"I haven't tried. Yet." As difficult as it was for her to concentrate, Riley was more than a little bit wary of dropping her guard.
Assuming she still had a guard, which was probably arguable.
"So what's the plan?" Ash was still watching her. "I don't know much about this kind of thing, but I'm guessing the guy didn't leave a lot of his own…energy…here anyway, not considering how little time he spent here. A cleaning crew was here the day he checked in, and Jake's forensics team is neater than most and clean up after themselves, so this place has pretty much been spit-shined."
Riley wondered if he was offering her an out because he was afraid she'd fail-or afraid she'd succeed.
She wasn't sure which one she was afraid of.
"Where's the master?" she asked.
"Usually has some of the best views, so I'm guessing upstairs," Ash replied. He led the way, adding over his shoulder, "It's not that I mean to hover, but I'd rather stick close just in case."
"I appreciate that," Riley said. Because she did.
The master bedroom was spacious for a rental, and boasted both a large adjoining bathroom and a private deck with a-distant-view of the ocean.
Riley ate a PowerBar and prowled the space, looking, touching, cautiously trying to open senses she wasn't sure were doing anything except barely functioning. She was getting nothing. No scents, no sounds, no appreciable texture; even the brightly decorated room looked oddly washed-out to her.
The strange veil was back, a layer of something indefinable separating her from the world. And it was getting thicker.
Riley was cold. So cold. But she tried not to shiver, tried to keep doing her job.
"He was neat," she said, peering into a closet where a suit jacket and two shirts hung evenly spaced.
"He didn't have time to get messy," Ash pointed out.
Riley opened a dresser drawer and pointed to several pairs of socks and Jockeys, folded precisely. "He was neat."
"Okay, he was neat." Ash paused, then said, "You know, if there's a possible connection between Tate and the people in the Pearson house, why not just follow that lead to get information? Why put yourself through this if you don't have to?"
She looked at him, frowning. "Put myself through this. Does it seem to you this is an effort for me?"
Ash returned her stare for a long moment, then came to her and turned her to face the mirror above the dresser.
"Look," he said.
For just an instant, no more than a split second, Riley thought she saw another woman standing there with Ash behind her, a weird sort of double image, the way slight movement shows as a blur in a photograph.
And then it was gone, and Riley saw herself. With Ash standing behind her, his hands on her shoulders.
At first, she couldn't see whatever it was that caused him concern; the weird veil that had faded colors and muted her other senses lay between her and the mirror, just as it lay between her and the world.
But then, slowly, the veil grew thinner, more wispy. And Riley felt curiously stronger, steadier on her feet. In the reflection she watched, fascinated, as the room behind them became brighter, the colors more vivid. Her pale blue short-sleeved blouse and jeans, Ash's khaki slacks and dark shirt, even his vivid green eyes, all became clearer, sharper.
No longer distant.
No longer out of her reach.
She looked at his hands on her shoulders, and her scattered thoughts began to focus.
Damn, Bishop was right. Again.
"Look at your face," Ash began. "It-"
Riley held up a hand to stop him. "Wait. Just a minute." Taking the chance of further depleting her energy reserves, she concentrated on listening, on reaching out to hear the ocean, too far away from this house to be easily discernible through insulated walls and triple-pane glass.
Almost immediately, as though a door had opened just yards from the beach, she heard the waves, the rhythmic crash of water against earth. She could almost feel the foamy surf lapping around her ankles, smell the slightly fishy salt air.
Her spider sense was back.
She reached farther, tried harder-
– he was already dead by the time she reached the otherwise-deserted clearing.
Smoke from the final glowing embers of the fire curled upward, and the smell of sulfur and blood was almost overpowering. She didn't approach the headless corpse, still dripping blood, but circled the clearing warily, gun in hand and senses flaring.
All her senses.
She wasn't getting much, just faint impressions of dark figures that had moved here, danced here, damned their souls here. The lingering echoes of chanting, and bells, and invocations in Latin.
But no sense of identity, and no real sense of life. It was…weird. As though the ghosts in her mind were only that, unreal figures conjured like a nightmare of images superimposed on this place.
Yet the corpse was real. He had been tortured and killed in this place, without doubt. She knew that if she touched it the body would still be warm.
The blood-spattered rocks were real. The dying fire. The circle of salt she found on the ground.
To sanctify the circle, or protect whoever had stood within it?
She didn't know. And the harder she tried to open her senses, the more Riley had the uneasy realization of…a barrier. There was a muffled quality to the normal night sounds she heard. The acrid stench of sulfur was fading more rapidly than she expected, more rapidly than it should have, and the blood-
She couldn't smell the blood anymore.
Riley looked quickly at the corpse, half-convinced she would find that it had been conjured by her own imagination. But the lifeless body hung there still.
She took a step toward it and then froze, abruptly aware that she had stepped inside the circle for the first time.
The unbroken circle.
Utter silence closed around her, and her vision began to dim. She tried to move but couldn't, couldn't even lift her gun or make a sound, and the darkness became a tangible thing, wrapping her in a cold embrace she couldn't escape.
There was barely time for the first faint hints of comprehension to fight their way through the dark fog of her mind.
Barely time for her to begin to understand what was happening to her.
And then the force of a train slammed into her, hot agony blazing along her nerves, bright fire in her mind. For an eternal instant she felt herself literally connected to the ground beneath her feet, a spear of burning energy impaling the earth.
Discharging all her strength into it, like a lightning rod-
"Riley."
She realized she had closed her eyes only when his voice pulled her back to the room in which they were standing, and she opened them to see the reflection of his worried frown. And feel his hands still on her shoulders but tighter now, almost holding her upright.
With an effort, she steadied herself. "Sorry. But, Ash-"
"Look at your face, Riley."
She realized she had been looking at his, and turned her gaze instead to her own.
The earlier chill came back with a vengeance.
Her face looked…gaunt. Not so much as if she had aged, but as though she were starving.
Riley lifted probing fingers, shaping the sharp cheekbones and the hollows beneath them. Hollows that hadn't been anywhere near this pronounced only hours before.
"This isn't normal," Ash said, his voice roughening for the first time.
"No…it isn't natural," she corrected slowly.
"What's the difference? Christ, Riley, you're burning calories so fast there's no way you can keep up with the demands of your body. You've got to stop pushing yourself, stop trying to use abilities that Taser must have destroyed."