath it all.”
Hollis looked at her with a sudden frown. “The truth underneath it all. Damn, now I know why it sounded so familiar. That’s what Andrea kept telling me I had to find.”
“Spirit Andrea?”
“Yeah. That’s the way she phrased it. The truth underneath it all.”
“You mean … the same truth?”
“I guess. She said it was all connected.”
Diana looked at Brooke. “You said that too.”
Brooke remained silent.
“Huh,” Hollis said. “Maybe everything is connected. Which means that Andrea isn’t attached to me but to this whole thing with Samuel. She didn’t show up until that investigation started, until we followed Samuel’s pet monster from Boston down to Venture.”
Diana shook her head. “So … connected to Samuel and somehow connected to me? If it’s the same truth, I mean.”
“Well—”
“Diana.”
The new voice jerked their heads around, but it was Hollis who spoke first. “Andrea. Great, maybe you can—”
“That’s not fair,” Brooke chided, frowning a little at the seemingly older spirit. “
She has to figure it out by herself.”
“She’s running out of time,” Andrea said, her gaze fixed on Diana’s face. “And I have to help her.”
Hollis had not let go of Diana’s wrist since first grabbing it, and now she felt the other woman’s tension. “Hey, what is it?”
Diana hadn’t taken her eyes off Andrea. “My God. Oh, my God, it’s… Mama?”
CHAPTER 17
HOLLIS LOOKED BACK and forth between them. “You mean—Andrea is your mother?”
“Andrea wasn’t her name.” Diana’s voice, weirdly hollow in the gray time, sounded numb.
“It was my middle name, the name I went by for most of my life. Until I married. Your father preferred my first name, so I used that.”
Diana shook her head slowly. “Missy said…you were okay. That you were at peace. Did she lie to me?”
“No, your sister didn’t lie. I was at peace. Until… they came for me.”
“Who?”
“His victims.”
“Wait,” Hollis said. “You got yanked out of heaven?”
“It was my choice. I could have said no. But they were insistent. All of them, all the victims. His victims, calling me to help them. Poor souls who couldn’t move on until he was made to pay for what he’d done.”
“Samuel?”
“No.” Andrea’s eyes were filled with sorrow. “Your father. Without him, without his money and determination to destroy Bishop, so much of this wouldn’t have happened. He believed he could regain control over your life, get you back, if he destroyed the SCU. But even more than that, he hated Bishop. Hated him for allowing you to believe in your gifts, for providing you with a useful life with purpose. Something he could never do.”
“Oh, my God,” Diana said.
“The truth underneath it all,” Hollis said, almost as stunned as her friend was.
Andrea said, “I tried to help, but… I’d been away so long it was difficult for me, just to make myself seen. I was never able to get here, to the gray time, when you were walking here, and it was even harder to make myself seen on the living side. Until Hollis.”
“You could have told me who you were,” Hollis said. “That might have helped, you know.”
“I’m sorry. I was… confused. The bits of knowledge I had when I came back were jumbled. It’s taken me a while to sort everything out.”
Diana was struggling visibly to come to grips with what she had heard. “But… Dad… He helped Samuel? He helped that monster destroy so many innocent people?”
“You were all he had left. When you tried to break away from him, when you met Quentin and Bishop, he knew he was losing you. He was willing to do anything to stop that. Anything.”
Hollis, quite abruptly, felt a tug, and said, “Diana, I think Reese wants to pull me back. We have to leave. Now.” She took a quick look around the corner of the building and added urgently, “Samuel’s heading back this way. If we’re going to leave without him seeing us, it has to be now.”
“There’s no time,” Brooke said to Andrea.
Andrea reached out and caught Diana’s hand, holding it for only an instant. “You’ll remember,” she said. “When you wake up, you’ll remember all of it. Have a happy, useful life, Diana. Fight for it. In spite of your father.”
“But—wait. No, I want to—”
But Andrea was gone, vanished like a soap bubble.
“There’s no time,” Brooke repeated.
Hollis made sure she had a firm grip on Diana’s arm. “You’ve found your truths,” she said quickly. “Come back with me now, Diana. Come back to Quentin. Reach with me. Do it.”
Diana looked at her blindly for a heartbeat or two, still obviously stunned, then nodded. “Quentin. I’ll reach for Quentin.”
Hollis felt a wave of stark relief sweep over her, even as the tugging became stronger. Too strong to resist. She felt herself begin to let go of this place or time or whatever it was and return to her own reality, and in the last seconds as the gray time began to flicker and then fade, she looked at Brooke, maybe to say goodbye.
The guide was smiling. And there was an odd, flat shine in her eyes.
Diana sucked in a breath and opened her eyes, immediately aware of her living, breathing—and very, very sore—body. She saw an unfamiliar ceiling, heard the beeps and clicks of machinery, and realized that she was in the hospital. She felt something leave her forehead and saw that it was Hollis’s hand, so she automatically looked to her left.
Hollis was slumped, mostly supported by Reese, but she was very much awake. Pale and with shadows of exhaustion beneath her eyes, but still on her feet. More or less. And grinning. “Hey. Hey, there. We did it.”
“You did it,” Diana murmured, her voice as scratchy as her throat was. “Thank you.”
“Don’t mention it. My pleasure. Let’s not do it again, okay?”
“Okay.”
“Diana…”
She looked to her right to see Quentin, feeling something inside her turn over with a painful lurch: He was haggard and hollow-eyed, and it hurt her to see him like that. It hurt her and moved her unbearably to see that he was, still, afraid to hope she was really back.
He was holding her hand against his cheek, and she managed to move her fingers against his skin.
Scratchy voice and all, she said, “I love you.”
His eyes lit up with a warmth she knew she could wrap herself in to truly begin her happy life. “I love you. So much.”
Hollis stopped grinning long enough to look up at DeMarco. “You think maybe we should leave?”
“That would probably be a good idea.”
Diana tore her eyes away from Quentin long enough to say to Hollis, “You have to tell them. In Serenade. So they know what they’re really up against.”
“Oh, yeah. Right. Only—listen, you are okay?”
“I’m fine. Tired and sore, but I think the doctors will be surprised when they check under these bandages. Very surprised.”
“In that case,” Hollis said to Reese, “we need to get to Serenade. Because it’s worse than you know, and they’ll need your primal ability to sense a threat and maybe my shiny new ability to heal, and—”
“Yeah, I’ve got all that,” he said, calm. “You’re broadcasting.”
“Am I? Sorry.”
“It’s a time-saver.” He looked at Quentin, his brows lifting. “I don’t think there’s anything else for us to do here, and they’ll definitely need us in Serenade. I’m assuming Diana will fill you in.”
“I will,” she said.
DeMarco nodded. “And we’ll tell the others you’re okay. Quentin, you should probably stick close, just in case. I don’t think there’s a threat here, but until we get things cleared up in Serenade…”
“Don’t worry, I’m not planning to leave her side for the next fifty or sixty years.”
To Diana, Hollis said, “Yours is more romantic than mine. That might be a problem.”
Diana tried hard not to smile as she looked at DeMarco. “She’s … really tired right now.”
“I know. She’ll hate herself later. Assuming she remembers. You two watch your backs. Come on, sweetie, let’s go.”
“Sweetie? You’re being sarcastic, aren’t you?”
“A little bit.”
“Well, I’m not sure I like sarcasm from my—from mine. You might have to fix that.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I mean fix it now, not keep doing it….”
As DeMarco took her away and Hollis’s rather plaintive voice faded with distance, Diana looked at Quentin and said, “I’m glad he enjoys her.”
“Yeah. Reese has a wicked sense of humor; it just doesn’t show very often. I think they’ll be very good for each other.”
“Like you’ve been good for me.”
“I was beginning to wonder,” he said.
“I know. For a long time it seemed like there was nothing in my life, and then there was so much I couldn’t trust it al
l…. I’m sorry,
Quentin.”
“Don’t be sorry. Some things have to happen just the way they happen, remember? I’d never want to go through the last thirty hours again, but the last year, getting to know you and watching you…bloom right in front of me? I wouldn’t take anything for that.”
“I’m glad. And as soon as I get out of this hospital bed, I’ll show you just how much.”
“Promises, promises.” He saw her fumble with her other hand for the bed’s controls and begin to raise the head slowly, and he said, “Hey, are you sure you want to do that?”
“It’s okay. I’m just a little… stiff. But I won’t face him lying down.”
“Face who?”
“My father.” She stopped raising the bed when she was half sitting up, then took a deep breath and shifted a bit. “Ouch. Quentin, I want you to hear this, okay? Hear it and believe me when I tell you that he is never going to interfere in our lives again. And I’m more than okay with that.”
“Diana—”
She turned her head and said, “Dad, you can come out now.”
Surprised, Quentin saw Elliot Brisco come around the curtain, apparently from the far corner of the room. His instinct was to rise and greet the man, despite the tension that had existed between them since their first meeting nearly a year before, but what he could feel in Diana kept him still and silent.
“What are you doing here, Dad?”
“I came to see you, of course. As soon as I heard about… the accident.” His face was pale, and there was an odd stiffness about him, like something brittle in danger of shattering.
“The accident? That’s the way you prefer to think about the fact that a sniper shot your daughter in broad daylight on a public street?”
He started to reach a hand out to her, but something in her face, something hard and closed, stopped him. “It—was a terrible thing. Horrible. I’m so sorry that happened to you, Diana.”
“I’m assuming you didn’t know he was going to shoot me.”
His face went even whiter. “Christ, Diana, I swear to you that’s the last thing in this world I would have wanted.”