Orchid (20 page)

Orchid opened her eyes to the natural shades of night that filled her bedroom. Moonlight spilled across the bed. She could feel the dampness of perspiration under her breasts and on the back of her neck.

She looked up into Rafe's taut face. His hands were clamped fiercely around her shoulders.

“Sorry.” Her voice sounded thick. She swallowed a couple of times and tried again. “The dream. Bad. Very bad.”

He hauled her into his arms, cradling her against his bare chest. “The same one?”

“Yes.”

“Damn.” She dashed the back of her hand across her eyes to get rid of the tears of frustration that welled there. “I didn't have it last night at your house. I was so sure that the stupid dream had finally finished.”

Rafe rocked her gently. “I guess this blows my theory that great sex is a sure cure for nightmares.”

She gave a choked cry, half laugh, half sob, and wrapped her arms around his hard, warm body. “It was a good theory while it lasted.”

“Yes, it was. One of my best.” He stroked his fingers through her hair. “Maybe it's time to see a doctor.”

Orchid tensed. “No.”

He eased away from her and searched her face. “Why are you so averse to getting some help?”

“Two reasons. The first is that I don't think there's much a syn-psych shrink can do about weird dreams.”

“What's the second reason?”

She bit her lip. “I think I know the advice I'd get. I wouldn't follow it, anyway, so there's no sense listening to it in the first place.”

“What advice would you get?”

“The first thing a doctor would do is consult my para-psych profile.”

“So?”

“As soon as he or she discovered that I'm an ice-prism, I'd be referred back to that research lab where Theo and Morgan and I went through all those stupid tests.”

Rafe framed her face in his hands. “What makes you so sure of that?”

“It's only logical. No one knows much about ice-prisms. The folks at that lab are considered the leading experts in New Seattle. They've got all my old records. Any syn-psych doctor worth his or her diploma would suggest that I go back there for help.”

“And you won't go back there, not even as a last resort to get rid of the nightmares?”

“No.” She curled her hands very tightly until she could feel her nails biting into her palms. “I wouldn't go back there if my life depended on it.”

“Take it easy.” Rafe held her head still and kissed her.

It was a gentling caress, not a passionate overture. Orchid felt some of the cold evaporate from her chilled body. She relaxed slightly.

“How do you feel about eating leftovers at three o'clock in the morning?” she said against his mouth.

“I can eat leftovers at any time.”

She smiled. “I think I have some lasagna in the freezer. We can thaw it in the ice-wave.”

“I'm drooling already. But then, I do that a lot around you.”

The following afternoon Orchid stood on the gently bobbing dock that functioned as a front walk for Morgan Lambert's shabby houseboat and leaned on the front doorbell. There was no answer.

She stepped back and glanced around at the small, floating community. The neighboring houseboat was several yards away. There was no sign that anyone was home there, either.

Beneath her feet the dock heaved. Overhead gull-fins wheeled and soared ahead of the approaching storm. Heavy, dark clouds pressed down on the city.

Orchid could see a sheet of rain sweeping across the downtown highrises. It would reach this sheltered section of Curtain Lake in a few minutes. She wanted very much to be inside Morgan's houseboat before the deluge struck.

She pressed the doorbell again.

Still no answer. To ward off a sense of growing unease, she reminded herself that Morgan was an artist. He kept strange hours. Chances were good he was sound asleep inside.

She knocked loudly. “Morgan? Are you in there? It's me, Orchid. I got your message.”

She had found it waiting for her on her answering machine when she walked through her front door forty-five minutes ago. He had left it earlier in the day while she had been out grocery shopping. After watching Rafe polish off her leftover lasagna last night, it dawned on her that she ought to keep more food in the icerator while he was around.

Morgan's message had been short and to the point and it had sent a jolt of alarm through her.

Orchid, this is Morgan. Listen, something kinda weird just happened. I picked up my mail on the way in a few minutes ago. You aren't going to believe it, but there's a letter from Theo. It's dated the same day that he drove off that cliff but the postmark is from yesterday. It says in the letter that he left it with a neighbor. Told the guy to mail it if he didn't contact him in a couple of days.

I'm not sure what to make of it. It's sort of typical Theo, you know, a little paranoid. Maybe I should turn it over to the police or something. But before I do anything like that I need to talk to you. Maybe I'm overreacting.

Give me a call when you get in. I don't care what time it is. Feel free to wake me up.

But awakening Morgan Lambert was proving difficult. Orchid wondered if any of his neighbors had a key. There was a deserted feel to the small houseboat marina. It was a few minutes past two o'clock in the afternoon. Everyone was either at work or out running errands.

She rapped sharply one last time.

“Morgan?”

Still no response. Tentatively she put her hand on the doorknob. It would be too much to expect that Morgan had forgotten to lock his door.

The knob turned easily.

Cautiously, half expecting an alarm to sound, she pushed open the door. “Don't panic, Morgan. It's me, Orchid.”

She put her head around the edge of the door.

And caught her breath at the sight of the small, cluttered living room.

It was a shambles. Ripped cushions were scattered on the floor. Books had been pulled willy-nilly from the shelves. They lay in a small heap next to an overturned lamp. The drawers of the desk had been yanked out and emptied on the carpet.

“Oh, my God.”

Orchid started to step quickly back out onto the dock. She froze when she noticed a shoe lying in the short hall that connected the living room with the kitchen.

It was a man's shoe. There was a foot in it. The leg disappeared around the corner.

“Morgan.”

Ignoring all the sound advice she had ever heard about entering a residence that had been recently burglarized, she hurtled through the door.

It was Morgan who was sprawled on the kitchen floor. A small plastic envelope half-filled with gritty gray crystals lay on the table. Next to the envelope was an empty glass. There was a filthy gray residue at the bottom.

She knelt beside Morgan and fumbled desperately for a pulse.

He was still alive. She glanced up, saw the phone on the wall near the icerator, and started to get to her feet.

Before she could move something scraped in the hallway behind her. She whirled around and found herself confronting a man in a black ski mask. He held a burning jelly-ice candle. As she watched, he casually tossed aside the ice-match he had just used to light it.

“So you wanna play with fire, do you, bitch?”

Orchid opened her mouth to scream, but at that moment the walls of the hall and kitchen twisted in an impossible manner, curving and bending around her. The floor sank away beneath her feet. Her stomach reeled. She reached out to clutch the table to steady herself, but it was not where her eyes told her it should be. Instead it was tilted at a wildly improbable angle. She could not reach it.

It was as though she had stepped into a bizarre carnival funhouse. Or another universe. Voices came out of the spinning void that was the kitchen hall.

“Shit, Jink, it's her. The one who was with that guy at the house we were watching. The one who kicked me.”

“It's all right. She's alone today. She won't give us
any trouble. The illusion will keep her occupied while we finish the job.”

Orchid thought she heard a man's laughter. She could not be certain. Her world had narrowed down to the small, horribly convulsing kitchen. She felt as if she were on a roller coaster. Every time she tried to orient herself, the place shifted around her.

“Watch this,” someone said out of the void in the hall.

She saw the flame of the jelly-ice candle grow larger. It was the only thing in her field of vision that did not waver. She stared at it with desperate concentration. For an instant she thought the world steadied. Her hand finally made contact with the edge of the table.

Then the flame exploded into a great conflagration. Fire filled the void. Waves of brilliant orange flames lapped at the kitchen.

Panic seared her senses. She had to get out. Now. Fire blocked the hall. That left only the window.

She groped for and finally found Morgan's ankle. She tried to tug his unconscious body across the undulating kitchen toward the window. It was impossible to make any progress. The walls flowed into new configurations every time she took a step.

She thought she heard more laughter. It was followed by a woman's scream. She thought it was her own but in that wild, chaotic kitchen-universe, she could no longer be certain of anything.

Chapter
11
 

She
could not smell the smoke.

The realization struck her with blinding clarity. Flames billowed toward her, consuming the hallway, but she could not smell any smoke. It was thick in the air around her, but if she concentrated, she had no trouble filling her lungs with clear air.

Orchid released Morgan's ankle and forced herself to think. An old adage reverberated again and again in her brain. Where there's smoke, there's fire.

But what if there was no smoke? At least, none that you could smell?

Orchid closed her eyes. Instantly the room stilled. She could feel the kitchen floor beneath her knees, right where it should have been.

She was right. There was no smoke in the kitchen. Nor could she hear the roar of the flames in the hallway.

Illusion.

She kept her eyes closed, cutting off the vision of an inferno in the hall. Gradually her jangled nerves
stabilized. In the absence of visual input, her other senses began to convey logical information once more.

She became aware of the sound of rain pounding on the roof. The storm had struck. Voices came from the front room. The same voices she had heard last night when she and Rafe had encountered the two men in the unnatural fog outside Theo Willis's house.

“It has to be here somewhere.”

“We've turned the place upside down, Jink. Come on, we gotta get out of here.”

“Keep looking. He won't like it if we don't find it. Let's check the bedroom.”

“What about the woman?”

“Forget her. She won't give us any trouble. She's too busy having a nervous breakdown out there in the kitchen.”

Orchid listened to the footsteps of the two men as they receded in the direction of Morgan's bedroom. Very cautiously she opened one eye.

The flames still consumed the hall. The kitchen writhed.

Orchid quickly closed her eye. The illusion-talent was strong. So was his prism. Together they were powerful enough to maintain the vision here in the kitchen while they searched the bedroom.

There was no way she could get down the hall and across the living room without the two men noticing. Her only option was the wall phone.

Unable to trust her visual sense, she kept her eyes firmly closed and tried to recall the exact location of the icerator. Directly behind her and a little to the right.

She turned, crouched, and began to crawl blindly across the floor. Thuds echoed from the bedroom. It sounded as if the intruders were pulling drawers out of a dresser.

Orchid knew she had found the icerator when she banged her head against it.
Damn, damn, damn.
But she managed not to cry out.

She used her sense of touch to guide her to her feet.
The icerator handle was reassuringly firm in her grasp. She clung to it with one hand and groped for the wall phone with the other.

A jolt of unwarranted relief raced through her when her fingers touched the receiver. Then she realized she would have to punch out the numbers without opening her eyes.

Where were the numbers on the phone?

Think. The number one was at the top on the left. The nine had to be last. No, that wasn't right. There were all those other little buttons. The pound key. The star button.

She risked opening her eyes long enough to squint at the number pad. A mistake. The keys swam before her, each digit moving in meaningless circles.

Hastily she closed her eye and stabbed at the key she thought might be the nine. Then she fumbled for the number one key. She punched it twice. Nothing happened. How hard could it be to dial 911 without sight? she wondered.

The answer was very hard. It took her two more tries before she got it right.