by Jayne Castle
Gibson growled again.
“It’s okay, Gibson,” Marlowe said. “You know Tucker. He won’t hurt me.”
“You have to come with me,” Tucker said. “We’ll use your car. You’ll drive.”
“Someone you know is in trouble, right?”
“My brother.”
“You stole the lamp because you thought you could use it to help him, but you discovered that the artifact was a fake. Now you’re hoping I can fix your brother.”
“You’re a dreamlight reader. You once told me that you can help people whose parapsych profiles are all messed up.”
“Only sometimes, Tucker. It depends on the nature of the underlying trauma.”
“You have to help my brother.”
“What’s wrong with your him?”
“Keith is dying,” Tucker’s voice rose. “Those damned crystals he forged are killing him.”
Adam emerged from the stairwell behind Tucker. It was obvious that he had come straight from the office. He had removed his black jacket, but otherwise he was in full Guild exec black. His polished leather boots made no sound on the floor of the garage as he moved up behind Tucker.
“You can put the gun down now, Tucker,” Marlowe said. “I’m here. I’m listening.”
Tucker ignored her, his eyes feverish. “My sister is a dreamlight talent. We all knew about the lamp because of Keith’s work with crystals, you see.”
“I understand,” Marlowe said.
“When Keith’s psi patterns started to go bad, Charlotte thought she might be able to work the energy of the lamp to reestablish the normal resonance patterns, but the damn artifact was a fake, and now you’re the only option we’ve got left. You have to help Keith.”
Adam reached around Tucker and snapped the mag-rez out of his hand.
“She’s not going anywhere with you, Deene,” Adam said.
Tucker’s handsome face crumpled. He started to cry, making no sound.
Marlowe glanced at her watch. “Three hours until the Guild reception starts. We’d better hurry.”
“I was afraid you were going to say that,” Adam said.
Chapter 34
THEY TOOK HER FLOAT. ADAM DROVE. UNDER HIS guidance the normally sedate, unobtrusive little compact cut through the early evening traffic like a shark through a school of small quartzfish. Marlowe rode on the passenger side, Gibson perched behind her on the back of the seat. Tucker huddled forlornly in the back.
“Tell me about the crystals,” Adam ordered.
“What do you want to know?” Tucker asked.
“You said your brother forged them.”
“Yeah.”
“How?”
“How?” Tucker shrugged. “He’s a crystal talent. He used a furnace. Some raw crystals. A lot of his own psi.”
“Creating crystals that can enhance a person’s talent isn’t the kind of thing you learn how to do in chemistry class or on the Internet,” Adam said. “It’s alchemy, an Old Earth science. Your brother must have found the instructions somewhere.”
“Yeah. He got hold of a copy of some old journal.”
“What old journal?” Adam asked evenly.
There was a long silence from the backseat.
“Keith told us that he found some notes supposedly copied from one of the early journals of Nicholas Winters,” Tucker said finally.
Marlowe felt energy heat the atmosphere. Adam was not a happy Guild boss.
“How many of those crystals did your brother make?” Adam asked, slicing through a narrow alley.
“A dozen,” Tucker replied.
“How many did you sell?”
“All of them.”
“I want the names of the buyers.”
“There was only one,” Tucker said tightly. “He took every one that Keith made. Said he’d buy all that we could produce. And before you ask, yes, he was a Guild Councilman. At least we think so.”
Adam glanced at him in the rearview mirror. “What makes you think he was a Councilman?”
“The deal was done through a go-between, a broker who handles those kinds of arrangements. Guy named Joey. He made it pretty obvious that the client was not only a strong talent but very well connected at the top of the Guild. No offense, but we thought you might have been the buyer. If it wasn’t you, must have been a Councilman.”
Marlowe turned in her seat to study Tucker. “How do you know the buyer wasn’t from the criminal world?”
He gave her a wry smile, the smile that had first attracted her weeks ago.
“Not much of a difference between the criminal world and the Guild here in Frequency, is there?” he asked.
Out of nowhere, anger flashed through her. No one could seriously defend the badly tarnished reputation of the Frequency Guild. But for some obscure reason, she reacted to the slur on the organization as if it had been aimed directly at Adam.
“Things will change now that Adam Winters is in charge,” she said coldly. “He’s going to clean up the Frequency Guild.”
Adam’s mouth kicked up a little, but he said nothing.
“Good luck with that,” Tucker said, monumentally unconvinced.
“It’s not like you’re exactly a shining beacon of integrity, now is it, Tucker?” Marlowe snapped.
Adam whipped the Float down a narrow, tree-lined street. “You two might want to save the sparkling repartee for some other time. We’ve got other issues on the agenda at the moment.”
Marlowe winced. “Good point.” She turned back to Tucker. “But I am a PI, if you will recall. I like answers. I want to know exactly why you are so sure that the person who bought the crystals wasn’t a politician or a businessman or a serial killer or some lunatic trying to fire up a cult?”
Tucker slumped deeper into his seat and stared glumly out the window. “We’ve worked with Joey before. We know him, and we trust him.”
“You’re talking about a guy who brokers deals on the black market,” Adam pointed out.
“Joey is a professional in his own way,” Tucker said. “He’s been in business for a long time. The good brokers survive for the simple reason that everyone involved, buyers and sellers alike, know they can be trusted.”
“Does this Joey the broker have a last name?” Adam asked.
Tucker hesitated. “Why?”
“Because I want to talk to him,” Adam said. “Give me a name, Deene.”
Marlowe narrowed her eyes. “We need a name, Tucker.”
Tucker crumpled again. “I can’t give you one. He’s just Joey the broker.”
“How do you find him when you need him?” Adam asked.
“Hangs out at a bar called the Green Hole,” Tucker replied.
Adam took a phone out of his pocket. He spoke briefly to whoever answered.
“Guy named Joey,” he said. “Works the black market as a go-between. His office is at the Green Hole. Pick him up.”
He closed the phone and glanced at Marlowe. Her surprise must have been plain on her face, because his brows rose a little.
“What?” he asked.
“I’m just wondering how you got the authority to send someone after a known criminal, let alone have him picked up for questioning. You’re not a police detective.”
“You know the code, the Guild polices its own.”
“Yes, but Joey the broker isn’t Guild.”
“If he’s selling illegal weapons to someone in the Guild, he has to deal with Guild law.”
A SHORT TIME LATER, ADAM BROUGHT THE FLOAT TO a halt in front of a modest house. He de-rezzed the engine and surveyed the quiet neighborhood.
“For the record,” he said, “I’d just like to mention one last time that this is probably not a good idea.”
“What do you mean?” Marlowe unfastened her seat belt. “According to Tucker, this involves the crystals. We’ve been trying to get a handle on them. This is the perfect opportunity.”
“There are other ways to do that.” Adam glanced at Tucker, who alread
y had the rear door open. “I don’t trust this guy.”
“Well, he is a chameleon and a professional con artist,” Marlowe allowed. “Of course, you can’t trust him completely.”
Tucker looked crushed. “I never meant to hurt you, Marlowe.”
“Skip it,” Marlowe said. She scooped up Gibson. “Adam’s right; you can’t be trusted far. But there is one exception.”
“What’s that?” Adam asked.
She looked at him over the roof of the Float. “Tucker cares about his brother. It’s in his dreamprints. This is about family, not about pulling off another score.”
Tucker drew a deep breath. “Thank you, Marlowe.”
Adam glanced at Tucker, shrugged, and closed the car door.
Marlowe considered Tucker. “It’s too bad, you know.”
“Too bad that we got off on the wrong foot?” Tucker said quietly. “I agree. It was my fault.”
“True.”
“You and I, we had something special going for us, Marlowe.”
“Ghost shit,” Adam said, coming up behind Marlowe.
“I wasn’t talking about us,” Marlowe said to Tucker. “I meant it’s too bad you can’t be trusted, because J&J could use someone with your kind of talent.”
Tucker was dumbfounded. “Me? An agent for J&J?”
“Boggles the mind, doesn’t it?”
“Marlowe—” He extended a hand toward her, as though to take her arm in the familiar, intimate way that he once had.
Gibson growled. Marlowe took a quick step back out of reach and came up hard against Adam. His hands closed around her shoulders, intimate and possessive.
“Let’s get on with this project,” Adam said. “Time’s running out.”
Tucker dropped his hand. He led the way up the walk.
“How did you know I was the one who took the lamp?” he asked Marlowe.
“You imitated Dr. Lewis’s dreamprints when you went into the vault to steal the relic,” she said.
“Yes.” Tucker exhaled heavily. “But how did you figure it out?”
“Good question,” Adam said. He looked at Marlowe. “How did you discover that Deene was the thief?”
“Something about the prints I tracked in and out of the chamber where the lamp was stored bothered me from the start,” she said.
“Because they had been left by a trusted employee?” Adam asked. “You couldn’t believe that Lewis would steal from the museum?”
“Not just that,” Marlowe said. “It was the fact that the prints weren’t hot. Dr. Lewis is a quiet academic who has dedicated his entire professional life to preserving artifacts in the museum. He suddenly decides to do something totally out of character and steal one of the artifacts, but there’s no strong emotion in his prints at the scene? It didn’t make sense.”
“Right.” Adam nodded, comprehending immediately. “At the very least, he should have been nervous as hell. Scared.”
“I know Dr. Lewis,” Marlowe said. “He would have been terrified. There would have been plenty of energy burning in his prints.”
Tucker’s jaw tightened. “I can imitate the basic resonance patterns of someone else’s prints, but I can’t generate the individual’s emotions when I do it.”
“What about your own emotions?” she asked, her professional interest aroused. “Why aren’t they visible in the prints that you imitate? You must have been hyped on adrenaline at the very least, when you went into the vault.”
“Are you kidding? I was freaked. Hell, I was stealing from Arcane. The energy is probably there in the prints, according to my sister. But it’s masked by the chameleon effect. Even a strong dreamlight reader can’t see it.”
Marlowe nodded. “Which is how you got close to me.”
“Damn it, Marlowe—”
“Like I said, a very useful talent.”
Adam’s jaw was set at an unforgiving angle. “Don’t even think about hiring him as an agent. You can’t trust him, remember?”
“Yes, but now that I know that, I might be able to work around that issue,” she said, thinking about the possibilities.
“Forget it,” Adam said in very low, very dangerous tones.
Tucker glared at him over Marlowe’s head. “You know, there are a lot of folks here in Frequency who would strongly advise her not to trust anyone connected to the Guild, especially the guy at the top.”
Marlowe felt Adam’s hand tighten a little around her arm. She looked at Tucker.
“You don’t need to worry about my relationship with Adam,” she said. “I would trust him with my life. Actually, I’ve already done that a couple of times, come to think of it.”
Adam smiled. “That works both ways.”
Tucker’s face tightened, but he said nothing. He halted on the top step and knocked twice.
The door opened so quickly Marlowe knew the woman who appeared in the entryway had been watching from behind the closed curtains.
“You must be Charlotte,” Marlowe said.
Charlotte stared at her uncertainly and then turned to her brother.
“Tucker?” Charlotte looked past him to Adam. “What’s going on? Why is he here?”
“It’s a long story, Charlotte,” Tucker said, his voice surprisingly gentle. “It’s okay, I swear it. Just open the door.”
Charlotte did not take her eyes off Adam. “You’re the new Guild boss.”
Adam smiled his humorless, Guild boss smile.
“Don’t mind me,” he said. “I’m here to make sure no one gets hurt.”
Charlotte flinched. Marlowe opened her talent and looked at the dreamprints on the floor beneath her feet. They seethed with an emotion that bordered on panic.
“It’s all right,” Marlowe said. “You and your brothers are Arcane. That means you’re entitled to J&J’s services. In hindsight, perhaps you should have come directly to my office and asked for help, instead of sending your brother to spy on me and the museum.”
Charlotte was stunned. “How can you even suggest that we could have approached J&J as legitimate members of the Society? By now you must know what we are, how we’ve survived.”
“Yes,” Marlowe said. “But that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t have helped you. You’re a dreamlight reader. That means you can work up a fairly accurate profile of another person, assuming he isn’t a chameleon, of course.”
Tucker closed his eyes and looked sad. Marlowe ignored him.
“Your brothers probably rely on your talent to profile a mark and set up the scam, right?” Marlowe continued.
Charlotte’s lips thinned, but she did not say anything.
“Take a look at my prints,” Marlowe said. “See for yourself if I’m here with the intention of doing any of you harm.”
Energy flared. Marlowe sensed that Charlotte had heightened her own talent. Whatever she saw must have convinced her that it was safe to open the door. With a sigh, she stepped back into the hall.
“Keith is in the living room,” she said. “Follow me.”
She led the way down the short entry hall and into a room furnished in warm, neutral hues. The drapes were pulled across the windows, creating deep shadows.
Keith Deene was curled into a fetal position on the sofa. There was a pitcher of ice water and a half-filled glass on the end table. The room was uncomfortably warm, but Marlowe could tell that he was shivering beneath the heavy quilt. When she got closer, she saw that he was soaked with perspiration.
Gibson mumbled a little.
“Hello, Keith,” Marlowe said very softly. She crouched beside the sofa. “What have you done to yourself?”
Gibson hopped out of her arms onto the sofa and chattered softly, ready to go to work.
Keith opened psi-fevered eyes. He seemed bewildered by the sight of Gibson. He switched his attention to Marlowe.
“Who are you?” he rasped.
“Marlowe Jones. I hear you’ve been fooling around with a very old alchemical recipe for crystals.”
“I’m a
crystal talent. Thought I could handle any kind of hot stone.” He clutched the edge of the blanket with a hand knotted into a fist. “Hell, I forged the damned crystals, myself, using my own energy. I should have been able to control them.”
Adam looked at him from across the room. “Your brother said that you were working from a copy of some instructions from one of Nicholas Winters’s early notebooks. The old bastard was still perfecting his theory of crystals in those days. He forged a couple of them and ran some experiments, but he realized immediately that they were flawed and potentially dangerous. He eventually abandoned that first engineering design altogether.”
Keith stared at him. “Your name is Winters. Guess that’s not exactly a coincidence under the circumstances, is it?”
“No,” Adam said.
Marlowe looked at Keith. “Unfortunately for you and a few other people over the years who found copies of those early notes, Nicholas never went back and put a warning in his early journals. It was only in his later notebooks that he mentioned the failed experiments of his youth and how they had set him on a different path.”
“So, I’m going to die?” Keith asked. “Sort of figured that.”
Marlowe braced herself and touched his hot forehead. The shock of hot nightmare energy rattled her senses. It was bad but not nearly as bad as what she and Adam had gone through together in the maze. It wasn’t even as jarring as what she had experienced with Vickie Winters.
“How long have you been using the crystals?” she asked.
It was Charlotte who answered. “He made the first one a few months ago. I noticed the changes in his prints about six weeks later. But he didn’t believe me at first when I told him that I thought the crystals were responsible.”
“Thought the changes meant that I was getting stronger,” Keith said, teeth chattering.
“No,” Marlowe said gently. “That’s not what the distortions in your dreamlight patterns meant.”
Keith’s nightmare images were coming at her on a storm of chaos. She caught fleeting glimpses of tsunami waves that threatened to drown the dreamer. Scalding flashes of dreamlight burned her. But, as always, it was the sense of helplessness, the realization that the outcome could not be altered or evaded that was the most devastating aspect. In nightmares there was no hope, only desperation, fear, and panic.