As soon as they got within sight of the van, she saw that something was wrong.
The van should have been dark inside, but each window was glowing. For one instant Kait thought the others had turned on the dome light, and then she thought of fire. But the glow was too bright for the dome light and too cool for fire. And it had a strange opaque quality about it—almost like a phosphorescent mist.
Fear, icy and visceral, gripped at Kaitlyn.
"What is it?" she whispered.
Gabriel pushed her back. "Stay here."
He ran to the van, and Kait followed, scrambling up behind him when he opened the door. Instantly the trip-hammer beating of her heart seemed to double.
She could see the mist clearly now. And she could see Lewis in the front passenger seat and Anna curled on the first bench seat. They were both asleep—but not peacefully.
Lewis's face was twisted into a grimace, and he was moving his arms and legs jerkily as if trying to escape from something. Anna's long black hair hid her face, but she was writhing, one hand a claw.
"Anna!" Kaitlyn grasped her shoulder and shook her. Anna made a moaning sound, but didn't wake up.
"Rob!" Kaitlyn turned to him. He was lying on his back, thrashing helplessly. His eyes were shut, his expression one of agony. Kaitlyn shook him, too, calling his name mentally. Nothing helped.
She looked over to see how Gabriel was doing with Lewis—and froze.
The gray people were here.
She could see them hanging in the air between her and Gabriel. Lewis's seat cut right through one of them.
"It's an attack!" Gabriel shouted.
Kait was reeling. She felt giddy and confused, almost as if she might faint. It was the web, she realized—she was picking up the sensations of the three dreamers.
Oh, God—she had to do something fast, before she and Gabriel collapsed, too.
"Visualize light!" she shouted to Gabriel. "Remember what Rob said? You defend against psychic attacks by envisioning light!"
Gabriel turned his gray eyes on her. "Fine—just tell me how. And what kind of light?"
"I don't know." Panic was rioting inside Kaitlyn. "Just think about light—picture it all around us. Make it—a golden light."
She wasn't quite sure why she'd picked gold. Maybe because the mist was a sort of silvery-green. Or maybe because she always thought of gold as Rob's color.
Pressing her hands to her eyes, Kaitlyn began to envision light. Pure golden light surrounding all of them in the van. As an artist, she found it easy to hold the picture in her mind.
Like this, she thought to Gabriel and sent him the image. The next moment he was helping her, his conviction adding to hers. She felt she could actually see the light now; if she opened her eyes it would be there.
It's working, Gabriel told her.
It was. Kait's giddiness was fading, and for the first time since entering the van she felt warmth. The mist had been as cold as the outdoors.
It slipped away now, like an oppressive blanket sliding off Kait. Still visualizing the golden light, she opened her eyes.
The sleepers had quieted. The last traces of the mist were vanishing, curling in on themselves and disappearing. The gray people were still hanging in air.
The next instant they had vanished, too, but not before Kaitlyn got a strange impression. For just a moment she had looked into one of those gray faces—and recognized it. It seemed familiar, although she couldn't put her finger on why.
Then the thought was driven out of her mind as she realized that Rob was stirring. He groaned and blinked, dragging himself to a sitting position.
"What—? Kaitlyn—?"
"Psychic attack," Kaitlyn told him calmly and precisely. "When we got back the whole van was filled with mist and you wouldn't wake up. We got rid of it by visualizing light. Oh, Rob, I was so scared." Abruptly her knees folded and she sat down on the floor.
Anna was sitting up, too, and Lewis was moaning.
"Are you guys okay?" Kaitlyn asked shakily, from the floor.
Rob clenched one hand in his unruly blond hair. "I had the most terrible nightmare…" Then he looked at Kait and said, " 'When we got back?'"
Kaitlyn's mind went blank, which was probably a good thing. She was too shaken to summon a lie. But behind her Gabriel said smoothly, "Kait had to go to the bathroom, and she didn't want to go alone. I escorted her."
It was a good story. Rob and Anna had found a public rest room down the beach. But Kaitlyn felt little triumph when Rob nodded, accepting it. "Very gallant of you," he said wryly.
"We also saved you," Gabriel added pointedly. "Who knows what that mist was going to do?"
"Yes." Rob's face sobered. He tugged at his hair a moment and then looked up at Gabriel. "Thank you." he said, and his voice was frank and full of genuine emotion.
Gabriel turned away.
There was an awkward moment, and then Anna spoke up.
"Look, why don't you two explain just exactly how you 'visualized light,'" she said. "That way we'll know what to do if they attack again."
"And then maybe we can go back to sleep," Lewis added.
Kait explained without much help from Gabriel. By the time she finished she was yawning hugely and her eyes were watering.
They settled down to sleep prepared for the worst, but nothing else happened that night, and Kaitlyn had no dreams.
She woke in the morning to Rob's mental exclamation. She hurried out of the van to find him and Anna bent over, staring at the ground beside the van.
The asphalt was covered with a thin layer of sand blown from the beach. In that sand, all around the van, were delicate tracks and footprints.
"They're animal tracks," Anna said. "You see these? These are the tracks of a raccoon." She pointed to a footprint three inches long, with five long splayed toes, each ending in a claw. "And these are from a fox." She moved her finger to a series of delicate four-toed marks.
"And those oval ones are from an unshod horse, and the little ones are from a rat," Anna finished. Then she looked up at Kait.
Kaitlyn didn't even bother saying, "But all of those animals couldn't have been here last night." She remembered very well what Rob had said yesterday—sometimes victims of a psychic attack found the footprints of people or animals.
"Great," she muttered. "I have the feeling we should get out of here."