The Lost Night (6 page)

His night vision was excellent. In the dim glow of the low-burning fire he could make her out quite clearly. She wore a pale, ankle-length robe over her nightgown and pair of fluffy slippers. Her flame-red hair was loose and mussed from sleep and tumbled around her shoulders.

Even from across the room
he was intensely aware of the strong energy that shivered in the atmosphere around her. It aroused him and heated his blood, made him want to reach for her and drag her down onto the sofa with him.

She moved with an elegant, feminine grace and confidence that spoke of dance or martial-arts training. He had heard that both were taught from childhood on within the HE community.

Darwina, Amberella clutched tightly in one paw, fluttered down the steps at Rachel’s feet.

He lay unmoving on the sofa. Rachel was already more than a little pissed off at him. The last thing he wanted to do was startle or alarm her. When she reached the foot of the stairs, she turned toward the kitchen. The route took her past the sofa. She glanced his way but she did not pause.

“I know you’re awake,” she said in a normal tone of voice. “I’m just going to let Darwina out.”

She kept going into the unlit kitchen. He pushed aside the blanket and sat up on the edge of the sofa. The back porch door opened.

“You and Amberella stay out of trouble, now,” Rachel said softly. “I do not want to get a call from Officer Willis telling me to come bail you out of jail.”

There was an answering chortle and then the door closed. A moment later Harry heard water run in the sink. A cupboard door opened.

He got up from the sofa and raked his fingers through his hair, pushing it back behind his ears. He padded barefoot across the cold floor. He had removed his pullover but he still had on the black T-shirt and trousers so he figured he was reasonably decent. He stopped in the kitchen doorway. Another night-light illuminated the scene. Rachel was lounging against the sink sipping a glass of water. There were dark shadows in her eyes.

“Bad dreams?” he asked.

“Yes.” She made
a face. “Darwina sensed my agitation. She woke me. But once she knew I was awake, she decided to go check out the after-hours clubs with Amberella.”

“After-hours clubs?”

“Or wherever dust bunnies go at this time of the night.” Rachel glanced toward the windows. “Looks like the storm is over.”

He followed her gaze and saw fog infused with cold moonlight pooling in the clearing around the cottage.

“For now,” he said. “But there’s more heavy weather on the way.”

“You think it’s another sign of trouble in the Preserve, don’t you?”

“There’s so much energy stirring inside the fence now that it’s having a serious impact on the local microclimate.”

“You’re not the only one here who is saying that. There really is something big going on out there in the Preserve, isn’t there?”

“Yes.” He folded his arms across his chest and watched her drink the last of the water. “Was there a storm the night you did your fugue-walk?”

“I don’t think so.
There was a lot of fog when I left the bookstore but I could see well enough to ride my bike back here to the cottage. My shoes and clothes were damp when I walked out of the Preserve the next morning but it seemed like the normal sort of dampness that you’d pick up walking through the woods and across rough terrain at night.”

He studied her for a long time. “What do you remember?”

For a moment he thought she was not going to answer the question. But after a while she started to talk.

“Very little,” she said. “I spent most of the day at the bookshop, conducting an inventory, dusting, just puttering around. I was still trying to decide whether or not I wanted to move to Rainshadow and take over the business as my aunts suggested or put the store and the cottage on the market. I locked up around five o’clock and started back here on my bicycle. Somewhere on the road everything went blank. Or maybe I should say mostly blank.”

“Meaning?”

“Lately I’ve been getting more and more wispy little fragments of memories. At least I think they may be real memories. But it’s like catching a glimpse of something out of the corner of your eye. When you turn to look, it vanishes. I’ve tried going back to the place where I later found my bicycle to see if the location stirs up any clear recollections.”

“And?” he prompted.

“Sometimes I think I get an
impression of a car. I feel as if I should know the driver, that if I just looked harder, I would recognize him.”

“Him?”

She hesitated. “I think so but I can’t be positive.” She put the empty glass down very gently. “Could be recovered memories or false memories or simply hallucinations. But the dreams have definitely been getting worse.”

“What do you see in your dreams?”

She looked at him, her eyes burning a little hotter in the shadows of the kitchen. “I see monsters.”

The shudder of energy in the atmosphere told him all he needed to know. She was holding herself and her sanity together but deep down she was scared to death.

He walked to where she stood and wrapped his arms around her. She did not resist but neither did she return the embrace. Her tension was a palpable force.

“I don’t know whether to hope that I’m recovering my memories or check myself into a para-psych hospital,” she whispered.

“Tell me about the monsters,” he said quietly.

“I can’t get a clear picture. Tentacles. Eyes that glow. Too many eyes. Like creatures out of a prehistoric sea. Whatever they are, they see me as prey. In the dreams I’m running through the ocean but it’s not dark. The water is infused with light.”

“You’re running
through
this sea?”

“Yes. But I’m breathing okay. I’m not drowning.” She shuddered. “The creatures are swimming all around me, above, below, to the sides.”

“But they don’t attack?”

“No. It’s as if they can’t get at me.”

“What’s the source of the
light in the water? Sunlight?”

“No.” She hesitated. “Energy, I think. The water is infused with ultralight.” She pulled back a little and looked up at him. “Yes, ultralight. That’s the first time I’ve understood that the water is hot with psi.”

“What’s your first clear memory the next morning?”

“I emerged from the Preserve just before dawn. There was fog again—I recall that much. And there was music.”

“What kind of music?”

“Clear, beautiful, bell-like notes.” She smiled. “I followed them out of the Preserve and came through the fence near Calvin Dillard’s place. He’s got a cabin out on Mills Road. His property is close to the boundary of the psi-fence.”

“Tell me about Calvin Dillard.”

“Calvin is a very talented musician and a composer. He can play almost any instrument. He told me I gave him quite a scare because he never gets visitors, and certainly not at that hour. When he realized I was dazed and disoriented and that I couldn’t remember what had happened to me, he figured I’d been in an accident and banged my head. It’s as good a theory as any.”

“Is he a professional musician?”

“No, I don’t think so, at least not any longer. His music is a personal passion. He’s lived here on Rainshadow for nearly a decade. Retired. He’s one of the loners here on the island but he’s not totally reclusive. He comes into town to collect his mail and buy groceries. He’s bought some books from my shop. I’ve always liked him.”

Harry made a mental note to
take a closer look at Calvin Dillard. The first witness on the scene was often the most closely linked to the situation.

“You said you found your bike on the road?” he said.

“What?” Rachel blinked a couple of times and then her expression cleared. “Oh, the bike. Yes, it was lying in a ditch on the side of the road. Which does lend credence to the theory that I took a fall and banged my head, doesn’t it?”

“You’re not buying that theory, I take it?”

“There was no sign of an injury. No blood or bruises on my head.”

“So, somewhere in between the bike ride in the fog and walking out of the Preserve near Calvin Dillard’s cabin you remember seeing monsters under the sea. Is that all?”

“Isn’t that enough to get me labeled a bit wacky?”

He smiled. “Not nearly enough, at least not here on Rainshadow.”

“Which is probably why I wound up back here.” She paused, looking past his shoulder to the window ledge. “I do have one souvenir of that night.”

He glanced at the window ledge and saw the glass jar filled with little crystals. “The rainstones?”

“I found them in the pocket of my jacket that morning when I walked out of the Preserve. But I have no memory of picking them up.”

“Or why you picked them up?”

“No. My intuition tells me that they’re important but I don’t know why. It’s not as if you can’t find rainstones all over the island. There doesn’t seem to be anything special about those particular stones.”

He released her and moved across
the kitchen to the window ledge. He picked up the glass jar and turned it slowly, examining the stones. In the dim glow of the night-light they were dull and colorless.

“Why would a strong crystal talent like you think that a handful of cold stones were important?” he wondered aloud.

“I don’t know why I thought they were important, but they aren’t entirely cold.” She walked to where he stood and took the glass jar from him. “There is a little latent energy in them but I doubt that many people could sense it, or work it unless they were strong crystal-talents.”

“Are you saying you can work rainstones?”

“Sure. I’ve done it for some of the kids who come into the shop. Whenever they find a rainstone they bring it to me and ask me to do my magic trick.”

“What is this trick?” he asked.

“I’ll show you.”

She rezzed the overhead light and unscrewed the lid of the jar. He watched her pour some of the crystals into her palm. Energy pulsed in the atmosphere. Her bracelet chimed gently and he thought he saw some of the tiny stones set in the charm brighten.

The crystals in her hand
started to heat with a little colorless ultralight. And suddenly Rachel was holding a palm full of water. But unlike real water the liquid did not drip through her fingers. It was transparent but it had a viscous quality. There was another shiver of energy and the quicksilver-like material transformed swiftly back into crystalline form. She was once again holding a handful of rainstones.

He whistled softly. “I’ll be damned.”

“The kids love it when I do that.” She dropped the stones back into the jar. “But aside from being a clever piece of magic, there’s not much point to it. As far as I can tell that’s all the stones do, go from crystal to liquid and back again.”

“But only someone with your kind of talent can make them shift back and forth?”

“I think so, yes.”

“You walked out of the Preserve at dawn with a pocketful of magic crystals,” he said. “That tells me one thing for sure.”

“What?” she asked.

“Those stones are important to this investigation.” He reached out and cradled her delicate jaw in his hand. “And so are you. But, then, I’ve known that all along.”

“Because you think I can be useful when it comes to identifying possible suspects. I know. You’ve already made that clear.”

“Not just because of that. There are other ways to come up with a list of suspects. Less efficient, maybe, but doable. No, Rachel Blake, you’re important to me for a lot of other reasons.”

She watched him intently, her
spectacular amber eyes heating a little with equal parts feminine awareness and caution. Energy swirled in the atmosphere, the kind of intimate energy that stirred the senses. He was taut and hard and on edge.

He leaned forward and kissed her ever so slightly. Just enough to get a taste of her. It was a mistake, because the small caress acted like a match to kindling. Desire roared through him.

She did not pull back but she did not throw herself into his arms, either. When he raised his head and looked at her, he saw the deep shadows in her eyes. He could read the signs. She wanted him but she did not trust him, at least not in the way she needed to trust a man before she went to bed with him.

He lowered his hand. She was right to be cautious around him—more right than she could possibly know.

She stepped back, folded her arms, and slipped her hands into the sleeves of her robe.

“I’m going upstairs now,” she said, exquisitely polite. “Please de-rez the light when you go back to bed.”

She swept out of the kitchen, the hem of her robe whipping around her ankles. He listened to her light footsteps on the stairs. She was practically running from him.

He de-rezzed the kitchen light and went back to the sofa. He did not lie down. Instead he sat there for a time, watching the glowing embers in the fireplace and wondering why a woman who could access the latent energy of almost any kind of stone would flee the Preserve with a handful of crystals that had no obvious value.

When that line of thought did
not lead anywhere helpful, he abandoned the effort and concentrated on the mystery of Rachel Blake, instead. He didn’t make any progress in that direction but he discovered that he could sit there, gazing into the fire and thinking about Rachel for the rest of the night.

Which was pretty much what he did.