“Saw him go around to the back a few minutes ago,” Jake said. “Probably had to take a quick break. I can handle this for you.”
Oh, yeah. I want to handle this.
“No, that’s all right, I’d better deal with it,” Myra said. “There’s always the possibility that it’s someone who was accidentally left off the guest list. Once in a while that happens. Excuse me, Jake.”
Myra went briskly toward the veranda entrance, fashionable high-heeled sandals clicking on the tiles.
Jake clamped down on his eager senses. Try to act normal here. He could do that fairly well most of the time. He had learned long ago that people, especially those who possessed a measure of psychic ability and who understood exactly what he was, got nervous when he didn’t. Others, which included the majority of the population—most of whom would never admit to believing in the paranormal—simply became uneasy for reasons they could not explain. He wondered which group the new arrival fell into.
He leaned against the railing, absently swirling the whiskey that he had not touched all evening. He wasn’t here tonight to relax and enjoy the hospitality. He was here to gather information with all his senses. Later he would go hunting.
The door of the compact popped open. A figure emerged from behind the wheel. The newcomer was a woman. She was not dressed in the uniform that the other members of the catering staff wore. Instead, she had on a severe black-skirted suit. A pair of black, heeled pumps and an oversized shoulder bag finished off the outfit.
Definitely not from around here, Jake thought. This was Arizona and it was July. No one went beyond “resort casual” at this time of year.
He prowled quietly forward along the veranda. When he reached a deep pool of shadow at the side of one of the stone pillars that supported the overhanging roof, he stopped. He propped one shoulder against the pillar and waited for events to unfold.
The newcomer’s neat black pumps echoed crisply on the paving stones of the drive. She walked boldly toward the main entrance where Myra waited. Jake could see that the somber black suit skimmed small, high br**sts, a trim waist and hips that, if one wanted to get technical, were probably too generously proportioned to suit the scale of the rest of the petite frame. He, however, had no problem, technical or otherwise, with her curves. They looked just right to him.
This was the kind of woman you looked at twice, even though you knew she wasn’t beautiful. At least she was the kind that he looked at twice. Make that three times, he decided. The big, knowing eyes, proud nose and determined chin were striking in a compelling, unconventional way. The veranda lights gleamed on lustrous dark hair that was secured in an elegant knot at the back of her head.
But it wasn’t her looks that grabbed his full attention across the spectrum of his senses. She had something else going for her, something that didn’t depend on physical attractiveness. It was in the way she carried herself, the angle of her shoulders and the tilt of her head. Attitude. Lots of it. It would be a mistake to underestimate this woman.
Automatically he cataloged and analyzed the data that his senses were collecting, the way he always did when he was hunting.
She wasn’t prey. She was something a lot more intriguing. She was a challenge. You couldn’t charm a woman like this into bed. She would make the decision based on whatever criteria she had established. There would be some fencing involved, certain negotiations, probably a few showdowns.
He felt the blood heat in his veins.
Myra stepped into the woman’s path. He could see that she had dropped the gracious hostess role. It didn’t take any paranormal sensitivity to detect the tension and wariness vibrating through her. The first words out of Myra’s mouth told him just how much trouble he was looking at.
“What are you doing here, Clare?” Myra asked.
Well, damn. Jake mentally sifted through the files he had been given to read before he was sent to Stone Canyon two weeks ago. No mistake. Right age, right gender, right amount of hostility from Myra.
This was Clare Lancaster, Archer’s other daughter, conceived in the course of a brief, illicit affair. The probability analysts employed by Jones & Jones, the psychic investigation firm that had hired him for this job, had estimated that the likelihood of her showing up here while he was working undercover was less than ten percent. Which only went to show that just because you were a psychic with a special flair for probability theory didn’t mean diddly-squat when it came to predicting the behavior of a woman. Plain, old-fashioned guesswork would have yielded better results.
He knew he should be worried. Clare’s presence here was seriously bad news. If the rumors about her were true, she was the one person in the vicinity who could blow his cover to pieces.
According to the Jones & Jones files, Clare was a level ten on the Jones Scale. There was no level eleven, at least not officially.
The Jones Scale originated in the late 1800s. It was developed by the Arcane Society, an organization devoted to psychic and paranormal research. Back in the Victorian era a lot of serious people took the paranormal very seriously. The period was the heyday of séances, mediums and demonstrations of psychic abilities.
Of course the vast majority of practitioners in those days were charlatans and frauds. But the Arcane Society had already been in existence for two hundred years at that point, and its members knew the truth. Paranormal talents did exist in some people. The Society’s goal was to identify and study such individuals. Over the years it had acquired a large membership of psychically talented people. Those who joined got tested, and they brought their offspring to be tested.
The Jones Scale was designed to measure the strength of a person’s psychic energy. It was continually being updated and expanded as modern experts in the Society created new methods and techniques.
It wasn’t just the knowledge that Clare was a strong sensitive that raised red flags. According to the files, her talent was extremely rare and highly unusual. The strength of a person’s pure psychic energy was fairly easy to measure these days, within limits, at least. Identifying the exact nature of an individual’s talent was often far more complicated.
In the vast majority of cases psychic abilities fell into the realm of intuition. Those endowed with a measurable amount of paranormal talent were often good card players. They got lucky when they gambled, and they were known for their very reliable hunches.
But there were some major exceptions. Among the members of the Society, such exceptions were usually termed “exotics.” It was not a compliment.