He put the box on the floor and started eating.
Marley sat down in her leather chair and leaned forward. “Did you notice anything about Pipes Dupuis when you saw her this morning?”
He frowned.
Marley pushed up the long sleeves of the black T-shirt she must have roasted in all day and rotated her arms to show the angry-looking welts on her wrists. “Pipes has some of these on the back of her neck. I told you that before you went into the house.”
“Damn, there was too much going on.” He stood up, furious with himself, but still clinging to Winnie. “I forgot. Why didn’t you explain to Nat?”
“He doesn’t believe in me. If he wasn’t desperate, he wouldn’t have asked me to help.” Her tight smile worried Gray. “People should know better than to doubt just because they’ve never seen something. If they can’t touch and smell, they pooh-pooh. Skeptics are always so righteous—until they start feeling foolish because they’re proved wrong.”
That was what he’d been afraid she’d say. “Don’t blame Nat. His job is to look for proof. If he doesn’t have evidence to show, the people he works with, and for, don’t want to know. It’s all about proving things in a court of law.”
“But he’s against the wall so he asked me for help.”
“Because he’s too good a cop not to go after anything that could help.”
Marley wagged her head. “I guess.”
“How do we get to Pipes Dupuis? She knows something.”
“She surely does,” Marley said. “But I don’t think she wants to talk about it.”
“Why wouldn’t she if she’s scared?”
“I don’t know.” She thought about it. “And I could be mistaken about what those scratches are. Either way, she has to want to talk to us about it.”
“Nat needs to know.”
“Does he? If I tell him about Pipes having those marks, I’ll have to talk about the ones I’ve got. I don’t want to talk about more details until I’m ready.”
“Why, if you say you want to help? You already told him the main stuff about you.”
“I’ve been laughed at before. And it wouldn’t help because they’ll ignore whatever I say. You said they work on proof so I’ll get them proof, then I’ll tell them more if I think it’ll help.”
Without intending to, she had confirmed his fears. She intended to go searching for a killer—again. And if she could sustain the visible wounds she already had, was it so unreasonable for him to be scared sick for her life?
He thought about the corpse of Shirley Cooper.
Winnie squealed. He had squeezed her too tightly.
“Don’t worry,” Marley said, sounding softer than he’d heard her before. “I know what I’m doing.”
A glance at her face didn’t reassure him. “You want to believe that,” he said. “I wish I could.” She wasn’t convincing herself and he knew he was right to be skeptical.
The dog wiggled and he set her down.
And he gathered himself to come up with more persuasive arguments for Marley.
She wasn’t looking at him. Or listening to him. He frowned, watching her face change. All expression smoothed away and her eyes didn’t appear to see anything. He wasn’t sure she even remembered he was there.
Her hands rose, fingers extended, and Marley stood up. The focus in her eyes completely dulled. How small and shaky she seemed.
Marley had not started what was happening. Of course he could be wrong, but he thought she would have preferred to wait for him to leave first.
Gray wanted to take her in his arms, to shake her and plead for her to let go of whatever had started to lead her away.
Faintly, he heard a hum and inside the hum, a rustling. The rustling had patterns and he strained to understand what they might mean.
Marley stood in front of her workbench. Her hands came together, the fingertips steepled, and she touched the elaborate roof of an old red dollhouse on the bench. Chinese-looking and like nothing he’d seen before. Three stories with silhouettes of people behind shaded windows and set in what was left of a garden surrounded by a stone wall. It had a corner door, like a shop, with a window on either side. What looked like baked goods were heaped there.
He glanced quickly at the dog who stood beside Marley’s chair, absolutely still, watching and waiting.
Backward Marley moved, making motions as if pulling against the little house, or pulling something from it. He stared. The gap between the house and Marley widened, but there was nothing connecting her to it that he could see.
She sat in her chair again, her feet flat on the floor, her hands on the arms. And Winnie curled herself over Marley’s feet, and closed her eyes.
Gray cast about, afraid to move, afraid not to move. “Marley,” he said quietly. “Marley?”
Her eyelids slid shut, but her face became rigid. As if she was wide-awake and tense inside a sleeping body. Gray saw her breathing grow shallow and rapid.
He bent over her. She hardly breathed at all. Automatically he lifted her into his arms. Sharp currents ran through his body.
“You must not interfere.”
Gray looked over his shoulder. In the multicolored haze suspended over the house, a wraithlike series of shapes coalesced into a dim face. He screwed up his eyes, strained to see. Gray-streaked dark hair. Sharp features, he thought.
The pattern of a voice rose out of that rustling, clear and demanding. It came from the direction of the workbench and the hovering face.
Gray held Marley tighter, gritted his teeth at the battering of sensation passing to him from Marley.
He sat down with her on his lap and stared ahead. Like the still-sleeping dog, he waited. Gray waited because he felt he must. At least Marley kept breathing faintly, but she was limp. He was afraid, but not for himself. He wanted to know more about whatever was happening around him.
The rustle continued.
His attention rose to the ceiling above the house. The colors there glowed, green, blue, pink.
They throbbed and he heard the sounds take shape again.
“She will live or she will die. She is uniquely gifted. You must only wait and be glad for your own emergence. Be ready to seize your own talents.”
This time the words definitely came from the ethereal being.
Chapter 25
Marley’s flesh quivered.
She had closed her eyes, but now she opened them and barely held back a scream. Hurtling through spaces too fast to grasp any one image, light and texture changed as she passed.
Vibrations buffeted her.
She spun around and around, then rotated head over heels.
Through an empty, dark-paneled room in an instant.
Into a pale chamber echoing with the Ushers’ voices. We had to take you. We could not wait. You have failed each time. They need your help.
“What do you want me to do? Where are Liza and Amber?” Each word felt thrust back into her throat where it faded away.
A corridor grew narrower as she shot toward an open door. Then she burst through.
Sunlight shone on a woman’s face, a woman with dark hair—and a blindfold. Marley could tell it was Liza Soaper.
Marley started to call out to her. Too late. In a crushing collision, she passed inside Liza’s seated body. This time there was no doubt what had happened. Marley was in a tight, clamoring place where she stared out at blackness, then down, past a narrow gap, at a stone floor. She looked left as far as she could, then right. Nearby was a wooden furniture leg. A table leg? Baseboards beneath cabinets. A white enamel door.
Marley was seeing through Liza’s eyes, out of a small opening at the bottom of the blindfold.
She must find out where this was. Until she did she couldn’t change anything.
“Why are you doing this to me?”
Startled by the loud voice, its vibration, Marley blinked. Liza had spoken.