Midnight Crystal Read online

  “It’s the Beacon, and it’s an exclusive. Trust me, he got a lot for it. What’s more, he took more than one photo.” Rick held up another paper. “Sold this one to the Examiner. I think Gibson looks especially dashing in it, don’t you?

  She glanced at the second newspaper and winced at the picture. It showed her getting out of the pickup on a narrow street in the Quarter. She was wrapped in the old, tattered blanket that the driver had given her, and her hair was hanging in damp tangles. The finishing touch was the bright, psi-green sign of the sleazy tavern on the sidewalk behind her. The name of the establishment was Fallen Angel. The headline read, “Bad Date for New Guild Boss?”

  “Oh, geez,” she muttered. “I knew it was going to be bad, but I didn’t realize just how bad.”

  Rick eyed the picture with a critical eye. “Winters looks good. But then, he’s a Guild boss. You, on the other hand, look like a professional dominatrix who fell into a swimming pool. Bet all that leather got tight as it dried, huh?”

  She shuddered. “Don’t remind me.”

  “Cheer up,” Rick said. “As far as I know, there’s no video.”

  “I’ll cling to that.” She headed toward the inner office. “Anything from Pete on those alibis he’s checking out?”

  “Yes, but you’re not going to like it.” Rick got out of his chair and came to stand in the doorway. “He called this morning to say that everyone on the museum staff can account for his or her whereabouts at the time the artifact was stolen, but he also said that some of the alibis were less than airtight. He’s digging deeper as we speak.”

  She sank down into the old chair behind her desk. It squeaked beneath her weight. The chair had been purchased by Jeremiah Jones at the end of the Era of Discord, one of several items of furniture that had been replaced after the rebels had torched the place. Every Jones who had taken over the Frequency office of J&J following Jeremiah had kept the chair, faithfully sending it out for repair as needed. No one had ever been able to get rid of the squeak.

  “Would Dr. Lewis’s alibi be one of those that isn’t solid?” she asked.

  “I’m afraid so,” Rick said.

  “I just can’t believe he took the artifact.”

  “You’re the one who said his dreamprints were the freshest at the scene. You told me they led directly to the cupboard where the lamp was stored.”

  “I know, but Dr. Lewis loves the museum,” she said. “For crying out loud, he has dedicated his life to maintaining the collection. Stealing one of his own precious relics is completely out of character.”

  “People do things that are out of character all the time.”

  “Not according to Uncle Zeke,” she said. “He claims that if you look deep enough, you can always find the explanation for an act that seems to come from left field.”

  “No offense, but your uncle is a chaos-theory talent. By definition, he’s always looking for conspiracies and patterns.”

  The chair squeaked again when she lounged back in it. “I know. Still.”

  “It’s possible that Dr. Lewis has something a little twisted in his psyche that no one knew about until now.”

  “Maybe.”

  “You’re not buying it, are you?” Rick said.

  “Not yet.”

  “The problem with verifying Lewis’s alibi is that he lives alone,” Rick said. “He told Pete that he was asleep in his bed when the break-in occurred.”

  “Well, he does live alone. By the way, I’m expecting a call from my mechanic. Put him through immediately.”

  “Speaking of which, what the heck happened to your bike? And Winters’s car, for that matter? I know the papers said something about both of you having car trouble, but that’s a little hard to believe.”

  “Some idiot hunter mistook Dream for a deer. Flattened one of the tires. Adam sent someone from the Guild to pick it up and drop it off at the bike shop this morning. It’s supposed to be ready this afternoon.”

  “And what about your, uh, date’s car?”

  “Same hunter got to it. Shot up the tires.”

  “Right. And if I believe that, you’ve got a solid-amber bridge you can sell to me.”

  She made a face. “Okay, okay. Adam has some enemies.”

  “Of course he does. He just took over the most corrupt Guild in the four city-states.” Rick’s eyes widened. “Are you saying that someone tried to kill him? While you were with him?”

  “Yep. That’s why we went underground and ended up hitchhiking.”

  “Whoa. Whoever it is must be desperate. The Guilds usually keep their political squabbles in-house. They don’t like to involve civilians. That’s an excellent way to attract the attention of the police, and that’s the last thing the organizations want.”

  “Adam thinks that someone on the Council is very unhappy about being passed over.”

  “Sure. Douglas Drake. That’s no secret.” Rick gave her a benign smile. “So, how long have you been seeing Adam?”

  “Not long.” She swiveled the chair to switch on her computer.

  “Thought you told me and everyone else that after Tucker Deene, you had sworn off men for six months.”

  “I changed my mind,” she said evenly. “And if you want to keep your job, you will refrain from mentioning Tucker Deene’s name in this office.”

  “Sorry, boss.”

  Rick sounded contrite, and she knew he was. Tucker Deene had completely and utterly deceived her. For ten glorious days she had delighted in his company. He had seemed to possess all of the attributes that she had ever hoped to find in a lover: intelligence, humor, an upbeat and positive personality, and complementary worldviews. As an added bonus he had been incredibly good-looking. It had all made for a very sexy package.

  Tucker had been perfect. Too perfect.

  Discovering the truth had not broken her heart. She was almost certain that her talent made her immune to the kind of deep, abiding bond that her parents and so many others in the Jones family enjoyed. But the experience had done something much worse. It had shattered her faith in her own judgment. She was the head of J&J. She wasn’t supposed to make mistakes like the one she had made with Tucker.

  “Live and learn,” Uncle Zeke had said. “Chalk it up to experience.”

  Attracted by the squeaking chair, Gibson tumbled through the doorway, the wrapper of the High-Rez Energy Bar in one paw. He hopped up onto the window seat and deposited the wrapper in the container Rick had placed there for that purpose.

  Marlowe knew that Gibson was not into recycling. He just liked shiny things. Recently he had become especially fond of the bright orange foil wrappers that the High-Rez company used to package the energy bars. He had piles going both in the office and at home. Like all avid collectors, he was obsessed with adding to his collections, hence the new locks on the cookie jars.

  When he had added the wrapper to the stash on the window seat, Gibson bounded up onto the desk and from there leaped nimbly to the high back of the chair. It was one of his favorite perches.

  Rick folded his arms, propped one shoulder against the doorframe, and looked wise. “Bet your relatives freaked when they heard that you and Winters were seeing each other, hmmm?”

  “In case you haven’t noticed, I’m a mature adult. I don’t take my dates home to be vetted by Mom and Dad.” She paused. “But as it happens, they don’t know yet that I’m seeing Adam Winters.”

  “Bet they do now.”

  “Relax. My parents don’t read the Beacon or the Examiner. I’ve got plenty of time. I’ll give Mom a call later.”

  The phone rang. Rick looked at it.

  “Your mom,” he said.

  Marlowe sighed and reached for the phone. “Sometimes I forget that she’s a high-grade intuitive talent.”

  TEN MINUTES LATER SHE ENDED THE CALL, THOROUGHLY alarmed. She picked up the phone again and punched in the code Adam had given her. To her amazement, he answered personally.

  “Hello, Marlowe,” he said.


  She frowned. “Don’t you have an administrative assistant to screen your calls?”

  “Of course I’ve got an administrative assistant. Two of them. But this is my personal phone. No one screens the calls that come in on this number. It’s not usually a problem, because very few people have this number.”

  “Oh, right.” She cleared her throat. “I’m calling to warn you that I just talked to my mother.”

  “Why is that a problem?”

  “She’s heard the news. About us. I explained everything, naturally.”

  “Everything?”

  “About how our so-called relationship is just a convenient cover story we’re using while we work a joint project involving a major find in the underworld. I told her I’d tell her the details later.”

  “I’m waiting for the bad news.”

  “She said she was going to invite your parents and you to dinner. Tonight. Before we go to the clinic to see your sister.”

  “That’s nice of her.”

  “Adam, pay attention here. I’ve had one or two other dates in my life. Mom never invited them or their parents to dinner. She knew the relationship wouldn’t last long.”

  “Because your relationships never last long.”

  “The thing is, she knows now that what you and I have isn’t a relationship. I have to ask myself why she’s making a big deal about inviting you and your folks to dinner. That’s the kind of thing parents do after a couple has been formally matched. Any way you look at this, it makes me very uneasy.”

  “Maybe this isn’t about us, Marlowe.”

  She paused. “What do you mean?”

  “Maybe this is about old times.”

  “Whose old times? Not mine.”

  “I just talked to my dad. Turns out thirty-five years ago, your father and my father both worked on a special task force, a joint Bureau-Arcane operation that was set up to track down a gang of rogue talents.”

  She was stunned into momentary speechlessness.

  “My dad and your father?” she finally got out. “Worked a case together?”

  “Yes.”

  “I didn’t know that the Bureau and Arcane had ever worked together.”

  “Evidently the last time was thirty-five years ago,” Adam said. “The gang they took down consisted of some powerful ghost hunters and some Arcane talents. The leader was named Gregory LeMasters. Ring a bell?”

  “Sure. He was a legendary psi-path of the first order. The LeMasters gang controlled the drug trade from the catacombs. Absolutely ruthless.” She paused. “But my father is a businessman.”

  “So is mine. Now. Doesn’t mean they don’t have interesting pasts. Dad’s got a talent for working an obscure kind of ghost light. Evidently it was the same kind of alien psi that LeMasters used. Very powerful stuff.”

  She thought about it. “My father is a strat talent. That means he has an ability to think like the opposition.”

  “Or the bad guys, in this case.”

  “I can see where your father and mine would have made a good team,” she said.

  “There was a third member of the team that took down the LeMasters gang: Elliott Fortner.”

  “The Bureau chief? Small world.”

  “Especially underground,” Adam said. “You know, the older I get, the more mysterious the older generation becomes.”

  Chapter 8

  ELLIOTT FORTNER CRANKED BACK IN HIS CHAIR AND steepled his fingers. He studied Adam with his pale gray eyes. “Why the hell didn’t her name pop up when we hacked into Arcane’s files to look for a dream reader?”

  “Probably because she’s a Jones.”

  “It was a Jones who developed the scale the Society uses to measure talent in the first place. Are you telling me they don’t use it to rank themselves?”

  Adam almost smiled. As the man in charge of the Frequency City office of the Bureau, Elliott Fortner routinely kept more secrets in a month than most people kept their entire lives. But nothing irritated him quite as much as discovering that others could conceal secrets just as well as he did.

  Elliott was a tall, distinguished-looking man in his mid-fifties. Like a lot of men at the top of the organization, he had started out in the catacombs in his late teens. But when it had become apparent that he had a rare talent for working blue ghost energy, he had been tapped by the Bureau. His intelligence, ambition, and passion for his work had taken him all the way to the executive’s office.

  It helped, of course, that Elliott had married into one of the most powerful families in the Guild, Adam thought. As with any other large organization, those kinds of connections were an asset to advancement. Nevertheless, within the Guilds, ultimately, it always came down to raw power. No one got to the top unless he possessed a lot of talent.

  “The Joneses have always been notoriously secretive when it comes to their own individual talent levels,” Adam said.

  Elliott exhaled slowly and tapped his fingertips together. “Can’t blame them, I suppose. The public has always been wary of those who command a high level of psi. That was true throughout history back on Earth, and it’s true here on Harmony.”

  “Yes.”

  “Even though the environment on this world has accelerated the development of the paranormal aspects of human physiology, not everyone is comfortable around strong talents. Still a lot of fear and suspicion out there.”

  “Sometimes for good reason.”

  Elliott raised his brows. “You say she has agreed to help you find the lamp?”

  “Yes,” Adam said.

  He walked to the window and looked out at the towering wall of the Dead City across the lane. The cramped offices of the Frequency City branch of the Chamber’s Bureau of Internal Affairs occupied the third floor of a small, anonymous Colonial-era building located deep in the heart of the Quarter. The ground floor was empty, the windows boarded up. The second floor housed the Bureau’s lab.

  “Can you trust Marlowe Jones, given the history between your families?” Elliott asked.

  “It’s old history, most of it based on myths and legends.”

  “According to what you’ve told me, the lamp itself is a legend.”

  “The lamp is real, trust me. It’s been in my family, off and on, since the late seventeenth century back on Earth.”

  “Off and on?”

  “This isn’t the first time it’s gone missing.” Adam turned away from the view of the quartz wall and looked at Elliott. “My gut tells me it’s our only hope of stopping whatever is happening down there in that maze.”

  “You’re still sure of that?”

  “When it comes to those ruins, I can’t be certain of anything. But unless and until one of the lab techs comes up with a better idea, the lamp is all we’ve got.”

  “I don’t like the idea of bringing the Arcane people in on this.”

  “Marlowe’s right. When it comes to the paranormal, Arcane has accumulated more experience than all of the Guilds put together.”

  “They may be experts in the paranormal, but this is alien energy we’re dealing with. When it comes to that kind of psi, we’re the experts.”

  “Energy is energy, and we need all the help we can get. I’ve already given the orders. The Arcane team will be going underground to join our people later today.”

  Elliott did not look pleased, but he nodded once. “You’re in charge of this project. It’s your call. Meanwhile, you and Miss Jones had better get busy and find that damn lamp.”

  “That’s the plan.” Adam headed for the door.

  “Adam?”

  “Yes, sir?” He reminded himself that he no longer reported to Elliott. There was no need to call him sir. But old habits died hard, especially when you were dealing with a legend like Fortner.

  “Watch your back,” Elliott said. “Judging by what happened at those ruins, you’d better assume that Drake and O’Conner have hired a pro.”

  Chapter 9

  “SHE’S A JONES, AND SHE’S A LITTLE DIFFERENT,�
� ADAM said. “I think you’ll like her, Vickie. She’s strong. Like you. You’ve been telling me for years that I need a woman who will stand up to me.”

  Vickie did not respond. From a distance you wouldn’t know that anything was wrong, Adam thought. It wasn’t until you got closer that you realized that there was no indication of awareness in her vivid green eyes. Her once-animated face lacked all expression. She sat motionless in the wheelchair, gazing straight ahead at the hospital rose garden.

  Her dark hair was cut in a sassy style that suited her. She wore an expensive red cashmere sweater, dark blue trousers, and loafers. Adam knew that his mother made certain that Vickie was always well-groomed. During the day, Vickie always looked as though she was about to dash out the door or go into her office at the university.

  At night she wore one of her own nightgowns, not hospital issue. Diana Winters was working on the theory that somehow the element of normalcy in attire would help break through the trancelike state in which Vickie was trapped.

  “Marlowe’s coming here to meet you tonight,” Adam said. “She says dreamlight energy is always strongest around midnight. I know that other dreamlight talents have examined you, but Marlowe is a lot more powerful than the others. Off the charts, I think.”

  It had been two weeks since he had carried Vickie out of the maze. Officially, the doctors had not given up hope, and the nurses were full of positive stories about miraculous recoveries after serious parapsych trauma. But he knew that the experts had run through all of their options, including the use of one of the strange ruby amber devices that had recently been discovered in the jungle. The ruby amber instruments were alien technology. No one knew how they worked, but some people with an unusual kind of talent were able to use them to treat certain types of psi-trauma. The ruby amber had not worked on Vickie.

  The hospital was a private parapsych facility that catered exclusively to members of the Guilds and their families. He and Vickie were sitting at the far end of the serene, elegantly maintained grounds. He had wheeled the chair down here because the roses were in bloom. Vickie had always loved flowers, always loved color.