Siren's Call (A Rainshadow Novel) (15 page)

Ella awoke to the steady drumbeat of rain. For a minute or two she lay still, afraid to move. But eventually she decided that she was once again feeling normal. A shower and some sleep had done wonders for the seasickness she had endured on the boat from Thursday Harbor.

She sat up and looked at the bedside clock. The amber-colored numerals on the face told her it was two fifteen in the morning.

Lorelei had been buzzed nonstop with excitement, both on the boat ride and upon arrival on the island. She had disappeared soon after Ella had settled into a room in the old lodge that was serving as the Rainshadow headquarters for Coppersmith Mining.

Ella pushed the covers aside, got to her feet, and found the thick, white terry-cloth robe that one of the female
employees had produced from a stockpile of spa supplies. The matching slippers were on the floor beside the bed.

The previous evening was something of a blur but she remembered Rafe handing her over to a competent woman named Bethany who had identified herself as the person in charge of housing the Coppersmith personnel.

Bethany had shown her to a room and given her a key. When Ella had expressed surprise at the nicely appointed spalike accommodations Bethany had laughed and explained that the previous proprietor of the old lodge had operated a high-end corporate retreat and seminar business on the grounds. When Coppersmith offered to purchase the property, lock, stock, and barrel, and had offered a premium for vacating the premises in a speedy fashion, the owners had jumped at the offer. They had left everything behind, including the spa robes, towels, and amenities.

Evidently the corporate retreat and seminar business had fallen off dramatically in recent months. Rainshadow wasn’t for everyone, Bethany had explained.

The room was decorated in a warm, rustic style with leather furnishings, a king-sized bed, and a small, cozy sitting area. A set of French doors opened onto the covered second-floor balcony that wrapped around the building.

She knew she had not made a good first impression. A consultant who arrived at the jobsite seasick and jet-lagged did not project the appropriate, can-do image. She needed to get her act together by morning.

She opened one of the French doors and stepped out onto the wide balcony. Rain dripped steadily from the eave but the night was humid and balmy, laced with an invigorating
warmth that carried a whisper of psi. Rafe had explained that the lodge was not far from the mysterious, fenced-off portion of the island that was the Rainshadow Preserve.

She moved to the railing. Here and there the grounds were lit with industrial fixtures, but the illumination did not extend far into the heavy rain. From where she stood she could barely make out an old boathouse and a dock that stretched a short distance into the black waters of the lake.

If it hadn’t been for the drumming rain the silence would have been downright eerie. She was accustomed to the background noise of an urban environment. Here on the island there were no sirens and no street sounds. She missed the steady nighttime glow of the green quartz walls that surrounded the ruins and illuminated the Old Quarter. What little she could see of Rainshadow looked very dark and forbidding.

She was not in Crystal City anymore, she thought.

A frisson of energy flickered through her senses.

“The place grows on you,” Rafe said quietly.

She caught her breath and turned quickly. He was standing a few feet away, dressed in jeans, a dark T-shirt, and low leather boots. He had on his shoulder holster. The handle of the gun was matte black in the shadows. His hair was sleep-rumpled and his eyes burned with a little heat.

“Sorry,” he said. “Didn’t mean to startle you.”

“It’s all right. Why are you up at this hour? Did the dreams come back?”

“No.” He moved closer to her. Leaning forward, he rested both forearms on the railing and looked out at the rainy night. “I got a few more good hours in, thanks to
you. I feel like I’ve caught up on my sleep for the first time since the fever hit. What exactly did you do to me?”

“There were signs of stress in your energy field.”

“No kidding.”

“Probably a combination of the fever and the lack of sleep. Auras respond to music, so I sang some harmonies to calm the agitated wavelengths. The fever went down after that.” She kicked up her senses and smiled when she saw the cooler energy in his dreamlight. “And it’s still low. You needed sleep.”

“Will the therapy last?”

“I honestly can’t say. I think it depends on whatever is going on with the fever. Once that situation resolves you’ll have a better idea of what you’re dealing with.”

“I haven’t told anyone here on the island about my little fever issues.”

“Don’t worry, I’m not going to gossip about them.” She did not bother to hide the brittle edge on her words. “Your aura is your private business.” She paused a beat for emphasis. “Just as the exact nature of my talent is my business.”

He winced. “Understood. We have a deal, right? We keep each other’s secrets.”

“Yes, we have a bargain. For the record, discretion and the ability to maintain confidentiality are the cornerstones of my business.”

His jaw tightened. He straightened and turned toward her. “Damn it, I didn’t mean to imply that I don’t trust you.”

“Why should you trust me? We’ve only known each other for about a day.” She paused. “Well, there was that brief meeting three months ago.”

“Yes, there was that meeting three months ago.” His voice roughened. “But we’ve been through some stuff together, the kind of stuff that builds a bond between two people.”

She folded her arms. “I know this is going to sound petty, but you stood me up three months ago. You said you’d call for a coffee date. That was the last I heard from you until you showed up in my office to offer me a job yesterday.”

“Shit happened after I saw you three months ago. The fever happened.”

“That’s why you didn’t call?” As soon as the words were out of her mouth she could have screamed in frustration. She had never intended to let him know that she had waited for his call. But it was too late. She could not stop herself. “Sorry, that excuse won’t fly. You’ve still got a fever, remember? But you obviously had no problem getting in touch when you concluded that my talent might be useful to you.”

“It’s a complicated story.”

She gave him a thin smile. “I’m sure it is. Probably much too long and way too complicated to tell me tonight, so I’m going back to bed.”

She turned to head toward her room. His hand clamped around her shoulder. She froze. His touch sent her senses into overdrive. She knew that he was jacked. The intoxicating heat of his aura enveloped her.

“Wait,” he said quietly. He turned her slowly around to face him. “Please.”

She kept her arms tightly folded, resisting the urge to put them around his neck. “What do you want?”

“A chance to explain.” He took his hand off her shoulder
and surveyed the balcony with a quick, assessing glance. “But not out here. I don’t want to be interrupted.”

She hesitated. “All right. We can go into my room.”

She turned around and led the way back through the open French doors. Taking a client back to one’s hotel room was never a good move, but in that moment she simply did not care. She wanted answers.

He followed her into the room; turned and shut the glass-paned doors. The dull roar of the rain faded into the background. She drew the drapes closed, plunging the small, intimate space into an even more intimate darkness. It took her an awkward moment to find the switch of the bedside lamp. When she did get the light on she was mildly horrified by the sight of the tumbled bedding. Hastily she grabbed the coverlet and dragged it up over the pillows.

When she turned she saw that Rafe looked grim but determined. She motioned toward a chair.

“Sit,” she ordered.

He sank into the chair and glanced at the in-room coffeemaker on the dresser. “Would this be the wrong time to suggest that we do that coffee date?”

She flushed and dropped down into the small chair across from him.

“Yes,” she said.

“Right.” He rested both arms on the curved sides of the chair and straightened his legs out in front of him. “About the fever.”

“I’m listening.”

“After I turned over Vickary and the mob guys to the Bureau I got called back to Coppersmith headquarters
on an emergency security matter. A company research team had disappeared into the Rainforest. I’m the unofficial Coppersmith troubleshooter, so I was put in charge of the search-and-rescue operation.”

Rafe stopped. She got the feeling he was pulling his thoughts together. She sat quietly and waited.

“The team had been sideswiped by an energy river that had destroyed all of their locator equipment. That kind of disaster is often a death sentence for everyone on a project, but Coppersmith has some protocols in place. Rule number one is, don’t move from your last known location. The team obeyed the rule.”

“So you found them?”

“Yes. They had taken shelter in some ruins. We got everyone organized and ready to trek back out of the jungle, but there was one person missing. The others said he had cracked under the pressure of being stranded and had disappeared deeper into the ruins. There was a lot of strange energy in the area. My talent for resonating with hot rock meant that I was the one most qualified to conduct a search.”

“Did you find him?”

“I did.” Rafe raked his fingers through his hair, pushing it back behind his ears. “He tried to kill me.”

“But you were attempting to rescue him.”

“He was psi-burned. He wasn’t thinking clearly. At any rate he tried to use a mag-rez pistol on me.”

“While you were inside the ruins? In the Rainforest? With all those paranormal forces in the atmosphere? Good heavens, you’re lucky to be alive. What happened?”

“When I realized what he was going to do I took shelter
in a chamber in the ruins.” Rafe paused. “It was . . . an amazing room. Made entirely of gray quartz.”

She looked at his ring. “The kind in your ring?”

“Yes.”

“Go on.”

“When the crazed tech fired the mag-rez there was an explosion that triggered a major chain reaction throughout the ruins. The place was literally engulfed in a paranormal firestorm. The gray quartz chamber was as hot as everything else. I thought I was a dead man. But there was a pool inside the gray room. I could sense the paranormal energy in the water. I was desperate. I wondered if the water might offer some protection from the storm.”

She watched the shadows in his eyes. “You went into the pool?”

“I had some crazy plan to stay under the surface as long as I could hold my breath and come up for air only when I absolutely had to. I figured I could tolerate the energy of the storm in short bursts, at least for a while. But when I went into the water I realized it wasn’t water. It was some kind of liquid crystal. I figured I really was dead then. But I thought I saw a door.”

“Another vision?”

“In my delirium I opened the door and walked through it into a crazy dreamscape.”

“What was on the other side of the door?”

Rafe looked at his ring. Energy shifted deep inside the quartz.

“A city of ice and fog,” he said quietly.

She caught her breath. “The Ghost City in the old legend?”

“I think so, yes.” He met her eyes. “It was a dream. I saw things—astonishing things—but they were all part of the hallucination. In my dream I walked through a vast walled city. I was all alone. There were no other living things. The structures looked like those in the aboveground ruins, but instead of being made of green quartz, everything in the city seemed to be built of weird crystal that was the color of fog or ice.”

“Just like in the fairy tale.” She thought about that for a moment. “Was it cold?”

Rafe frowned, as though he had never considered the question. “No, but you don’t think about temperature and weather in a hallucination, do you?”

“No, I guess not. Go on.”

“There was power—incredible power—everywhere. I didn’t have a clue how it could be used but I sensed that it was potentially very dangerous.”

“How did you get out of the Ghost City?”

Rafe’s mouth twisted in a humorless smile. “The way you usually get out of a dream. I woke up.”

“Where were you when you awakened?”

“In the gray chamber. In my dream I came up out of the liquid pool, realized that the storm had subsided, and I hauled myself up onto the floor of the chamber. The place was still hot.” Rafe looked down at his ring. “I remember picking up this stone. And then I just started walking. The ruins were engulfed in a massive psi-firestorm that must have been triggered by the explosion. I got through it and just kept going. Luckily, my locator started working as soon as I got beyond the range of the
storm. Somewhere along the way my brother and a Coppersmith team found me.”

She nearly fell off her chair. “Wait. Hold on here.
You walked through a psi-firestorm
? How? Nothing can get through a firestorm.”