“It’s a hypnotic summons, right?” she said. “Tuned to my vibe?”

“Yes,” he said. “I can hear it but it’s not pulling me.”

“You’re doing it again,” she said. “Stop looking at me as if I am a grenade that might explode at any second.”

“How are you feeling?”

“Annoyed. With you.”

“I’m serious. How bad is the pull of the music?”

“It’s there. I can sense it clearly but I’m in control. I can handle it. Last night it caught me off guard. I wasn’t prepared. Tonight everything is different. I know what I’m dealing with. Don’t worry, I’m not going to run wildly into the fog to find the recorder player.”

“You’re sure?”

She shot him a quick glare. “I happen to be a very strong aura talent, remember? Pretty sure anyone with a powerful psychic profile could handle the recorder. It’s a lot like pulling yourself out of a lucid dream. Once you know you’re dreaming you can rewrite the script or wake up.”

“Okay, that makes sense. Do you think you’d be able to resist if I wasn’t here with you in the car?”

“Yes. Why?” She wrapped her arms around her knees and watched him the same way he had been watching her. Closely. “You’ve got a plan, don’t you?”

“I don’t think the recorder works as a tracking device. It feels like a bright, shiny lure.”

“Meaning the piper can’t use it to find me. It only works to draw me to him.”

“Right.”

“But you can follow the music back to the source,” Olivia said. “That’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it?”

“I would really like to get my hands on one or two of those guys in black, preferably the one playing that damned recorder. We need information.”

“There are four of them, Harlan, at least that’s how many there were this afternoon at the Sefton house. And they’re armed. For your information, guns work just fine in these mountains, unless you go into one of the caves.”

“Two vehicles. Probably the same two SUVs as at the Sefton house.”

“ ‘Probably’?”

“It’s a good bet we’re dealing with the crew we ran into earlier today.”

“ ‘A good bet’?” Olivia said. “Since when does a chaos theory talent talk about gambling odds?”

“I do it with every breath I take. So do you. So does everyone on the planet. The only difference between chaos talents and other people is that we’re better at calculating the odds. But we screw up, too. And when we find ourselves standing in the rubble, we ask the same question.”

“ ‘How the hell did this happen?’ ”

“That question. Yes.”