Кей Хупер - Chill Of Fear

"Oh." Quentin stared a moment longer, then resumed his pacing, sparing only a glance now and then for some of the other sketches and watercolors. "God knows what I'd draw," he muttered, half under his breath.

"The ghosts in your life, probably. Missy. Joey. Others lost along the way. The ones you blame yourself for losing."

"I've had my couch time this month, Beau."

"Sorry."

Quentin sighed. "No, I'm sorry. Didn't mean to snap. I'm just feeling very frustrated right now. I want to help Diana, and I'm afraid she won't let me even try."

"Be patient."

"You know something I don't?"

"No. We both know patience is something you have to work at."

Quentin sighed again. "You're here to state the obvious, is that it?"

Beau chuckled. "I'm here to teach a workshop. Come on, Quentin, you know as well as I do that there aren't any shortcuts. You and Diana both have to find your own way. Whether that's separately or together — or both — is entirely up to the two of you."

"Jesus, you sound like Bishop."

"It's something he understands. Miranda too."

"That didn't stop them from taking a hand in things last fall," Quentin said, recalling the single time in his memory that Bishop and his wife had made a deliberate attempt to change a tragic future both had foreseen.

"With great care and only because the stakes were so high. They'll always hesitate to interfere openly unless they're very, very sure that by doing so they won't make the situation worse."

"I was there."

"I know you were. And I know you understand the concept."

"That doesn't mean I always agree."

"No. It's always more difficult when you're the one... personally involved."

"Yeah, yeah. Look, teaching Diana in this workshop of yours sounds like a shortcut to me."

"No. This is a critical time for her, a turning point in her life. And what other people do at those turning points is as much a part of our journey as we are ourselves."

Quentin sorted through that, and said finally, "No offense, but you really do sound like a fortune cookie sometimes."

"So Maggie tells me."

Momentarily distracted by the mention of Beau's half sister, Quentin said, "Do she and John have that organization of theirs up and running yet? I hadn't heard."

"Just about."

"So we'll soon have a domestic organization geared toward psychic investigation and resources."

"That's the plan. If anyone can do it, John can."

"I'll say. And Maggie's doing okay?"

"She's flourishing. John's been very good for her."

"She's been great for him as well. Twenty years I tried to convince him psychic abilities were real, and she manages it in a week or two."

"Sometimes," Beau said, "falling in love removes the blinders from our eyes."

"Very like a fortune cookie."

Beau smiled, but kept his gaze on his canvas.

Quentin prowled a while longer, then said, "You're very plugged in to the universe, right?"

"According to Maggie."

"Okay, then. Without providing a fateful shortcut for me, can you at least tell me if I'm on the right track in how I'm handling things with Diana?"

"Are you following your instincts?"

"Yeah."

"Then I'd guess you're on the right track." Beau paused, then added casually, "But you might want to open up your focus a bit to include more than Diana."

Quentin stopped prowling to stare at the other man. "What do you mean?"

"I mean that right now you have a kind of tunnel vision." Beau stepped back from his canvas, set his palette down on a worktable nearby, and began cleaning his brush. "Focus on a single element, and you could miss other equally important elements. If you hadn't encountered Diana, what would you be doing right now?"

"With Cullen Ruppe unavailable today, I'd probably be... trying to get permission to go through boxes of old paperwork I know The Lodge has in storage rooms and in the basement. Because I don't have any legal authority to examine something ruled not relevant to an old crime, I've never been able to get access to stored employee records, the original blueprints of the buildings, and whatever else is down there."

"Maybe it's time to ask again."

After a moment, Quentin said, "Maybe it is."

Beau said, "I'm told the current manager of The Lodge just got the job last fall. Have you met her?"

"Not if she started last fall."

"She might be more open-minded than the other managers were. More apt to grant a reasonable request to look through old paperwork."

"You're about as subtle as a flagpole, Beau."

"Just making a suggestion."

"But not offering a shortcut?"

"No. It's a path you would have followed on your own."

With considerable feeling, Quentin said, "Once, just once, I'd like at least one member of the unit to give me a straight answer."

Beau's eyebrows rose. "That was a straight answer."

"Jesus." Quentin started toward the door, then paused and frowned at the other man. "My instincts are telling me to give Diana a little time to think about things. But not a lot of time. From what she told me earlier, her abilities are strong. Strong enough to scare the hell out of her. Maybe strong enough that they'll be difficult for her to control even once she accepts their reality. And I don't know as much as I wish I knew about mediums."

"Neither do I. But like the rest of us, they're all different in most respects. Different strengths and weaknesses. No hard-and-fast rules, I gather."

Steadily, Quentin said, "I think she may have the ability not only to open a door into the spirit dimension, but to pass through it herself."

"That," Beau said, "has got to be dangerous."

"Yeah, I don't have much doubt about that. I'm afraid if I'm not careful, I could lose her. I think maybe I need some expert advice."

"I think maybe you do. Miranda raised a medium, I understand?"

"Her sister, yeah. And very successfully; Bonnie's one of the most well-adjusted psychics I've ever met."

"Say hello for me," Beau said.

Diana hid out in her cottage for most of the afternoon, but by the time the sun began to slip behind the mountains, she was too restless to stay put any longer. She picked up her tote bag, with the sketches of Quentin and Missy still inside, hesitated at the door, and then somewhat defiantly locked it behind her.

Quentin had been right earlier, and she'd had to have her key-card redone.

Diana had overheard one of the doctors talking to her father back during her teenage years when it had been so bad. He'd been talking about the "stronger than normal" electrical impulses her brain had produced during an EEC Other tests had also shown the "abnormality."

Diana still winced when she remembered how she'd felt hearing that.

Abnormal. None of the psychiatrists or psychologists had ever used that word. But that doctor, cool and sure of himself, had used it with utter certainty.

She was abnormal. There was something wrong with her.

Unless... there was nothing wrong with her.

Psychic? It was a possibility she had, literally, never considered. It had never crossed her mind that there could be anything so beyond her understanding at the root of her problems.

And, surely, and despite what Quentin had said, someone in all these years would have offered the suggestion if it had been possible. Wouldn't they? All the doctors and therapists, all the experts her father had taken her to see for most of her life, they couldn't all have been wrong, could they?

Could they?

Diana wandered away from The Lodge, in the direction of the Formal Garden. Though she didn't consciously think about it, the neat rows of box hedges, the symmetrical planter beds bordered by smoothly raked paths, the classical fountains, all made her feel somewhat soothed. It was all so... orderly.