Slowly, Hollis said, “He told us someone was after the Five. A killer, serial. He waffled about whether the killer was one of the Five, which bugs me. Said something about all the psychics, in the five families and outside them. About all the shields keeping them from using their psychic tools the way we can, to hunt monsters. One of us asked him . . . something. And he said why didn’t he show us. He gestured for us to look, toward the other side of the street. Main Street. We saw all those poor people. Cut and burned and bleeding, walking toward us. It was horrible. I wanted to leave. And just as Reese started to pull me out, I looked at Daniel. There was something about him. Something wrong.”

DeMarco was still gazing at her steadily. “You were looking at him. So something looked wrong to you. What was it?”

“His eyes.”

“What was wrong about his eyes?”

After a frowning moment, Hollis shook her head, frustration again tightening her features. “I don’t know. I mean, I still feel that there was something wrong, something about his eyes, but when I try to remember, it just isn’t there.”

“I thought I was the only one with memory problems about people and things in the gray time,” Diana said.

“Apparently not.”

Miranda said, “So maybe both your memories are affected at least somewhat by the gray time. I mean, maybe that’s a natural attribute of the gray time.”

That struck Diana as something potentially good, at least as far as her own memory issues went. If there were things she wasn’t meant to remember in the gray time, for whatever reason, then maybe her uncertain or missing memories of visits in the past had a lot less to do with her own mind than she’d realized. She dragged her attention back to the less personal discussion.

“Interesting, I guess,” Hollis said. “But not really a lot of help. Just one more frustrating thing about this case.”

Bishop said, “Maybe the interference here affected both of you in the gray time.”

Diana stared at him. “Is that possible?”

“We don’t know enough about the gray time to rule it out.”

Hollis was even more uneasy. “That sounds weird. And . . . spooky. If the energy here could reach one of us even there, it’s not like any energy I’ve ever experienced or even heard about.”

Quentin said, “Well, it’s also reasonable that if it could reach you in the gray time, it would have a blocking or muffling effect on your abilities. Because that’s what it’s doing to us now.”

“Not completely blocking us. I was able to communicate with Tia here. And a bit with Leo.” She didn’t mention the easy communication with DeMarco, especially when they touched; that was another thing entirely, something that was a part of their connection, and something she knew the other two couples also shared. It was not, strictly speaking, an ability, and was not affected by external energy.