Kay Hooper - Hunting Fear

"Luke?"

Still gazing at the map, he said slowly, "It's gone now. But for just an instant I think I connected. It was like… she felt a jolt of absolute, wordless terror."

"Where?" Jaylene asked.

"Here." He indicated a handsbreadth area in the western part of the county. "Somewhere here."

The area covered at least twenty square miles of the roughest terrain in the county and held nearly a dozen of their red marks.

"Okay," Jaylene said. "That's where you and I start looking."

I just want to know if he's going to ask me to the homecoming dance." Her voice was so nervous it wobbled, but it was determined as well, and her blue eyes were fixed on Samantha's face with desperate intensity.

Samantha tried to remember what it felt like to be sixteen and so desperate about so many things, but even so she knew she had nothing in common with this pretty teenage girl or her ordinary life. There had been no homecoming dance for Samantha, no high-school rituals or worries about the right dress or who the football team's star quarterback would ask out on Friday night.

At sixteen, Samantha's worries had included putting in long hours to earn enough money so she didn't starve, preferably without selling her body or soul in the process.

But she felt no resentment toward this girl, and her voice- lower and more formal than her usual speaking voice but with no fake accent-remained calm and soothing. "Then that is what I will tell you. Concentrate on this boy, close your eyes, and picture his face. And when you are sure you have his image in your mind, give me your hand."

She had been using her crystal ball earlier in the evening, but for some reason tonight it had bothered her eyes to stare into it, so she had abandoned that prop for the less dramatic but more direct and often more accurate palm reading.

The teenager sat with eyes closed and pretty face screwed into fierce concentration for a moment, then opened her eyes and thrust out her right hand.

Samantha held it gently in both of hers, bending forward over it to seemingly peer intently at the lines crisscrossing the palm. She traced the lifeline with a light finger, more for effect than because she was "reading" the actual line.

She knew a bit more about palmistry than the average person- but only a bit more.

Her own eyes half closed, she was seeing something far different from the girl's hand. "I see the boy in your mind," she murmured. "He is wearing a uniform. Baseball, not football. He is a pitcher."

The girl gasped audibly.

Samantha tilted her head to one side, and added, "He will ask you out, Megan, but not to the homecoming dance. Another boy will ask you to the homecoming dance."

"Oh, no!"

"You will not be disappointed, I promise you. This is the boy you are meant to be with at this time in your life."

"When?" Megan whispered. "When will he ask me?"

Samantha knew the exact day but also knew how to make her revelation sound more mysterious and dramatic. "On the next full moon," she said. She glanced up in time to see a baffled look cross the girl's face and was tempted to dryly advise her to look at a calendar. Or to look up at the sky, since the late-afternoon storms had passed and a bright nearly full moon shone hugely.

Samantha couldn't remember if it was a harvest moon or a hunter's moon, though the latter struck her as either an apt coincidence or a deliberate sense of timing by the kidnapper.

"Oh, Madam Zarina, thank you!"

As Samantha released the girl's hand, she couldn't help but add, "Choose the blue dress. Not the green one."

Again, Megan gasped, but before she could say anything, Ellis appeared from the draperies behind Samantha and swept the girl out of the booth.

Samantha rubbed her temples briefly and drew a breath, trying to keep focused. Then Ellis returned, alone.

"What, am I done?" Samantha demanded.

"Are you kidding? You've got at least a dozen people waiting in line, and Leo says another dozen tickets have been sold so far tonight."

"Well, then?"

"I told them you were taking a ten-minute break. Word's spreading about your accuracy tonight, so nobody's complaining." Ellis vanished behind the draperies again, then returned with a big mug. "I've brought you some tea."

She had known Ellis too long to waste time arguing, so Samantha merely accepted the tea and sipped it. "Sweet. I'm not in shock, you know."

"No, but you need fuel and I know damned well you won't eat anything until you're done tonight. You've been at this two hours nonstop, and it doesn't take another psychic to feel your energy draining away."

"I'm a little tired. It'll pass."

Sitting down in the client chair, Ellis said, "Judging by the reactions-yours as well as theirs-I'm guessing you've been getting hits all night. Psychic hits, I mean. Yes?"

"Yeah. It's sort of weird, really. Not full-blown visions, just these flashes of images. And knowledge. I've never been so… on… before."

"Why, do you think?"

"Dunno. That weird vision earlier today might have changed something. Maybe left me more plugged in than usual, for however long it lasts."

"You're not doing any cold reading at all?"

Samantha shook her head. It was something she had done in the past and would undoubtedly do in the future-and it was the sort of thing that made cops like Sheriff Metcalf suspicious. Because a really good "seer" could read the body language and "tells"-physical tics and gestures, usually unconscious-of her clients, weaving a subtle pattern of guesswork and half-truths into something that appeared to be genuine psychic ability.

Or magic.

She wasn't particularly proud of that but, as Ellis had noted, Samantha had a highly practical nature and she did what she had to do in order to make her way in the world. The sign outside her booth clearly stated that she read for entertainment purposes only, and she weighed her clients carefully before offering them anything more than a show, wary of those who were too desperate or too gullible.

Usually they were like young Megan, anxious to know about their love lives, or whether a promotion at work was forthcoming, or where they could find the strongbox full of cash supposedly buried somewhere in the backyard by Great-Uncle George.

But sometimes… sometimes their faces were pale and beaded with desperate sweat, and their eyes were glazed, and their voices were so strained it was like listening to an animal in pain. Those were the ones Samantha did her best to recognize early, before already-intense emotions got out of control.

Half a lifetime of experience helped; she had more than once given a deliberately vague reading in order to avoid either upsetting or encouraging a client in a fragile mental state.

"Then everything you've told the clients tonight has been the truth?" Ellis demanded.

"Pretty much. It's been harmless, mostly. Though I did see a couple of things I didn't think they could handle, so I kept them to myself."

"Tragedies?"

"Yeah. I saw one lady die in a car accident about six months from now-and knew there was nothing I could tell her to change the outcome." She shivered and took another swallow of the hot, sweet tea. "You want to tell them to go hug their kids or make peace with their mothers, or make that list of the ten things they want to do before they die and damned well do them now. But you know-I know-they'd only fall apart if they believed me at all, and that would just make the rest of their lives miserable. So I don't tell them. I just look at them… and hear the clock ticking off the time they have left. Jesus, it's creepy knowing stuff like that."

"I guess it would be. Do you believe in fate, Sam? You've never said."

"I believe some things have to happen just the way they happen. So, yeah, I guess I do. Up to a point."