Running Hot

TWENTY-TWO

The housekeeper was humming. She pushed her cart past Grace and continued down the hallway. The melody sounded vaguely familiar. Grace found herself trying to identify it. The harder she concentrated, the more intricate and compelling the tune seemed to become.

The song was definitely not from the contemporary pop repertoire. Not classic rock, either. It was far more elaborate and sophisticated; an aria from an opera, perhaps.

She wondered how many housekeepers hummed opera. Someone had certainly missed her calling. Then again, perhaps the woman sang professionally. Maybe housekeeping was just her day job.

The humming echoed softly in the corridor, growing ever more illusive and more intriguing as it faded.

Music was a form of energy. It acted directly on all the senses and across the spectrum. The proof was evident everywhere. It could stir the passions, excite the nerves or send adrenaline rushing through the veins. Some religions feared its power to such an extent that they tried to ban it. Others harnessed its unique energy to exult and glorify their deities. Music could throw an intoxicating spell over crowds, drawing people to their feet and compelling them to discharge the energy in the form of motion; dancing.

Music could make you want to focus on something very important.

Name that tune.

An odd chill fluttered through Grace. It suddenly seemed very important that she identify the housekeeper’s song. She had attended the opera on several occasions over the years. The over-the-top emotions of the stories appealed to her primarily because she had always been so careful to control her own passions. The singers’ astonishing ability to project their impossibly gorgeous voices to the farthest corners of a three-thousand-seat theater without the aid of microphones never failed to amaze her. But she was not a dedicated fan. She lacked an intimate acquaintance with the music. She had heard the housekeeper’s piece somewhere on an opera stage, though, she was sure of it.

The inexplicably intense need to recall the name of the song dissipated almost as swiftly as it had come.

Ice touched the nape of her neck. Her pulse beat harder, faster. From out of nowhere an anxious, almost panicky sensation gripped her senses. She recognized the syndrome. Her survival instincts were kicking in hard and fast.

Get out of here.

Music was a form of energy.

It occurred to her that although she had come within a yard of the housekeeper, she could not recall anything about her, not even her hair color, let alone whether she had been plump or thin or middle-aged or young. Nothing at all except an overpowering urge to focus on the tune that the woman had been humming.

Grace stopped and turned. The housekeeper and her cart had disappeared around the corner at the far end of the long corridor.

She hesitated, uncertain of her next move. She was on her own for the morning. The five Nightshade executives and their bodyguards had left for the golf course an hour ago. Luther had followed them after giving her strict orders to remain either in the suite or in the hotel’s public spaces.

She had been on her way back to the room to pick up the hat she had forgotten to take down to the pool when she passed the humming housekeeper. For a moment there, she had been so distracted by the compulsion to identify the song that she had even forgotten the purpose of her return to the suite.

Something was very wrong.

She had to get a look at the housekeeper.

She walked quickly back the way she had come, following the path the housekeeper had taken. When she reached the corner, she heard the humming again, very faintly this time. Once again the urge to focus on the pattern of the music came upon her. But she was ready for it this time. She pushed back, gently but firmly. The urge evaporated.

She went around the corner and saw the housekeeper. The woman was waiting for the freight elevator. Her hair was an explosion of dark curls that partially obscured her profile. A pair of heavily framed dark glasses veiled her eyes. She moved with vigor and grace. There was an air of glowing enthusiasm about her; clearly a woman who loved her work. She didn’t appear to be struggling with the heavily laden cart. She manipulated it effortlessly.

Grace slid into her other senses. The housekeeper’s aura flared brilliantly. Waves of an unfamiliar but extraordinarily powerful psychic energy pulsed through it. The rest of the profile was complicated. There was also something wrong with it. There was none of the darkness that was the signature of the Nightshade auras; nevertheless, the pulsing bands of energy looked warped in places and very erratic in others.

The housekeeper might enjoy her work but she had some serious mental health issues.

It’s not like I’m one to talk, Grace thought. She had just gone an entire year barely able to touch another human being.

The door to the room across the hall from the freight elevator opened. A couple emerged.

The housekeeper stopped humming and started singing. Her voice was soft but it floated down the hallway on wings of energy. Every note was crystalline. Grace had the impression that she was not the intended audience; even so, she had to resist the urge to try to capture the bell-like notes as they drifted through the air.

The couple went past the housekeeper, paying no attention. A lot of people might be inclined to ignore a hotel maid, Grace thought, but surely not one who could sing like this. The expressions on the faces of the man and the woman were utterly blank.

The elevator doors opened. There was a ping and an arrow glowed indicating that the cab was going up. The housekeeper pushed her cart inside. The doors closed, cutting off the song. Grace watched the couple become visibly more animated and engaged. The woman blinked a few times and then looked at her companion.

“My spa appointment is at eleven,” she said. “When will you be back from the golf course?”

“Not until five,” the man said.

“In that case, I think I’ll do some shopping this afternoon.”

They nodded politely at Grace and continued along the hall to the guest elevators.

She waited until they were out of sight before she opened the stairwell door and stepped inside. There were two floors above the one on which she stood, five and six.

She rushed up the concrete stairs and listened intently before opening the door. No aria sounded on the other side. Cautiously she opened the door and checked the corridor. Empty.

She hurried up the next flight and again paused at the hall door. She sensed the music pulsing gently, insistently, even though it was almost inaudible.

She opened the door and moved out into the corridor just in time to see the singing housekeeper vanish into a room at the far end of the hall. The woman, her aura flaring hotly, left her cart outside. She did not follow the hotel’s usual routine of leaving the door open, however. Instead she closed it firmly behind her.

Grace glanced at the number on the door across from where she stood and did the math. More adrenaline splashed through her. If she had counted correctly, the housekeeper had just vanished into 604, Eubanks’s suite.

Mr. Jones, what are the odds?

Whatever was going on here, it was important. She was very sure of that. The question was what to do next. Luther would know but he was not around. A good field agent had to be able to make independent decisions.

It would be no big deal to walk past the room the singing housekeeper had just entered and check the number to make absolutely sure that it was 604. It would not be good for her future as a J&J specialist if she screwed up on something that important.

She started down the hall in what she hoped looked like a leisurely manner, card key in hand, as though she were on her way to her own room. There were no other guests about.

Another housekeeper, pushing a heavily loaded cart, appeared at the far end of the corridor. She paused in front of a room and rapped lightly.

“Housekeeping,” she called.

That was something else the operatic maid had failed to do, Grace recalled. The woman had entered the room without knocking and without announcing her presence, as if she knew full well that the occupants were not inside.

Grace reached the singing maid’s cart. She looked at the closed door: 604.

She kept going, unsure what her next move should be. It seemed logical, however, that a sharp, independent-thinking J&J agent would keep an eye on the singing housekeeper and follow her after she left Eubanks’s suite. This was a surveillance mission, after all.

It was also imperative to notify Luther that a woman with a high-level psychic talent who may or may not have been a member of the hotel staff had just entered the room of one of the Nightshade members.

She took out her phone and entered a quick text message.

Talent entered E’s rm. Will watch.

She dropped the phone back into her purse and looked around for someplace to conceal herself while she waited for the singer to reappear. All she could see were two long rows of doors stretching out ahead of her. The hall ended where it intersected with another corridor. She had two choices, either go back the way she had come and hide in the stairwell or go around the corner at the far end and wait for the door to 604 to open.

She opted for the stairwell. It was closer. She hurried back past Eubanks’s suite and was almost at the door when she sensed movement behind her. She turned to look over her shoulder and saw the second housekeeper striding purposefully toward 604.

She switched to her other senses and studied the woman’s aura. It was average for a nonsensitive but it was clear the housekeeper was annoyed. The sight of the other cart in the hall bothered her for some reason, perhaps because this was her territory.

Grace was suddenly very certain that it would not be a good idea for the housekeeper to confront the woman who had just disappeared into 604.

Impulsively she started back toward the suite but the housekeeper was already knocking briskly. Without waiting for a response, the maid jammed her master key into the lock and pushed open the door. She stared into the room, her body tense, her aura registering a growing unease.

“Who are you?” she demanded. “This is my floor and I didn’t ask for any extra help today. You must be new.”

The singing started up inside the room, intense and so darkly compelling that Grace felt as if she were in danger of being extinguished by the crushing weight of impending doom. Power and violence conveyed in a coloratura soprano’s pure, utterly mesmerizing voice poured out into the hall.

The second housekeeper’s aura pulsed with terror. The woman retreated a step, turning slightly, as though preparing to run. But she went statue-still instead. Then, as though drawn by invisible chains, she started toward the shadowed doorway of 604.

The energy of the song shivered across the paranormal spectrum. Grace could feel its inexorable pull even though she recognized intuitively that it was aimed at the housekeeper, not at her.

The maid was transfixed by the music. She took another step toward the fatal doorway. Soon she would vanish into 604.

“Wait,” Grace called loudly, hoping to shatter the spell of the music with the force of a command. “Stop. Don’t go in there.”

* * *

The housekeeper ignored her cry of warning. Her aura was no longer pulsing in a normal manner. As Grace watched, horrified, it became unstable and erratic. Through it all, panic still pulsed. The woman knew that she was being drawn to her doom but she could not stop.

Grace rushed forward, jacking up her own aura to the max. The music was not loud out in the hallway but the controlled power of it seemed to fill all the available space.

She had not had to do what she was about to do for a long time. But she had not forgotten the inevitable reaction of her senses. It was going to hurt.

Bracing herself for the shock of physical contact, she seized the housekeeper’s shoulder, simultaneously pushing back hard at the wavelengths of the fearful music, trying to shield the mesmerized woman with her own aura.

Pain splashed through her. The thin fabric of the housekeeper’s uniform offered almost no protection. She clamped her teeth tightly together and managed to keep her grip on the woman’s shoulder.

Momentum carried the two of them several feet beyond the doorway before they stumbled and fell together onto the carpet. Grace rolled frantically to the side, struggling to free herself from the other woman’s unmoving body.

She scrambled to her knees and looked toward the doorway to 604.

The curtains inside had been drawn tightly shut, sealing the room in dense shadows. The singer stood near the bed, her mouth still open on the last notes of her terrible song. The combination of the oversized dark glasses, the heavy wig and the dim light made it impossible to see her face clearly. But Grace was still on high alert. She had no trouble viewing the spiraling rage in the woman’s aura.

The housekeeper launched into another fiery cascade of song. Each note struck Grace with the force of a shock wave from some invisible explosion. Her senses reeled beneath the onslaught. She could not breathe. Her heart pounded. The hallway whirled around her.

Instinctively she forced all her energy into a counterpoint pattern. The hallway steadied. Her head cleared.

The rage in the singer’s aura grew stronger but the power of her music lessened. The crystal pure note she was singing suddenly fractured.

“Who are you?” the singer shrieked. “How dare you interrupt my performance?”

Grace managed to get to her feet. She stood over the fallen housekeeper. “You were going to kill her.”

“The stupid woman deserved to die. She interfered.”

“I’m in your way, too,” Grace said. “Do you intend to kill me?”

“Yes.”

The single word should have come out as a scream. Instead it floated through the shadows on a cloud of dark, exquisitely controlled energy intended to pull Grace into the room. The note was so intense that it

hurt. Once again Grace felt her heart start to pound.

She resisted the compulsion with everything she had, fighting back with all her power. She could tell that she was having some effect. The singer went higher, apparently in an effort to compensate for the resistance. Sooner or later she was bound to attract attention. There had to be someone in one of the neighboring rooms. Surely not every single guest was at the beach or the spa or the golf course.

But none of the doors in the long hall opened; no one appeared to inquire about the music. A terrible possibility occurred to Grace. Maybe those who heard the music assumed that it was being piped into the hallways by the hotel.

The perfection of the music literally stole Grace’s breath. She realized with horror that she was no longer inhaling. Her chest and head were in agony. It was as if she were drowning in an invisible sea.

Breathe, she told herself.

You’re going to die if you don’t breathe.

From out of nowhere she managed to summon an extra flicker of power. The killing song weakened again.

She was still dizzy but she managed to use the reprieve to suck in one gasping breath and then another. She lacked the strength to scream for help. It was all she could do to fill her lungs. But the oxygen suddenly flooding her system fueled her will to live. She had not survived the death of her mother, the foster care system, the streets and Martin Crocker only to die at the hands of a killer diva.

She forced herself to concentrate. There were signs of definite instability in the pulses of power that flashed and sparked in the singer’s aura. The woman was not only a little crazy, she was on the verge of flying into an inchoate rage. Grace’s resistance was infuriating her.

Push her a little harder, Grace thought.

You’re going to die here in this hallway if you don’t.

Her intensified resistance had an immediate effect. The singer’s aura darkened and flashed with unstable rage. She was losing her emotional control. Surely that would impact her vocal control, Grace thought. She had read somewhere that professional opera singers claim it is fatal to feel too much emotion when they sing. The logic was obvious. It was difficult if not impossible to maintain perfect control over your voice when your chest and throat were tightened by rage or tears, or

fear.

It dawned on Grace that she had the same problem. If she did not pull herself back from the brink of panic, she would lose her own control. She needed to think of something other than impending death.

Luther.

There was power in a name if the person attached to the name had a strong connection to you. The strength she drew from Luther’s name told her just how important he was to her.

The singer screamed. There was no other word for it but the sound was no normal shriek of fear. It was an intense pulse of raw rage. The incredibly high-pitched note was all wrong.

Grace discovered that she could move again. Instinctively she jammed her fingers into her ears. The music and the pain receded slightly.

And then another sound echoed down the hallway: the distinct chime of the elevator bell.

The singer must have heard it, too, and understood that other people were about to appear. Chaos sparked across her aura. Teetering on the edge of insane fury, she launched herself at Grace, fingers hooked like claws.

Grace scrambled out of her path, putting the cart between them. She groped for something to use as a weapon. Her fingers closed around a feather duster.

The singer tried to adjust her trajectory but she stumbled over the unconscious housekeeper and went down, sprawling on the carpet. Grace shoved the cart toward her but it did not roll far enough.

The singer staggered to her feet. Her mouth opened. Her throat worked. But the only sound that emerged was a choked gasp.

She glanced back once toward the elevator lobby. The doors started to open. Logic or maybe her own survival instincts overrode her rage. She fled, running straight past Grace, and vanished around the corner.

Grace waited, clutching the duster, but there was no more singing.

She took a deep breath and started toward the fallen housekeeper, who was just beginning to stir. Something crunched under her foot. She looked down and saw sparkling shards of glass scattered across the carpet. One of the clean drinking glasses that had been sitting on top of the cart had shattered.

It dawned on her that the door to suite 604 was still open. She closed it. Something told her that Fallon would want to keep this incident quiet if at all possible.

She crouched beside the dazed woman.

“Are you all right?” she asked gently.

“Yes, I think so.” The housekeeper gave her a blank look. “Did I just faint?”

“Yes. Don’t try to get up. There’s a house phone down by the elevators. I’ll call your supervisor.”

“I’m okay, really. Just a little tired, that’s all. It’s been a long day.”

“It certainly has.”

The housekeeper would be all right. Her aura had returned to normal. Automatically Grace reached out to pat her in a reassuring fashion. At the last instant she remembered how her palm had burned when she had pulled the woman away from the doorway. The pain was gone but she dared not touch the housekeeper. It would take days or even weeks to recover.

Back to square one.

“Damn,” she whispered. “Damn, damn, damn.”

She pushed herself to her feet and went down the hall to the phone.