She tilted her head into Renee, appreciating her soothing touch. She loved the way she smelled and the feel of her thick hair against her cheek. “God, I hope so.”
“It will, I feel it here.” Renee leaned away to tap her chest. “This is a bump in the road, and that’s all it is. Merry and the baby will be fine.”
Hearing those words from Renee actually made her feel better. She might not be psychic, but Lorna had been around her long enough to know she had her own special powers. In their own right, they were as important as what Lorna could do. “Did you see an aura around her?”
Renee’s ability to see auras was incredible and, as far as she’d seen, pretty damned accurate. She could detect the powers of good, bad, sickness, and health as they surrounded people. It was pretty cool, in Lorna’s humble opinion.
Renee squeezed her hand. “I did. What I can tell you is that all day she’s been fine and nothing suggested tragedy around her. She was tired earlier and that’s all. Remember, it’s normal for a pregnant woman to be fatigued. It doesn’t mean there’s a problem. If something was wrong, I’m absolutely certain it would have shown up around her. It didn’t, and so I’m telling you, she’ll be fine, and so will our little girl.”
The band around Lorna’s heart loosened a couple of notches. How she wished Jeremy were here to hear Renee. He could use the encouragement as well. “Good,” Lorna breathed out. “You don’t know how much better that makes me feel.”
Renee squeezed her hand, smiled, and stood. “You want some coffee? You must be a little tired.” She winked and her smile grew.
Lorna flashed back to their earlier hot and passionate lovemaking. She could feel the flush that rose in her face as she thought about it. “You know, for someone who looks all sweet and innocent, you’re actually a pretty wicked woman.”
Renee winked again. “Only with you, baby. Only with you.”
That comment warmed her all over and made her want to run back to the hotel. “Good to know. Let’s keep it that way.”
“No worries, I’m all yours.” She leaned in and gave her a peck on the cheek. “Now, coffee? Yes? No?”
She had to think about that for only a second. “Well, thanks for the offer, but I’m going with no. This scare has me plenty wide awake without any artificial stimulants.” All she needed to do was wind herself up with a caffeine rush. Besides, she’d never been in a hospital yet that had decent coffee.
Renee sat back down next to her. “All right, we’ll forego the coffee for the time being. I have a hunch this is going to be a long night, and it might come in handy a few hours from now.”
Lorna shifted in her seat and pulled the cell phone out of her pocket. She didn’t wear a watch, but then who needed to these days when everyone had a cell phone to keep time. She looked at the display and frowned. “That’s odd. I have a voice mail, and I didn’t even hear the phone ring. Did you?”
Renee shook her head. “No, I didn’t hear a thing. Do you have it on mute by any chance? That’s my favorite trick, and then I miss a bunch of calls before I realize what I’ve done.”
She looked at her phone more closely and was dismayed to see that somewhere along the line, she had, indeed, flipped the little switch that turned the phone from ring to mute. “Damn it,” she muttered as she put it back on ring.
Now to see who’d left her a message. As she listened to the voice mail, her heart sank. Oh, hell no, she thought. This was the last thing she needed right now. Here they were in the middle of a family crisis, and damned if Anna wasn’t making it worse. God had probably been looking out for her when Anna dumped her because she’d forgotten how big a pain in the ass the woman could be and how her timing on everything was the worst. She slipped the phone back into her pocket and turned to Renee.
She tried to keep the irritation out of her voice but figured it was an epic failure. “Anna has gone back out to Healing Waters armed with a pry bar and who knows what else. She’s going to break into the place.”
Renee turned in her seat, a shocked expression on her face. It confirmed her feelings about Anna’s poor timing. “Oh dear, that’s not good. What in the world is she thinking?”
Nothing good was an understatement. They’d be bailing Anna out of jail before the night was done and maybe, or maybe not, finding Sadie in the midst of the chaos. Anna didn’t realize the danger she could be in or what it could mean to Sadie if something otherworldly was going on out there. She got the emotion that was driving Anna, she really did. At the same time, she wanted to shake her and make her understand the danger.
Lorna had come up against some weird shit since she’d evolved into a psychic or whatever in the world she was. It made her cautious and willing to think outside the box. Oh hell, she didn’t think she ever even thought inside the box these days. So much of what she’d seen couldn’t be explained in the rational world. Just like the troubling sensations she’d encountered out at Healing Waters. She didn’t know what they’d find once they got inside the building. It might be perfectly normal. Or it could very well be something more along the lines of the paranormal. Bottom line, it was no place for Anna to be alone.
“No, it’s not good,” she muttered. “Not at all.”
Renee took her hand. It was warm and soft, though the pressure of her grip was all business. “You know we have to follow her back out there.”
Lorna nodded. Yeah, she knew exactly what they had to do, and it pissed her off. The most important thing right now was to stay right here for her brother and her sister-in-law-to-be. It wasn’t fair that Anna once more was causing havoc in her life. So much for taking the high road. Wasn’t she supposed to be building some good karma by coming to Anna’s aid? Sure didn’t seem it, or she wouldn’t have to leave Jeremy in his hour of need.
She blew out a long breath. “As much as I hate to say it, yeah, we do. We can’t leave her out there alone, but I have to tell you, I’d really like to. If she wants to be a dumbass, why is it up to me to save her? I could easily leave her out there all night and not feel the least bit guilty.”
“You’d hate yourself if you did.”
Damn it if Renee wasn’t right. The old Lorna with the broken heart and bruised pride would love to tell Anna to knock herself out if she couldn’t wait a few hours and do it right. The new Lorna, the Lorna loved by the wonderful Renee, would do the right thing. She would go and save Anna from herself.
“First, I’ve got to tell Jeremy we’re heading out. Do you have any idea how much I hate leaving him alone? It’s so wrong to bail out on family because of Anna. She’s messed up my life in so many ways.”
Renee kissed her on the cheek. “I have a pretty good idea how much this bothers you. I also know Merry and Jeremy are in good hands. They’ll be well taken care of until we can get back here. If anyone will understand what you’re doing and why, it’s those two. You know as well as I do they’d be angry if you turned your back on her.”
As if he’d heard them talking about him, Jeremy pushed through the double doors leading from the brightly lit waiting area to the emergency exam rooms. To see that some color had returned to his face made the tension in her shoulders relax a little. But it didn’t make her irritation with Anna go away one iota. She would still love nothing better than to sit her butt back down in the chair and let the chips fall where they would for Anna. She stayed on her feet.
“Is she okay?” Lorna blurted before he got more than a couple steps outside the doors. “Tell me Merry and the baby are okay.” Geez, she sounded like she was about to burst into tears. Maybe because she almost had.
He smiled and nodded, and the tension in the back of her loosened. The tears that were so close to the surface faded as quickly as they’d surged forward. “She’s going to be fine.” She saw the glimmer of tears in his eyes, and they were tears filled with light.
“And the baby?” she asked in a whisper, afraid for the words to pass her lips. She almost felt as though if she said the words too loudly, it would make t
hem more powerful. As she studied her brother’s face, she hoped her prayers would be answered.
His smile grew, and the light in his eyes pushed away the threat of tears. “The baby is wonderful. Healthy and happy right where she is. The doc told us it was a little premature labor and that’s all. They believe they’ve got it stopped. Mama and baby are both going to be fine. The good news is that after a day or two in the hospital just to make sure it doesn’t happen again, we can trek back across the mountains to that nice comfortable home you’ve made for all of us.”
“Oh, thank God,” Lorna breathed out at the same time Renee stepped forward and gave Jeremy a big hug, along with a kiss on the cheek. She followed suit and wrapped her arms around both of them. “I’m so glad.”
When she stepped back, she frowned and told him, “I’m so sorry. I want to stay here with you, but we’ve got to go.”
He nodded and seemed very calm about the idea of being left at the hospital. That surprised her until he started explaining. “Might as well go back to the hotel. You can’t do anything more here. I’m going to stay with Merry though. I don’t want her to be alone. You two get some sleep. I have a hunch you’ll be back at it bright and early in the morning. I’ll bet Katie has her hands on those keys before seven.”
Her fault he didn’t understand because she didn’t explain at all. Lorna shook her head, “Unfortunately, we’re not going back to the hotel, and tomorrow morning is out too. We have to race back out to Healing Waters tonight. Like right now.”
“What the hell?” His forehead scrunched. “Why on earth would you go out there at this time of night? Katie said she couldn’t get the key until morning. What’s she doing, dragging some poor state employee out of bed in the middle of the night? That’s gonna go over big. We don’t need people pissed off at us.”
She closed her eyes for a moment and then opened them. The evening had started out so wonderfully in the lovely and very comfortable hotel room. She’d felt alive and loved and hadn’t wanted to move one inch. How quickly it had turned from being sweet to being painful. Not that she considered what was happening here in the hospital a pain. Merry and her niece were as far from that as possible. Anna, on the other hand, had pain in the ass written all over her. “Anna is on her way out to Healing Waters with a pry bar.”
Jeremy blinked and blew out a long breath before saying slowly, “Son of a bitch. You two better haul butt out there.”
*
As Lorna drove, Renee punched in Katie’s number on Lorna’s cell. Not too surprisingly, the ever-vigilant cop picked up on the second ring. If Renee had to guess, that phone was right next to the bed. After apologizing for the late-night call, she explained the details of the message Lorna had received from Anna. The consummate professional, Katie didn’t even seem flustered despite the ungodly time. She told Renee she’d meet them at Healing Waters with a key one way or the other. Renee was incredibly relieved to hear it, but felt sorry for whoever was going to get dragged out of bed.
Lorna’s face was tense as she stared out the windshield. If she heard any of the conversation between Renee and Katie, she didn’t give any indication. She was intent and focused on the road. The lights of city faded behind them as Lorna pushed her speed well past the posted limit. “You’re worried, aren’t you?” Renee asked as she put the cell phone on the seat. “I mean, really worried.” At first she thought Lorna’s intensity was because she was so focused on driving. Then she realized there was more to it than that.
Lorna nodded and kept her eyes on the road. Her jaw was tense, and Renee could imagine her teeth grinding together. “The whole time we were out there earlier I kept picking up a bad vibe coming off the main building. It’s a bit like the feeling I got when John McCafferty’s spirit made its presence known to me. You remember when he crawled inside Jeremy and tried to kill me. Or kill Catherine, actually, but you know what I mean.”
“I do.” And she did. She would never forget how close she came to losing Lorna so soon after they’d met. John McCafferty was the wicked, bitter man who’d built the gorgeous house on the ocean shore that they all lived in now. Even after he’d died, he would do anything and everything he could to make sure his daughter bent to his will. His iron rule transcended death just as Catherine’s devotion for Tiana did. His evil had ended the lives of two good women simply because, in defiance of his mandate, they loved each other and refused to relinquish that love. He, or rather his spirit, had tried to do the same to them when Lorna’s psychic powers uncovered the truth. As they brought to light the proof of his misdeeds, and when they were close to reuniting the spirits of Catherine and Tiana, his black spirit had returned from beyond the grave in an attempt to once again assert his will. He’d almost succeeded, almost being the key word. Love and kindness had won the battle that night. The spirits of the tragic lovers were reunited, and John McCafferty was silenced for eternity.
To now hear Lorna say she was sensing that same level of evil made Renee feel a little sick to her stomach. She never wanted to even come close to someone like that again. The man was bad through and through, his spirit even worse. Healing Waters was supposed to have been a place for help, and she had the distinct feeling it was, or had been, quite the opposite. She worried about what they might find once they stepped inside that old, abandoned building. It could hold the spirit of something far worse than John McCafferty, and that gave her chills.
In the bit of time they’d spent in the waiting room at the hospital, she’d been able to do a little research into Healing Waters and into the woman who, as it turned out, was Sadie’s great-great-grandmother. All she could say was thank goodness for smartphone technology. She’d been one of those people who’d resisted the trend to have the kind of phone that could do it all and then finally broke down and bought in. She was a businesswoman, after all, and it wasn’t very good business to let technology pass her by. Finally, she had her very own smartphone, and she’d never looked back. It made everything easier, including doing research while sitting in a hospital waiting room. At last she understood what the big deal was, and though she’d be loath to admit it, she loved her phone.
What she’d found in her Internet search at the hospital was quite interesting, especially what she learned about the grandmother. More accurately, what she didn’t find about the grandmother. Sadie’s family was quite prominent in the city, and her great-great-grandfather’s name was on buildings, schools, and parks. So, it was very curious to discover that so little was written of her great-great-grandmother while volumes were available on her great-great-grandfather. Especially since he was the same one who had committed his beautiful, wealthy wife to an institution designed to treat the insane.
It didn’t escape her that back in the day, women had little to no power, even if they were far wealthier than their husbands. It galled her to think that perhaps Sadie’s relative had been put in such a place simply to get her out of her high-profile husband’s way. It would have left him free to do as he wished and given him unguarded access to her money. She couldn’t say that was what had happened, just as she couldn’t say that wasn’t what had happened. How she wished she could see the man and read his aura. Then she’d know if he’d been a concerned husband or a bastard.
On the way out to Healing Waters, she filled Lorna in on what she’d found in her search. Given everything they’d learned since Lorna’s evolution into a psychic, they both decided that something otherworldly was indeed waiting for them at the big red-brick building. Whether or not Sadie was caught in its net, they didn’t know. Whether or not it involved Sadie’s long-dead relative, they also didn’t know. All they were certain of was that a force with unseen powers was making itself known.
As it stood, they were going into the situation blind. Lorna had only fleeting images that didn’t let her get a clear idea of what they would find inside, and Renee’s particular skill wasn’t useful at all in this setting. There was no telling what they would encounter once they walked through those
doors. When she thought back to what they’d discovered the last time they were in the area, namely a serial killer’s burial grounds, it chilled her to think about what they might come face-to-face with now.
She was absolutely confident that whatever it was, Lorna’s powers would uncover it. As the days, weeks, and months passed, Lorna was coming more and more into her powers. Her confidence level was grounded in a growing understanding of what her powers could do, and she also appeared to be finding a comfort level in them that hadn’t been there when they first stumbled upon the spirits of Catherine and Tiana.
It warmed Renee’s heart to witness the ever-evolving change in the person she loved with all her heart. When she’d first come to the house on the sea, the woman she’d met had carried such a burden of sadness with her it was heartbreaking. It was ingrained in every fiber of her being, and her aura had shown it just as clearly. Renee had felt so bad for her and at the same time understood Lorna would have to be the one to embrace her own peace. The woman who sat next to her in the car now was infinitely more comfortable in her own skin. Lorna was discovering her way in the world that was now hers, and that made Renee love her all the more. That she was able to overcome her bitterness toward Anna and had come to help made her proud. That she was doing everything she could to find the woman Anna had left her for made her even more proud. It took a generous soul to set aside the depth of feeling that situation had created.
At the same time, Lorna’s growing acceptance of her psychic powers scared Renee. Lorna was more open to her powers than ever before, and while that let her see beyond the veil separating the worlds more easily, it also gave evil a wider door to enter and attack. Lorna’s heart was a good one, and evil detested people like her. Renee didn’t want her hurt, and she worried that what was inside the doors of that building might go straight for her beautiful heart.
Twisted Screams Page 11
