Chill of Fear (11 page)

"Although, as a matter of fact, you'll find that having psychic abilities complicates the hell out of your life."

"Gee, that's all I need."

"I'm not handing you a magic pill. And I'm sure as hell not telling you that your life will suddenly be perfect, all your problems in the past, just because there's a very simple answer to the question of what's
wrong
with you. Nothing is wrong. Your mind just works a bit differently from what is traditionally considered the norm."

Listen to him.

Diana caught her breath, staring at the cup in her hand. It had always sounded alien, that particular whisper in her head, somehow not a part of her. It was one reason she had never been able to completely buy the doctors' various explanations—because all of them had more or less stated that what she "heard" in her mind were only aspects of her own personality.

So why did this whisper feel like someone else?

"Diana?"

She set her cup down and looked at Quentin, listening to the rumblings of the storm as it rolled around the mountains and seemed to circle the valley. Round and round and back again. She tried to listen to that and not to the whisper in her mind.

He can help you. He can help us.

To Quentin, a bit unsteadily, she said, "I've sat across from enough doctors to have heard, over the years, most of the jargon. It varied a little from one to the next, but one thing they all had in common was the absolute conviction that hearing voices made you delusional."

"If you're insane. Not if you're psychic."

A little laugh escaped her, hardly a breath of sound. "They were all very careful not to use that word.

Insane. Very careful to find nice, socially correct words and phrases to use instead. Disturbed. Ill.

Confused. In need of more... advanced... therapy. I think my favorite phrase was 'in transition.' I asked that particular doctor what I was in transition from. Or to. He said with a perfectly straight face that I was in transition from a state of confusion to a state of certainty."

"Christ," Quentin muttered.

"Yeah, he wasn't the best at it. He didn't last long. Or—I didn't last long with him."

Diana...

"Diana, I know I'm asking a lot in asking you to believe that you're psychic—"

"What makes you think I am, by the way? I could have been making up everything I've told you." She was trying very hard to ignore that other voice.

"You didn't make up that sketch—so to speak. Besides, we tend to recognize each other."

"At first sight?"

"Pretty much."

"I see. So now I'm a member of a secret club?"

Quentin grinned suddenly, recalling that initial conversation with Bishop years before. "Something like that. As for recognizing others like you, you'll find it comes in handy."

"You claim to be psychic, and yet I didn't... sense... anything different about you," she said, realizing as the words emerged that she was lying. She had sensed something, had known in an instant that her life was about to change forever because of him, even if she hadn't been able to admit it to herself then.

"I'm willing to bet you did," he said, still smiling. "But you haven't been taught how to sort through the impressions of all your senses. I can help you with that."

"Sure. And then I get to recognize people as nuts as I am."

"You aren't nuts."

"No, just seriously disturbed."

"That either. Look, even if I was wrong about you being psychic and you did accept the possibility, would you be worse off than you are now?"

"I don't know."

...
listen to him.

"Could you be? You've been medicated, and you've tried every form of therapy available without success. Why not take a chance and find out if I can help you? What have you got to lose?"

Instead of answering that, Diana said, "You believe I can help you solve Missy's murder, don't you?"

Quentin hesitated, then said, "There has to be a connection. You drew her picture."

"Even if I did, that doesn't mean I can help you. If I'm psychic, as you claim, then maybe I just...

picked up her image somehow. From here, this place where she died. That would make sense—at least in your world."

He ignored that little dig. "Maybe you did. But
if you
did, it's very likely you could pick up other information as well."

"Information about Missy and her murder."

"Yeah, maybe."

"So who's helping who?"

This time, Quentin didn't hesitate. "We're helping each other, or we will be."

Listen to him. Let him help us.

Diana forced herself to stand up. "I have to think about this," she told him. "I—the storm seems to be easing up. I think I'll go to my cottage for a while." She took a step away.

On his feet as well, Quentin said, "Diana? Better stop by the front desk and have your keycard redone. We both know it won't work."

"How did you—"

"We usually have a higher than normal level of electromagnetic energy in our bodies. Tends to interfere with some electrical or magnetic things, especially those we have to carry around with us. Like watches. And keycards."

He wasn't wearing a watch.

Diana glanced down at her left arm, bare of a watch because she'd never been able to wear one.

Then she stared at Quentin for a moment before turning and walking away.

Toward the front desk.

It was late afternoon, the storm long gone, when Quentin found Beau in the conservatory, alone, painting at an easel.

"Making progress?" the artist asked. Quentin couldn't see what was on the canvas, and wasn't interested enough to look; he appreciated both fine art and the people who created it, but right now his mind was on something else. "I have no idea," he replied frankly. "She hasn't called the cops or the guys with the butterfly nets—yet. But she also hasn't admitted to even the possibility that she's psychic."

"Not surprising, really. So many people have spent so many years convincing her she's sick."

"Yeah, and I hate that." Quentin scowled and began prowling among the other easels set up for Beau's students. "They've done a real number on her."

"Conventional medicine. They only know what they think they know."

"They know shit, at least when it comes to us."

"True." Beau watched the other man for a moment, then smiled slightly and returned his attention to his canvas.

"Not that you don't definitely have some sick puppies in your workshop, judging by some of these."

"Troubled people. Not sick puppies."

"No, Beau, these are some sick puppies." Quentin was staring at one canvas that bore a somewhat abstract image of a prone figure seemingly in a pool of blood. The figure was contorted in an agonized pose, and sticking out of its chest was what appeared to be a huge knife.

Unperturbed, Beau said, "Less sick when you know the background. His brother was killed in a violent mugging. Protecting him. He's still trying to come to terms with it. With the exception of Diana, all the students in this workshop are trying to come to terms with a specific traumatic event. So they aren't emotionally disturbed in the clinical sense. Ordinary people, for the most part."

"Oh." Quentin stared a moment longer, then resumed his pacing, sparing only a glance now and then for some of the other sketches and watercolors. "God knows what I'd draw," he muttered, half under his breath.

"The ghosts in your life, probably. Missy. Joey. Others lost along the way. The ones you blame yourself for losing."

"I've had my couch time this month, Beau."

"Sorry."

Quentin sighed. "No, I'm sorry. Didn't mean to snap. I'm just feeling very frustrated right now. I want to help Diana, and I'm afraid she won't let me even try."

"Be patient."

"You know something I don't?"

"No. We both know patience is something you have to work at."

Quentin sighed again. "You're here to state the obvious, is that it?"

Beau chuckled. "I'm here to teach a workshop. Come on, Quentin, you know as well as I do that there aren't any shortcuts. You and Diana both have to find your own way. Whether that's separately or together—or both—is entirely up to the two of you."

"Jesus, you sound like Bishop."

"It's something he understands. Miranda too."

"That didn't stop them from taking a hand in things last fall," Quentin said, recalling the single time in his memory that Bishop and his wife had made a deliberate attempt to change a tragic future both had foreseen.

"With great care and only because the stakes were so high. They'll always hesitate to interfere openly unless they're very, very sure that by doing so they won't make the situation worse."

"I was there."

"I know you were. And I know you understand the concept."

"That doesn't mean I always agree."

"No. It's always more difficult when you're the one... personally involved."

"Yeah, yeah. Look,
teaching
Diana in this workshop of yours sounds like a shortcut to me."

"No. This is a critical time for her, a turning point in her life. And what other people do at those turning points is as much a part of our journey as we are ourselves."

Quentin sorted through that, and said finally, "No offense, but you really do sound like a fortune cookie sometimes."

"So Maggie tells me."

Momentarily distracted by the mention of Beau's half sister, Quentin said, "Do she and John have that organization of theirs up and running yet? I hadn't heard."

"Just about."

"So we'll soon have a domestic organization geared toward psychic investigation and resources."

"That's the plan. If anyone can do it, John can."

"I'll say. And Maggie's doing okay?"

"She's flourishing. John's been very good for her."

"She's been great for him as well. Twenty years I tried to convince him psychic abilities were real, and she manages it in a week or two."

"Sometimes," Beau said, "falling in love removes the blinders from our eyes."

"Very
like a fortune cookie."

Beau smiled, but kept his gaze on his canvas.

Quentin prowled a while longer, then said, "You're very plugged in to the universe, right?"

"According to Maggie."

"Okay, then. Without providing a fateful
shortcut
for me, can you at least tell me if I'm on the right track in how I'm handling things with Diana?"

"Are you following your instincts?"

"Yeah."

"Then I'd guess you're on the right track." Beau paused, then added casually, "But you might want to open up your focus a bit to include more than Diana."

Quentin stopped prowling to stare at the other man. "What do you mean?"

"I mean that right now you have a kind of tunnel vision." Beau stepped back from his canvas, set his palette down on a worktable nearby, and began cleaning his brush. "Focus on a single element, and you could miss other equally important elements. If you hadn't encountered Diana, what would you be doing right now?"

"With Cullen Ruppe unavailable today, I'd probably be... trying to get permission to go through boxes of old paperwork I know The Lodge has in storage rooms and in the basement. Because I don't have any legal authority to examine something ruled not relevant to an old crime, I've never been able to get access to stored employee records, the original blueprints of the buildings, and whatever else is down there."

"Maybe it's time to ask again."

After a moment, Quentin said, "Maybe it is."

Beau said, "I'm told the current manager of The Lodge just got the job last fall. Have you met her?"

"Not if she started last fall."

"She might be more open-minded than the other managers were. More apt to grant a reasonable request to look through old paperwork."

"You're about as subtle as a flagpole, Beau."

"Just making a suggestion."

"But not offering a shortcut?"

"No. It's a path you would have followed on your own."

With considerable feeling, Quentin said, "Once, just once, I'd like at least one member of the unit to give me a straight answer."

Beau's eyebrows rose. "That
was
a straight answer."

"Jesus." Quentin started toward the door, then paused and frowned at the other man. "My instincts are telling me to give Diana a little time to think about things. But not a lot of time. From what she told me earlier, her abilities are strong. Strong enough to scare the hell out of her. Maybe strong enough that they'll be difficult for her to control even once she accepts their reality. And I don't know as much as I wish I knew about mediums."

"Neither do I. But like the rest of us, they're all different in most respects. Different strengths and weaknesses. No hard-and-fast rules, I gather."

Steadily, Quentin said, "I think she may have the ability not only to open a door into the spirit dimension, but to pass through it herself."

"That," Beau said, "has got to be dangerous."

"Yeah, I don't have much doubt about that. I'm afraid if I'm not careful, I could lose her. I think maybe I need some expert advice."