What Hides Inside: Bay City Paranormal Investigations, Book 2

while they ate, trading theories
about extraterrestrial life and pointing out the admittedly
few inaccuracies in the plots.
Sam was enjoying himself so much, he almost
didn’t notice the crawl that appeared at the bottom of the
screen halfway through the third episode.
“Oh my God.” Bo sat straight up, his plate falling
off his lap. “Sam, look.”
Sam frowned at the TV. “What? I don’t—”
Suddenly, he saw. “Oh no. Not again.”
Slipping silently underneath Mulder and Scully’s
heated debate was one of the crawls the local stations
used to report non-emergency breaking news. It read,
Fourth teen vanishes from South Bay High. Details at
eleven.
“The school’s closed,” Bo said, his voice soft and
shocked. “What the hell happened?”
Sam shook his head, watching numbly as the crawl
started over. “I don’t know.”
“We’re going out there tomorrow.” Scooting
backward, Bo leaned against Sam’s side as Sam put an
arm around him. “We’re going to have to be extra
careful. You can’t open this one, can you, Sam? Not like
before.”
Sam thought about that. “I don’t know. I haven’t
tried. But it feels so different from Oleander House. I
can’t explain it very well, but it just feels… More
controlled. Less random. And it doesn’t feel like I can
affect it. But, Bo, I think I have to try.”
Bo’s head snapped up from where it rested on
Sam’s shoulder. “What do you mean? You’re not still
seriously considering trying to communicate with those
things, are you?”
“Andre and Cecile both got a sense of what that
thing in Oleander House meant to do, but I understood
it. No one else has shown any ability to connect with
their minds to the extent I have.” Lifting Bo’s hand, Sam
placed a gentle kiss on his palm. “If communicating
with them is the key to closing the portal, then I have to
do it. Before anyone else dies.”
Bo fixed Sam with a fierce stare. “And what about
you? What if you…” He stopped, eyes filling with fear.
“Doesn’t your life count?”
“Of course it does. Especially now.” Reaching out,
Sam pulled Bo into his arms, resting his cheek against
Bo’s hair. “Look, I promise I won’t take any
unnecessary risks. But I have to try. I could never live
with myself if I didn’t.”
Bo let out a long sigh, his arms winding around
Sam and holding tight. “We have no idea what will
happen if you deliberately plug your mind into one of
those things, Sam. I’m afraid for you.”
Sam didn’t answer, because Bo was right. There
was no way of knowing what might happen. But it
didn’t matter. Even though he was as afraid as Bo, Sam
knew he had no choice. He had an ability to affect the barrier between the worlds, and he couldn’t ignore that.
Not when lives were at stake.
When Bo captured Sam in a deep kiss and the heat
started to rise between them again, Sam was relieved.
He didn’t want to dwell on visions of what might
happen when they entered the tunnels and he faced the
portal. Tumbling onto his back and spreading his legs,
Sam let Bo’s touch take him away.
Chapter Twelve
    Bo didn’t spend the night, though Sam asked him to. He said he wanted to get home so he could call Janine’s parents’ house and talk to the boys. Clearly that was true, but Sam suspected Bo also didn’t want their coworkers to see them arriving at work together the next day. Sam said he understood, kissed Bo goodbye and let him go without an argument.
    To his surprise, Sam fell asleep early and slept like the dead, waking without need of an alarm at a quarter of six. He wolfed down coffee and cold pizza for breakfast, curled on the sofa where he and Bo had made love one more time before Bo left. The memory made him smile.
    Feeling wide awake and energetic, Sam left for work early enough that he was the first to arrive. He let himself in and turned on the lights, then settled at his desk to mentally review his plan for the day.
    The problem was, he didn’t actually have a firm plan. Ever since Oleander House, he’d been researching the subject of dimensional portals and their connection to the human mind, trying to find a way to control his newly discovered abilities. So far he’d come up emptyhanded. He’d run across a couple of people who claimed to be able to manipulate the inter-dimensional barriers, but those leads had both been dead ends. One couldn’t provide Sam with anything but the vaguest speculation regarding how she did it. The other turned out to be a