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“Yes,” she whispered, her lips barely moving.
“Go back to the start of the séance. Remember what you felt. What you saw. Replay those events, those feelings. Remember what contacted you. What happened first?”
Her lips moved; the words came slowly. “It’s moving. I can’t feel my hands. I know when it starts because I can’t feel my hands.” Her brow furrowed. Grant murmured words of comfort.
“Jeffrey is helping,” she said. “They trust Jeffrey.”
“Who trusts Jeffrey?”
“Them.” She wet her lips. “Natalie. Conrad’s sister. She’s with him, looking after him. She’s worried—”
“Now, wait just a minute—” Conrad said, lurching forward. Anastasia caught his arm, held him back. He looked hard at her, as if surprised by the strength of her grip. He met her gaze. And I bet that gave him a shock.
Conrad stayed back and stayed quiet.
“That was the first contact you made during the séance,” Grant said, his tone never wavering. “Move forward now. You tried again.”
“Asked a question. Who hooks up.” She smiled a little.
“You felt something.”
Tina’s smile vanished. “No.”
“You’re safe here. The room is protected. The scene playing now is only an image, a memory. You can see the memory very clearly. It can’t hurt you.”
She shook her head, just a little. “It’s here, closing around the house.”
“What is?”
“It’s ugly. No.”
Jeffrey reached for her hand, but Grant shook his head sharply, warning him away.
“Whatever you saw, it can’t hurt you here,” Grant said. “You have control over this memory. What do you see? What is it, closing around the house?”
“Hate,” she said.
Grant pursed his lips. “Where does the hate come from?”
“It’s a plan—it’s all part of the plan. I can’t see the plan, I can only see what it means, and it’s full of hate. Nobody makes it, nobody—” She grimaced, her head started shaking, and a whine began in her throat, at the edge of a scream. Her whole body tensed. The hair on my neck bristled.
Grant leaned in. “The light is fading, Tina. It’s growing dim, fading to a warm, comforting darkness. You’re resting, relaxed in every part of your body. Your mind is relaxed, your breathing is relaxed. When I count to three, you’ll awake rested, aware, in full control of your memory and yourself. One… two… three…”
She opened her eyes. Looked at Grant, then at Jeffrey. She let out a long sigh.
“So what’s out there?” Jerome said, moving closer, from the outskirts of the gathering. “What’s closing in?”
She rubbed her face; her frown was despairing. “I couldn’t see it. It was almost…” She shook the thought away. Jeffrey took her other hand and squeezed tightly.
Urgent, Jerome continued. “Is it a person? An animal? A thing? Another one like us? What?”
“I said I don’t know!” She sat up, glaring. Her hands were shaking.
“Whole lot of good that does us,” the wrestler said, turning away.
Lee said, “I’m not trying to criticize, or question you, but could this maybe be paranoia? We’re in the middle of nowhere, in a weird situation—”
“I’m a paranormal investigator,” she said. “I’ve been in situations way more whacked-out than this.”
“I believe her,” Anastasia said. “I believe there’s more going on here than we think. I would certainly like to know what.”
I bet you would, I managed not to mutter. She and Grant were back to studying each other, without looking like they were studying each other. The cynic in me was starting to think they were both plants, in cahoots with Provost to jack up the tension until somebody snapped. All to make the show more exciting. Except I knew Grant wouldn’t do that kind of thing. I thought Grant wouldn’t do that kind of thing. The last thing I needed here was to decide I couldn’t trust anyone.
“Clearly, you have an unusual talent,” Anastasia said to Tina.
Tina looked away. “I wish I didn’t, most of the time.”
“That’s another way to tell the fakes from the real thing,” Grant said, turning to Conrad. “The real psychics tend to treat it as a burden. They tend not to show off.”
Tina gave him a thin-lipped smile.
The skeptic crossed his arms, set his expression into a frown. “I’ll give you this much, you all are putting on a great show.”
“Will you lay off with that?” Tina said.
For my part, I’d about had it with him, and it had only been two days. “That’s it,” I said, marching to the front door. “I’m doing it right there on the front porch for everyone to see so he’ll just shut the hell up.”
“Kitty—” Ariel, who was closest, grabbed for my arm. I brushed her away, and a growl cut from my throat.
She backed away, arms up defensively. Something inside me wanted to howl. I closed my eyes, held my head for a moment while taking several deep breaths, and thought of broccoli. Thought of anything that wouldn’t make me bare my teeth and snarl.
The room had fallen silent, like the hush at a party after somebody breaks a wineglass. Without the laughing after.
Making the effort to settle, I rolled my shoulders, straightened my back, and opened my eyes to regard my colleagues and housemates with a friendly, nongrowling smile. I suddenly felt exhausted. But some of the tension went out of the room. Everyone could breathe now.
“What just happened?” Conrad said.
“I’m taking a walk. If something’s out there, maybe I’ll catch a sign of it,” I said and went outside.
This whole situation was designed to make me go crazy. I just had to keep that in mind and not let it get to me. Thank God the nearest full moon was behind me instead of in front of me, or keeping it together would be that much harder.
I stomped down the front steps to the clearing and already felt better. Closer to the earth, more in my element. I shook my arms and let some of the tension fall out of me. Maybe I could shift. Run as Wolf, just for a little while. Take the edge off.
Gordon and his camera followed me out, but I ignored him. Ignoring him was getting easier.
I heard another set of footsteps on the porch and turned back just as I caught Jerome’s scent. My shoulders stiffened, like rising hackles. He hesitated, turned sideways. Came down the steps obliquely instead of right at me. It made me only marginally less twitchy.
“Well?” I said. Rather ambiguous, but that was about as articulate as I was feeling at the moment.
“Maybe you have the right idea. If Tina thinks something here’s out to get us, maybe we should go looking for it.”
“If something here’s out to get us, it’s because Provost and his people planted it for the sake of the show and it’s all a setup.”
“Fair enough. But have they pla
The bottom line: we’d feel better by actually doing something rather than standing around bitching.
“For somebody who lets himself get beaten up professionally, you seem to have hung on to a few brain cells,” I said.
“I think I got out of boxing just in time to save them. Pro wrestling’s a little tamer.”
I started to say something snide, then stopped. Who was I to judge? “Shall we take a walk around the house? I take clockwise, you take counter, and we’ll see if we find anything.”
He continued down the steps to join me in looking out over the meadow, the lake with its surface shining metallic in darkness, the shadows of the forest. The light from the lodge’s windows extended only to the edge of the clearing. A faint wind was blowing; we both turned our noses into it and breathed deeply. In a way, with just the two of us here, I felt more comfortable. I wasn’t so aware of the ways I wasn’t human. Jerome wouldn’t think I was strange, sniffing the wind, pacing silently, peering into the darkness. Acting like a wolf on the hunt.
Both of us took on that body language, prowling step by step around the house, glancing back to check on the other’s progress. Anyone watching from inside would notice it; Conrad would probably say we were only acting. I reached the corner of the lodge and turned my senses outward, letting Wolf bleed into them, letting her instincts tell me if anything was wrong. Moving slowly, I zigzagged to cover more ground, listening for the smallest sounds. What I heard were normal nocturnal noises, the creatures who came out at night, mice or voles in the underbrush, an owl flapping in trees overhead. Nature’s white noise.