Hidden Salem

by Kay Hooper

  “With the aid of psychic energy?”

  He nodded slowly. “And determination, and will, and—a vision.”

  “Utopia?” Her tone was more wry than dry.

  “Initially, I’m sure it was a group effort. They just wanted a nice, safe little town. And somewhere along the way, the five families took more of a hand in shaping it. Eventually one had to come along who wanted to shape it alone. Though in my experience and yours, one man’s personal utopia is hell to most others. The never-ending lure of power.”

  Miranda settled back down, close, her head on his shoulder.

  And that’s what they’re walking into. How long have you known? The mind talk was as easy to them both now as spoken speech, though it held far more layers of thought, idea, emotion, intimacy, and understanding.

  Suspected since I met Nellie. She had no walls that really protected her then, and . . . her father left her far more than she was consciously aware of. Her mother left her even more.

  And she has to find both in Salem.

  Yes. Find. Accept. Control. And stop at least one hellish vision of utopia.

  With Gray and Geneva to help her.

  Yes. And one more.

  Finn.

  Finn. He holds the lock, Nellie the key. Gray and Geneva have the experience, the awareness and understanding of darkness, the strength and skill to push through whatever they have to, as they’ve already done.

  We really have two teams there, don’t we?

  Bishop’s rueful mental laugh was quicksilver. Four people who need to find their own connections to each other. The Universe sets the place and time, puts them where they need to be, and puts their feet on the path. After that . . .

  Some things have to happen just the way they happen.

  Yes, beloved. But every choice they make shapes the path each walks. It’s something we’ve learned well.

  We haven’t seen . . . how it ends. For any of them.

  No. And I don’t believe we will until it’s . . . all . . . over and done with. Perhaps because Salem really is out of sync with the world we know. Perhaps because those sent to search and understand face a kind of power we’ve never encountered before. Or . . . perhaps it’s just the Universe reminding us again that our abilities are no more than the tools we use, the weapons when they have to be, but never to be used without understanding and the willingness to pay whatever price is demanded.

  The Universe is a hard taskmaster, Miranda observed.

  Which is why we train our teams to be tougher than even they know, to be more than even they know.

  This time, it was Miranda’s rueful mental laugh that was a quicksilver flash. I think sometimes they wish they knew a little more about both right from the beginning.

  Some things have to happen—

  —just the way they happen. Yes, darling.

  SATURDAY

  Geneva was up early despite—or because of—the first really comfortable night’s sleep she’d had since being left in that cellar. The hot shower before bed had been blissful, both because it warmed her and because it got her clean; Geneva hated being dirty. In fact, she took another shower when she realized she was awake for the day a little before seven.

  She doubted Gray was up yet. The migraines that tended to follow any extended use of his spider senses were the worst ones he ever had, and she didn’t doubt he’d taken the knockout med the doctor had prescribed as well as the one that helped the pain and other symptoms yet allowed him to be functional. He hated giving in to what he thought of as a weakness to that extent, but he was neither stupid nor burdened with an ego that would demand he pretend to be okay when he wasn’t, and he was a pro. She doubted he’d be awake before eight, if then.

  They all paid some sort of price for their abilities, she reflected as she dried her long, thick, ridiculously red hair. She had trouble with electronics; she fully expected this dryer to short out before the end of her stay, even as carefully and briefly as she used it, and she’d already replaced the lightbulb in her bedside lamp three times. She’d simply unplugged the bedside clock radio within an hour of first arriving here, since it wouldn’t have lasted long at all.

  As for ATMs, computers, cell phones, or tablets, forget about it. To her, they were useful only as props of normalcy, plugged in a careful distance away from her touch, and strictly avoided until it was time to pack to leave.

  And she’d learned the hard way not to stand too close to any clock, though the more old-fashioned the less likely she was to affect it. Hell, one of the reasons she carried and used the old-fashioned roll of film and viewfinder sort of camera rather than a digital one like Gray’s was because she had to; digital cameras in her hands lasted about as long as a cup of coffee.

  With Gray, the price he paid was migraines. Virtually always when he was on a case, or was otherwise using his abilities, both empathic and the spider senses. Like her, he accepted the price demanded with resignation, though certainly not happily. It was common enough for quite a few members of the unit to suffer headaches, even blackouts, and so far the doctors and other specialists had found no preventative, only meds for the resulting symptoms.

  But at least the meds worked, tweaked for psychic minds, Geneva believed, though nobody had ever said so.

  As for Geneva’s problems, Bishop had people constantly working to refine special casings for cell phones and tablets, and various protections for laptops, but the truth was that for a lot of psychics, tech they could reliably use was pretty damned low-grade.

  An irony of the Universe that so many of those with “extra” senses found even communication over any distance at all often to be a problem because of the useless sophistication of the communication tools they were given.

  Bishop had, fairly recently, displayed a growing ability to reach some of his agents telepathically, and from quite a distance, but as with all their abilities, it had its limits. There were some rare team members he couldn’t read even if they were in the same room—though most of those swore there was “contact of some kind” going on. As in many other things, Bishop had never explained whether his was a new ability or a natural evolution, a strengthening of his already formidable telepathic range, and his agents knew better than to ask.

  If he wanted them to know, he’d tell them. Otherwise, questions would be ignored or turned aside with what Geneva considered one of his typical nonanswers.

  Since she was one of those he could normally reach at a distance, and easily, Geneva knew that whatever weird “static” other psychics outside the area had picked up hovering in and around Salem, and the growing tingling discomfort she felt physically, which she assumed came from the same source, had to be blocking him somehow, because her normal faint, familiar sense of him was absent.

  It wasn’t at all intrusive, that sense. It was, she had decided, rather like a ring one was so used to wearing that it was noticed only when it slipped off the finger suddenly and clinked on the floor.

  Geneva caught herself grinning as she thought of Bishop clinking, then pushed that aside determinedly. She was, after all, a pro.

  Now that she was out of her mountain jail and back in town, she was far more conscious of the “static” than she had been even those few days before. Even so, she didn’t so much sense it as feel it. Like her skin was crawling a bit. Just a bit. Still, she had a hunch her current edginess was at least partly due to the probable buildup of that energy all around her.

  Partly. The rest was due to Gray.

  Not that she was about to tell him that, of course.

  Any way she looked at it, the static/energy was worrisome.

  Geneva killed as much time as she could before impatience drove her from her room at barely eight o’clock. She put a set of copies of the dump site photos in an envelope to slip under Gray’s door so he could upload them to Bishop before he went down for breakfast. And
she took only one of her cameras with her, its case hanging by a long strap casually on her shoulder.

  Geneva had forgotten that the B and B usually filled up with guests on weekend mornings, drawn by the excellent breakfasts offered, so she was momentarily startled when she entered the big dining room to find every table occupied. The quiet murmur of conversation was accompanied by the occasional clinking of silverware against china, but they were peaceful sounds.

  She knew Ms. Payton would appear within moments to efficiently conjure a table out of nowhere, but as she stood gazing around she saw suddenly at a table slightly apart from those around it a coal black Pit bull sitting quietly beside a petite woman with honey brown hair and a faintly preoccupied expression.

  Even though she’d never seen her before, Geneva recognized the psychic she had sensed the night before. She hadn’t thought much about making herself known to the other woman, hadn’t weighed the pros and cons as she usually did, but even as that thought crossed her mind, a faint frown disturbed that very pretty face, and Geneva found herself meeting a pair of unexpectedly sharp brown eyes across the few feet separating them.

  The other woman recognized exactly what Geneva was, static or no static.

  Without realizing she was going to, Geneva went to the table, which was set for two, and said, “Busy this morning. Mind if I join you? I’m Geneva Raynor.”

  “Nellie Reed. And please do.” She was maybe a year or two younger than Geneva, but those sharp eyes were older than her years and held shadows.

  It didn’t surprise Geneva; psychics rarely had an easy life, one way or another. She slid into the seat across from Nellie, hanging the strap of her camera case over one side of her chair. She met the intent gaze of the very large dog and smiled. “He’s gorgeous.”

  “Leo,” Nellie offered.

  “Hey, Leo.” Geneva leaned over to accept a paw suddenly waved in the air, aware of Nellie’s surprise but not sharing it. Animals tended to take to her immediately, especially dogs and cats.

  “I’ve never seen him do that before,” Nellie said slowly.

  Geneva settled back in her chair, still smiling. “I guess he knows I love dogs. Or”—she lowered her voice just a bit—“he knows I’m like you. Psychic.”

  Gray would have winced, Geneva knew; he was always more cautious about revealing psychic abilities, on a case or not. But Geneva had the sense of a clock ticking in the back of her mind, something that had begun the instant she’d met Nellie’s gaze. And she was not a woman willing to waste valuable time, especially when there was a child missing and bodies turning up, however quickly they were swept from view—and possibly the knowledge—of the townsfolk.

  Nellie was saved from having to respond right away when a cheerful waitress appeared to fill Geneva’s coffee cup and take her breakfast order. Having already discovered the pastries were to die for, Geneva ordered a large bear claw as well as bacon and eggs; she’d missed real food the last couple of days and intended to make up for lost time.

  It wasn’t until the waitress had gone off to get Geneva’s order that she once again met Nellie’s gaze. And found it, not unexpectedly, guarded, wary.

  “We tend to recognize each other,” Geneva said, her voice low but casual. “Not always, but quite often. Recognize each other as . . . fellow travelers on an uncommon path. You recognized me, didn’t you.” It wasn’t a question.

  Nellie hesitated, one hand wearing a very snug, beautifully made, whisper-thin black glove toying with the handle of her coffee cup. Then, finally, she said slowly, “I just got the sense we . . . had things in common.”

  “Ah. Then I’m guessing you’re clairvoyant. And a few other things as well.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Geneva was good at reading all the layers of a question. “The way you phrased it told me probably clairvoyant; you tend to get a sense of things, flashes of knowledge. But that’s not your primary ability, I think. A telepath, like me. That’s always been the strongest ability, so it’s the one you concentrate on tamping down. As for the other things . . . Well, don’t freak out, but late last night when I passed by your door, I knew there was someone practicing meditation techniques of a . . . certain kind. Meant for control. If you were only clairvoyant, or even only clairvoyant and telepathic, you probably wouldn’t have needed those.”

  Nellie was frowning now, but it was clearly thoughtful rather than angry. Abruptly, she said, “Bishop. You’re one of his.”

  Geneva wasn’t at all surprised by the guess—because she knew very well it wasn’t a guess. And because she knew Bishop kept track of psychics he located over the years, whether or not they wanted to become agents or investigators, just as she’d reminded Gray the night before. “I’m a photographer; my job is to gather pictures of the gorgeous scenery around here for a proposed book.” Geneva paused, grinned faintly, and added, “And, yes, I’m one of Bishop’s. Here very, very unofficially.”

  Half under her breath, Nellie murmured, “That’s the one thing I didn’t think of when I knew I’d come to Salem. I probably should have called him before I left home.”

  “To find out if he had people in place?”

  Nellie hesitated. “To find out if he knew of any danger here. Anything . . . unusual going on. Though I guess you being here sort of answers those questions.”

  “Suspicions aren’t necessarily knowledge,” Geneva said, adding immediately, “and some answers aren’t all that helpful. Did you come here to look for danger, or are you trying to avoid it?”

  The blunt question widened Nellie’s eyes, and for a long moment, she didn’t answer. The return of the waitress with Geneva’s order gave her an extra few minutes to consider how to answer.

  It wasn’t enough time.

  Digging into her breakfast, Geneva said conversationally, “You’ll have to forgive me if I don’t dance around the subject very well. I’m not good at that. The truth is that I am here looking for trouble, danger. I’ve already found both, and I have a strong sense that time is short when it comes to finding answers. I need to know where you stand.”

  “Can’t you read my mind?” Nellie asked steadily.

  “Nope. I mean, I probably can, since I picked up on the meditation last night—we each tend to have a finite range, either distance or frequency—but I’m not reading you. I have my shields up. It tends to take most people, even other psychics, a bit of time to understand and accept that we telepaths aren’t plucking your thoughts out of your head without so much as a by-your-leave. That would be an invasion of privacy, and we try to avoid that whenever possible.”

  “Try.”

  Honestly, Geneva said, “Well, sometimes the job forces us to be . . . impolite, especially when it comes to the bad guys. More often, though, the truth is that even the strongest psychic can’t be on guard all the time. That’s why you meditating slipped through my shields last night; I was tired, and when I passed by your door, your concentration on those techniques reached through. Probably helped by the fact that I recognized them. We’ve all been taught, and pretty much the same way.”

  “All of Bishop’s people. The unit.”

  “Yeah. And others outside the unit. Psychics Bishop’s been meeting for years who don’t want to become feds or investigators or just aren’t suited for the work. Still, he always does what he can to help psychics, whether they’re his agents and investigators or just want to get on with their own lives as best they can. The gloves were his idea, right? To give you a visible, actual barrier you could focus on.”

  Nellie was silent for a moment, then drew a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Bishop is one of the few people I’ve trusted in the last few years. Since things got . . . stronger. Worse. And now . . . I need to know if I can trust you. Here. In Salem. Because I was sent here to stop something from happening. Something evil. And I don’t even know what it is.”

  SIXTEEN


  Grayson wasn’t at all surprised that Geneva was already up by the time he dragged himself out of bed and took a hot shower to help clear away the last of the cobwebs the migraine sleep med tended to leave behind. It had at least been effective, pretty much knocking him out minutes after he’d fallen into bed, and thanks to both meds his sleep had been deep and painless. Now, the morning after, he didn’t feel like turning his head too fast because even his neck felt sore, everything sounded a bit louder than it should have, and his eyes felt dryer than they should be, but those he recognized as aftereffects of the too-prolonged use of his spider senses.

  Normal, for him. As the day wore on, things would improve. Unless they didn’t.

  The envelope with Geneva’s photos had been slid under his door as promised, and Grayson took the time to scan them in and send to Bishop both Geneva’s shots of the mutilated body left at a dump site and his own shots of the tracks he’d found on the mountain and the strange old ruins containing a bloodstained altar.

  After that, he took a few moments to study Geneva’s photos, frowning over them, convinced as she had been that the “occult” symbols painted in blood on the rocks around the body were nothing of the sort, but likely left just to confuse or terrify whoever might have stumbled across the remains. Maybe the same reason . . . that . . . had been done to the skull, why the brain was so obviously missing, though he couldn’t figure out how it had been accomplished.

  Not that any of it made whoever they were after less dangerous. More likely their unsub was even more dangerous, smart enough to cover his trail or sick enough to believe that he had—or deserved to have—some supernatural abilities that justified his evil acts.