She blinked. “What?”

“Think about it. You saw a series of images, of symbols. You saw a journey culminating in—what?”

“Death. My death.”

Leigh didn’t seem surprised. “It’s quite likely that was purely symbolic. In visions, the death of the seer often represents a sudden and drastic change in one’s life. A crossroads where a choice must be made. The end of a way of life, of a way of thinking.”

That didn’t reassure Sarah terribly since she had some idea of what would happen if the other side got their hands on her.

The end of a way of life, indeed.

“All right. But you said—it was my future as I decided it would be?”

“Sarah, even the best and strongest of psychics must see through intensely subjective eyes. You might be objective when seeing someone else’s future but never when it’s your own. You know yourself, know your thoughts and wishes and hopes and dreams, and everything you see is filtered through that knowledge even if only subconsciously. So when your mind leaps through time to peek at the future, it’s with the total awareness of your own nature.”

“I still don’t…”

“All right. Think about Tucker. Do you really believe that you accepted him and his help because destiny insisted you should? Or had your mind looked ahead, seen him, known how it was in your nature to respond to him—and offered you a future possibility in which you did just that?”

Sarah thought about that for a long time, turning it over in her mind. She was hardly aware of Leigh’s steady gaze, or of absently eating two more crackers and finishing her coffee.

Finally, she said slowly, “That’s…a lot more complex than I thought it was. And confusing. How can I trust any of what I see if it’s all so subjective? What’s the good of being able to see the future if there are so many possible interpretations of what I see?”

Leigh smiled faintly. “Did you really think this was a good thing?”

Sarah gazed into those old, old eyes and slowly shook her head. “No. No, I didn’t.”

“It’s neither good nor bad,” Leigh told her. “It’s just another sense, like sight or hearing; your eyes and your ears can be fooled. So can this. You can mistake what you see or hear; you can mistake what this sense tells you as well. You can strain your eyes in bad light or too much light, or hurt your ears listening to loud noises; you can injure this sense too.”

“How?”

“By overworking it. By misusing it. By not allowing it the time and quiet to develop properly.”

Sarah heard a warning and shook her head. “I don’t have time. You know that.”

“You have to find Tucker.”

“Yes.”

“He’s alive,” Leigh said.

“Yes. But they have him.” It was the first time that the other side had been mentioned, and Sarah watched Leigh intently to judge her reaction.

She wasn’t sure what that reaction was. Those old eyes met hers squarely, but the quiet that lay behind them gave nothing away.

“They, Sarah?”

“Don’t pretend you don’t know who I’m talking about.”

“All right. I won’t. And I won’t pretend that I believe you can confront them on your own. That won’t get Tucker away from them. They’ll just kill him and take you.”

Sarah drew a breath. “Who are they?”

“I don’t know.”

“Don’t you?” Tentatively, Sarah tried to reach in past those quiet dark eyes.

Without a word aloud, Leigh let her in.

The pain was nearest the surface and came first, the awful, tearing pain of friends and loved ones lost, of tragedy and failure. It was dark and vast, an emptiness that ached and would never be filled. Then the emotional struggle of being different, the sense of isolation, the shame and loneliness. The battle for understanding, for control. For acceptance.

The years were there, many more years than Sarah had imagined, and they were filled with conflict and secrets and commitment. People coming here briefly with desperate faces and frightened eyes, and then passing on out of her hands. Other people coming here and talking with quiet courage and utter dedication. Plans discussed, arrangements made. Clandestine lines of communication formed and broken and altered.

And finally, deep, deep inside, there were the shadows, lurking like the worst nightmare her mind could conjure. They loomed and flitted and filled all the dark corners. They brought terror with them and left destruction as they passed, and they were many, so many…

Slowly, Sarah opened her eyes. She felt utterly exhausted with the effort of looking inside Leigh’s mind and with the trauma of what she had found there. “My God.”

“That’s all we see,” Leigh said. “Shadows. Even the strongest psychics we know have been unable to learn anything about them, not who they are, or where they’re based, or what’s behind their actions. We don’t know how they’re able to block us, but somehow they can—possibly by using the psychics they’ve already taken. But we can sense that shadowy part of them, and sometimes it helps us identify them; if you come into physical contact with one, you’ll see or sense the shadows. But as you’ve already found out, they also use tools, other psychics and ordinary people, and those are not so easy to identify.

“And touching them is usually not a very good idea.” Leigh’s smile was twisted. “By that point, it tends to be too late to escape them.”

Sarah drew a deep breath. She understood, now, where the darkness inside Leigh Munroe came from. “You keep saying ‘we.’ Who are you talking about?”

“You aren’t alone, Sarah. We aren’t alone. There are people, psychics and nonpsychics, who are trying very hard to find a way to fight and defeat the other side.” She shook her head slightly, and her voice gentled. “We’ll talk about that. But right now, you need to rest.”

“I can’t rest. Tucker—”

“Sarah, you can’t help Tucker if you’re exhausted. You need to sleep, for a few hours at least, and then you need to eat. Then we’ll talk about what to do.”

Bitterly, Sarah said, “I obviously can’t do very much at all if two minutes of effort costs me this much.” She was almost swaying with weariness.

“Those two minutes were rather remarkable, if you only knew.” Leigh came over to take her arm and urge her gently to her feet. “Come on. I have a very comfortable bed upstairs.”

Sarah didn’t want to go to sleep. She needed to find Tucker. But just getting to her feet, even with Leigh’s help, was almost more than she could manage, and the stairs left her weak and shaking.

She was asleep even before Leigh could cover her with a blanket.

Leigh stood gazing down at her sleeping guest for a long moment, then went slowly downstairs, frowning. She gathered the tray from the living room and took it to the kitchen. A glance at the clock made her frown deepen, and she reached for the phone on the breakfast bar. The number she punched in was a familiar one.

“Hello.”

“It’s Leigh. She’s here.”

“At last. Were we right?”

“She looked into my mind as if through an open door, all the way to the center. And she has no idea what she did. She may well be the one we’ve been waiting for.”

“Good. I’ll send them immediately.”

“Tell them to hurry. She won’t sleep long.”

The first thing Tucker was aware of was a pounding headache. Next came the thought that someone had filled his mouth and ears with cotton. He was awake yet couldn’t seem to get his eyes open or hear anything at all, even his own breathing. He thought he was lying on his side on something marginally softer than the floor, and he had the sense of a lot of space around him.

And someone was watching him.

Playing possum seemed like a good idea, at least until his head stopped pounding and he could think clearly. In any case, pretending he couldn’t move wasn’t a problem. He couldn’t move. He didn’t think he was tied up, but his body felt cold and leaden. Pretending he was still asleep was harder; the temptation to try to look around and find out where he was was almost overpowering.