Storm of Visions (31 page)

“I did,” Samuel admitted.

“I have a list, too, and it’s supposed to be the most current.” Irving looked both grim and angry. “Shall we compare the names?”

“God, yes,” Samuel said with harsh delight. “That might throw some light on our perpetrator.”

The two men started down the corridor.

Caleb didn’t budge. “I don’t give a damn about the list. I want to know who picked up the crystal ball and smashed Jacqueline’s skull with it.”

Irving and Samuel halted, swiveled.

“You know that for a fact?” Samuel asked.

“Yes.” Caleb had no intention of explaining the crystal ball had been the tattletale.

“Someone in this house?” Irving clarified.

Caleb met his eyes. “You set the enchantment, Irving. I’d say by your swift appearance you know who’s coming and going, and when. So has a stranger sneaked in?”

“No,” Irving said.

“Then yes, someone in this house.” Caleb met his eyes. “If it wasn’t Samuel, then who?”

“We could ask our second psychic if he knows,” Irving said.

“Our second psychic?” Samuel stepped back. “I wasn’t gone that long. Who the hell are you talking about?”

An ugly suspicion stirred in Caleb’s gut.

“Tyler Settles. Didn’t you know?” Irving stared hard at Samuel. “That’s his gift.”

“No, it’s not.” Samuel couldn’t have sounded more scornful. “He controls minds, like me. I saw him manipulate Zusane.”

A quick glance at Irving proved his chin had sagged and his eyes were round.

Okay. This was a surprise to him, too. Caleb didn’t feel quite so stupid. “When you saw him do it, why didn’t you say something?”

“Because I didn’t want to be in that silly chalk circle. I didn’t want to be part of the Gypsy Travel Agency. I didn’t want anything to do with the whole stupid setup, and I figured the less I got involved, the better off I was.” Samuel was frank to a fault.

“And now?” Irving asked.

“Now I’m stuck.” A hot flush settled on Samuel’s cheekbones. “For more reasons than one.”

“Yeah. Women.” Caleb could relate.

“Settles can mind-speak, too,” Samuel said. “When he was testing me out to see which of us was stronger, he tried to make me think his thoughts were mine. I let him know that didn’t work on me, and he backed off.”

“Guys, have you got a minute?” Charisma stood in the door of the library. She’d obviously been listening for a while. “I’ve got something you’ll be interested to see.”

Caleb shifted impatiently.

She looked right at him. “Really. You need to know this.”

He followed the other two men into the library.

She shut the door behind them. “Over there on the computer. When Tyler was having his vision, I kept thinking I’d seen something similar before. So I searched YouTube and guess what I found.” She clicked the mouse and started the video in motion. “Check out the character actor on this episode of
Grey’s Anatomy
.”

“It’s Tyler.” As if his knees could no longer hold him, Irving sank into the desk chair.

“The dialogue’s completely different, and he’s holding a gun, but . . . Man, that’s exactly the same routine,” Samuel said.

“Is it.” Caleb wasn’t asking a question. He was making a threat he intended to keep.

“He’s supposedly an epileptic patient who suffers from delusions.” Charisma’s gaze never left the screen. “In this version, in the end, instead of getting up off the floor on his own steam, he chokes to death on his own tongue.”

“We should be so lucky,” Irving said.

“I found a video of his faith healing show. He does the same routine there.” Leaning forward, she clicked her mouse, brought up another video, and started it playing.

Caleb turned on Irving. “I’m confused. How could you not know what his gift was? I thought the top dudes always knew.”

“They did. They do. I did know.” Irving blinked as he concentrated. “I remember thinking he was a mind manipulator, but after the explosion, I was in such an uproar, and when he said he was a psychic, I realized I had been wrong.”

“He never said that when I was around.” Samuel planted his feet. “Or at least not loudly enough that I could hear him.”

“Because you were the stronger manipulator and you would have called him on it.” Caleb hated knowing he had been criminally unperceptive. “And he waited to have a vision until you were out of the house.”

“How could I have been so gullible? I’ve been trained to recognize fakers.” Irving could not have been more chagrined.

“You said it. You were in an uproar of grief and fury.” Caleb balanced on the balls of his feet, ready to take action. “Where is he now?”

Irving squarely met his gaze. “He told me he was going out.”

“You let him?” Caleb hadn’t thought the state of affairs could get any worse. What a bitch to find out he was wrong.

“He had an important mission, so I encouraged him.” Irving spoke slowly, his eyes unfocused.

“What important mission?” Charisma asked.

It took a minute for Irving to snap to the realization he’d been manipulated again. “I don’t remember.”

“When did he leave?”

“He walked out of the meeting right after you did.”

“I’ll just bet he did. Search his room. See what you can find. A computer, a GPS, a cell phone. Something he can communicate with. Something that lets them know where we are. I’m going to see if I can locate
him
.” Caleb turned to the door.

“It’s a big city,” Samuel warned.

“I think I know where he is,” Caleb said. “And I’m going to make him sorry he ever tried to hurt me and mine.”

H
ead down, Jacqueline walked with jerky determination up the stairs to Mrs. D’Angelo’s attic, and all the while fear buzzed like a thousand bees in her head.

She shouldn’t be here.

She was trespassing.

Mrs. D’Angelo wouldn’t like it.

Caleb would be furious.

She wiped a sheen of sweat from her forehead, and with a trembling hand opened the door to the attic. She stepped inside and tried to focus on something besides her fear.

Mrs. D’Angelo’s attic was the polar opposite of Irving’s—small, cramped, with tiny windows and a low ceiling, stuffed with trunks and hung with old clothes and more of the inevitable lace curtains.

Jacqueline liked it. It felt cozy. Lived in. And without the spooky undertones of Irving’s stark space. If only she didn’t have to have a vision up here.

But second thoughts were useless. She would do what she had to do. She
would
. For Caleb.

The thought of him steadied her. Caleb wouldn’t be having second thoughts. Caleb wouldn’t be afraid. He always did what had to be done. The memory of his bravery pushed her forward. Shutting the door behind her, she looked around, and realized—she was too new in the vision business to know how to make it work. What if she needed the crystal ball to induce a vision? What if she had to be in Irving’s attic?

Panic choked her . . . and a shameful relief.

Coward
. She was such a
coward
.

Then she stiffened her spine. If pain and death were the price she had to pay to invite a vision, she would pay. She
owed
Caleb all the help she could give him. If anything happened to him—no. She wouldn’t let it.

Spying an artist’s easel and a collection of drawings on the wall, she hurried over to see a lineup of crayon works with Caleb’s name scrawled in the corner of each one. Some of the pictures made her feel his passions—the young boy Caleb drew fire engines, firemen, big buildings, taxis, all the things he saw in his new world. Some made her feel his sorrow: He drew pictures of his father and mother, of his brother and himself, of a cottage overlooking the sea, and finally, of fire and his mother’s blind brown eyes.

Jacqueline stared at that one, stared hard, imprinting it on her brain. Mrs. D’Angelo had defended her husband and her son, and paid a horrific price in pain and blood and darkness.

Jacqueline touched the place on her forehead and remembered the pain of her concussion. She took a free, clear breath and wanted never again to breathe smoke-filled air. She looked at her bandage-wrapped hand.

It was shaking so hard the stones of Charisma’s charms clinked against the silver bracelet.

She tried to close her fingers into a fighting fist.

It hurt. It ached. The stitches pulled.

She felt sick.

She recognized a pencil sketch of Zusane, clad in one of her sequined gowns and sporting a fur around her neck. Picking it up, she whispered, “Were you ever hurt by a vision?”

No. Caleb had told her the truth. Zusane had been hurt by
life
.

Beneath the sketch of Zusane, Jacqueline caught sight of a drawing of herself on the baseball diamond, all gawky legs and stick-straight figure, dressed in a softball uniform and winding up to pitch. He’d perfectly captured that sulky adolescent cast of her mouth and the uncertainty in her eyes. She found one from her graduation, and another of her in a karate gi, scowling with her fists clenched. She located a series of photographs, each with a drawing attached. It took her a minute to realize the pictures had been taken in the last two years, as she traveled across the country trying to escape her fate. Caleb had reproduced them here in the attic at his easel, then hidden them out of sight.

So. It was the truth—he loved her. He had loved her for years.

She had to get this vision started. And there was no use lying to herself. She
did
know how to bring about her vision—she simply had to give herself, wholeheart edly, to the role of seer.

She peeled off her leather gloves, and placed them on the shelf. Finding the edge of the tape, she ripped it and the gauze away. She dropped the handful onto the floor, opened her palm . . . and couldn’t bring herself to look.

What if . . . what if she couldn’t help Caleb find the traitor? What if the devil had succeeded, and in cutting open her eye, he had destroyed her gift?

Oh, God. She was so afraid.

For so many reasons, she was afraid. Afraid of being cut again, afraid of choking on killing smoke—more than anything, afraid of seeing those glowing blue eyes coming to get her . . . and take her to hell.

Glancing around, she found a round powder compact with a broken hinge. She opened it; it had a mirror. Perfect.

In a corner on a shelf, she found a cheap plastic snow globe. Inside was New York City: the Empire State Building, Times Square, Central Park. Also perfect.

Rummaging around in Caleb’s art supplies, she found a stub of green chalk. The chalk circle Martha had made was red and blue, but Martha had suggested a circle; she hadn’t specified what kind.

Taking her findings, Jacqueline went to the middle of the attic, bent and used her outstretched arm like a compass to draw a circle around herself. She seated herself in the exact middle. Sitting guaranteed that if something hit her during her vision—like the wing of a plane—she wouldn’t fall down, too. She checked the clasp on Charisma’s protection bracelet, and took a long breath of preparation.

Man, she hoped all this helped.

She placed the snow globe and the mirror on the floor. Neither was particularly like a crystal ball, but they gave her something on which to concentrate. Unfortunately, sitting here, she felt nothing like a vision approaching. No sepia tint, no sense of skewed time.

Picking up the mirror, she looked at herself.

Caleb’s drawings had done a good job of catching the nuances of her features, although she was grateful he couldn’t see her now. She touched the still-tear-swollen and blotchy skin around her eyes and nose. She didn’t want to explain her tears to him, not because he wouldn’t understand, but because another crying bout hovered close to the surface, and she didn’t have time to weep again.

Putting down the mirror, she picked up the snow globe. It was a silly thing, a child’s souvenir. When she shook it, the snow cascaded over the plastic buildings and the plastic roads, filling them with winter. Whoever had designed the globe hadn’t cared a bit about the arrangement of the streets or the placement of New York’s landmarks. They had slapped the Statue of Liberty in the East River, Rockefeller Center on Broad-way, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in SoHo, and beside that, they’d placed a church, a hospital, and a cemetery. . . .

That dripping sound grew louder and more insistent.

A church? A hospital? A cemetery? Funny things to put in a kids’ snow globe. Funny to see that sepia tone creep over the cheap souvenir in her hand . . .

When she looked around, she stood on the quiet, snowy street.

Where had the summer gone? Where had the attic gone?

How had she fallen into the snow globe?