“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” Then he straightened and looked across the room, his attention so obviously yanked from his partner that Olivia found herself following his gaze without even thinking about it.
She saw Dalton reaching one end of his pacing path, turning blindly to start back the other way—and then Victoria moved three quick, soundless steps toward him from behind, reached up both hands to touch his head on either side, and spoke one firm word.
“Sleep.”
Dalton dropped like a stone. Victoria sort of danced back a couple steps in a curiously graceful and clearly practiced maneuver, and caught him under his arms before he could hit the floor.
She let out a grunt when she took his weight, then looked at the others. “Little help here?”
DeMarco and Sully were there in seconds, relieving Victoria of her burden and laying Dalton out on the window seat. He looked utterly boneless and totally peaceful, so much so that he was oddly unfamiliar to those who had known him longest.
“Thanks,” Victoria said.
“No, thank you,” Sully said. “My head was killing me.”
Hollis said, “So was mine. How long will he be out, Victoria?”
Since they had been quickly briefed on their journey here as to the abilities of the non-SCU psychics they’d both be meeting for the first time, neither DeMarco nor Hollis was the least bit surprised by Victoria’s ability.
She shrugged. “An hour if he’s lucky. Ten minutes if we aren’t.”
“Nifty ability,” Hollis noted with a smile as her partner returned to her side. “Is he really out?”
“Sleeping. Deeply. Never tried it on Dalton before, mostly because he wouldn’t let me, but it usually muffles whatever the psychic ability is. He’s stopped broadcasting, I take it?”
Both Sully and Hollis nodded, the latter adding, “All I was getting was anger. And his aura was going really red. Not good.”
Sully, returning to his own place on the couch, said wryly, “It’s been a while, but as I remember, Dalton’s broadcasting was usually wordless rage. Not that I can really blame him.”
“No, not with his history,” Hollis said. For a moment, she looked across the room at Dalton’s peaceful form, her expression speculative. “I wonder . . .”
Nobody really had the nerve to ask what she wondered.
Olivia spoke up then to say, “Tory put me out once when I thought my head was going to explode. All the pain went away, and it was so peaceful.” She sounded a little wistful.
Victoria joined the group around the fireplace, leaning against the back of the couch between Olivia and Reno. With a slight grimace, she said, “It’s a temporary relief—and only works really well the first time I use it on somebody.”
“What happens when you do it again?” Hollis asked.
“For the same person? The effects taper off more and more with every try. Not such deep sleep, shorter and shorter time periods. Abilities less muffled. By the fourth or fifth time they generally just blink and get mad at me.” She glanced over at the sleeping Dalton, adding, “I’d really rather not get that far with him.”
Reno looked at the two SCU agents. “Dalton was never willing, but the rest of us . . . experimented a bit over the years. Victoria was able to put all of us out. Like she said, with . . . gradually diminishing returns when it came to the active abilities, and even blocking receptive abilities like mine. It didn’t affect any of our individual abilities once we woke up. Even if . . .”
“Even if that’s what we hoped would happen,” Logan said. He frowned at Victoria. “Did I get mad when it stopped working?”
“Furious,” she confirmed immediately.
He looked a bit disconcerted. “Sorry. I didn’t remember that.”
Victoria smiled faintly. “It was a very tense time. If I remember correctly, you wanted to get away from a stubborn spirit who’d been following you around for days. I think he was standing right behind me when that last attempt failed. So you were probably more mad at him than at me.”
“Still,” Logan muttered, a tinge of color rising in his cheeks. “Sorry.”
She nodded, then looked at the agents. “So the usefulness of my ability is definitely limited. In my real life it’s helped with the occasional noisy roommate or bad date, but that’s pretty much it. Far as I’ve been able to tell, it doesn’t matter if the person I put out is psychic or not—though psychics remember what happened and nonpsychics wake up confused and wondering why they just suddenly went to sleep. Nonpsychics also tend to be out longer, even up to a couple of hours. Most psychics tend to be grateful for whatever time they’re out. They get a restful nap, at least. The first time. After a few times, it just stops working.”
“Do you know if the ability can . . . rebuild over time? Like a static charge?”
“So far, no sign of that. I’ve tried it with a couple of people in this group up to nearly three years after it stopped working. No joy. Whether because I’m limited in that way or they build up immunity or some kind of shield against it, I couldn’t say.”
Hollis nodded but said, “What about your other ability?”
“I don’t have another ability.”
Hollis’s brows went up briefly, and then she studied the younger woman, her bright eyes narrowed slightly. “Maybe you call it something else,” she said finally, “but your aura is shot through with silver on the inside, close to your body, which in my experience means you’re holding in power, electrical and magnetic energy. Power that belongs to you. And it’s stronger now than it was when you put Dalton out, which I assume would have taken at least some of your energy because any active ability does.”
“I have excess energy, that’s all,” Victoria said. “Not another ability.” There was an edge to her voice.
Hollis continued to look at her for a moment, smiling faintly, then shrugged. “Hey, I’m all for holding back a few aces. I hope most of you have more than one ability, because I think we’re going to need everything we can get. But I should warn you that intense investigations tend to bring out everything a psychic has, good or bad, and that includes inactive or latent abilities. So it’s likely that, assuming we all survive this, your abilities will end up changed in some way. All of them. Maybe even a few you don’t—know—you have.”
“That’s your deal, your thing,” Victoria objected. “Different abilities popping up. It doesn’t happen to other psychics I’ve ever heard of.” She was still frowning.
“Well, me aside, if it happens at all, it happens with latent but existing abilities, and during SCU investigations,” Hollis said. “Because of the energies of other psychics. Because there’s generally a human monster we’re hunting, one with all the wrong kind of energy. Because of outside influences producing or using energy, even the weather or other electrical or magnetic fields. And where there’s energy involved, especially negative energy, the changes can be . . . rather drastic.”
Reno spoke up then to ask, “Do we know if negative energy is involved in Prosperity?”
“It is if something bad is happening there. Or will. We were all summoned, after all,” Hollis replied.
Bishop came into the room just then, his wife at his side and Galen just behind them. All three looked grim.
“Something bad just happened,” he said. “Something very bad.”
* * *
? ? ?
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 8
“This is not . . . I don’t understand this. I don’t understand how this happened,” Sheriff Jackson Archer said. He rubbed his eyes briefly with both hands, as if he could erase the scene before him. But when his hands dropped, he saw the same impossible things just as he had before. What he had been standing here staring at for more than half an hour. It didn’t seem real. Even though he knew it was.