His hands tightened. “Then don’t look for death or violence. Try to control it, Sarah. Ask yourself a specific mental question and concentrate on finding the answer to only that. I don’t know if it’ll work—I’m not psychic, so I can’t know that. But I know the mind is an incredible instrument, one that can be focused and fine-tuned. One that can be controlled. I believe you can do that. If you try.”
Sarah didn’t know if she could try. What she did know was that she didn’t want to. And she knew she was too weary to be standing here this close to Tucker. She knew that tonight it would be all too easy to make a mistake. She wanted him to put his arms around her and hold her. She wanted him to kiss her again. She wanted him to hold the darkness at bay.
She wanted him.
But Tucker had made it clear to her that he considered their brief kiss at the lake a mistake. He had avoided even the most casual touch since then, and he had withdrawn so completely from her that Sarah found it difficult to gauge even his mood, much less his thoughts. Even now, with his hands on her, all she sensed from him was wariness and reserve.
And even knowing that, even being painfully sure that he didn’t want her, she still wanted him.
Before she started clinging to him like an idiot and made a total fool of herself, she carefully drew back away from him until his hands released her. “I’m really tired,” she said. “I think I’ll turn in.”
She was at the door of the sitting room before it occurred to her that he would have to go through the bedroom in order to get to the bathroom. She paused and looked back at him. “Don’t worry about disturbing me when you need to use the bathroom. I always…I sleep like the dead.”
Still standing at the window, Tucker merely nodded. “Good night, Sarah.”
“Good night.”
Sarah tried not to think very much after that. She pushed the bedroom door to but didn’t completely close it. She thoughtfully left a light on in the bathroom when she was finished in there so that Tucker would be able to see his way. Then she shed the robe, climbed into the huge bed, and turned off the lamp.
She wanted to sleep, to just close her eyes and let everything stop for a while. She needed that. But when she closed her eyes, the worries and questions and thoughts refused to stop.
Who are they?
Try to control the thing inside you. Try to see something to help us.
Why are psychics so important—or such a threat—to them?
There isn’t much time left. I feel that.
Why did this have to happen to me?
All I see is death.
Tucker needs to find Lydia.
Am I going to die?
Am I going mad?
Finally, even though she knew she was too tired and afraid to make the attempt, Sarah concentrated on closing out everything except one single, vitally important question. Who are they? She fixed it in her mind until it was so clear she could see the letters of each word.
Then, hesitantly and very afraid, she tried to open up her mind, her senses, and invite the answer to come.
At first, all Sarah saw was the question, bright as neon. Gradually, though, the question dimmed and all around it the blackness lightened. She saw a large, featureless building very briefly, just the flash of the image, but it made her skin crawl, as if she stood briefly at the mouth of a dark cave where something unspeakably brutish dwelled. Then she heard the low murmur of many voices, what they were saying indistinguishable but rousing in her another powerful primitive response as the hairs on the back of her neck stirred a warning.
Wrong. It was all wrong, worse than bad…
Then she saw the shadows. They were many, all shapes and sizes, tall and thin, short and squat, manlike and bestial. Nightmare shapes. They moved rapidly, flitting across her inner field of vision with an energy and purpose that was chilling. Arms reaching out. Hands grasping…something. She couldn’t see what they were doing. Couldn’t see what it was they caught and held so avidly. She couldn’t see their faces.
She couldn’t see their faces.
Panicked, Sarah wrenched herself out of it without even realizing she was going to. When her eyes opened, she found herself sitting up in bed, her heart pounding and breathing rapid and shallow, as if she had awakened from a nightmare. Was that it? Had her psychic abilities actually shown her something that was real, or had her fears and worries simply been given frightening shape by her anxious mind?
She didn’t have the same sense that a vision left her with, that what she had seen was real. There was no feeling in her of inevitability. Instead, what she felt was a profound but wordless and nameless uneasiness. A fear that was purely instinctive, like the primal response to snakes and spiders and noises in the night.
Sarah wanted badly to get out of bed and go into the sitting room. To Tucker. She wanted to tell him what she thought she had seen and how it made her feel. She wanted to hear him tell her that there was nothing to be afraid of, and everything would be all right.