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.
Unlike her mind. Thoughts skittered through it, half formed, just bits and pieces. She couldn't concentrate at all, couldn't focus on anything except the haunting question of whether twenty-five years of her life had been virtually wasted in a futile search for a "cure" that had never existed.
Because she had never been ill.
Sitting down on an iron bench near a beautiful three-tier fountain, she considered and then discarded the impulse to pull out the sketchpad and draw something. Instead, she stared at the fountain, trying and failing to put the question out of her mind.
"Hello."
Startled, Diana saw a little boy standing only a few feet away. He was perhaps eight years old, an angelic child with fair hair and big brown eyes.
"Hi," she said.
"I'm sorry you're upset."
Diana forced a smile, hoping she hadn't been wearing the sort of expression that gave children nightmares. "I'm just having a bad day, that's all."
He nodded, solemn, then said, "My name is Jeremy. Jeremy Grant."
"Hi, Jeremy. I'm Diana." She hadn't been around kids much and felt a bit awkward with this one. "Where are your parents?"
He gestured vaguely toward the main building of The Lodge. "Back there. Can I show you something?"
"Show me what?"
"A place." He tilted his head slightly to one side, still solemn. "Sort of a secret."
She wanted to ask him why he'd want to show his secret place to a stranger, but instead said, "It'll be getting dark soon, you know."
"I know. We have time. It isn't far."
"Okay, sure." Anything beat sitting there while her mind chased itself in useless circles, she thought. "Lead the way." She got up and followed as Jeremy turned and began walking along the gravel path toward the far end of the Formal Garden.
Diana thought idly that if this child wanted to go beyond the gardens, she'd protest. The sun had set behind the mountains now, and there was a growing chill in the air. It would be dark in less than an hour. And she had no intention of being responsible for someone's child, not even on a good day.
Even as she thought that, she realized that Jeremy had paused beside one of the raised planting beds to allow her to catch up, and when she did, reached confidingly for her hand.
"It's just over here," he told her.
Diana allowed herself to be guided down another path to where the Formal Garden intersected the English Garden. This area was filled with riotous blooms on shrubs and plants, the paths wound leisurely among them, and it possessed a more natural, less manicured feeling than the other gardens.
"Jeremy—"
"This way." He led her toward one corner where the landscapers had apparently decided to allow an existing granite rock formation to become part of the garden. Several large boulders jutted up from a bed of smaller rocks and gravel, softened only by moss and a very few tenacious flowers growing in the stony area.
"They were going to put in a waterfall," Jeremy said. "Changed their minds, I guess. The gardeners never dig here."
"No wonder, with so much rock," Diana said. "Is this what you wanted me to see?"
"Around to the side," Jeremy said. "See that rock with all the moss near the bottom? Look behind that."
Suddenly suspicious, Diana said, "Nothing's going to jump out at me, is it, Jeremy? A frog, or some kind of bug? Because I don't like those."
He smiled sweetly. "No, I promise. No frog or bug. Something you need to see." He released her hand. "Just look behind the rock."
Diana looked at him for a moment longer and then, still wary, picked her way carefully among the rocks until she could see behind the one the child had indicated. At first, she had no idea what it was she was supposed to see. More rocks, looked like, more grayish granite, most of them jagged except for a piece that was paler and smoother, worn by a river somewhere, she supposed.
"Jeremy, what—" She looked back over her shoulder, surprised not to see him there. She turned completely around, gazing all around the area, but saw no sign of him. "Fast little kid," she muttered, trying to figure out how he had moved so quickly and so silently.
She looked back down at the rocky ground at her feet, more warily sure now that some nasty surprise lay in store for her if she poked around here. Even so, she found her gaze fixed on the rounder, smoother stone, and hesitated only an instant before crouching to touch it.
It didn't really feel like a rock, she thought. When she tried to move it, the gravelly soil imprisoning the lower part of it gave it up easily. And it wasn't until she turned it slightly that she realized in horror what it was.
It fell from her nerveless fingers, clattering against the stone, and came to rest so that the empty eye sockets stared up at her and small white teeth seemed to grin.
The skull of a child.
"Are you sure?" Bishop asked.
"As sure as I can be," Quentin replied. "She only told me as much as she did because it freaked her out and her guard was down. God knows if she'll talk to me about it again. All I know is what it sounded like to me."
"And she was touching your hand? When she said she was alone on the veranda except for you and Missy?"
"Yeah. Said there were flashes, like a strobe, and that's when she saw us. Said something about me being there only because she was touching me, keeping me partway there. In the — what did she call it? — the gray time in between, I think she said, she was completely alone out there. Didn't see anybody else, including me. Or Missy."