Tucker hoped she hadn’t meant that literally. He really hoped so. He wasn’t at all sure he believed that some evil entity could capture a soul—or even take one in payment for…anything.
No, surely she hadn’t meant it literally. She’d meant it the way anyone would, using the phrase as a yardstick to measure how badly someone could want something. Mason willing to sell his soul for life meant simply that he was willing to give up just about everything else that mattered to him in order to live.
That was what she’d meant.
Except that Tucker had a crawly feeling it wasn’t. Because the look on Sarah’s face when she’d said it wasn’t a price she was willing to pay had spoke of something truly terrible. More than the loss of possessions or even a way of life. The loss of a soul.
Literally the loss of a soul.
Which means—what? That we’re fighting the devil?
No. No, there was nothing supernatural about the other side. So far, nothing that had been done by them could not be explained logically and rationally. In fact, everything he’d found out about this conspiracy—with the exception of its bizarre focus on psychics—smacked of all-too-human violence, and felonious intentions rather than mystical behavior.
Sure, the other side was or appeared to be all around them—though that perception was probably more paranoid than real. And they did seem to have vast, even limitless resources. But Tucker was still convinced that what lay at the heart of this conspiracy was a very ordinary and even unimaginative (if presently inexplicable) plan to profit in some way. To gain something—power, perhaps.
Even as those thoughts took form in his mind, Tucker was reminded of crossing a graveyard at night as a young boy. Whistling, as boys would, to prove to himself there was nothing wrong. Not looking to the left or the right, and surely to God not looking back, but only straight ahead. Marching briskly. Because there was nothing hiding in the graveyard, nothing about to jump out at him from behind a headstone.
Nothing was going to get him.
Half-consciously, Tucker turned up the Jeep’s heater.
They had been on the road about an hour when Sarah stirred and opened her eyes drowsily. Tucker had been waiting for her to wake and spoke immediately, hoping to use the unexpectedness of the question to tap into that odd well of knowledge she couldn’t seem to reach into deliberately—or, at least didn’t admit she could.
“Sarah, where are we going?”
“Hmm?” she murmured.
“Where are we going?”
“Holcomb. It’s a little town northwest of Bangor.”
The answer surprised him, but he tried to keep his voice calm and without any particular inflection. “Why there?”
“Because that’s where it ended.”
“Ended? Past tense?”
Sarah’s eyes opened wider and she turned her head to look at him. For a moment she looked a little lost and more than a little puzzled, the pupils of her eyes wide like a cat’s in the dark as they always seemed to be now. Then she shrugged and half-closed her eyes. “I don’t know what I meant. A slip of the tongue, probably.”
Tucker didn’t think so. Her too-dark eyes were veiled against him, and her voice held an evasive note. He wanted to push, to insist that she tell him whatever it was she was holding back. But he couldn’t quite bring himself to, not now. She was still exhausted, strained, and even in the delicate bones of her face was the finely honed look of unspeakable stress and pressure; he was afraid that if he pushed her now, forced her now, she would simply break.
So he forced himself to be patient. For now.
“But it is Holcomb we’re headed for?”
“I— Yes. Yes, I think so.”
Tucker thought about it, then shook his head. “The only city of any size roughly between here and Bangor is Portland.”
“But that’s on the coast.”
“Yeah…but from there it’ll be less than a hundred and fifty miles to Bangor. We can be in Portland in a few hours, spend the night there. Then go on to Holcomb tomorrow.”
“On the last day of September,” Sarah said.
“We’re safer in large cities, and you’re in no shape to drive straight through to Bangor.”
“I’m fine.”
“No, you’re not. You need to sleep about twelve hours.”
“I don’t want to sleep that long. It wouldn’t help anyway.”
He glanced at her, then turned his gaze forward once again. “All right. But you do need to rest. And we need to decide if we want to look up another psychic. There are three on the list who presently live in Portland.”
“I don’t know.” Her voice was evasive again. “We’re running out of time.”
“Maybe we should risk spending a few extra hours in Portland, Sarah. Visit at least one more psychic. If we go on to Holcomb with no idea of what to expect there…”
“What if the next psychic is…another of their tools? What if they all are?”
That hadn’t occurred to Tucker, and he felt a chill. “They can’t all be on the other side. Surely…”
“No?” Sarah closed her eyes again, and added softly, “But what if they are, Tucker? What if they are?”
TWELVE