The Lost Night (10 page)

But he also understood intuitively that she did not belong in the cloistered environment of an HE community with its emphasis on maintaining a cerebral detachment from the world and an inner psychic balance in all things. She was too curious, too adventurous, and far too passionate to live apart from the world. She needed the rough-and-tumble of real life. She needed to be free to lose her temper at times, free to become giddy, free to cry or laugh out loud.

Most of all she needed a lover who appreciated her strengths, her talent, and her spirit.
A lover like me,
he thought. His hands tightened a little on the railing.

No. He needed a lover like her.

She brought the bicycle to a halt at the bottom of the porch steps and dismounted with the fluid grace of a dancer. Or one skilled in martial arts, he reminded himself. He smiled.

“The fog seems worse out here,” she said.

“Probably because this place is so close to the fence boundary.” He went down the steps, picked up the bike, and carried it back up the steps. “Where’s your pal?”

“Darwina disappeared with Amberella just before the tea-tasting event started. Haven’t seen her since. Maybe she went off to meet a guy or maybe she wants to impress her friends
with the doll. Who knows? Slade says Rex vanishes frequently into the woods. Dust bunnies don’t seem to have any problem with the psi-fence or the Preserve.”

He propped the bike against the wall of the cottage. “You don’t have a car?”

“Can’t afford one yet. Things didn’t go well for me financially in Frequency City. My boss at the Chapman Clinic was decent enough to give me two-weeks’ severance pay, but I had to hand over most of that to my landlord when I broke the lease on my apartment. I get a lift from a friend or borrow a Vibe from Brett at the service station when the weather is bad.”

“Come on inside,” he said. He held the door for her.

Just before she crossed the threshold she glanced toward the dark woods that crowded around the cottage. “I didn’t realize how close this place was to the psi-fence. You can really feel the energy of the Preserve from here.”

“And it’s getting stronger.”

“So you and Slade keep saying.” She moved into the front room of the cabin. “I’m not arguing that point.”

He took another look at the fog-shrouded woods before he followed her inside. There was a lot of energy in the atmosphere this evening and not all of it was coming from the Preserve.

“There’s another storm on the way,” he said, closing the door.

The territory of the Preserve covered nearly 75 percent of Rainshadow. There was no physical fence. Instead, the boundary was secured with an invisible barrier of para-normal energy that
had been in place as long as anyone could remember. Most people assumed that it was some sort of natural phenomenon generated by the unusual currents on the island. Harry wasn’t so sure. He and the others in his family had another theory.

Regardless of the origin of the fence, the Foundation had recently reinforced the barrier with some very high-end security technology that had come out of one of the company labs. But the enhancement wasn’t working. Slade Attridge and others, including a couple of the local kids and Rachel, had all managed to get inside lately.

Rachel stopped a few steps away and turned to face him. “I just had a thought. Maybe it’s the heavy storm pattern we’ve had lately that is responsible for agitating the energy in the Preserve.”

“No,” he said. “I’m sure it’s the reverse. The Preserve is stirring up the storms. But there is bound to be a synergistic effect, which makes things worse over time. This island is a major geothermal para-nexus. There’s a lot of natural energy in the vicinity—unusually powerful ocean tides and currents, deep-sea volcanoes offshore, hot springs, tectonic movement—and Rainshadow sits right in the center of the convergence zone. It wouldn’t take much to destabilize things here even without the added problem of a new source of paranormal radiation firing up unpredictable oscillation patterns.”

“Those three stones that your ancestor hid in that cave?”

“Yes.”

She nodded somberly. “I understand. ‘All things in nature survive on the
razor’s edge that separates harmony and chaos.’ ”

“One of the Principles?” he asked, amused.

“I’m afraid so. ‘You can take the girl out of the Community but you can’t take the Principles out of the girl
.
’ That’s another quote, by the way. One of my dad’s.”

“According to my research, your father is one of the highest-ranking scholars in the Community. He probably knows what he’s talking about. If you’ll give me your jacket, I’ll hang it up.”

For a couple of beats he was afraid that she was going to refuse. But she finally unfastened the jacket, slipped it off, and handed it to him. His fingers brushed hers when he took the garment from her. The fleeting contact aroused his senses again. He had to exert some real effort to suppress the reaction. That should have worried him but it didn’t. It made him feel reckless.

“Mind if I ask a personal question?” he said.

She narrowed her eyes. “How personal?”

“Just wondered about the leather.” He indicated the jacket and boots. “Somehow you don’t look like the leather type.”

She was surprised, as if she had been braced for a different question. Then she relaxed.

“It goes back to those missing twelve hours of my life,” she said. “I went into the Preserve dressed in a pair of sandals, slacks, and a short-sleeved shirt. When I came out the next morning after the trek through the woods, I was a real mess. My arms and my feet were in especially bad shape, all scratched up and bruised because I’d been brushing up against
branches and thorns and stumbling over rocks. If I go into another fugue state, I want to be prepared.”

She spoke casually enough, but the shadows in her eyes made it devastatingly clear that the fear of a second fugue haunted her days as well as her dreams.

When he hung the jacket on the ancient coatrack, he caught a fleeting trace of her scent laced with a residue of her energy. He felt a little intoxicated.

He turned back to her and discovered that she was watching him with a cautious expression. There was some heat in her eyes. He knew that she was well aware of the attraction between them and that she was wary of it. He smiled.

“What?” she demanded.

“It struck me that the principle you just quoted, the one about all things in nature being balanced on the line between harmony and chaos applies to what is going on between you and me,” he said. “I’m on edge when I’m around you. I don’t think it would take much to push me off balance.”

“Don’t even think about it, Sebastian.” She beetled her brows and held up one hand, palm out. “I am not in the mood to be seduced.”

“But your mood could change, right?”

She grimaced. “Now you’re making fun of me.”

“No. But I might be laughing at myself.”

“Why?”

“Forget it. Sit down.” He moved a hand slightly to usher her toward
the old chairs near the fireplace. “Let’s get to work.”

She hesitated and then turned to walk briskly toward one of the chairs. He watched her, allowing himself a few seconds to contemplate the lush shape of her rear framed in denim.

Just too damn much energy in the atmosphere tonight,
he thought. And a lot of it was circulating right here inside the cottage. He reined in his overheated senses.

“You do realize that you are the first person who has made a connection between the unusual weather pattern and the Preserve?” Rachel asked.

“That’s what I do,” he said. “Look for connections and logical explanations.”

“Do you ever come up with the wrong conclusion?”

“Yes. But not often.”

She settled gracefully on one of the oversized leather chairs and held her hands out to the fire. “Because you’re that good?”

“Not at everything but when it comes to this kind of stuff, yeah. I’m good. You could say I have a talent for the work.”

A knowing look came and went in her eyes. “Just as your great-grandfather had a talent for hunting pirates?”

“Something like that, yes.”

“I can’t stay long this evening,” she warned. “Regardless of how this new storm is being generated, I don’t want to get stuck out here after dark. It’s tough to ride a bike at night here on
the island because there are no streetlights.”

“I promise you that you won’t be riding your bike home alone in the dark,” he said. “I’ll drive you back to your place if the storm hits before you leave. How did the tea-tasting event go?”

To his surprise she seemed to hesitate.

“It went fine,” she said. But she didn’t look at him; she gazed into the fire. “Made some money. Emerson Eubanks, the man who runs the seminars, seemed pleased. So did the instructor who organized it, Nathan Grant. They both said something about making it a regular event at each seminar.”

“That would be a good thing, right?”

She nodded. “Definitely.”

“So what went wrong?”

Her mouth curved in a wry smile. “Do you always assume a negative?”

“I don’t have to be psychic to know there was a problem.”

She wrinkled her nose. “That’s the thing. I don’t know if there was a problem or not. Ever hear the Old World expression, ‘it felt like someone just walked over my grave’?”

A chill went through him. “Something happened at the tasting that made you think of that saying?”

“Uh-huh. When Jilly and I washed the dishes, I picked up a cup. For some reason my intuition stirred, and I sensed a little psychic residue on the cup. I got a small psychic shock and dropped the cup.”

“You can sense that
kind of energy?” he asked.

“I can’t read it but like a lot of strong talents, I can catch traces of it, especially if it was laid down by another powerful talent. At any rate, for a few seconds I could have sworn that I half remembered a ghostly aura, one I could not quite see. The harder I tried, the more it faded.”

“Another dream fragment?”

“I think so,” she said. “Now I’m starting to worry that my dream images are messing up my real memories. False memories are worse than no memories.”

“This could be important, Rachel. Do you think that one of the people who attended the tea-tasting is connected to what happened to you?”

A small tremor went through her. She clasped her hands tightly together. “I thought about that possibility, believe me, but I don’t see how that would be possible. The seminar attendees are all new on the island as of last Saturday. I know I’ve never seen any of them before.”

“What about Eubanks and the instructor, Grant?”

She shot him a sidelong look. “I haven’t forgotten your theory about a local resident being responsible for whatever is happening inside the Preserve. Eubanks has been on the island for several months. I heard that Nathan Grant joined the staff a few weeks ago. I took a quick look at their auras this afternoon. I’ve never seen either one before.”

“Unless you’ve forgotten one of them?” he suggested gently.

She sighed. “Unless I’ve forgotten one of them.”

“I don’t understand, you must
have met Eubanks previously.”

“Yes, briefly.” Her eyes widened. “I see what you mean. I’ve met him in person, but today was the first day I’ve had a reason to examine his aura. As for Nathan Grant, I’ve talked to him on the phone, but today was the first time I’d met him in person and, therefore, the first time I’ve had a chance to view his aura.”

“You don’t automatically view an individual’s aura whenever you see him or her?”

“If I’m in my senses, I can perceive some paranormal energy around everyone but I can’t read that energy with any degree of accuracy unless I focus through crystal. Frankly, most of the time I prefer not to look at people’s auras.”

“Why not?”

“Well, it’s a terribly intimate experience, for one thing,” Rachel said. “Much worse than reading someone’s diary or learning an individual’s most closely held secrets.”

“It feels intrusive.”

“It
is
intrusive,” Rachel said. “What’s more, it’s often depressing because I can see weaknesses and flaws that I know people could overcome if they just exerted the willpower to do it.”

“But you know they probably won’t make the effort to change.”

“And I also know that they will go through the rest of their lives blaming their problems on others,” she concluded. “But that’s not the worst of it. The most unpleasant thing about doing
in-depth aura readings is discovering how many people are actually low-level, garden-variety psi-paths—people who will lie, cheat, or steal without a qualm just to get what they want. Then there are the real monsters.”

“I get the picture.”

“Take my word for it, if I read the aura of every person I encountered on the street, I’d probably end up in a para-psych ward.”

“But you did read Eubanks’s aura today,” he said. “What did you see?”

“Just what you’d expect in someone who is in the motivational seminar line. He’s a con man who has managed to con himself into believing that he really does have a message that others need to hear.”

“What about Nathan Grant, the instructor?”

Rachel frowned. “His aura was murky. I couldn’t get a good fix on it. That happens sometimes. To do a reading on him I’d probably need physical contact.”

“How many murky auras do you run into?”

She raised one shoulder in a small, graceful shrug. “It’s not all that uncommon.”

“But you didn’t see anything in his aura that would lead you to believe that he’s involved in whatever is going down out in the Preserve?”

She sat back in her chair. “It doesn’t work like that, Harry. I’m not a human lie detector. Everyone has a dark side and most people are capable of doing dangerous or illegal things if the goal is worth it.”

“I’ll add Eubanks and Grant to my list of persons of interest.” He indicated
the files spread out on the low table. “Meanwhile, I went through the records that Slade pulled for me. These are the ones I thought might have some significance. I’d like to go over them with you.”

“Okay, but I’m telling you again, you’re wasting your time. I have no idea what’s going on in the Preserve, let alone who in town might be responsible.”