Fallon ended the connection, as was his custom, without bothering with the usual civilities such as good-bye or see ya or talk to you later. Jack lowered the phone and looked at Chloe.
“Fallon Jones is sending a team out from L.A. to collect the lamp. We’ve got a few hours to kill. What do you say we go downstairs and have breakfast? I’m hungry.” He thought about it and smiled. This was the first time in weeks when he’d contemplated food as anything more than fuel. “Really, really hungry.”
34
IT WAS IMPOSSIBLE TO GO ANYWHERE WITHIN THE SPRAWLING casino-hotel complex without having to traverse the gaming floor. Chloe lowered her senses to the minimum, but there was no way to ignore the layers of feverish dreamprints that fluoresced everywhere in the eternal night that enveloped the vast room.
The glowing residue of psi left by thousands of frantic, excited, and desperate players gave the midnight realm an otherworldly luminescence. Weaving a path through the glowing card tables, roulette wheels and banks of slot machines was like swimming through a maze of boiling sulfur cauldrons at the bottom of the ocean.
The hotel featured over a dozen restaurants, bars and fast- food eateries, all scattered around the perimeter of the gaming floor. The large café that catered to the breakfast and lunch crowd had a very short line. The seating hostess showed them to a booth. Chloe ignored the sickly psi prints that glowed all across the sparkling clean table and opened her menu. Jack sat down across from her. He put the leather duffel containing the lamp on one side of the seat and positioned his computer case on the other. The subtle aura of dark power emanating from the artifact misted the atmosphere of the small area.
“You’re really going to give that thing to Arcane?” she asked.
Jack studied the menu. “Yeah.”
“Are you serious? Do you actually trust the Society to take care of it?”
“Not one hundred percent, no.” He closed his menu and looked at her. “But you rarely get a hundred percent certainty in anything. Fallon is right. The lamp will be a lot more secure locked up in an Arcane vault than sitting on an end table in my condo.”
“Okay, I’ll give you that,” she said. “But what if one of your descendants ever needs it?”
“Same reasoning applies. Arcane has taken reasonably good care of a lot of paranormal artifacts for a few centuries. Their security is always first class these days because they’ve got the best crypto-talents to design it. My family managed to lose the lamp in the course of a cross-country move. Who knows? Maybe one of my great-grandchildren, assuming I ever have any, might decide to put it into a yard sale.”
She got an odd little twinge when she thought about his children and great-grandchildren. His descendants would probably all be strong talents. Maybe they would have his eyes.
She forced her thoughts back to the present.
“I see what you mean.” She looked at the duffel bag again. “But you’re banking on a future edition of Fallon Jones or someone at his level within the Society being willing to let your descendants use the lamp if they need it. What’s more, you’re betting that the Society, itself, will continue to exist not just for decades but for centuries.”
“It has survived since the late 1600s.” He shrugged. “It’s not like I’ve got a lot of great options. The lamp is safer with a long-standing institution like the Society, which understands the importance of paranormal artifacts, than it is with a single family.”
She pursed her lips, thinking about it. “Maybe. It’s just the principle of the thing. I mean, you’re talking about giving the lamp to an organization run by the Joneses.”
“You should talk. Your uncle and your cousin are working for J&J.”
She made a face. “Wait until the rest of the family finds out.”
They ordered omelets. When the food arrived Chloe shook her head, awed by the sheer size of the portions.
“Good grief. We could have split one of these,” she said.
Jack forked up a large bite with obvious relish. “Speak for yourself. I told you, I’m hungry.”
He gave her a wickedly sexy smile and winked. She felt her face grow warm in response. It occurred to her that she was very hungry, herself. They had both used a lot of energy last night. She dug into her eggs.
She knew she was putting off the moment when she would have to explain last night’s failure. But somehow she just couldn’t bring herself to shatter the warm intimacy of the morning. It had never been like this with any other man. Surely she was entitled to a little romance. Besides, maybe she was wrong. Maybe she hadn’t failed.
“I couldn’t help but overhear your conversation with Fallon,” she said. “How long were you married?”
“Two years.”
“What happened?”
“Well, according to Shannon, I was too driven, too intense. I think she used the term control freak a few times.”
“Was she right?”
“Yes. I discovered I was good at making money. Went at it twenty-four /seven. All in all, I became pretty intense and driven and maybe something of a control freak. Guess I got stuck in that mode.”
“I don’t think it’s a mode,” she said. “It requires plenty of intensity, determination and control to handle your level of talent. Your personality and temperament would reflect those qualities, regardless of what you did for a living.”
He looked up. “Nicholas Winters wrote something in his journal about the high cost of each of the three talents. The first talent fills the mind with a rising tide of restlessness that cannot be assuaged by endless hours in the laboratory or soothed with strong drink or the milk of the poppy.”
“Guess that explains a few of your quirks. Talent number two is accompanied by the nightmares and hallucinations problem?”
“Right.”
She cleared her throat delicately. “Uh, what about number three?”
“It is supposed to be the most powerful and the most dangerous of the three talents. Nicholas wrote that if the key is not turned properly in the lock, this last psychical ability will prove lethal, bringing on first insanity and then death.”
Her fork froze in midair. “He specifically wrote about a key and a lock? Do you know what he was talking about?”
“No. The old alchemists were big on riddles and hidden meanings.”
She thought about the feeling she’d had last night, the sensation that she had turned an invisible key in a paranormal lock. A shiver whispered through her.