Burning Lamp (25 page)

 

 

 

THEY MADE THE EVENING MEAL OUT OF THE FOOD THAT MRS. Trevelyan had packed for them: bread, cheese, some pickles and boiled eggs. There was also the bottle of wine that Griffin had grabbed from his cellar before they went down into the underground tunnel.

He could see that the wine amused Adelaide.

“It is as though you waved a magic wand,” she said. She looked at him over the rim of the glass, her eyes sparkling. “With a mere bottle of wine you have transformed our little adventure into a picnic. What on earth made you think to bring it along?”

“I’ve had some experience in this business,” he said. “Going into hiding is never comfortable but there’s no need to make the process entirely uncivilized.”

“I’ll remember that.”

She positioned a pickle on top of a small wedge of the cheese, placed the cheese and pickle on a slice of bread and took a bite.

He watched her eat for a moment, enthralled. Something deep inside him stirred in response to her enthusiasm for the food. Then again, just being in her presence aroused him; the mere thought of her had the same effect. And in spite of everything that had happened, some part of him could not stop thinking about what it had been like to have her soft, warm and glowing in his arms.

“I can’t help but notice that you seem to have adapted quite well to the poor accommodations I’ve provided,” he said. “A lot of ladies would have been calling for their vinaigrettes by now.”

She smiled. “Like you, I’ve had some experience in this line and often the accommodations were far more Spartan.” She looked around, clearly satisfied. “We actually have a roof over our heads and a lavatory.”

“What did you expect?”

She raised one shoulder in a dainty shrug. “A cave or an abandoned basement, perhaps.”

“Why did you find it necessary to go into hiding?”

“It usually wasn’t so much a case of having to hide out,” she said with a judicious expression. “More often than not it was a matter of being obliged to leave town quickly under cover of night. I must admit that, on at least one memorable occasion, it was entirely my fault.”

He picked up the knife and cut another slice off the loaf. “I cannot wait to hear the tale.”

“My first post was working as an assistant to a medium named Mrs. Peck.”

“There is no such thing as being able to speak to the dead.” He bit off a chunk of the bread. “And, therefore, no real mediums.”

“Yes, I know that. But you would be amazed by how many people are willing to believe such a power exists. Contacting spirits is a very profitable business. I met Mrs. Peck on the ship during the passage to New York. I started out as her assistant but when she realized I actually did have some genuine paranormal talent, she changed the billing and the act. I became the Mystical Zora.”

“A fine stage name.”

“I thought so. I got it out of a sensation novel. I gave amazing demonstrations of psychical talent and, for a handsome fee, I saw customers privately. I analyzed dreamlight and gave clients advice. I was quite good at it. But sometimes I made the cardinal show business mistake of telling people things they did not want to hear.”

He ate some cheese. “A mistake in any profession.”

“I learned that the hard way. And then there was the time I informed one customer that her husband was a brute who had already beaten her on a number of occasions and would likely someday murder her in a fit of rage. I advised her to leave him immediately and disappear. The woman took my advice. When his wife vanished, the husband blamed me. Mrs. Peck and I found it necessary to leave town in a rather hurried fashion.”

“Did the husband try to pursue you?”

“I’m afraid he was in no condition to do so. He attacked me after the last performance. I had no choice but to put him to sleep, a very deep sleep. Something must have happened to his mind when I put him under. I was terrified at the time so I probably used more energy than was strictly necessary. In any event, when he woke up everyone assumed he’d had a stroke. He never really recovered.”

“And the wife?”

Adelaide smiled slightly. “I believe she returned to see that her poor, bedridden husband was properly cared for until his timely death. Took about ten days for him to cock up his toes. I suspect the lady may have assisted him along his way, perhaps with a dose of arsenic. After he was gone she assumed control of his fortune.”

“A happy ending.”

Adelaide crunched another pickle. “My favorite kind.”

“How did you end up in the Wild West Show?”

“Mrs. Peck and I made a great deal of money over the next few years. She eventually elected to retire to Chicago. I headed west with the act and made even more money. Monty Moore attended one of my performances in San Francisco. Afterward he came around to my dressing room and offered me the opportunity to join his Wild West Show. I declined initially because I was doing very nicely on my own. But when he promised to make me a full partner I decided to accept. His show was extremely popular but he thought it would do even better if he added some demonstrations of psychical talent. He was right.”

“There were, however, more hurried midnight departures?”

She smiled. “Oh, yes. That sort of thing is part and parcel of the life of any traveling show. To the local people in a town the members of the cast and crew are always outsiders and not to be trusted. We were usually the first to be blamed for anything that went wrong. Washing stolen off the clothesline? Must have been one of the lads from the traveling show. Your wife’s bracelet is missing? Everyone knows there are always pickpockets in the crowd at the show.”

“I see what you mean.”

“Frequently we found it necessary to load the horses, Willy and Buster, our two buffalo, and all the props and tents on board the train in the middle of the night. But it was never dull and always profitable. Eventually Monty and I sold the Wild West Show. He retired and I returned to England.”

“What did you do with all the money you made?”

“I took Monty’s advice and invested it in railroad shares, a couple of shipping companies and some property in San Francisco. Among other things, I own a large house with a very fine view of the bay. I had planned to make it my home.”

“Instead you returned to England.”

She helped herself to more cheese. “With the lamp.”

“Why?”

“It was time.” She glanced at the artifact with a reflective expression. “There are no coincidences, remember? I suppose it was my intuition that told me I needed to return to England.”

“But you still own the house?”

“Oh, yes. A caretaker and his wife are looking after it.”

He drank a little wine and then he smiled at her. “You have lived a very unusual life, Adelaide Pyne.”

“So have you, Griffin Winters.”

“There is, however, one thing that puzzles me.”

“Only one thing?”

“Why did you never marry?”

“Ah.” That was all she said. She sipped her wine.

He waited a moment. When it became obvious she was not going to continue he tried pushing a little.

“I will understand if it is something you wish to keep private,” he said. “I did not mean to pry.”

“Of course you did, just as I intended to pry when I asked you about your wife and best friend.” She swirled the wine in her glass. “If you must know, it is the nature of my talent that makes marriage impossible for me.”

He set his glass down and folded his arms on the table. “Of all the explanations you could have given, that is the very last one I expected. What is it about your talent that makes marriage impossible?”

“We both draw our talent from the dreamlight end of the spectrum, but my affinity for dream energy is not like your own.”

“I am aware of that.”

“I am very sensitive to the dreamlight currents of others. When people are awake that energy is usually suppressed to a level that I can handle quite easily, unless I open up my own senses. But when people sleep, their dreamlight floods their auras and the atmosphere around them.” She moved one hand in a vague, uneasy gesture. “I find such energy extremely disturbing. I cannot sleep in the same bed with someone who is dreaming. And everyone dreams.”

He felt as if he’d been kicked in the gut. “Are you telling me that you cannot sleep with a man?”

“Yes.” Her smile was wistful. “We are a pair, are we not? You dare not marry for fear of exposing a wife to your dangerous world. I cannot wed because I have never found a man I could love who, in turn, was capable of loving a woman with my unfortunate little eccentricity.”

“But that’s all it is, an eccentricity.”

A wistful expression came and went in her eyes. “Over time my problem destroys any sense of closeness and intimacy. Certainly men think it a great convenience at first. They see me as the perfect mistress because I am delighted to live in a separate house and not demand marriage. But it doesn’t take long for them to conclude that on some level I am rejecting them. And I suppose they are right.”

“No,” he said, very sure. “They realize that you will never truly belong to them. At first you are a challenge and that intrigues them, but when they comprehend that they will never be able to possess you, they become angry.”

She raised one shoulder in a delicate shrug. “Perhaps. I do know that the damage goes both ways. I soon come to resent a lover whose dreamlight is so intolerable it ruins my sleep and disturbs all my senses.”

His hand tightened around the wineglass. “Is that a subtle way of informing me that you do not want to sleep with me?”

She drew a sharp breath. “I did not mean that. Not exactly.”

“Because you have my word that I will not impose my attentions on you tonight,” he said. “You are under my protection. I will not take advantage of you.”

She cleared her throat. “That is very noble of you. However, as it happens—”

He cut her off before she could complete the sentence, determined to say what needed to be said. “You have already made it clear that as far as you are concerned our encounter last night was brought on by paranormal forces.”

“Good grief. You did not force yourself on me, Griffin. I am a woman of the world. And as you pointed out, there is an attraction between us.”

“Which you attribute to the energy of the lamp.”

“Not entirely.” She was starting to sound cross.

“I realize that you had no intention of succumbing to passion when you worked the lamp for me. You were caught up in the energy that was sweeping through the room.”

“Swept away by my bedazzled senses?” she asked in acid tones.

“In a manner of speaking.”

“And what of yourself, sir? Were you also just a victim?”

“Hell, no,” he muttered. “I knew exactly what I was doing.”

“In other words, I’m the only weak- willed individual in this room? Is that what you are implying?”

“I meant nothing of the kind.”

“If neither of us were victims of the effects of the Burning Lamp, then what are we supposed to make of what occurred? Just one of those things?”

He eyed her closely. “You’re getting angry.”

“Very astute of you.” She gulped the last of her wine. “I am also trying to make it clear that I take full responsibility for my actions last night, just as you do. Nevertheless, I do agree that both of us were aroused in an unnatural manner.”

“Unnatural,” he repeated neutrally. Now his temper was starting to fray.

“What I’m trying to say is that I am well aware that it was not romantic love that brought us together.”

“What was it, then?”

“Passion, of course. But I do assure you that the desire was mutual. You did
Not
take advantage of me.”

He let out his breath in a long, slow exhalation. “At least give me credit for trying to act the gentleman. It doesn’t come easily to a professional crime lord.”

Her smile was very cryptic. “It does to you, Griffin. Whether you will admit it or not.”

He scowled. “I control the Consortium. I can control my own lusts.”

“I never doubted that for a moment.” Her voice softened. “I know that you would not dream of presuming on our relationship tonight.”

He drank some more wine and tried again to quash the memories. “Wouldn’t think of it.”

But he would damn sure dream of it.

 

 

 

SHE AWOKE TO A STORM OF ENERGY. THE FORCE OF THE CURRENTS jolted her from a dream. One moment she was holding the targets for Monty Moore and discovering that the man pointing the gun at her was not Monty but Mr. Smith. In the next instant she was sitting straight up on the cot, her hands knotted in the silk sheet.

Heart pounding, she struggled to separate the remnants of her own dream energy from the gale that was howling soundlessly in the small space. Not her own currents, she realized. Griffin was in the grip of a savage nightmare. She would recognize his energy anywhere.

It was not just the moonlight filtering through the window that illuminated the outer room. She could see and sense the eerie glow of hot dreamlight.

She scrambled free of the sheet and rose from the narrow bed. The floor was cold beneath her bare feet. She went to the doorway and looked out into the small sitting room area, expecting to see Griffin asleep in his bedroll.

But he was not asleep. Instead he sat cross-legged on the open bedroll. The Burning Lamp stood on the floor in front of him. He had one hand on the rim. The artifact was not yet fully transparent. The crystals were still dark. But energy stirred and flashed within the device, producing the ominous glow.

Griffin’s eyes were open. They burned in the haunting glare of the artifact. He gave no indication that he saw her.

“Griffin?” She kept her tone low, barely a whisper. Her intuition warned her that it would be dangerous to startle him out of the dream state, especially now that he had ignited the lamp’s power.