by Jayne Castle
A year ago his life and career had been on track. He had been headed straight to the very top of his profession. But the narrow-minded fools at the institute had failed to comprehend his genius. Instead, they had fired him. Fired him. His hand clenched in a fist. Not only that, but the administrator had made it clear that he would never get a decent reference. For all intents and purposes, the bastard had destroyed his career.
Admittedly, there had been some unsatisfactory outcomes among the subjects, but that was the nature of the experimental process. It was no reason to fire him. The truth was that it was professional jealousy that had led to his dismissal.
No matter. One day soon they would all pay.
But first he had to find the other relic. Luckily at this point the Guild had no inkling that there were two of the ruby amber devices. The psi-burned hunter who had found them down in the catacombs had turned over only one of the artifacts to the Guild. Sensing that the relics had great value, he had concealed the other one.
Fortunately, the para-trauma the hunter had experienced had brought him to the hospital where Kennington had been working. He had discovered the man’s secret in the course of an experiment. It had been no trick at all to pull the location of the concealed relic out of the patient. The man had, of course, died soon thereafter. It had been suicide, according to the records. It was true the hunter had been severely depressed. Kennington had made sure of it with a carefully measured dose of psi meds.
It had taken months to find a thief capable of stealing the second artifact from the Guild vault.
The other bit of good news was that it was obvious that the Guild had no clue as to the nature of the kind of power the artifacts could generate when they were operated by an individual who possessed the right type of psychic talent, his type. Those with his brand of psi abilities were statistically quite rare. The odds were excellent that no one else would realize that the relic was anything other than an alien curiosity. Nevertheless, he wanted it in his possession as quickly as possible.
One thing was clear now: Davis Oakes was a problem. Any ghost hunter capable of destroying a doppelganger without generating green fire had to be taken seriously. More crucially, Oakes appeared to have Celinda Ingram in his control. That meant that she was the key to the missing relic.
He rezzed the computer and searched for everything he could find on Celinda Ingram, professional marriage consultant. Everyone had a weakness.
He discovered Celinda’s in less than five minutes.
Chapter 12
MRS. FURNELL WAS WAITING AT THE FOOT OF THE STAIRS. Celinda, preparing to lock her door, looked down and got a queasy feeling in the pit of her stomach. Luck had been with her earlier when Trig had left. Mrs. Furnell had evidently not heard him descend the stairs. But she was lying in wait for Davis. It was too much to hope that she would not know that he had spent the night.
Davis was halfway down the stairs, a suitcase in either hand, Max perched on his shoulder. He nodded pleasantly at Betty when he reached the front hall.
“Good morning, Mrs. Furnell,” he said.
“I thought I heard someone coming down the stairs.” She chuckled. “I meant to tell you both that I had the oddest dream—” She broke off, wincing in pain. She touched her temples with her fingertips. “Oh, dear, I seem to have a headache coming on. Probably that new pillow.”
It wasn’t like Betty to complain about aches and pains, Celinda thought. Worried, she started down the stairs, the plastic-covered pink dress draped over one arm.
“Are you all right, Mrs. Furnell?” she asked.
“What?” Betty blinked. Her face cleared miraculously. “Yes, dear, I’m fine. Just a bit of a headache. But it’s easing up already. I’ll take something for it in a minute. I just wanted to wish you a safe trip to Frequency City.”
“Thank you,” Celinda said.
Araminta stuck her head out of Celinda’s oversized tote and chortled happily at Betty.
Betty laughed lightly, reached into the pocket of her purple track suit pants, and took out a small, paper-wrapped candy. “There you go, Araminta.”
Araminta accepted the gift with polite greed and downed it with two or three efficient crunches of her sharp little teeth.
Betty beamed at Celinda. “Give my regards to your sister.”
“I’ll do that,” Celinda promised. She tried to edge surreptitiously toward the front door. Unfortunately, Davis was standing in the way, and he showed no signs of moving.
Betty smiled archly at Davis. “I see you’re going to attend the wedding with Celinda.”
“Wouldn’t miss it,” Davis assured her.
“You know, I don’t believe Celinda has had any overnight visitors in the four months she’s been here except for her sister, who came to visit her last month.”
Davis gave her a wicked grin. “You can’t know how happy I am to hear that, Mrs. Furnell.”
Betty laughed. “Go on, you two. You’ve got a long drive ahead of you.”
Celinda yanked open the front door and hurried outside to the Phantom. Davis followed at a more sedate pace. He opened the small trunk and put the suitcases inside. She arranged the pink dress very carefully on top of the suitcases and then stood back and watched him close the trunk.
“You do realize that it will be a miracle if my reputation survives the week,” she said.
He shrugged. “What’s the big deal about having a man spend the night?”
“A marriage consultant’s reputation is her most important asset. In fact, the vast majority of successful consultants are in Covenant Marriages. It sends a subtle signal to the clients, you see.”
“That the matchmaker knows what she’s doing?”
“Exactly. Mrs. Takahashi took a big chance when she hired me. If word gets out that I let men I barely know spend the night, she’ll probably ask me to leave.”
For some reason that observation seemed to irritate Davis. “I spent the night on the sofa, remember?”
“Yes.” Celinda started toward the passenger door. “But appearances are everything in my business.”
He went around to the driver’s side and looked at her over the Phantom’s low roof. “Don’t worry, if your reputation gets damaged because of this case, the Guild will take care of it.”
She didn’t know whether to laugh or grit her teeth. “Got news for you; there are some things even the Guild can’t fix.”
Chapter 13
THE DRIVE TO FREQUENCY CITY USUALLY TOOK A LITTLE over three hours, but Celinda had a feeling that with Davis at the wheel they would make it in considerably less time. It wasn’t just that the Phantom was a fast car, it was the way Davis drove it, efficiently and with exquisite control.
Araminta, who had been perched on the back of the seat with Max since the start of the trip, hopped onto Celinda’s shoulder and made little encouraging noises. Celinda gave her another cookie from the bag of snacks she had brought along.
Cookie in her paw, Araminta returned to the back of the seat and huddled close to Max. She broke off a bit of her treat and offered it to him. He took it as though it were a rare and valuable offering.
“Araminta and Max seem to be getting awfully cozy together,” Celinda observed, more to break the silence than anything else. Davis had said very little thus far. After the quick stop by his apartment to pick up an overnight bag and his tux, he had seemed content to concentrate on his driving.
His mouth curved a little at the corner. “Dust bunny love, you think?”
“Whatever it is, I doubt that it can be dignified by the term love,” she replied. She winced a little, aware of the primness in her voice. “They only met yesterday, and they spent the night together last night. We in the matchmaking profession refer to that as a one-night stand.”
“I’m getting the feeling that’s probably against one of the rules in that book you wrote.”
“It certainly is,” she said.
“They’re still together this morning. Doesn’t that
bode well for true love?”
She watched Araminta and Max move a little closer to each other on the back of the seat.
“A brief affair, maybe,” Celinda said. “Not love.”
“Mind me asking where you got all those rules you put into your book?”
“I made ’em up.”
He gave her a quick, sidelong look. “That’s a joke, right?”
“Of course it is.” She turned serious. “The rules in my book are based on my own experience as a marriage consultant and the combined experiences of several of my colleagues whom I interviewed. Over time you see what works and what doesn’t.”
“One-night stands don’t work, I take it?”
“Nope.”
“Good thing we stopped where we did, then, last night, huh? Means there’s still hope for us.”
She stiffened and stole a quick look at him, wondering if he was teasing her. But Davis looked calm, even thoughtful.
She, on the other hand, was pretty sure that she was probably blushing all the way down to her toes. It was the first time the subject of that scorching kiss in the doorway had come up. She had begun to believe that they were both going to continue to pretend nothing had ever happened, that it might be better that way, given that the relationship was such a crazy mix of business and the personal.
“Last night was a little weird,” she said very carefully. “I’m not sure we should draw any conclusions from it.”
“You’re calling that kiss weird?” He sounded interested, not offended.
“Well, yes.”
“In what way?”
“I don’t know about you, but I’ve never gotten half naked in a doorway before.” She was suddenly incensed for absolutely no logical reason. “I mean, anyone could have walked past.”
“Someone did walk past. A guy capable of summoning a doppelganger ghost. And another guy drove past, as I recall. Nearly flattened you.”
Back to business, Celinda thought. It’s better that way. Don’t let this get personal again.
They both fell silent for a moment. After a while, Celinda fed Araminta another cookie and thought about the hasty repacking she had done this morning before letting Davis take her suitcases down to the car. On a mad, inexplicable whim she had yanked the plain cotton nightgown out of a case and replaced it with the new, sexy green satin gown she had found on sale a month ago. She hadn’t even worn it yet. What had she been thinking?
Twenty miles later she stirred in her seat. “You know,” she said, “I’m not sure your theory about Araminta not wanting to be parted from her relic for long is going to hold up. We’re almost a hundred miles out of Cadence, and she isn’t showing any signs of agitation about being in a car that is driving very rapidly away from wherever she stashed that relic.”
“Who knows how a dust bunny’s sense of time and distance works?” he said. “She may have no concept of how far away from your apartment we are.”
“Hmm.” Celinda turned in her seat to take a closer look at Araminta. “You may be right. I think she’s sort of distracted.”
“By Max?”
“Yes. If you don’t get your relic back anytime soon, blame your Lothario of a dust bunny.”
“Max is not that kind of bunny.” Davis seemed genuinely insulted. “Trust me when I tell you that Araminta is the first female he’s shown any interest in since I met him six months ago. Furthermore, Max isn’t the only one who’s had a long dry spell.”
“You’re saying that you haven’t had a date in six months? I find that a little hard to swallow.”
“My engagement ended about six months ago,” he said quietly. “My business took a downturn at about the same time. I’ve been concentrating on rebuilding.”
“I see.” In spite of herself she felt a sharp pang of sympathy. Having a Covenant Marriage engagement end at the same time that your business hit some difficulties would have been tough for anyone. “I just assumed from the car and your clothes that Oakes Security was doing well.”
“The car and the clothes are left over from before things hit the skids.”
“Trust me, I know what it is to have everything you’ve worked for suddenly go south,” she said quietly.
The Phantom ate up a few more miles of near-empty highway.
“What about you?” he asked after a while. “Last night you said something about not having had a date in four months?”
“I’ve been busy, too. It wasn’t easy finding a new job, and after I got one, I devoted myself to proving to my new boss that she hadn’t made a huge mistake by hiring me.”
“Leave anyone special behind in Frequency?”
She thought about Grant Blair, the very nice lawyer she had been discreetly dating at the time of the disaster. “There was someone. It seemed promising for a while, but it ended badly.”
“Mr. Perfect?”
“No,” she said. “He was not Mr. Perfect.”
“What happened?”
“I told you, it ended.” She glanced at him. “Look, are you sure you want to get any deeper into this conversation? I thought men didn’t like to talk about old relationships.”
Davis shrugged. “I like to know what I’m dealing with. This guy you were seeing, would that have been Benson Landry, the hunter who’s slated to take over the Frequency Guild?
She was shocked speechless. It took her a few seconds to find her tongue. “You know about Landry?”
“I’m a detective, remember?”
She pulled herself together with an effort of will. “Benson Landry is not the man I was dating back in Frequency. Landry is a manipulative bastard. He also has a very scary parapsych profile.”
Davis’s eyes tightened at the corners. “Like the driver of the getaway car last night?”
Celinda blinked and then shook her head ruefully. Just like that, they were back to business again. “No,” she said, thinking about it. “Both men give off unwholesome vibes, but they aren’t the same vibes. The getaway driver is a powerful psi talent with an obsessive streak a mile wide, but he is sane.”
“Landry isn’t sane?”
“The last time I saw him, he was teetering on the edge of insanity. But the most frightening thing about him is that he passes for normal.”
“So there’s no chance that Landry was the getaway driver?”
She shuddered. “Absolutely none.”
“What about the other man, the one in the cap who fired up the twin ghosts?”
She shook her head. “Definitely not Landry. I didn’t get close enough to read his psi, but I could see enough of him to be certain. That man was tall and gaunt. Landry is built much differently.”
“Okay, so much for that angle.”
She looked at him. “What made you ask if one of those men might have been Benson Landry?”
“Just occurred to me that if one of them was Landry, we would have had an obvious connection to work with.”
“The obvious connection being me?”
“Yes.”
She made herself exhale slowly and evenly. She would not take it personally, she told herself.
“Don’t take it personally,” he said.
“Too late. I think I am taking it personally.”
“Look at it this way; it would have made things easier.”
“You mean from an investigative point of view?”
“Right.” He paused. “Okay, I can see where you might not want to be a connection in this case.”
She shivered. “Especially if it means being connected to Benson Landry. Look, as long as we’re talking about the case again, I want to go over the details of our cover story.”
“What about them?”
“I get that I’m supposed to pass you off as my date for the wedding,” she said, “but I don’t think you realize just how curious my family is going to be.”
“I’m not a big fan of fake details in cover stories,” Davis said, his attention on the highway. “They tend to trip you up. Keep it simple is my motto.
”
“How simple?” she asked warily.
He moved one hand on the steering wheel in a slight, negligent gesture. “We met recently, hit it off immediately, and now we’re getting to know one another.”
“I assume you have parents?” she asked patiently. “Siblings?”
“Oh, yeah.”
There was an ominous ring to the words, a man admitting he had a nemesis.
“If you showed up at a family event with a mysterious girlfriend that you hadn’t ever mentioned, wouldn’t everyone demand to know more about her?” she asked pointedly.
“There shouldn’t be any problem if we just stick to the truth as much as possible,” he said, calmly insistent. “They want to know what I do for a living? Tell them I’m in the security business.”
“How did we meet?”
“In the course of an investigation. I came to your office to ask you some questions regarding a case I was working on. There was an instant attraction. We both felt the thrilling frissons of energy resonating between us. I asked you out, and you said yes. Simple.”
She looked at him in disbelief. “Thrilling frissons of energy?”
“I thought it had a romantic ring.”
She took another deep breath and tried again. “Look, my sister has arranged for everyone from both families to stay at a hotel in the Old Quarter tonight. The rehearsal dinner will be held there this evening, and after the wedding tomorrow, the reception will take place in the hotel ballroom.”
“So?”
“So, you do realize that you cannot share a room with me, don’t you? My father would come unhinged. My mother would cry, and my sister would be worried sick. No telling what my brother might do.”
“Your family doesn’t think you’re all grown up yet?”
“It’s not that.” She hesitated. “It’s because of what happened with Benson Landry.”
“The hotel room photographs?”