Cassandra Palmer 1(52)

Once in the heart of the swirling blue miasma, I found that Tomas' eyes could see outlines, but no distinct features. Still, it wasn't too hard to make out the fallen body of a giant rat. Damn. I knew they'd screw it up. I wasn't likely to waste any tears on Jimmy, but I'd wanted to know what he'd promised to tell me about my father. Besides, we'd made a deal, and I didn't like that my so-called allies had taken it on themselves to alter it without so much as a word in my direction.

«He better not be dead,» I began, as Louis-Cesar's flushed face appeared in front of me. I got no further because his hand reached out and caught me in a stranglehold that would have crushed a human's throat. He was saying something in a harsh tone that didn't sound much like his usual voice, but I couldn't understand him. I had a second to think, Oh, crap, before the familiar disorientation flooded over me and the blue faded away. I closed my eyes, not wanting to believe this was real, that I was going to have a vision now of all times, but there was no way to deny it. I was suddenly back in that same unwelcoming, cold, stone corridor, hearing voices filled with unimaginable despair.




I fell to my knees in shock, not at the surroundings, although they were far from welcome, but at the voices. I'd thought before that it was the people inside the torture room making the high-pitched keening, but now I knew it wasn't. The men chained to the wall had started crying out only when they saw me, and their tones, although desperate, hadn't sounded like this. This was a chorus of hundreds, thousands maybe, and they weren't alive, at least not anymore.



I realized that the icy cold of the corridor was less from the weather than from the positive miasma of spirits crowded into it. Never had I felt so many ghosts in one place at one time, like a spiritual mist permeating the walls and filling the air to the point of suffocation. It was despair made tangible, like a film of freezing grease on my face that ran down my throat until I thought I would choke on it. This time I was alone and, without the bully of a jailer to distract me, I could concentrate on the voices. Slowly they became a little clearer. I quickly wished they hadn't.

There was a definite feeling of intelligence, of many minds here, and none of them were happy. I thought at first that they might be demonic, there was that much—for lack of a stronger word—rage floating around. But they didn't feel like the few demons I'd met; they felt like ghosts. After a few minutes' soaking up their fury, I finally figured it out. Haunters are usually dealing with one of three main issues: they died before their time, they died unjustly—usually, but not always, murdered—or they died with something vital unfinished. Sometimes there are other contributing factors—ghosts, like people, can have many issues bugging them at the same time—but normally one of the big three is there. What I was sensing was thousands of ghosts who had all three of the big ones and a whole galaxy of contributing issues as well. If they'd still been alive, they could have kept every shrink in the United States working around the clock for the next century trying to sort them out. But they don't have psychiatrists in the ghost world. What they have is revenge.

A ghost created by vengeance issues either gets some satisfaction, gets some payback, or hangs around lusting for it until its energy runs out. Most ghosts don't have regular energy donors like I am for Billy Joe, so they fade over time, getting less and less powerful until only their voices remain, and then finally passing on to wherever it is ghosts go. I sensed that some in this throng were about to run out of juice, while others were as powerful as if they'd died yesterday, which maybe they had. The implication was staggering: wherever I was, it had been used for torture for decades at least, and probably for centuries, racking up enough spiritual dark energy to be felt even by nonsensitives. I doubted there was anyone, no matter how obtuse to the psychic world, who could walk into this chamber of horrors and not get a serious case of the creeps.




I looked around, but it was still just me and the chorus line. I didn't know what to do. I was used to my visions behaving in a predictable way: they came; they hit me like a freight train; they left; I cried; I got over it. But lately, my psychic abilities were branching out into new and uncomfortable areas, and I was feeling resentful that the universe had suddenly decided to change the rules. Especially since, if I had to get stranded anywhere, I sure wouldn't have picked this place. A cold wind slapped my face—they were getting impatient.



«What do you want?» I barely whispered it, but you'd have thought I'd taken a stick and stirred a hornet's nest. So many spirits descended on me at once that I got only flashes of color, flickers of images and a roaring in my ears like a hurricane had decided to blow through the hall. «Stop! Stop it! I can't understand you!»