Tessa looked at her for a moment, then said, "It takes a while, I'm told. To build that shell around your emotions."

Unoffended, Hollis smiled slightly. "Sometimes. But it's usually all smoke and mirrors. None of us would be in this line of work if we didn't care deeply. If we didn't believe we were making a difference."

"Is that why you got in?"

"I was dragged in. More or less." Hollis's smile twisted a bit. "When your entire life changes, you build a new one. But when that change happened to me, I was lucky to have kindred spirits around me, people who understood what I was going through. Just like you were lucky when they crossed your path."

"It was easier for me," Tessa said, adding, "My abilities weren't triggered by trauma."

"Adolescence is trauma," Hollis pointed out.

"Of a kind, sure. But nothing like what happened to you."

Musing rather than revealing much of herselfor, perhaps, revealing a great dealHollis said, "In the SCU, my experience isn't so unusual. Not even the degree, really. The majority of the team went through some kind of personal hell, coming out the other side with abilities we're still trying to figure out."

Tessa recognized the courteous warning and shifted the subject back to answer Hollis's implicit question. "I didn't find kindred spirits because I went looking for them; Bishop found me. Years ago. But I didn't want to be any kind of cop, he left, and I thought that was the end of it. Until John and Maggie got in touch."

"And you decided to be a cop without a badge?"

"Mostly, I haven't been. Investigating, but not in any sort of dangerous situation. Not like this one. Not with people dying. There've been eight bodies found in this general area, right? So far. Eight people killed the same way. The same very unnatural way."

Hollis nodded. "Over the past five years, yeah. That we know about, anyway. If we knew for sure probably more."

Tessa didn't move from her position but leaned back against the counter and crossed her arms in a gesture that wasn't quite defensive. Hollis took due note of that and asked herself for at least the third time since she'd arrived here hours ago if John Garrett, the director and cofounder of Haven, had made a wise choice in sending Tessa Gray on this particular assignment.

She was a little above medium height and slender, almost ethereal, an impression emphasized by her pale skin, fair hair, and delicate features dominated by large gray eyes. Her voice was soft, almost childlike, and when she spoke it was with the absolute courtesy of someone who had been raised to be polite no matter the circumstances.

Which made her sound as vulnerable as she looked.

She was supposed to look vulnerable, of course; that was part of the bait for the church. Without family, lost and alone after the sudden and unexpected death of her young husband only a few months previously, burdened by business concerns she had inadequate knowledge to handle on her own, she was just the sort of potential convert the church had a history of aggressively pursuing.

Although never before this aggressively, Hollis mused, at least as far as they knew. And the question was why.

What was it about Tessa that Reverend Samuel and his flock considered so important? Was it only the property in Florida, highly valuable to Samuel for a reason that had nothing to do with the value of the land? Or was it because he had, somehow, sensed or otherwise discovered Tessa's unique abilities?

Now, there was an unnerving thought. The idea that your ace might be in plain view for all to seeand other players to usepushed the possible stakes much, much higher.

Given what they were reasonably sure Samuel could do, it made the stakes potentially deadly.

"I've never been sent in undercover," Tessa said. "Not like this, with a whole other life to remember."

Hollis cast the useless speculation aside. "Second thoughts?"

A little laugh escaped Tessa. "More like first thoughts. I mean, John explained the situation, and Bishop filled me in on what happened last summer in Boston and a few months ago in Venture, Georgia. They both told me how dangerous it could bewould probably be."

Not a big believer in sugarcoating, Hollis said, "Yeah, if Samuel is who and what we believe he is, there's a pretty good chance a few more of us won't be left standing when it's all done. Even assuming we win."

"Do you doubt we will?"

"Honestly? Having some idea of what he can do, I have more than a few doubts."

Tessa frowned. "Because you've already faced him, fought him?"

"Not exactly. Not even by proxy, really. He just wanted me out of the way. Bishop believes he's afraid of mediums and that's why he sicced his pet killer on me in Georgia."

"Why would Samuel be afraid of mediums?"

"Well, think about it. If you were responsible for dozens of brutal deaths, would you be all that anxious to have someone around who could open up a door and allow your victims to pay you an extremely unsettling visit?"

"Probably not."

"No. In Samuel's shoes, neither would I. We figure that's the reason, though more because it makes sense than because we have any kind of solid proof."

"But that's the one ability we're pretty sure he doesn't want. If he is who and what we believe he is."

"Safe bet. In fact, my semieducated guess as a profiler-in-training is that the reverend's terrified of finding out for certain that with the reality of spirits come all the other traditional trappings of an afterlife many of us are raised to believe in. Accountability. Judgment. Punishment."

"Is there?" Tessa asked, figuring a medium would know if anyone would.

"Yes," Hollis answered simply.

"Hell?"

"Some version of it. At least for monsters like him. And isn't it ironic? The only thing Reverend Samuel could preach with complete conviction and total honesty from his pulpit is the truth of Judgment Day. And that's the one thing he's spent twenty years making very, very sure his church denies."

Washington , D.C.

"So that's his Achilles' heel?" Senator Abe LeMott sat utterly still at his desk, hands clasped atop his neat blotter, and studied the man in one of his visitor's chairs. "The one thing he fears?"

"We believe so." Special Agent Noah Bishop matched the older man in stillness, though his steady gaze was, if anything, more watchful. "He had every chance to take the abilities of one of our strongest mediums. Instead, he tried to have her killed."

"She was also bait for a trap, was she not? Bait for you?"

"Bait. We're not entirely sure what his ultimate aim was. We can't be. All we can know is what happened. Dani was the one he attacked, the one whose abilities he tried to take, most likely because he knew those abilities could be used as offensive weapons. Maybe he didn't go after the rest of us because he believed we weren't so vulnerable. Maybe he can only take one ability at a timeor that was his limitation then. Maybe it was all a test of our strengths. And weaknesses. Maybe our abilities weren't important to him because he already has his own version of them."

"That's a lot of maybes."

"Yes, I know. I did warn you, Senator, that there'd be no quick or easy answers, not if we want the whole truth. But we did get the man who murdered your daughter with his own hands."

"And do you believe, Agent Bishop, that the man who commands or wills another to act for him is any less guilty of the act committed?"

"You know I don't." If anything, more guilty.

"Then you know why I can't be satisfied by the capture of that evil creature clawing the walls of his cell as we speak."

Bishop nodded. "Believe it or not, Senator, I want the man behind that killer as badly as you do."