But then, slowly, the veil grew thinner, more wispy. And Riley felt curiously stronger, steadier on her feet. In the reflection she watched, fascinated, as the room behind them became brighter, the colors more vivid. Her pale blue short-sleeved blouse and jeans, Ash's khaki slacks and dark shirt, even his vivid green eyes, all became clearer, sharper.

No longer distant.

No longer out of her reach.

She looked at his hands on her shoulders, and her scattered thoughts began to focus.

Damn, Bishop was right. Again.

"Look at your face," Ash began. "It-"

Riley held up a hand to stop him. "Wait. Just a minute." Taking the chance of further depleting her energy reserves, she concentrated on listening, on reaching out to hear the ocean, too far away from this house to be easily discernible through insulated walls and triple-pane glass.

Almost immediately, as though a door had opened just yards from the beach, she heard the waves, the rhythmic crash of water against earth. She could almost feel the foamy surf lapping around her ankles, smell the slightly fishy salt air.

Her spider sense was back.

She reached farther, tried harder-

– he was already dead by the time she reached the otherwise-deserted clearing.

Smoke from the final glowing embers of the fire curled upward, and the smell of sulfur and blood was almost overpowering. She didn't approach the headless corpse, still dripping blood, but circled the clearing warily, gun in hand and senses flaring.

All her senses.

She wasn't getting much, just faint impressions of dark figures that had moved here, danced here, damned their souls here. The lingering echoes of chanting, and bells, and invocations in Latin.

But no sense of identity, and no real sense of life. It was…weird. As though the ghosts in her mind were only that, unreal figures conjured like a nightmare of images superimposed on this place.

Yet the corpse was real. He had been tortured and killed in this place, without doubt. She knew that if she touched it the body would still be warm.

The blood-spattered rocks were real. The dying fire. The circle of salt she found on the ground.

To sanctify the circle, or protect whoever had stood within it?

She didn't know. And the harder she tried to open her senses, the more Riley had the uneasy realization of…a barrier. There was a muffled quality to the normal night sounds she heard. The acrid stench of sulfur was fading more rapidly than she expected, more rapidly than it should have, and the blood-

She couldn't smell the blood anymore.

Riley looked quickly at the corpse, half-convinced she would find that it had been conjured by her own imagination. But the lifeless body hung there still.

She took a step toward it and then froze, abruptly aware that she had stepped inside the circle for the first time.

The unbroken circle.

Utter silence closed around her, and her vision began to dim. She tried to move but couldn't, couldn't even lift her gun or make a sound, and the darkness became a tangible thing, wrapping her in a cold embrace she couldn't escape.

There was barely time for the first faint hints of comprehension to fight their way through the dark fog of her mind.

Barely time for her to begin to understand what was happening to her.

And then the force of a train slammed into her, hot agony blazing along her nerves, bright fire in her mind. For an eternal instant she felt herself literally connected to the ground beneath her feet, a spear of burning energy impaling the earth.

Discharging all her strength into it, like a lightning rod-

"Riley."

She realized she had closed her eyes only when his voice pulled her back to the room in which they were standing, and she opened them to see the reflection of his worried frown. And feel his hands still on her shoulders but tighter now, almost holding her upright.

With an effort, she steadied herself. "Sorry. But, Ash-"

"Look at your face, Riley."

She realized she had been looking at his, and turned her gaze instead to her own.

The earlier chill came back with a vengeance.

Her face looked…gaunt. Not so much as if she had aged, but as though she were starving.

Riley lifted probing fingers, shaping the sharp cheekbones and the hollows beneath them. Hollows that hadn't been anywhere near this pronounced only hours before.

"This isn't normal," Ash said, his voice roughening for the first time.

"No…it isn't natural," she corrected slowly.

"What's the difference? Christ, Riley, you're burning calories so fast there's no way you can keep up with the demands of your body. You've got to stop pushing yourself, stop trying to use abilities that Taser must have destroyed."

Still looking at that haggard face in the mirror, at eyes staring back at her with a feverish intensity that belied the chill shivering through her body, Riley said, "I don't think that's it. The start of it, maybe. Probably. The first step. Only it wasn't intended to take me out of the game. It wasn't intended to kill me. It was intended to weaken me. To make me vulnerable."

"What are you talking about?"

"The biggest piece of the puzzle, Ash. It's me."

He turned her around to face him, keeping his hands on her shoulders. "How could that be? Honey, all this occult shit started weeks before you got here. Weeks before you had any intention of coming here."

"But it was a dandy lure, wasn't it?" She was working it out even as she spoke, slowly putting together what had seemed to be disparate facts and events. Ragged memories and uncertain visions. "Possible occult activity in a sleepy little seaside community, nothing violent or vicious, no need for a whole team to come investigate. Just one. Just me. Just the unit's expert in the occult."

His hands tightened on her shoulders. "Gordon Skinner is the one who called you down here. Someone you trust. Right?"

"Yes. And that had to be part of the plan. Going into a situation knowing a trusted friend had my back if necessary, I wouldn't have felt any hesitation in coming alone."

"Are you saying he's involved?"

"No." Riley shook her head, hesitated, then lifted her hands to grasp Ash's wrists. Almost instantly, she began to feel a little stronger. Her head was clearer, thoughts and conclusions falling rapidly into place in her mind.

She was right about this.

It's about connections. And this is a connection I need to work this case. Hell, maybe I need it just to survive.

"No, I don't believe Gordon's part of it. Willingly, at least. Knowingly. But he could be a pawn. Maneuvered just like so many other people and events have been maneuvered."

"Riley-"

"Ash, this isn't natural, what's happening to me. It shouldn't be happening. What damage the Taser did my brain should be repairing, even now. Which means there's something else here, something else affecting me. Something that was here from the beginning. Stealing my strength, my abilities, playing with my memories, my sense of time, of what's real and what isn't."

"What could be doing all that?"

"Negative energy. Dark energy. Created, controlled, channeled, directed by someone."

"Another psychic? You said that wasn't likely."

"I don't think it is another psychic. Or at least not like any psychic I've ever heard of. I think this is someone who went looking in very dark places for enough power to achieve whatever it is they're after."

"Which is?"

Slowly, she said, "Whatever it is, I think it has everything to do with me. I had a flash of memory just now. At least, I'm pretty sure it was a memory. Of Sunday night. Of reaching the clearing, finding the body hanging there, already dead. I was alone. But I felt uneasy, my senses didn't seem to be working well. And then I stepped inside the circle."