“This situation sucks all the way around,” Cassie said. “There doesn’t seem to be a solution that will get law enforcement turned onto the killer’s path and not put Emily in more danger.”
“I need you to back me up here,” Jake told Cassie. “We can’t let this continue. It’s too dangerous and it’s hurting her.”
“Jake, I’m still with you on this,” Cassie said, “but maybe we should put off telling Uncle Leo just for today. We really don’t know much about what’s happening to her except for a lot of supposition. We need to put together a much better theory if we ever expect him to understand what we’re saying.”
Emily grabbed Jake’s hand and took hold of his eyes with hers. “I’m not going to do anything dangerous. I’m only going to check out a few things today. No matter what happens or what we find out, we’ll talk to Uncle Leo tomorrow morning. We’ll even call him later this afternoon to schedule an appointment.”
“And I’m going to his house tonight for dinner,” Cassie said, “so I’ll make sure he sees us in the morning before he does anything else.”
Jake’s clenched jaw relaxed a bit, and he squeezed Emily’s hand. “Nothing can happen to you,” he said. “I can’t...” He moved to the edge of his seat and placed his other hand on top of hers.
Pain clenched Emily’s heart. His fear of losing her stemmed from the deaths of Janie and his mom, and she didn’t want him to worry. “Nothing is going to happen to me, or anyone else,” she said. “But I need your support in this. I can’t do it alone.”
“I have a meeting with Nathan in a few hours,” he said. “After I’m done with that, I’ll meet you back at my house. We’re not staying here and you’re not staying at Cassie’s house, either. You two are way too close, with owning a business together for so long, and he might know everything about Cassie. You’ll be safer with me, at my house.” He turned to Cassie. “You’d be better off staying at my house as well.”
“I’ll be fine at my house. I’m not the one hearing voices. Besides, I’ll be at Uncle Leo’s until late tonight.”
“At least come to my house after dinner,” Jake said. “I have a spare bedroom that doesn’t get much use.”
“Don’t worry about me, Jake. I have a few guns at my house and I’ve been shooting all my life. I feel pretty safe at home playing Dirty Harry.”
Emily smiled despite the seriousness of conversation.
“I don’t like it much, but if you’re sure, then I guess your gun collection can probably keep you safer than I could.” Jake looked at Emily. “While we’re on the topic of safety, he probably knows what you drive and could have followed you in the past. Your car isn’t going anywhere today.”
“We’ll leave it in her garage,” Cassie said. “I’ll drop her off at your house when we’re done this afternoon.”
“Jake, I’d rather bring it to your house to have it just in case,” Emily said. “Cassie can follow me to your house this morning and drop my car off. Then she can drive me around today.”
“We’ll stash it in the garage so it’s out of sight,” Jake said.
Bob brushed up against Emily’s legs, reminding her that he also needed a place to go. “What should we do with Bob?” she asked.
“Pack up his litter and food,” Jake said. “I’ll take him home with me now and get him set up before I go meet Nathan.”
Emily smiled at him. “Thank you, Jake.”
Cassie’s cell phone beeped with a new text message. She dug it out of her pocket. “Sorry, guys. Let me just—” Her jaw slacked.
“What is it?” Emily asked.
Cassie lifted her head and stared at Emily. “It’s Uncle Leo. They found Stephanie Price’s body.”
Emily froze and absorbed Cassie’s words. The darkness that played on the edges of her mind all morning rolled in like a thick fog. “I heard her dying,” Emily said. “I had hoped...” She had resolved not to break down in front of them, but tears leapt from her eyes and she covered her face with her hands.
Jake jumped out of his chair and sat next to her on the couch. He gathered her into his arms and she buried her head in his shoulder. Holding the back of her head, he whispered next to her ear. “You’re safe, Em. We’re going to keep you safe.” Jake tightened his hold on her.
Once again, his arms closed out everything else around her, and the darkness retreated. “Don’t let me go, Jake,” she said. “Please don’t let me go.”
“As soon as I finish this meeting with Nathan, I won’t let you out of my sight even for a second. Not until we get him out of your mind, and even then...” He moved back from her and cupped her face in his hands. “I’m not going to let anything happen to you.”
Embarrassment crept over her cheeks for breaking down in front of him, and she pulled away from him. “I’m sorry, to both of you. I should have come to you sooner. If I had, maybe Stephanie wouldn’t—”
“No, Em,” Cassie said. “Don’t start down that path. There’s nothing any of us could have done to save her. We just have to do what we can now to help the police stop him.”
Chapter Forty-eight
As soon as Cassie’s car turned into a parking spot in front of Marta’s Floral and Gift, comfort cradled Emily. In the first year after Aunt Susan’s death, Emily slowly stopped going to see Marta Mendez, and guilt gnawed at her for neglecting Aunt Susan’s best friend. Marta would forgive her, but it didn’t alter her remorse at missing out on valuable time with her.
Climbing out of the car, Cassie asked, “How is it that you’ve been keeping so many secrets from me lately?”
“What do you mean?”
“You met a guy at the party, you have a date with said guy, you have a serial killer running around in your mind, and now your aunt had a mysterious friend you never told me about. Who are you?”
Emily rolled her eyes. “Don’t you ever have something you keep to yourself, if even for a little bit?”
Cassie paused with her hand on the front door. “I’m an open book. When I do it, you know it.”
“And sometimes even when I don’t want to know about it,” Emily said, following Cassie through the door.
The store had not changed much since her last visit nine years earlier. The floral arrangements had been updated with the times, and there were many more shelves of gifts than Emily remembered, but the layout and décor of the store remained the same.
One of the employees, with a nametag that read Belinda, greeted them. Emily opened her mouth to speak when Marta bounced down the main aisle in their direction. Hellos and hugs were exchanged, and Emily introduced Cassie. Marta gushed about how much Emily had changed since they last saw each other. Marta let Belinda know not to disturb her, and waved for them to follow her.
The back of the store contained a large storage room, an employee break room, the bathrooms, and Marta’s warm and welcoming office, which looked more like a living room than a place to work. Her desk was tucked away in a corner and two pale yellow couches faced each other around a coffee table.
In the middle of the coffee table was the familiar sight of a plate of cookies and two short glasses of cold milk. Marta lifted the plate to them. “Emily, I made your favorite. Chunky chocolate chip. Cassie, that means you must be oatmeal raisin with small pecan pieces, since no one else claimed those today.”
Cassie’s eyes widened and she snatched a cookie off the plate. “How do you know what kind of cookies I like? It’s the most obscure cookie ever, and nobody likes oatmeal raisin but me.”
Emily grinned like a child. “Marta knows these things.” She bit into her cookie, and warm chocolate melted in her mouth, taking her back in time to her childhood.
With a mouthful of cookie, Cassie said, “So you knew where I could get the best cookies ever, and you never bothered to bring me here?”
Marta flashed a motherly smile. “Cassie, we’re both a little surprised at Emily right now. You could say I suffer from missing her terribly over the past nine years, so I’ve got just
a bit more of a gripe than you.”
Emily’s remorse came back tenfold. “I’m so sorry, Marta. Nothing I can say would ever make up for not coming to see you.”
Marta reached across the table and touched the top of Emily’s hand. “I know you’re sorry, and I know you didn’t come for so long because I reminded you of Susan. You’re forgiven.” She shifted on the couch. “Now, I see you’ve met a man. He looks very good on you, and you must keep him around. Susan would have been delighted.”
“All this psychic stuff is starting to freak me out,” Cassie said. “But these cookies are so darn good that I think I can move past it.”
“I will bring him to meet you really soon, I promise.” Emily swallowed hard. They needed to move onto the reason for their visit. “Marta, I need your help. With Aunt Susan gone, I don’t know where else to turn.”
Marta lowered her glasses from the top of her shiny, silver hair down to the bridge of her nose. “Come over here. Let me take a look at you.”
Emily moved next to Marta on the couch. She felt like she was at the doctor’s office while Marta examined her, pushing on various parts of her face, neck, and the back of her head. As a child, when she first met Marta, she found her ways odd, but soon learned to appreciate her methods.
Marta took Emily’s hand in hers and stroked the back of her hand. “I want you to close your eyes,” she said. “Push all thoughts out of your mind, just like Susan taught you.”
Emily lowered her eyelids and started the difficult task of removing all thoughts and emotions. Just as the last thought escaped her mind, Marta asked, “What do you feel? What’s left in your mind?”
One word came to Emily’s lips, and she said it without thought. “Evil.”
Marta let go of her hand and jumped back on the couch.
Emily’s eyes flew open. “What is it?”
“You’re lost, Emily,” Marta said, with sadness in her voice. “You are so lost. How did this darkness get into your mind?”
Emily relayed the story to Marta of everything that had happened. She did her best not to leave out a single detail. Forgetting even one thing could be the difference between getting the help she needed and living with the darkness forever.
“I know what I did was wrong,” Emily said, after she finished her story. “At the time I truly believed it was the right thing to do.”
“He tricked you,” Marta said. “He wanted you to know the pain of the women, to make you think you could help them and get you to open your mind up to him. He’s quite pleased with his success.”
“Sorry to interrupt,” Cassie said. “How did he get to Emily through these women in the first place?”
“You don’t know?” Marta asked, with genuine surprise. When both women shook their head, she asked, “Did Susan ever tell you about conduits?”
“Not that I remember,” Emily said. “At least it doesn’t sound familiar to me.”
“I don’t know why she didn’t tell you,” Marta said, “but I guess I should have also told you. Conduits are very important to what we do. We have gifts we can use, but without a conduit, our abilities are not that strong. A conduit is gifted in their own way. When they’re near someone like us, they channel the energy around them and send it to us, strengthening our abilities. It works the opposite way, too. A conduit can channel our abilities and send them out into the world.”
Emily connected the dots. “So the women he killed were all conduits that he used to reach out to me?”
Marta nodded. “There are far more conduits than there are psychics in the world, but just as psychics have varying degrees of abilities, so do conduits. Some conduits are stronger than others. All psychics have a conduit they’re connected to, whether they know it or not. Conduits make our abilities so much stronger. They are someone we are very close to, someone we could never live without. If we were to lose them, our gifts would suffer greatly. My sister is my conduit.”
Emily turned to Cassie, her eyes wide. “You’re my conduit,” she said. Everything from the past several days, and from her life with Cassie, suddenly made sense.
Cassie’s lips curled into a lopsided smile. “You mean I’m special, too?”
Marta laughed at Cassie’s excitement. “Of course you’re special, Cassie. Without you, Emily would not be as powerful of a psychic. You make her so much stronger because your conduit abilities are exceptionally strong. I felt them before you ever entered the store.”
Cassie’s smile grew and she looked at Emily. “I’m special, too,” she said.
“I always felt like Cassie filled a void inside of me,” Emily said.
“That’s why,” Marta said. “Because she’s your conduit. You belong together and nothing will ever break the bond you share.”
“It’s strange,” Cassie said, “but I think I always knew all of this. The effect Emily has on me when I’m around her can’t be explained. Why would she affect me if I’m the conduit in this friendship?”
“Because Emily is a conduit as well.”
Cassie and Emily exchanged a surprised look. “Is that even possible?” Cassie asked.
“Susan and I never thought it was, until she brought Emily to me for the first time.” Marta looked at Emily. “We didn’t want to tell you until you were older and had a better grip on your abilities. That’s why you are so connected with that new man in your life. You’re his conduit, and he’s the strength you always needed to explore your abilities. Together, there is so much you can do.”
Emily’s heart warmed at the thought, but it was short lived. “Is this why the killer is having such an easy time getting into my mind? Because I’m both?”
“Yes,” Marta said. “There is so much you still have to learn, Emily. Because you stopped coming here for so long, your abilities are stunted. Even though what you’re capable of is only beginning to surface, because your gifts aren’t fully developed it makes you more susceptible to him, as well as others that only seek to do wrong.”
The thought that there might be others like the killer terrified Emily, but it also reminded her of what her mom said at her last visit. “Marta, my mom said something to me. It’s like she knows what’s happening to me, but I never told her. Is she like me?”
“Your mom does possess some gifts, but only to a certain degree. She denied her gifts when she became pregnant with you. See, your father is also psychic, and he has conduits in his family. That’s the only reason why you’re both. Your mom knew that between her, your father, his family, and Susan, you would be born with incredible talents. She was always jealous of that, so she pushed everything aside in hopes of not letting you become more powerful than her.”
Emily’s eyes dampened. She never knew that her mom had the same abilities, or that she was jealous of Emily. Marta’s words explained so much of her life, but left her with so many questions, about her mom as well as her dad. Why would he leave her alone with her mom, knowing how her mom would treat her because of her gifts?
“Emily, this isn’t the time to talk about family,” Marta said. “I promise, one day we will discuss it. But you have much more important things to focus on now.”
The darkness surged in Emily’s mind, reminding her of the reason for her visit. She pushed aside the thoughts of her family. “One of the women who died has an aunt that is psychic. The other has a best friend who is. Were they conduits for these psychics?”
“Yes, that’s correct,” Marta said. “I hate to ask, because I don’t really want to know, but did they die in a bad manner?”
“They were tortured quite severely,” Cassie said.
“He used their pain and their fear to increase their abilities and his,” Marta said. She shook her head like a mother ashamed of her child’s behavior. “He’s abusing his gift terribly.”
“Why is he doing this?” Emily asked.
“He loves you. At least he believes he does. He wants to bring you to him through these conduits so you can be together.”
Emily??
?s insides pulled away from her skin and the nausea returned. He killed the women to get to her, making her responsible for their deaths. The darkness pushed through her mind, and Stephanie Price’s screams echoed in her ears.
“It’s not your fault, Emily,” Marta said, reading her emotions once again. “Don’t fall into that cyclone of guilt and let him gain control over you. I know it’s difficult, but you have to retain control of your mind. The more power he has, the more you will lose yourself to him, and the easier it will be for him to get to you.”
Emily thought about Jake getting into her mind the night they met and the way she reacted to it. When she saw Uncle Leo’s memories of the crime scene, she had worried about her abilities physically affecting him, the way the killer affected her. “Marta, I’ve always been able to pick up on thoughts of people and even see their memories. Is that different than this killer getting into my mind?”
“What you can do is something special,” Marta said. “Not a lot of psychics can do that, but you’re just picking up on thoughts, feelings, and memories, and you aren’t hurting anyone. What he’s doing to you is much different. He tapped into your mind and connected with you psychically so that he’s a part of you and you’re a part of him.”
“Can this connection affect me physically?” Emily asked.
“Absolutely. The longer he stays in your mind, the more energy he drains from your body and soul. Have you been ill?”
“Quite a bit,” Emily said. “The first time it happened, I thought I had food poisoning. I ran a fever, threw up several times, and lost my strength. My body always feels weak now, and I get terrible headaches.”
“Those symptoms are just the beginning of what this connection will do to you. By being in your mind, he’s stripping away part of you. He might also be affected by the connection, but it won’t be anything near what you’re going through. Your physical symptoms will get much worse unless he is stopped.”
“How do we stop him?” Cassie asked. “Is there some sort of magical, mystical way to kick him out of Emily’s mind?”