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He called a taxi and made Christina sit on the wall while they waited. A couple trundled up the sidewalk toward them.
The woman asked, “Is this the right way to Coit Tower?”
Eric pointed ahead. “You’ll start seeing signs on that next block. Just keep walking uphill and following the signs.”
They thanked him and continued their trek.
A taxi pulled up to the curb and Eric gave him the name of their hotel.
By the time Christina got back to the room, her color had returned to normal and her eyes had lost their glassiness.
Was she losing it? Was the strain of this case too much for her? Too personal? He could relate to all of that.
“I want you to lie down.” He pulled the covers down on her bed. “I’ll get you some water.”
She hooked her finger around the straps of her sandals and pulled them off. She hopped onto the bed—the same bed where he’d made love to her, claimed her again as his own. The same bed where he’d discovered he had a daughter.
He ran a hand across his head while crouching before the fridge. He had all the time in the world to be mad at her for that. Now wasn’t the time.
He poured her a glass of water from the bottle and put it on the nightstand. “Drink.”
She took little sips of the water and leaned back against the pillows. “I must be in some incredible danger for him to make an appearance like that. I felt such dread when he was communicating with me.”
“I thought you said he didn’t talk to you. How was he communicating with you?”
She tapped her head. “With my mind.”
“Okay, you lost me.”
“It’s the same way those...others communicate with me.”
“The killers.”
“Yeah.”
“How come this one, I mean, why aren’t you getting any feelings from this one?”
“I’m not sure. It doesn’t always happen. I just felt the evil at the base of that tree at the crime scene for Nora.”
“Have you tried?” He stood by the window, as far from the bed as he could get, and folded his arms across his chest. “I mean really tried?”
“You know I don’t do that.” She crossed her legs at the ankles and tapped her feet together.
“But you know how. You told me one time your father tried to give you some tips, and then your mom charged in and put a stop to it all.”
“My father has imparted some bits of advice to me.”
“You never tried it out?”
“I did, not in any official capacity as an agent investigating a case, but as a silly teenager and a curious college coed.”
“And?” He’d uncrossed his arms and braced his hands on the back of a chair. The air hung heavy between them, and he held his breath so as not to disturb the energy.
Christina had stopped tapping her feet. Looking at her palms spread in her lap, she said, “It scared me.”
“Because of what you saw? The feelings?” He couldn’t imagine Christina afraid of much. Of course, she’d been afraid to tell him about Kendall.
“It’s hard to explain. It was like an onslaught of feelings. Vivi always told me for her it was like grasping at wisps of gossamer and if she tugged too hard, the feeling would go away and she’d have to start over. It was nothing like that for me. Once I opened those doors, I had a hard time slamming them shut.”
“Maybe your powers are greater than Vivi’s. Just like members of your coven are using their powers for evil, you could use yours for incredible good.”
She snorted and fell over sideways on the bed, breaking the spell. “I always got the feeling before that you thought my gift was baloney most of the time...not that you weren’t supportive because you were.”
“Maybe I’ve had a change of heart these past few days. Obviously, people believe in witchcraft enough to kill over it, to attack law enforcement. They must be fighting over something.”
Christina drew her knees to her chest in a fetal position. “I’m not ready to put myself through any of that. Let’s solve this case the good, old-fashioned way—good detective work and boots on the ground.”
“That’s what I do.” He dug his finger into his chest.
“We still need to find out why these four particular people were singled out for murder. Okay, they were all members of the same coven, but whoever is committing these murders is not going to be able to track down every member of this coven, especially if they start going into hiding like my sister did.”
“Do you think if the cops questioned the victims’ families, they would’ve revealed the coven connection of their family member?”
She answered, “Probably not to an outsider. Maybe the family members didn’t make any connection between the murder and the victim’s coven activity. The cops didn’t know the right questions to ask and hadn’t linked the other victims to the same coven.”
