Back at the beginning Craigmore had not referred to his organization as Nightshade. He had established it as a legitimate, very low-profile corporation. The melodramatic label had been coined by Fallon Jones as a code for what had become Arcane’s twenty-first-century nemesis.
Craigmore had been aware of the J&J code name because of his position on Arcane’s Governing Council. Evidently he’d liked the theatrical touch and had adopted it. Probably a legacy of his days as a government agent, Victoria thought. For some reason, spy agencies were very big on exotic code names. Whatever the case, the members of the shadowy conspiracy Craigmore had founded now routinely referred to their organization as Nightshade.
In addition to the recent loss of its founder, Nightshade was also reeling from the shock of J&J’s discovery and destruction of several clandestine formula labs. There was no doubt a lot of finger- pointing going on at the top. Victoria suspected that some of those at the highest levels would not survive. Nightshade was nothing if not an exercise in Darwinian theory. It wouldn’t be the first time that its corporate politics took a deadly turn.
She did not care what happened in the upper echelons. Not yet. There was little she could do to affect the outcome of the power struggles at this point, anyway. Someday she would control Nightshade, but that time had not yet come.
Her immediate goal was to take charge of one of the three surviving drug labs, specifically the one located in Portland, Oregon.
“Do you think the dream talent Winters found will be strong enough to work the lamp?” Hulsey asked anxiously.
“According to the J&J files she looks like a Level Seven.”
“I’m not at all sure that will be enough sensitivity. Most dreamlight readers can see only a limited portion of the dream spectrum. Very few can actually work that kind of energy.”
Victoria looked at her computer screen where her notes about the colorful Harper family were displayed. “The seven has a very big asterisk after it. J&J suspects she’s probably a lot stronger.”
“The agency isn’t sure?”
“She has never been officially registered with the Society or tested. No one in her family registers and gets tested. In fact, the Harpers have a long history of going out of their way to avoid Arcane. Probably another reason why Winters chose Chloe Harper. He wouldn’t want a dream talent who would pick up the phone and call J&J as soon as she heard his name.”
“We can’t proceed with the rest of the experiment until Winters locates that lamp,” Hulsey stated. “Keep me informed.”
“Of course, Doctor.”
She broke the connection and spent a few minutes going over the plan yet again. There were always risks involved in a scheme this daring, but she had done a good job of limiting them. She had also provided several escape routes and bolt holes for herself in the event everything went south.
If things went wrong it would not be the first time she’d pulled off a disappearing act. After the Oriana Bay disaster a few months ago she had been obliged to destroy her Niki Plumer identity in a way that had convinced both Nightshade and J&J that she was dead. Being a strong para-hypnotist had its advantages. All in all, however, the new venture was coming together very nicely.
Unlike a lot of people, she took the legends and myths of the Arcane Society seriously. She was, after all, the product of one of those legends.
17
CHLOE LOOKED OUT THE WINDOW OF THE PLANE AND CONTEMPLATED the fantasy landscape that was the Las Vegas Strip. From the air the sharp divide between the real and the fake was clear. Like the movie sets on Hollywood’s back lots, the exotic, fanciful façades of the big casino-hotels were only skin deep.
Immediately behind the phony Renaissance palaces, medieval castles, Roman temples, Egyptian pyramids, waterfalls, rain forests, artificial islands and pirate ships lay acres of concrete. The massive rooftops of the resorts were laden with the huge HVAC equipment required to keep the gaming floors icy cool even when the outside temperatures soared past 110°F.
Beyond the rooftops lay the big garages, parking lots and RV parks. Next came streets filled with shabby budget motels and cheap apartment buildings. And sprawling out to the distant circle of mountains lay vast stretches of desert punctuated by subdivisions, golf courses and acres of sagebrush.
But when you were down on the ground, in the middle of the Strip, all you could see was the fantasy, Chloe thought.
“I still think this is a really bad idea,” she said. “I never take clients along on a verification trip. They always get emotional, regardless of how things turn out.”
“You’ve mentioned that several times,” Jack said. “Trust me; I’m not the emotional type.”
She believed him. Control was clearly his middle name. The man probably lived on a steady diet of ice and glacial melt. But that did not make him any more predictable than the client who was at the mercy of his emotions.
“Remember, I’ll do the talking,” she said.
“You’ve already mentioned that at least twelve times.” He checked his watch. “How are you feeling?”
“I told you, I’m fine.”
“How much sleep did you get the past couple of nights?”
“Enough,” she said.
“How bad were they?”
“What?” she asked. But she knew what he was talking about.
“The dreams,” he said.
“Don’t worry, I didn’t wake up screaming. The wine took the edge off. Besides, I’m a dream talent, remember? I can handle a few bad dreams.”
“They were brutal, weren’t they?”
“Well,” she said, “Madeline Gibson is a very disturbed young woman. Stands to reason that her dream energy is also pretty unstable.”
He frowned. “What do you mean? Didn’t you get hit with my nightmares?”
“No. I got a dose of her energy.” She turned in the seat, frowning a little. “What did you think happened?”
“I’m not sure,” he said. “I told you, it’s not like I’ve been able to run any controlled experiments with this damn second talent. But I assumed that when I used it, I was generating energy and images from my own dreamscape and that it was those visions that struck the target.”
She thought about that and then shook her head. “I admit I’ve only had the single close encounter, but I think what happens is that when you use your talent, you send out currents of very strong, intensely focused energy from the dark end of your dream spectrum. That energy, however, doesn’t carry the images from your dreams and nightmares. It’s just energy.”