Authors: Jayne Castle
“That was the general idea,” Zac said through gritted teeth. “How was I to know you were going to pop up and start yelling and throwing purses?”
“But Zac, you’ve got to admit it provided a useful distraction for you,” Guinevere said logically. “Who knows? You might not have gotten a good chance at Rick otherwise.”
“That is not the point, Gwen.” He put his big hands on her bare shoulders and brought her close. “The point is that you risked your neck out there, after I had given you strict orders to stay down and keep out of sight.”
“Yes, well, I felt I had to improvise. And it worked, Zac. You got a clear shot at him. Admit it. Admit my causing that distraction was very useful for you.”
“I’ll admit nothing of the kind. I ought to turn you over my knee.”
She grinned, relaxing slightly as she sensed some of the tension draining from him at last. She put her arms around his neck and let the tips of her breasts brush his chest. “How long have you had this kinky streak in you?”
Zac groaned and pulled her closer. “If I weren’t so damn tired, I’d do it, you know. But somehow, after that little game of hide-and-seek in the woods, plus two hours of talking myself hoarse trying to explain this mess to the authorities, I find my reserves of energy are totally depleted. Turn off the water and let’s go to bed, Gwen. We both need some sleep before we drive back to Seattle. I’ll finish yelling at you later.”
“Whatever you say, Zac.” She turned off the taps and reached for a towel.
Twenty minutes later they collapsed side by side beneath the covers, the drapes firmly pulled against the early morning light. A waiting silence hung over the bed for a few minutes, and then Zac tucked Guinevere against him, his leg settling with possessive intimacy over hers.
“Gwen?”
“Hmm?”
“You probably saved our lives back there in the woods.”
Guinevere’s lashes lifted. “What?”
He sighed and settled her closer. “You were right. The distraction you caused bought me the time I needed.”
“Oh, Zac . . .”
“I don’t want to think about how many years it took off my life, however,” he concluded.
“I wouldn’t worry about it,” she smiled. “You’re in great shape.”
There was another stretch of silence, and then Zac spoke again, into Guinevere’s ear.
“Gwen?”
“Hmm?”
“It turns out I’m not sleepy. Too much adrenaline, I guess.”
“That’s too bad, seeing as how you’ve already charged this room to your corporate account,” she reminded him regretfully. “You’re going to have to pay for it whether we use it or not.”
“We can always put the bed to another use.” His palm closed possessively over her breast as he nuzzled the sensitive place behind her ear.
Guinevere sighed contentedly. “Yes, I suppose we could. Waste not, want not.”
Zac pushed her back against the mattress. Then he came down on top of her with a sudden urgency that whipped the banked fires of her own sensuality into a glowing blaze. They made love until the jagged edges of the night’s danger and terror were dulled, and then finally they slept.
Three days later Guinevere stood in the center of Zac’s new office suite talking to Sally Evenson and Evelyn Pemberton. She was entertaining them with the details of the Zoltana case, while Zac worked himself into a frenzy of anxiety and party-giver’s panic. Periodically he moved through the room, double-checking the position of the caterer’s platters. Then he disappeared into the second office to count champagne glasses. The reception was due to start in fifteen minutes, and Zac had convinced himself that no one would appear.
“Zoltana had been running her little con game for years,” Guinevere explained to Sally, who listened with avid attention. Sally was wearing her royal blue blazer tonight and was thrilled to have been invited as one of Zac’s clients, even though she didn’t pay one penny of Zac’s usually hefty fees for his services. Sally was unique in that she had gotten his help for free. Still, ultimately she had been a client, and as such she deserved an invitation to the evening’s festivities.
Evelyn Pemberton nodded, one eye on Zac, who was adjusting a canapé tray for the tenth time. “I can understand how it would work. She gave her clients the impression she really could read their past and guide them in making decisions about the future. Then the susceptible ones kept coming back for more. A nice, steady income.”
Sally sighed. “She could be very persuasive.”
“I don’t doubt it,” Guinevere agreed. “She certainly had Elena Overstreet on a string. The poor woman latched onto Madame Zoltana and clung to her. Zoltana fed her fears, the way she normally did, probably assuming they were false. It undoubtedly came as a shock when Elena died. There sat Zoltana with the incriminating diary and enough knowledge to guess what might have happened. She hesitated for several months, but then she contacted Rick Overstreet anonymously and let him know her silence could be bought for a price. For a while she got away with it.”
“How did he find out she was the blackmailer?” Evelyn Pemberton asked. She swung around suddenly. “Mr. Justis, please don’t worry about that canapé tray. It’s perfect the way it is.”
“I was just straightening it,” he muttered, stalking into the other office.
“According to the cops, Rick finally tracked Zoltana down by keeping an eye on the drop point she chose for the payoffs. It wasn’t easy, because she changed the points constantly, and Rick couldn’t take long hours off from work to watch bus depot lockers and private post office boxes all day long. But one day a couple of months ago he got lucky.”
“Then he set about planning to kill her.” Sally shuddered.
“He took his time about planning her death. He still hasn’t admitted he did it. But the police said a Jane Doe that fit the description of Madame Zoltana turned up in Lake Washington last week. They think they can tie Rick to it. If nothing else, they’ve got him for attempted murder,” Guinevere said.
“Attempted murder of you and Zac,” Evelyn Pemberton said, shaking her head. “What about Francine Bates and her sister?” Before Guinevere could answer, Evelyn called through the doorway into the next office, “Mr. Justis, don’t touch the glasses. You’ll get fingerprints on them. Just let the caterer’s staff handle things. That’s what they’re here for.”
Guinevere hid a grin as Zac reluctantly refrained from picking up one of the glasses that sat on his desk in the second office. He paced restlessly back out into the main room, straightening his already straight tie. He answered Evelyn’s question. “Before he killed Zoltana, Rick forced her to reveal the safe. She kept quiet about the other hiding place, hoping to use it to bargain for her life. He grabbed the contents of the safe without looking at them, assumed he had what he needed, and shot Zoltana before she could convince him there was a second hiding place. Then he dumped her body in the lake, knowing it was going to take a long time before anyone reported her missing. It was only later that he realized he didn’t have the evidence against himself that he’d gone after. But he was a greedy man. He couldn’t resist trying to squeeze some easy money out of Zoltana’s victims, so he sent a note to Sally and some of the others. In the meantime, he kept wondering what had happened to the diary.”
Zac reached the far end of the room and spun around, pacing back past Guinevere and the other two women. “He also decided to make a pass at Gwen. He went over to her apartment one evening and saw the note he’d sent to Sally, the one he’d signed with Zoltana’s name. It was lying right out there in the open on a table. He also saw the note Gwen and I typed on Zoltana’s typewriter. At that point he knew he had real trouble. Gwen was obviously asking questions about Madame Zoltana, and that was dangerous for him.”
“I see,” Evelyn Pemberton said slowly. “But he assumed you didn’t know anything about the diary.”
“True, and at that point we didn’t,” Guinevere agreed, knowing neither she nor Zac intended to talk about Rick’s blackmail attempt. Overstreet had originally prepared the photos intending to use them to coerce Guinevere into going to bed with him. But after he’d seen the notes, he’d used the doctored pictures in an attempt to scare her off the case instead. “He was, however, holding all the client data he’d taken from the safe. He also had a list of payoffs to Zoltana’s inside person at Gage and Watson, although she hadn’t put down Francine Bates’s name, thank heaven. It gave poor Francine some time. But eventually Rick figured out what the record of payments was, and then he decided to get rid of Francine on the assumption that she knew too much. She might also have the diary. It was logical that Zoltana might have told her about it.”
Sally’s eyes widened. “But then you found the diary, and decided to warn poor Francine she might be in great danger.”
Zac whipped around from the other side of the room, glancing at his watch. “But Francine had gotten nervous enough to move out of the cottage and take her sister with her. When Gwen and I found her, she realized the murderer could, too. So she and Denise headed for Oregon. The cops located them yesterday and told them they had Overstreet in custody. Where the hell is everyone?”
“It’s only five forty-five, Zac,” Mrs. Pemberton said firmly. “Relax.”
He ran a finger around his collar and glared at Guinevere. “If no one shows up, I’m holding you personally responsible. This was all your idea. You said it would be good public relations.”
“Calm down, Zac. Everything’s going to be fine,” Guinevere soothed gently, aware that her eyes were undoubtedly mirroring her amusement.
Sally Evenson finished the tale. “I guess it was my fault Mr. Overstreet got the final bit of information he needed to know Francine was involved. He stopped me in the hall and asked me all sorts of questions.”
“He knew you were one of Zoltana’s victims,” Zac pointed out. “And he was blackmailing you himself. It was logical you might be able to tell him who the inside person was, even if you didn’t realize you knew. He was fishing for information.”
“I didn’t understand what he was asking,” Sally explained unhappily. “He just started talking about Francine and a few of the other women in the office. I answered his questions, and I guess I told him something that pinpointed Francine. Thank heaven she wasn’t at the cottage when Rick arrived.”
“Yes,” responded Zac dryly. “Unfortunately, not all of us were quite that lucky.” He shot a baleful glance at Guinevere.
Before Guinevere could respond, a voice hailed them from the open doorway.
“Hey, is this the office where the free food is supposed to be?” Mason Adair, the artist, sauntered into the room, Guinevere’s sister Carla on his arm. Both were smiling broadly. “Nice spread, Zac. I suppose we have to wait until the big-time clients arrive before we tear it apart?”
Zac was visibly relieved that someone had shown up after all. “Help yourself. How are you, Mason?”
“Doing great, thanks. Carla here has my career well in hand.” He glanced at the canvases on the walls. “Glad you like the pictures.”
“They look terrific in here,” Carla observed. “But then, they would, of course. A Mason Adair picture is an asset to any important room.”
Zac was nodding his head in willing agreement when another couple appeared in the doorway.
“Good evening, Zac. Are we on time?”
Zac grinned. “Come on in. Evelyn, this is Edward Vandyke and his wife. Mr. Vandyke is a former client of mine. Mr. and Mrs. Vandyke, this is my new executive secretary, Evelyn Pemberton.”
“How do you do, Mrs. Pemberton?” Mrs. Vandyke said with a warm smile. “I’m sure you’ll find working with Zac very interesting.” She turned to Guinevere. “Good to see you again. How is the temporary-service business doing?”
Guinevere responded to the easy inquiry as someone else walked into the room. Out of the corner of her eye she watched the trickle turn into a rush, and within half an hour the small suite was crowded with people. Zac was the perfect host, relaxing finally, as it became obvious the reception was not going to be a social disaster. Guinevere found him alone for a moment in the inner office, where he had gone to bring out more champagne. She cornered him at the desk and held out her glass for a refill.
“Congratulations, Mr. Justis. You’re a success.”
His gray eyes gleamed as he looked down at her. “Thanks to you. I couldn’t have done it without you, Gwen. I’ll admit it.”
“My tab is paid for your services on the Zoltana case, then?”
“We can discuss what you still owe tonight after we get home,” he returned smoothly.
Her mouth curved. “Home,” she repeated. “I like the sound of that.”
“So do I. It strikes me that maintaining two apartments has become an unnecessary expense. What do you think?” There was a sudden, curious tension in him, although his voice was casual.
“I think so, too,” she agreed softly.
He bent his head and kissed her briefly, his mouth warm with promise.
“Did I ever tell you what Madame Zoltana said about you the day I went to see her?” Guinevere asked musingly as Zac raised his head.
“I don’t believe you went into great detail.”
“She said you were a good lover.”
“Ah,” said Zac complacently. “I always knew the woman had a certain amount of true psychic ability.”
“Yes,” said Guinevere, remembering the events of the past few days. “I think she did.”
Keep reading for a special excerpt from the newest novel by Jayne Ann Krentz
THE LOST NIGHT
Available September 2012 in hardcover from Jove
“You belong to me,” the vampire said. “Soon you will understand that you are meant to be my bride. No matter what happens to me in this place, I will escape and I will come for you.”
Marcus Lancaster’s voice was rich, compelling, and resonant, the voice of an opera singer or the ultimate con man. He accompanied the words with a sly whisper of compelling energy that shivered with promise.
I can fulfill your deepest desires
.
Rachel Blake did not doubt for a moment that he truly did want her, but she was certain it was not because he had fallen in love with her. Lancaster was one of the monsters. That crowd didn’t have the capacity to love. They were inclined, however, to be obsessive in their desires and, therefore, quite dangerous.
“I knew this was a waste of time.” Rachel gathered up her notepad and pen and got to her feet. The silvery charms attached to her bracelet shivered and clashed lightly.
“You cannot run from me, my beloved,” Lancaster said. He reached up with one well-manicured hand and touched the stud in his left ear. The small item of jewelry was made of black metal and set with a stone that was the color of rain.
The gesture was casual, made in an absent manner, as if Lancaster was not aware of what he was doing. But the hair on the back of Rachel’s neck stirred. A chill of intuition raised goose bumps on her arms. Her palms went cold.
Lancaster wore another piece of jewelry, too, a discreet signet ring engraved with the image of a mythical Old World beast, a griffin.
She had shut down her senses so she wouldn’t have to view Lancaster’s aura, but there were traces of his energy on the table and everything else that he had touched in the room. She could not abide the way he was watching her. She had to get out of there.
She looked at the one-way window set into the wall as she went toward the door and raised her voice a little to make sure her unseen audience could hear her.
“That’s it, Dr. Oakford. I’m finished here. There’s nothing I can do with this one.”
She did not have to see the faces of Dr. Ian Oakford and the other members of the clinic staff who were observing the therapy session to know that they were all reacting with shock and outrage. Ditching a patient the way she had just done was extremely unprofessional. But she no longer cared. She’d had enough of Oakford and his team, enough of their research, enough of trying to fit in to the mainstream world of clinical parapsychology.
A woman—at least one who had been raised in a Harmonic Enlightenment community—could take only so much. Her parents and her instructors at the Academy were right. She was not cut out for mainstream life.
Most people would not have known Lancaster for what he was. Tall, blond, blue-eyed, and handsome in a slick, distinguished way, he was a natural-born predator that moved easily among his prey. But the dark side of her talent for aura healing was the ability to see the monsters and recognize them for what they were.
Lancaster had made a tidy fortune in the financial world. But a few days ago he had shocked his associates and his clients when he had voluntarily committed himself to the Chapman Clinic. He claimed to be plagued with severe parapsych trauma induced by the death of his wife several months earlier. His symptoms consisted of nightmares and dangerous delusions—precisely the severe symptoms required to be admitted to Dr. Oakford’s new research program at the clinic.
She opened the door, stepped out into the hall, and signaled to the waiting orderly.
“You can take Mr. Lancaster back to his room, Carl,” she said. “We’re finished.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Carl moved into the therapy room.
“Time to go, Mr. Lancaster,” he said in the soothing, upbeat tone he used with all of the patients.
Lancaster chuckled. “I think I make Miss Blake nervous, Carl.”
He got to his feet with leisurely grace, as though he were still dressed in the elegant silver gray suit and white tie that he had been wearing when he had walked into the clinic. Credit where credit was due, Rachel thought. Lancaster managed to make the baggy shirt and trousers that were standard issue for all patients look like resort-casual attire.
“Do you think she’s afraid of me, Carl?” Lancaster infused his mellifluous words with just the right tincture of regret. “The last thing I want to do is frighten her.”
“No, Mr. Lancaster, I’m sure Rachel isn’t afraid of you,” Carl said. “She has no reason to be afraid of you, now does she?”
“An excellent question, Carl. One that only Rachel can answer.”
Rachel ignored both of them. The tiny stones set into her charms were starting to brighten. That was not a good sign because she was not consciously heating the crystals. They were reacting to her anxiety, a strong indication that her current state of psychic awareness and control was anything but harmonically tuned.
This was it, she thought. Lancaster was the last straw. She was going to hand in her resignation. The money was good at the clinic and the work provided the illusion that, in spite of what everyone back home said, she could make a place for herself in the mainstream world. But she had not signed on to deal with monsters like Marcus Lancaster. Nor was he the only one enrolled in the research trial. There was a very good reason why the patients in Oakford’s project were housed in a locked ward.
She was an aura healer. She needed to use her talents in a positive way.
According to mainstream theories of parapsychology, energy-sucking psychic vampires were a myth, the stuff of horror novels and scary movies. But Rachel had met a few in her time, and she knew the truth. The monsters were real. The good news was that most of them were relatively weak. They tended to pursue careers as con men, cult leaders, and politicians. They preyed on the emotionally vulnerable and the gullible.
Nobody denied that such low-level human predators existed, but few thought of them as vampires or monsters. Psychology textbooks, therapists, and clinicians had invented more politically correct terms to describe them. The diagnostic descriptions often involved the phrase
personality disorder
or
parasociopath
. But the ancients back on the Old World had gotten it right, Rachel thought. So had the philosophers who had founded the Harmonic Enlightenment movement and established the Principles of Harmonic Enlightenment. The correct description for the Marcus Lancasters of the world was
evil
. When that particular attribute was coupled with some paranormal talent, you got a psychic vampire.
The question that was worrying her the most was why Lancaster was attracted to her. She knew it was not love or even simple lust that had made him fixate on her out of all the members of the clinic staff. She had learned at the Academy that it was the prospect of controlling others that fascinated the monsters. Because of her own psychic ability and training she possessed a high degree of immunity to their talents. But she suspected her immunity was the very quality that had drawn Lancaster’s attention. She was a challenge to him. Seducing and controlling her would affirm his own power.
The problem for the creeps was that they were incapable of achieving any degree of inner harmony. They spent their lives trying to fill the dead zones on their spectrums. No ponzi scheme was ever lucrative enough, no cult was ever large enough, no business empire was ever sufficiently profitable, no position on the academic or political ladder was imbued with enough power to content a vampire.
And for the subset of vicious monsters who were drawn to death and violence, no amount of torture and killing could satisfy the bloodlust.
But monsters had dreams, too, Rachel thought. Evidently Marcus Lancaster had concluded that controlling her would fulfill some of his own dark fantasies.
Ian Oakford was waiting for her at the end of the hall. Last month when she had met him, she had done a little fantasizing of her own. Ian was an intelligent, good-looking man with a very buff build and a lot of stylishly cut brown hair. He was endowed with the strong-jawed, trust-me-I’m-a-doctor presence that the patients and most of his female staff found appealing. Rachel was convinced that he could have had a lucrative second career as an actor playing a doctor in pharmaceutical commercials.
Not that Ian wasn’t already doing very well for himself. He was still young by the standards of the profession, but his talent for parapsychology, combined with a lot of drive and ambition, had taken him far. Six months ago he had been appointed director of the new research wing of the Chapman Clinic. The funding from drug companies had quickly followed. He had several clinical trials in various stages of progress.
At that moment, however, Ian did not exhibit the kind, reassuring air that people liked in those engaged in the healing profession. Behind the lenses of his designer glasses his gray eyes glittered with anger. His square jaw was rigid.
“What do you think you’re doing, walking out of a therapy session like that?” he demanded.
His voice was tight but controlled. Ian prided himself on never expressing extremes of emotion of any kind. He viewed such displays as a symptom of instability in the aura. He was right, of course, at least according to the Principles, and she had admired him for his self-mastery. But she did not need her talent to tell her that he was furious. She didn’t blame him. He had taken a huge risk bringing her onto his research team. Her professional failings reflected badly on his judgment.
She braced herself for the inevitable. This was it, the end of her first really good job in the mainstream world. Her parents would breathe a sigh of relief. They had warned her about the difficulties she would encounter when she left the Academy and the Community.
“Marcus Lancaster is not experiencing severe paratrauma, Dr. Oakford,” she said quietly. “He’s faking it. He’s incapable of feeling any sense of loss unless it affects his bottom line or threatens his personal safety. A dead wife wouldn’t cut it, trust me, not unless her death cost him financially, which, according to what I found online, was not the case. Just the opposite. He inherited a lot of money when she died.”
“You’re wrong. No one could fake those night sweats and hallucinations.”
“He is,” she said simply. “And you and the others here at the clinic are buying his act.”
“Why would a man in Lancaster’s position pretend to have such a severe mental illness? It could destroy him financially and socially. No one in his right mind would voluntarily commit himself for treatment in a parapsych hospital the way Lancaster did unless he truly feared for his sanity.”
“I have no idea why he committed himself voluntarily,” Rachel said. “You could ask him, but I can tell you right now he’ll lie through his fangs.”
“Fangs?”
“Sorry, teeth. As I was saying, I don’t have any idea why he went to so much trouble to get into your research project, but if I were you, I’d watch out for a lawsuit somewhere down the road.”
“Lawsuit?”
“I suspect that Lancaster has a long history of financial cons and schemes,” she said. “Maybe he’s got a plan for proving that he was a victim of unethical research practices. Who knows? I can’t begin to guess his objectives, but I can promise you that there is nothing you or I or modern parapharmaceuticals can do for him. We can’t fix the monsters.”
“I have warned you before that we do not use terms like
monsters
and
vampires
in this clinic. I realize you’re not a professional, Miss Blake, but that is no excuse for unprofessional language.”
“Yes, Doctor.”
“There are no such things as human monsters. How many times do I have to explain to you that Lancaster suffers from parapsych trauma complicated by an underlying instability of his parasenses?” Ian must have realized that his voice was rising. He regained control immediately. “I did not hire you to diagnose my patients. Your sole responsibility is to identify the erratic currents in their auras so that their disorders can be treated by a qualified therapist and appropriate prescriptions can be written.”
“I understand,” she said.
Behind Ian, Helen Nelson and Adrian Evans, the two members of the staff who had been observing the session with Oakford, walked quietly away in the opposite direction. They knew what was going to happen next, Rachel thought. They were on their way to spread the gossip.
Just before the pair turned the corner, Helen glanced back and gave Rachel a sympathetic look. Rachel managed a wan smile in return. She was keenly aware that most of the professional staff at the clinic viewed her with disapproval and, in some cases, outright hostility. Helen had been one of the kinder people on the research team. She had gone so far as to invite Rachel to join her for lunch in the company cafeteria a few times. In return Rachel had done free aura readings at a birthday party for one of Helen’s friends. There had been a lot of white wine and canapés that night. Rachel had known full well that she was there as the entertainment for the evening, but she had hoped that it was the first step in building a circle of friends outside the Community, another step toward mainstreaming.
She knew now that she was never going to be accepted at the clinic. She had done her best to blend in but pinning her hair into a tight bun and donning dark-framed, serious glasses and a white lab coat couldn’t hide the truth. Everyone at Chapman was well aware that she was not a real parapsychologist. She wasn’t even a licensed therapist. In addition, she qualified as a curiosity, especially among the men on the staff, because she had been raised in a Harmonic Enlightenment community.
She had discovered early on that there were a lot of myths and misunderstandings in the mainstream world concerning the harmonically enlightened lifestyle, and a number of them revolved around sex. The one aspect of her attempt at mainstreaming that had appeared promising at first was her social life. Men had lined up to invite her out on dates at the tearoom and later here, at the clinic. But the whirlwind of dating had dissipated rapidly after she had been forced to make it clear that women who lived by the Principles were not necessarily inclined to hop into bed whenever the opportunity arose.