“Then he confronted Jones?”
“Right. He didn’t expect to survive the encounter. But he wanted Sylvester to know that he had prepared his revenge and that it was a dish that would be served ice cold. There is no record of exactly what happened that day. All we know is that when the final meeting between the two men was over, Nicholas was dead.”
“What about Eleanor’s son?” Chloe asked.
“You don’t know that part of the story, either?”
“No.”
“Sylvester took the boy and gave him to one of his three mistresses to raise.”
Chloe looked stunned. “Sylvester adopted Nicholas’s son?”
“Not formally. He didn’t make the boy a Jones. But he saw to it that he was cared for and educated.”
“Hmm.” Chloe pursed her lips. “Sylvester was never known for being kindhearted.”
“I doubt that kindness had anything to do with it. It’s possible that he was curious to see if Nicholas’s son would inherit his father’s first and second talents. More likely he wanted to keep an eye on the boy to make certain he didn’t show any signs of becoming the anti-Jones.”
“In other words, the Winters boy was just another lab experiment to Sylvester.”
“Neither Nicholas nor Sylvester went down in the historical record as good fathers.”
21
THE PULL CORD THAT WORKED THE YELLOWED CURTAINS COVERING the small window was broken. She used both hands to drag the tattered fabric across the grimy glass, cutting off the view of the aging casino and the adjoining café across the street.
“Do you really think that J&J is watching you?” she asked.
“When it comes to Fallon Jones, paranoia is the only intelligent response,” Jack said. He was crouched on the floor beside the crate, crowbar in hand. “Now that I’ve got the lamp, I intend to keep the lowest possible profile until I find out if you can work it.”
“And if I can’t work it?”
“Then my profile is going to get a hell of a lot lower.”
She chilled. “But where will you go?”
“For your own sake, it’s better if you don’t know anything more than that.”
She sighed. “Well, this place certainly qualifies as low profile. I have a feeling the rooms usually rent by the hour, not the night. No telling when the sheets were last changed.”
“Got a hunch you’re right.”
There was a metallic groan of steel and wood. A couple of nails popped free. She slipped into her other sight and studied the ultralight wavelengths seeping out of the crate. Dark energy swirled in the atmosphere.
“If things do work out as planned, how are you going to get the lamp back to Seattle?” she asked.
“As a carry-on,” Jack said. “How did you think I was going to get it back?”
Two more nails popped free.
“That might not be such a good idea,” she said. “The energy leaking out of that thing will probably make the passengers sitting around us a little edgy.”
“A lot of people get uneasy when they fly. I’m sure as hell not going to check the lamp and risk having it wind up in St. Louis or Acapulco.”
The last nail came free. Jack put down the crowbar. For a few seconds he just looked at the crate. Then he raised the lid, slowly, deliberately. As if it were a coffin lid, she thought.
More energy from the dark end of the spectrum swirled into the room. Her senses were still wide open. She could see icy ultrablues, strange purples, eerie greens and countless shades of black. A midnight rainbow from a very dark dream.
The object inside the crate was encased in a sack made of worn black velvet. Jack picked it up, stood and carried it to the small table. Slowly he untied the cord that secured the sack. The psi radiation got stronger, the hues more intense. Fascinated, she moved closer to the lamp.
The velvet bag fell away, revealing the artifact.
“Drake Stone was right,” she said. “It’s not what anyone would call attractive, but there is something fascinating about it.”
The lamp stood about eighteen inches high. It looked very much as Jack had described it. Narrow at the base, it flared out toward the rim. It was fashioned of a strange, gold- toned metal that looked oddly modern, as Drake Stone had said, but ancient alchemical designs were worked into it. Large, murky gray crystals were positioned in a circle just below the rim.
She looked at Jack. He was studying the lamp with rapt attention, an alchemist gazing into his fires. Currents of psi pulsed strongly in the room. The energy was as dark as that of the lamp, but there was a thrilling, disturbingly sensual quality to it. She recognized it immediately: Jack was in the zone. She realized something else as well: Her own senses were responding to his energy, starting to resonate a little.
She folded her arms tightly around herself and concentrated on the lamp. She felt a sudden need to break the crystalline atmosphere that had settled on the room.
“How does it work?” she asked.
Jack did not answer for a few seconds. When he did, she got the impression that he’d had to summon the will to look away from the lamp.
“Damned if I know,” he said. “Adelaide Pyne’s journal supposedly contained some advice and directions, but it vanished. Without it, all I’ve got is you. If you can’t fix the damage, my options are nonexistent.”
She eyed the lamp, uncertainty tingling through her.
“You’re absolutely sure you’ve been damaged?” she asked.
His jaw hardened, and his eyes heated. “We’ve been over this. I’m a double-talent and my second talent is lethal. That is not a good thing. Who knows how long I’ve got before I start going crazy?”
“Okay, okay,” she said soothingly. “It’s just that, well, you seem so stable. In control.”
“For now.”
The grim, haunted look in his eyes told her that he was braced for the worst-case scenario. He was not in a mood to listen to a glass-half-full view of the situation. What did she know about the lamp, anyway? It was his lamp and his curse. He was the expert here, not her.
She walked around the table, studying the lamp from every angle.
“What happened to Adelaide Pyne’s journal?” she said.
“The story is that a rare books dealer came to see my grandmother one day while my grandfather was out of town on a business trip. The dealer claimed to be in the market for personal diaries and journals from the Victorian era. She told him that she didn’t have any to sell, but she showed him Adelaide’s journal. A few weeks later she noticed that it was missing.”