Psychic Read online

  “I wish it didn’t bother you,” he said. She ran the sink to wash her hands, then stepped away, dressing. “You really are beautiful.”

  “Modesty,” she said.

  “I get it.”

  “I’m going to go put the candles away,” she said. “Don’t wash that. Let it sit until tonight.”

  He agreed wordlessly, hands rubbing together under the water.

  She gathered up the candles in a box and went back downstairs. Jason opened the front door for her.

  “Morning.”

  “Morning.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “Putting some stuff away.”

  Jason peered.

  “What stuff?”

  “Candles.”

  She went out to the Cruiser and started unloading the candles.

  “What did you need candles for?” he asked, teasing.

  She looked at him. Continued to pack candles into the cabinet. His face changed.

  “What did you do?”

  “What needed to be done,” Samantha said. He pulled himself up into the Cruiser next to her.

  “No. No. Tell me you two idiots didn’t…”

  She pushed the drawer closed. Sam, upstairs, was packing. She never understood why he unpacked as much as he did, but he was packing and working through the same muddle of reactions she was. Jason pulled her out of the Cruiser.

  “No. Dammit, Sam. You two were happy. Goofy happy.”

  “I had to,” Samantha said. “We had to.”

  “You know the last time I’ve seen him happy like that? Never. Damn, I’ve never been happy like that. And you smiled, Sam. You smiled all the time, when you weren’t paying attention. Why couldn’t you just leave it alone?”

  “How did you know?” Samantha asked. His jaw dropped, and he spread his arms.

  “You’re crying.”

  “Am I?”

  She put her fingers to her face, finding them wet.

  “Why? Why would you screw that up?”

  “It was the only way to know if Brandt snagged him with a trap door in his spell.”

  Jason rolled his head back and made a strangled, guttural noise.

  “So what? I mean, we run around killing stuff. Not because it ever did anything to us, no, because it’s just what we do. We’re hunting demons. We’re hiding from demons. You’re buying potions and threatening people. What’s the point? Sam? Why are we doing it, if you and Sam are going to throw away… If you’re going to throw it away, just to keep doing what we do. Let Brandt possess him. End the world. Hell, I don’t care, some days. Just… Why don’t you two get to be happy for a little while?”

  Samantha pushed the tears away, glancing up at Sam in the window. She wondered how much of the meaning he was getting.

  “We were. And now we go back to… normal.”

  “This is Carter talking, isn’t it? This is him raining on your parade.”

  “You did know.”

  “You can’t keep letting him run your life.”

  “Does it look like I am?”

  “The guy’s a douche. He got you to give up any hope of a real relationship with Sam because he doesn’t like someone else being more important than him.”

  “He hosted my bridal shower when I got engaged,” Samantha said. “He’s a prick and he’s a tool and I’ll never argue his merits to anyone who says they hate him. I know he’s a manipulative bastard. But you’re wrong if you think it’s because he’s jealous. Jealous would mean he’s thinking about his relationship with someone else. He told me I had to re-bond Sam to protect him, and he was right. I knew it before he said it.”

  “You two are freaking idiots,” Jason said.

  He spun, finding Sam visible in one of the upstairs windows. He pointed.

  “I’m coming for you next,” he said, dashing into the house. Samantha went and lay down in the back seat of the Cruiser, wallowing in despair and delight at how clearly she could feel Sam’s reactions to Jason’s lecture, and the subsequent fight that took place between them. Dark couldn’t hide in him, like this. Not from her.

  She wrapped her arms around her shoulders. She would sleep in a chair tonight.

  <><><>

  There was a hallway. There was a door. He went through the door like it wasn’t there, his stomach only giving a twinge to remind him that going through doors wasn’t supposed to be possible. The room was dim, dawn or dusk, perhaps, with curtains drawn. A hotel room. Nicer than the branded ones where they stayed, but older.

  There was the sucking intake of breath through a nose, and a thump, and the light in the room adjusted, mimicking his eyes adjusting to the light, and he saw himself thump into the wall again with Samantha.

  He tried to pull away from the vision, to not see something that was going to happen to him, but the vision had a grip on him that he couldn’t slip.

  Their kiss broke, and he watched as some future version of himself pulled Samantha’s shirt off over her head. Her mouth found his again as soon as he pulled it clear, throwing it somewhere the watching Sam couldn’t see. He had never really experienced one of their kisses in detail like this before. He knew the first-person version of it well enough, the black well of exchange of feeling, everything live-wire reaction, but the sound of quick breathing, the slick noise of mouth against mouth, the intimate noises they both made to express want, these were new.

  Overwhelming.

  He tried to pull away from the vision again, but couldn’t do it. He couldn’t even find the thread of contact to the Samantha that was in his time, he was so distracted by this one.

  The Sam in the vision kissed Samantha’s neck, pulling her head back and away, and she twisted so that she could unbutton his shirt. She pulled the shirt out of his pants and pulled it down his shoulders, forcing one arm back to get the sleeve off, then he crushed her against the wall, flinging his other arm behind him as the shirt tangled and finally came free.

  He picked her up by the thighs so that her shoulders were even with his, and kissed her hard, deep, then kissed the spot where her jaw met her neck with an open mouth.

  Samantha blinked, looking over at Sam as he watched, then winked at him. Her eyes closed again, and Sam pushed off of the wall, carrying her over to the bed.

  There was a pounding on the door as Sam desperately tried to get out of the vision. Jason yelled something, but there was too much going on for Sam to catch it. There was a solid thud, then another, and the door flew open as the doorjamb flew free of the wall. Jason fell into the room,

  and Sam found himself sitting in the front seat of the Cruiser. His pulse raced. He looked back at Samantha, feeling guilty for reasons he wasn’t sure were his fault and found her watching him in amused confusion.

  “This is going to be interesting,” she said.

  <><><>

  They sat in the microfilm library in a small town in Illinois.

  “I did not miss this,” Jason said.

  “Well, maybe if we do it right this time, we won’t have to come back again in six years,” Sam said.

  “Every six years,” Samantha said, peering at a news article.

  “Different towns every time, same distance apart,” Sam said. “No telling how far back it goes, because the records aren’t digital after a while, and before that, they don’t even exist.”

  “How far do you have proof?” Samantha asked.

  “Fifty-seven,” Jason said. He rubbed his eyes. “And there’s no point, looking for the records. It’s just reading old newspapers and hoping we get lucky.”

  “Nothing else to do, either,” Sam said. “After the three of them, there’s no chance we’re going to catch a break and stop it from happening again.”

  Samantha put her feet up on the table.

  “Okay. So tell it all to me again. You’ve got to be leaving out something.”

  “Not much to tell. Just what I said before. Three couples. Three towns. The last one is always near Chicago. Sometimes they’re real coupl
es. Sometimes they’re friends or acquaintances. Sometimes they’ve never met before. They find a hotel somewhere, hole up in it, and, after a lot of sex, they die of dehydration or something else related to just not taking care of themselves.”

  “They just lie in bed together until they die,” Samantha said.

  “That’s it,” Jason said. “Once, the girl was diabetic. She died of low blood sugar and he died eighteen hours later. No one mentioned whether he kept having sex with her after she died.”

  “Jason,” Sam said.

  “Might be relevant,” Jason said, “with the complete lack of leads we’ve got now.”

  “Could be some kind of old curse,” Samantha said.

  “Every six years?” Sam asked.

  “Someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing slings together enough potent stuff, sure. I believe it could happen like that. The pattern sort of goes with that.”

  “Brain control,” Jason said.

  “Over more than seventy years?” Sam asked.

  “Could be a mother-daughter gig,” Jason said.

  “Why?”

  “Why not?”

  Sam sighed.

  “We have seen worse with less motivation.”

  “So, the first couple is dead. Where is the second one going to be?” Samantha asked, returning to her viewer.

  “There are two possible regions, about a dozen little towns. We’re in the middle of the first region. We’ve got a couple of days before the second couple should go missing.”

  “So we’re looking for some random couple, whether or not they know each other, to turn up missing, and then we have, what, three or four days to find them before they die,” Jason said. “Perfect.”

  “Simon is watching the missing person’s reports,” Sam said. “And we’re here faster than we were last time.”

  “Even if we do find them, we aren’t going to know what we’re up against,” Jason said. Sam turned back to the old newspapers.

  “That’s why we’re reading.”

  Jason sighed.

  “I hate reading.”

  Samantha snorted.

  “I could get through this a lot faster if they weren’t on microfilm,” she said.

  “Duh,” Jason said.

  “No, she can read stuff that she brings across with her,” Sam said. “She could get through all of the papers they’ve got here in a few seconds, if they were on paper.”

  “Damn microfilm,” Jason said. Sam laughed. “At least it’s not the worst way in the world to go, right?”

  “Dehydration? I don’t know,” Sam said.

  “No. They screw to death,” Jason said.

  “Awesome,” Sam said.

  “No, I’m serious. Maybe they die happy.”

  “I’m not sure that’s helping,” Sam said.

  “What? You think I’m wrong?”

  “I didn’t say that. I’m just sure none of them got up this morning hoping they’d be happily dead by next week.”

  “Well, nobody thinks that, but maybe they should.”

  “Do you want to die in a hotel room with a stranger?” Sam asked.

  “After three solid days of sex? Damn. I don’t know. Wouldn’t Brandt be pissed?”

  “He only has sex with strangers,” Samantha said.

  “That’s only mostly true,” Jason said. “Though I probably wouldn’t make it three days with Kara. I’d die of exhaustion, way before that.”

  “TMI,” Sam said.

  “You started it.”

  “Did I?”

  “Yes.”

  “You were the one who said they were screwing to death.”

  “You were the one who asked if I’d volunteer.”

  “Touché.”

  Jason grinned.

  “You guys want some pizza?”

  “I don’t think they’ll let us eat it here,” Sam said.

  “Yeah. I’m thinking we call it a day here and go see if we can find anything at the room where the first couple died. Pick up pizza on the way.”

  Samantha sighed, her machine clicking as she changed rolls of film.

  “We just got here.”

  “Like two hours ago.”

  “And you’re already ready to give up?”

  “We should try to get into the first hotel room,” Sam said. “Before someone cleans it out completely.”

  “See?” Jason asked.

  “Small town newspapers are interesting,” Samantha said. Jason looked at her and dropped his head to one side.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  “No, seriously. They write about the weirdest stuff. I’m reading an article about a wedding ceremony that actually lists the songs in the processional.”

  “And why are you reading it?” Jason asked. “It isn’t about dead people.”

  “But it could reference deceased relatives that they wish had been there,” Samantha said. “It actually does talk about the bride’s grandmother, but all of our couples were younger, right?”

  “Between twenty-four and thirty,” Sam said.

  “So,” Jason said. “Pizza?”

  Sam sat back in his chair and folded his hands behind his head.

  “Yeah, I guess I’m in.”

  “That makes two-to-one,” Samantha said, cranking to the next page. “I’ll wrap up this article and get it put away.”

  “Tiebreaker vote is good,” Jason said.

  “We do fight less than we used to,” Sam said.

  “No you don’t,” Samantha said. Jason grinned at Sam.

  “She’s a sore loser,” he said.

  “Not really, but if you’d prefer being right, I can take it out on you in training tonight,” she said.

  “I’d like to see you try,” Jason said.

  “Oh, look who’s gotten too big for his shorts,” Samantha said. “Just because he can bend time.”

  “I’m fast,” Jason said. “I’m super-fast. I’m Batman.”

  Sam snorted.

  “The Flash was the fast one,” he said.

  “What, the loser in tights?”

  “Various portrayals of Batman have had him in tights,” Sam said.

  “I rest my case. They’re all losers in tights,” Jason said. “That’s okay. I like Spiderman best, anyway.”

  “Also wore tights.”

  “He wore a spidersuit,” Jason said, pointing a finger at Sam. “Totally different.”

  Sam held up his hands.

  “All right. Skin-tight spandex. Sure. If you want to draw a line there.”

  “Boys,” Samantha said, sitting up. Jason looked at her.

  “Catwoman, right?”

  She grinned.

  “Wolverine.”

  “Huh,” Sam said.

  “You’d look hot in a cat suit, though.”

  “And you’d look silly in spandex,” she answered, standing. “Can we get some work done, please?”

  “Right,” Jason said, getting out his keys. “Pizza.”

  <><><>

  They checked into the hotel where the first couple had died, then went and found the room where it had happened.

  “This place is old,” Samantha said as Jason picked the lock.

  “You sure you can’t just open this?” Jason asked.

  “Nothing that is locked with a dead-bolt,” she said. “Not even a knob-lock. I don’t open locks that are mechanical with magic.”

  “Carter seemed to think you could, if you wanted to.”

  “Carter was jerking you around,” she said. Jason felt the pins fall in place and twisted the lock. The door opened.

  The room was clean.

  “Suicide,” Sam said. “No police investigation.”

  “Dammit,” Jason said. They wandered the room a bit, anyway, looking for anything that housekeeping might have missed. He returned from the bathroom to find Samantha leaning against Sam.

  “How old is this place?” Samantha asked.

  “Dunno,” Sam said.

 
“And they weren’t from here?” she asked.

  “Next town over,” Jason said.

  “Are there no hotels there?” Samantha asked.

  “We can look,” Sam said. He was looking down at the top of Samantha’s head. Jason cocked an eyebrow at him, but neither of them noticed.

  “Let’s do that,” Samantha said. She started and stood up. “Then I’m going to beat up Jason. Can’t forget that.”

  “No, of course not,” Jason said.

  Back in the room, Sam pulled up the history of the hotel.

  “Built in 1918,” he said. Samantha went to lay on the bed next to him as Jason sat on a couch.

  “And when were the hotels built, in the town where the couple was originally from?” she asked. Sam did some typing and they leaned in to read the screen. Sam was nodding.

  “How have we missed this?” he asked, typing a bunch more. Jason yawned and settled further down on the couch. Samantha rolled to the side of the bed and pulled a pad of paper out, scooting back over to lean shoulder-to-shoulder with Sam, taking notes as he pulled up data on the computer.

  “You guys have this wrapped up?” Jason asked.

  “1905,” Sam said. Samantha nodded and wrote it down. There was a pause.

  “Built in… 1923,” Sam said.

  Jason stretched out and zoned out for a while as Sam and Samantha worked hotel names and dates back and forth. Finally, Samantha sat up and put her pad of paper on Sam’s back, leaning across his back.

  “Nothing newer than… 1932,” Samantha said. Sam nodded.

  “Simon’s on it. Looking at violent deaths between 32 and 35,” Sam said.

  “So we’re looking for a ghost?” Jason asked. Sam looked up.

  “Seems like a good guess,” he said.

  “So we need a who and a why,” Jason said. “What do you want to bet this isn’t going to be one of the traditional ones?”

  Sam looked over his shoulder at Samantha.

  “You shouldn’t feel worthless,” he said.

  “I suck at ghosts,” she said.

  “You’d make a great Seeker,” Sam said.

  “You’re sweet, but I’ve got a lot more training than just that.”

  “I’ll tell Simon you said that,” Sam said. There was a long moment as they looked at each other, and Jason cleared his throat. Samantha’s head jerked up and she looked at Jason.

  “I owe you a beating,” she said.