Rituals (Cainsville 5)

"Given the choice, I would rather be lost in the vision maze with you than stuck alone on the other side."

"That's really kind of sweet."

"It's practical."

"Also sweet. Own it. I won't tell anyone. Okay, so we'll both climb up on the other side and..."

He kept walking, heading for the exit door.

"That still doesn't open," I said.

He took hold of the knob and murmured something in Welsh. And it opened.

"Huh," I said. "So that's like an 'open sesame' for sluagh-locks?"

"Hmm."

I didn't ask how he thought of it--I suspected he didn't know, either, only that the urge sprang from deep in his Gwynn-memory bank.

Not surprisingly, the door led into another basement room. We continued past a furnace, shining the light this way and that until...

"Stairs," I said. "Which will lead right back to the hole again."

"Don't even say that."

We picked our way through basement crap until we reached the stairs. Halfway up them, the hairs on my neck rose, five seconds in advance of the damned voice that teased at my memory.

"Going somewhere, Eden?"

"You made your point," I called. "You're a badass. We need to take you seriously. We do. But keeping me locked in this building isn't actually going to accomplish anything. If you want to talk, let's talk. Otherwise, we really need to go."

"In a hurry, are you? For what, exactly? There's no fire to put out, Eden."

Those words snagged on a memory, the one that insisted I knew who this was, that I'd met her before.

Same voice. Different tenor. Different inflections.

There's no fire to put out.

No.

Hell, no. That wasn't possible. It just wasn't...

I took a deep breath and turned to Gabriel.

"Fire." That's all I said, seeing if he'd make the connection. In a heartbeat, he did, his lips forming a name.

I saw that name on his lips, and I tumbled through memory, images flashing. A house, nestled between two tall buildings. A woman, fleeing to a parking garage. Middle-aged with girlish barrettes and a girlish voice. A woman easily dismissed. A woman we had dismissed.

The young woman in the park who'd given Todd the file and set him on Greg Kirkman's path. I'd recognized her voice there, too, but couldn't connect it to the fragile whisper of the middle-aged woman with the silly pink barrettes.

There's one more connection that my mind makes as it tumbles through memories.

The fifth figure in the fun house. The person in charge, the one I couldn't see, couldn't even hear.

Just moments ago, Stacey Pasolini talked about "that bitch" who showed them what to do, made them promises for what the killings would bring them.

The same woman.