"Fallon?" Isabella whispered.
"Game over," he said. His eyes were still hot.
She felt him move away from under the staircase and realized that he was crouching beside the fallen man.
"Dead?" she asked.
"I couldn't let him live." Fallon's voice was flat on the surface but underneath there was a soul-deep weariness. "He was too strong. A hunter-talent of some kind. If the cops had tried to arrest him, it would have taken him about five minutes to escape and disappear."
"Don't get me wrong, I wasn't complaining. But what do we do now? There's no way we can explain that clock to the police."
"We're not going to explain it to the cops. We'll take it with us. They won't need it to find the bodies and figure out what was going on here."
She heard a rustling sound and realized that he was going through the killer's clothes.
"We'll have to find a way to stop that clock before you drive it back to Scargill Cove," she said. "It's generating too much energy, enough to fill this entire house. You might be able to see where you're going, but the driver of any car that you pass will be temporarily blinded."
"It's just a damn clock," Fallon said. "Got to be a way to stop it. Mrs. Bridewell's curiosities all incorporated traditional mechanical escapements."
She shuddered. "I can't wait to hear more about this Mrs. Bridewell."
"I'll tell you later. The point is that, paranormal aspects aside, the clock's mechanism is very similar to the one in my office."
She sensed his movement when he got to his feet. He crossed through the strange night, a dark shadow silhouetted against the eerie mist. There was a squeak of small hinges and a cranking sound. The ticking stopped abruptly.
The flashlights reignited, spearing beams of light across the basement. At the top of the stairs, the entrance was once again filled with normal shadows.
"That worked," Isabella said.
"Which means this really is one of her infernal devices, not some new variation," Fallon said. "That's the good news."
"Why is it good news?"
"I wasn't looking forward to hunting down a modern-day inventor who had decided to create a high-tech version of some of Bridewell's gadgets. The originals are bad enough. The question now is, how did the clock get into this house? But we'll deal with that later."
He aimed his flashlight at the body on the floor. Isabella looked at the crumpled figure of Nightman. The killer's face was set in a death mask of stark horror. He looked to be in his midthirties, sandy-haired and lithe in build. He was dressed in dark green work pants and a matching shirt. The logo on the pocket of the shirt spelled out the name of a construction firm based in Willow Creek.
She looked away. "He told us he found the clock in a cave beneath this basement."
Fallon swept the light across the floorboards. "Before we call the cops, I want to make sure the evidence is there."
She speared her flashlight at the section of the flooring that was in the heart of the whirlpool of energy. "Try that section."
He walked to the circle of light created by her flashlight, crouched and began probing with his gloved fingers.
"Here we go," he said. "A trapdoor."
She went toward him, watching as he opened a wide, square section of the flooring. They aimed their flashlights into the darkness below. A metal ladder disappeared into the depths. Isabella leaned forward slightly, trying to get a better view of the object near the foot of the ladder.
"What's that?" she asked.
"Looks like a body bag," Fallon said.
Isabella straightened quickly. "Norma Spaulding is never going to sell this house now."
"Real estate has always been a tough market in this part of California." Fallon reached for his phone.
Isabella cleared her throat. "One thing before you call the cops."
"Don't worry, you won't be here when they arrive. You're leaving now."
"Right, thanks." She exhaled slowly. "But there's a complication. Norma knows that I was the one who promised to check out the house for ghosts."
"As far as everyone involved is concerned, including Norma Spaulding, I got an intuitive flash of impending disaster and decided that I would handle the Zander house case personally. I sent you back to the office before I found the bodies. Now go. Get out of here."
"Right," she repeated. She turned and hurried up the stairs. When she reached the doorway, she paused and looked back at him.
"An intuitive flash of impending disaster?" she said.
"I'm supposed to be psychic, remember?"
"Of course."
"Where did you pick up that factoid about the meaning of the word nightman?"
"I had what you might call an eclectic education."
"Homeschooled?"
"Yes. Plus, I read a lot."
"When this is over, maybe it's time you told me who or what you're hiding from," Fallon said quietly.
"I should have known better than to take a job as an assistant to a psychic detective."
4
We still don't have any leads, Mr. Lucan," Julian Garrett said. "Turned over every stone we could find in Phoenix. It's like she never existed except during the short time she worked at that department store."
"It's been damn near a month," Max Lucan said.
"I'm aware of that, sir."
Max got up from his desk and went to stand at the window of his office. Absently he touched the black granite pedestal that stood nearby. The pedestal held the bronze statue of a seated cat. The creature had a gold ring in one ear.
The statue was Egyptian. Like the other antiquities displayed in the room, it was authentic. It had been created sometime around 600 B.C. But it was not the age of the bronze that intrigued Max. It was the power that the artist had somehow infused into the metal. After all these centuries, the energy in the figure still whispered to him.
"How could a little finder-talent drop off the radar so easily?" he asked.
"Beats the hell out of me," Julian said.
"Rawlins and Burley still haven't recovered their memories?"
"No, sir, and I think we should assume they never will. Evidently the finder-talent put them into some sort of fugue state. They remember locating her in that mall store, but the next thing either of them remembers is waking up in front of a restaurant three miles away."
Max felt the hair on the back of his neck stir. He knew it was because he was missing some important pieces of the puzzle. "Interesting that Rawlins and Burley didn't get run down by a car, walking blind like that through Phoenix traffic at night."