“So?”

“So why do I get the feeling there’s something else in your devious mind, Yoda?” She was the only one of his agents to use that rather mocking nickname. To his face, at least.

He didn’t bother with denial. “The crows.”

She frowned. “I haven’t seen a single crow all morning. I assumed they were doing what the female—what Tia—told Nellie they were doing—patrolling the valley.”

“Probably. But I had a hunch they might more likely approach you without Reese being present. Even shielded, his energy can be felt from quite a distance, especially when he’s with you.”

Hollis didn’t pretend to misunderstand. “And you sent Miranda off, too, so it wouldn’t look so obvious?”

“One of us was needed in the search, and I needed to introduce you to some of the elders.”

“Yeah, yeah. Well, since no crows are about—”

She broke off to watch a rather large crow alight silently on one of the pretty benches placed here and there along Main Street, this one only about a dozen feet away from them, then returned her gaze to Bishop. “You planned that.”

“How could I have planned it?”

“If I knew that, I could collect a lot of money from just about everybody else in the unit.” She sighed, again misting the chilly air before her.

Bishop glanced around them. “Not many people out this morning, and nobody close. Now would be a good time to find out if the crows do know where Megan is. They’ve had time today to look specifically for the sort of signs indicating a grave, or a place where someone could have been held.”

However uncertain she felt about communicating with crows, Hollis was restlessly aware of time ticking, of someone recently taken who might yet be alive and able to be found in time, of remains to be found that might help point them toward what was so far a very quiet sort of killer in their experience.

Deadly quiet.

Calm, Bishop said, “I’ll be close enough to help if anything else happens when you drop your shields.”

“I don’t even know why they’re so solid today. My shields. They’ve been like Swiss cheese lately.”

“Maybe it’s a defensive response because of the energy.”

“Maybe.” Hollis was willing to accept that, even though energy hadn’t affected her lack of a shield before. And although she hadn’t had any idea that Bishop might be able to project his own formidable shield—or in some other way deflect any energy attack against her while she left herself vulnerable to attempt to talk to a crow—she trusted him.

They all trusted him.

So Hollis turned and took several slow steps to halve the distance between them and the crow.

She lowered her unusually solid shields cautiously, almost immediately aware of both a strengthening of that crawly sensation on the back of her neck and, much stronger, way too many human feelings here in town, virtually all of them from nonpsychic people.

Worried people.