Canyons Of Night (24 page)

“I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t say anything about it to anyone else, especially the members of your family.”

She glanced at him, brows lifted. “Why not?”

“Because your family is well-connected with Arcane and I don’t want J&J or anyone else getting curious about the effects that gas had on me.”

“Got it.” She set the pan down. “I understand and I agree.”

“You do?”

“My family may be well-connected within the Society but that doesn’t mean that I don’t know how things work in the organization. I’m well aware that rare and unusual talents make some members of the Society uneasy. That goes double if those talents are powerful. I don’t think there’s any doubt but that you are now off the charts. Level Ten with a very large asterisk.”

“Off the charts with an unknown talent,” he added quietly.

“A heretofore unknown aspect of your core talent,” she corrected.

“Doesn’t matter.” He poured the juice into two glasses. “Arcane gets nervous when the words
unknown
and
off the charts
appear in the same sentence. The same is true in the Guilds and at the Bureau.”

“I’m aware of that. Don’t worry, I have no intention of discussing your talent with anyone else, including the members of my own family.”

He was glad she was not going to argue with him. He put the bottle of orange juice back into the refrigerator and picked up the coffeepot.

“You were right about one thing, I’m going to need time to figure out just what has changed in my talent,” he said.

She carried the plates to the table and sat down. “You probably won’t figure it out until the first time you use it intuitively. We both know that’s how psychic abilities manifest themselves.”

He sat down across from her. “And sometimes people find out the hard way.”

She picked up a fork. “Don’t worry, you know now that you’ve got the control you’ll need to handle the energy you’re capable of generating.”

“You’re sure of that?”

“Absolutely.”

He ate some eggs, thinking. “What was it like for you?”

She gave him a wicked smile. “Are we talking about last night or my talent?”

He grinned. “I was thinking about your talent but if you’d rather discuss last night—”

“Forget last night. I spent a good portion of it on a lumpy sofa because there was a dust bunny on my side of the bed.”

He groaned. “Don’t remind me. It won’t happen again. By the way, I left your sheets on top of the washing machine.”

“Thanks. I’ll take care of them before I go to Looking Glass.”

“I don’t know why Rex took over your side of the bed last night. At my place, he never sleeps on the bed. In fact, he’s usually gone most of the night. Shows up around breakfast time.”

“Got a hunch he was guarding you,” she said, very thoughtful now.

“From you?”

“No.” She paused. “I think he was watching over you while you slept off the burn. Somehow he understood that you weren’t in a normal sleep state. He must have sensed that you were vulnerable until you woke up. He’s your buddy. He was watching your back.”

“You know, they say we shouldn’t anthropomorphize animals.”

“True. But Rex’s relationship with you is certainly odd.”

“I can’t argue that.” He slathered butter on a slice of toast. “You were going to tell me what it was like coming into your talent.”

“When I was thirteen, I started seeing faint rainbows in various reflective surfaces but only whenever there was someone else in the vicinity. I didn’t realize what was happening for the first few months, although I soon discovered that if I concentrated hard, the rainbows got brighter.”

“You didn’t realize you were seeing ultralight rainbows?”

“Not for some time. And neither did anyone else because it is not only a low-rent talent it is generally a very weak talent. A lot of people with the ability never realize what they’re seeing. They catch a glimpse of an ultralight rainbow in a mirror or a window and assume it’s just a trick of the light. Also, because the talent is not exactly impressive, it hasn’t been studied. It is poorly understood and not adequately described in the literature.”

“So how did you figure out what was going on and what you could do with your ability?”

“It was a long process,” she said. “When I mentioned the rainbows to my mother, the first thing she did was take me to an ophthalmologist who concluded that there was nothing wrong with my eyes. Aside from the fact that I needed glasses, that is.”

“But you kept seeing rainbows.”

“Of course. And they got increasingly vivid. My parents finally started to wonder if there was a link to my psychic senses because I certainly wasn’t showing signs of developing any other kind of talent. Everyone in my family has some talent, you see.”

“They say there’s a strong genetic component in some families.”

“Yes, but psychic genetics are extremely complicated. My talent doesn’t appear anywhere on the family tree. At any rate, the next appointment Mom made for me was with some experts in rare talents at one of the Arcane labs. They ran a lot of tests on me and eventually announced that I was an unusually strong rainbow-talent.” Charlotte waved one hand. “And that was the end of it, as far as everyone was concerned because, as everyone knows, the talent is just a novelty at best.”

“You seem to have parlayed it into a good career as an antiques dealer.”

She looked at him over the top of her mug, her eyes shadowed with darkly luminous mysteries. He felt the hair stir on the back of his neck, as it always did when he sensed secrets.

“Yes,” she said. “It has worked out well for me from a financial point of view.”

He looked at the mirrored pendant she wore. “Tell me about that necklace.”

“This?” She touched the pendant with her fingers. “I came across it a few years ago in an estate sale. I had no idea what it was but I knew that I had to have it. Later I figured out that it works a bit like tuned amber. It helps me focus my talent more precisely.”

“Interesting.”

She looked hesitant. He got the feeling that she was about to tell him something else about the pendant but in the next moment she changed her mind. She glanced out the window.

“Brace yourself,” she said lightly. “We have a visitor.”

He followed her gaze and saw Thelma Duncan striding briskly along the drive toward the cottage. She was dressed in her standard uniform, an oversized denim shirt heavily embroidered with colorful flowers, sturdy trousers, and a pair of well-worn boots. Her gray hair was covered by a broad-brimmed straw hat. She carried a basket on one arm.

“Something tells me you’re going to be eating zucchini bread for another week,” Slade said. “Rex will be happy.”

Charlotte set down her mug and got to her feet. “I admit I’ve had enough zucchini bread to last me until next summer’s crop comes in but I hope she brought more of those incredible tomatoes and basil. I could eat those all year long.”

Under other circumstances, her enthusiasm for the free produce would have been amusing, he thought.

“You do realize that Mrs. Duncan is going to see me here having breakfast with you,” he said. “She will draw the obvious conclusions. The news will be all over town by noon.”

Charlotte paused in the kitchen doorway and looked at him. “So what? Everyone assumes we’re sleeping together, anyway.”

“Assuming is one thing. Having the facts confirmed by a witness who actually saw us at breakfast takes the quality of the gossip to a whole new level.”

Charlotte winked. “The locals will conclude that their cunning plan to keep you happy here on the island is working.”

He thought about that for a beat and smiled slowly. “They’ll conclude right.”

She looked surprised and then she turned a delightful shade of pink and disappeared into the living room. He picked up his mug, got to his feet, and went to stand in the doorway between the two rooms.

Charlotte opened the door to a beaming Thelma Duncan.

“Good morning,” Charlotte said. “Won’t you come in? You’re just in time to join Slade and me for coffee.”

“Oh, goodness, is the chief here?” Thelma looked at Slade and managed to feign a start of surprise, as if she had not noticed him filling the kitchen doorway. “Why, so he is. Good morning, Slade. Lovely day, isn’t it?”

“According to the weather report there’s a storm coming in tonight,” Slade said.

“Yes, well, of course there is.” Thelma smiled serenely. “That’s the thing about life, isn’t it? Always something dark out there on the horizon. The trick is to enjoy the sunshine while you’ve got it.” She handed the basket to Charlotte. “I brought you a few things from my garden and another loaf of the zucchini bread. I know how much you like it.”

“Thank you so much.” Charlotte took the basket and examined the contents with enthusiasm. “More tomatoes, oh and the peas are coming in, I see. Fabulous. The basil is absolutely gorgeous. I should display it in a flower vase.”

Thelma looked pleased. “I must say the tomatoes and basil have been especially good this summer.”

“I’ve never seen garden produce as beautiful as what you grow,” Charlotte said. “You’re an incredible gardener.”

Thelma chuckled. “I don’t know about incredible, but I do enjoy my little hobby.”

“Come on into the kitchen and have some coffee,” Charlotte said.

“Thank you, dear, but I really don’t want to interrupt your breakfast.”

“Nonsense, you’re not interrupting anything,” Charlotte said.

She started toward the kitchen, basket in one hand. Slade got out of her way.

“Well, if you’re sure,” Thelma murmured. She fixed Slade with her twinkling gray eyes. “Where is Rex?”

“Who knows?” Slade said. “He took off at dawn. Haven’t seen him since.”

“I’m sure he’ll be back. He seems to have adopted you. Very odd behavior, really. I didn’t know dust bunnies made good pets.”

“They don’t,” he said.

SLADE
SENSED
REX
SHORTLY
BEFORE
THE
DUST
BUNNY
materialized out of the woods at the edge of the road.

“I knew you’d show up sooner or later,” he said. “If you’re going to hang with me, we’re going to have to talk about some rules.”

Rex chortled cheerfully and bounded up onto Slade’s shoulder. He settled down with his purse.

“Rule number one,” Slade said, “you don’t take over the lady’s side of the bed. Understood?”

Rex mumbled happily but otherwise gave no indication that he grasped the finer points of human sexual etiquette.

They turned off the main road and onto the graveled drive that wound through the trees to the cottage. The first chill of awareness trickled across Slade’s senses when they emerged into the open area that surrounded the cabin. He stopped. On his shoulder, Rex growled.

They both looked hard at the cottage. Slade had no idea what was going through Rex’s brain but his own hunter’s intuition was flashing a warning. His first instinctive thought was,
No need to make yourself a target
.

He moved back into the trees. Rex sleeked out. They had both picked up the same bad vibes, Slade thought. There was something very wrong with the tranquil scene.

He raised his talent. He was no longer worried about being overwhelmed by the darkness at the end of the spectrum; nevertheless, he was cautious. He knew that he could control the storm of power but it was useless to him until he figured out how to focus it. He did not need the distraction just then.

It did not require a lot of energy to view the psi-prints on the ground. There were two distinct sets. The tracks came out of the trees on the right and wound around the cabin, vanishing behind it. The intruders had not wanted to chance being surprised by someone coming along the drive. They had gone in through the kitchen door.

The question now was whether the pair was still inside the house. He studied the fluorescing prints closely. There were two more sets of tracks leading away from the house and back into the trees toward the road.

He worked his way through the woods to the trail of retreating prints. Rex growled softly. When they reached the tracks, Slade crouched and took a close look. The prints were familiar. He’d seen them yesterday at Hidden Beach. The two men who had chased Devin and Nate into the Preserve had evidently concluded that the local chief of police was going to be a problem.

“I thought we’d have to go looking for them,” Slade said quietly to Rex. “Maybe do some actual investigation work. But they’re going to make it easy. They’re coming after me. Probably disappointed last night when they found out I wasn’t home. I’m sure they’ll try again.”

Rex rumbled.

Slade returned to the cabin. The front door was still locked. He made his way around to the back porch and went up the steps. The intruders had popped the lock on the kitchen door, as he had expected. He shook his head, disgusted.

“Looks like they weren’t even trying to be subtle,” he said.

He opened the door and moved into the kitchen, rezzing his talent again. Out of long habit he stood quietly for a moment, absorbing the silence. Empty houses always had a unique vibe. He did not pick up any of the energy that indicated there was someone lurking on the premises. He went to the cupboard and opened a door.

Rex muttered. Slade understood the outrage. This was their territory. It had been invaded by intruders. That could not be allowed to stand.

“We’ll get them,” Slade said.

Rex tumbled down to the ground, still sleeked, and headed for the front room of the cabin.

Slade was mildly surprised to find his laptop still safely tucked away on the highest shelf of the cupboard. Not the most original of hiding places, but on the other hand, he hadn’t been trying to protect Bureau secrets, just a business plan. Losing the computer would have been annoying and expensive but not a disaster.

“They didn’t do a very good job of searching the place,” he said.

But maybe that had not been their goal, he thought. Maybe they had just come here to kill him and had left when it turned out he wasn’t home. Typical thug mentality.