by Jayne Castle
“I know,” Diana said. “But at this point we’re willing to try anything.”
“Of course.”
Diana closed her eyes. Tears glistened at the edge of her lashes. “Forgive me. It has all been such a strain on the family. Not only am I worried sick about my daughter, I’m afraid that Adam blames himself for what happened to her. Nothing Sam or I say to him can convince him to accept the truth. It was a terrible accident, but it was not his fault. Vickie was—is a professional, and she’s a Winters. She wanted to go on that exploratory expedition into the maze, and she was fully qualified.”
They walked along the length of the gallery and stopped at the window at the far end. Down below on the terrace Marlowe stood with Adam. The energy of sexual awareness that shivered in the air around the couple was evident, even from this distance, Elizabeth thought. She had been keenly aware of it earlier, during dinner. Oh, Marlowe, what have you done? You’re falling in love with a descendant of Nicholas Winters.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Diana said.
Elizabeth smiled wistfully. “Probably the same thing you’re thinking.”
“Trying to stop whatever is happening between those two would be like trying to stop a hurricane,” Diana said.
The tall clock chimed softly at the end of the gallery. Elizabeth glanced at her watch.
“Almost midnight,” she said. “Time to go to the clinic.”
Diana took a deep breath. “I’m afraid to hope.”
There was nothing to say, Elizabeth thought. But she was a mother, too. She understood. She put her arm around Diana. Together they walked back along the gallery to the staircase.
Chapter 13
“I’M SORRY, BUT I CAN’T ALLOW YOU TO BRING WHATEVER that animal is into the ward,” the nurse said. Her name was Nancy Hawkins, and she was not pleased by the late-night visitors to the clinic.
Marlowe reached up to her shoulder to pat Gibson. “It’s all right. He’s a therapy dust bunny.”
Nancy did not appear convinced. “I’ve never heard of a therapy dust bunny.”
“Trust me,” Marlowe said. “I do a lot of dreamlight work. I have discovered that people with severe parapsych trauma sometimes respond well to dust bunnies.”
“I’ve never heard that,” Nancy said.
Marlowe felt a little sorry for her. The nurse’s dreamprints were those of a dedicated healer whose only goal was to protect her patient. But Nancy Hawkins was outnumbered and outgunned tonight. Marlowe and Gibson had not come alone to the hospital. Adam, his parents, and her own mother and father had accompanied them. Faced with the heads of both the Winters and the Jones clans, two of the most formidable families in Frequency, there was little Nancy could do. Her only option was to call hospital security, and everyone, including her, knew that she would not take that step. She might not like what was happening, but she was, after all, dealing with her patient’s family. They had rights, too.
Abandoning the battle to bar Gibson from the ward, she turned and started down the hall. “I’ll take you to Vickie’s room.”
Marlowe and the others followed her along the quiet corridor, past the rooms of sleeping patients.
Marlowe kept her senses throttled back to the lowest possible level. Hospitals and medical clinics were always bad, but parapsych wards were the worst. There was no way to tune out all of the layers of disturbing and often just plain depressing dreamprints. Some of the dark, warped energy was so powerful and so terribly sad that Marlowe found herself brushing tears away from her eyes. Some of it was twisted in ways that sent chills down her spine.
Over the years the dreamlight generated by the patients had soaked into the very walls and floors. No amount of scrubbing could remove it. No disinfectant was strong enough to erase the seething, luminous miasma of human psychic misery.
On her shoulder, Gibson muttered anxiously, sensing her unease. As she always did on these occasions, she took comfort from his presence. They were a team.
Adam tightened his grip on her arm. “Are you going to be all right?” he asked.
“Yes, of course.” She realized with a little flash of astonishment that she was taking comfort from him as well. She and Adam were also a team. She fumbled in her purse for a tissue, found one, and blew her nose. “Not the first time I’ve visited a parapsych ward. Just takes a little acclimating, that’s all.”
Elizabeth glanced back at her. “Marlowe?”
“I’m fine, Mom. You know how it is. I’m a pro.”
Elizabeth smiled in sympathetic understanding. “Yes, I know, dear.”
Up ahead, Nancy made one last appeal to Diana. “Of course you are allowed to visit your daughter at any time, Mrs. Winters. But I strongly advise against disturbing Vickie’s routine like this. It’s after midnight, and there are so many of you. There is no telling how the presence of strangers may affect her.”
“We won’t all go into her room,” Diana Winters assured her. “Just Miss Jones.”
Nancy looked back at Marlowe, brows tensed with disapproval. “Are you a parapsych therapist of some kind, Miss Jones?”
“I’m good with dreamlight,” Marlowe said. “I don’t know yet if I can do anything for Vickie. I just want to take a look at her prints. I will try not to disturb her. You don’t even need to turn on the lights in her room.”
“I see.” Nancy said. She came to a halt in front of a partially open door and gave Marlowe a sharp look. “Please be careful. Vickie is more easily agitated late at night.”
“Dreamlight is always stronger at night,” Marlowe said, keeping her voice equally soft. “If she typically shows more anxiety after dark, that may actually be a good sign.”
“Why do you say that?” Nancy asked.
“Because it indicates that her trouble may be a disturbance in the ultradark end of the spectrum.”
“And that’s your area of expertise?”
“Yes.”
Nancy searched her face for a few seconds. Marlowe felt a little shiver in the atmosphere and knew that the nurse was focusing energy through standard resonating amber, most likely her small amber pendant. Surprise, surprise, she thought. Nancy Hawkins possessed some degree of talent, and she was using it to take a reading.
Whatever Nancy sensed must have satisfied her, because she beckoned to someone inside the room. A middle-aged woman appeared in the doorway. Her name tag read Tina. A professional sitter, Marlowe thought. Diana Winters had explained that they had hired someone to stay at Vickie’s bedside throughout the night.
Tina looked at the small crowd in the hallway and then glanced questioningly at Nancy.
“Is something wrong?” she asked softly.
“No,” Nancy said. “Tina, this is Miss Jones. She’s a strong dreamlight talent. The Winters family wants her to examine Vickie.”
“I understand,” Tina said. She looked at Diana. “But I must warn you that Vickie is somewhat agitated at the moment. In fact, I was just about to call in Miss Hawkins to ask if your daughter should have another dose of medication. I’m not certain this is a good time for a stranger to go into the room.”
“I won’t stay long,” Marlowe said. “I’ll just take a quick look. If I see that I can’t do anything helpful, I’ll leave immediately.”
“It’s all right, Tina,” Sam Winters said.
The sitter said nothing more, but she got out of the way. Adam and the others waited outside in the hall, as promised. Marlowe walked into the shadowed room and stopped next to the crisply made bed. She opened her senses slowly. Gibson muttered. She felt his small paws tighten on her shoulder. Animals had their own psychic natures. They usually responded to subtle changes in the atmosphere before humans picked up the currents.
In this case, however, there was nothing subtle about the dark, chaotic currents of dreamlight that roared and crashed around the sleeping figure on the bed. Vickie Winters was locked in a world of nightmares. Her eyes were closed, but her lashes twitched and her fingers trembled. Small but
spasmodic shudders swept through her thin frame. Her hands were clenched.
Marlowe fought her instinctive urge to shut down her talent in order to protect herself. Instead, she deliberately went hotter, focusing on the seething, churning energy pouring from Vickie’s aura. The currents were coming from the darkest end of the spectrum, and they were fluctuating wildly. The underlying pulses appeared strong at the source, but the rogue waves slamming through them destabilized the patterns so that they failed to oscillate properly.
The damage was bad and ongoing, but the fact that Vickie’s own powerful energy field was still generating a steady, stable pattern meant that there was hope. Deep down, Vickie was fighting the battle for her own sanity. Thus far she had held the line, but she was weakening. She needed backup.
“It’s okay, Vickie,” Marlowe said. “I’m here. We’ll get through this together.”
Gibson hopped down onto the bed. His second set of eyes opened, glowing amber in the shadows, but he did not go into full hunting mode. He hovered next to Vickie’s hand.
Marlowe touched him, feeling the sleek little predator beneath the ball-of-lint fur.
“Ready, pal?”
Gibson chattered softly. In these situations he always seemed to understand that they were on a mission.
Marlowe braced for the jolt she knew would come and put her fingertips on Vickie’s brow.
The psychic shock waves smashed into her senses. The intuitive elements of her talent interpreted the energy frantically, delivering a senses-disorienting dreamscape.
. . . She was running through endless corridors of mirrors. The brilliant, polished surfaces surrounded her on all sides, forming the walls, ceiling, and floors of the maze. Lightning flashed and burned and ricocheted from one impossibly brilliant surface to another.
Somewhere in the echoing world of reflections she could hear familiar voices calling to her: Adam, her mother, her father. But she could not find them, and they could not find her.
Everywhere she looked she was confronted by infinitely repeating reflections of herself, an infinity of Vickies. They screamed. They laughed. They sobbed. She could no longer tell which image was the real Vickie, so she kept running.
Another, unfamiliar voice was calling her name . . .
“Vickie, you’re in a dream, but I know you can hear me. I have suppressed the rogue waves in your dreamlight patterns. You are in control of the dreamscape now. Listen to my voice.”
The endless Vickie reflections were receding into the distance, growing fainter. The energy flashing and sparking off the mirrored surfaces was weakening . . .
“Stop running, Vickie. Panic is making you run. You are no longer afraid, because you are in control. Focus on the sound of my voice. You will see the exit from the maze. This is a lucid dream now. You control it.”
One entire section of the mirrored corridor dissolved. She could see darkness beyond. Light slanted through the shadows, a familiar kind of light, not the blinding energy that had been bouncing off the mirrors . . .
“Concentrate on the opening in the maze, Vickie. Use your talent to focus on it. Walk through it. Don’t try to run. Just walk. You are in control of this dreamscape now.”
Vickie opened her eyes. She looked around the shadowed room for a few seconds, confused. Gibson chortled and pushed close to one of her hands. Vickie touched him without seeming to be aware of it. Her fingers tightened in his fur. She grew visibly calmer.
“Welcome back,” Marlowe said gently.
Vickie turned her head on the pillow and looked at her.
“Who are you?” she whispered.
“A friend of the family,” Marlowe said. Before she could explain, she heard rapid footsteps on the floor behind her.
Diana Winters rushed toward the bed.
“Vickie? Are you really awake?”
Vickie pushed herself up on her elbows.
“Hi, Mom.”
Chapter 14
“VICKIE REALLY WILL BE OKAY?” ADAM SAID. “THE FIX is permanent?”
“She’ll be fine.” Marlowe unfastened the wire lock on the cookie jar, removed the lid, and waited for Gibson to select two perfect High-Rez Energy Bars. “There was no permanent damage done to her underlying field. When she got zapped by the bad energy in that maze, her senses were overloaded. A lot of people, certainly anyone who lacked a very strong parapsych profile, would have been driven insane or died on the spot.”
“But she’s a Winters,” Adam said, not bothering to conceal his pride. “She held the line until reinforcements arrived.”
Marlowe smiled. “Yep, she’s a Winters.”
Chortling gleefully, Gibson hopped down from the rim of the cookie jar and set about peeling off the wrappers of the two bars.
Marlowe locked the cookie jar and plucked two small glasses and a bottle of Amber Dew out of a cabinet.
She and Adam were alone. Adam’s parents had stayed behind at the hospital. Hers had returned home. Adam had driven her back to her condo in the Quarter, and she had invited him in for nightcap. After all, it had been a very long night. And they were partners.
There had been no outbreak of jubilation after Vickie Winters had awakened. The initial reaction was disbelief followed by a lot of tears. Not all of the tears had been spilled by Diana Winters. Marlowe had seen a suspicious glitter in Adam’s eyes. Sam Winters had choked up as well.
There had also been questions, mostly from a very confused and disoriented Vickie. She had awakened with no memory of her experience. She had also been utterly exhausted because the trancelike state had not allowed for any healing sleep.
Marlowe set the bottle aside, picked up the two glasses of Amber Dew, and carried them across the room. She put the glasses down on the coffee table and crossed to the wall to rez the flash-rock fireplace. When the flames leaped on the hearth, she went back to the sofa and sat down.
“The inside of that maze is a psi firestorm.” Adam lowered himself onto the sofa beside her. He looked at the glass on the table in front of him but made no move to pick it up.
“Vickie reacted to the assault on her senses instinctively.” Marlowe picked up her glass. “She shut down and retreated to the darkest end of the spectrum. That’s where her talent originates and where she has the most strength. In essence she took cover in a dreamscape. It was a self-imposed trance.”
“But she went so deep that she couldn’t find her way back out?”
“That pretty much describes what happened, yes.”
Gibson finished the energy bars. He carried the empty foil wrappers across the room to a basket that was already half-filled with identical wrappers. He made the additions to his collection and then fluttered across the floor to the dust-bunny-sized door that Marlowe had installed for him. The door was located in the wall next to the glass doors that opened onto the balcony. Gibson chortled once and disappeared outside into the night.
“Probably off to hang with his buddies,” Marlowe explained. “I think dust bunnies are quite sociable. Or maybe he’s got a girlfriend. I’m not sure what he does when he goes out at night. But he’ll be back in a few hours. He hops from balcony to balcony until he gets to the ground.”
“Helps to have six paws when you do that kind of mountaineering,” Adam said.
Out on the balcony Gibson bounced up onto the railing. He stood silhouetted against the green light of the ruins for a few seconds and then vanished over the side.
“You and Gibson have done this kind of psychic repair work before?” Adam asked.
She sipped some Amber Dew and lowered the glass. “You know how some people are on a special list of donors for rare blood types?”
“Sure.”
“Arcane operates a private clinic for members of the Society similar to the one your sister is in. I’m on a list of rare talents who can be called in to consult on special cases.”
He held his glass of Amber Dew up to the firelight and studied the golden liqueur. “The Guild clinics keep lists of parapsych s
pecialists, too. We have some very rare and unusual talents on tap. But none of them could help Vickie.”
“Her condition was unique because it was related to dreamlight. Doubt if you have a lot of dream talents in the Guild.”
“No,” he agreed. “That’s more of an Arcane thing.”
“I expect you’ve got some talents on your clinic lists that the Arcane parapsych doctors could use from time to time.”
He drank some of the Amber Dew. “Might be useful in the future if the Guilds and the Society shared those lists.”
“Yes,” she said. “Might be very useful.”
She sank deeper into the sofa, letting the gentle heat of the potent liqueur take the edge off her overstimulated nerves. She had used a lot of energy at the hospital. Now she was in the edgy, high-rez state that always followed a major burn. Soon she would crash and fall into a heavy sleep.
But that wouldn’t happen for a while. Not that she was looking forward to sleep. There would be dreams tonight. Bad ones. But that was just the way the talent worked. She had a lot of natural resilience. That, too, was connected to her talent. After a couple of nights, the images from Vickie’s dreams would stop invading her own dreamscapes.
Meanwhile the Amber Dew was hitting her harder and faster than it would have otherwise. She knew from experience that she had a tendency to get chatty in this condition.
Adam looked at her. “You saved my sister tonight. I owe you. For the rest of my life, I owe you.”
“Stop right there.” Marlowe held up one hand. “What I did for your sister, I would have done for anyone.”
“I know that, too. Doesn’t change anything.”
She swallowed more Amber Dew. “If the situation had been reversed, you would have done the same thing.”
He watched her with a steady, unreadable expression. “Think so?”
She smiled, feeling a bit smug. “I’m a dreamlight talent, remember?”
“Oh, yeah.”
“And one hell of a profiler. For your information, I nailed your parapsych profile the first time I met you in the ruins.”