Dream Eyes

started to run. He laughed and told me that was what the others had done. He said that the chase was the best part. I figured I had nothing to lose, so I fled into the mirror engine. He followed me. And suddenly he was screaming.”

“He saw something in the mirrors?”

She took a deep breath and buried her fingers in Max’s fur. It was time to choose her words very, very carefully.

“I told you, there was a lot of energy in the atmosphere that day. I was in my talent and so was Taylor. There was the additional energy of the camera, too. The mirrors are designed to enhance the effects of psi. I’m not sure exactly what happened, but I think Taylor saw things in the mirrors—maybe the images of some of the people he murdered.”

Judson’s expression sharpened. “He saw ghosts in the mirrors?”

“Yes, I think so. He shouted at them. You’re dead, damn you. Why don’t you stay dead? He started firing that strange weapon at the mirrors. There was a flash of brilliant light. It looked like a real camera flash or a strobe light except that it was hot psi. I could sense it. The energy bounced off the mirrors—straight back at Zander. He started screaming. He turned and ran out the front door of the lab. He kept running and he kept screaming, and when he got to the falls, he threw himself into the water. I ran out behind him. I was in time to see him go over. I will never forget the look in his eyes.”

She stopped talking. For a time Max’s rumbling purr was the only sound in the room.

Judson contemplated the fire. “Do you think that it was the reflected energy from his own weapon that killed Taylor?”

“That’s the only explanation that makes any sense. All I can tell you is that in those last moments he went stark staring mad.” She paused. “I sometimes have a few bad dreams of my own, especially at this time of year.”

Judson’s brows rose. “You can’t fix your own bad dreams?”

“I haven’t been able to fix these,” she said. “As a strong lucid dreamer, I can usually structure a dream to some extent. The trick to handling a bad dreamscape is to find a way out. But I haven’t been able to find an escape route through my Zander Taylor dream. So it keeps repeating. August seems to be the worst month.”

“Because that’s when the deaths occurred.”

“Yes.”

She stopped talking, waiting for the other shoe to drop—waiting to find out if Judson was going to buy her heavily edited version of events. She had told him the truth, she reminded herself. Just not quite all of it.

To her surprise, he reached across the small space between them. His strong, warm hand closed over hers.

“I don’t have any helpful advice to give you,” he said. “You don’t ever forget watching someone die. Doesn’t matter if the bastard deserved it. Violent death exacts a psychic toll from anyone unfortunate enough to be in the vicinity. I see that in my work and I’ve experienced it firsthand. No one is ever the same afterward. If the events of two years ago didn’t give you a few bad nights, it would probably mean that you were missing something vitally important in the part of you that is supposed to make you a decent person. It’s only the monsters that can kill without paying a psychic price. That’s what makes them monsters.”

She looked at him. “I’m the one who is supposed to be the psychic counselor here.”

“Yeah, well, that’s all the counseling you’re going to get from me because I don’t have anything else to offer. I’ll warn you up front that what I just said isn’t going to be any help in the middle of a bad night. All you can do is remind yourself that it was the outcome that matters. You saved not only yourself but all of the people Taylor likely would have murdered in the future. You take that information and you move forward.”

“I get the feeling you’ve given yourself the same lecture recently.”

“Yeah.”

“Is it working for you?”

He looked at her and said nothing.

“Right,” she said. She drank some more of her brandy. “You need closure, too.”

He ignored that. “There’s no doubt that it was Taylor’s body they found?”

“None. Evelyn and I both knew him and so did Nicole. All three of us identified him.”

“Did anyone come forth to claim the body?” Judson asked.

“No. It was Nicole who arranged to have Taylor cremated.”

“What about the weapon?”

“The camera?” She shook her head. “I don’t know what happened to it. I think about it a lot. I try to see it in my dreams. Evelyn and I went back to the lab the following day to look for it, but we couldn’t find it. We assumed that it went into the river with Zander, but I’ve never been entirely sure of that.”

“What makes you think it didn’t get lost in the water?” Judson asked.

“I’ve replayed that scene over and over again in my dreams, using my talent to take a closer look. I could swear that Zander did not have anything in his hands when he ran outside the lab and went toward the falls. I think he dropped the camera somewhere inside the lab. I thought I heard it hit the concrete floor, but I might be wrong. But like I said, Evelyn and I searched that whole place the next day and we didn’t find it.”

“And now Evelyn Ballinger has died in a way that is very similar to the deaths of the two people who were killed by the camera weapon.”

“Yes.”

“You said you didn’t go back to the lab until the next day,” Judson continued. “That leaves an entire night during which someone could have searched the lab.”

“But that would mean that someone else knew about the weapon and what it could do. It means that person knew where to search for it after Zander’s body turned up in the river.” Gwen caught her breath. “It means someone was aware that Taylor was murdering people with a crystal-based weapon and that he intended to murder me that day.”

Judson’s ring flashed with dark energy, but his expression did not change. “Yes,” he said. “We’re talking about an accomplice who may have decided to continue playing the game.”

“But no one else in the study group has died in the past two years. Evelyn and I kept track.”

Judson’s did not take his eyes off the fire. “You said that Mary Henderson and Ben Schwartz were both victims of Taylor’s kill-the-psychic game and that Taylor liked to see his prey run. He intended for you to die running, too.”

“Yes. The chase excited him.”

“What I sensed today at the scene told me that Ballinger’s killer did not see her as a player in a fantasy game. He definitely got a rush out of the kill, but he was under control at the time, not excited the way I think he would have been if he had considered that murder a game.”

“You could perceive that much?”

“It’s the nature of my talent,” Judson said. “I can sense the emotions the killer experienced when he made the kill.”

She shivered. “It’s as if you get a snapshot of the killer’s mind.”

He looked at her. “Yes.”

“Tough talent. Must make for a lot of bad dreams.”

He looked at her for a long moment, his eyes shadowed. Eventually he turned back to the fire.

“My talent doesn’t make for good dreams or stable, long-term relationships,” he said.

She recognized it for the warning it was and smiled.

“Welcome to the club,” she said.

He smiled. “There’s a club for people like me?”

“People like us. I’ve got dream disorder issues, too, and they make stable, long-term relationships very difficult. Impossible, in my case.”

“Yeah?” Judson looked intrigued.

“You’d be amazed how fast a guy can run when you tell him that you see ghosts. In fact, men I have known have fled, screaming, into the night.”

Judson’s teeth flashed briefly in a wicked smile. “Sounds interesting.”

“You think I’m joking, don’t you?”