Chapter Two #2
The novelty of being able to communicate with someone while in the trance had caused her to stay too long. She could not risk another minute. She was no Cinderella and Luke was not her idea of Prince Charming, but it might as well have been midnight in the ballroom.
She prepared to strike another note on the chimes, the one she would use to ride out of the trance and back into the waking state.
A shadow in the doorway made her hesitate.
“Oh, shit,” she whispered in her trance voice. “This isn’t over yet.”
“What’s happening?” Luke asked.
“There’s a figure in the doorway. A man. He enters the room. There is no hesitation. He knows his way around. He stops near the sofa.”
“Deke,” Luke said. “It must be.”
“He’s got something in his hand.”
“A gun?”
“I don’t think so. I can’t see the object, but whatever it is, it’s important to him. Now he’s returning to the door.”
“When did this go down? Before or after the murder?”
“Good question. The visions are not connected. I’m viewing two separate incidents. Both are very recent but there’s no way to know which happened first. This one is much weaker and fainter than the murder scene. That indicates no violence is involved, thank goodness.”
“But it’s important?”
“Very. There’s a lot of tension around the man.”
Another ghostly silhouette appeared on the threshold, evidently waiting for Deke. She could not make out the figure’s face but she would know that energy field anywhere.
She struck the chimes, got a note, and rode it out of the trance and into the heavy darkness inside the cabin.
“Sorry,” she said, safely back in her normal voice. “That’s it. That’s all I can tell you. Please turn on the light.”
Luke flipped the switch and studied her with his CIA assassin eyes. She knew he didn’t believe her. That was his problem.
“Can you track the energy prints outside the cabin?” he asked.
“Across the porch maybe but that’s about it. The ground absorbs the paranormal currents very quickly.”
She was talking fast now because she was flying on adrenaline.
The mirrored sunglasses concealed her eyes but she knew that she had stayed too long in the trance.
The ice fever would strike very soon and it would be bad.
She had to get back to the shop. She needed to dose herself with the tea and then she had to come up with a plan to find Bea.
Luke, however, suddenly seemed to be in no great rush to leave the cabin.
“Where would you go to hide a body around here?” he asked.
“Pick a spot, any spot.” She swept out a hand to indicate the thick woods that surrounded the cabin. “We’re in the middle of a forest, in case you haven’t noticed. We lose a hiker or two every summer. Sometimes the bodies are never found. There’s also the lake. It’s very deep.”
Her teeth were starting to chatter. Damn. This was not good. Bruce was watching her in an attentive, concerned way. Or maybe that was how a hellhound looked just before he went for the throat.
“I asked where you would hide a body,” Luke said.
A jolt of anger flashed through her. “Are you implying that I had something to do with what went down in this cabin?”
“No, I’m trying to use some logic. Connect a few dots.
It’s what I do. If you kill someone, you have to deal with the body.
We know it wasn’t left here. You grew up in Mirror Lake.
You know the territory. It seems reasonable to ask you where someone might dump a—” Luke broke off, frowning. “Are you all right?”
“Yes. No.” She wrapped her arms around herself but she knew nothing would stop the shivering.
“I always go through this after I do a reading. It doesn’t usually happen so fast, that’s all.
I spent too much time in the trance. I’ll be okay.
” She managed a steely smile. “I’m a professional. Don’t try this at home.”
“Do you need medical attention?”
“A…a…absolutely not,” she bit out through clamped teeth. “A doctor would diagnose my symptoms as a panic attack.”
“Is that what’s going on?”
“No. Please take me home. I’ll make myself a nice cup of tea and I’ll be fine.”
“You’re shivering,” Luke said.
“One of the side effects of my stupid talent. Don’t worry about it. I’ll live.”
He started to strip off his jacket. “Here, put this on.”
“It won’t help. I’m already wearing a coat.”
“What does help?”
“A cup of tea, like I said. Take me back to the shop.”
“Looks like you’ve got all the symptoms of para-hypothermia,” Luke said.
She couldn’t tell if he was genuinely concerned for her health or if he was alarmed because her traumatized aura meant she might not be of any more use to him. He was a Wells, so probably the latter.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “Just a few chills. I’ve been through this before.”
Okay, not quite like this, but she knew what to do. She needed the tea.
“How long until you recover?” Luke asked.
“Not long.” She gave him another sharp smile. “About a half hour after I get my tea.”
“We can probably speed up the recovery process if I use my energy field to help stabilize your shocked wavelengths. You know the old rule—two auras are stronger than one.”
Bad idea, she thought. A really, really bad idea. Also potentially dangerous. What he was suggesting required physical contact. In her shaky state, there was no way to know how her rattled senses would react to an attempt to calm her energy field.
“It’s too risky,” she said, trying to sound like she knew what she was talking about.
“Don’t worry, I won’t hurt you.”
There was no point trying to hide the truth. So what if she scared the living daylights out of him? It wasn’t like they had a personal relationship. He wasn’t another experiment.
“You don’t understand,” she said evenly. “If you attempt to manipulate my aura you’re the one who most likely will be damaged.” She paused for emphasis. “Seriously damaged.”
“Yeah? How?”
He sounded interested, not scared. Maybe he considered her a challenge. She was getting more annoyed by the minute.
“I could pull you straight into a nightmare,” she said. “I might even shatter part of your aura.” She paused and then added politely, “Accidentally, of course.”
“Sounds like you’ve had some experience.”
“Yes.” She was not about to go into an in-depth discussion of her list of failed experiments. Not now.
Luke moved closer. “Don’t worry, you won’t damage me. What’s the deal with the shades? Are they for dramatic effect? No need to impress this client.”
Before she realized his intention, he reached out with both hands and deftly slipped off the mirrored sunglasses.