Sizzle and Burn

  The woman refused to be rushed. “What’s wrong, ma’am?”

  “I just found a dead body.”

  She hung up before the operator could ask any more questions. When she closed the phone she realized that Doug was still standing at the foot of the stairs. His features were partially obscured by the shadows but she was pretty sure his mouth was hanging open. The poor man was obviously starting to realize that there were reasons why the other local real estate agents hadn’t jumped on the Tallentyre listing. He must have heard the rumors about Aunt Vella. Maybe he was starting to wonder if the crazy streak ran in the family. It was a legitimate question.

  Doug cleared his throat. “Are you sure you’re okay, Miss Tallentyre?”

  She gave him the smile she saved for situations like this, the special smile her assistant, Pandora, labeled her screw you smile.

  “No, but what else is new?” she said politely.

  The officer’s name was Bob Fulton. He was the hard-faced, no-nonsense, ex-military type. He came down the basement stairs with a large flashlight and a wicked-looking bolt cutter.

  “Where’s the body?” he asked, in a voice that said he had seen a number of them.

  “I’m not certain there is one,” Raine admitted. “But I think you’d better check that storage locker.”

  He looked at her with an expression she recognized immediately. It was the everyone-here-is-a-suspect-until-proven-otherwise expression that Bradley got when he was working a case.

  “Who are you?” Fulton asked.

  “Raine Tallentyre.”

  “Related to the crazy lady—uh, I mean to Vella Tallentyre?”

  “Her niece.”

  “Mind if I ask what you’re doing here today?”

  “I inherited this house,” she said coldly. He’d called Aunt Vella a crazy lady out loud. That meant she no longer had to be polite.

  Clearly sensing the mounting tension in the atmosphere, Doug stepped forward. “Doug Spicer, Officer. Spicer Properties. I don’t believe we’ve met. I came here with Miss Tallentyre today to take a listing on the place.”

  Fulton nodded. “Heard Vella Tallentyre had passed on. Sorry, ma’am.”

  “Thank you,” Raine said stiffly. “About that storage locker—”

  He studied the padlocked door and then glanced suspiciously at Raine. “What makes you think there’s a body in there?”

  She crossed her arms and went into full defense mode. She had known this was going to be difficult. It was so much simpler when Bradley handled this part, shielding her from derision and disbelief.

  “Just a feeling,” she said evenly.

  Fulton exhaled slowly. “Don’t tell me, let me guess. You think you’re psychic, just like your aunt, right?”

  She flashed him her special smile.

  “My aunt was psychic,” she said.

  Fulton’s bushy brows shot up. “Heard she ended up in a psychiatric hospital in Oriana.”

  “She did, mostly because no one believed her. Please open the locker, Officer. If it’s empty, I will apologize for wasting your time.”

  “You understand that if I do find a body in that locker, you’re going to have to answer a lot of questions down at the station.”

  “Trust me, I am well aware of that.”

  He searched her face. For a few seconds she thought he was going to argue further but whatever he saw in her expression silenced him. Without a word he turned to the storage locker and hoisted the bolt cutter.

  There was a sharp, metallic crunch when the hasp of the padlock severed. Fulton put down the tool and gripped the flashlight in his left hand. He reached for the doorknob with gloved fingers.

  The door opened on a groan of rusty hinges. Raine stopped breathing, afraid to look and equally afraid not to. She made herself look.

  A naked woman lay on the cold concrete floor. The one item of clothing in the vicinity was a heavy leather belt coiled like a snake beside her.

  The woman was bound hand and foot. Duct tape sealed her mouth. She appeared to be young, no more than eighteen or nineteen, and painfully thin. Tangled dark hair partially obscured her features.

  The only real surprise was that she was still alive.

  Two

  Knives were always the worst. People did unpleasant things with them, and they did those things close up and in a very personal way.

  “I don’t like sharp objects,” Zack Jones said.

  He did not take his attention off the ceremonial dagger in the glass case. Elaine Brownley, director of the museum, leaned closer to study the artifact.

  “Probably all that early childhood advice you got about the dangers of running with scissors,” she suggested. “Leaves a lasting impression.”

  “Yeah, that must be it,” Zack said.

  This was not the first time he had found himself standing beside Elaine, looking at an unpleasant object housed in a glass case. His was a dual career path. Consulting for the Arcane Society’s curators was one of his businesses.

  Elaine removed her glasses and fixed him with a direct look. She was in her mid-fifties. With her short, graying brown hair, round glasses, intelligent eyes and slightly rumpled navy blue skirted suit, she looked like the academic that she was. Zack knew she had a number of degrees in archaeology, anthropology and fine arts. She was also fluent in several languages, living and dead.

  At various points in Elaine’s life her instructors, teachers and colleagues had labeled her “gifted.” Most of them had probably never even had a clue how right they were, Zack thought. What she had was a psychic talent for finding and identifying genuine antiquities of any kind. No one could slip a fake past her, whether it was a Renaissance painting or a piece of Roman glass.

  When she had left the university world to accept a position with a museum, most of her colleagues expected her to end up at the head of one of the many prestigious institutions that had made jaw-dropping offers.

  Instead, she became the director of the Arcane Society’s museum at the West Coast headquarters of the Arcane Society, USA. The museum was one of four the Society operated, three in the United States and one, the original Arcane House, in the United Kingdom.

  The Society’s museums were little known and mostly ignored by the mainstream world of archaeology and academic research. The Society liked things that way. Its highly specialized museums collected and studied artifacts and relics that were associated with the paranormal. They were not open to the public.

  Elaine peered up at him. “Well?”

  “It’s old.” Zack turned back to the dagger. “Lot of static on it. I can feel it from here.”

  “I know it’s old.” She made a soft, impatient sound. “I didn’t buy it yesterday at Wal-Mart. It cost me a huge chunk of the museum’s annual budget. Trust me, I wouldn’t have authorized the acquisition if I wasn’t certain that it was second century, A.D. That’s not what I’m asking.”

  “I’ll have to handle it to know for sure. No gloves.”

  Her mouth pursed at that. Elaine did not like anyone to handle any of the objects in the collection with ungloved hands. But she knew his requirements. If she wanted him to verify her theory about the dagger, she would have to let him have direct physical contact.

  Without a word, Elaine punched in a code that opened the case.

  Zack readied himself for the shock he knew was coming and deliberately jacked up his psychic senses. He reached down and closed his hand around the jeweled hilt of the dagger.

  The current of psychic energy that still clung to the blade even after so many centuries was faint but it had been laid down in blood and it was still strong enough to sear his senses. He locked his teeth together and closed his eyes. Not that shutting his eyes had any effect on the ghostly images that flashed through his mind.

  The scenes, layers of them in this instance because the dagger had been used many times for similar purposes, came to him in the hues of nightmares. He was never able to explain the colors of the paranormal visi
ons. They had no equivalent in the normal world.

  …He thrilled to the act of driving the dagger downward, savoring the anticipation of how it would feel when it cut into human flesh, sensed the unholy lust and exultation that came with the killing blow, knew the terror of the victim…

  He dimmed his psychic senses swiftly and dropped the dagger back into the case.

  “Hey,” Elaine yelped, outraged. “Careful with that thing.”

  “Sorry.” He gave the hand he had used to grip the blade a little shake as if the small action could rid him of the remnants of the grim visions. He knew better. Luckily the dagger was very, very old.

  Elaine raised her brows. “Tell me.”

  “It was definitely used to kill people, not animals,” he said. Calling on years of practice and sheer willpower, he managed to repress the visions. It was a temporary fix. They would be back, probably in his dreams that night. “A human-sacrifice scenario.”

  “You’re sure it was a sacrifice, not just the killing of an enemy or a routine murder?”

  He looked at her. “Routine murder?”

  She rolled her eyes. “You know what I mean.”

  “The energy on the hilt was tinged with that special rush of sanctimonious power that goes with a blood sacrifice. The bastard liked his work and he got off on it. There’s a reason they call it bloodlust, Elaine.”

  She remained skeptical but there was a sparkle in her eye that could only be described as a form of lust.

  Archaeologists, he thought. Gotta love ’em.

  “An execution, perhaps?” she suggested.

  “No. Ritual sacrifice. There was an altar, and the killer felt he had a license to kill.”

  Elaine relaxed, smiling with intense satisfaction.

  “I was right,” she said, all but rubbing her hands together with glee. “This is the dagger used by the priests of the cult of Brackon.”

  He had never understood how collectors and curators could get so excited about objects and devices designed to kill and maim. But then, they didn’t have to deal with the psychic visions left behind on those objects and devices.

  “What’s so special about that dagger?” he asked.

  Elaine chuckled. “The director of the Sedona branch of the museum has been after it for years. He needs it to complete his collection of Brackon cult artifacts.”

  “A little friendly competition between curators?”

  “Not so friendly.” Elaine lowered the glass lid and relocked the case. “Milo has an Egyptian ring that I want very badly. I’ve begged him for years to consider a trade. He has always refused. But now I’ve got a bargaining chip. He’ll have to deal on my terms.”

  “Got it.” He surveyed the cases in the gallery. “You’ve built this into a fine museum, Elaine. I’m no archaeologist but I’ve spent enough time consulting in all four of the Society’s museums to know that this is a world-class collection.”

  She laughed. “I am living proof that an obsessive personality and a keen sense of professional rivalry are the essential traits of a successful curator.”

  “Probably useful traits in any profession.” He’d been on the obsessed path himself, most of his life. Until Jenna.

  Elaine fixed him with a speculative look. He knew what was coming and readied his exit strategy. He liked Elaine and admired her professional skills. But she was a friend of the family and the family had been applying a lot of pressure lately.

  On the surface, the invitation was smooth enough.

  “Do you have time for a cup of coffee before you leave for the airport?” she asked.

  “I was planning to spend a couple of hours in the museum library,” he hedged.

  “That was your excuse last time.”

  He considered his options and didn’t like any of them. Elaine was a good client and a very smart woman. He liked the company of smart women. If she stuck to business, he wouldn’t mind having coffee with her. It wasn’t as if there was any great rush to return to his home in the Northern California wine country. There was no one waiting for him.

  For the most part he was okay with his new existence as a duo-job workaholic. The problem was that family and friends were becoming increasingly aggressive, pushing him to resume what they considered his destined career path. He knew damn well that they weren’t applying pressure just because they were concerned about him, although that was part of it. The reality was that they had an agenda, and that agenda no longer coincided with his own.

  He glanced at his watch. “My flight leaves at five-thirty. That gives me some time.”

  “Your enthusiasm is underwhelming.”

  He felt himself redden. “I’ve been a little distracted lately.”

  “By what?”

  “Work.”

  “Ah, yes, the all-purpose excuse.” She lightly patted his arm. “And there’s no denying that it is excellent therapy after one has suffered a loss like yours. But it has been almost a year now, Zack. Time to move on.”

  He said nothing.

  They walked toward the far end of the gallery. Moving down the aisle between the glass cases was like walking a gauntlet. The combined psychic energy buzz given off by the artifacts stirred his senses in an unpleasant way. He knew Elaine felt something, too, but she seemed to thrive on the sensation.

  He had to exert a lot of raw willpower to keep the psychic side of his nature suppressed. He could never dampen it entirely; no level-ten sensitive was capable of shutting off his or her paranormal senses altogether. It would have been the equivalent of deliberately going deaf or losing his sense of taste. But it was possible to minimize one’s parasenses.

  “What are you working on?” Elaine asked.

  “At the moment I’m finishing a paper for the Journal.”

  Among the curators and consultants associated with the Arcane Society’s museums there was only one journal, The Journal of Paranormal and Psychical Research. Like the Society’s museums, neither the print nor the online edition was available to the general public.

  “I feel like a detective trying to interrogate a suspect who is waiting for his lawyer to arrive,” Elaine said drily. “But I will persevere. What’s the topic of this paper you’re finishing?”

  “The Tarasov camera.”

  She tilted her head slightly to look at him, her attention caught. “Never heard of it.”

  “According to the records, it was acquired in the 1950s during the Cold War. It was discovered in a Russian lab and brought back to the States by a member of the Society.”

  “Discovered?” she repeated, amused.

  He smiled faintly. “A polite euphemism for stolen. That was back in the days when the former USSR was doing a lot of paranormal research and experimentation. Someone inside the CIA got nervous and wanted to find out what was going on. J&J was quietly asked to see if it could get an agent inside one of the Russian labs.”

  There was no need to explain what J&J stood for. Every member of the Arcane Society was aware that Jones & Jones was the Society’s very private, very low-profile psychic investigation firm.

  “J&J was successful, I take it?” Elaine said.

  “The agent managed to get the camera out of the country. Brought it back and turned it over to the CIA. Their technicians examined it but concluded that it was bogus. They couldn’t make it work.”

  “Why not?”

  “Evidently it requires an operator who possesses a unique type of psychic talent. The Society wound up with the camera after the CIA decided it was a fraud. Our techs weren’t able to make it function, either, so it went into a vault. That’s where it’s been sitting all these years.”

  “What made the camera unusual?” Elaine asked.

  “The Tarasov camera was supposed to be able to photograph human auras.”

  “Nonsense.” Elaine gave a disdainful sniff. “Human auras have never been successfully photographed, not even by the experts in the Society’s labs. Something to do with the location of aura energy on the spectrum, I
think. Auras can be measured and analyzed in oblique ways and some people can see them naturally, but you can’t take pictures of them. The technology just isn’t available yet.”

  “It gets better,” Zack said. “According to the notes of the agent who brought the camera out from behind the Iron Curtain, the Russian researchers believed that a unique type of psychic photographer could not only take pictures of auras, he could use the camera to disrupt them in ways that would cause severe psychic trauma or death.”

  Elaine frowned. “In other words, it was meant to be some sort of psychic weapon?”

  “Yes.”

  “But the experts say that no modern technology can interface successfully with human psychic energy. That’s why no one has ever been able to build a machine or a weapon that can be activated by paranormal powers or one that can produce that kind of energy.”

  “True.”

  “In other words, the camera really is a fraud?” She sighed. “That’s a relief. The world is already armed to the teeth. The last thing we want to do is introduce a new psychic technology designed to kill people.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  She beetled her brows at him. “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “I was able to determine that the Tarasov camera had been used to kill at least once, possibly twice. The vibes from the first murder were murky, though.”

  Elaine’s eyes widened a little. “In other words, the Russians had at least one sensitive who could operate the camera?”

  “Looks like it.”

  She moved one hand in a small arc. “How is that possible?”

  “The J&J agent speculated in his private notes that the Russian operator was probably a one-of-a-kind exotic. Some type of unusual level-ten talent that has never been classified by the Society.”

  Exotic was the Society’s slang for those endowed with rare, extremely high-level psychic talents. It was not, generally speaking, a complimentary term. The truth was, people with exceptionally strong paranormal abilities often made other members of the Society uneasy. In fact, it was not uncommon for folks outside the Society—people who scoffed at the very idea of the paranormal—to find themselves unaccountably nervous or wary when they were in the presence of an individual endowed with powerful parasensitive abilities.