I immediately performed CPR.
All while I called out for help.
Someone nearby heard me. A girl. I told her to get help. She stared at me for a moment, then took off running, her feet pounding along the polished tiles.
I went back to my CPR, doing all I could to get Cal's heart beating, to get him breathing again, and by the time the first adults arrived - Junior and his wife, followed shortly by Tara and Allison - I was certain that Cal was quite dead.
* * *
Jesus, Sam, what happened? asked Allison.
We were all sitting in the great room.
All seventeen of us. Cal was still in the library, lying under a sheet. Further attempts to resuscitate him had gone for naught.
Are your thoughts protected? I asked.
Yes, of course.
Something killed him. I watched it kill him. I'm seriously freaked out.
Allison snapped her head around and stared at me. She wasn't the only one who stared at me. Most people in the room were looking at me. Also in the room was Tara. I'd been too busy and shaken to notice when she'd returned. Edwin hadn't stopped looking my direction. The sky beyond the big windows was a nasty gray.
The first of the day's raindrops had begun to splatter against the glass. Jagged bolts of lightning occasionally lit up the underbelly of the heavy clouds. Junior, who had been on his cell phone in the hallway, came into the room.
"The Island County Sheriff can't make it out today," he reported. He looked ten years older than when I'd last seen him.
He had, after all, just lost his uncle. "Nor can the paramedics, nor anyone else, for that matter."
"Why?" asked a little girl. She was, I knew, one of Junior's granddaughters.
"Because of the storm, honey."
I was holding my phone. I wanted to text Fang. To text Kingsley even. I didn't feel comfortable texting Russell yet. The poor guy was just beginning to know me. I couldn't lay something like this on him.
What was I supposed to say? That I'd seen some dark entity strangle a man? For a new relationship, that might be a deal breaker.
Fang would have understood, and so would've Kingsley. Hell, so would have Detective Sherbet. For now, I was left with only Allison.
Gee thanks, Sam.
Oops, I thought. You know what I mean. The others are, you know...
Freaky like you?
Right.
Outside, the wind had clearly picked up. The tall evergreens were once again swaying and bending. Rain splattered harder, driven into the window. A lawn chair outside scuttled over the grounds, rolling like a tumbleweed.
Did you really watch him die, Sam?
Yes, and I'm still shaking.
I gave her a glimpse of my own memory of the event, reliving the moment the darkness appeared from his aura and reached up to his throat. I relived his last few words, too: "It has us all, Samantha. It controls us all. We are not free. We are never free..."
Jesus, came Allison's reply. Was he poisoned?
Maybe, I thought. But I suspected it was something else, something that I didn't entirely understand, but it had to do with his last words to me: It controls us all.
Allison, who'd been following my train of thought as best she could, formulated the words that I had been searching for: Sam, you think that, on some level, that whatever has control over Edwin, also had control over Cal? But not just the two of them, I thought grimly.
All of them? asked Allison.
Maybe.
Junior turned his attention to me.
"Samantha, I can't express to you how thankful I am for your efforts on behalf of my uncle. I'm sure that you did all you could to save his life."
"I'm sorry I couldn't do more," I said.
"What, exactly, did you do?" asked Patricia, Junior's wife.
Her aura, I noted, was not rippled with the same black ribbon I had seen in some of the others. Her aura was a biting green.
I opened my mouth to speak, but instead, looked around me. Junior, I noted, had a black ribbon woven through his aura. I looked again at Edwin: the same black ribbon. I looked at the kids. They all had black ribbons, some thicker than others.
All of them. I'd never seen this before.
Not like this, and not in the same pattern, and not with so many people.
What the hell was going on? I wondered.
"Standard CPR," I said, finally.
"Where did you learn this standard CPR?"
I glanced over at Tara. She was holding her breath. I glanced over at Edwin. He was grinning knowingly. The jig, I was quite certain, was up.
I said, "At the FBI Academy."
"Are you a federal agent, Samantha?"
"Not anymore."
Junior, who had been standing, stepped threateningly before me, arms crossed. "Then what the hell are you, Samantha?"
I looked over at Tara, who was standing near the arched opening into the great room. Her aura, I noted, was still rippled with the same black ribbon.
"I'm a private investigator," I said.
"And my name's Samantha Moon."
