As soon as Hollis set eyes on the Reverend Joshua Matthews she was nagged by a vague familiarity. He was past middle age, a tall, thin man with a shock of silver hair and gentle brown eyes, and didn’t look . . . substantial enough . . . to host the customary deep, booming voice of a Southern Baptist preacher.
“Danny Dryden’s family?” He looked from Hollis to DeMarco. “He isn’t a suspect in these terrible killings, is he?”
Hollis smiled at him. “His name came up in our investigation, Reverend, and we have to cover all our bases. He and his family attend your church?”
“His mother and grandmother do. As long as I’ve been here. But I don’t know that I can tell you anything.”
“Danny doesn’t attend?”
“Well, not regularly, not since he was a child. He’s one of my holiday members. He comes Christmas and Easter, and that’s about it. Not terribly uncommon, especially among the younger members. Not that he’s as young as all that. He must be past thirty by now.”
“He’s not married?”
“No.”
Hollis tilted her head slightly as she gazed at the preacher. “Girlfriend?”
“I really couldn’t say, Agent. Although—”
“Although?”
Matthews was frowning a little, clearly troubled. “Is it important, Agent?”
“It could be very important.”
“I was just going to say that from all I’ve seen, Danny has always seemed pretty much . . . absorbed in his own concerns. Not very interested in mixing with others. His family has always been the sort to—as the saying is around here—keep themselves to themselves. They were never active in the Hales family real estate business, except that they own a considerable number of rental properties and land they lease to farmers, which provides an income for them.”
“Danny doesn’t have a job?”
“He handles the properties for his mother, I understand.”
Hollis studied him, her head still tilted to one side. “So not a job with regular business hours, I take it. Does he have hobbies that you know of?”
“He likes to hike. Always out roaming in the mountains.”
“I see.” She focused without really being aware of what she was doing, reaching deeper than what she could see and hear. “Reverend . . . what is it about Danny that makes you uneasy?”
He looked somewhat startled. “Uneasy?”
“Yes. Something about him disturbs you. What is it?”
“It’s—it’s nothing I know firsthand, Agent. My father, Lucius Matthews, was pastor of this church before me, twenty years ago, and he had certain reservations about Danny. But Danny was only a child then, and it was so long ago.”
“What sort of reservations did he have?”
“I gather it was more a matter of temperament than anything else. He thought Danny was too quick to strike out at other children when he didn’t get his way. He was especially prone to do that whenever any other child took something that belonged to him. Apparently there were some troubling scenes during Bible school one summer.”
DeMarco was also studying the reverend, his gaze intent. “What happened after that, Reverend?”
“What happened? I don’t know what you mean.”
“What did your father do? About Danny?”
Matthews frowned. “He didn’t do anything. He was going to talk to Angela Dryden, suggest that a therapist might help the boy deal with his temper.”
“Why didn’t he talk to her?”
“Because he died, Agent.”
Hollis exchanged glances with her partner, then said, “I’m sorry if this is painful for you, Reverend, but how did your father die?”
Somewhat stiffly, Matthews said, “It was an accident. In this very office, Agent. He was cleaning one of his guns, and . . . There was no question of suicide, I promise you. His cleaning supplies were all out on the desk, his shotgun cleaned and set aside. We never knew for certain why it happened, but somehow one of his target pistols went off. He was shot in the head.”
“Do you have a picture of your father here, Reverend?”
Looking a little bewildered now, Reverend Matthews pointed to one of the walls, where a large grouping of photos hung. “There, in front of this church. It’s the last photo we have of him.”
Hollis went to look at the photo, and it only required a moment for her to be certain. Lucius Matthews was the spirit she had seen in the restaurant with the gunshot wound in his head.
The one who had warned her that the monster they hunted was not sick but evil. And had always been evil.
THEY MET UP back at Hales in the early afternoon, all the team plus Finn, Nellie, and Leo.
“No sign of Danny Dryden at his condo here in town,” Bishop told them after filling in Quentin and Diana about what they’d learned from Megan’s sister and from the postmortem. “The family home where his mother and grandmother live is out in the valley.”
“Danny Dryden? Daniel?” Diana exclaimed. “You mean . . . our Daniel?” She looked from Bishop to Hollis.
“I don’t even know if it’s possible, but it’s what I’ve been fairly convinced of. Because I don’t believe in coincidences, not like that would have to be,” Hollis confessed, frowning. “Is it? Can one of your spirit guides be not a spirit? And a lot older than he appears in the gray time?” Her own theories aside, Hollis believed no one knew the gray time as well as Diana.
But Diana only looked baffled and uneasy. “I . . . don’t know either. I don’t think it’s ever happened before.”
Hollis looked at Bishop. “I’m betting you have theories. Do any fit this situation?”
Bishop looked at Finn. “Dryden is a Hales cousin—a first cousin, according to Megan’s family. I assume they’d know for certain if, at the very least, he’s shown any mediumistic tendencies.”
“Yeah, related to the Hales that close they’d know. His mother was born a Hales. And now that I think about it, his grandmother was a Hales cousin.”
“Does the Hales family history, that bloodline, show more signs of inbreeding than in the other families?”
Finn grimaced slightly. “Well, it isn’t something anybody advertises, but my father always said the Hales should have gone outside the valley for mates a long time ago. Danny was the first son of his line in about three generations, and apparently his mother had several miscarriages before he was born.”
“Is he known to have Talents of any kind?”
“Well . . . not that I ever heard. There are very few in the Hales family, even in the direct line, with Talent, and it’s always, always the same Talent.”
“Telekinesis?”
“Right. Difficult to control even when it’s not a strong Talent. And it’s usually not, at least not according to the family lore. Maybe because it’s so rare nobody ever found a way for it to be really useful, so nobody was encouraged to use it. Controlling something like that is difficult, but necessary. Maybe because it’s one of the few Talents that genuinely make people fearful.”
“And it’s not a Talent that can be used without the awareness of anyone watching,” Bishop said.
“Yeah, exactly. Pretty damned visible if you move things with your mind.”
“Could Dryden have another Talent?”
“Most of us have only the one.” Finn glanced at Nellie. “Except a few Cavendishes.”
“But it’s possible?”
“Anything’s possible—you know that. But if he has any Talent at all, much less several of them, he’s hidden it very well.”
“Maybe it’s something that was triggered only recently,” Hollis murmured, frowning.
Bishop looked at her. “The energy?”
“It’s at least possible, isn’t it? We know energy can affect abilities, even trigger them. So why not in him?” She looked at Finn. “Something’s been nagging at me. The energy started increasing around here when Duncan Cavendish was building his power base, right?”
“It was beginning to affect some of us during the last year or so,” Finn agreed.
“But it only became a real problem for people with Talents since Duncan was killed?”
He frowned at her. “Yeah. In the last few weeks. What’re you thinking?”
“I don’t know what I’m thinking. It just . . . bugs me.”
Diana spoke up then to say, “But how was Daniel—Danny—able to do it? I mean, to get into the gray time? To be able to . . . manipulate that? And I know the guides are never as childlike as they appear, but—”
“So far,” Bishop told her, “the best guess would seem to be that his primary ability, unlike that of his family, or any of the five families, is as a medium. We may never know whether he was born with the instincts to open a door into the gray time, as you were, or if it was triggered more recently and he somehow stumbled onto it.”
Diana blinked at him. “ ‘Stumbled’?”
He shrugged slightly. “Sounds like he spent a lot of time on his own, up in the mountains. He may have been exploring his abilities as well as hiking trails.”
Hollis said, “However he learned about the place—time—whatever—he must have visited, and more than once, especially in these last weeks. And he learned fast. Or, at least, learned enough to be able to manipulate some things in the gray time. Like his own appearance.”
Steadily, Diana said, “Wait. You’re telling me that a serial killer knows how to get into the gray time? By himself? I mean, I know there’s been evil there before, but Samuel couldn’t come and go at will. He needed us to open a door so he could get out.”
Hollis, who understood better than anyone else just how creepy that idea was, nodded reluctantly. “Yeah, I think he can go there at will, and get out when he wants to. Not that I think he’s a traditional—if I can use that term—serial killer. Which, as I remember, you were the first to question.”
Diana looked as if she wanted to say something about that, but in the end just shook her head.
“I think Daniel wanted us to look for a typical serial,” Hollis said, “and not look for personal connections to any of the victims. I mean, books, TV, and movies have pretty much educated way too many people about serial killers and how they hunt and prey on strangers. And about how we investigate crimes, especially murder. I think Daniel was trying to hide his connection to Megan.”
Finn was frowning. “But Aylia Blackwood saw a serial killer hunting the five families.”
Quentin shook his head. “Did she? I can tell you from experience that visions—that farseeing—is just a glimpse into a future that may or may not be set. Two members of the Five have died, and Simon was taken; she could have glimpsed just enough of that future to believe what it seemed to indicate. We interpret what we see, even if unconsciously, and filter it through our knowledge and experiences.”
After a moment, Finn nodded. “Okay, that makes sense. But . . . is it why Daniel would have killed Cole Ainsworth and buried Simon alive? Just a distraction?”
Hollis said, “I think that was the plan, but the fact that he got so . . . enthusiastic . . . with Cole and played his little game in burying Simon is also because he’s more than a little twisted and has been since he was a kid, according to what we were told by his pastor.”
She filled them in on what she and DeMarco had learned, finishing with “Not that there’s any evidence, especially after all this time, but the spirit of the old man I saw in the restaurant was definitely Lucius Matthews, and I believe he was trying to warn me about Daniel. I think he was probably Daniel’s first victim, killed because Daniel didn’t want him talking to his mother. Or maybe just because he was angry.”
Finn looked from one to the other. “You were both able to use your Talents in questioning Reverend Matthews?”
“We’d both dropped our shields,” Hollis confirmed. “There had to be something he knew, or else why did the crows lead us there? So we probed.”
“I thought you were having problems with this energy interference, like the rest of us.”
“Well, that’s another thing we may have figured out.” Hollis exchanged a glance with her partner. “Even though you were all aware of the energy once Duncan began building his power base, it’s only interfered with everyone’s abilities in the last few weeks. Not before that. So what happened back in January? Duncan Cavendish was destroyed.”
“Yeah.”
“And Cavendish was after energy, sheer power to add to his own. Which he stole from psychics who were descended from the five families. I remembered something Geneva told me. That it was Duncan, with that weird energy-weaving Cavendish talent— No offense,” she added hastily to Nellie.
Nellie smiled faintly. “No offense. I think it’s weird too.”
Hollis smiled at her, then went on. “It was Duncan who figured out how to construct something they called a barrier to hold in psychic energy. I mean, it was something he came up with long before Bishop taught Nellie how to weave a similar thing to help contain her energy. Right?”
Finn answered, “Yes. What became obvious later is that he saw young psychics as a potential threat. Saw anyone with Talents he couldn’t somehow control or repress as a threat. What he told the families, however, was that by allowing him to construct the Barrier in their children with Talents, it would allow the children to grow and mature until they were old enough to be able to deal safely with their Talents. He claimed they had to be at least thirty before they’d have the necessary control.”
“Bastard,” Hollis said without heat.
Finn nodded. “He was that. But he was convincing, at least during the last twenty years. A lot of parents remembered their own struggles to master their Talents and believed they were protecting their children by sparing them those struggles until they were older.”
Bishop said, “But not the Deverells.”
“No, not us. No Deverell took Duncan up on his offer.”
“And,” Nellie said, “a few of us had parents who didn’t agree with Duncan. It’s one reason my parents took me and left Salem when I was an infant. My father didn’t want any of my Talents suppressed.”
Hollis nodded. “Yeah, because what the Barrier really did was an extreme version of what Nellie’s shields were designed to do, to hold psychic abilities inside, but completely dormant, so they were no threat to Cavendish. Not all the kids, as you say, not all parents agreed with him, but enough to make a real difference.”
Finn nodded. “There were plenty over the years. They believed they were keeping their kids safe.”
“Yeah. But here’s the point. If Cavendish constructed those barriers, what happened when he was destroyed?”
They stared at each other.
“All of them,” Hollis said softly. “All those psychics . . . waking up so abruptly when Duncan died. With no idea how to use their abilities, or to build real shields, or to channel energy. Unshielded psychic minds all coming alive in the same small valley at the same time, many of them very young. Expending energy they can’t control. That’s why it’s affecting us. All of us.”