Maggie didn't object, just nodded.
"Eighth floor," Andy told them. "Apartment 804. I'll be there with her fiance." He headed off toward the regular elevators.
"Are you sure you're up to this?" John asked her abruptly.
"Why wouldn't I be?"
"Maggie, you were upset when you got to the hotel this morning, and you're still upset. When you went home last night, you were more tired than anything else. So I can't help wondering what happened later."
She was only a little surprised; either his perception was sharpening where she was concerned, or else she wasn't hiding her tension very well. "It was… a nightmare, that's all. I didn't sleep well."
John had the feeling she had evaded the subject and yet hadn't really lied to him, which made him all the more curious to find out the whole truth. But all he said was "You don't have your sketch pad today. It's the first time."
"So? I don't always carry it."
"I think you usually do, especially during an ongoing investigation."
Maggie shrugged. "Usually-not always."
"So why not today?"
"Maybe I forgot it."
"Did you?"
"No."
"Well, then?"
She looked at him for a moment, then shook her head. "Never mind. The only thing I'm thinking about right now is whether Tara Jameson is or isn't the sixth victim."
John followed as she moved toward the service elevator. "You know, you could just try saying it's none of my business," he commented mildly.
"I guess I could," she murmured.
He decided to take a chance and push just a little bit. "Unless maybe it is. I think you're too honest to lie about that. So is it my business, Maggie? Is there something you're not quite sure you should tell me?"
She glanced at him, then drew a breath and said calmly, "Several things, actually. But not here and not now. Okay?"
Bearing in mind Quentin's warning, John got a grip on his curiosity and nodded. "Okay."
A flicker of gratitude crossed her face, which made him glad he'd agreed. It also made him wonder even more what could have upset her so much; clearly, she wasn't looking forward to telling him about it.
Maggie paused in the hallway a few feet from the service elevator and visibly braced herself.
John was hardly given to premonitions, but a sudden uneasy impulse made him say, "Maybe this isn't a good idea."
She looked at him gravely. "Why not? Because I might imagine something terrible? But my own imagination can't hurt me, can it, John?"
He chose his words carefully. "After what I saw in the Mitchell house, I know it's more than imagination, Maggie. I just… I don't want to see you hurt like that again."
Maggie almost reached out and touched him, wanting to reassure him, needing to, but stopped herself with an effort she hoped didn't show. Steadily, she said, "If Tara Jameson is the sixth victim, she's the one hurting right now. Whatever I feel is… temporary."
"That doesn't mean it hurts any less."
Instead of denying that, she merely said, "I'll be fine." She didn't give him a chance to protest again but went to the service elevator and pushed the button.
The doors opened almost immediately, and before she stepped inside, Maggie cautiously allowed her inner senses to reach in and probe the innocent-looking cubicle.
The elevator was well used, and at first all she got was a jumble of images and flashes of emotion, mostly irritation and low-level anxiety. Not unusual, she knew, for a building in which often harried, stressed people lived and visited.
Then, on the extreme edges of her awareness, she felt something… alien.
Dark. Hungry. Cold. So cold…
It grew stronger, pressing in on Maggie until she found it difficult to breathe. The darkness was black, viscous, slimy like an oil slick, and it wrapped around the hunger that was cold and grotesque in its twisted urgency.
"Maggie?"
She blinked and looked at John, at his hand gripping her arm, and wondered vaguely what her face looked like to make him feel so much concern. As if a door had closed-or opened-all she could sense right now was him, his worry about her, and other, less defined but no less powerful emotions. "I'm fine," she murmured.
"Are you? Then why did you say that?"
"Say what?" She didn't remember saying anything aloud.
"You said, 'deliver us from evil.' Almost as if you were reciting the prayer."
After a moment, Maggie pulled her arm gently from his grasp. "Funny. I'm not even religious." She tried to focus again, recapture that cold, dark presence, but all she could feel right now was John, even without the physical contact. As if that door that had opened refused now to be closed. And a very large part of her wanted to burrow in and surround herself with him, luxuriate in the warmth and strength that was more familiar and yet more tantalizing than anything she could remember feeling before.
"Maggie, what is it? What did you sense?"
She wondered if he was even aware of the term he had used, but didn't ask. She stepped into the elevator and watched him follow, watched her own finger push the button for the eighth floor. Only when the doors closed did she ask a question of her own. "Have you ever wondered about the nature of evil?"
He was frowning at her, still disturbed. "I don't know that I have. Why? Is that what you felt-evil?"
Maggie nodded. "Evil. Him. He was here. In the elevator. It's… the first time I've been able to feel him like that." And she didn't even try to explain how horribly unnerving that was.
"How can you be sure it was him?"
"His… desire… wasn't normal. The hunger he was feeling."
"Christ," John muttered.
"I'm sorry, but you asked."
His mouth tightened. "What do you sense now?"
"Nothing, really." You. "It was just a flash, maybe what he was feeling right before he left the elevator."
"Did he have her with him?"
Maggie frowned, only then realizing. "I don't think so. I mean, I don't think he had her here in the elevator. But I'm certain he'd taken her, because he was… anticipating… what he would do with her."
"But he didn't take her down in the elevator?"
"No."
As the elevator doors opened on the eighth floor, John was saying, "Then how the hell did he get her out of the building?"
"I don't know."
They both looked around as they moved down the hall toward Apartment 804, John silently gesturing toward the security camera positioned to get a clear view of the entire hallway. It didn't seem possible that anyone could have carried an unconscious woman from any of the apartments without being observed- and taped-by security.
"Somehow, he must have tampered with the system," John said. "But that still doesn't explain how he got her out of the building."
Maggie stopped suddenly, getting another flash of that darkness, as well as a sense of determination, of effort. "It was… difficult," she murmured. "It took more strength than he expected."
"What did?" John asked quietly.
"Getting her out of here."
"How did he do that, Maggie?"
Her head turned slowly as she scanned the hallway. Other apartment doors. A few tall green plants and occasional tables and framed prints and mirrors providing pleasant decoration. Fire extinguishers and glassed-in fire hoses placed strategically here and there.
… nearly rusted shut…
Her gaze fixed on a large, gilded mirror halfway between the elevator and Tara Jameson's apartment, and she walked toward it slowly. She was disconcerted when she saw her own reflection, wondering idly why she was so pale and why her eyes looked so peculiar, the pupils enormous. Then John came up behind her, and she stared at his reflection, briefly confused by what she saw.