“Isn’t she lovely, Carl?” Lancaster asked. “Miss Bonner is going to be my bride, you know. The voices tell me that she’s my perfect match. We have so much in common.”
“Congratulations,” Carl said. “Be sure to send me an invitation to the wedding.”
“I’ll do that,” Lancaster said, sounding pleased.
“Meanwhile, it’s time for lunch.”
“Yes, of course,” Lancaster said. “Do you suppose there will be quiche and perhaps a nice white wine at lunch today? I haven’t had a decent meal since I arrived here.”
“This is Wednesday,” Carl said. “That means meat loaf.”
“I really don’t like meat loaf,” Lancaster said. “But I will tolerate anything so long as I can be near my beloved. Her radiance lightens my aura like a fine champagne.”
“No wine at lunch, either,” Carl said.
“I was afraid of that,” Lancaster said.
Carl guided him along the hallway.
“Damn it, Rachel, whatever you did to Lancaster in that therapy session has worsened his condition,” Ian said. He kept his voice low but it was plain that he was not just angry—he was concerned for his patient.
Rachel shuddered but she did not turn around. She listened to the retreating footsteps, suddenly very glad to know that in fifteen minutes she would be out of the building and far away from the clinic.
“I know you don’t want to hear this,” she whispered back, “but Lancaster is deliberately acting crazy. His aura is very stable—scary stable, in fact. He is in full control of himself and his talent. He’s a full-on psi-path and he’s dangerous, sir.”
“You’re wrong,” Ian said. “There is definitely instability in Lancaster’s aura. He is an ideal candidate for the drug trial that I am conducting.”
“Right.” She clutched her notebook to her breasts. She really needed to get out of the clinic. She fought the suddenly overwhelming urge to run. “If you’ll excuse me, I’ll go pack up my office.” She started to move around him and paused. “I do have one piece of advice for you, although you probably won’t take it.”
Ian narrowed his eyes. “What?”
“Do not believe anything Marcus Lancaster says.”
“If you have any proof that he’s lying, now would be a real good time to provide it,” Ian said, his expression fierce.
She tried to come up with something, anything that would impress Ian.
“His ear stud,” she said.
Ian blinked. “What about it? The crystal isn’t tuned amber. It can’t be used to generate energy. That was checked out when he was admitted. The patients are not allowed to possess amber. And it’s certainly not gem quality. It’s just a cold, decorative stone of some kind.”
She took a deep breath. “Here’s the thing, sir: I’ve seen stones like it before. Also, you should know that Lancaster doesn’t need amber or charged crystal to use his para-senses. He’s a natural. I think he has a mid-level talent for psychic hypnosis but that’s not my point.”
“Ridiculous. There is no such talent.”
“I didn’t expect you to believe that, but think about this, sir: Why would a guy who wears designer suits and watches that probably cost more than the entire city-state budget wear a cheap ear stud?”
“Probably because it has sentimental value,” Ian snapped, exasperated.
“Trust me, there isn’t an ounce of sentiment in Marcus Lancaster.”
“What makes you think that you are qualified to offer an opinion on Lancaster’s para-psych profile?” Ian said. “You were selling tea and giving aura-readings when I found you at the Crystal Rainbow.”
“Yes, I was, and I think I’ll go back to that career. I don’t seem to be cut out for clinical work—or for the mainstream world, come to that.”
She tightened her grip on her notebook and stepped around Ian.
“Rachel—”
Surprised by the hesitation in his voice, she paused and turned back.
“Yes?” she said.
“Even though you were technically here on probation, I’ll see to it that you receive two weeks’ severance pay,” Ian said quietly.
“Thanks. I appreciate that. I spent a fortune on new clothes for this job. I’ll be paying off the credit card for a while.”
“I suppose you’ll be going back to the Crystal Rainbow Tearoom?”
“No,” she said. “I think it’s time for Plan B.”
“You’re going to return to the Harmonic Enlightenment Academy?”
“No. The truth is, I don’t belong there, either. Ever heard of Rainshadow Island?”
“No,” Ian said.
“Not many people have. It’s one of the islands in the Amber Sea. It’s not even on most maps. My great-aunts ran a bookshop and café there for a couple of decades. Several months ago they retired and moved to the desert. They left Shadow Bay Books to me. I’ve just let the shop sit, closed up, until I could decide what to do with it. In the back of my mind the shop was my fallback plan in case things didn’t work out for me here in Frequency City. Good thing I didn’t sell it.”
She started walking again, heading toward her office.
“One more thing,” Ian said.
She paused and turned back to face him again. “What now?”
“You said you’d seen stones like the one in Lancaster’s ear stud.”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“On Rainshadow Island. As far as anyone knows, that’s the only place they have ever been found. They’re called rainstones.”
She hurried away down the hall to the tiny office that had been allocated to her. Two months ago, when she had accepted the position at the clinic, she had been so excited at having her very own office she had taken dozens of photos of the small, spare space and e-mailed them to everyone in the family. She shook her head at the naive memory. As if an office were proof that she had found her place in the world.
“I should have known this wasn’t going to work out,” she said into the silence. “Not like I wasn’t warned.”
It took ten minutes, not fifteen, to gather up her personal possessions and dump them into a cardboard box. Carl was waiting at the door. He looked unhappy.
“I’m really sorry about this, Miss Bonner,” he said. “It’s been nice having you here. The patients all like you. So do I. Things seem more cheerful and sunnier here when you’re around.”
She smiled. “Thank you, Carl, but Dr. Oakford is right. It’s best that I leave. I don’t belong here.”
Carl cleared his throat. “I don’t suppose you happen to have any more of that tea that you blended for me, do you?”
“Not here in the office, but I’ll mix up another batch and send it to you.”
Carl brightened. “Thanks, I appreciate that.”
Five minutes later she was alone on the street, the cardboard box containing her things tucked under one arm, her purse slung over her shoulder. The low, dark clouds opened up as she walked quickly toward the bus stop. Naturally she would get caught in the rain without an umbrella today, she thought. Some days were just flat-out unharmonic from start to finish.
The cold, sleeting rain plastered her tightly pinned hair to her head and soaked her new, low-heeled black pumps. The shoes would be ruined. Not that it mattered, she told herself. No one wore black low-heeled pumps on Rainshadow. Boots—athletic shoes and sandals were the norm there. And she just happened to own a new pair of boots.
She waited for the bus, chilled to the bone but aware that she felt a lot better now that she was away from the Chapman Clinic.
She would survive the rain and the loss of the job. What mattered was that she would never again find herself alone in a therapy room with Marcus Lancaster. Because she was quite certain it was no coincidence that he had manipulated the situation so that they had wound up together today. If she remained on the staff at the clinic he would manipulate things to ensure that there would be more such encounters. She knew that as surely as she
knew the Principles.
Another shiver of apprehension swept through her. Rainshadow was Plan B, but the thought of returning to the island made her uneasy. Something had happened to her the last time she was—something unnerving. Twelve hours of her life had vanished.
She had gone into a psychic fugue late one afternoon and wandered into the forbidden territory of the Preserve. Somehow she had not only survived the night in the dangerous woods, she had done what most people who knew the island considered almost impossible—she had managed to find her way out of the Preserve.
She had emerged at dawn the following morning but she had no memories of the night.
She had, however, collected some souvenirs along the way—dark dreams that now haunted her sleep, the faint memory of ethereal music being played somewhere in the night and a handful of rainstones.
Table of Contents
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-one
Twenty-two
Twenty-three
Twenty-four
Twenty-five
Twenty-six
Twenty-seven
Twenty-eight
Twenty-nine
Thirty
Thirty-one
Thirty-two
Thirty-three
Thirty-four
Thirty-five
Thirty-six
Thirty-seven
Thirty-eight
Thirty-nine
Forty
Forty-one
The Lost Night
Amanda Quick, Crystal Gardens
(Series: Ladies Of Lantern Street # 1)
Thank you for reading books on BookFrom.Net Share this book with friends