Out of Body

Without intending to, she had confirmed his fears. She intended to go searching for a killer—again. And if she could sustain the visible wounds she already had, was it so unreasonable for him to be scared sick for her life?

He thought about the corpse of Shirley Cooper.

Winnie squealed. He had squeezed her too tightly.

“Don’t worry,” Marley said, sounding softer than he’d heard her before. “I know what I’m doing.”

A glance at her face didn’t reassure him. “You want to believe that,” he said. “I wish I could.” She wasn’t convincing herself and he knew he was right to be skeptical.

The dog wiggled and he set her down.

And he gathered himself to come up with more persuasive arguments for Marley.

She wasn’t looking at him. Or listening to him. He frowned, watching her face change. All expression smoothed away and her eyes didn’t appear to see anything. He wasn’t sure she even remembered he was there.

Her hands rose, fingers extended, and Marley stood up. The focus in her eyes completely dulled. How small and shaky she seemed.

Marley had not started what was happening. Of course he could be wrong, but he thought she would have preferred to wait for him to leave first.

Gray wanted to take her in his arms, to shake her and plead for her to let go of whatever had started to lead her away.

Faintly, he heard a hum and inside the hum, a rustling. The rustling had patterns and he strained to understand what they might mean.

Marley stood in front of her workbench. Her hands came together, the fingertips steepled, and she touched the elaborate roof of an old red dollhouse on the bench. Chinese-looking and like nothing he’d seen before. Three stories with silhouettes of people behind shaded windows and set in what was left of a garden surrounded by a stone wall. It had a corner door, like a shop, with a window on either side. What looked like baked goods were heaped there.

He glanced quickly at the dog who stood beside Marley’s chair, absolutely still, watching and waiting.

Backward Marley moved, making motions as if pulling against the little house, or pulling something from it. He stared. The gap between the house and Marley widened, but there was nothing connecting her to it that he could see.

She sat in her chair again, her feet flat on the floor, her hands on the arms. And Winnie curled herself over Marley’s feet, and closed her eyes.

Gray cast about, afraid to move, afraid not to move. “Marley,” he said quietly. “Marley?”

Her eyelids slid shut, but her face became rigid. As if she was wide-awake and tense inside a sleeping body. Gray saw her breathing grow shallow and rapid.

He bent over her. She hardly breathed at all. Automatically he lifted her into his arms. Sharp currents ran through his body.

“You must not interfere.”

Gray looked over his shoulder. In the multicolored haze suspended over the house, a wraithlike series of shapes coalesced into a dim face. He screwed up his eyes, strained to see. Gray-streaked dark hair. Sharp features, he thought.

The pattern of a voice rose out of that rustling, clear and demanding. It came from the direction of the workbench and the hovering face.

Gray held Marley tighter, gritted his teeth at the battering of sensation passing to him from Marley.

He sat down with her on his lap and stared ahead. Like the still-sleeping dog, he waited. Gray waited because he felt he must. At least Marley kept breathing faintly, but she was limp. He was afraid, but not for himself. He wanted to know more about whatever was happening around him.

The rustle continued.

His attention rose to the ceiling above the house. The colors there glowed, green, blue, pink.

They throbbed and he heard the sounds take shape again.

“She will live or she will die. She is uniquely gifted. You must only wait and be glad for your own emergence. Be ready to seize your own talents.”

This time the words definitely came from the ethereal being.

Chapter 25

Marley’s flesh quivered.

She had closed her eyes, but now she opened them and barely held back a scream. Hurtling through spaces too fast to grasp any one image, light and texture changed as she passed.

Vibrations buffeted her.

She spun around and around, then rotated head over heels.

Through an empty, dark-paneled room in an instant.

Into a pale chamber echoing with the Ushers’ voices. We had to take you. We could not wait. You have failed each time. They need your help.

“What do you want me to do? Where are Liza and Amber?” Each word felt thrust back into her throat where it faded away.

A corridor grew narrower as she shot toward an open door. Then she burst through.

Sunlight shone on a woman’s face, a woman with dark hair—and a blindfold. Marley could tell it was Liza Soaper.

Marley started to call out to her. Too late. In a crushing collision, she passed inside Liza’s seated body. This time there was no doubt what had happened. Marley was in a tight, clamoring place where she stared out at blackness, then down, past a narrow gap, at a stone floor. She looked left as far as she could, then right. Nearby was a wooden furniture leg. A table leg? Baseboards beneath cabinets. A white enamel door.

Marley was seeing through Liza’s eyes, out of a small opening at the bottom of the blindfold.

She must find out where this was. Until she did she couldn’t change anything.

“Why are you doing this to me?”

Startled by the loud voice, its vibration, Marley blinked. Liza had spoken.

“You were getting above yourself,” a man said in an unremarkable voice. “You’re very sexy, but you know that.”

Marley felt fear emanating from Liza.

“Please let me go.”

The man laughed. “So you can turn me in to the police? Now, Liza, you know better than that.”

“I thought I was coming here to talk about my career,” Liza said. “I haven’t been here long enough to be missed yet. If I go now I’ll be quiet and no one will ever know a thing about this.”

The man sniggered. “You’ll get out of here how and when I decide. But you’re here to talk about your career. You’ve hit that glass ceiling, baby. Time to get out of the way and make room for people with more talent.”

Marley felt Liza’s confusion. And she had her own questions that didn’t produce sensible answers. If Liza had only been missing a short time like she’d just said, then…

Time and events had changed.

Panic set in. Marley understood. For some reason she had gone back in time to the beginning of all this, when Liza first disappeared. This had happened just after her abduction.

Liza jerked to her feet. She struggled. “Get your hands off me. Don’t touch me like that.”

Helpless, Marley tossed with Liza’s emotions. The sliver of vision beneath the blindfold moved, twisted. Liza scuffed forward. Still the floor was white, but Marley watched the tiles pass until Liza stopped again and a door opened. They moved into a room where brown paper packages were tied shut with string and pressed tightly together on a bottom shelf.

Another door opened and while Liza gave muffled shrieks, Marley fought against closing her eyes while a steep wooden staircase tumbled away beneath them.