Dream Eyes

Eight

“When did you start talking to yourself?” Judson asked.

He’d held the question back until after the waiter had brought two glasses of wine to the table. The name of the restaurant was the Wilby Café. It featured a typical Pacific Northwest menu that ran the usual gamut from salmon and Dungeness crab cakes to steak. The establishment’s most outstanding virtue in his opinion was its convenient location. The café was located within walking distance of the Riverview Inn.

He could tell his question caught Gwen off guard. That had been his intention. She was expecting to be interrogated on the subject of Zander Taylor and the camera weapon. He’d get around to that eventually but he preferred the indirect route. It was usually easier to get straight answers out of people if they didn’t see the questions coming. He’d spent enough time in Gwen’s company now to know that she had long ago learned to keep secrets.

When it came to keeping secrets, he thought, they had a lot in common.

Gwen paused, her wineglass halfway to her lips, and looked at him for a long, considering moment. He didn’t care about the delay. He could sit here and look into her eyes forever. He realized that he was still a little jacked. Not like he could shut down completely around her, he thought. Something about Gwen kept him on edge and heated his blood as well as his senses.

For a while he wondered if she was going to answer the question. She had a right to her privacy, but, damn, he wanted to know more about her. And he knew that the talking-to-herself thing was not just an old habit.

She reflected a moment longer. In the end she took a sip of wine and set the glass down very precisely on the table.

“I wasn’t talking to myself today,” she said. “I was in a waking dream, talking to Evelyn’s ghost in the mirror.”

She watched him, waiting for his reaction.

“Huh.” He ran through the possible scenarios. “The ghost is some sort of dreamstate image manifested by your intuition?”

Gwen relaxed visibly. Her eyes cleared and she smiled. “Yes. That’s exactly what happens when I see the ghosts. But it’s almost impossible to explain that to people because it sounds like I’m claiming to have visions.”

“Which is exactly what is going on, when you get right down to it.”

“Sort of, yes.” She eyed him, once again wary. “You don’t appear too freaked. Most people look at me funny when I tell them about the ghosts. My aunt said I mustn’t ever tell anyone about the visions. She said I should learn to ignore them. But after she died, I went into the foster care system. Eventually I made the mistake of confiding in a counselor. Everyone concluded that I was seriously disturbed. The next thing I knew, I landed in the Summerlight Academy. By the time I graduated, I had learned to keep my secrets, believe me.”

“When did the ghost visions start?”

“When I was about twelve. They got stronger as I went through my teens.”

“That’s about the age when Emma, Sam and I came into our talents,” he said.

“I’d see the ghosts in unexpected places, almost always on some reflective surface,” Gwen said. “The first time it was a mirror in an old antique shop. I was terrified. Somehow I knew that it was not a real ghost, but in a way, that just made the experience more unnerving.”

“Because you wondered if you were crazy.”

“For a time, yes,” she said. “So did everyone else around me. But it was Evelyn who helped me to understand that the visions are actually lucid dreams that occur when I’m awake. I can go into a lucid dream on purpose. But the energy laid down at the scenes of violence seems to trigger the ghost dreams.”

“A lucid dreamer is someone who knows when he or she is dreaming, right? The dreamer can take control of the dream.”

“Yes.” Gwen took another sip of wine. “It’s not an uncommon experience. A lot of people occasionally have lucid dreams. But in my case, the talent is linked to my psychic intuition and my ability to see auras. I’ve come to the conclusion that seeing ghosts at old murder scenes is actually just a side effect of my type of paranormal sensitivity.”

“How did you figure out that the ghosts were always at old murder scenes?”

“After the first few instances, I went online and researched the locations where I had seen the ghosts. It didn’t take long to find out that in most cases there was a record of a murder or unexplained death in the vicinity. My intuition was picking up some of the psychic residue and interpreting it as a vision of a ghost.”

“The energy laid down by violence is powerful stuff,” he said. “A lot of people are sensitive to it, even those without any measurable talent. Almost everyone has had the experience of walking into a room or a location that gives off a bad vibe.”

“I know. But in my case the reaction is a little over-the-top.”

“How bad was the Summerlight Academy?” he asked.

“I was miserable at the time, but looking back, it was the best thing that could have happened to me. I was very lonely at first and I was scared, but I soon met Abby and another talent, Nick Sawyer, there. The three of us bonded. I’m not sure why. We just did. We stuck together until we graduated, and we’re still very close. We’re family. The other good thing about Summerlight was that I met Evelyn there. She was the one who helped me deal with my talent.”

“But most of the time you use it to do your psychic counseling work.”

“I prefer living clients.” She smiled over the rim of the glass. “They pay better.”

That surprised a laugh out of him. “I can see the upside.”

She stopped smiling and wrinkled her nose. “But living clients are also incredibly frustrating. I can pick up a lot of impressions when I view their auras, but those impressions are not helpful if I can’t get context. To obtain that, I need cooperation from my clients. That isn’t always forthcoming.”

He raised his brows. “Are we, by any chance, talking about me now?”

“We are.”

“I’m not one of your clients,” he said very softly, very deliberately.

“True,” she agreed. “But that could change. I’ve got room on my schedule.”

“Not a chance in hell.”

“Fine. Be like that.” She finished off the rest of her wine and set the glass down. “Your dreams, your problem.”

“That’s how I look at it.”

“At least you’re not one of those clients who pays for dream therapy and then fails to take my advice.”

He smiled. “Does that happen a lot?”

“Oh, sure, all the time. Clients book a session, spend forty minutes telling me about their dreams to give me context, I do an analysis, put them in a trance and help them rework the dreamscape until we discover the unresolved issues involved. Then we talk about the issues and I offer advice. The clients go away and return a month later complaining about the same problems.”

“Because they didn’t follow your advice?”

“It’s very frustrating.” Gwen shook her head. “I suppose I should be grateful for the repeat business but—”

She broke off because he had started to laugh. She watched him, her eyes widening with a mix of curiosity and bemusement.

He was even more surprised by his laughter than she was. It had been a while since he’d been able to laugh like this. A couple of people at a nearby table turned to look at him.

He finally settled into an amused smile and reached for a chunk of bread.

Gwen narrowed her eyes. “What’s so funny?”

“You, the psychic counselor, wondering why people pay you for advice and then ignore the advice,” he said around a mouthful of the bread. “Talk about naive. But it’s rather sweet when you think about it.”

“Excuse me?”

“People ask for advice all the time. They go to their friends for it. They talk to virtual strangers at the gym. They pay doctors, shrinks, therapists and psychics for advice. But very few people actually take the advice unless that advice happens to be something they are already inclined to do.”

“That’s a very insightful comment.” She wrinkled her nose. “Still, it’s one thing to have a person reject my help flat-out like you did. It’s something else altogether when people pay you for expensive dream therapy and then ignore it. Do you know how disheartening that is?”

“Sure, I’m a consultant, remember? The pay is good in my line, but almost no one ever follows a consultant’s advice.”

She furrowed her intelligent brow. “I hadn’t realized that.”

“Look on the bright side: at least we both get paid for the advice we give.”

“There is that.”

The waiter put the plates of broiled salmon down in front of them and departed.

Gwen examined the salmon for a few seconds and then looked up.

“Do you think we’ll be able to find Evelyn’s killer?” she asked.

“Sure.”

“You sound very certain of that.”

He shrugged. “The case looks simple enough. It will take a while to sort out, but it’s just a matter of following up on the leads. Plenty of those.”

“I wish you had been around two years ago when Zander Taylor was stalking the people in Evelyn’s research study. Maybe he could have been stopped before he killed Ben and Mary.”

“One thing I’ve learned in the consulting business. Don’t look back. Not unless there is information in the past that can be used to figure out what is going on in the present.”

“It’s a good rule.” Gwen picked up her fork. “But in my line, I’ve learned that the past always impacts the present.”

“Yeah,” he admitted. “I’ve run up against that problem a few times, myself.”

They ate in silence for a while. He tried not to watch Gwen overtly but it was hard to take his eyes off her. It was good to be here with her, basking in her delicate feminine energy. This was what he had needed ever since he had returned from the island, he thought. Gwendolyn Frazier was the fix he craved.

“It’s usually better if you don’t ask,” she said matter-of-factly. She speared a tomato slice and ate it.

He went very still, vaguely aware that his ring was suddenly infused with a little heat.

“Better if I don’t ask what?” he said, feeling his way as cautiously as he had when he had escaped the underwater cave.

“You’re wondering what I see when I view your aura.” She munched the tomato and swallowed. “I was just warning you that it’s better not to go there.”

He had known he would have to deal with this sooner or later. She was not the type to let go.

“You do realize that you’ve left me no option,” he said. “Now I have to ask.”

“I was afraid of that. Promise you won’t get spooked?”

“I’m a talent. I take the paranormal as normal.” He forked up a mouthful of fish. “Why would I get spooked?”

“My aura readings sometimes have that effect on people, even those who accept the reality of the paranormal,” she said.

“What do you see in my aura?”

She hesitated. He could see the uncertainty in her eyes.

“Okay,” she said. “But remember that my visions involve all sorts of misleading symbols and metaphors. When I go into my talent, I essentially slip into a trance, a waking dream. Those kinds of dreams can be just as hard to interpret as regular dreams unless I have context.”

She paused to give him an encouraging smile.

“No context,” he said. “Let’s see what you can do without any hints or clues.”

She stopped smiling.

“I was afraid you were going to say that,” she said. “You don’t believe that I can actually see anything useful, do you?”

“I don’t doubt that you can see auras, and I’m convinced you’re sensitive to heavy energy like the kind laid down at crime scenes. But read my dreams? No. I don’t think anyone can do that.”

She sat quietly for a moment, her incredible eyes luminous with a little psi. Energy shivered in the atmosphere. Two men at the nearby table glanced around uneasily and then went back to their meal.

Gwen lowered her talent. Her mouth tightened at the corners. “Your aura looks the same as it did a month ago when I met you in Seattle. You’re stable. But I can tell that the dreams are getting more powerful. They aren’t nightmares—not exactly—but there is a rising sense of urgency linked to them. You’re not sleeping well, either. But there’s something else going on, too, something I can’t figure out without more context.”

He made himself put his fork down with no outward show of emotion. “Is that the best you can do? Because any storefront fortune-teller could pull that kind of analysis out of a crystal ball. Everyone has a few bad dreams from time to time.”

“I know,” she said.

Her voice had gone flat and cold. He felt like he had just stomped on a butterfly.

“I apologize,” he said. “I shouldn’t have implied that you were a storefront fortune-teller.”

“I’m aware of what the general public thinks about psychic counselors. Most people assume that we are entertainers at best and scam artists at worst.”

“I know that your talent is genuine, Gwen. I shouldn’t have said what I did. I’m sorry.”

She relaxed. “Apology accepted. Do you want me to finish telling you what I saw in your aura?”

“Sure.”

“There’s not a whole lot more to tell. It’s all that hot radiation in your dream currents that I find difficult to interpret. I’m sure it’s psi. But the ultra-light is the same color as the energy I see from time to time in your ring. Did something happen to you that involved that amber crystal? Were you caught in an explosion? A fire, maybe?”

He thought that he was prepared for whatever vague analysis she came up with—prepared for anything except the possibility that she might actually be able to see into his dreams. There was only one way she could strike that close to the truth.

“I told Sam something of what went down on that last case,” he said. “He told Abby and Abby told you. So much for keeping some things private within the family.”

“You mustn’t blame Sam or Abby. Neither of them told me anything about your dreams. As for what happened on your last case, it’s no secret that you nearly got killed and that you had to swim out of an underwater cave—which does explain some of the urgency in your dream, of course. But there’s something else going on. You’re revisiting the same dreamscape again and again. My reading tells me that you’re searching for something.”

A dark chill whispered through him. “And you can help me find it?”

She smiled, her eyes filling with a wistful regret, as if she had just acknowledged to herself the loss of something she had longed to possess.

“I fix bad dreams, remember?” she said gently.

“I’m not interested in therapy. I can handle my own damn dreams.”

“Right.” She took a breath and pulled her cloak of cool, polite reserve around herself. “Now you see why I lead a very limited social life.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You’re thinking that it’s as if I had caught a glimpse of one of your dreams, aren’t you? It felt like an invasion of privacy.”

He started to deny it but decided there wasn’t much point. “Thought crossed my mind, yeah.”

“If it’s any comfort, I can’t actually see your dreams.”

He was starting to get pissed—with himself, not with her. He was the one who had challenged her to do a fast reading on his aura. The fact that he didn’t like the results was his own fault.

“Good to know,” he said.

“There’s no need to growl at me.”

“I am not growling.”

“I know growling when I hear it,” she said. “The thing is, heavy dreams affect the aura, especially if they recur frequently and especially if the dreamer has a lot of psychic talent. What I pick up is the dreamlight energy in a person’s aura. My intuition then interprets that energy. I don’t always get it right, and it’s impossible to do an accurate analysis when I don’t have any context. But I can usually see enough to start asking the right questions. That’s where I’m at with your case.”

“I’m not your case, and I’m not here to get psychic dream counseling,” he said. “I’m here to solve a murder. You’re the client, not me.”

Anger flashed, quicksilver bright, in her eyes. In the next instant the shadows were back, veiling her secrets.

“No,” she said much too politely. “You are not my client.”

He felt as if she had just slammed a door in his face. And it was his own damn fault.