“No kidding.”
She told herself she was big enough to ignore the sarcasm. Jack was under a lot of stress, after all.
“Here’s the thing,” she said. “I’m not so sure that you actually are a double-talent.”
He turned his attention back to the road. “Last month I was a strat. This month I can generate nightmares. If that isn’t two different talents, what is?”
“Think about it, Winters. There are a gazillion different kinds of strats, but they all have one thing in common: They possess a preternatural ability to assess and analyze a situation and then figure out how to exploit it. At its core, that is simply a survival mechanism. Probably a psychic adaptation of the primitive hunting instincts in our earliest ancestors.”
“Where are you going with this?” he asked.
“I’m building my case. Stick with me. Your form of strat-talent just happens to make you very, very good at detecting people’s weaknesses and vulnerabilities, right?”
“So?”
“Okay, it’s a stretch from being able to assess and manipulate a person’s weaknesses to being able to scare the living daylights out of that person with a blast of psi but not a big one. Once you know an individual’s vulnerabilities, you have a certain amount of power and control over that person. In your case you’re able to take it a step further. You can actually generate energy that zeros in on the wavelengths of a person’s most elemental fears.”
“I couldn’t do that for the first thirty-five years of my life.”
“Maybe not, but the fact that you can do it now doesn’t necessarily mean that you have a whole new talent. What you’ve got now is just an enhanced version of your old talent.”
“Enhanced as in formula enhanced?” His mouth hardened. “Fallon Jones might find me useful, but something tells me that the rest of the Jones family, including Zack Jones, won’t be so easygoing about my new level of talent.”
“Oh, yeah?” She made a rude noise. “Like anyone in the Jones family has the right to judge what’s normal and what’s not when it comes to talent.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“Give me a break,” she said. “It’s no secret that Sylvester Jones began experimenting early on in his life with various versions of his enhancement formula. Who knows what he did to his own DNA before he fathered all those little Jones boys by those three different women?”
There was a short, startled silence.
“Damn,” Jack whistled softly. “I never thought of that. It might explain why that family line has always produced so many unusual and off-the-charts talents.”
“Yes, it would,” she said crisply.
“If my talents are normal, why the hallucinations and the blackouts? Why the disturbance to my dream psi?”
“I understand the hallucinations,” she said. “That is a common problem when dream energy spills over into the other senses. As I told you, the sudden emergence of your enhanced level of talent temporarily disrupted the patterns of some of the currents of your dream psi.”
“What about the blackouts and the sleepwalking?”
She tightened her hands on the steering wheel. “I suppose they could have been caused by the frayed dream channels, but, as I told you, there are still traces of what looks like heavy medication at one point on the spectrum.”
“I started taking the meds after the blackouts and the sleepwalking episodes began.”
“Were you on any other kind of medication prior to that?” she asked. “Even some over-the-counter stuff can have unpredictable effects on sensitives, especially high-level ones like you.”
“Some anti-inflammatories occasionally. That’s it.”
“Well, if it’s any consolation, the murky stuff is definitely fading,” she said.
“I lost an entire day of my life, not to mention the nights when I went walkabout.”
“I realize it’s very unsettling,” she said gently. “But things are stable now. I can sense it. Last night it felt as if we turned a key in a psychic lock. You’re fine, Jack.”
“I sense a but.”
She took a deep breath. “But I’m still wondering why there is so much power locked up in that lamp.”
39
THAT EVENING THEY HAD DRINKS IN ONE OF THE HOTEL BARS. Jack swallowed some of his whiskey and thought about how good it felt to be sitting there with Chloe. Like a real date, except that he could not imagine any of the other women he knew sitting there so casually across the table from a man who could plunge them into a waking nightmare in a heartbeat. Then, again, Chloe wasn’t like any of the other women he knew.
“Where does J&J go from here?” she asked.
“Fallon’s frustrated.” He shrugged. “That is not an unusual condition for him, however.”
“No luck finding the mystery woman who knocked on Stone’s door?”
“No. But he seems pretty sure that’s a dead end, anyway. He’s convinced that now that Arcane has recovered the lamp and stashed it in one of the Society’s vaults, Nightshade will terminate the project. Those responsible for the failure will be given notice in the organization’s customary fashion.”
“They’ll be cut off the drug.”
“Apparently.”
“But Fallon still doesn’t know why Nightshade wanted the lamp?”
“His working theory is that Nightshade went after the lamp for the same reason they wanted the formula.”
She nodded. “Because it holds out the possibility of enhancing talent.”
“Makes sense. But whatever the reason, we’re out of it. The problem is Fallon’s now.”
She raised her wineglass in a small salute. “Another case closed for Harper Investigations.”
For some reason he didn’t like the sound of that. It sounded too final. But she was right.
“You’re good,” he said.
“Told you so.”
He smiled. “Yes, you did. You know, I’ve been thinking.”
“About?” she prompted. There was an aura of anticipation about her.
“According to Fallon, Nightshade is very well organized. There are several circles or cells of ascending power with some version of a corporate board of directors at the top. There seem to be no links between the circles. Each one functions independently.”
The aura of warm anticipation that had enveloped her promptly faded. He was almost sure she gave a tiny, wistful sigh. He had the feeling he had screwed up. What had she expected him to say? She recovered immediately.