“Just a skirmish,” she insisted wearily. “He wasn’t even one of them, really. He was a tool they tried to use against me. A…pale echo of what they are. And even so, as ineffective as he is compared to them…look what it did to me to fight him. Look what it cost me just to hold my own with one of their tools.”

“It was your first…skirmish,” he reminded her. “You’ll be better at it next time.”

A little sound escaped Sarah, not a laugh or a cry but something in between. “No, I won’t. I can’t do that again.”

“Sarah—”

“I can’t. You don’t know what it’s like. You don’t know what it does to me.”

Tucker was beginning to understand but nevertheless said, “What was all that about kids?”

“I wanted to find out if he knew,” she murmured.

“Knew what?”

“That they’d taken another child. Early this morning.”

“How do you know?”

Starkly, her voice full of horror, Sarah said, “I heard him scream. In my mind.”

Tucker nearly pulled off the road, every instinct urging him to put his arms around Sarah and offer some kind of comfort. But he kept driving. For one thing, something in her posture warned him that right now she didn’t want to be touched by anyone. And since she had kept from him this knowledge of another abducted child, he was even more sure that she especially didn’t want to be touched by him.

But he could, and did, change the subject to what he thought was a lesser horror. “You said that Mason was trying to get into your head—why?”

“To…convert me. To try to make me think the way they want me to.”

“Which is?”

“That I can’t fight them and win. That they’ll always be stronger. That I already belong to them. That I’m…destined to lose.”

Tucker glanced at her quickly, then turned his attention back to the road ahead of them. “But he failed.”

“He didn’t get inside my head.”

“Did you get inside his?”

Sarah was quiet for a moment, then said, “Not enough to help us.”

Tucker sent her another glance, this one a bit hard. More secrets. “What are you not telling me?”

“Nothing that matters.”

“On a need-to-know basis, I think I need to know.”

Again, she was silent, minutes passing before she finally said, in a curiously hollow voice, “It only matters to me. I know something I didn’t know before. I know what it will cost me to survive if they get their hands on me. And it’s not a price I want to pay.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that I looked inside Mason’s head, inside him, and there was nothing there.”

“I don’t—”

“He was telling the truth, Tucker. He did pay a high price for life. He paid with his soul.”

Neil Mason sat there on the couch for some time after Gallagher and Mackenzie left and gazed at nothing. He was a little tired. More than a little, if the truth be told. He lifted one hand, holding it out in front of him and, dispassionately, watched it shake.

I’m getting too old for this. Hell, I was always too old for this.

His hand fell to rest on his thigh, and he looked around the living room almost curiously. Had it been worth it? Funny that he hadn’t asked himself before. Hadn’t been able to, maybe. Afraid of the answer, probably.

The phone rang, and Mason rose to get the portable from its place out in the hall. “Hello?” Idly, he walked back into the living room.

“Report.”

That cool, incongruously pleasant voice had the usual effect of removing the solid bone and cartilage from his knees, and Mason sat down abruptly in the chair Sarah Gallagher had occupied. God, how did I let him do this to me?

“I have nothing to report,” he said formally.

“Then you have something to explain.”

“She’s stronger than I was told. Much stronger.” Maybe stronger than you knew, you son of a bitch. “And smarter. She managed to block me very effectively.”

“And the drug?”

“She never touched the coffee.”

“You should have put it in something else.”

Mason smiled, glad he was not visible to the other man. “When I offered coffee, she accepted. Took the cup—and set it down. She wouldn’t have tasted anything I gave her.”

“What made her suspicious of you?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Unless it was the fact that her abilities are just about the best I’ve ever encountered. Lots of raw talent there.”

There was a short silence. Mason waited patiently.

“I see. Is she aware of her own potential?”

“I’d say not. Still scared of it. And that says something, you know. Even scared, she did pretty damn good. When she gets her feet under her, she won’t be a tool you can use. She’ll be a weapon. If, that is, she’s brought over by then.”

“And how long do you estimate we have before she…gets her feet under her?”

“Hard to say. If the status remains quo, maybe a week or two. If you keep her rattled and off balance, maybe longer. On the other hand, she’s awfully close to the edge now. Push her the wrong way and that weapon won’t be yours—it’ll be hers. And she’ll be out of your reach for good.”

There was a soft click, and then the dial tone.

Mason turned off his portable phone and set it on the coffee table. Half to himself, he muttered, “Don’t ask if you don’t want to know.”

Then he sat there looking absently around his pleasant living room and waited for them to come for him.

“A tool may fail even in the hand of a master,” Varden said.

Duran turned from the window and gave him a look that warned him not to bother sucking up, but all he said was, “Bring Mason in.”

“Yes, sir.” Not making a second mistake, Varden left.

She had gone to sleep with the suddenness of an exhausted child just moments after telling him that Mason had sold his soul for life, and Tucker let her sleep. He needed to concentrate on getting them out of Syracuse, and he needed to think.

There was a lot to think about, not the least of which was Sarah’s clearly expanding abilities. She had begun by having visions of the future, but unlike any precognitive psychic Tucker had ever heard of, she was also, at the very least, telepathic to some extent. And that was becoming more obvious as time passed. Last night she had accused him of failing to keep his promises and had cited a broken promise to Lydia—which she could only have known by looking into his own mind telepathically. Or reaching across distance and possibly time to look into Lydia’s mind, as she had appeared to do once before.

Lydia. Jesus Christ.

He pushed that away, concentrating on what Sarah had done this morning. She had, she said, heard the mental scream of a child being abducted—and she had managed to hide her shock and distress from him. And as for Neil Mason, she had somehow managed to block his efforts to influence her telepathically. And she had looked inside him to find nothing.

He did pay a high price for life. He paid with his soul.

Tucker hoped she hadn’t meant that literally. He really hoped so. He wasn’t at all sure he believed that some evil entity could capture a soul—or even take one in payment for…anything.

No, surely she hadn’t meant it literally. She’d meant it the way anyone would, using the phrase as a yardstick to measure how badly someone could want something. Mason willing to sell his soul for life meant simply that he was willing to give up just about everything else that mattered to him in order to live.

That was what she’d meant.

Except that Tucker had a crawly feeling it wasn’t. Because the look on Sarah’s face when she’d said it wasn’t a price she was willing to pay had spoke of something truly terrible. More than the loss of possessions or even a way of life. The loss of a soul.