She lowered the washcloth and tilted her face so that the spray rinsed off the soapy lather she had just applied. Slowly she turned in his arms. She regarded him with very serious eyes.
“How do you feel?” she asked.
“Good.” He considered the matter more closely and smiled slowly. “Very, very good.”
She glanced at the shower door behind him. He felt energy pulse and knew that she was checking out his prints on the glass.
“Some of your dream psi was a little disturbed. That’s why you were getting the hallucinations and nightmares. But I fixed the wavelengths.”
“I know. The weird shit is gone.” He removed the washcloth from her hands, tossed it aside and touched her nipples. “I can sense the difference.”
“The weird stuff might be gone, but there are still traces of those sleeping meds. I didn’t have a chance to do anything about them.” She frowned intently. “They’re fading, however. Shouldn’t be much longer now before the last of the drug is out of your system.”
He captured her face between his hands, forcing her to look at him, not the door.
“About last night,” he said again.
She blinked, as though he had distracted her from whatever she had been going to say next. Her air of intense concentration slowly evaporated. She smiled. Heat and feminine mystery darkened her eyes.
“Okay,” she said. “It was a big deal. So was the night before.” That was what he wanted to hear, he thought. So why wasn’t he satisfied with her response? He decided he would have to think about the problem some other time. At that moment the only thing he could concentrate on was touching Chloe all over, kissing her all over. This morning he was going to do everything the way he should have last night.
Invisible energy sparked and flared in the atmosphere. Just like last night, he thought. But this time she wouldn’t be able to blame it on the lamp.
A LONG TIME LATER she got out of the shower and wrapped herself in a thick white towel. He followed, reaching for one of the towels. He was feeling very good, even better than he had when he had awakened.
He smiled at her as he dried himself. “Well?”
She wrinkled her nose and turned pink, and then she laughed.
“Okay, that was a big deal, too,” she said.
He grinned. “No lamp involved.”
AFTERWARD HE PUT ON the new clothes the Harper family had provided. He made the call to Fallon while Chloe was getting dressed in the bedroom.
Fallon picked up halfway through the first ring. “You’re not in L.A.”
“Still in Vegas. Sorry about that. I wanted some privacy.”
“Yeah, I started getting suspicious this morning when I saw the credit card charges. Harper running those for you?”
“Part of the full-service package. It’s designed to make it look like I’m somewhere other than where I happen to be at the moment.”
“You sound different. I take it the lamp worked?”
“As advertised. Chloe says my dream-psi patterns are stable again. She’s right. I can sense it, too.”
“So you’re not going to turn into a Cerberus on me. Great. That takes one problem off my to-do list.”
“You never did sound all that worried.”
“Probably because I wasn’t. Griffin Winters survived, so the lamp must have worked for him. Figured it would work for you, too.” Fallon paused. “I’m assuming, of course, that you haven’t been overcome by a compulsion to murder anyone with the last name of Jones?”
“Well, now that you mention it—”
“That was a joke, Winters.”
“I knew that.”
Fallon was silent for a few seconds.
“Think there’s anything to the story about the Midnight Crystal that Old Nick claimed he inserted into the lamp there at the end?” he asked eventually.
“One of the rocks in the lamp stayed dark. Figure that’s the one Nicholas called the Midnight Crystal. Chloe thinks it’s just a chunk of glass. She couldn’t sense any energy in it, and I sure as hell couldn’t fire it up.”
“Good news for the Jones family tree,” Fallon said. “What’s got me worried now is that it looks like Nightshade wants the lamp, and I can’t figure out why.”
“What makes you so sure that Nightshade is involved with what happened at the motel yesterday?”
“My talent,” Fallon said flatly.
“Hard to argue with that. But what would they want with the lamp?”
“When I find out, you’ll be the first to know. I’ve got a feeling that as long as you and Chloe have the lamp in your possession, though, you’re both in danger.”
“Why Chloe?” he asked, gut tightening.
“Because she can work the lamp,” Fallon said. “If they want the lamp, they may want her, too.”
“Shit.”
“Harper’s doing a good job. Anyone trying to follow you probably believes that you’re in L.A., so I think we’ve got some breathing room. But we need to get the lamp into safekeeping in one of the museum vaults as quickly as possible.”
“You have a plan?”
“I had a plan,” Fallon said. “I’ve always got a plan. But you screwed things up when you decided to stay in Vegas. I had a couple people waiting in L.A., the kind of talents who can handle this type of work.”
“Hunters?”
“Cleared hunters. When it comes to dealing with Nightshade, I’m not using anyone who hasn’t been vetted by me, personally, unless there’s no other option.”
“You think Arcane has been infiltrated?”
“It’s a given now that we know that the bastard who founded the organization was sitting right there on the Governing Council for decades, listening to every single one of the Society’s secrets.”
“Not that Arcane was ever particularly good at keeping secrets,” Jack pointed out.
“The Society wasn’t set up to be an intelligence agency,” Fallon shot back. “We’re supposed to be a group of serious academics and researchers devoted to the study of the paranormal. We publish scholarly papers, damn it. We collect artifacts for our museums. And J&J is just a small-time private investigation agency, not the CIA.”
“Take it easy, Fallon. You sound a little tense.”
“So sue me. I’ve got about a dozen irons in the fire at the moment, and they’re all red-hot. Do you have any idea of how much data we collected when we took down those Nightshade labs a couple months back?”
“No.”
“Neither do I because it’s all locked in computers. Hard-core encryption. I don’t have nearly enough crypto-talents to get the job done.”
“Must be tough,” Jack said, trying for soothing.
But Fallon was on a roll. “I’ve had to put a lot of routine cases on the back burner because I just don’t have the time or the people to handle them. That means that an unknown number of sociopathic sensitives are out there right now using their talents to con little old ladies out of their life savings, picking pockets, stealing jewelry or running gangs. In some cases they’re getting away with murder. Literally.”
“J&J was never intended to be a police force, either,” Jack reminded him.
“Who the hell is going to catch those kinds of bad guys if we don’t? Regular law enforcement agencies don’t even acknowledge that there is such a thing as the paranormal, let alone that some of the people they’re chasing have psychic talents.”
There was movement in the bedroom doorway. Jack glanced back and saw Chloe coming toward him. She looked fresh and vibrant, still a little flushed and rosy from their lovemaking and the shower.
“You need an assistant, Fallon,” he said into the phone. “You should learn to delegate.”
“Yeah, people keep telling me that. But I don’t have time to find someone who could handle the job. And then there’s the other issue.”
“What other issue?”
Fallon was quiet for a couple of beats. “I’ve been told that I’m not the easiest person t
o work with.”
“Hard to believe.”
“I know, go figure. Thing is, even if I did find someone suitable, what are the odds that he or she would want to pull up stakes and move here to Scargill Cove?”
“What’s wrong with Scargill Cove? Thought it was one of those picturesque little coastal towns like Mendocino.”
“Small towns are small towns. Doesn’t matter what the scenery looks like. The only movie theater here closed four years ago. The one bookstore stocks books on vegan cooking and meditation. Most of the locals can best be described as interesting characters, and the only restaurant clean enough to take a date to is the Sunshine Café, which closes at five thirty. They roll up the streets at night around here.”
Jack took the phone away from his ear and looked at it. He put the phone back to his ear.
“You’re thinking of inviting a woman out on a date?” he asked cautiously.
“I’m a man,” Fallon muttered. “I have needs.”
“Then maybe you’d better move to another town. Someplace where you have a shot at getting those needs fulfilled.”
“That won’t work.” Fallon exhaled heavily. “I require peace and quiet. Lots of peace and quiet. Scargill Cove works for me.”
“I hesitate to state the obvious, but have you considered registering with arcanematch?”
“What’s the point? Everyone knows that the Society’s database isn’t much good at finding matches for guys like us. Look what happened when you went shopping for a wife there. You were divorced two years later.”
“Just because my marriage didn’t work out doesn’t mean that arcanematch wouldn’t work for you.”
“Hell, I’m not looking for a wife. I don’t have time to deal with a wife. Wives require a lot of attention.”
“Maybe what you need is a wife who shares your interest in running J&J,” Jack said. He wondered when he had become an expert on marriage. Fallon was right, his own had not been what anyone would call a resounding success.
“What the hell are we doing talking about my private life?” Fallon demanded. “I’ve got work to do. I’ll get the team of hunters out to you later today. They’ll be driving from L.A. Don’t want to risk taking the lamp through airline security. They should reach you in about four hours, assuming I can get hold of them right away.”
Fallon ended the connection, as was his custom, without bothering with the usual civilities such as good-bye or see ya or talk to you later. Jack lowered the phone and looked at Chloe.
“Fallon Jones is sending a team out from L.A. to collect the lamp. We’ve got a few hours to kill. What do you say we go downstairs and have breakfast? I’m hungry.” He thought about it and smiled. This was the first time in weeks when he’d contemplated food as anything more than fuel. “Really, really hungry.”
34
IT WAS IMPOSSIBLE TO GO ANYWHERE WITHIN THE SPRAWLING casino-hotel complex without having to traverse the gaming floor. Chloe lowered her senses to the minimum, but there was no way to ignore the layers of feverish dreamprints that fluoresced everywhere in the eternal night that enveloped the vast room.
The glowing residue of psi left by thousands of frantic, excited, and desperate players gave the midnight realm an otherworldly luminescence. Weaving a path through the glowing card tables, roulette wheels and banks of slot machines was like swimming through a maze of boiling sulfur cauldrons at the bottom of the ocean.
The hotel featured over a dozen restaurants, bars and fast- food eateries, all scattered around the perimeter of the gaming floor. The large café that catered to the breakfast and lunch crowd had a very short line. The seating hostess showed them to a booth. Chloe ignored the sickly psi prints that glowed all across the sparkling clean table and opened her menu. Jack sat down across from her. He put the leather duffel containing the lamp on one side of the seat and positioned his computer case on the other. The subtle aura of dark power emanating from the artifact misted the atmosphere of the small area.
“You’re really going to give that thing to Arcane?” she asked.
Jack studied the menu. “Yeah.”
“Are you serious? Do you actually trust the Society to take care of it?”
“Not one hundred percent, no.” He closed his menu and looked at her. “But you rarely get a hundred percent certainty in anything. Fallon is right. The lamp will be a lot more secure locked up in an Arcane vault than sitting on an end table in my condo.”
“Okay, I’ll give you that,” she said. “But what if one of your descendants ever needs it?”
“Same reasoning applies. Arcane has taken reasonably good care of a lot of paranormal artifacts for a few centuries. Their security is always first class these days because they’ve got the best crypto-talents to design it. My family managed to lose the lamp in the course of a cross-country move. Who knows? Maybe one of my great-grandchildren, assuming I ever have any, might decide to put it into a yard sale.”
She got an odd little twinge when she thought about his children and great-grandchildren. His descendants would probably all be strong talents. Maybe they would have his eyes.
She forced her thoughts back to the present.
“I see what you mean.” She looked at the duffel bag again. “But you’re banking on a future edition of Fallon Jones or someone at his level within the Society being willing to let your descendants use the lamp if they need it. What’s more, you’re betting that the Society, itself, will continue to exist not just for decades but for centuries.”
“It has survived since the late 1600s.” He shrugged. “It’s not like I’ve got a lot of great options. The lamp is safer with a long-standing institution like the Society, which understands the importance of paranormal artifacts, than it is with a single family.”
She pursed her lips, thinking about it. “Maybe. It’s just the principle of the thing. I mean, you’re talking about giving the lamp to an organization run by the Joneses.”
“You should talk. Your uncle and your cousin are working for J&J.”
She made a face. “Wait until the rest of the family finds out.”
They ordered omelets. When the food arrived Chloe shook her head, awed by the sheer size of the portions.
“Good grief. We could have split one of these,” she said.
Jack forked up a large bite with obvious relish. “Speak for yourself. I told you, I’m hungry.”
He gave her a wickedly sexy smile and winked. She felt her face grow warm in response. It occurred to her that she was very hungry, herself. They had both used a lot of energy last night. She dug into her eggs.
She knew she was putting off the moment when she would have to explain last night’s failure. But somehow she just couldn’t bring herself to shatter the warm intimacy of the morning. It had never been like this with any other man. Surely she was entitled to a little romance. Besides, maybe she was wrong. Maybe she hadn’t failed.
“I couldn’t help but overhear your conversation with Fallon,” she said. “How long were you married?”
“Two years.”
“What happened?”
“Well, according to Shannon, I was too driven, too intense. I think she used the term control freak a few times.”
“Was she right?”
“Yes. I discovered I was good at making money. Went at it twenty-four /seven. All in all, I became pretty intense and driven and maybe something of a control freak. Guess I got stuck in that mode.”
“I don’t think it’s a mode,” she said. “It requires plenty of intensity, determination and control to handle your level of talent. Your personality and temperament would reflect those qualities, regardless of what you did for a living.”
He looked up. “Nicholas Winters wrote something in his journal about the high cost of each of the three talents. The first talent fills the mind with a rising tide of restlessness that cannot be assuaged by endless hours in the laboratory or soothed with strong drink or the milk of the poppy.”
“Guess that exp
lains a few of your quirks. Talent number two is accompanied by the nightmares and hallucinations problem?”
“Right.”
She cleared her throat delicately. “Uh, what about number three?”
“It is supposed to be the most powerful and the most dangerous of the three talents. Nicholas wrote that if the key is not turned properly in the lock, this last psychical ability will prove lethal, bringing on first insanity and then death.”
Her fork froze in midair. “He specifically wrote about a key and a lock? Do you know what he was talking about?”
“No. The old alchemists were big on riddles and hidden meanings.”
She thought about the feeling she’d had last night, the sensation that she had turned an invisible key in a paranormal lock. A shiver whispered through her.
“Nicholas was very explicit about the price exacted by the first two talents,” she said carefully. “I wonder if he was being more literal than you think.”
Jack watched her very steadily. “He also wrote that only the woman able to work the lamp could halt or reverse the transformation into a Cerberus.”
Her pulse picked up, and her chest tightened. “Oh, geez. Talk about pressure. Listen, Jack, you look pretty normal to me this morning. And you said you felt good.”
He smiled slightly, eyes heating. “Thanks to you.”
“Yes, well—”
The burbling of her phone interrupted her. Startled, she dove into her purse and came up with the device.
“Uncle Edward? Is something wrong?”
“I got a call from your assistant, Rose, a few minutes ago. She said Drake Stone contacted her this morning. He’s trying to get in touch with you. Said it was very important that he talk to you. Thought I’d better pass the message along.”
A sliver of alarm sliced through her senses. “I’ll call him right away. Thanks, Uncle Edward.” She crossed her fingers under the table. “Oh, and the lamp worked.”
“Good to know.”
“Yes, it is. We don’t need it anymore, so J&J is sending someone to collect it and take it to an Arcane vault.”