You’ve done three. Only three more. And then you can rest. Then you can be.
“I’m tired,” he murmured, still watching her. “This time, I’m tired.”
That’s because you’re changing.
“I know.” He moved carefully, staying in the shadows as he followed her. This one was tricky; she was aware of her surroundings, watchful. Uneasy. They were all beginning to act that way, he’d noticed. Part of him loved that, that he made them so uneasy.
But it made things more difficult.
You can do this. You have to. Or she’ll tell. She’ll tell them all about you.
“Yes,” he murmured, easing a little closer despite the risk that she would see him. “I have to. I can’t let her tell. I can’t let any of them tell.”
Rafe pulled the Jeep abruptly to the curb and parked. They were still in the downtown area, not even halfway to Jamie’s apartment. He continued to stare through the windshield, his rugged face completely unreadable. “A host.”
Isabel didn’t have to be clairvoyant to know he had just about reached the end of his willingness to believe in the paranormal. Or even to accept that it might be possible.
Or possibly he had simply reached the end of his rope.
Hard to blame him for that.
“A host,” he repeated, his deep voice still extremely calm. “You want to explain that?”
Matching his tone, Isabel replied, “When it’s a spirit, the simple truth is that some of them refuse to accept what’s happened to them when they die. Whether it’s unfinished business or simply an unwillingness to move on, they want to stay here.”
“I guess that explains haunted houses.” He was trying hard to keep his voice matter-of-fact.
“Well, only partly. Some houses really do contain the spirit or spirits of people who didn’t want to move on. But some of what people call hauntings are just place memories.”
“Place memories?”
“Yeah. When people report seeing the same ghost repeat the same actions again and again, that’s likely a place memory. A good example is the Roman soldiers so many people have seen marching on their battlefield, endlessly. Or other battlefields, like Gettysburg. We don’t believe those poor men keep reenacting the battles that killed them; we believe the places remember what happened there.”
“How?”
“We can only theorize. Either because those particular areas have a specific energy of their own or possibly just the ability geographically or topographically to contain energy better than other places do. We believe that the extreme psychic-electromagnetic-energy of such horrific, tragic events literally soaked into the earth at places like that.
“And sometimes there’s a buildup of pressure and those ‘memories’ are discharged in the form of energy, like static. If anybody happens to be around, especially a functional or latent psychic, what’s seen is what that place remembers. An image of what happened there.”
“That actually makes a kind of sense,” Rafe said, sounding both reluctant and bemused.
“Yeah, most of this does, if you consider possible scientific explanations. Which we always do. All based on some form of energy.”
“So explain this host thing.”
“Well, like I said, some people who die don’t want to be dead. If they’re desperate enough, or angry enough, sometimes they’re able to muster enough power to… find and inhabit a physical host. Another person.”
“Possession. You’re talking about possession?” He was beginning to sound incredulous again.
Isabel waited until he finally looked at her, then said, “Not in the… Hollywood… sense of the word. This isn’t some pea-soup-spewing demon a priest could exorcise. Often, they aren’t even negative, or bad, spirits. They just want to live. It’s a case of a stronger mind and spirit overpowering a weaker or otherwise vulnerable one.”
“You’re telling me this has actually happened?”
“We believe it has, although I can’t offer you any proof. Bishop and Miranda actually fought the spirit of an insanely determined serial killer once. Quite a story there.”
Rafe blinked, but said only, “Who’s Miranda?”
“Sorry. Bishop’s wife and partner. Years ago, Miranda touched several mental patients who were being treated for severe schizophrenia. She definitely felt, in each case, that there were two distinct and separate souls fighting for possession of those people. It convinced her. It convinced us, even before we duplicated the experiment and got the same results in three out of the five diagnosed schizophrenic mental patients we tested.”
“This is a little hard to swallow,” Rafe said finally.
“I know. Sorry about that.” She might have been apologizing for bumping him in a crowd.
He stared at her, then pulled the Jeep away from the curb and continued on their way. “So, worst-case scenario in a situation like that, the host goes nuts and ends up in a mental institution being treated for a mental disease he doesn’t have.”
“I can think of worse things that might happen, but, yeah, we do believe that has happened. Theoretically, if the host mind and spirit were really weak, the invading spirit would just take over. You’d have a person who appeared to suddenly develop a whole new personality.” Isabel reflected, then said, “Which, I suppose, could explain teenagers.”
Rafe didn’t smile. “What happens to the host’s spirit?”
“I don’t know. We don’t know. Withers away, maybe, like an unused limb. Gets booted out and passes on to whatever awaits all of us when we leave this mortal coil.” Isabel sighed. “Frontier territory, remember? We have a lot of theories, Rafe. We have some personal experiences, war stories we can tell. Even a few nonpsychic if not unbiased witnesses to testify to things they’ve seen and heard. But scientific data to back us up? Not so much. For most of us, we believe because we have to. Because it’s us experiencing the paranormal. Hard to deny something when it’s part of your everyday life.”
“And the rest of us have to take it on faith.”
“Unfortunately. Unless and until you have your own close encounter with the paranormal.”
“I’d rather not.”
Isabel’s smile twisted a bit. “Yeah. Well, let’s hope you get your wish. But don’t count on it. Maybe it’s just because we psychics are present to pull in and focus the energy, but people around us do tend to experience things they never would have imagined before. Fair warning.”
“You keep warning me.”
“I keep trying.”
It was Rafe’s turn to sigh, but all he said was, “You made a distinction earlier between a spirit and a-what did you call it?-a noncorporeal force? What the hell is that supposed to be?”
“Evil.”
He waited a moment, then said, “Evil as in…?”
“As in the force opposing good, the negative to offset the positive. As in the precarious balance of nature, of the universe itself. As in worse than you can imagine, breath smelling like brimstone, glowing red eyes, straight-out-of-a-fiery-hell evil.”
“You’re not serious?”
When he glanced over at her, he found something in her green eyes older and wiser than any woman’s eyes should ever have held. Than any human eyes should ever have held.
“Didn’t you know, Rafe? Hadn’t you even considered the possibility? Evil is real. It’s a tangible, visible presence when it wants to be. It even has a face. Believe me, I know. I’ve seen it.”
Alan had every intention of taking the note to Rafe and the federal agents. Just not right away.
He wasn’t stupid about it, of course. He made a copy and put the original in a clear plastic sleeve to protect it. And then he spent a lot of time staring at the note. The words. Trying to figure out what the author was trying to tell him.