'So he hasn't drained away her personality yet.'
'No. That process seems to take at least a dozen private visits with Samuel, over a span of months. Or, at least, it did. Things do seem to be moving faster now, happening quicker or more often. Like that black hole I compared him to, he's sucking in energy at an ever-increasing rate.'
Hollis muttered, 'A psychic vampire. Tessa and I talked about that after she told me about the dream, but in the sane light of day it sounds a lot worse.'
'It is worse,' Sawyer said. 'Dracula seems sweet and cuddly by comparison.'
Nobody laughed.
DeMarco checked his watch and swore softly. 'I need to get back. If everybody's reasonably up to speed, I suggest we start talking about what we're going to do next.'
'We have to help Ruby,' Tessa said.
'She does seem to be one of the keys,' Hollis said. 'The other spirit that visited methis Andrea I haven't been able to identifytold me back in Venture that we had to help Ruby. Wasn't by name then, but this morning she was a lot clearer about it being Ruby. Though I don't have a clue what 'Look for her in the water' means, Andrea definitely said Ruby could help us stop Samuel.'
'Ruby's only twelve,' DeMarco said. 'How can she help?'
'I don't know.' Hollis frowned at him. 'Can't you read her?'
'No. Until I caught Samuel watching her a couple of times in the last few weeks, I wasn't even sure she was a latent.'
'She's not a latent, she's active. And we think she may have a really nifty ability or two'
Tessa interrupted to say, 'My car's still up there; that's my excuse for going back. Not to try to get her out today,' she added quickly. 'But maybe if I can talk to her'
'You need to be very careful anywhere near the Compound,' DeMarco warned, and all of them heard the faint emphasis on the first word.
'Why? The vulnerability is just pretend, you know. It'
'No,' DeMarco said. 'It isn't. You are vulnerable, Tessa. What happened to you in the Compound today, that uneasy sense of being watched, of being threatened? That was Samuel.'
'How do you know that?'
'Because while he was trying to push his way into your mind, trying to affect and influence you, I was trying to hold him off.'
'You weren't in my mind. Either of you. I would have known.'
DeMarco shook his head. 'That's not what I was doing. Like I said, I can't send, which means I don't have the ability to reach into someone else's mind, not like that. But my shielding ability has been evolving.'
'Fancy that,' Quentin murmured.
DeMarco ignored him. 'Several times in recent weeks, I've been able to project a kind of shield, a barrier, between Samuel and his target. It's not much more than a dampening field, but I believe it has had some protective effect. I have to know who his target is, and I have to have some time to prepare. And to even attempt it, I always make sure I'm alone and likely to be undisturbed, because every time I try, I take the chance of being discovered.'
Tessa was pale. 'How did you know I was his target this morning?'
'Because he knew you were coming.'
'What?'
'Before Ruth got back to the Compound, he knew you were coming. He told me you'd ask to look around by yourself and that it was to be allowed.' DeMarco's smile was hardly worthy of the name. 'He does that sort of thing sometimes, casually with one or another of us, as though reminding us of his divine powers.'
'Well,' Quentin said in a practical tone, 'if he really has had some kind of vision of his apocalypse, an actual prophecy, then it's a given he's a functional precog. And, I'm guessing, an exceptionally powerful one. Which means it could very well be all but impossible to catch him by surprise.'
Galen said matter-of-factly, 'We may not be able to sneak up on him, but we can surprise him. I can shut down his entire security net with the push of one button.'
DeMarco looked over at him. 'I saw you, by the way. Last night. You're slipping.'
'Bullshit. You just sensed me because you can do thatand because my shield happens to be tuned to your frequency.'
'That sounds vaguely' Sawyer decided not to finish that sentence. Even in his mind.
'Maybe it's an odd frequency,' Hollis said almost absently, 'because you have one of the strangest auras I've ever seen. It's almost pure white.'
Polite, DeMarco said, 'And why are you wasting energy trying to see auras right now?'
'I wasn't trying tountil Tessa's got my attention. Tessa, what're you doing? Because your aura's gone all strange.'
'Strange how?' Sawyer asked, wondering what it would be like to see people bathed in various colors of light.
'Sparkly. Like she's expending an unusual amount of energy. Tessa?'
'Just a little experiment,' Tessa said. She drew a breath and let it out slowly, as though relieving some strain, then looked at the serious faces around the table. 'Aside from Sawyer and Hollis, do any of the rest of you see anything unusual about me?'
DeMarco said, 'Only if you mean the dog. And I didn't see that until the chief thought about it.'
'Still creepy,' Sawyer told him.
'Sorry. You were thinking loudly.'
Sawyer wasn't quite sure how to deny that, so he didn't try.
Bishop frowned at Sawyer for a moment, then looked at Tessa. He went utterly still, his eyes narrowing. Then, softly, he said, 'I'll be damned.'
'Huh,' Quentin said. 'Maybe we do have a plan. Or at least a better start to one.'
Chapter Seventeen
AMY LET OUT a long, guttural moan and began to sway. Before she could topple over, Father smoothly took her candle and Ruth appeared out of nowhere to catch her. Held in the older woman's arms, Amy continued to jerk and moan for seconds longer. Her face was flushed, her slack mouth wore a blissful smile, and she ran shaking hands down over her body from breasts to thighs in a gesture so sensual it made Ruby's stomach lurch sickly.
Still chanting, Father placed Amy's candle in the tall copper holder closest to her circle. And while he did that, Ruth was silently arranging Amy's limp body on the floorfaceup, her head on the little velvet pillow and her arms spread wide, feet together and just touching the base of the copper stand holding her candle.
Amy's lips began to move as she resumed chanting.
Theresa was next, and though Ruby tried not to watch it all happen again, she was unable to look away. Her heart was thudding as if she'd been running and running, and her mouth was so dry it was difficult to keep chanting, and she was desperately afraid that her shell was not going to be enough to protect her this time.
When Father was done with Theresa, Ruth laid her out on the floor in the same way, arms wide, toes touching the candle holder, and Theresa also resumed the chant, her voice languid.
Always before, Father had come to Ruby next, but this time he went to Mara instead. And her experience was visibly different from that of the other girls. Father took more time with her, and it seemed to Ruby that Mara was slower to respond to whatever it was he was doing to her. Maybe because she was only eleven and this was her first time.
Ruby and Brooke had talked about their first times, and both agreed that it was weird and scaryand not at all pleasant. Their skin tingled, their scalps crawled, and it was difficult to breathe. But both of them had shells, and they hadn't been at all sure what a first time was supposed to feel like.
They had simply copied what the other girls did, how they behaved, and they pretended to enjoy their
