Blood Sins

Tessa glanced at the chair beside her own at the dining-room table, at the open bag in which the poodle was curled, sleeping. 'I read somewhere that the tiny ones are bred to be companion animals, so that make sense. I mean that she'd be carried around most of the time. And that bag seems to be her security blanket. The question is, who's her owner?'

'One of the questions,' Sawyer corrected. He had been introduced to Hollis upon their arrival at the Gray home and was still trying to cope with the notion of an FBI agent who was also a professed medium. A professed medium who not only knew about his own secret but was utterly matter-of-fact about his abilities. 'I have more than I can count.'

'Join the club,' Hollis advised, then said, 'My money's on Ruby Campbell as being Lexie's person.'

Tessa wondered if Ruby's had been the voice in her mind there at the pet cemetery, the presence that had warned her with such insistence to close her mind that Tessa was pretty sure she had knocked herself outliterallyto obey.

'Because?' Sawyer's tone was the very polite one of a man who had decided to be calm about things. No matter what.

'Because I don't believe in coincidence. Because just about the time you guys were reading that note, I was being begged to help Ruby.'

'Begged by a ghost,' Sawyer said.

'You, of all people,' Tessa told him, 'should be able to accept the existence of spirits. You saw your grandmother when she died, didn't you?'

'Jesus, Tessa'

Reaching up to rub her forehead fretfully, Tessa said, 'Sorry. I wasn't looking for that, it just came to me.'

Hollis looked at Sawyer. 'She's right? You saw your grandmother's spirit?'

'Just that once,' Sawyer replied, hoping it mattered.

'I told you that your abilities were evolving,' Hollis reminded Tessa. 'Your visits to the Compound must have activated a new pathway in your brain. Or amped up the voltage somehow. Even with your shield in place, you're picking up stuff.'

Sawyer muttered, 'That weird energy up there. God only knows what effects it's having. On them and on us.'

'I don't need any new pathways,' Tessa announced. 'I was justbarelylearning how to follow the ones I had.'

'Doubt you've got a choice.' Hollis shrugged.

'Great.'

'It's another good reason for you to stay away from that place,' Sawyer told her.

'No,' Tessa said. 'It isn't. We all take risks, Sawyer. You're in law enforcementyou know that.'

'Not unnecessary risks.'

'And how do you define unnecessary when a hundred men, women, and children are in danger?'

Sawyer didn't like the corner he'd been backed into. 'Okay, then let's talk about effectiveness. There's no sense putting yourself at risk when you can't be effective in a dangerous situation. And from what I saw at the Compound, I'm thinking whatever is going on up there is not something you can handle without unnecessary risk. To you and possibly to everyone else.'

'What's he talking about?' Hollis asked.

Sawyer continued to look steadily at Tessa. 'What the hell happened to you at the Compound? There at the end, you were so distracted it was visible. As if you were listening to somebody else.'

'Maybe I was,' Tessa said.

Hollis was looking at her with a frown. 'I just assumed that when you opened yourself up at the pet cemetery, all the pain and grief there overwhelmed you.'

'It started before we got to the cemetery,' Sawyer told her. 'She was a little scatty.'

'Scatty?'

'Distracted, like I said. I don't know what it was, but something affected her when we left that outdoor pulpit. Maybe sooner.'

Tessa drew a breath and let it out. 'Still here, guys.' Hollis's frown deepened. 'Tessa, did you consciously drop your shields at that cemetery?'

She didn't want to answer, but Tessa knew she had to. 'No. I opened a door, just a little bit. But I didn't drop my shields.'

'Then something was affecting you? Something that got through your shields?'

'Maybe.'

'Tessa.'

'All right, yes. I heard That same presence as before was in my mind. Not the dark one; the one who said, I see you. Only this time, it was warning me. To be careful. To not let my feelings overwhelm me, because heSamuel, I assumegets in that way. He makes people feel and gets in that way.'

'How did you feel?'

It was Tessa's turn to frown as she tried to sort through the fragments of memory and emotion. 'It's hard to separate things. At first I felt uneasy, as if someone was watching me. Sawyer felt the same thing.'

He nodded when Hollis looked at him. 'Tessa said maybe it was the cameras, butit didn't feel like that.' He hesitated, then added, 'Cameras pointed at me feel a certain way. This was something else.'

Tessa nodded. 'I felt a tugging, a pull, and when I looked around, I saw something flash at the edge of the pet cemetery. Once we got there, the pain and grief of the people, especially the children, started to overwhelm me. That's when that voice in my mind warned me to shut the door before he got in. So I shut it. Too hard, I guess.'

Sawyer frowned at her. 'That's why you went out? You did it to yourself?'

'Well, self-preservation. You asked me if I'd know if I was under the sort of attack Samuel is capable of; the insistence in that voice told me I had to protect myself, and fast. So I did.'

'We're in trouble,' Hollis said.

'Not necessarily.'

'Tessa, you were chosen for this assignment partly for the strength of your shields and the fact that you don't read as psychic. No matter who that insistent voice belongs to, it shouldn't have been able to come through to you so clearly, not through what was in effect only a chink in your shields. And you shouldn't have been overwhelmed by the emotions of those people, not with your shields up. At all. That's new, we both know that, and the new stuff is the hardest to handle. We are definitely in trouble.'

'I was tired and distracted before I even went up there, Hollis, and you know it. I felt like I was being pulled long before I reached the Compound. You said I connected to someone or something up there yesterday, and I agree.' She reached for the piece of paper lying on the table in front of her and looked at it again, read it again.

* * * *

Please, take care of Lexie.

can't protect her anymore.

Father's started watching me.

* * * *

'This was addressed to me. Even more, it was placed in Sawyer's Jeep, not my car, when no one could have logically known I wouldn't be leaving the Compound the same way I came.'

Hollis shook her head. 'You didn't mention meeting any of the kids yesterday, not by name.'

'I was introduced to a whole group of them pretty much at once. I barely spoke to them beyond saying hi. Until