Midnight Crystal (15 page)

“IT’S A FAKE,” CHARLOTTE DEENE SAID.

An emotion far more intense than disappointment seared her senses. Rage. She looked at the ugly artifact sitting on the coffee table, barely resisting the urge to hurl it against the nearest wall. She had to fight the impulse. She had to remain in control.

“Son of a ghost,” Keith whispered. He shivered and wrapped his arms around himself. He was always cold these days.

Tucker stared at the lamp, clearly shaken. “Are you sure?”

Charlotte looked at her brothers. The three of them were triplets, but fraternal, not identical. There was, however, a strong family resemblance. They were all fair-haired with gray eyes. Although they were the same age, Keith looked much older. The warping in his dreamlight currents was taking a physical toll on his body. His face had begun to hollow out, and he was losing weight.

“Believe me, it’s not the real Burning Lamp,” she said. “I’m a dreamlight talent, remember? I’ve tried everything. If that vase was infused with even a small amount of raw dream energy, I’d have been able to sense it by now.” She touched the rim of the artifact and heightened her senses again, making absolutely certain. “All I’m picking up are some murky dreamprints, most of which were probably left by the museum staff. The artist’s prints are on it as well. They indicate that this thing was made sometime around the Era of Discord, not on Earth.”

“Shit,” Tucker whispered. “I can’t believe that after all this time the Arcane experts didn’t realize they were storing a fake in the museum vault.”

“At the time of the Era of Discord the Winters family must have commissioned a replica of the real lamp, probably to get J&J off their backs,” Charlotte said. “A curator stuck it in a vault, and everyone forgot about it. In the intervening decades there has apparently been no reason to dig it out of storage.”

“More likely the Joneses just made damn sure it stayed buried,” Keith muttered. Another shiver went through him. He pulled his jacket more tightly around himself and wiped the sweat off his forehead with the back of his sleeve.

Charlotte watched him with growing concern. The three of them were alone in the world. They had been since shortly after their birth. Their father had died before they were born. Their mother had been killed in an accident a few months later. Charlotte, Keith, and Tucker had grown up in an orphanage.

For years they had survived on their talents, their looks, and their natural charm, running sophisticated cons, scams, and frauds.

But now Keith was dying, not because of some fatal disease but because he had been unable to resist pursuing the dangerous secrets he’d discovered in the old journal. It was the oldest story in the world, she thought. The ending was always the same. The price for forbidden knowledge was always far too high.

“I can’t believe I took all those risks just to steal a fake.” Tucker’s jaw locked. His eyes burned with hot psi. “I thought the whole gig was going to crash when Marlowe Jones realized I was a chameleon talent. We’re damn lucky she concluded I was just a cheap con artist trying to marry into her family.”

“You skated on that one,” Keith said. He sank wearily down onto a chair. “If she or any of the other Joneses had found out what you were really after, you would have ended up so deep in the tunnels no one would have found your body.”

“It didn’t happen,” Tucker said.

“Trust me, if Marlowe Jones ever does learn the truth, she’ll send every J&J agent she’s got after you.” Keith hugged himself and rocked a little in the chair. “We should never have started this. I knew it wouldn’t work. Knew it would end badly. I could feel it in my bones. I want you both to quit now.”

“No,” Charlotte said fiercely. “Not while there’s still a chance.”

“She’s right,” Tucker said. “We have to keep going.”

“Don’t you get it?” Keith rounded on him. “So far you’ve lucked out. You haven’t attracted the attention of J&J. But that kind of luck won’t hold, not when you’re up against Arcane.”

“We have to find the real lamp,” Tucker shot back. “You’re dying, in case you haven’t noticed.”

“Believe me, I’ve noticed. But do you really think I want to go out knowing I was responsible for the deaths of you and Charlotte?”

“You’re my brother,” Tucker said. “You know damn well that if the situation was reversed, you’d be doing for Charlotte or me what we’re doing for you. We’re trying to save your sanity and your life, damn it.”

“Stop it, both of you,” Charlotte said sharply. “We don’t have time for this. What’s done is done. Our only hope is to move forward. We’ve got to find the Burning Lamp.”

Keith and Tucker looked at her.

“Speaking of time,” Keith said in a flat voice, “how much longer do I have?”

She hesitated as she always did when he asked her to read his dreamprints. She hated looking at the damage. But he was the one who was dying. He deserved the truth. Reluctantly she rezzed her talent and studied the seething, warped dreamlight tracks on the floor of the office. The unwholesome resonance was getting stronger.

“We’ve got some time,” she said. “I promise you.” It was the truth, as far as it went.

“How much time, damn it?” Keith whispered.

“I’ve told you, I can’t answer that precisely. According to the old records, Samuel Lodge used the crystals for decades before he died. You just started working with the stones a few months ago. We don’t need to panic. Not yet.”

But Keith was failing fast, much faster than Samuel Lodge had back in the nineteenth century on Earth. When it came to psychic mutation and evolution, things on Harmony moved much more rapidly and took very different twists than they had back on the Old World. Something in the environment, the experts said.

Keith fixed the fake artifact with a brooding glare. “We just hit a wall. The real lamp was never even in the Arcane vaults. That means we’re back to square one.”

“Not necessarily,” Charlotte said. She went to the window and looked out at the quiet street. “According to the old legend, it takes a dreamlight talent to find the Burning Lamp.”

“That was supposed to be you,” Tucker said softly.

“I heard that,” Keith growled. “It’s not her fault.”

Tucker slanted him an angry look. “Don’t you think I know that?”

“I managed to track the fake lamp to the Arcane vault,” Charlotte reminded them quietly.

“But it was the wrong lamp,” Keith said. There was no accusation in his voice, just a statement of fact.

“We were looking in the wrong place,” she said. “But stealing the fake may have been the smartest thing we could have done under the circumstances.”

Tucker scowled. “What makes you say that?”

She gestured toward the copy of the
Examiner
on the table. The photo of Marlowe Jones and Adam Winters occupied most of the front page. “It’s no coincidence that Jones and Winters are now an item in the tabloid press. Obviously she consulted him after she realized the lamp had been stolen. I’ve got a hunch that they are now both looking for it.”

Keith and Tucker exchanged uneasy glances.

“Winters is Guild,” Tucker said. “The Guild is the only crowd that scares me more than Arcane.”

“Think about it,” Charlotte said quietly. “According to the legend, it requires the combination of a Winters male and a strong dreamlight reader to find the lamp. That’s exactly what we’ve got working for us now. “

Keith shivered. “You think that part of the legend is for real?”

“It’s certainly starting to look that way,” she said.

“Just one problem,” Tucker added. “If Winters and Marlowe get lucky and find the lamp, we still have to figure out how to grab it so that you can work it for Keith.”

“We’ll worry about that after they find the lamp,” Charlotte said.

MARLOWE ROUNDED THE CORNER INTO THE NARROW lane that bordered the Old East Wall. She went cold when she saw the flashing lights of the emergency vehicles. An ambulance and two patrol cars were parked directly in front of Tully’s small shop. It was only eight o’clock in the morning, but a small crowd had gathered. One of the officers was stringing crime scene tape.

She de-rezzed Dream, kicked down the stand, and swung her leg over the bike. After removing her helmet, she collected Gibson from the saddlebag and walked toward the small group of onlookers. She was just in time to see the medics load a stretcher into the aid car. There was a body bag on the stretcher.

She moved closer to two men who looked like they had been living on the streets for a while. She had learned early on in her work for J&J that in the Quarter it was the locals who had the most information.

“What happened?” she asked.

“Man named Tully who owns that shop got himself killed last night,” one of the men said. He looked at Gibson. “Hey, is that a dust bunny?”

“Yes,” she said. She did not take her eyes off the shop. “How did Jake die?”

The second man glanced at her, showing some interest. “You knew Jake Tully?”

“My firm has done some business with him.”

“I heard one of the cops say that it looks like Tully died of a heart attack. He did have a bad ticker, so that may have been what happened. But the place is all torn up inside. You ask me, I say it was a burglary gone bad.”

“Someone stole all his best stuff, I’ll bet,” the other man said. “Poor Tully. He was always hoping to score one last really big deal so that he could retire from the business.”

“Thanks,” Marlowe said.

She walked back to the bike, took out her phone, and entered Adam’s code. He answered immediately.

“You’re up early,” he said. “Sleep well?”

The low, rough, sexy, incredibly intimate edge on his words sent a frisson of energy through her. Memories of the passion that had heated up her entire living room last night jangled her senses for a few seconds.

She took a deep breath and reminded herself to focus.

“I got a lead on the lamp,” she said.

“Where are you?”

The sexy intimacy in his voice was gone, replaced by the flat, hard tone of masculine authority. The Guild boss taking charge.

“I’m standing in the lane outside the shop of the dealer who may have found the lamp.”

“Stay there. I’m on my way.”

“Don’t bother. Tully is dead. Looks like his place was burglarized last night. His shop is a crime scene now. There’s no way the cops will let us inside.”

There was a long, thoughtful silence on the other end of the connection.

“Whoever took the lamp from the museum vault must have discovered he stole a fake,” Adam said after a while. “He’s still looking. Think he found it last night?”

“Only one way to find out,” Marlowe said. “We need to get inside Tully’s shop.”

“I DIDN’T REALIZE YOU PLANNED TO COOK DINNER,” Marlowe said. “I thought when you suggested we eat here at your place that we’d order out.”

He snapped the end off an asparagus spear and did his best to look crushed. “Just because I’m a Guild boss doesn’t mean I can’t cook.”

Marlowe absently swirled the wine in her glass and watched him from the opposite side of the kitchen counter.

“I wasn’t implying that you didn’t have any culinary talent,” she said. “It’s the time factor. I just assumed a man in your position, given all that you’ve got going on at the moment, wouldn’t have time to plan and prepare a meal for what is essentially a business meeting.”

He snapped the last asparagus spear. “I don’t order out because I don’t like the idea of having to go down four flights of stairs to open the door to a stranger. Call me paranoid, but after avoiding several staged accidents, having my amber warped, and getting shot at, I’ve concluded that it’s a good time in my life to exercise a bit of caution.”

She winced. “Point taken.”

“Besides, we can’t risk going into Tully’s shop until later tonight, anyway.” He put the washed and dried asparagus spears in a shallow roasting pan. “Might as well eat dinner and talk about the case.”