“Uh-huh.”
“Take me, for example. Why, if I told any of my professional colleagues outside the Society that I could determine the age and authenticity of an object by the use of my psychic sensitivity, I’d become a laughingstock among my peers.”
“Right.” It was definitely time to invent a belatedly remembered appointment.
But Elaine was in full flight now.
“It will take decades to prepare the scientific establishment and the outside world for the reality of the paranormal,” she said. “It’s the Council’s job to guide the Society and its members during the transition period.”
“The Council is pretty big on tradition, Elaine,” he reminded her.
“Tradition is all well and good, but survival is the most important imperative. I’m telling you, Zack, the Society’s antiquated ways could well come back to haunt us in the next few decades. People quite naturally fear secret societies. One can hardly blame them.”
“I agree with you,” he said.
And then, just as if he actually did possess a genuinely useful psychic talent for escaping from awkward social situations, his phone rang.
He unclipped it from his belt and glanced at the coded number. The hair stirred on the back of his neck. There was no such thing as precognition. No one could predict the future. The best you could do was a probability analysis. But it didn’t take any keen paranormal talent to know that when Fallon Jones called, something interesting was about to happen.
“Sorry, Elaine,” he said, “I’m going to have to take this. J&J business.”
She gestured toward an empty conference room. “You can talk privately in there. I’ll meet you in the coffee shop.”
“Thanks.” He walked into the room, shut the door and punched a button on the phone.
“Hello, Fallon.”
“Where the hell are you?” Fallon demanded.
The head of Jones & Jones always sounded as if he were calling to inform you that the sky was falling, but today Fallon seemed even more grim and impatient than usual.
He was a strong psychic like almost everyone else in the Jones family tree but his talent was an unusual one. He could perceive patterns and connections where others saw only a bunch of dots or dangling strings, a natural born chaos theorist.
He was a descendant of Caleb Jones, who, together with his wife, established Jones & Jones in the late Victorian era. The firm still had an office in the United Kingdom. There were currently four in the United States, each responsible for a region. Fallon was in charge of the branch that handled the West Coast and the Southwest.
His base of operations consisted of a one-man storefront in tiny Scargill Cove on the Northern California coast. During normal times he and his web of loosely connected agents were kept busy handling a wide range of security and investigative work for members of the Society. It was understood, however, that J&J’s primary client was the Governing Council of the Arcane Society.
On rare occasions, someone who was not affiliated with the Society stumbled onto the existence of J&J and came looking for the services of a psychic detective agency. Once in a while—rarely—such clients were accepted. They included certain trusted investigators who worked for a handful of police departments and a highly classified, unnamed government security agency.
“I’m in LA,” Zack said.
“The museum?”
“Right.”
“You’re supposed to be home.” Fallon sounded deeply aggrieved.
“I know this is going to come as a shock to you,” Zack said, “but strangely enough, I don’t sit around the house twenty-four hours a day waiting for the phone to ring in the faint hope that you might call with a job for me. I have another business to operate, remember?”
As usual, the sarcasm went straight over Fallon’s head, probably without even ruffling his hair.
“I need you in Washington ASAP,” he announced.
“State or city?” It was sometimes necessary to be patient when one worked with Fallon Jones. He was always several moves ahead on an invisible chessboard that no one else could see. For some reason he expected those in his loosely knit network of contract agents to follow his unfathomable logic.
“State,” Fallon snapped. “Town called Oriana. It’s about twenty miles east and a little north of Seattle. Know it?”
“No, but I can probably find it.”
“How soon?”
“Depends on whether or not I can get an earlier flight out of LAX, how bad the traffic is on the drive home, how long it takes to pack a few things and then get a flight out of Oakland or San Francisco to Seattle,” Zack said.
“Forget commercial. Head for the airport now. I’ll have one of the company jets waiting when you get there. After you pick up your stuff from home, it will take you on to Seattle.”
Company jet meant one of the Society’s private, unmarked corporate planes. Fallon commandeered one only on those rare occasions when he had a very hot situation on his hands.
“I’m on my way,” Zack said.
“That reminds me, when you pack?”
“Yes?”
“Be sure to add some hardware.”
So Fallon thought he might need to be armed for the assignment. This was getting more interesting by the moment.
“Understood.” Zack headed for the door.
“Why the hell do you sound so cheerful?” Fallon asked, immediately suspicious. “You haven’t been in such a good mood in damn near a year. You smokin’ something, Jones?”
“No. Let’s just say your timing is better than usual.” He lowered his voice. “You saved me from what was turning into a very long and extremely boring lecture on the future of the Society.”
“Huh.” With his usual preternatural ability to connect the dots, Fallon put it together instantly. “Elaine Brownley on your case?”
“Damn, Fallon, you must be psychic.”
Fallon ignored that.
“I just e-mailed you a file with some background on the Oriana case,” he said. “The data is sketchy. Sorry about that. You’ll understand why when you read it. By the way, the file is encryption grade three.”
Zack felt another little rush of adrenaline. An encryption grade three explained the company jet and the urgency in Fallon’s voice. Lately he pulled out all the stops only when the matter involved the dangerous organization he had recently dubbed Nightshade.
Until the Stone Canyon case, Fallon had referred to the shadowy group of powerful psychic criminals as a cabal. But Stone Canyon changed all that. In the wake of the affair it became obvious that the group was not composed of a small number of closely linked conspirators. It was, instead, a highly disciplined mob-like organization run by a ruthless inner circle and a director. Nightshade had proven that it was willing to kill to achieve its objectives.