And on the other side...
Diana's finger lightly touched the image of the little girl on the other side of the dog. She too was dressed for summer, but her fairer hair was shorter and less restrained, her grin not so shy as Missy's.
"She looks familiar," Quentin said. Then he swore under his breath as he looked at Diana.
"My father carries this picture in his wallet," she said slowly. "But only half of it." She touched the image of the fair little girl again. "This half. The part with me in it."
"You might as well use this lounge," Stephanie told Quentin, adding, "It isn't used much even when the hotel is full, and with the early check-outs we've had since yesterday..." She looked across the beautifully furnished third-floor room at Diana, who was standing by one of the windows gazing out over the gardens, and added in a lower voice, "Is she all right?" All Stephanie knew about the photograph they had found was that it might indicate a familial relationship between Diana and one of the children killed here at The Lodge; she hadn't asked for details.
"I don't know," he replied honestly. "The last twenty-four hours have been... Christ,' rough' isn't the word for it. Her entire life has changed." He shook his head. "I don't know what happens now."
Stephanie eyed him uncertainly. "Aren't you supposed to? I mean, isn't that your psychic thing, seeing the future?"
Quentin didn't bother to once again explain that he never saw anything. Instead, he merely said, "The irony hasn't gone unnoticed, believe me. With a couple of minor exceptions, my abilities have pretty much been absent since I got here. Maybe the explanation is that I've been so focused on the past, the future's been out of my reach. At least that's what my boss says, and he's usually right."
"I don't pretend to understand any of it," Stephanie said frankly. "Look, do you want me to have some coffee sent up? It looks like you guys are going to be here for a while."
"That'd be great, thanks."
"Okay. Good luck finding something helpful in that lot." She nodded toward the two boxes filled with stuff Quentin had transferred, with her permission, from the trunks in the attic.
The lounge could be closed off from the hallway outside by pocket doors, but Quentin didn't bother to draw those closed after Stephanie left. The Lodge really did feel practically deserted, and he doubted they'd be interrupted or disturbed by a guest wandering casually into the room.
He approached Diana warily, more than a little worried because she'd said next to nothing since they had found the photograph in the attic. The photograph she still held in one hand, though she had stopped staring at it to gaze out the window.
Before Quentin could speak, she said in a perfectly composed voice, "You were right, you know, about any magnetized cards I carry not working for long."
He knew she was going somewhere with this, so he followed without question. "Yeah, something about our electromagnetic field affects them."
"The keycards die faster than credit cards."
"Probably because they're rekeyed or remagnetized more than once in a process meant to be fairly temporary."
She nodded slowly. "So the magnetic information on credit cards is intended to be more permanent, and so is more resistant to interference."
"That's our theory."
"And cell phones? They only work for me a week or two and then just die. The cell phone companies can't explain it. I finally stopped trying to carry one."
"Same thing. Our electromagnetic field interferes with anything magnetic or electronic, especially those things that we tend to carry with us or on us most often."
"You carry a cell phone." It was clearly visible, worn on a belt clip.
"We've found a rubberized casing that seems to protect them, at least for a while. The batteries still tend to lose their charge faster than what's considered normal, but at least we have the use of the phones for a reasonable amount of time."
"Ah. I wondered." She paused. "May I borrow your cell phone, please?"
"Of course." He released the phone from its belt clip and handed it over, beginning to have an inkling what she meant to do. He didn't know if it was a good idea, but he also couldn't think of an argument she was likely to listen to right now.
Diana examined the casing protecting his phone for a moment with what seemed idle curiosity, then opened it and tapped in a number, murmuring, "Long distance, sorry. Really long distance, since I think he's at his London office. My taxpayer dollars at work."
Ignoring that, he said, "I can leave, if you'd rather be alone."
She looked at him for the first time. "No. I'd rather you stayed."
Quentin nodded, but he wasn't much reassured. The odd, flat shine that had been visible in her eyes when they were in the caves was back, and the very stillness of her face hinted at something frozen. Something that might shatter at the first wrong touch.
Diana returned her gaze to the window as she waited for the call to go through, then said into the phone, "Hi, Sherry, it's Diana. Is he busy? I need to talk to him. Thanks."
"He works this late?" Quentin asked, having rapidly calculated the time difference.
"He works all hours, seven days a week," Diana replied. "And pays his assistants double overtime to work six."
Quentin wondered if that had always been the case, or if Diana's father had taken refuge in his work when first his wife and then his daughter had tried and seemingly failed to cope with apparent mental problems. But before he could frame the question, Diana's father took her call.
Elliot Brisco, as it turned out, had one of those distinct, powerful voices that was clearly audible on cell phones, so much so that Quentin was easily able to hear both sides of the conversation.
Then again, maybe he was automatically calling on the spider sense to listen with unusual intentness.
"Diana? Where the hell are you?"
"Hi, Dad. How've you been?"
"I've been worried to death about you, Diana, and you damned well know it. That doctor of yours has refused to answer any of my questions, and—"
"I asked him not to tell you where I was, and I asked you to respect that. Besides which, the law agrees my medical information should be confidential. I'm thirty-three, Dad, not a child. And the judge decided I was capable of making my own decisions."
The one statement about a court decision told Quentin a lot. Clearly, Diana had fought for her independence, probably as soon as the medications were out of her system. And just as obviously, her father had not relinquished control over her life willingly.
"You've been ill most of your life," he said now, his voice taking on a hard edge. "Am I not supposed to worry when you suddenly go off all your medications and then disappear God only knows where?"
"I didn't disappear. I told you I was going to try another form of therapy."
"And I wasn't supposed to ask questions about that? Jesus, Diana, with all the crackpots and New Age nonsense out there, you could have been doing any kind of half-assed thing masquerading as therapy. They used to believe LSD was therapeutic, remember?"
"No drugs this time," she said. "I'm not smoking anything. I'm not drinking anything. It's an artistic workshop, Dad, that's all. I've been... painting my demons."
Elliot Brisco made a sound that, to Quentin, indicated either disbelief or withering impatience. "Painting? What the hell is that supposed to accomplish?"
"It accomplished quite a lot, actually. Certainly much more than I expected it to." Diana drew a breath and then let it out slowly, as if for control. "I'm at The Lodge, Dad. In Tennessee. Does that ring a bell?"
"The Lodge. You're at The Lodge." Abruptly, her father's voice was flat, and in that flatness Quentin heard or sensed something a lot like fear.
"Yeah." Diana tilted her head slightly to one side, as if she heard it too, then lifted the hand holding the old photograph so that she could see it. "And I found something here I wasn't looking for. An old picture of two little girls. They don't really favor... and yet they do. When you really look at them, you realize they could be...sisters."