"I am not surprised that you did not have the moral courage to own up to your problem earlier, Gabriel. It is always about you, isn't it? You and your vanity. Mrs. Cartwright is incidental in your scheme of things. You don't care about her. You just care about not looking stupid."
"Alexander, I am so sorry."
"No, you're not. You're just sorry you had to tell me about it."
"Please, just listen-"
"I blame myself. I bought into this ego trip of yours by thinking only your viewing was worthy. I neglected the team, did not give the reports of the others the same attention. You've lost us time, Gabriel. Time we could have spent exploring other avenues. And now we've lost the trust of the police as well."
Gabriel had no answer.
"I want you to leave."
Gabriel left. Back at his apartment, Frankie was nowhere to be seen. Without even removing his clothes, he fell into bed.
But it wasn't until shortly before dawn that he finally started to sink from wakefulness into sleep. And as he began to drift, he felt his inner eye opening. He was about to slam a ride.
He felt the soft tug of the ride. Let go. Let go. Cross over…
He hesitated.
Let go. Cross over…
Why should he? Mullins had kicked him out. And chances were he'd simply get blocked again. Why put himself through that kind of agony?
Let go…
No. He clamped down on the impulse, shutting his inner eye with ease. He was finished with Eyestorm. Such a relief, he thought. Such a relief to know that this part of his life was done with.
As he turned over and pulled the blankets over his head, he noticed the dark sky outside his window beginning to stain with palest light.
Melissa Cartwright's body was discovered eleven hours later in an outhouse on a farm in Yorkshire. She had died in the very early hours of the morning.
Shortly after sunrise.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
"Gabriel, wake up." Frankie's hand was gently shaking his shoulder.
He lifted his head from the car seat and winced. He had fallen asleep during the drive to Oxford, and his neck now had a painful crick at the base. His forehead felt numb and cold where it had pressed up against the frosty windowpane.
He opened the car door and the coldness of the night air was a shock. As he stepped out, his breath left his lips in a ghostly cloud.
For a moment he stood quietly, looking at the house in front of him. With the exception of a brand-new shed in the garden, the place looked exactly as it had thirteen years ago.
Frankie slipped her hand into the crook of his arm. "Come on."
As they walked up the garden path toward the front door, an outside light went on and the door opened. A tall figure dressed in a worn velvet smoking jacket, flannel trousers and Nike sneakers stepped onto the porch.
Gabriel stopped walking. For a moment it was quiet. Then the man on the porch made a gesture with his hand. "Come in." He turned around and walked back into the house. After a moment's hesitation Gabriel and Frankie followed, closing the front door behind them.
Inside the house nothing had changed either. The flocked wallpaper in the entrance hall was immediately familiar. And the living room was still stuffed with porcelain knickknacks-winsome shepherdesses and pink-cheeked angels-and stacks of books and magazines. The low-wattaged bulbs inside the dusty fringed lamp shades bathed everything in a tired yellow light.
But if the house still looked the same, its owner did not. Alexander Mullins had aged. His skin was raddled with fine lines. His hair had thinned considerably. He made a clicking sound with his tongue and moved his mouth, and Gabriel realized with a sudden shock that Mullins was wearing an old-fashioned set of false teeth.
The eyes behind the cat's-eye spectacles, however, were still glacial. And the voice, even though it had lost none of its upper-crust plumminess, could still sound biting.
"Well, you're here. What do you want?"
Gabriel left the talking to Frankie. She did a good job, listing the facts of the situation chronologically and methodically, sanitizing the narrative of emotion and speculation. Just as Mullins had taught them to do at Eyestorm all those years ago when summing up a case. This was one student who had taken the training to heart, Gabriel thought wryly. No sloppy asides or personal prejudices clouding the issues. Mullins should be pleased.
When Frankie had finished, Mullins turned his eyes to Gabriel.
"So what is it you want from me?"
Frankie leaned forward in her chair. "Alexander-"
He silenced her with an abrupt gesture of his hand.
Gabriel spoke, his lips stiff. "I suppose I'm looking for help."
"Help." Mullins's voice was quiet.
Silence. Gabriel found that he had balled his hands into fists. He relaxed his fingers with an effort.
"Well, I'm sorry, but there is very little I can offer." Mullins paused. "I have never come across an RV like this woman before."
This woman. Minnaloushe. Fallen angel.
"It is clear that this woman's RV skills are exceptional," Mullins continued. "In all my years of research I have never personally encountered an RV who is able to inflict physical damage on someone else simply by using her viewing skills." He frowned. "This is truly extraordinary. I don't know what the explanation is."
"The explanation is she's a witch." Gabriel's voice was harsh.
"A witch." Mullins uttered the word with disdain.
Gabriel tried to keep his voice calm. "Yes. She is an extreme magician. She has taken her natural talent-remote viewing-and amplified it into a deadly weapon."
"And how did she manage to do that?"
"Through her practice of alchemy. Of high magic."
For a long moment it was quiet in the room. Then Mullins made a gesture with his hand as though pushing away something unpleasant.
"I'm afraid I do not feel equipped to follow you into these esoteric realms. I suggest we deal with the facts as we know them. A remote viewer is apparently able to use her viewing skills to create an abnormal pathology in a healthy brain. I have never encountered this before and therefore I have no data to share. And no magic bullet."
"There must be something we can do." Frankie's voice was low.
"Well, let's break the problem down to its basic components. Question: Is there a way to deny the attacker access to Gabriel's mind? Answer: Yes. He can block the scan. Second question: Is this a sustainable defense? Answer: No. When blocking, he sustains physical trauma."
Gabriel shrugged. "So I'll simply have to come up with another defense."
"There is nothing simple about that." Mullins took off his glasses, rubbing the lenses against the sleeve of his jacket. It was a mannerism Gabriel remembered welclass="underline" an indication that Mullins was concentrating, focusing his intelligence on the topic at hand. He supposed he should feel grateful that the old man was at least intrigued enough by the situation to give the problem serious attention. This was what Frankie had bargained on. She had counted on Mullins's curiosity outstripping his personal animosity.
Mullins repositioned the glasses back on the bridge of his nose. "Explain to me what one of these mind attacks feels like." He turned his cold eyes on Gabriel's face.
"Sensory overload. That's what it feels like. It feels as though someone is tipping a giant garbage truck of violently frenetic images and sounds into my mind. As though an avalance is sweeping through my brain. And it happens so fast, I can't make out anything- the information is not discrete-the images all blur together. And it doesn't stop. It feels as though there is no end to it. And then, when I clamp down, my head feels as though it is about to explode. The pain is… severe." "Excruciating" was probably the better description, but he knew Mullins would find such an extravagant word distasteful.
It was quiet for a few moments. "The memory palace," Mullins said slowly. "It seems to me the answer lies there. As I understand it, this memory palace is really a vast depository of data."