by Jayne Castle
The shudder of energy in the atmosphere told him all he needed to know. She was holding herself and her sanity together but deep down she was scared to death.
He walked to where she stood and wrapped his arms around her. She did not resist but neither did she return the embrace. Her tension was a palpable force.
“I don’t know whether to hope that I’m recovering my memories or check myself into a para-psych hospital,” she whispered.
“Tell me about the monsters,” he said quietly.
“I can’t get a clear picture. Tentacles. Eyes that glow. Too many eyes. Like creatures out of a prehistoric sea. Whatever they are, they see me as prey. In the dreams I’m running through the ocean but it’s not dark. The water is infused with light.”
“You’re running through this sea?”
“Yes. But I’m breathing okay. I’m not drowning.” She shuddered. “The creatures are swimming all around me, above, below, to the sides.”
“But they don’t attack?”
“No. It’s as if they can’t get at me.”
“What’s the source of the light in the water? Sunlight?”
“No.” She hesitated. “Energy, I think. The water is infused with ultralight.” She pulled back a little and looked up at him. “Yes, ultralight. That’s the first time I’ve understood that the water is hot with psi.”
“What’s your first clear memory the next morning?”
“I emerged from the Preserve just before dawn. There was fog again—I recall that much. And there was music.”
“What kind of music?”
“Clear, beautiful, bell-like notes.” She smiled. “I followed them out of the Preserve and came through the fence near Calvin Dillard’s place. He’s got a cabin out on Mills Road. His property is close to the boundary of the psi-fence.”
“Tell me about Calvin Dillard.”
“Calvin is a very talented musician and a composer. He can play almost any instrument. He told me I gave him quite a scare because he never gets visitors, and certainly not at that hour. When he realized I was dazed and disoriented and that I couldn’t remember what had happened to me, he figured I’d been in an accident and banged my head. It’s as good a theory as any.”
“Is he a professional musician?”
“No, I don’t think so, at least not any longer. His music is a personal passion. He’s lived here on Rainshadow for nearly a decade. Retired. He’s one of the loners here on the island but he’s not totally reclusive. He comes into town to collect his mail and buy groceries. He’s bought some books from my shop. I’ve always liked him.”
Harry made a mental note to take a closer look at Calvin Dillard. The first witness on the scene was often the most closely linked to the situation.
“You said you found your bike on the road?” he said.
“What?” Rachel blinked a couple of times and then her expression cleared. “Oh, the bike. Yes, it was lying in a ditch on the side of the road. Which does lend credence to the theory that I took a fall and banged my head, doesn’t it?”
“You’re not buying that theory, I take it?”
“There was no sign of an injury. No blood or bruises on my head.”
“So, somewhere in between the bike ride in the fog and walking out of the Preserve near Calvin Dillard’s cabin you remember seeing monsters under the sea. Is that all?”
“Isn’t that enough to get me labeled a bit wacky?”
He smiled. “Not nearly enough, at least not here on Rainshadow.”
“Which is probably why I wound up back here.” She paused, looking past his shoulder to the window ledge. “I do have one souvenir of that night.”
He glanced at the window ledge and saw the glass jar filled with little crystals. “The rainstones?”
“I found them in the pocket of my jacket that morning when I walked out of the Preserve. But I have no memory of picking them up.”
“Or why you picked them up?”
“No. My intuition tells me that they’re important but I don’t know why. It’s not as if you can’t find rainstones all over the island. There doesn’t seem to be anything special about those particular stones.”
He released her and moved across the kitchen to the window ledge. He picked up the glass jar and turned it slowly, examining the stones. In the dim glow of the night-light they were dull and colorless.
“Why would a strong crystal talent like you think that a handful of cold stones were important?” he wondered aloud.
“I don’t know why I thought they were important, but they aren’t entirely cold.” She walked to where he stood and took the glass jar from him. “There is a little latent energy in them but I doubt that many people could sense it, or work it unless they were strong crystal-talents.”
“Are you saying you can work rainstones?”
“Sure. I’ve done it for some of the kids who come into the shop. Whenever they find a rainstone they bring it to me and ask me to do my magic trick.”
“What is this trick?” he asked.
“I’ll show you.”
She rezzed the overhead light and unscrewed the lid of the jar. He watched her pour some of the crystals into her palm. Energy pulsed in the atmosphere. Her bracelet chimed gently and he thought he saw some of the tiny stones set in the charm brighten.
The crystals in her hand started to heat with a little colorless ultralight. And suddenly Rachel was holding a palm full of water. But unlike real water the liquid did not drip through her fingers. It was transparent but it had a viscous quality. There was another shiver of energy and the quicksilver-like material transformed swiftly back into crystalline form. She was once again holding a handful of rainstones.
He whistled softly. “I’ll be damned.”
“The kids love it when I do that.” She dropped the stones back into the jar. “But aside from being a clever piece of magic, there’s not much point to it. As far as I can tell that’s all the stones do, go from crystal to liquid and back again.”
“But only someone with your kind of talent can make them shift back and forth?”
“I think so, yes.”
“You walked out of the Preserve at dawn with a pocketful of magic crystals,” he said. “That tells me one thing for sure.”
“What?” she asked.
“Those stones are important to this investigation.” He reached out and cradled her delicate jaw in his hand. “And so are you. But, then, I’ve known that all along.”
“Because you think I can be useful when it comes to identifying possible suspects. I know. You’ve already made that clear.”
“Not just because of that. There are other ways to come up with a list of suspects. Less efficient, maybe, but doable. No, Rachel Blake, you’re important to me for a lot of other reasons.”
She watched him intently, her spectacular amber eyes heating a little with equal parts feminine awareness and caution. Energy swirled in the atmosphere, the kind of intimate energy that stirred the senses. He was taut and hard and on edge.
He leaned forward and kissed her ever so slightly. Just enough to get a taste of her. It was a mistake, because the small caress acted like a match to kindling. Desire roared through him.
She did not pull back but she did not throw herself into his arms, either. When he raised his head and looked at her, he saw the deep shadows in her eyes. He could read the signs. She wanted him but she did not trust him, at least not in the way she needed to trust a man before she went to bed with him.
He lowered his hand. She was right to be cautious around him—more right than she could possibly know.
She stepped back, folded her arms, and slipped her hands into the sleeves of her robe.
“I’m going upstairs now,” she said, exquisitely polite. “Please de-rez the light when you go back to bed.”
She swept out of the kitchen, the hem of her robe whipping around her ankles. He listened to her light footsteps on the stairs. She was practically running from him.
H
e de-rezzed the kitchen light and went back to the sofa. He did not lie down. Instead he sat there for a time, watching the glowing embers in the fireplace and wondering why a woman who could access the latent energy of almost any kind of stone would flee the Preserve with a handful of crystals that had no obvious value.
When that line of thought did not lead anywhere helpful, he abandoned the effort and concentrated on the mystery of Rachel Blake, instead. He didn’t make any progress in that direction but he discovered that he could sit there, gazing into the fire and thinking about Rachel for the rest of the night.
Which was pretty much what he did.
Chapter 4
They called him the Merchant on the streets of Frequency City. He specialized in the high-end black market. It was said that, for a price, he could get you anything you wanted.
At that moment, however, he could not get what he wanted most for himself. Time was running out. Everything had gone wrong. The frustration and rage were building.
He picked up the sledgehammer and slammed it against the frozen waterfall. Aside from the jarring jolt to his shoulder, nothing happened. The blow did not take so much as a chip out of the door of the big crystal vault.
“Shit.”
Frustration and fury roared through him. He dropped the hammer and stared into the transparent chamber. He was so damn close.
The crystal vault extended from one side of the cavern wall to the opposite side and from the floor to the ceiling. It blocked the entire passage. Cascades of solid rainstone sealed both ends.
He could see the treasures inside—the artifacts of ancient Alien technology were worth a fortune on the black market. But nothing he had tried could smash through the doors of the chamber. The crystal walls had proved equally impenetrable. The transparent stone was as hard as the green quartz that the Aliens had used to build their cities and the catacombs. Nothing made by humans could put a dent in it.
He made a fist and pounded it against the rainstone. He only did it once.
“Shit.”
Grimacing from the pain, he turned and went back through the psi-lit cavern and into the crystal tunnel through the artificial sea.
The sea monsters that swam and crawled through the depths watched him with their cold, unblinking eyes. Their tentacles writhed and their fins rippled in the currents. The Merchant ignored them.
There was only one person who had the talent to open the vault doors. Things had gone wrong the last time, but Rachel Blake was once again back within reach. Unfortunately, there was a new twist. Harry Sebastian, the man in charge of security inside the Preserve, was now on the island. It was no secret in town that he was conducting a full-scale investigation.
But that was not the worst of it. The real problem was that Sebastian had obviously sensed that Rachel was the key. He had closed in on her with a hunter’s intuition almost immediately after he had arrived.
The Merchant’s frustration threatened to swamp his logic. He forced himself to step back emotionally and think like the smart guy he was. One thing was clear: To get to Rachel, he would first have to get rid of Harry Sebastian.
Chapter 5
The bell over the door of Shadow Bay Books jangled brightly. Charlotte Enright, the proprietor of Looking Glass Antiques, entered. Rex, Slade’s dust bunny companion, was on her shoulder. Rex had his favorite object, a small, elegant, and very expensive antique clutch purse in one of his six paws. He chortled excitedly at the sight of Darwina and bounded down to the floor.
He scooted across the bookshop and into the café at the rear. Darwina waited for him on the windowsill, and he hopped up to join her. She graciously gave him part of the day-old cookie that she had been munching. They murmured to each other.
Although Rachel had unlocked the front door of the shop, the Closed sign still hung in the window. The official opening time was nine. It was only eight thirty. Jilly Finch, Rachel’s part-time assistant, had not yet arrived. Rachel and Charlotte and the dust bunnies had the premises to themselves.
“Young love in bloom, do you think?” Charlotte asked. She nodded toward Rex and Darwina.
“Or a hot fling,” Rachel said. She went behind the counter to pour some tea. “Hard to say with dust bunnies.”
“Or humans, at least at the beginning,” Charlotte said. “Takes a while to figure out what’s really driving a relationship at first, doesn’t it?”
Amusement and friendly commiseration gleamed in her hazel eyes. Rachel gave her a rueful smile. They had met and become “summer friends” in their teens. Their families had vacationed on the island and they each had aunts who had been local residents.
After graduating high school, however, life had taken them in different directions. Charlotte had gone to college and eventually pursued a career as a dealer in paranormal antiques. Rachel had studied crystal healing at the Harmonic Enlightenment Academy and moved on to practice at the Enlightenment Institute until she had decided to try to find a place for herself in the mainstream world.
Now they were both back on Rainshadow and it was as if their friendship had been in hibernation during the time they were apart. It had blossomed immediately when their winding paths had brought them back to the island.
“No need to be subtle.” Rachel put two cups of tea on the counter. “I’m well aware that the news that Harry spent the night at my place is the chief topic of conversation in town this morning. I fed him breakfast and kicked him out of the house as soon as I could, but Hank Levenson, the fish guy, drove past just as Harry was pulling out of my driveway in that big SUV of his.”
“Hard to disguise that vehicle. Everyone in town knows it belongs to Harry.”
“So true.”
“How did he end up at your place?” Charlotte asked.
“He went into town for dinner. When the storm hit, he decided to turn around but there was a tree down on the road. At least that’s the story I was given.”
“Do you doubt it?”
“Let’s just say that I’m sure there probably is a tree down on the road to the old gatekeeper’s cabin. Whether or not the road was impassable is an open question.”
Charlotte smiled. “Meaning?”
“Meaning that if Harry did give me a story, he would have made certain that it would hold up under scrutiny.”
“Well, for what it’s worth, Slade says there are several trees down on various roads.”
“Okay.”
“And to be fair, if he couldn’t get back to the cabin, it’s not like Harry would have had a lot of options,” Charlotte said. “Your place was the closest.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I can tell that you are not entirely convinced.”
“Huh-uh.”
Charlotte smiled. “That was a really bad storm.”
Rachel folded her arms on the counter. “I thought about posting a banner outside the shop window today that reads NOTHING HAPPENED LAST NIGHT but I decided it would be a total waste of time and energy. Also, not entirely honest.”
“Oh, wow.” Charlotte’s eyes widened behind the lenses of her stylish glasses. “Something did happen?”
“Yes, but don’t get too excited. I fed him leftover lasagna and then he more or less blackmailed me into helping him investigate what is going on inside the Preserve.”
“Blackmail?” Charlotte straightened, incensed.
“I know what you mean.” Rachel made a tut-tutting sound with her teeth and tongue. “What is the modern dating scene coming to?”
“Wait until I talk to Slade.”
“Thanks, but don’t bother. I exaggerated somewhat. It would be more accurate to say I was pressured into agreeing to assist with the investigation. And it’s too late to back out now. I’ve already committed myself.”
“But why? How?” Charlotte frowned. “And what in the world could Sebastian possibly use to pressure you?”
“The entire town of Shadow Bay, for starters.”
“Excuse me?”
“Here’s the pr
oblem,” Rachel said. “Harry thinks someone in town is responsible for what is going on in the Preserve. If I don’t use my talent to help him narrow the field of suspects, he’ll handle the investigation his way and most likely order an evacuation.”
“Oh, crap. Slade said something about a possible evacuation but I didn’t think it would come to that.” Charlotte paused, frowning. “I doubt if it would work. You know folks on this island. A lot of them would simply ignore or defy an order to leave. They would conclude that it was some sort of conspiracy to seize their property or expose their secrets or something. There are a bunch of people on Rainshadow who have reasons to keep their pasts buried.”
“I did warn Harry but he thinks that whatever is going on in the Preserve is potentially quite dangerous.”
“So you’ve agreed to help him.”
“Yes, but mostly because I think he’s flat-out wrong.”
“About the situation in the Preserve becoming dangerous?” Charlotte shook her head. “Slade agrees with him. I’ve been inside the fence and I can tell you that there is a lot of ambient psi in the Preserve.”
“I didn’t mean that I think Harry is wrong about the trouble in the Preserve. I meant that I think he’s wrong about one of the locals being responsible. Most of the residents have been here for years. Why would the trouble start now if one of them was involved? Why not a long time ago?”
Charlotte cleared her throat discreetly. “Not all of us have been living on the island for a long time. Take me, for instance. And Slade. We both moved here recently.”
Rachel winced. “Same with me. But we’re the exceptions. Regardless, I think it’s best that I keep an eye on Harry Sebastian. I know most of the locals and I understand them. I’ll try to keep Harry from leaping to the wrong conclusions.”
“I agree. And you won’t be on your own for long. Slade and I will be back in a week—sooner if necessary. You know Slade. He’ll stay in close contact while we’re doing the meet-the-relatives routine in Frequency City. He takes his responsibility as police chief here very, very seriously.”