At Risk by REBECCA YORK

you.”
    “How?”
    “By seeing if I can go back to when it was made.”
    “You’re not in any kind of shape for that.”
    Maybe she was right, but he wasn’t going to wimp out now. Leaning forward, he reached out and grabbed the bag, pressing his fingers through the plastic and lightly squeezing the charm inside, avoiding the needle. It wasn’t direct contact, but it was enough. Immediately, the room swam around him and disappeared. He was somewhere else. A few hours ago when he’d touched the knife, he’d gone to the bayou. This time he was in a house. Nicely furnished. He saw an Oriental rug on the floor, overstuffed furniture. A lamp was on in the corner, but it was the only source of light. Was he going back to another voodoo ceremony?
    He saw his hands. A man’s hands, encased in surgical gloves.
    A collection of objects was spread out on the low table in front of him. Chicken feathers. Dried cloves. Dried garlic. A smelly crawfish claw. A couple of toothpicks. A needle. What looked like mustard but might not be. A broken knife blade. A small wad of paper towel. The man leaned down and spit on the towel, then crumpled it up and plopped spittle onto what looked like a blob of dark putty.
    He moved his hand through the objects on the table, picking up pieces and turning them one way and the other. Pulling some down and picking up others, he pressed them into the base material.
    Rafe had no idea who was fashioning the thing. Or where the room was. He wasn’t in his own body, and he had only minimal control of the situation. For example, he couldn’t walk out of the room. He had to stay where the man was.
    But could he stand up for a better view of the interior space? When he started to try it, he pitched to the side, falling against the corner of a desk. Pain seared into his side where the horizontal surface gouged him.
    A voice came to him from far away. “Rafe, are you all right, Rafe?”
    Was he?
    His eyes blinked open, and he focused on Eugenia who had crossed the room and was sitting beside him on the sofa. When he realized he was slumped over, he straightened up.
    “Are you all right,” she asked again, her voice urgent as she closed her hand over his shoulder.
    “Yes.”
    “What happened?”
    “I wanted to get an impression of whoever made that thing.”
    “And you did?”
    “Yeah. But not enough.”
    “What does that mean?”
    “I saw a room, but it was mostly dark.”
    “A cabin? Something in town?”
    “In town, I’m pretty sure. It was nicely furnished. I remember an Oriental rug.”
    “Could you identify the pattern?”
    He laughed. “I’m not that into decor. I saw someone putting the charm together, but I don’t know who it was.”
    “Man or woman?”
    “A man, I’m pretty sure.”
    She stroked his shoulder. “You shouldn’t have done that.”
    “It’s part of my job.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “It’s why Frank Decorah sent me—and not somebody else. He knows I can enter a scene generated by things I touch. He thought it might help me figure out who’s behind the muggings.”
    “Has it helped?”
    He answered with another laugh—this one more hollow. “With this case? Not so far.”
    oOo
    After Rafe had figured out that touching things could give him impressions of the object’s owner, he’d played around with it, trying to figure out who had been doing what. Once he’d stumbled into a scene where one of his friends had been bent on seduction in the backseat of a car. Another time he’d seen his father sitting alone in his room, holding a picture of his mother. That had cured him of making a game of eavesdropping on people. And since beginning his investigative career, the skill had turned into serious business.
    He moved on the sofa and winced.
    “What?”
    “I hit my side against a desk.”
    “When?”
    “When I was . . . away.”
    “You can get hurt in one of those visions?”
    “Yeah.”
    “So now you’ve gotten hurt twice in less than two hours.