Кей Хупер - Chill Of Fear

She didn't go to her suite. Instead, she stepped out one of the service entrances to stand on the small concrete porch. A metal pail half filled with cigarette-littered sand stood more or less behind the door, mute testimony to the usual reason employees lingered in the area.

But there was no one here now, and when Ellie glanced around warily, she didn't see a sign of anyone in the area. She reached into the skirt pocket of her uniform and pulled out her cell phone. And a slip of paper with a phone number printed in shaky handwriting.

It hadn't been easy to get, this number. Contact information on the guests — the special guests — was kept in a locked file drawer in the manager's desk. Everybody knew that. Well, everybody as curious as Ellie and who had reason to wonder about those secretive VIPs. Good reason.

Ever since that first pregnancy test had been positive, Ellie had spent way too much free time lurking outside the manager's office. It was one reason Mrs. Kincaid was watching her so closely now, because there was no good reason for her to have been in the administrative section of the hotel except in passing.

She had passed through a lot. Luckily, she'd gotten her chance before Mrs. Kincaid became too suspicious. And her luck had held when Ms. Boyd had left her office door closed but not locked.

The file drawer had been locked, but desperation and panic had apparently lent Ellie magic fingers, because the metal nail file she tried had actually unlocked the thing.

And without telltale damage. She hoped.

Ellie wasted another precious minute wondering if that miracle heralded a change in her luck, then drew a deep breath and carefully placed the call.

She got his voice mail, which she'd been counting on, and left the careful message she had rehearsed half the night.

"Hey, it's Ellie. From The Lodge? I'm sorry to call you like this — I know I promised not to get in touch. But something's happened and I really need to talk to you. I don't want to make trouble, honest. But this is something you should know. So if you could call me back? Please?"

She didn't bother to recite her cell number, since she knew his would record it automatically along with her message. Instead, she merely added, "It's important. Thanks." And ended the call.

There. The ball was in his court.

All she could do now was wait.

"I don't blame them for not believing me," Diana said as she and Quentin stood watching Nate McDaniel, Cullen Ruppe, and Stephanie Boyd form a clearly tense huddle in front of the tack room. Ruppe was arguing angrily against the invasion of his domain, Nate was arguing for a search he couldn't legally justify or present any rational reasoning behind, and the manager of The Lodge was clearly annoyed and frustrated by the entire situation.

With a sigh, Diana added, "In the sane light of day, I don't really believe it myself."

Quentin was hardly surprised by that. As dramatic as her ghostly encounters had been thus far, he knew very well that she was struggling to overcome a lifetime of conditioning. Such radical shifts in thinking were seldom quick or easy turns.

"There's a difference, though," he said to her. "This time, you remember what happened. Right?"

"If it happened. It all seems like a dream now. And maybe it was. Maybe I was just walking in my sleep."

Instead of arguing with her, Quentin asked, "Did it feel like that? Like a dream? Or did it feel like you were someplace you'd visited before?"

She was silent.

"Diana?"

"Dreams feel that way sometimes, we both know that. Familiar even when they seem... different from most dreams."

"Were there shadows?"

That surprised Diana, and she looked up at him. "What?"

"Were there shadows?" His tone was steady, his gaze holding hers. "If there's any light at all in this world, there are also shadows. Even in the darkness, there are shadows, areas of deeper black. There's depth, dimension. It's one of the qualities we associate with our world. With its substance, its reality. Did you feel and see that last night? Were there shadows?"

Diana dug her hands deeper into the pockets of her light wind-breaker, wondering if she would ever feel warm again. The sun was up now, the air warming. That should have made a difference, she thought. She wondered why it didn't.

And she wondered how he could possibly know about the lack of shadows in the gray time. Had she told him? She didn't remember that.

He was waiting patiently, and finally she heard herself answer him. "No. No shadows. No dimension. No darkness, no light. Just gray."

"Where you were alone with Rebecca."

"It could have been a dream."

"It was real, Diana. A real place, apart from this one. Even if you don't want to admit it, somewhere deep inside yourself you have to know that." Without waiting for her to respond, he added thoughtfully, "You've obviously been there many times before. I wonder why you've remembered this time?"

"Because the drugs aren't in my system anymore." She grimaced slightly, wishing she hadn't answered that.

But Quentin was nodding. "That makes sense."

"None of this makes sense."

"Of course it does, given one simple fact. That you possess a mediumistic ability."

"And that there's an existence beyond death. Don't forget that part." She wanted her tone to be mocking, but to her ears it only sounded strained.

"Oh, that's a given." Quentin sounded utterly calm. "I've seen way too much to believe anything else."

"I wish I believed it," she murmured.

Quentin wished she did too. It would, he thought, make all this at least a bit easier. He wasn't aware that he was rubbing the back of his neck until he felt Diana's gaze on him.

"Headache?" she asked.

He merely nodded, unwilling to explain that he was coping with the painful results of a night spent watching her cottage.

She frowned, then said, "Give me your right hand."

Quentin did, wishing all his senses weren't so muffled; he could barely feel the cool touch of her hands as she held his between them, palm up. Her thumb moved near the center of his palm, massaging slowly in a small circle.

"One of the doctors I saw over the years," she said, "was very good at this. He said it was a form of acupressure, his own personal variation. I used to wake up with headaches sometimes, until he taught me to do this."

Quentin was about to tell her that neither acupuncture nor acupressure had ever had the slightest effect on his headaches when suddenly the pounding in his head lessened, his eyes stopped burning, and he actually felt his ears pop as his hearing cleared.

He was abruptly so conscious of her touch it was as if all his focus was there, held in her hands.

"It's supposed to open up blocked energy channels," she added, her tone a bit rueful. "New Agey stuff, I suppose, but—"

"Wow," he said.

"Better?"

"Much. In fact, the pain is gone."

"Good." For an instant, she seemed unsure, then let go of his hand and put both her own back into the pockets of her jacket. "I'm glad."

Even no longer touching her, his awareness of her remained so heightened that it was almost a tangible thing, as though she had channeled some of her own energy to heal his pain, leaving behind a faint impression of the energy's path between them. He felt it so strongly that he could almost see it.

Was she a healer as well? It wouldn't be unprecedented among psychics; Miranda's sister Bonnie was both a powerful medium and an amazing healer. And it made sense given the theories and experiences of the SCU. A brain hardwired to tune in to the specific energy signature of death and whatever lay beyond might be reasonably expected to also possess an affinity for the energy signature of life — and possibly be able to channel that energy to heal.