Heat Stroke

I felt it come into tune. When I opened my eyes again I could see a slight blur around me, like shimmer from hot pavement. Couldn’t be sure I had it right, but there was no test like the present.

I checked the kitchen. It was clean, modern, neatly organized. Even the salt and pepper shakers were in their places. I opened the refrigerator, just out of curiosity, and found regimental model-home organization. All the labels were turned outward. Vegetables in the lettuce crisper wouldn’t have dared to be less than perky.

Creepy.

The one interesting thing about it was that she had a secret stock of mint chocolate chip ice cream stuffed in the back of the freezer. Premium stuff, not the skim low-fat artificial sweetener crap. I took the carton out and weighed it. Half-empty. It wasn’t Kevin’s. He wouldn’t have cared whether or not anybody saw it, and I suspected the kid had never left an ice cream carton half-empty in his life.

I put everything back and proceeded down the hallway. An extra bedroom turned out to be an office. Everything was in files and folders, neat as an office supply store. No photos. In fact, she had no photos anywhere in the house that I’d seen. The art was all generic, carefully chosen to make absolutely no impression on anybody. I left the office. Three doors left—one was a bathroom, and as much as I’d hated Patrick’s trashy Wal-Mart happy faces in his loo, this one was worse. Ducks. Why did it have to be ducks?

The room it opened into was the master bedroom. I admit it, I was scared to go, but I couldn’t mist;

Kevin had specifically forbidden me to do it. I eased the door open slowly, one inch at a time, alert for giveaway creaks.

I needn’t have bothered. She wasn’t in there. The bedroom was clean and soulless as a hotel room. Didn’t look like a place to let loose unrestrained passion, or any passion at all, come to think of it.

That left the last room. I took hold of the doorknob and felt something. A kind of vibration, a warning…

I eased open the door and stepped inside.

The room had started life as a converted garage, then been gentrified with faux wood paneling and plush carpeting. Nothing much in it, but there was an aura to this place like nothing I’d ever felt before. Inanimate objects soak up energy, and that energy becomes visible in Oversight. The place looked dead normal, down here in the real world, but when I blinked and shifted into Oversight the real story came out. Red, rancid glows from the walls. Rotting greens. Pus-dull yellows. This place had seen suffering, and horror. It reminded me of Luminol, the stuff the police use to bring out old bloodstains… the ghost of evil, shining out of the darkness. Pain never dies completely, and this room was suffering.

David stood in the center of it, motionless, blank as a snowfield. He still retained his dark-copper hair, but it was shorter now, revealing the hard lines of his cheekbones, the strength of his face. The round glasses were gone. His eyes had gone dark. Very, very dark.

He was wearing black leather—pants, jacket, all of it looking butter soft and more than a little sexy. More than a little dangerous, too. Frightening. I wondered if she hadn’t actually expressed something essentially true about him that I’d never really quite grasped before… because David now looked like a predator.

Yvette walked a slow circle around him. There was something feline about the way she moved, both in the graceful sway of it and the predatory fascination.

Over the pulsing, thread-thin silver cord, I whispered his name. The dark eyes shifted and focused on me. I’d moved out of the doorway into a corner, shutting the door behind me; Yvette glanced toward me but saw nothing. David continued to stare.

Get out, he whispered to me over the silvery thread co

I’m not going anywhere. An echo of the pledge he’d made to me. I said it even though I was terrified to watch this, terrified that I couldn’t do anything to help.

Yvette was holding the bottle in one hand, swinging it carelessly. Taunting him. Even if she dropped it, the carpet would break the fall; she’d have to throw it hard at the wall to even crack it. Still. If I could catch it on the upswing, it was possible I could help that along…

She froze in midstep. Her head snapped around, searching corners. She’d sensed something. How? I was sure I’d done it right…

“David?” she asked in that sweet, purring voice. “Someone here?” No answer. She understood why, unlike Kevin, and kept going without a pause. “Someone here? Someone here?”

I felt the compulsion click in, even across the room. David said, “Yes.”

“Show me where.”

He pointed. Right back at her. Yvette smiled. “Clever boy. Are we going to play these same tired games again? I thought you knew by now that I don’t tolerate that kind of thing.”

He lowered his hand to his side. She leaned forward and kissed him. Long, hard, hot. The same sultry, meaningless dance she’d done at Patrick’s apartment, with Lewis. She was professional at it, I had to give her that much. “I still think there’s somebody here,” she said when she pulled back for air. David remained still, blank-faced, unresponsive as a store ma

Bitch.

There had to be something I could do.

She unzipped the black leather jacket, slowly, sliding her hands inside on the warm gold skin. I gritted my teeth. You can’t hurt my mother. Kevin had given me that command. Since he hadn’t been specific enough about his command to kill her, the two orders were floating around in limbo, the first one still applying. I wanted to wrap my hand around her throat and squeeze until she came apart, but I wasn’t sure I should even try it. And trying and failing would be far worse, just now.

“Take that off,” she told him. He stripped off the jacket and let it fall in a glistening heap to the floor. “You know what I want, David. What I always want.”

Oh, I had a pretty good idea, too. Or thought I did.

He proved me wrong.

I watched, sickened, as he reached out for her….. grabbed her by the hair, and slammed her face down on the carpet.

Still no change in him. Controlled, calm, utterly emotionless.

Oh God.

He rolled her over, and the flushed, breathless excitement on her face said it all. No wonder this place reeked of sickness. Yvette was one very sick lady.

I dropped the concealment. She spotted me instantly over David’s shoulder as I walked slowly forward, and the insane glee in her eyes was almost as nauseating as what she was about to force David to do. I remembered the dream, David’s desperate attempt to make Jonathan understand. It’s rape.

“I thought you were there,” she said. “Excellent. Maybe I’ll have you join us.”

“David,” I said calmly. “Would you like for me to do something about this?”

He couldn’t speak, of course. Couldn’t do anything. He was fixed on her, and I thought I read utter despair in those dark, alien eyes.

“What do you imagine you can do?” Yvette asked me, sugar sweet, looking ravishingly beautiful spread out on the floor. So very pretty. So very twisted. “Other than admire his technique.”

I crossed my arms and maintained my cool. “Well, I could do what your son suggested and kill you. What do you think?”

She froze, staring up at me, and her face was for a few seconds comically surprised. “You’re lying.”

“Well, yes, we Dji

I shrugged to show the depth of my not-caring. “Suit yourself.”

I looked at David, who was still frozen, waiting for her command. Leashed, but far from tame. She got up, still watching me, and put her hand on his shoulder to bring him up with her. Slid it in a proprietary way along the warm glory of his skin, up his neck, over a well-shaped ear, to dig her fingers luxuriously into his hair. No protest from him, and no flinch. I knew he had more latitude than that—didn’t he? — but he wasn’t refusing anything from her. Maybe she’d already given that command before I came on the scene. Or maybe he was drawing her in, making her careless.