“I know. I really am thrilled. Take care, and I’ll see you in a couple of months when my assignment ends.”
“Right.”
Larissa went up on tiptoe and gave him an affectionate little kiss on the side of his jaw. Then she slipped away into the crowd.
North watched her join a group of people on the far side of the room. He knew all of them. They were friends. Colleagues. Teammates. A couple of months ago he would have been with them, sharing the rush of a successful takedown.
It occurred to him that he was seriously flirting with depression.
Maybe it hadn’t been a good idea to drop in at the Fogg after all. He had hoped it would distract him but it was having the opposite effect.
“I’ll see you tomorrow, Jake,” he said.
“You’re leaving?” Jake asked. “So soon?”
Not soon enough, North thought.
“Yeah,” he said. “I’m going home.”
Alone.
CHAPTER 4
He walked out into the balmy desert night. The atmosphere was warm and pleasant but the world after dark was no longer the wondrous experience he had taken for granted ever since he had come into his talent.
Unable to resist a peek at what he was going to lose, he paused in the shadows and used both hands to take off the glasses. For a couple of seconds the night came alive. Even the bright lights of the Strip could not overpower the paranormal auroras that illuminated the sky.
But in the next moment the ghostly gray figures appeared, first at the corners of his eyes. The hallucinations advanced rapidly and soon threatened to swamp his vision. The whispers began.
Hastily he put on the glasses and took a couple of deep breaths until the visions and the whispers receded.
When he was sure he was back in control he cut through one of the heavily shadowed parking garages, entered the adjoining casino via the service door and made his way across the busy gaming floor.
He went out onto the crowded sidewalks of the Strip. The flashy, glittering casino hotels that lined both sides of the street blazed in the night with their own kind of energy, but it wasn’t the same.
Three-quarters of the way down the Strip he passed a set of shimmering mirrored doors. There was no sign. Most passersby probably assumed it was the private entrance to a condo tower. But behind the reflective doors were the offices, museums, libraries, storage vaults and research facilities of the Foundation.
The private quarters of the director, Victor Arganbright, and his husband, Lucas Pine, occupied the entire top floor. There was a large pool and elaborate gardens on the roof.
North walked on, turned a corner and used a ride-hailing app to summon a car to take him to the big house that sat alone out in the desert.
Half an hour later the driver stopped in front of the gated entrance.
“Thanks,” North said.
The driver studied the high-walled estate through the windshield. “Isn’t this the old mansion that belonged to that famous magician?” he asked. “The one who disappeared a long time ago?”
“Griffin Chastain,” North said.
“Right. Heard the house is called the Abbey or something.”
“The Abyss,” North said. “He named it after his most spectacular trick. No magician has ever been able to duplicate it.”
“They say the place is haunted. You know how it is here in Vegas. Everyone loves a good celebrity legend. According to the story I heard, Chastain’s body was never found. They say he probably died in that house while trying to perfect one of his dangerous tricks and that he still haunts the place.”
“I’ve been living here for nearly a year,” North said. “I haven’t seen a ghost.”
He had uncovered some fascinating secrets inside the Abyss but, to date, no specters.
“Surprised the place is still standing,” the driver said. “It’s been sitting out here in the desert since the middle of the last century. Abandoned. They say even the squatters and the transients didn’t try to go inside.”
“The house can take care of itself.” North opened the door and got out. “Thanks for the ride.”
“Sure. Anytime.”
The driver made a U-turn and sped off toward the lights of Las Vegas in the distance.
The security box looked vintage mid-twentieth century but the electronics inside were anything but standard issue for the era. Behind the panel there was a green crystal.
He opened the panel, touched the crystal and sent a little energy through the stone. At least he could still summon enough heat to open his own front gate. He remembered his advice to Jake. Look on the bright side.
The heavy steel gates swung inward.
He walked into the big desert garden and used the crystal on the inside wall to relock the gates.
He pushed a whisper of energy through another crystal to bring up the low lighting that illuminated the winding walk through the cactus garden. Until recently he hadn’t needed the small lamps to make his way through the maze of cacti planted around the house. But with the glasses on he had no choice.
It was an interesting collection of exotic cacti, but the garden had not been designed for decorative purposes or to conserve water. The sharp thorns of the plants served as a defensive perimeter. An intruder who managed to get over the high walls at night would be faced with a dangerous obstacle course. Only someone who was a direct descendant of Griffin Chastain could activate the footpath lights.
The cactus garden would be the least of an intruder’s problems. There were far more dangerous barriers waiting in the shadows, security devices only a master magician with a psychic talent could have engineered.
When North reached the grand entrance he touched another crystal lock. The big red lacquered doors swung open. Once inside he touched the crystal switch that turned on the massive chandelier that hung from the ceiling above the two-story circular foyer.
Arched doorways off the rotunda opened onto the ground-floor rooms. A grand staircase provided access to the upper floor. The house had been decorated in what his mother described as mid-century-Vegas-over-the-top. Okay, so Griffin Chastain had liked mirrors. Most magicians did.
Lily Chastain had shaken her head when he had announced that he planned to move into his grandfather’s mansion. “It’s too much house for anyone, especially a single man, and trust me, no woman will want to live there. It may not be haunted but it gives me the creeps.”
His father, Chandler, had understood. The house was, after all, a large, ongoing crystal light engineering experiment.
People assumed the mansion had been built for the customary reasons—to show off the owner’s success and to entertain on a lavish scale. But they were wrong. Griffin Chastain had been a brilliant magician whose stage tricks had become legendary but he had also been an engineering talent with a gift for manipulating light from the dark end of the paranormal spectrum. In the tradition of all great magicians, he had taken care to guard his secrets.
He had designed every room in the house as if it were a stage set. If you simply walked through the various spaces you would think they were normal, if wildly glamorous and theatrical. North knew his mother was right. The decorator had gone overboard with red velvet, gold satin and mirrored ceilings and walls, but he didn’t care. What intrigued him about the mansion was the part that was hidden.
Griffin Chastain had been inspired by the designs of ancient Egyptian pyramids and the great castles of Europe. There were hidden corridors and secret rooms everywhere. It was in those spaces, behind the scenes, that the magician had set up his private research laboratory.
During the construction phase Griffin had hired a number of different contractors. Each had been assigned to build a small section of the sprawling mansion. No one contractor and none of the people who had worked on the house had been allowed to view all the floor plans. No electri
cians were involved, because the house was powered by crystals, each of which had been personally installed by Griffin. The result was that by the time the mansion was complete, the only person who knew the overall layout was Griffin Chastain. And he had never told anyone about the secrets he had concealed inside.
The result was a house of mysteries. The Abyss would have made a great roadside attraction except for the fact that the mansion was designed to terrify anyone who was bold enough to enter without permission.
The only downside was that Lily Chastain was probably right when she claimed that no woman would ever want to live in the house. North knew he was going to have to face that reality sooner or later unless he wanted to live alone for the rest of his life. But at the moment he had a bigger problem on his hands. He was fully occupied with the task of trying not to fall into a state of panic or utter despair.
* * *
—
The following morning the vibration of his phone pulled his attention away from his third cup of coffee. He glanced at the caller ID and got a little rush of adrenaline. Victor Arganbright, the director of the Foundation. With luck that meant another job, which, in turn, meant another distraction.
Or maybe Arganbright was about to inform him he was being removed from the team.
North braced himself and took the call. “You’re up early, boss.”
As far as anyone could tell, Victor worked twenty-four-seven. He was obsessed. The object of that obsession had a name: Vortex.
Vortex held the status of a legend within the Foundation. It was said to have been the most highly classified of all the labs associated with the Bluestone Project. There were those who were convinced it was a myth. Others were certain that if it had been real, it had been destroyed when Bluestone was shut down. But Victor believed not only that Vortex had existed but that something very dangerous had been discovered in the lab. He was afraid that now, after all these decades, someone or some group was intent on discovering Bluestone’s greatest and most deadly secret. “Where are you?” Victor growled.
North got a little ping of premonition. Victor Arganbright growled a lot but there was something different about his tone today.
“I’m at the Abyss,” North said. “Do we have a new case?”
“What we have is an as-yet-unidentified problem. Pack a bag. The Foundation jet is being readied for a flight to Seattle. You and your mother are going to be on board.”
A ghostly whisper of intuition iced the back of North’s neck. His father had gone to Seattle three days earlier on Foundation business.
“Is this about Dad?” he asked.
“A short time ago Chandler was found conscious but unresponsive in his hotel room.”
North felt as if he had just taken a body blow. For a few beats he could not think.
“What?” he finally managed.
“Your mother got a feeling. She couldn’t get ahold of him. She called me and I called the hotel. The front desk sent security up to check on Chandler. That’s when they found him. An ambulance was called. He was taken to Harborview. It’s a level one trauma hospital. I’m told there is no sign of physical injury. No indication he might have suffered a stroke or a heart attack. They’re throwing around terms like pseudocoma and locked-in syndrome.”
“‘Locked-in syndrome’?”
“Trust me, you don’t want to know the details. It’s as bad as it sounds. But the bottom line is that the symptoms don’t meet any of the standard diagnostic criteria for a coma, which makes me suspect aura trauma. Our Seattle people were notified immediately. They’re with him at the hospital. They’ll make sure he’s protected until we can airlift him back here to Vegas.”
It took North a beat to realize that our Seattle people meant Lark & LeClair, a small private investigation agency that had recently agreed to accept the Foundation as a client. There was also a cleaner team stationed in Seattle. The team worked out of the Lark & LeClair office.
North tried to concentrate.
“Protected?” he said. “Are you saying you think Dad was attacked? That he’s still in danger?”
“We don’t know what the hell happened.”
“Do you think it’s wise to move Dad before we have a better idea of what’s going on?” North asked.
“Pretty sure we’re dealing with an unusual situation.”
In Victor-speak, unusual situation meant an incident involving the paranormal.
“Have you told Mom?” North asked.
“Yes. She’ll meet you at the airport.”
“You want me to escort Dad back here?”
“No,” Victor said. “Your mother and some medics from Halcyon will handle that end of things. I’m sending you to Seattle because I want you to find out what happened to Chandler.”
Halcyon Manor was the private psychiatric hospital run by the Foundation. It specialized in treating diseases of the paranormal senses. North knew it all too well. He had spent a lot of time there in recent weeks getting fitted for the special crystal glasses that were supposed to keep him sane while he lost his night vision.
He steeled himself for what had to be said.
“Of course I’ll go to Seattle,” he said. “But under the circumstances I may not be the best investigator. You know what’s going on with my talent.”
“You haven’t lost it entirely and my intuition tells me you are the best person for this job.”
“Why?”
“Because your father’s last stop before he returned to the hotel was at an antiques shop that specializes in hot artifacts. He had contacted your mother to tell her that he had a lead on a relic that might have belonged to your grandfather. Chandler said he thought it might be an object that was tuned to Griffin Chastain’s psychic signature. But when Olivia LeClair from Lark & LeClair went through your father’s hotel room and belongings after he was taken to the hospital, she found no sign of an artifact.”
“Stolen?”
“There’s a high probability that is the case,” Victor said. “But if it’s tuned to Griffin Chastain’s signature—”
“Only another Chastain would recognize the relic. In other words, you don’t have any choice but to send me out on this case, because I’m the only Chastain available.”
Victor grunted. “That pretty much sums it up. Pack that bag and come in to headquarters. I’ll tell you everything I know before you go to the airport, but I’ll warn you up front, I don’t have a lot of information.”
Victor ended the connection.
North was already on the grand staircase, moving fast. He was used to packing in a hurry. It did not take long to throw the essentials into a backpack.
When he was ready he opened the gun safe, took out the holstered pistol, hoisted the pack and went back downstairs.
The steel-gray SUV was waiting inside the garage. He drove out through the front gate and headed toward the Strip. He did not bother to glance back at the Abyss. There was no need to make sure he had turned off the lights or locked the doors.
The house could take care of itself.
CHAPTER 5
Delbridge Loring stopped at the end of the long workbench, picked up the vintage radio and hurled it against the nearest wall. The artifact struck hard and fell to the floor. The plastic casing cracked. A knob fell off. The small glass screen shattered.
“You son of a bitch, Chandler Chastain, you cheated me.”
Ignoring the radio, Loring resumed pacing the laboratory, trying to get a grip on the rage threatening to consume him. He had risked so much only to discover that all he had to show for his efforts was a broken radio. Sure, there was a little heat in it, but nothing special. It was not the tuning device he desperately needed.
After all the planning, all the experiments, all the waiting, things were starting to go wrong. Chandler Chastain should have been dead; instead he was in a sort
of unresponsive state. With luck he would not come out of it, but who knew how things would turn out? What if he regained the ability to communicate? How much would he remember? Would he be able to identify the person who had attacked him with the night gun?
The disaster was the Puppets’ fault. They had fucked up the entire operation. That was the problem with Puppets. They were, by nature, unstable and impulsive. Typical cult recruits. But it wasn’t as if he’d had a lot of options when it came to hiring muscle. He’d needed men with minimal talent, just enough to activate the weapons. Men who were hungry for more power. He’d needed men who would believe him when he promised to transform them into invincible psychic warriors armed with untraceable weapons. He needed people he could manipulate. That sort didn’t come equipped with the ability to think logically. There was a reason that within the paranormal community they were referred to as Puppets. So simple for a smart man to pull the strings.
Still, the four Puppets were all he had to work with. Well, there was Garraway, but he was just the money man and the window dressing needed to make the Riverview operation appear legitimate.
Loring went to the window and stood looking out at the high walls of the psychiatric hospital. Beyond lay nothing but vast stretches of forest and the cliffs above the Pacific Ocean. There was a small town a few miles away but the locals were not friendly. They had not been happy when they discovered that the old, abandoned mansion had been converted into a private asylum. They kept their distance. That was fine by Loring. He wanted nothing to do with the people in town. He was here to fulfill his destiny.
He turned away from the window and contemplated his state-of-the-art lab. It was everything he had ever wanted. He had been determined to succeed where Crocker Rancourt had failed; where the entire Bluestone Project had failed. He had a talent for crystals and he was close to discovering the secret of weaponizing paranormal energy.
All he needed was Crocker Rancourt’s tuning crystal.
All the Colors of Night Page 4