Everything was so utterly still. Quiet.

Lifeless.

Hollis wasn’t sure what she was supposed to do now that she was here. She didn’t have spirit guides, like Diana’s, appearing to tell her where she was supposed to go or what she was supposed to do.

And besides, this was Diana’s realm, not hers, a place where her friend and fellow agent knew the rules—such as they were.

Hollis had, so far, learned a gray-time rule only when she stumbled and fell over it.

But one thing she had learned from bitter experience was that the gray time was exhausting for the living, for even the spirit—or consciousness, or mind, whatever—of the living. The longer she remained, the more exhausted she would become. And unlike Diana, Hollis hadn’t had the better part of thirty years to get familiar with this place.

So she started walking, down toward the town. And hadn’t gone more than three paces before she heard a voice.

“Hollis?”

—

DIANA HAYES HAD, in her more than two years with the Special Crimes Unit, grown somewhat more comfortable with the mediumistic abilities that had been hers from birth. She would have been far more comfortable with them by now had her autocratic father not believed, from her childhood, that the “symptoms” of her psychic abilities were a mental illness that required keeping his only surviving daughter medicated to the point of literally drifting, uncaring and almost unseeing, through her life.

Far too much of her life.

But Elliot Brisco was no longer part of Diana’s life, his authority over her first severed by a doctor who saw something of the truth and had quietly weaned Diana off all the medications so she was able to see what had been done to her, and then by Diana herself, fighting for her independence and gaining it, at last, in a court and by a judge’s ruling.

The final severing between Diana and her father had come when he used his money and power to back a monster in his efforts to regain control of Diana. An attempt that not only failed but had resulted in countless deaths and nearly killed his only child. She had turned her back on him for good after that. She had been unmoved by even the ruthless vengeance of another powerful man, another father, grieving and embittered by the loss of his own daughter and bent on destroying Elliot Brisco and his empire. Elliot Brisco’s actions had far-reaching consequences.

And one of them was that Diana’s life was her own to live as she wished.

She had resisted giving up any of her hard-won independence for a long time, which was why Quentin had had to be very patient. It was, Bishop had told Diana privately, very good for Quentin, who was inclined toward recklessness and was known for his humorous, somewhat flippant attitude, to learn patience. Even if he had to learn it the hard way.

Personally as well as professionally.

But the horrific injury in the middle of a deadly, hectic investigation had landed Diana in the hospital, had very, very nearly killed her, and that had taught her that protecting something Quentin would never take from her anyway had been a true waste of time and of her life. Their lives.