Free Carolyn Jourdan - Nurse Phoebe 03 - The School for Psychics by Carolyn Jourdan

we should stay on this main pathway down the long axis of the grounds and see if I can pick up anything. If not, then try a perpendicular axis. The paths aren’t laid out on true compass points. It’s on a grid, but the layout is rotated about forty-five degrees so the long axis runs from the château at the southeast through the fancy part of the gardens, past huge expanses of lawns, and then to the more forested and less maintained areas at the northwest end. We may have to do some backtracking, too. A huge stretch of the grounds is bisected by a long skinny lake, which makes it hard to cross from one side of the gardens to the other.”
    “Lead on,” he said. “I’m content to walk as long as you’d like.”
    “I don’t really know what I’m doing,” Phoebe confessed.
    “That’s a good sign in this kind of work,” J.J. said. “You have to feel your way as you go with no preconceptions. It’s been my experience that the people who know things in advance are almost always wrong.”
    They walked arm-in- arm down the packed stone pathway. Thank goodness they were dressed warmly. The place was beautiful, but very cold. There were people in sight in every direction, but not many of them.
    They didn’t speak as they walked along. Phoebe tried to blank her mind, let it wander, not fasten ing on any particular topic. They walked a long way before she got any signal at all. When she felt it, she stopped so suddenly she actually skidded slightly on the gravel. J. J. was too sensitive to her movements to slam into her, though. He stopped and stood next to her quietly.
    Sh e looked around. They were at an intersection of several walkways. Trails went out in four different directions. And there was even a fifth choice—a small path went off into the woods at a forty-five degree angle, headed almost due north.
    She didn’t move. She let herself feel all the directions. Something was pinging against her skin from the north. She shook herself slightly to loosen any tension, the way the Boss had taught her. Then she waited. Yes, something was coming toward her from the north. She didn’t speak for fear of losing the delicate connection.
    The trail leading through the woods was good, but not quite right. She started out on it, but soon veered off to the left, taking them through the leaf-strewn forest. The signal got stronger when she did that. She lifted her head and homed in on the direction. She began to sense something speaking to her. She wanted to speed up, but didn’t dare because the ground was uneven and bare branches snatched at them from all sides. Moving quickly would be difficult for J.J.
    “Come to me,” someone said. She heard it as plainly as if it had been spoken aloud. She knew it hadn’t been, but it certainly got her attention. She’d rarely had a full-blown auditory communication like that. It was what some people might call an auditory hallucination and she was wary whenever it happened. It was essential to stay grounded in the real world.
    Then she heard it again, loud and clear, a man’s voice saying, “Come to me.”
    Holy moly, it was all she could do not to break into a run, but she restrained herself. She led J.J. through the forest. They topped a rise and then she saw it—a tiny white masonry pavilion sitting in the middle of a small formal garden. She gasped. Whatever it was, whoever he was, he was in there.
    She stood looking at the building from fifty yards away , shivering and jerking slightly. She realized she couldn’t make herself go any closer. She felt as if she was being held in place. Uh oh . She knew from experience that when she lost muscle control, get ready, she was about to be shown something—a little internal movie would start soon.
    She stood rooted to the spot, waiting for it, then she began to have a vision of activity occurring inside the pavilion. She was seeing the events from a different angle than from where she was actually standing.
    It was of a man with