by Kay Hooper
She blinked and stared at Missy’s young, solemn face. “My God. It happened to her. She was . . . gone. Before Daddy or the doctors ever realized, a long time before they said it, before her body finally stopped, she was gone.”
“Yes.”
“I didn’t . . . why didn’t I remember that?”
“You were too afraid to remember.”
This time, Diana understood. “Because I knew I could do what she’d been able to.”
Missy nodded. “You were afraid you couldn’t control it, that you’d be lost on this side just like she was. And you couldn’t control it, then. You were too little, you didn’t know how. And she wasn’t there to help you understand. No one was. Not then.”
“Until now.”
“There are no medicines fogging your mind now. And he’s here to push you to see what is. To help you understand. You needed that. But you’re still afraid. That’s why you argue with him when he wants to talk about it.”
“I have reason to be afraid, don’t I? You said yourself you didn’t know whether I could be trapped on this side. But we both know it’s possible, so—”
“There are worse things than being trapped here, Diana.”
Tha-thum.
Tha-thum.
It wasn’t a sound so much as a sensation, and shocking in this gray place of stillness and silence.
Quentin had asked her if she had ever felt or heard something like a heartbeat inside her, and Diana had denied it because she hadn’t remembered. But now she recognized it instantly. She remembered it, an echo from her childhood and from somewhere inside her, someplace deeper than instinct.
She knew this.
Tha-thum.
Tha-thum.
It was vast and dark and smelled of damp earth and rotten eggs. It was so cold it burned, and the blackness of it stole every flicker of light. And it was . . . inevitable. Ancient. Beyond powerful. So overwhelming she felt weak and terrified.
Tha-thum.
Tha-thum.
“It’s coming,” Missy said. “It’s ready to kill again.”
“You mean him, don’t you? That murderer.”
“He stopped being a person even before they buried him alive. Now there’s only . . . it. And you know what it is.”
Diana did. That was the terrifying thing. She did.
“What will it look like this time?” she whispered. “Who will it take over?”
“It almost always looks like someone we trust, doesn’t it?” Missy turned and again led the way down the long, gray corridor. “This way. Hurry, Diana.”
Because she couldn’t do anything else, Diana followed, frightened of what was coming and uneasily aware of the growing distance between the part of her taking this journey and the part of her left behind with Quentin. An anxiety that only increased when she realized this corridor was unfamiliar and that she had no idea how to find her way back to him.
Quentin prowled the lounge restlessly, his gaze returning again and again to Diana’s face. Her eyes were closed, her face peaceful, and if he hadn’t known better, he would have believed her to be asleep.
She wasn’t sleeping, though.
A room service waiter had come and gone, but the coffee Stephanie had sent up sat untouched on the tray. Quentin didn’t want coffee, though he could have done with something stronger. Something a lot stronger.
“Don’t touch me. There’s something I have to— Just don’t touch me. Wait.”
Wait. Just wait. How long was he supposed to wait? How long was it safe for her to be . . . wherever she was?
She was in the gray time, he assumed. He wasn’t certain what had triggered the event, unless it had been a combination of Diana’s troubled emotional state after finding out about Missy and the storm rumbling outside. Probably that, he thought. The storm was certainly scrambling all his senses, and given what had happened during the last one, this one had undoubtedly enhanced hers.
It was his own undependable senses that kept him from reaching out to her now, touching her, anchoring her. Even more so than usual during a storm, he felt almost disconnected from the sensory input his body and mind were accustomed to. Everything was muffled, distant, beyond his reach.
All he knew for sure was that what Diana was doing was dangerous. And necessary.
That was what he couldn’t get past, that strong certainty that she had to do this, that it was important. And that if he interfered, if he yanked her back from wherever she had to be right now, he would regret it.
The question was, could he trust even his own deepest certainties? Could he trust his instincts?
Because if he couldn’t, and he waited too long before trying to draw her back . . . she could be beyond his or anyone’s reach.
“She’s done this before,” he heard himself mutter as he paced and watched her. “For years, she’s done it, decades. I wasn’t there then, and she got back without my help. Without anyone’s help. She can get back now.”
If she was as strong as he believed she was.
If she was strong enough.
Quentin hated this. He hated waiting, hated standing by with nothing to do except worry. He’d been forced to do it more than once in the past and, in fact, suspected that Bishop had from time to time put him in that position quite deliberately in order to teach him some patience.
Confronted with Quentin’s suspicion, Bishop hadn’t denied it. But he hadn’t confirmed it either.
Par for the course.
In any case, if a lesson had been intended, Quentin had yet to learn it. It went against his deepest instincts, his very nature, to allow someone else to take the active role while he waited around twiddling his thumbs. Especially when that person was, despite her strength, damaged and fragile and someone he cared about—
A loud crash of thunder sounded almost deafening in his ears, the brilliant flash of lightning so blinding that for an instant he was totally in the dark and abruptly alone inside his own head. Except for . . .
Now. Hurry. Before it’s too late.
The storm had his senses so scrambled that he thought it was a wonder he could even hear that whisper in his mind. Or maybe it had been whispering for a long time now, and he’d been unable to hear it.
Suddenly afraid he had waited too long, Quentin hurried back to Diana’s side and took her cool hand in his, holding it strongly.
Nothing. No reaction, no response. She sat there, still and silent, her eyes closed, face peaceful.
He had never been called upon to be someone’s lifeline, but Quentin had learned long ago that the mind could do remarkable things if properly motivated and harnessed.
Concentrating, fiercely closing out the distraction of the storm, he fixed all his will on reaching Diana and pulling her back to him.
Missy, where are you taking me?” The uneasiness Diana felt was increasing, building, and she had the sudden, frightened notion that this spirit of her supposed sister might be far less benevolent than Diana had assumed her to be.
“There’s something I have to show you.”
“Why can’t you just tell me whatever it is you want me to know?” Diana was looking around, trying to figure out where in the hotel they were. But the corridor was peculiarly featureless in the gray time—even more so than usual—and seemed to stretch ahead of them forever. “This isn’t right,” she added before Missy could reply. “This looks—”
“There’s something Quentin’s forgotten,” Missy said, ignoring both the question and comment.
“What?”
“Because of what happened to me, he thinks it’s about children.”
Diana only partly heard, because Missy had turned a corner as she spoke, and to her surprise Diana found herself looking at a green door. It was the only spot of color she had ever seen in the gray time.
“You have to remember this place, Diana. This door.”
“Why?” Diana was doing her best to think clearly, but it was becoming increasingly difficult.
“Becau
se you’ll be safe here. When it’s important, when you need a safe place, come here.”
“I thought . . . all places were the same in the gray time.”
“Not this place. It’s a special place, in your time as well as here. It’s protected. Don’t forget.”
Diana wanted to ask more questions, but before she could, Missy was going on.
“Diana, listen to me. Quentin always believed it was about children, but it isn’t. Children are easiest because they’re so often vulnerable, unprotected. Easy prey. It feeds off fear. You remember the terror of a child, don’t you, Diana?”
Her lips felt oddly stiff and very cold when Diana murmured, “Yes. I remember.”
“It isn’t about the children. It isn’t even about me. It’s about punishment. It’s about judgment. He was judged. And punished.”
Again, Diana wanted to question, wanted to understand all this more clearly. But before she could speak, they both heard/felt it.
Tha-thum.
Tha-thum.
Tha-thum!
Missy’s face changed, and she said quickly, “You have to go back. Now. It can cross over too, Diana, don’t forget that. And a medium’s mind can be the most vulnerable of all. If it finds you—”
“Missy, I don’t understand.”
“You will.” Missy reached out and took Diana’s hand, her small one surprisingly warm rather than cold. “Don’t forget the green door. But go back now. Reach for Quentin.”
Diana wasn’t sure she could, because her mind felt sluggish and cold, and doing anything at all required too much effort of her. But the warmth of Missy’s small hand seemed to chase away part of the chill . . .
Tha-thum!
Tha-thum!
She could feel the floor underneath her vibrate, as though under the steps of something immeasurably heavy, and the grayness around her seemed to be darkening, shading toward black. She tried to reach out mentally, thinking of Quentin, needing to be with him.
There was a bright flash of light, then another, and between them the gray was getting darker and darker.
“Hurry,” Missy said. “It’s—”
“—here,” Diana said, opening her eyes.
“Jesus, don’t do that to me again,” Quentin said.
She turned her head and looked at him, a little dazed and more than a little confused. He was holding her hand, and his felt warm and strong, and she was once again conscious of that unfamiliar sense of security.
Safe. She was safe. Now.
“Are you all right?” he demanded.
“I think so.”
He drew a breath and released it, clearly relieved. He didn’t let go of her hand. “Another visit to the gray time?”
Diana nodded slowly.
“Another guide?”
“Missy.”
That caught him off guard. “You talked to her?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
Diana told him, about the green door and Missy’s warning that “it” wasn’t about hurting children but was about punishment and judgment.
“I don’t remember a green door in this place,” he said.
“Me either.”
“But it’s a safe place for you.”
Trying to remember exactly what she’d been told, Diana said, “I think so. Something about it being a protected place here and in the gray time.”
A bit grim, Quentin said, “If she offered you a safe place, it must mean she believes you’ll need one.”
A cold finger glided up Diana’s spine. “I guess so.”
“And she said it’s about judgment, about punishment.”
“Yes. Because he was judged and punished. That killer.”
“Samuel Barton.”
“Yes.”
Quentin digested that for a few moments, frowning, then said, “What else?”
She didn’t know if he was using any of his extra senses or if her face was an open book to him, but she knew she had to answer. So she did, telling him what Missy had said about her deepest fears of being unable to handle her abilities and becoming trapped between two worlds, about her terror over what had happened to her mother. And it was only then that Diana remembered something else.
“My God. She said ‘when we visited Mommy.’ That I was frightened by the people in the hospital, the people without their souls, when we visited Mommy. Quentin . . . Missy wasn’t a half sister. We had the same father and mother.”
Stephanie wouldn’t have admitted it aloud, but the major reason she asked Ransom Padgett to accompany her down to the basement wasn’t to help carry any files or boxes she decided to bring back upstairs. It was because she didn’t want to be alone down there.
Not that he asked, of course.
He used one of the many keys on his ring to unlock the basement access door, then led the way down well-illuminated stairs, saying over his shoulder, “I’ll give you fair warning, Ms. Boyd—it’s hell trying to find anything down here. I told Management years ago that the place ought to be cleared out, at least of the junk, but they didn’t listen to me. Don’t have to, mind you, ’cause I just work here. But still.”
Stephanie only half listened to him, looking around as they reached the bottom of the steps and feeling a bit sheepish now. The basement was as well illuminated as the stairs had been, and though the vast space was undoubtedly cluttered with what Padgett termed “junk,” there was a kind of order to it all.
She could see a dozen big filing cabinets in a smaller, partially walled-off area near the stairs, the bulging cardboard file boxes stacked on top of them mute evidence that all of the cabinets were undoubtedly stuffed to capacity and that more storage space for paperwork had been required.
Great. That’s just great. I’ll be down here for weeks.
Sighing, she looked around the rest of the basement space visible from the foot of the stairs.
One section held unused furniture, presumably in need of repair or perhaps just abandoned due to changing styles and tastes, with chairs stacked atop tables and an occasional dust cloth draped over upholstered pieces to protect them. Another section was filled with boxes, most of whose big labels indicated old linens and draperies.
In yet another area, shelves held an amazing assortment of outmoded kitchen gadgets, cheek by jowl with what looked like stacks of old magazines and newspapers. And leaning against the shelves were dozens of large framed prints, again, presumably, moved down here due to changing tastes.
“My God,” she muttered. “Did they throw anything away?”
“Not so’s you’d notice,” Padgett said in mild disgust. “Ought to, though. There’s plenty of charities would love some of this junk, and God knows the textiles they saved are likely rotten or moth-eaten after so many years. There’s a whole stack of rugs in one of the back corners that were probably worth a fortune in their day. Not much left of ’em now.” He shrugged. “Anything’s needed up in the hotel, they always buy new, so I don’t get why the old and broken stuff ends up down here.”
“Saving for a rainy day, I suppose.”
They both listened to a rumble of thunder so low and long that they could feel the vibrations of it beneath their feet, and Padgett lifted an eyebrow at her.
Stephanie had to laugh, but said, “Well, I’m not going to be the one to tackle this, that’s all I know. Or at least, I’m not planning to go through anything except the paperwork. I have to say, though, this space is a lot more inviting than I’d expected, even with all the clutter. At least the paperwork seems to be filed fairly neatly, and all in one place.”
Padgett gave her a pitying look, then beckoned her to follow as he headed toward the section piled high with furniture. “Couple managers back, somebody had the bright idea to get all the old Lodge records and other paperwork in its own space, nice and neat and organized instead of just stacked wherever there happened to have been a bit of clear floor or an empty shelf. Most of it got moved, eventually, out of all the scattered corners of this plac
e. But not all.”
Stephanie followed him around the furniture, and bit back a groan when she saw a rather dark corner piled high with obviously old ledgers and file boxes and even several old banded trunks.
“Jesus,” she muttered.
“The light’s not great here,” Padgett said. “Why don’t I start dragging all this stuff back toward the stairs? At least then you’ll be able to see what you’re looking at. That’s assuming you want to start in on this stuff.” His face said clearly enough that he hoped she’d return to the file cabinets, which would obviously keep her busy for a long time.
Stephanie hesitated, then said, “I guess this stuff here would have contained some of the oldest records, right?”
“Yeah, probably. It all used to spill out a lot farther in this corner, with boxes stacked right up against the furniture, so I’d expect the oldest stuff to be back in that corner against the walls.” He eyed her. “I’ve been here about as long as anybody, so if I knew what you were looking for, I might be able to shorten the search.”
Briskly, she said, “Well, I don’t really know myself. But since you offered to help, why don’t you grab some of that stuff and start bringing it closer to the stairs? I don’t know how much time I’ve got before the next crisis erupts, so I might as well do what I can in the meantime.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Leaving him to it, Stephanie retreated to the “organized” area near the stairs and, drawing a deep breath and flipping a mental coin, opened a file drawer at random to start her search. She didn’t have a clue what she was looking for.
But she had a hunch she’d know it when she found it.
“That’s the last of this lot,” Quentin said, setting aside the largest of the two boxes.
“Anything helpful?”
“Not as far as I can see. A few interesting letters from around the early 1900s, written to guests and staff, but nothing to indicate unsolved disappearances or other mysteries here.”
Diana gestured toward the old photographs stacked on the coffee table before her and said, “Same here, more or less. I’ve gone through all the photo albums and all the loose photos we found. Interesting pictures, most without even a date on the back, but nothing that sends up a red flag.”