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Talia sighed. “As we know and continue to prove, psychic-land is populated with frauds, fakes, cons, and the sadly deluded.”
“Yes.”
There was a long silence before Talia spoke again. “Are you going to the police with what you sensed in that asylum?”
“No, of course not.” Pallas suppressed a shudder. “Not yet, at anyrate. We tried that in Saltwood. It did not end well. The bottom line here is that I know something happened in the asylum, and the man I’m supposed to meet with in an hour wants to talk about it and what he thinks he witnessed in the sleep clinic. There’s something in this, Talia. Something important.”
“I agree,” Talia said finally. “We can’t ignore the sleep clinic angle, but there may be a perfectly logical explanation for what Drake thinks happened during that sleep study. Maybe they gave him some medication. People who take sleep meds often report short-term amnesia. Others have bizarre dreams. Some hallucinate. I assume you’ve done some initial fact-checking?”
“Yes, but it wasn’t helpful.”
“You mean Drake’s story doesn’t hold up to close scrutiny?”
“Not as well as I would have liked,” Pallas admitted. “On the way back from the asylum I stopped at the public library and went through the files of theCarnelian Gazettefor the past couple of months. I found no record of a suspicious death at the asylum or the Carnelian Sleep Institute, and no one seems to have gone missing during that time. No bodies were discovered.”
“If two people had died by violence it would have been in the news,” Talia said. “Carnelian is a relatively small town.”
“A smallcollegetown,” Pallas said quickly. “That means a highly transient student population. Visiting lecturers. Prospective students and their parents probably come here year-round to check out the campus. Strangers disappearing might not have been noticed.”
“I don’t know,” Talia said. “Feels like a rabbit hole. I wish Amelia was available. I’d like her perspective.”
“Is she still in Lucent Springs?”
“Yes. She left yesterday. There’s no cell coverage out there in the desert. She’ll be back in a couple of days.”
“I wish she wouldn’t get these sudden urges to go back to that damned hotel on her own. I know there’s no one around and it’s boarded up, but it’s so isolated out there in the desert. Just thinking about that horrible place gives me nightmares.”
“Lucent Springs gives all of us nightmares,” Talia said. “But you know how it is for Amelia. This isn’t the first time she’s awakened in the middle of the night and announced that she has to go back to the hotel and take some more photos.”
“She’s so sure that one of these days she’ll look through the lens of her camera and see something important. Something that will tell us who is responsible for what happened to us. She’s obsessed, Talia.”
“Who among us isn’t? Amelia will be all right. It’s not her first trip to Lucent Springs alone. Right now we need to make a decision about the Carnelian situation.”
Pallas did not take her eyes off the drawing in the sketchbook. Why snakes? There was always a reason for the imagery her intuition dictated when she was in the trance. The fact that it was a picture of snakes cascading down the stairs instead of something else—a waterfall or flames or tentacles—was important.
She needed context.
“Maybe this is a rabbit hole of a case,” she said, “but it warrants some preliminary investigation. I’ve got a feeling this story is real, and it fits the podcast brand.”
“How?”
“I told you, there’s a lost night involved. Okay, it all happened at a sleep clinic, so technically it’s not entirely lost. There will be some records. What matters is that Drake is convinced a woman was murdered at the Institute and that he saw some evidence of it but his memories are jumbled and blurred.”
“Like ours were after Lucent Springs,” Talia said quietly.
“Yes.”
Talia went silent for a moment. “All right. You’re the one on the scene. It’s your call. How do you plan to investigate?”
“The usual way—one step at a time. I’ll start by conducting a full interview with Drake. I want to see whatever it is he found in the asylum that makes him think someone was murdered. After that, assuming I believe him, I’ll get some more information. I need to verify that he really did spend a night in the sleep clinic and if there was another patient there on the same night.”
“That last bit might not be so easy,” Talia warned. “There are a bunch of laws that protect patient confidentiality. You can’t just walk into the clinic and ask if Drake was undergoing a sleep study on the night in question, let alone if there was another patient on the same night.”
“I’ll figure it out.”
“Okay, you’ve made the decision to interview Drake. Please tell me you’ll take precautions.”
“Of course. We agreed to meet on neutral ground, a tavern at the end of the main street. I can see it from my window. It’s only a few blocks away from the campus. It will be crowded.”
