“Good.” Wallace sounded a bit wary rather than satisfied, as if he realized that Stephanie had not quite sung the team fight song. “Good. I’ll expect regular updates, Stephanie. No matter how this plays out.”
“Yes, sir.” She crossed her fingers. “With the weekend looming, I doubt much will get done until Monday, at least. I’ll call then with an update.”
“Very well.”
She cradled the receiver, then leaned back in her chair, propped her feet on the desk, and thought about this.
Item: there were discrepancies in The Lodge’s accounts, and possibly other paperwork as well. Item: Douglas Wallace, properties manager for the very wealthy group of investors who owned The Lodge, was worried about the wrong person finding the wrong thing while sifting through that paperwork. Item: whatever Wallace was worried about might or might not have something to do with the murder of an eight-year-old boy ten years ago. But either way, Wallace was just this side of scared and not hiding it well.
Which meant bad news any way you cut it.
Final item: Stephanie Boyd was sitting in the hot seat.
“Shit,” she muttered. “I knew this job was too good to be true.”
“You can’t blame yourself,” Diana said.
“Rationally, I know that.” Quentin shrugged. “I’ve told myself to let it go and move on with my life. God knows other people have told me the same thing. But whether psychic abilities, a guilty conscience, or simple instincts, something inside me has insisted all these years that I had to find Missy’s killer. And let her rest in peace. It’s something I have to do. Something I’m meant to do.”
Recalling the thin face and sad eyes she had seen and drawn, Diana said slowly, “I wish I could tell you she was already at peace. But . . .”
“But you can’t. You saw her, which means she’s still in—for want of a better term—limbo. Even after all these years, she hasn’t been able to move on.”
“On to where?”
He smiled slightly. “Do you want me to say ‘heaven’?”
“I don’t know. Would it be true?”
“Not a question I can answer. Whatever I know of the future tells me nothing of the spirit realm. Or anything beyond this life. So far, anyway.”
Diana frowned. She sipped her cooling tea, then said, “My sketch of Missy. I drew that before I saw her.”
Quentin knew what she was asking. “It’s a form of automatic writing. Your subconscious and psychic abilities were on autopilot, more or less.”
“Why?”
“We have a few theories. Automatic writing or drawing is almost always triggered by stress. I know of only a couple of psychics who are able to deliberately tap in to the ability; for the rest of you, it tends to manifest itself because something is being suppressed.”
She stared at him.
“Your abilities have been trying to surface for most of your life. Trying to. Between the meds and therapies and denial, they’ve been pushed down again and again. Beaten back, imprisoned. But something that powerful finds a way, sooner or later, to escape whatever’s restraining it. You said something about blackouts earlier.”
Diana frowned uneasily. “I did?”
“Yeah. I’m guessing the blackouts began sometime during your early teen years, during the physical and emotional chaos of adolescence. And that either they’ve grown stronger with time or else tend to occur when you’re under unusual levels of stress.”
Grudgingly, she said, “The latter.”
Quentin didn’t let her see how relieved he was by that information. If the blackouts were erratic and stress-related, then it was less likely that Diana’s abilities were becoming a danger to her.
Less likely. Not impossible.
“Which means?” Diana prompted.
“Which means—or probably means—that you black out only when your abilities can find no other way of breaking free.”
She set her cup down on the coffee table and leaned back, crossing her arms over her breasts. “Okay, now you’re really creeping me out. You make these so-called abilities of mine sound as if they have a mind of their own.”
“Energy, Diana. Your brain is naturally designed to tap in to energy, and it has to also be able to release it. Think of steam building up inside a pot holding boiling water. If the lid’s on tight, the pressure can intensify until it’s a destructive force, until the container itself is endangered. Some of the steam has to be allowed to escape.”
“Okay, but—”
“The energy you tap in to has to have an outlet, something your instincts have always known. If you can’t provide that release valve consciously, by allowing yourself to undergo the sort of visions you experienced earlier today, then your subconscious will find a way to do it for your own safety. The blackouts.”
“I don’t remember what happens then.” She hesitated, then added, “But I . . . I’ve awakened in strange places. Doing strange things sometimes.”
“I’m not surprised. Psychic blackouts are an extreme response, which means the energy level just before they occur has to be tremendous.”
“Then what happens? Once a blackout is . . . triggered?” Diana wasn’t sure which was strongest in her, curiosity or fear.
Quentin shook his head. “I have no way of knowing, not for certain. Psychic abilities are as unique as the individuals who possess them; the unconscious release of stored energy could take just about any form. What sort of strange things have you awakened in the middle of?”
“I was in a lake once. Up to my waist.” She shivered. “I couldn’t swim at the time. Now I can.”
He frowned. “What else?”
“Driving my father’s Jag. Very fast. I was fourteen.”
“Jesus.”
“Yeah. Scared the hell out of me.”
“When you came out of the blackout, you didn’t have any sense of where you were going or why?”
“No, just—” It was Diana’s turn to frown. “Just . . . a pull.”
“Pull?”
“Yeah. As if something—or someone, I suppose—had been calling me, drawing me toward them.”
“Where were you headed?”
“I was so shaken up by it I hardly noticed where I was.”
“Think. Try to remember.”
“It’s important?”
“Maybe.”
Concentrating, Diana tried to push past the remembered terror and panic and recall more than emotions. What had she done? Slowed the car, looking for a sign, her hands cold and sweaty on the steering wheel and her heart pounding. In the darkness before dawn, everything had looked alien, and she had felt so alone there weren’t even words for it.
“I was on an interstate highway,” she remembered as a sign flashed through her memories. “Heading south. Took me more than an hour to find a phone and call my father. He was . . . not happy. As scared as I was, or so it seemed to me.” She paused, then added, “There was a new clinic the next week. A new doctor. A new treatment.”
“I’m sorry, Diana.”
She looked at him. “That was one time I was more than willing to try whatever treatment the doctors offered. I was fourteen years old, Quentin, and I woke up on an interstate highway at five o’clock in the morning driving my father’s Jaguar at nearly eighty miles an hour. I was afraid I’d been trying to kill myself. I think my father was afraid of the same thing.”
“And the doctors?”
“Did they believe I was suicidal?” Her shoulders lifted and fell. “Over the years, some did, I’m sure. But I never did any of the things suicidal patients were supposed to do. Never tried to slit my wrists or hurt myself in any other way. If you discount the blackout experiences, of course. I never tried to hoard medications. Never talked about killing myself, never drew pictures to indicate suicide was on—or under—my mind.”
“What about the blackouts? Frequent?”
“There haven’t been that many, really. Maybe two a year, and mostly I come out of them in my bed or just
sitting in a chair. Like I’ve been asleep. Dreaming dreams I can never remember.”
“The subconscious tends to be a good guardian, and protects us from what we can’t or don’t need to endure,” Quentin said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if realizing you’re psychic now doesn’t open a few doors for you, though. You may begin to remember those dreams. And those experiences.”
That was a scary possibility, Diana thought. Maybe even more scary than not remembering anything. She said, “One of my doctors became convinced that the blackouts were caused by an adverse reaction to one or more of the drugs prescribed for me. That was almost a year ago.”
“He took you off everything?”
She nodded. “The first couple of months were . . . hell. It was a supervised withdrawal, so I had to be hospitalized. Watched. So many of the medications had been prescribed to quiet my mind and keep me calm.”
“Sedatives,” Quentin said. “Antianxiety meds. Antidepressants.”
“Yeah. When all those were taken away from me, even gradually, it was like I went into hyperdrive. I lost twenty pounds because I couldn’t be still. I talked so fast no one could understand what I was saying. I couldn’t sleep, and nothing could hold my attention more than a few minutes at a time. My father wanted them to put me back on the meds because of the state I was in. But the doctor, bless him, held firm. And after the first weeks, my mind was finally clear enough so I could be firm too.”
After a moment, Quentin asked, “How long had it been since you’d been completely off medications?”
Diana didn’t really want to tell him, but finally said, “The first medications were prescribed when I was eleven. From that point on, there was always something, usually more than one drug at a time. But always something. I’m thirty-three now. You do the math.”
“More than twenty years. You’ve spent two-thirds of your life drugged.”
“Just about into oblivion,” she agreed.
Madison said, “I don’t think this is such a good idea.”
“Why not?” Becca wanted to know. “We have to do something, and we don’t have much time. Trust me, you don’t want to be here when it comes back.”
“Are you sure it will come back?”
“Of course I’m sure. It always comes back.”
“Maybe this time—”
Becca shook her head. “It’s going to keep coming until they stop it. And they won’t be able to stop it until they know. Until they understand.”
Madison hesitated, then said unhappily, “But she looked so scared. When he left her alone a little while ago, and she locked the door behind him. Even if she is a grownup. She looked so scared.”
“I know. But she can change things here, or at least she might be able to try. She’s the one we’ve been waiting for, I’m sure of it. She saw Jeremy, and that’s what matters most, what we have to remember. I think she’s seen Missy too, so—”
“Who’s Missy?”
“You haven’t met her yet,” Becca said. “She’s been here even longer than Jeremy was. She usually stays in the gray time, though, and doesn’t come out much, even when somebody opens the door.”
“Why not? Isn’t she lonely there?”
“I expect so. But she’s more afraid of what happens out here. I expect that’s because she knew what it would do to her even before it did.”
“Really?”
“Uh-huh. She was special, like you are. I expect she’s trying really hard to find a way to stop it this time.”
“So she can leave The Lodge?”
“I expect so.”
Suddenly irritated, Madison said, “Well, I expect it won’t be easy, or she could have done it by now.”
Becca chuckled. “Does it get on your nerves, me saying ‘expect’ so much? My mama always said it. Used to get on my nerves too. But now I like to say it, I s’pose because it reminds me of her.”
Her ready sympathy stirred, Madison said, “Your mama isn’t here?”
“Not here at The Lodge. She’s on this side of the door, but I can’t see her, of course. Can’t talk to her. We were just supposed to stay here a little while, her and my brother and me. They stayed a long time, looking for me. They stayed longer than they meant to, looking for me. But they couldn’t find me, of course. They had to go home, sooner or later. So they did.”
“And left you here?”
“Well, they couldn’t take me with them. They couldn’t see me. And even if they had, I didn’t have any bones to show them, not like Jeremy.”
Madison eyed her new friend uneasily. “I’m glad you don’t have any bones, Becca, ’cause I’d just as soon not see them.”
“Fraidy cat.”
Staunchly, Madison said, “Yes, I am. I don’t like bugs, either, or snakes, or anything gross.” She bent down and picked up Angelo, who had begun to whine a bit, telling herself the action was to comfort him rather than her.
“Well,” Becca said, “all I can say is that you’d better help us try to stop it when it comes back this time. Because if we can’t . . .”
Madison waited, watching as Becca turned frowning eyes toward the cottage several yards away.
“If we can’t,” Becca continued softly, “there’ll be more than bones for them to find. For them to see. A lot more.”
Quentin paced the sitting room of his suite, restless and more than a little uneasy. Diana had closed down immediately after telling him about spending most of her life medicated, her face without expression and eyes going shuttered, and after the day she’d had he hadn’t dared push her to continue talking.
Not yet, at least.
He was, truthfully, grateful for the time to try to sort through what she had told him so far. He wanted to help her, needed to, and he had nothing to go on except the instincts that urged him to probe carefully, to ask questions when she seemed ready to talk and to offer bits of information about the paranormal as she seemed able to accept it. It was all he had to guide him, that and what she told him about her life and experiences.
A horror story if he’d ever heard one.
Two-thirds of her life spent medicated.
Jesus.
Quentin found it hard not to blame her doctors, and especially her father, for not being open-minded enough to at least consider the possibility that there had been nothing wrong with Diana from the beginning. But they hadn’t. Faced with the inexplicable, with experiences and behaviors they didn’t understand and were frightened by, they had acted swiftly, with all the supposed knowledge of modern-day medicine, to “fix” her “problems.”
Even before she hit puberty, for Christ’s sake.
And they had left her only half alive. A pale, colorless, vague, and passionless copy of the Diana she was meant to be.
Christ, no wonder she looked out on the world with wary, suspicious eyes. Finally off all the mind-numbing medications, Diana was clearheaded for the first time since childhood. Truly aware for the first time of the world around her. And not just aware, but painfully alert, with the raw-nerved sensitivity of most psychics.
She knew, now. No matter what she was willing to admit aloud or even consciously, she knew now that she had been kept half alive, less than that. Knew that those she had trusted most had betrayed that trust, even if they had done it in the name of love and concern and with all good intentions. They hadn’t kept her safe, they had kept her doped up and compliant. They had sought to hammer away all the sharp, unique edges that made her Diana.
So she could be healthy. Like everybody else.
It had been in her voice when she’d told him, a haunted awareness of all she’d lost.
“I’m thirty-three now. You do the math.”
He thought it must have been like waking from a coma or a hazy dream to find that everything that had gone before had not been real. The world had turned, time had moved on . . . and Diana had lost years.
Years.
Quentin paced a while longer, more rather than less restless as time passed. He found hi
mself, finally, in his dark bedroom, standing at the window, looking out on the night. And it was only then that he realized he could see Diana’s cottage from here, his third-floor suite high enough to overlook the shrubbery and ornamental trees between The Lodge and her cottage.
Watch.
He went still, holding his breath as he tried to concentrate, to hear the faint whisper in his mind.
You have to watch tonight.
Long moments passed, and he allowed himself to breathe again as he realized there would be no more. Just the realization, the understanding. That he had to stand watch tonight, for Diana’s sake.
Perhaps for her safety.
He could see both the front door and the private little patio door from here, clearly visible because the doors of all the cottages were well lit, just as the paths linking them to The Lodge were well lit. For convenience as well as security.
Without even making the conscious decision to do so, Quentin focused, concentrated. Everything went fuzzy for an instant, and then the cottage stood out in sharp relief from the landscaping around it. The door seemed so close it was as if he could have reached out and turned the handle.
Since he needed to enhance only his vision, his other senses more or less went dormant. He heard only silence. Smelled nothing. When he leaned a shoulder against the window frame, he wasn’t aware of the contact. His mind was quiet and still.
Bishop had warned him not to do this. Enhancing only one sense at the expense of all the others would exact a price, a painful one. Quentin knew. He knew if he kept this up for hours he’d have a pounding headache tomorrow, that his senses of smell and taste and touch and hearing would be muffled, maybe for the entire day. He knew his eyes would ache and be sensitive to the light, strained by being forced to work harder right now.
There was also a danger, Bishop believed, of losing the capability entirely. Pouring extra energy into one’s senses to enhance them was one thing; totally shutting down one or more of those senses for an extended period of time was something else again. Balance. It was all about balance.