Clare Lancaster was an exotic. She had a preternatural ability to sense the unique kind of psychic energy generated by someone who was attempting to prevaricate or deceive.
In other words, Clare was a human lie detector.
“Hello, Myra,” Clare said. “I can see from your expression that you weren’t expecting me. I was afraid of that. All I can say is that I’ve had a bad feeling about this right from the start. Sorry for the intrusion.”
She didn’t sound sorry, Jake thought. She sounded like a woman who expected to have to defend herself; a woman who had done just that frequently in the past and who was fully prepared to do so again. A scrappy little street fighter in conservative pumps and a badly wrinkled business suit. He was a little surprised that she didn’t have “Don’t Tread on Me” tattooed across her forehead.
“Did Elizabeth ask you to come here tonight?” Myra demanded.
“No. I got an e-mail from Archer. He said it was important.”
Now, that was interesting, Jake thought. Archer had said nothing at all about his other daughter, let alone bothered to warn him that she might show up unexpectedly.
Clare turned her head quite suddenly and looked straight into the pool of shadow where he stood. A small shock electrified his senses. Something had alerted her to his presence. He hadn’t intended for that to happen. He knew how to blend into the background. He had a predator’s talent for concealment when he chose to use it and he had been using it instinctively for the past couple minutes.
Aside from the rare handful of other sensitives who possessed exotic psychic abilities similar to his own—other hunters—there were very few people who could have detected his presence in the shadows. Clare’s intuitive awareness was especially impressive given the amount of highly charged emotional electricity that was vibrating in the air between her and Myra. If nothing else, the tension alone should have distracted her.
Yes, indeed, here comes trouble. Can’t wait.
“I was not aware that we had gotten a call from the guards at the front gate,” Myra said stiffly.
Clare turned back to her. “Don’t worry, there was no major breach of security. The guard called the house before he waved me through the gates. Someone on this end vouched for me.”
“I see.” Myra sounded uncharacteristically nonplussed. “I don’t understand why Archer didn’t tell me that he invited you.”
“You’ll have to take that up with him,” Clare said. “Look, it wasn’t my idea to come all this way for a cocktail party. I’m here because Archer said that it was very important. That’s all I know.”
“I’ll go and find him,” Myra said. She turned and walked quickly across the veranda, disappearing through the open French doors.
Clare made no move to follow. Instead she switched her attention back to Jake.
“Have we met?” she asked with a chilly politeness that made it very clear she knew they had not.
“No,” Jake said. He moved slowly out of the shadows. “But I have a feeling that we’re going to get to know each other very well. I’m Jake Salter.”
Chapter Two
He’s lying, Clare thought. Sort of.
She should have been prepared. She was always prepared for a lie. But this wasn’t a pure, full-on lie. It was a subtle, nuanced bit of misdirection wrapped in truth, the kind of lie that a magician might use: Now you see the coin, now you don’t. But there really is a coin. It’s just that I can make it disappear.
He was Jake Salter but he wasn’t.
Whatever he was, he was definitely a powerful talent. The strong but confusing pulses of energy that accompanied the half-truth jangled her senses. She had developed her own private coding system for lies. The spectrum ran from the hot ultraviolet energy that accompanied the most dangerous lies, to a pale, cool, paranormal shade of silvery white for the benign sort.
But Jake Salter’s lie generated energy from across the spectrum. Hot and cold. She knew intuitively that Jake could be extremely dangerous but he wasn’t, at least not at the moment.
Adrenaline flooded through her, making her edgy and hyper-alert. Her paranormal senses flared wildly, disorienting her on both the physical and the psychic planes. Her pulse kicked up suddenly and her breathing got very tight.
She was accustomed to the sensation. She had been living with her rare brand of sensitivity since it developed in her early teens. Heaven knew she had practiced long and hard to learn how to clamp down on her physical as well as her paranormal reactions. But unfortunately her unusual senses were hardwired to the primitive fight-or-flight response. The Arcane House parapsychologist who had helped her deal with her unique type of energy had explained to her that psychic talents that triggered such basic physical instincts were exceptionally hard to control.
When she did her own search through the genealogical records of the Arcane Society, looking for examples of others like herself, she had stumbled across two disturbing facts. The first was that, although human lie detectors popped up occasionally among the membership, the majority were fives or lower. Powerful level tens were extremely rare.
Disturbing Fact Number Two was that of the handful of level-ten lie detectors in the historical records, the majority had come to bad ends because they never learned to control their talent. They wound up in asylums or took to drugs to dull the effects of the steady barrage of lies that assailed them day after day, year in and year out. Some committed suicide.
The truth was, everybody lied. If you were a level-ten human lie detector you either got used to it or you went crazy.
If there was one thing she had taught herself, Clare thought, it was control.
She pulled her senses—all of them—together with an effort of will and adjusted her psychic defenses.
“I’m Clare Lancaster,” she said. She was proud of the fact that the words came out evenly and politely, as if she wasn’t on the downside of a mini–panic attack.
“Nice to meet you, Clare,” Jake said.
Okay, he wasn’t lying now. He really was pleased to meet her. More than pleased, in fact. She did not need her psychic sensitivity to detect the masculine anticipation in the words. Old-fashioned feminine intuition worked just fine. Another little thrill quivered through her.
He walked, no, he prowled, toward her, a half-filled glass in one hand. She got the impression that he was factoring her presence into some private calculation. Fair enough. She was doing the same thing in reverse.
“Are you a friend of the family, Mr. Salter?” she asked.