Hostage (13 page)

Hollis slowly looked down at her arm, pushing back the sleeve of her sweater. No gooseflesh. No sensation of the hairs stirring on the back of her neck. No cold wave washing through her. No oddly muffling quality of the normal sounds around her.

None of the signs she had grown used to, signs telling her that the door between this world and the next was open or opening, and that she was able to communicate with spirits.

No signs. No warning.

“Oh, shit,” Hollis said rather numbly. “It’s worse than I thought. If I can’t tell the living from the dead here . . .”

Then something new had been added to her bag of psychic tricks.

Either that . . . or something very, very strange was going on here in Alexander House.

And neither possibility was at all reassuring.

* * *

COLE JACOBY TRIED
to shake off that dark pressure he could feel inside him, even as he stood in the tiny shower stall and washed himself head to toe, in cold well water with strong soap, to get rid of the blood.

He refused to think about where it had come from beyond the fleeting hope that
when
he thought about it he’d realize that he had simply killed a game animal even now hanging outside in the cold somewhere near the cabin.

That was it. That had to be it.

And never mind that the dogs had never growled about that.

Never mind.

He washed himself and got dressed in clean clothes, tossing the dirty ones into his washtub with more cold water and double the detergent and bleach he usually used, then returned to the cabin’s main room and stirred up the embers in the fireplace. There was just enough heat left to catch when he tossed in some kindling, and when that was burning, a couple of logs.

They were still watching him from their beds. Ace’s fur was standing up all the way down his spine, and both Lucy and Cleo were visibly trembling.

“You need to go out,” he said to them, holding his voice calm. “That’s what’s wrong with you. I should have taken you out first thing, instead of . . . Come on, guys, let’s go out and do your business before breakfast.”

He opened the front door of the cabin and waited for the dogs, clearly reluctant, to leave their beds and approach. He stood to one side, trying not to flinch at the way they sidled past, avoiding any contact with him. Half afraid they’d run if given the chance, he stood on the porch and waited, again giving them the command to do their business, the command they’d been raised to obey. Answer the morning call of nature and then come back inside for breakfast. That was the established routine, and dogs were very much creatures of routine.

All three eyed him, clearly uneasy, but they did as commanded, going no more than a few yards from the cabin. Ace found a tree to lift his leg against and the two girls squatted. There was no joyous running about, no hint of the morning playfulness that was usual for them. There was just obeying his command and relieving themselves, none of them wasting time for anything else before returning to the cabin and their beds, again almost sidling through the doorway, rubbing against the door frame rather than come close.

Close to him.

He felt a pang about that.

“Probably just hungry,” he murmured as he closed the door behind them. “I know I am.” More than that, he felt . . . hollowed out inside. Empty of everything except that dark pressure he was so starkly aware of. But he ignored that, and tried not to raise his voice when he said to the dogs, “I know I’m hungry. Starved. So we’ll eat. We’ll eat, and everything will be okay.”

Never mind that they’d never acted like this before.

Never mind the dark pressure.

Never mind.

The voices were silent, which made him feel grateful for a while as he briskly prepared the dogs’ breakfast and got eggs and sausage for himself from the ancient cold-storage box just outside the cabin’s back door.

He put the dogs’ bowls down as he usually did, spread out a couple of feet apart between the kitchen and living/sleeping area of his cabin, called them to eat with a cheery voice that sounded unnatural even to him, and went to start his own breakfast.

As he added fuel to the embers still burning in the old iron stove provided to cook on, he told himself he wasn’t looking to make sure the dogs were eating because of course they were.

Of course they were.

He waited until sausage was crackling and popping in his single frying pan and eggs were broken into a bowl ready for cooking before he finally forced himself to look.

The dogs were eating.

But the animals he had raised to healthy, happy, affectionate adulthood were almost hunched over their bowls, gobbling their food as if to just get it down quickly, their tails tucked tightly and ears flat—and their eyes fixed on him.

Fearful eyes.

He wanted to cry. But he turned back to his cooking, facing the realization only then that perhaps the dark pressure he felt inside himself might actually be worse than the voices.

He didn’t know how. He didn’t know what it meant. Where it had come from. All he knew, all he was really certain of, was that he was afraid.

And that he was changing.

* * *

“WHAT DO YOU
mean, you don’t know what it means?” Hollis demanded, keeping her voice low as she used the house phone in the foyer.

“I mean I don’t know,” Bishop replied, patient. “You’ve always been able to tell the dead from the living before. Obviously something has changed.”

“I know that much. But what? And why?”

“I don’t know. I can’t see the situation for myself, or sense it firsthand. I’m not there, Hollis.”

“No, but you’re our Yoda,” she said with something of a snap. “You’re
supposed
to know this stuff.”

She was the only member of the SCU who dared call him a rather mocking nickname, and other team members had speculated as to why Bishop seemed more amused than annoyed by it.

Still patient, he said, “You said yourself you’re in what appears to be a very haunted house, filled with a great deal of spiritual energy. Aside from the hospital when Diana was injured, you probably haven’t been exposed to so much spiritual energy since your own abilities became so powerful.”

“So?”

“So . . . another psychic tool, perhaps.”

Striving mightily to hold her own voice calm, Hollis said, “I don’t see how on earth an
in
ability to tell the living from the dead could possibly be of any use to me. The opposite, in fact, since it’s bound to add confusion to a situation. Besides, don’t you always say that our abilities come about because we have a use for them?”

“I have always said that.”

Hollis waited a few beats, then snapped, “Well?”

“I’m not there, Hollis,” he repeated. “And you know very well we don’t deal in absolutes. Energy changes us, often in unpredictable ways. Perhaps the energy there is changing you. Or perhaps you’re experiencing a . . . temporary glitch caused by that energy.”

“I’d rather this were temporary,” she announced. “It’s unsettling.”

“I imagine so.”

She let out a sigh. “And you haven’t seen anything in the future that might help me understand what’s going on here?”

“I’m afraid not.”

Hollis silently counted to ten, taking her time about it. “You didn’t just send us here so I could practice being a medium, did you?”

“You said yourself it’s a place with a great deal of spiritual energy, and what better location to use your abilities?”

“Bishop.”

“Just . . . carry on, Hollis. Try to make contact with Mrs. Alexander’s husband. Deal with what’s in front of you, with . . . whatever comes up. Follow your instincts. And talk to Reese about this.”

“I don’t have to talk to him, dammit, I broadcast, remember?”

“That’s not the same as having a conversation, Hollis, and you know it. Talk to Reese. Get his take on what’s happening. He may be able to help more than you realize.”

“You know, I don’t have to be precognitive to know that one of these days there’s going to be a real situation, and you’re going to be too damned enigmatic and uninformative for our good—and for your own. And very bad things are going to happen.”

“I’ve never asked for anything except that you do your best, Hollis. And you’ve never delivered less than that.”

She was caught off guard by the unexpected compliment—and not at all sure he hadn’t deliberately done it to stop questions he wasn’t ready to answer, something of which he was most certainly capable.

“Uh . . . thanks. I think.”

“Just keep going,” Bishop repeated. “Call if you need to. I’ll be here.”

“Where’s here this time?” she wondered.

“Outside Boston.”

Reminding herself that it was still very early, Hollis said, “I woke you up, didn’t I?”

“No. Serial killers don’t keep regular hours as a rule. Call if you need to, Hollis.”

“Okay. Thanks. I think. Be safe.” She cradled the phone slowly, absently wondering if places that served as hotels and inns clung to corded telephones simply because if they didn’t, handsets would be lost by guests more often than TV remotes.

“Probably,” Reese said, joining her in the foyer.

“I would say stop reading me, but I guess that’s fairly useless.” Without pausing for a reply, she added, “Did you just come from the dining room? And do they have food in there yet? And coffee? I need both.”

He took her hand and led her back the way he’d come. “They have both. I gather we were heard stirring around, and the excellent staff here threw together breakfast more than two hours earlier than normal. A very nice buffet is waiting for us.”

“How did you get past me?” she wondered. “I was in the foyer and didn’t see you come down the stairs.”

“Rear staircase. One of several, I think. Found it while exploring. Although I think I’m going to study one of the maps a maid told me they have in that table back there in the foyer before I go exploring again. The staircase took me to the servants’ quarters, I believe, and from the reaction, that was a social faux pas even in these modern times.”

“Yeah? You catch somebody coming out of the shower naked or something?”

“No, just a maid still tying on her apron as she came out of her room. Which was awkward enough.”

“Wish I’d been there.”

“Sadist.”

“I like my entertainment twisted. Sue me.”

“You just want to see me . . . at a loss.”

“Well, it happens so rarely,” she explained, grave.

“I’d rather it never happened. I don’t like losing control.”

“No, really?”

“Smart-ass.”

Hollis was distracted a bit then by the enticing aroma of coffee and bacon as they entered the cavernous formal dining room, and inhaled thankfully. “Ahhh . . .”

“Sideboard’s over there.”

“They don’t have a little breakfast room somewhere?” Hollis wondered, looking around the huge room as they crossed it. “Maybe something too cozy for, I don’t know, more than thirty or forty people?”

“Breakfast tables are set up in the conservatory, according to Thomas. But it’s only used for breakfasts when the place is a hotel. When the family is in residence, meals are served here—or on a tray in the bedrooms.”

“Room service?”

“He didn’t call it that, but yes. I gather most meals are expected to be taken here, but breakfast on a tray is the norm for family and a large percentage of guests. Which also means I doubt we’ll see our host or hostess before lunchtime.”

“I’d already figured that much out. Neither of them struck me as early risers, and if they get breakfast in bed, there’s even less reason to stir themselves before they have to.”

“I didn’t know people still lived this way,” DeMarco said. Then he added, “Here, grab a plate.”

Food and coffee were kept hot on a long sideboard, and in the covered servers Hollis found a breakfast substantial enough to satisfy even her rather unusually strong appetite.

She didn’t really think about that until some time later, when she and DeMarco sat in lonely splendor at one end of the very long dining table and finished their meal, enjoying the really excellent food and coffee.

“Um,” she said, sipping the latter.

DeMarco sipped his own, eyed her for a moment, then said, “I could be a gentleman and not comment on the fact that you ate enough to feed three people, but I gather that’s on your mind.”

“Well, it’s unusual,” she pointed out. “You’re always trying to feed me, so you know I don’t generally have much of an appetite.”

“No, you don’t. Something new here, maybe. Or a gradual evolution; you’ve developed more abilities just in recent months, and abilities require energy. Physical energy, stamina. Maybe your body has finally figured that out.”

“Maybe. I just hope I don’t end up like Riley and have to keep those energy bars in my back pocket all the time.”
5

“She only has to do that when Ash isn’t around,” DeMarco pointed out. “Which is almost never.”

Hollis’s mind shied away from the possibilities Brooke had mentioned and spoke hastily, hoping to deflect DeMarco at least from picking up on the discomfort she felt about that. “Well, if I can eat like a pig and burn it all off, I’m not going to complain.”

“You didn’t eat like a pig. You just ate with an appetite.”

“I won’t quibble.” Hollis drank more coffee, frowning. “The thing is, if a need for more energy is new, it’s not the only new thing.”

“What’s the other new thing?”

Surprised, she said, “You don’t know already?”

He looked at her with slightly lifted brows. “I assume it has something to do with you being a medium. You haven’t realized? Hollis, the only time I literally can’t read you even when I try is when you’re using your mediumistic abilities.”

“Seriously?”

“Entirely. I may well feel there’s something wrong if you’re in trouble, but no actual thoughts. I assume it’s because the energy of your thoughts is different, on a different frequency, when you’re using those abilities. And it’s not a frequency I pick up.”

Thinking back only then, Hollis realized that DeMarco had indeed always behaved as if he had no specific awareness of information or knowledge she gleaned from her contacts with the spirit world unless it was something she discussed out loud or thought about later.