None of them were taking the situation lightly, especially when Hollis related the information offered by her dawn visitor as they all ate breakfast downstairs. The innkeeper, Ms. Payton, had given them a rather private corner and large table to themselves and well away from the handful of other guests staying at the moment, either out of common sense or because Finn had charmed her the previous day.
Hollis thought it could have been either.
“Megan Hales.” Bishop frowned briefly, then said, “If I’m not mistaken, she was the granddaughter of one of the Hales elders. Our researchers have gotten that far in tracing at least some of the family lines, but I don’t remember anything about her leaving town suddenly.”
“Last summer,” Hollis said. “Suddenly last summer. Wow. Tennessee Williams, right? Anyway, it was before any of us—well before most of us—had even heard of Salem.” She didn’t waste a glare at Bishop.
Diana said, “She must have taken being jilted hard if her family believed she’d just left town and stayed out of touch all these months. How old, do you think?”
“Twenties at a guess. Early. I took everything Very Seriously at that age.” She spoke as if it were eons before rather than a relatively few short years. “But getting horribly murdered isn’t what anybody expects to cope with at any age.” Hollis knew her voice was calm, but she felt jittery.
“And at least two more victims since she was murdered,” Bishop said. “The one you sensed yesterday, possibly Cole Ainsworth, probably dead now, and a third one taken even more recently. Dead or being held or tortured.”
“That’s what she said.” Hollis was frowning. “Yet we haven’t had word of anyone else being missing. Does that bug anybody besides me? I mean, small town and all.”
“Yes,” Miranda told her.
“Ask the crows,” Quentin muttered, his thoughts following a different tack. “Does anybody know if Nellie talked—I’m tired of saying communicated—to the one on her balcony last night?”
“She did,” Bishop confirmed. “The crow’s name is Tia, and she not only agreed to our request but let Nellie know that the crows are already—I believe the phrase used was ‘patrolling the valley’—looking for anything they consider to be unusual. Easier for them to see what there is to see in the valley; not as easy on the mountain slopes, though they’re likely patrolling there as well. Nothing was said about knowing the location of a grave or of human remains.”
Quite suddenly, Hollis pushed away the small plate containing the half-eaten jelly doughnut that had been intended to finish off her far more substantial breakfast. “Damn. They’re carrion birds, aren’t they?”
Miranda said, “Not exclusively. They eat insects, grain, fruit, small mammals. The eggs of other birds.”
Hollis frowned and pushed the jelly doughnut another inch or two away. “And here I was wanting to respect them.”
“No reason not to,” DeMarco told her, being a man who took the cycle of life pretty much for granted. “They’re highly intelligent birds; we all know that now if we didn’t before. What they eat isn’t really relevant.”
Hollis eyed him. “Unless they’ve eaten some of our evidence. Flesh is just the shell, I know. Intellectually I know. But the people look the way they were physically when I see them in spirit, and I haven’t entirely gotten used to what’s too often done to their bodies before the spirits depart them. In fact, I don’t want to get used to that. Ever.”
Diana said, “We talk about the damnedest things over meals. Has anybody else noticed that?” And before she could be answered, she added, “Let’s hope he did bury her. Or otherwise hid her away somewhere the flesh couldn’t be got at. Because I want to respect the crows too, and I don’t know if I would.”
“I wonder if they make exceptions for friends,” Hollis mused speculatively. “Cats don’t. Then again, I’ve never been entirely sure cats would be bothered enough to make that sort of distinction. Dogs have masters; cats have staff. Or, alternatively, if they’re sensitive enough to know we’re gone by then, with just a . . . a tasty shell left behind. But if crows see us as individuals—physically, I mean— surely they’d make distinctions.”
“You’re getting morbid,” DeMarco told her.
“No, I’m just wondering how to make sure the crows like me. In case. You never know. Because if they tell their friends, one might say, ‘Hey, that one’s not lunch; she was nice to me once.’ Which I would prefer over the alternative.”
“Maybe you can just tell them that.”
“I still don’t know if I speak crow.”
“You speak Leo,” he reminded her.
“Not really, I told you. That was an impression, a concept or idea. Not really a thought, and definitely not conversation.”
Bishop, well aware that they were, in their various ways, bracing themselves for what was likely to be a difficult and unpleasant if not gruesome day, contributed his bit. “According to Gray, crows have a sense of humor. Possibly sly and even malicious, but there.”
“I should think malicious,” Diana said. “If they eat other birds’ babies.”
“I doubt they laugh while they do it,” Quentin offered gravely.
Hollis stared at him. “Cawing malevolently.” She tested the phrase, then shook her head. “Not a nice image. At all. Though these crows around here do seem eerily silent, so maybe not. I mean, not out loud. And I’m having second thoughts about even trying to talk to a crow in that way. Not out loud, I mean. Don’t know that I want to hear crow laughter in my head, malicious or otherwise.”
“Gray said it was a bit unnerving. Still, you should try if and when you get the chance,” Bishop told her, serious now.
“Why?” Hollis demanded. “We have Nellie.”
“Nellie may be able to help at times, but she’s not only not a cop, being the head of one of the five families means she’s high on the list of potential targets; sticking to her normal working day at the bank is best.”
“You say killers love routine,” Hollis reminded him. “Especially serial killers, which this one appears to be if he’s killed Megan and one more, probably Cole Ainsworth, and is holding or has already killed a third.”
“True. But I believe Nellie is safe enough at the bank, and I suspect she’ll have guardians other than Leo watching over her while she comes and goes.”
Hollis, remembering the whole report of what had happened here in January, looked at him thoughtfully. “The crows. Guilt? Because of what happened to her father?”
Diana said, “Didn’t that happen years ago?”
Bishop nodded but said, “American crows can live to be twenty or more years old, so that may be part of it, assuming crows are capable of experiencing guilt. Or it may simply be that these crows belong here in Salem and have generational memories. They do share their knowledge about people, individuals, with their own kind, and being a Cavendish—at least here in Salem—probably forms a natural bond between Nellie and the crows, especially if communication between the birds and that family has been in existence as long as we believe it has. For whatever reason, I’m fairly certain they’d protect her.”
“Well,” Miranda said, “there are certainly more of them than there are of us, so anything they can do to help is a good idea in my book.”
“As long as I don’t get eaten,” Hollis said.
FINN JOINED THEM in time for coffee and grim tidings and was able to confirm both that no Salem resident had been reported missing overnight and that Megan Hales’s family had indeed believed that she had left Salem abruptly after her fiancé had eloped with another woman.
Diana winced. “With no warning at all, not even a Dear Jane letter? I’ll say she was jilted.”
“There was an uproar about it back in the summer,” Finn said, still frowning over the new information of her true fate. “Most of the Five take care to marry outside their own families for obvious reasons, but it’s still a bit uncommon for a man from one of the Five to marry a woman from another. Megan was engaged to Paul Ainsworth, which was unusual enough. Two months before what would have been their wedding day, he eloped with a cousin. Of his.”
“So that was the uproar,” Hollis said. “A cousin.”
“Yeah, more or less, though Paul also caught hell for jilting Megan when he came back last fall. But . . . for anyone spending their lives in Salem, especially one of the Five, the gene pool is already limited by sheer lack of numbers. Aside from any religious or moral concerns, biology definitely plays a role in what any society considers the norm. Inbreeding can cause serious health issues, even between distant cousins and especially over time, so it’s strongly discouraged.”
“Because it wasn’t always?” Miranda guessed.
“Way back, no, it wasn’t. Given the times, there were thoughts of keeping family lines ‘pure,’ especially once the Five found this valley and settled in, because according to the lore they’d been persecuted because of their Talents.”
Hollis murmured, “And once they escaped that, they fought to hold on to what had made them outcasts.”
Finn nodded. “In whatever way they could, yeah. Could have gone the other way, of course, but . . . Pride or just stubbornness made them want to be who and what they were. The population numbers here were naturally even fewer then, interaction with people outside the valley almost nil. Some inbreeding was inevitable, no matter what, far too much in the early years for all those reasons. And there were quite definitely health issues that began cropping up. Too many to ignore, many of them serious. There were a lot of miscarriages, fatal birth defects. People started whispering that the families had brought a curse with them into the new land. So inbreeding was discouraged across all five families. For generations now, that’s been the rule, something everyone understands, and which most everyone obeys. And like so much else in Salem, a practice based on a perfectly good reason simply became custom no one thought much about.”
Quentin said, “Unless and until it was flouted.”
“Why Paul really caught hell from his family, because of the cousin.” Finn nodded but said, “Megan was a good kid and deserved better treatment from Paul, far better; they’d been engaged for at least a couple of years, and high school sweethearts almost from the beginning. When he jilted her after all that, I thought the same as others, that she’d left Salem and probably found herself better off. She was a trained accountant and working in the family real estate business keeping the books; it would have been easy for her to find that sort of job in another place. And she had the strength and spirit to start over and build a new life for herself. That’s what I thought.”
“You couldn’t have known that didn’t happen,” Miranda reminded him. “She told Hollis that had been her intention, that she’d packed up to leave. Her killer took advantage of that.”
Hollis wondered suddenly if, assuming they found what was left of Megan Hales’s mortal remains, they would also find a girlish suitcase or two crammed with whatever she had thought necessary for a life outside Salem, and felt depressed.
Under the table, DeMarco’s hand grasped one of hers. If you didn’t have such a strong sense of humor to balance the compassion, you’d end up gloomy as hell.
Hollis smiled despite herself. I’ve gotten too used to being a team leader; that’s the problem. That keeps me focused on business. With Bishop on-site and in charge, it leaves me too free to feel instead of think.
Don’t kid yourself. You never stop feeling.
He squeezed her hand and then let it go, and Hollis glanced around, wondering idly if anyone else had picked up on the silent conversation. It wasn’t likely; physical contact made the mind talk within their connection deeper, way below the surface thoughts most telepaths normally picked up on. Still, two of the strongest telepaths in the unit were here, and there was never any telling just how strong Bishop and Miranda were at any given time.
Even when they weren’t deliberately probing.
No way to know for sure, but when she focused briefly and more or less automatically to check auras, everybody’s was held close to their bodies by that sharply delineated line she’d learned to associate only with shielded minds. She spent a few seconds just studying the auras of Bishop and Miranda, which were remarkable and unique in Hollis’s experience because whenever they were within a couple of feet of each other, their two auras in essence became one.
One that held all the colors of the rainbow, which was also unique. She’d never told them that, and made a mental note to herself to do so. She thought they’d probably be interested.
Hollis forced herself to look away from that fascinating aura, noting finally that it, too, had that sharply delineated line because both were shielding.
So probably nobody had been listening in. Besides which, it would have been rude; those within the SCU had learned long ago to do their best to respect each other’s privacy.
She glanced at Finn, who happened to be seated nearby. And his aura suddenly made her pay closer attention, because it was greenish, which was rare, but more because it held a metallic glint on the outer edge of the delineation.
“What is it?” Bishop asked, his attention fully on her.
Hollis didn’t really notice when Finn turned his head to find himself the focus of all her attention, because her mind was working busily and her gaze sort of traced his outline several inches out from his body. “Finn, do you have enemies in Salem? With abilities—Talents—I mean?”
To him, the question clearly came out of left field.
“An enemy with Talents? You mean a personal enemy? Now that Duncan and the most rabid of his followers are gone, I don’t believe so. Why?”
Instead of replying, she looked at Bishop. “Maybe a shield with generations of learning behind it always looks like that. More solid than we’re used to. Extra protective. I haven’t thought about it, or tried. Yesterday it was only exploring what we could of the nearest mountain slopes, so we really didn’t see people. Not to look at. And I didn’t have reason to look. But maybe I should meet a few more members of the Five.”
Bishop said, “Nellie’s would be different since it was developed away from here and in a different way. So maybe you should.”
Miranda, taking pity on Finn’s bewilderment, said, “It’s one of Hollis’s abilities to see auras. She sees something unusual in yours.”
“My aura? What do you mean something unusual?” he demanded, returning his gaze to Hollis.
She lifted a brow at Bishop, waited for a slight nod, then looked back at Finn. “Well . . . you know it’s all about the body’s energy, right? The electromagnetic field around living things and some machines.”
“Right.”
“Some people who have stronger electromagnetic energy can be sensed by people who don’t see auras but feel the actual vibrations of that energy. Which is where the bit about ‘feeling vibes’ came from; sensitives—generally latent psychics—can determine mood from those vibrations, so not quite the New Age bullshit you might have thought.”
Wearing the expression of a man adjusting his belief system, Finn nodded.
“Those of us who see auras,” Hollis went on, “that’s what we’re looking at. The way Nellie saw mine last night, though I still dunno— Never mind that. Every person’s individual energy field, in living color, is as unique as a fingerprint. Different colors mean different things, different emotions, but that’s only a baseline; every person’s aura is always a combination of more than one color, and it changes as their mood changes.”
“Okay,” Finn said.
“So. The auras of most people who aren’t psychic or don’t have shields sort of . . . flare . . . in an irregular pattern of colors around them. Even pulse sometimes as their energy changes. But shielded psychics have auras that look different. Because they’re guarding their own minds, their own energy fields, their auras are held closer to their bodies, and there’s a distinct edge along the outside of the colors. The visible aspect of their shields. Does that make sense?”
“I suppose so,” he said cautiously. “Though I always thought shields were inside our heads. Around our minds.”
“I thought so too until I could see auras. And there are guards of a sort we all use to protect our minds specifically, but our shields are partially made up of the energy of our bodies. The energies in our auras feed the shields our minds create and control. So our most protective shield tends to be the one around our entire bodies.”
“Okay.”
“Okay. If there’s also energy aimed at that shield from outside, a very strong psychic probe or an attack, even an electrical charge of some kind, then the outer edge of a shield has a metallic glint. If it’s a powerful, determined attempt to get at the psychic, I’ve even seen sparks sort of striking and bouncing off.” She paused. “No sparks yet, but what I’m seeing tells me someone somewhere is trying to get past your shield. And none of us is doing that.”