He studied her I.D. for a long moment, then answered with a show of exaggerated patience. "Everybody knows about the murders, Agent Templeton. But out of respect for the families, of course we've kept our distance and our silence. Especially as you and the sheriff haven't seen fit to positively identify the victims."

Marc stopped himself from going on the defensive, though it wasn't easy. "Lab results take time," he said.

"Yes, one of my congregants was the gardener out at the Blanton place. He found the… remains."

Marc and Hollis exchanged glances, but all the sheriff said was "Information he was ordered to keep to himself."

"He came to me in confidence, Sheriff, as any troubled soul would." Butler shrugged. "But, as I said, the situation was already being discussed."

Hollis's voice was not quite light when she said, "Just as long as there are no lynch mobs forming up."

"We're God-fearing people, Agent Templeton. Even if we had some idea who this evil killer is-and I assure you we do not-we would never take it upon ourselves to hunt him, far less punish him. That is for the law, and the courts, and God to do."

It was a nice little speech. Dani wondered why she didn't believe it.

Because she was a cynic, probably.

Or maybe it was something else.

She tried to concentrate on the possible something else, not really listening as Marc asked Butler a few routine questions about whether he'd seen or heard anything suspicious during the last few weeks. Instead, against her better judgment, she realized she was listening for that voice again.

His voice.

Because with every second that passed, she became more uneasy, more uncomfortable. She was acutely aware of the urge to look back over her shoulder, behind her, but when she looked she saw nothing but the countryside she recognized.

So what was it she was feeling? Sensing?

The fine hairs on the back of her neck were standing straight up, her hands felt cold, and there was a leaden queasiness in the pit of her stomach. Yet when she looked at Butler, at her surroundings, nothing about him or them seemed responsible for what she felt.

Thunder rumbled louder now, rolling around as it did in the mountains so that it seemed to circle them, and she wondered if that was it. Could it be? She had never been as sensitive to storms as many psychics were, to the point of discomfort, but they did tend to affect-enhance, strengthen?-her normal senses.

So maybe that was all it was. Still, she knew she was trying to listen for something beyond her normal senses and honestly didn't know whether to be relieved or disappointed that she could hear no faintest hint or echo of the whisper that so terrified her.

"Dani?"

She blinked at Marc, then scrambled mentally as she realized the reverend had already turned to go back inside his church and that Marc and Hollis were both looking at her with raised brows.

"Sorry." She got back into the front passenger seat of Marc's car, hoping she hadn't missed anything important.

"Are you okay?" he asked her.

"Fine. My mind just wandered, that's all." She was still listening for that voice but at the same time was aware that what she was feeling physically was very familiar. Pressure.

Like in the dream walk. Could that be from the approaching storm?

She reached up surreptitiously to touch her nose, a little surprised to find no blood there. Because the pressure was increasing, and she had to fight the urge to move, to try to somehow get out of the way of whatever it was that was pushing at her, pressing against her.

Nothing. There's nothing. Just the storm coming. Just my imagination.

Marc looked at her a moment longer, frowning, then started the car and began to maneuver it down the long, rutted "driveway" that wound through a mile of countryside to the old storage facility.

From the backseat, Hollis said, "I hate storms. But maybe that's why. Because I've never been able to see auras before."

DANI TURNED IN her seat, noting as she did that Marc shot a quick glance at the rearview mirror so he could see the agent's face. A face that was, Dani saw, just a little strained and far more pale than was normal for her.

"I gather that wasn't the non sequitur it sounded like?" Dani said.

Hollis was looking at Dani. Or, rather, her gaze seemed to be probing the space about a foot out from Dani's body.

"No. It wasn't a non sequitur. It was… completely on topic."

"Which topic?" Marc demanded. "On the topic of monsters." Dani forced a laugh. "Who, me?"

"No." Hollis met Dani's eyes finally, her own holding a weirdly flat shine. "Dani, can you shield?"

"A little. Not much, but-"

"Do it. Now. Concentrate."

Dani obeyed without hesitation, closing her eyes and doing her best one more time to remember how she'd been taught to wrap herself in a protective blanket of her own energy. It didn't seem to be getting any easier.

Through gritted teeth, Marc said to Hollis, "What the hell do you see?"

"Something I've never seen before." Hollis's voice was low, tense. "But I believe… it's not a normal aura. It's an attack of some kind. Someone or something is trying to get at Dani. Marc-"

He didn't wait for whatever Hollis had been about to say but instantly reached over with one hand and covered both of Dani's cold and tightly clenched ones, holding on even when he felt a jolt, even when she cried out in such pain that it broke something inside him.

Without another sound, Dani went limp.

Dani looked around, puzzled for a moment because there was nothing but darkness as far as she could see, and silence, and she had the feeling she was alone here. Perhaps it should have frightened her, but oddly it did not.

She couldn't feel a floor or ground beneath her feet. She couldn't, actually, feel her feet, and when she looked down she couldn't see them, because her body just sort of dissolved into darkness.

That probably should have scared her too.

It probably should have scared her a lot.

"No, you were always more comfortable with this sort of thing than I was," Paris said as she mostly emerged out of the darkness in front of Dani.

"I'm the one who tried to run away from it," Dani pointed out, not as distracted as she should have been by the fact that Paris seemed to have a body only from the navel up.

"It was the stuff out there you were running away from, the stuff you couldn't control. People, relationships. Emotional stuff. The psychic stuff was always easier for you."

"I can't control this."

"Oh, of course you can. You always could."

"Bullshit."

"To paraphrase what you said to Marc, that'll fix things-a good, resounding bullshit."

"I didn't tell you what I said to Marc."

"Mmm. Never mind that now. Just remind yourself that you really can control this. Later, when you think about it, when it matters. Don't forget."

"What's happening later?"

"You'll need to know stuff."

"Paris-"

"It's all right, Dani. Some things are meant to happen just the way they happen. We both knew this was one of them, right? We both know that's why you really came home."

For the first time, uneasiness stirred in Dani, cold and deep. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Of course you do."

"No. I don't."

"I wasn't in your vision dream. Right from the beginning. Before you told anybody. Before you came here. Before you did anything at all to affect what you had seen. I should have been there with you, and I wasn't."

"So? It's one of the things I knew would change."