"She's here?" I said. "In Miami?"
Lucas nodded. "In a private nursing home, a Cortez-run mental-health facility."
"So your dad's looking after her?" I said.
"He should. He's the reason she's in there."
The dictionary defines a clairvoyant as someone who can see objects or actions beyond the natural boundaries of sight. That's a near-perfect description of a true clairvoyant. With the right cues, they can see through the eyes of a person miles away. A good clairvoyant can go beyond mere sight and pick up a sense of their target's intentions or emotions. It's not mind reading, but it's as close as any supernatural can get.
A clairvoyant is also the closest thing the supernatural world has to a soothsayer. None of us can truly foresee the future, yet a clairvoyant can make educated guesses about a person's future actions based on their current situation. For example, if they "see" a person nursing a sore tooth, they can "foresee" that person visiting a dentist in the near future. Some clairvoyants attune this deductive skill to the point where they appear to have the gift of prophecy.
I'd never actually met a clairvoyant. Even my mother met only one in her long life. Like spell-casting, it is an inherited gift, but so few people carry the gene that there are only a handful of clairvoyants born each generation, and they learn to hide their gift right from the cradle. Why? Because their powers are so valuable that anyone who finds a clairvoyant, and reports it to the Cabals, would reap a lottery-size reward.
To a Cabal, a clairvoyant is a prize beyond measure. They are the living equivalent of a crystal ball. Tell me what my enemies are plotting. Tell me what my allies are plotting. Tell me what my family is plotting. A Cabal CEO with a good clairvoyant on staff can double his profits and cut his internal problems in half. And the Cabals fully acknowledge the clairvoyants' value, treating and rewarding them better than any other nonsorcerer employee. So why do the clairvoyants go to extremes to avoid such a dream job? Because it will cost them their sanity.
Good necromancers are plagued by demanding spirits. They're taught how to erect the mental ramparts but, over time, the cracks begin to show, and the best necromancers almost invariably are driven mad by late middle age. To maintain their sanity for as long as possible they must regularly relieve the pressure by lowering the gate and communicating with the spirit world. It's like when Savannah wants something I don't think she should have-after enough pestering, I'll negotiate a compromise, knowing that will grant me a few months of peace before the pleading starts again. Clairvoyants also live with constant encroachments on their mental barricades, images and visions of other lives. When they lower the gate, though, it doesn't quite close properly, and gapes a little more each time.
In effect, the Cabals take the clairvoyants and use them up. The power, and the temptation to use it, is so great that they force the clairvoyant to keep "seeing" until the gates crash down and they are swept into a nightmare world of endless visions, seeing everyone else's lives and losing sight of their own.
That is what Benicio did with Faye Ashton. Lucas's grandfather had taken Faye as a child, then put her aside for safekeeping until she came into her full powers. By then Benicio was CEO. For twenty years, Faye had been the Cortez clairvoyant. A long life span for a clairvoyant, which may suggest that Benicio tried to conserve her powers, but the end result was the same. She went mad, and he put her in the home where she'd lived for the last decade.
Along with some of her powers, she'd retained enough of her sanity to never let Benicio near her again. Lucas, though, was another matter. Not only had she known him since he was a child, but she never turned down the opportunity to help anyone who fought the Cabals. So she'd given Lucas carte blanche to use her powers. Yet he never had. Although she assured him that the occasional "seeing" wasn't going to damage her already ruined mind, he'd always been unwilling to take the chance. Now, though, we had nowhere else to turn.
The nursing home was a century-old manor in a neighborhood where most homes had long since been converted to medical and legal offices, as the cost of maintaining the monstrosities overshadowed their historical value. From the street, the nursing home appeared to be one of the few still used as a private residence, with no signage and a front yard that hadn't been converted into a parking lot.
We parked in the driveway, behind a minivan. At the door, Lucas rang the bell. A few minutes later, an elderly black man opened the door and ushered us inside. When the door closed, it was like stepping into Cortez headquarters. All street noise vanished; I suspected the house had first-rate soundproofing, probably to keep the neighbors from realizing this wasn't a private home.
Inside, nothing disturbed this veneer of domestic normalcy, not a reception desk or nurse's station, not even the usual hospital stink of disinfectant and overcooked food. The front door opened into a tastefully decorated hallway with a parlor to one side and a library on the other. A woman's laugh fluttered down from the second level, followed by a low murmur of conversation. The only smells that greeted us were fresh-cut flowers and fresher-baked bread.
Lucas exchanged greetings with the caretaker, Oscar, and introduced me. As Lucas had explained earlier, both Oscar and his wife, Jeanne, were shamans, a race whose reputation for compassion and stability made them excellent nurses for the mentally ill. This was a long-term care facility, and none of the eight residents were ever expected to leave. All were former Cabal employees. All were here ostensibly because of excellent employee benefits packages, but in reality because the Cortez Cabal was responsible for their madness.
"It's good to see you," Oscar said, patting Lucas on the back as we headed down the hallway. "Been over a year, hasn't it?"
"I've been-"
"Busy." Oscar smiled. "It was an observation, not an accusation. We all know how busy you are."
"How is Faye?"
"No better. No worse. I told her you were coming, so she's ready. Woman's got the strength of a bull. She can be completely catatonic, but the moment I say someone's coming to see her, she pulls it together." He grinned over at me. "Well, unless she doesn't want to see them, in which case she plays possum. I suppose you two are here about those kids being killed."
Lucas nodded. "Does Faye know about it?"
"The damn woman's clairvoyant, boy. Course she knows. We tried to keep the news from her, but she sensed something was up and badgered one of her outside friends into spilling the beans. Been pestering us to get hold of you ever since, but we said, no, Faye, if he wants your help, he'll come get it."
"Has she… seen anything?"
"If she had, I'd have tracked you down. Everyone's been careful not to give her any details. That way she won't start fishing around that big psychic pond and strain herself."
"We can provide her with sufficient details to avoid that," Lucas said. "Yet, if you feel it would still be too great a strain-"
"Don't you answer that," called a strident voice. A small, white-haired woman wheeled herself into the doorway. "You send him away, Oscar Gale, and I'll make your life hell. You know I will."
Oscar smiled. "I wasn't going to do that, Faye. You'll be fine. You always are."
Faye reversed her wheelchair, vanishing into the room. We followed.
Black Hole of Hate
Faye Ashton was a tiny woman who, had she stood, probably wouldn't have topped five feet. I doubted she weighed more than a hundred pounds. Though she was only in her late fifties, her hair was pure white and her face was lined with wrinkles. Her dark eyes danced with energy, giving her face the haunted look of a young spirit trapped within a body that had grown old before its time.