Breathe. Calm down. You’re worried about Jake out there at the Shipley house. That’s what triggered this episode.
She started to pace, making herself focus on her breathing while she painstakingly erected the psychic defense mechanisms she had worked so hard to create.
The sensation of intense awareness winked out as swiftly as it had hit. It was as if someone had turned off a switch.
After a couple minutes she felt steadier, more in control.
She glanced at her watch. It was nearly midnight. Jake had been gone for more than two hours. How long did it take to search a whole house?
He ought to be home by now. She pulled her cell phone out of her pocket and looked at it longingly. But she dared not call him. Surely he had turned his phone off when he entered the Shipley home but what if he had neglected to do so? She didn’t want to risk placing a call that would create a problem for him on his end.
There was always the possibility that a neighbor had noticed something at the Shipley residence and went to investigate. Or called the police.
Please, don’t let it be the police, she thought. The last thing they needed now was for Jake to get hauled in on breaking-and-entering charges.
But something was very wrong. She knew it with a dread certainty that did not diminish even as the initial adrenaline charge of the panic attack faded.
It’s your imagination, she thought. Let it go. Get a grip.
But she couldn’t get past the absolute certainty that Jake was in trouble.
No matter what the Arcane House experts claimed, everyone with half an ounce of sensitivity—members of the Society or not—knew that once in a while two people who had an intimate bond sometimes experienced brief flashes of psychic intimacy. When she and Jake made love they shared some kind of psychic connection. Why would it be strange if she could somehow sense that he was in danger?
Maybe she was coming at this from the wrong angle. It was possible that the panic attack had been triggered by what she had been doing a few minutes ago.
The notebook had fallen to the floor. She scooped it up and looked at the numbers she had written down. When she had found the cell phone on the coffee table in the Shipleys’ house, she was disappointed because there were no incoming or outgoing calls logged on the day of Valerie’s death. In addition, none of the few numbers that Valerie had entered into the device’s phone book seemed unusual.
But tonight when she had gone over the phone book list a second time, one jumped out at her. Valerie had evidently called it with some frequency because she had put it on speed dial.
Take it easy, she thought. It was possible that a lot of women in town had the Stone Canyon Day Spa on speed dial.
Nevertheless, there was one other person in the world who had evidently loved Brad McAllister. And Kimberley Todd was a professional massage therapist who had vanished from her job. Everyone at the Secret Springs Day Spa assumed she had found another position.
What if that was precisely what had happened? What if her new position was right here in Stone Canyon?
What were the odds?
Probably about a million to one, Clare thought. She tossed the notebook on the coffee table and checked her watch again. What was keeping Jake? She was going to go nuts waiting for him.
Lights speared the night outside the window. A car was coming up the road. Relief flooded through her. Jake was home at last.
She rushed down the hall and opened the door just as the vehicle pulled into the driveway.
The car halted but Jake didn’t turn off the engine. The headlights blazed straight into her eyes. Instinctively she put up an arm to cut the glare.
The door on the driver’s side opened. A figure got out. The blinding brilliance of the high-beam lights made it impossible to see anything more than a vague silhouette. Alarm flashed through her.
“Jake? Is everything okay? I was getting worried.”
“I’m afraid Jake has been badly hurt,” Owen Shipley said. “I found him unconscious in my house when I got home tonight. He’s in the emergency room. I’ll take you to him.”
The ultraviolet lie ignited her already sensitized senses. The monster of all panic attacks arced through her.
In the wake of the wave of terror that pounded through her she fought to control her reaction. She could not succumb to the panic. She had to stay in control so she could help Jake.
The searing blast of psychic energy came out of nowhere, frying her fully open senses. She felt herself falling through space, and then darkness descended.
Chapter Forty-four
The faint hissing sound finally became so irritating that Clare opened her eyes. She found herself gazing up into an eerie twilight sky. She could feel hard tiles beneath her back. Artistically arrayed benches designed to resemble rocky outcroppings rose up the walls.
“Oh, damn,” she said.
“I think I said something similar when I came around a few minutes ago,” Jake said. “Maybe a little stronger.”
“Jake?” She sat up suddenly. That proved to be a mistake. The interior of the Stone Canyon Day Spa steam chamber whirled precariously around her.
“Take it easy.” Jake crouched beside her, steadying her with a hand on her shoulder. “The dizziness will pass in a minute. At least it did for me. How do you feel?”
“Weird.” Memory tore through her. She remembered Owen getting out of his car, lying to her about Jake.
“I was so afraid he had killed you,” she whispered. Her throat tightened. Panic flickered.
“Breathe,” Jake said.
She did, albeit cautiously because she expected the action to fire up a splitting headache. To her enormous relief, there was no new wave of pain. The blast of psychic energy that had seared her senses had been intense while it lasted but evidently it did not leave a residual effect.
“What did Owen do to us?” she asked.
“I’m not sure. Some kind of trick that temporarily shorted out our senses, I think.”
“I’ve never heard of anyone being able to do that.”
“There are some references to something similar in the old archives concerning the founder’s formula.”
She frowned. “I’ve studied the history of the Society. I don’t recall any stuff about mind blasts.”
“The details are in the private archives of the Jones family.”
“Those files are not open to the regular membership of the Society,” she said. “Only the Master and the Council have access. And the members of the Jones family, I suppose. How did you get to see them?”
“It’s sort of complicated.”