Hidden Salem

by Kay Hooper

  “Yeah, mine too, but is it controlling a whole town?”

  “You saw what Bishop sent, same as I did. And know what’s been said within the unit. We’ve had experiences with energy fields, really wild ones, and not so long ago. Including people in an otherwise nice little town beginning to go nuts and kill their families and total strangers for no reason whatsoever. Focused energy can control people, if the mind controlling it is strong enough. You suspected one man was controlling things, the militia at least, and if he’s psychic, as Bishop said he is, and powerful, he could be doing a hell of a lot of things.”

  Geneva turned her head slightly so she could better see the park, and said, “That conversation is turning into a marathon. And neither one of them looks very happy.”

  “I noticed. They’re also beginning to stand out, with the snow falling. And so are we.”

  Geneva released a sound he didn’t dare call a snort. “If the guy running things is so all-powerful, you can bet he knows about us already. Just because I wasn’t able to penetrate his walls doesn’t mean he can’t get through mine, and without me knowing about it, dammit. As for his plans . . . I’m guessing he’d expect Finn to make contact with Nellie, but I don’t know how he’s going to react if we all four team up very publicly. On the other hand, I’m beginning to doubt we’re fooling anybody.”

  Thoughtfully, Grayson said, “Nellie’s alias hasn’t protected her for very long; Finn knew who she was, and I’m guessing whoever is really in charge here also knows. Probably his people in the militia, at least some of them. Even though Thomas Cavendish clearly believed whatever Nellie had to do here could risk her life, I wonder if her father really had any idea what she’d be facing in coming back to Salem.”

  “And if he would have sent her had he known?” Geneva shrugged. “We don’t have a medium here to ask him. But a lot can change in nearly thirty years. Even if her father was in touch with Finn or his father before he was killed, that was more than ten years ago. We don’t have any reports of anything suspicious going on in this town in the years before that. Bishop didn’t. The people lured here, probably murdered, that’s all been recent. So something must have changed. Maybe because all these people were about to turn thirty, though I still can’t figure that out.”

  “Descendants of four of the five families,” Grayson pointed out. “Bishop confirmed that.”

  “Yeah, but what does it matter that they were about to turn thirty? That Nellie is? Does the guy in control believe they change somehow when they hit thirty, like it’s not just a date on a calendar?”

  Grayson, remembering Bishop’s warnings about superstitious mountain cultures, slowly said, “Maybe he does. Maybe he’s . . . created a culture where that’s an important milestone, for whatever reason.”

  “Surely not for the whole town.”

  “No, I don’t think it’s the whole town. The five families. Maybe not even all of them, considering Finn. He can’t be the only one— And maybe we’re about to find out.”

  Geneva turned her attention back to the park to see that Nellie and Finn, with Leo pacing between them, were heading toward them. Nellie’s face was impossible to read. Finn looked grim.

  As soon as they reached the agents, Finn said, “Probably not the best way to handle this, but we need to talk, and now. The safest place is my office here in town. Very few are working in the building on a Saturday with bad weather looming, and nobody will be listening in.”

  Grayson exchanged glances with Geneva and said, “Lead the way.”

  * * *

  —

  DUNCAN CAVENDISH TURNED from the window, where he had watched the downtown sidewalk below, and said, “Is everything ready?”

  His senior lieutenant in the militia, a Cavendish cousin named Aaron, nodded briefly, but said, “Moving everything up a day wasn’t that difficult with the weather like this. But the moon won’t be completely full tonight, and with the weather it probably won’t be visible at all. Will that matter?”

  Duncan waited out a slow roll of thunder, his expression thoughtful, then said, “We can’t do anything about the snow. With the forecast calling for worse tomorrow, there was no choice.”

  He was a big man, quite imposing, with wide shoulders that could fill doorways and an almost visible aura of strength that was rare for a man in his sixties. Dark, like most of the Cavendish family, and with the brown eyes that could turn curiously sharp in one with the Talents.

  Aaron didn’t have them, though his younger brother Devin had a rare one: He was a Dreamer. Doubly rare because he was outside the direct male line of the family, where the Talent almost always lay.

  Thinking of that, Aaron said, “Nellie Cavendish hasn’t run; despite the nightmares she doesn’t seem too shaken up. Now she’s met up with Finn, even after Devin made sure she saw him in the nightmare. And the two outsiders you said would be trouble.”

  “They can’t interfere with something they don’t know is happening,” Duncan said. “Or with something they could never understand. And after it’s done, they’ll never be able to touch me.”

  Aaron had learned long ago not to ask too many questions of this man, and simply nodded. “The snow is supposed to be light, tapering off before moonrise,” he said, then paused to listen to another slow, deep roll of thunder. “Supposed to be. I don’t think those clouds are going anywhere.”

  “We have the ceremony no matter what,” Duncan said.

  Aaron nodded in understanding and, recognizing the tone, turned and left the office.

  Duncan looked at the clock on the wall—he hadn’t been able to wear a watch in years—and smiled faintly. Hours to go. Plenty of time to prepare himself for what would be done.

  Plenty of time.

  TWENTY

  There was a leather couch along one wall of the spacious office, where the two agents sat as they talked to Finn, who was half sitting on that end of his big desk. They had been talking for some time, covering much of what Finn had already told Nellie. She sat in one of the visitor chairs, petting Leo and trying her best to tamp down things trying to rise inside her.

  And still, every few minutes, the thunder rolled.

  “I could shoot Bishop,” Geneva was saying in a tone more wry than angry. “All the time I’ve been here, nosing around trying to look like I was just taking pictures, and I could have been talking to you.”

  “Some things have to happen—”

  She made a little exclamation that was more sound than word. “He has you convinced of that too?”

  Finn smiled faintly, though the grim set of his features didn’t alter by much. “It’s a truth. He didn’t invent it.”

  Geneva shook her head a little. “I’m not so sure, but never mind. It’s practically the mantra of the SCU, has been from the beginning. Some things have to happen just the way they happen. Like all this, apparently. So you don’t know anything about Bethany Hicks?”

  “As far as I knew, she was on vacation with her family. Until Nellie told me, I had no idea she’d been taken.”

  Grayson said, “But you believe it was by Duncan Cavendish.”

  “Couldn’t be anybody else. I’m sure he wasn’t there. I’m just as sure it was done at his orders.”

  “Why?”

  Finn hesitated. “I’m almost afraid to guess. That it was her, probably because she was convenient. Wandered into the wrong place at the wrong time. If he had planned to take a child, I think he would have looked outside Salem. Maybe far outside. To take a child living here, part of the town . . . Even for him, that’s a line I wouldn’t have believed he’d cross.”

  “What about her parents and sisters?” Geneva asked. “What could he have said to them to make them just pack up and leave on a supposed vacation?”

  “I don’t know,” Finn admitted. “There are some with the Talent who can at least temporarily influence others to
see what they’re shown, and believe what they’re told, though it seldom holds more than a few days or a week. Maybe that; I believe he has at least one among his followers. However it was accomplished, Duncan has a habit of getting what he wants, and it’s been a very long time since anyone openly defied him.”

  “My father,” Nellie said.

  Finn turned his head slightly to look at her. “Thomas, yes. And all the other families know how that ended. With Thomas taking you and your mother and leaving Salem, his Talent burned out or somehow taken from him in the struggle against Duncan.”

  “You could all sense that?” Geneva asked intently.

  “According to my father, yes. I was too young, but he said about Thomas that it was . . . like seeing a man who had lost an arm in some horribly traumatic way. That he was in shock—and something that had always been part of him was missing, gone forever.”

  Nellie looked down at her gloved hands and was silent.

  Matter-of-factly, Grayson said, “We’ve actually seen something like that before, or at least the unit has. A psychic able to . . . steal the abilities of other psychics. It’s rare.”

  “Thank the Universe,” Geneva muttered.

  Briefly, Grayson wondered if she even remembered the bitter resentment of her childhood and teenage years for the abilities that had made her different from those around her.

  Joining the SCU always changed people. Always.

  “He never said a word about—about Talents that I can remember,” Nellie said. “Not that he’d ever had them, and not that I had them. The first mention I can ever remember didn’t come until the letter. Then he said abilities, not Talents.” She shook her head. “But I hardly saw him, growing up. And my mother was gone. I didn’t know anything at all about her. That she had—”

  “Talents?” Geneva suggested. “Maybe something to do with that thunder we keep hearing?”

  Steadily, Nellie said, “It only happens when I’m upset. And it was really rare for a while. After Bishop taught me how to keep up a shield, how to . . . enclose it, control it. But today I can’t seem to do that very well.”

  “Well,” Geneva allowed, “it’s been a very upsetting day for you, what with one revelation and another.” She looked back at Finn. “But speaking of control, yours is damned good. I haven’t been able to get through at all. An empath, huh?”

  “All my life.”

  “Which, living in Salem, meant you’d one day head up your family after your father died.”

  “It isn’t an automatic thing. One of my uncles might have, but neither really wanted the job. The other families work it out in their own ways.”

  “Except for Duncan Cavendish, who not only wanted to be the head of his family but apparently the lord high head of everybody else.”

  Finn half shrugged. “After Thomas left, there was really no one standing in his way. And I don’t think the other families understood how much he wanted, not back then. That there was some struggle with Thomas everyone knew. They assumed it was just . . . a Cavendish matter. It wasn’t until a few years later that he began controlling things outside his own family. In the town, in decisions being made about our lives here. Little things at first. It was gradual, insidious. It wasn’t until I came home from college that I began to understand how far he’d gone.”

  “Cult?” Grayson suggested.

  “For those who chose to listen to him and follow him, yes, more or less. He didn’t push it too hard with the other families, the urge to control, I mean, but among his followers are members of each of the families. Except for the Deverells.”

  “And he accepted that?” Geneva asked, brows raised.

  “None of us defied him openly, just went about our business. Until my father became aware of some very . . . unholy ceremonies taking place up in the woods.”

  “Satanic?” Grayson asked.

  “Not exactly. Duncan was never willing to play second fiddle, so he always had to be center stage.”

  “Mixing your metaphors,” Nellie murmured.

  Finn glanced at her. “Sorry. The point being, he wasn’t about to worship; he wanted to be worshiped. His followers apparently enjoyed the sense of freedom he offered them.”

  “Lots of sex with no strings,” Geneva translated.

  “I believe so, yes.”

  Grayson was watching him intently. “But you don’t know for sure. You were never tempted?”

  “I was tempted to try to find out exactly what was going on, but my father discouraged me from that. I think he knew a lot more than he said, and even that he confronted Duncan about it at some point, because—” Finn paused for a moment, then said steadily, “Just over three years ago, there was an accident out at the paper mill. My father was killed.”

  “A . . . bizarre accident?” Nellie ventured.

  “Let’s just say that none of the experts who run the machines could explain it,” Finn responded.

  “But you think Duncan was responsible,” Grayson said.

  “Bad things tend to happen to people who interfere with Duncan. That’s enough for me to suspect. But I have no proof. And I have responsibilities to my family. I didn’t want to run the paper mill, had no feeling for it even before Dad was killed. So an aunt runs that, and I more or less run the Chronicle. Doing so also gave me the time to join the militia, and to place a few loyalists to me there as well, eventually.”

  “To keep an eye on things,” Geneva said rather than asked.

  “To be . . . in the loop, as much as I could be without becoming one of Duncan’s followers.”

  “Who were still periodically cavorting up in the woods,” Grayson said.

  “As far as I knew. The militia members loyal to Duncan are very good at keeping quiet about activities the rest of us aren’t a part of. We all knew if we went looking for the site of one of those ceremonies, even signs of a past one, the crows would watch and report back to him. It didn’t seem worth the risk, then. As far as we knew, no one was dying. That seemed to be it, at least for a while. Then last month, during what’s usually a fairly busy tourist time for us, the bodies began turning up.”

  “You saw them?” Geneva demanded.

  “No. By the time I found out, there was nothing to see. Tourists had come and gone, but no townsfolk were missing. The county sheriff, one of Duncan’s followers, was blithely unconcerned when I asked him point-blank if he knew of any missing persons in the area. He said he’d seen no such reports.”

  Finn shook his head slightly. “I didn’t dare cross Duncan until the odds were more in my favor. That’s when I contacted Bishop, asked if he could do some checking for me. Unofficially, since I lack the authority to call in the FBI to investigate or assist in a local case.”

  “I guess,” Geneva said, “it would be useless for us to ask you when and how you met Bishop.”

  “Do you want to tell your story?” he asked politely.

  Geneva stared at him a moment, then said, “No. Dammit.”

  Finn nodded, unsurprised, and went on. “During the time I was initially in touch with Bishop, there had been, as far as I could determine, two bodies—or the remains of two bodies—discovered and disposed of. By the time Bishop very quickly uncovered missing-persons reports, he had three of them for people he was reasonably sure had come to Salem for some unknown reason. And the third body turned up, or so I heard.”

  “That’s when he sent me in,” Geneva said.

  “Yes.”

  “And you knew about me.” It wasn’t a question.

  Finn smiled faintly.

  “Dammit,” Geneva said again. And then, to Grayson, “Why is it that we all keep threatening dire things whenever Bishop does some kind of shit like this and yet none of us ever follows through?”

  “He’s our boss,” Grayson said.

  “That’s not a good enough reason.” Geneva sh
ook it off and looked back to Finn. “Okay, riddle me this. Why is the thirtieth birthday the big deal it seems to be?”

  Finn answered that readily. “It began as mere superstition, because of a succession of psychics able to hide what they could do for years. According to family lore—I wouldn’t necessarily call it history—anyone in any of the families born with the Talent doesn’t fully come into their abilities until their thirtieth birthday.”

  It was Nellie who spoke up then to say, “That’s nuts. If you’re born with it, it happens a lot sooner, and control comes when control comes. After a lot of work. I can testify to that, and I’m pretty sure the rest of you can too. It’s got nothing to do with a date, unless abilities are triggered by some kind of trauma.”

  “I couldn’t agree more,” Finn said. “Note I said family lore. I have no idea when or how that started, but Duncan, like most would-be prophets, likes to claim he’s all-knowing as well as all-powerful. And so, years ago, even before Thomas confronted him, he created the Barrier.”

  Geneva blinked at him. “Say what?”

  “I have no idea how he did it, but it’s real enough. He said it was to spare those born with the Talent from the chaos of adolescence, and since we’d had quite a few problems from just that over the years, most of the elders in the families thought it was a good idea. The kids would come into their Talents only when they were adults—in the week or so before their thirtieth birthdays. So the elders, almost all of them, allowed Duncan to place a barrier in the minds of their children.” Finn paused, adding grimly, “Few of them realized they were just handing him more power and removing the threat others with the Talent represented to Duncan.”

  “I still don’t see how he could have kept anybody with abilities from using them,” Geneva objected.

  Finn hesitated, then looked at Nellie. “Another Cavendish Talent. Like your shield, Nellie.”

  She stared at him, expressionless for a long moment, then said slowly, “Bishop called it weaving. Lacing together threads of energy I could see in my mind, until I was wrapped in them. Protected.”