Canyons Of Night (5 page)

“He showed up a while back,” Slade said.

“Didn’t know they made good pets.”

“They don’t,” Slade said. “Thanks for the fish. See you later.”

“You bet.” Hank beamed. “Have a good time tonight now, you hear?”

“I’ll do my best.”

Outside on the front porch, Rex examined the package of salmon with great interest.

“Forget it,” Slade said. “This is dinner, not an afternoon snack. It’s going into the refrigerator at the station and then it’s going back to the cabin after work.”

Rex appeared to lose interest in the salmon. Slade was not deceived. He went down the steps.

Cautiously he jacked up his other senses a couple of degrees. He knew better. The doctors at the clinic had warned him against pushing his talent beyond a very minimal range. But he was unable to resist. He had to know how much worse the damage was getting, had to know how much time he had left before his senses shut down altogether and he went psi-blind.

His other vision kicked in for a few seconds. Waterfront Street—with its weathered, wooden storefronts—the ferry landing, and the marina began to glow in eerie shades of ultralight. The footprints of the people strolling on the sidewalks heated with iridescent energy. But when he inched a little higher and tried to work his way into the zone, he sensed the seething storm of energy that was out there waiting to envelop him. The good news was that it did not seem to have grown any darker since he had last checked.

He still had some time left before his talent failed completely, but the psychic powers that had shaped his life and made him so good at what he did for the past fifteen years were slowly but surely being consumed by the storm at the end of the spectrum.

He clamped down on the useless tide of rage that threatened to well up inside. There was no point giving in to the anger. He had to keep moving forward because there was no alternative.

At least he was going to have dinner with an attractive, interesting woman tonight. It had been a long time since he’d had a date. Susan had left after the verdict had come down from the doctors and para-psychs. He didn’t blame her. For a time it had looked like he was probably going to self-destruct. They had both known that there was nothing she could do to stop the slide. Even if he did not put a mag-rez pistol to his head or get permanently lost in a haze of drugs and alcohol as some expected, he would never again be the man she had planned to marry.

Susan had cut her losses and he had been relieved when she did. At least he no longer had to pretend that some day he might recover his talent; that some day he might be able to return to the Bureau.

But Charlotte Enright had never known him in what he now thought of as his other life. To her he was a clean slate. No baggage. And he would not be hanging around Shadow Bay long enough for her to get the wrong impression. He’d been straight up about that. She now knew that he planned to leave within six months. He was pleased that he’d gotten that issue out of the way before he’d asked her to dinner.

They were just two semi-strangers passing in the night, he thought. No reason they couldn’t spend some time together. She wasn’t a kid anymore. They were both adults.

He had been literally stunned to see her when he’d walked off the ferry five days ago. Most of the town had turned out to greet the new chief of police, but it had been the sight of Charlotte in the crowd that had sent the jolt of lightning across his senses and awakened sensations he could not identify.

The first thought that had slammed through him that day was completely irrational.
It’s as if she’s been here, waiting for me all these years
.

It made no sense but for the past five days he hadn’t been able to shake the feeling that he had spent the last fifteen years trying to get back to Rainshadow to see if she was still here.

She had definitely grown up in the years they had been apart, but he would have recognized her anywhere. The elements of the woman she was meant to become had all been in place that summer, waiting to bloom. And the final result was everything he had sensed it would be. Intelligence, energy, and the promise of a passionate nature had illuminated her brilliant hazel eyes that year and those qualities were more luminous than ever now.

Some things had certainly changed, he thought. Gone was the awkward, shy, painfully vulnerable fifteen-year-old girl. In her place was a sleek, savvy, sophisticated woman. Her hair was cut in a shoulder-length style that framed her fine-boned face. She still wore glasses but the new ones were a trendy-looking pair that made a perfect frame for her spectacular eyes. Everything about her, including her energy, thrilled his senses.

He had known that day that he wanted her more than he had ever wanted anything in his life. He had also known that she was the one thing he could not have.

The Shadow Bay Police Station was located at the far end of the street in the town square. The headquarters of the volunteer fire department sat directly across the small park. The post office and the office of the part-time mayor, Fletcher Kane, completed the picture-perfect small-town scene.

It was enough to drive anyone who hated small towns as much as he did mad, Slade thought morosely. He really had to get moving on his new career path.

Devin Reed was sprawled on one of the stone benches in the park, legs shoved straight out in front of him. He was dressed in a pair of logo-splashed running shoes, jeans, a gray hoodie, and the new sunglasses he had invested in recently. In addition he wore the utterly bored, world-weary air that only a thirteen-year-old boy could pull off. The thing was, Slade thought, in Devin’s case, he had a right to the attitude. The kid had gotten some tough breaks.

Rex bounded ahead and hopped up onto the bench seat.

“Hey, Rex.” Devin patted the bunny and then peered at Slade through the new shades. “Hey, Chief Attridge.”

“Dev.” Slade stopped. “What are you doing this afternoon?”

“Nothing much.”

“How about last night between midnight and dawn? Do anything much then?”

“Huh?” Devin jerked his hand away from Rex.

“You broke into the antiques shop.”

“I didn’t break anything, I swear it.”

“You went inside.”

“I found the door unlocked,” Devin said quickly. “I just wanted to make sure everything was okay inside.”

“Take anything?”

“No.”

“That’s good. I wouldn’t want to have to arrest you. It would break your grandmother’s heart.”

Devin was stunned. “You wouldn’t arrest me.”

“In a heartbeat.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Try me.”

Devin’s expression closed down into a sullen scowl. “I was just doing Miss Enright a favor, that’s all. I just checked to make sure there was nothing wrong inside the shop.”

“Right. Next time you’re out wandering around after midnight and you find an unlocked door, you call me or Officer Willis.”

“Yeah, sure, whatever.”

Rex moseyed off to investigate the stone-and-tile fountain. He liked to play in water.

Slade propped one booted foot on the bench and rested his forearm on his thigh. He was no guidance counselor, but Devin definitely needed some advice. Whether the kid took it or not was another problem.

“Does your grandmother know you snuck out of the house last night?” he said.

“No.” Devin looked uneasy now. “She’d think I was doing drugs or something.”

“I know why you went into the shop, Dev.”

“I told you, I just—”

“You can sense the energy in there, can’t you? I feel it, too. It hits you like a shower of small sparks of lightning, doesn’t it? Jacks you up a little.”

“Huh?” Devin went very still.

“What you pick up on in there are traces of paranormal energy.”

“You mean like in the Old Quarters and in the Underworld? Alien psi?”

“Sort of, but what you sense in Looking Glass isn’t alien energy. It’s human psi.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Miss Enright says there’s a fair amount of it infused into most of the antiques in the shop. Evidently there are collectors who will pay big bucks for stuff like that. Go figure.”

Devin looked first shocked and then hurt. “Come off it, you think I’m dumb enough to believe that? Why don’t you try telling me that Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy are real?”

“I think you’re developing some serious psychic talent, Dev, not just the low-level kind that everyone uses to resonate with amber to start a car or switch on a washing machine. Something a lot stronger.”

Dev brightened. “You think I might be a ghost hunter? That maybe I can join the Guild someday?”

“Ever rez any ghosts?”

Devin sank back into himself. “No. Tried a few times back in Frequency. Went down into the tunnels with some other kids. They pulled some small ghosts but I couldn’t do it.”

“Probably because your talent is different.”

“Yeah?” Devin did not try to conceal his skepticism. “How?”

“It doesn’t depend on amber, for one thing, although you’ll probably be able to use amber to focus it more efficiently.”

“Huh?”

“Look, it’s common knowledge that something here on Harmony has speeded up the evolution of the latent psychic senses we all possess. That’s why we can use amber in the first place, right?”

“Right. We learned that in science class. So what?”

“Here’s what they didn’t teach you in science class. Some of the First Generation colonists already possessed a lot of natural psychic talent when they arrived two hundred years ago. They kept a low profile because back on the Old World the paranormal wasn’t accepted as normal. People who claimed to have psychic talent were considered weird or even dangerous.”

“Yeah?”

“Things are better here on Harmony but a lot of folks still have a bone-deep fear of those who possess powerful talent of any kind, whether or not they use amber. And sometimes there’s a good reason for them to be afraid of strong talents.”

“Come on, nobody takes those movies and comic books about rogue psychics and paranormal killers seriously.”

Slade thought about his last encounter with a rogue psychic. “You’d be surprised.”

“Yeah?” Dev was starting to sound intrigued now.

“Natural talent, which I think you’ve got, takes a while to develop. It will be a few years before you find out how strong you are. That’s good because you need the time to learn how to control and focus your new abilities.”

“Huh.”

“My advice is to keep quiet about what’s happening to you unless you’re sure you’re talking to someone who understands and believes you.”

Dev gave him a wary, uncertain look. “You think people would laugh at me?”

“Probably. Strong talent usually has a genetic component. Has your grandmother ever talked to you about the possibility that you might have some above-average psychic ability?”

“Are you kidding? No way. If I asked her about something like that she’d pack me off to a shrink. I’d wind up in the loony bin. She’s already worried about me as it is. The last thing I want to do is make her think I’m going crazy, like my mom did.”

It was no secret around the station or in town that Devin was the offspring of an illicit affair. His mother had taken her own life a year earlier. The kid’s father, a married man who lived in Crystal City, met his financial obligations but took no interest in the boy. What Devin had going for him was his grandmother, Myrna Reed. Myrna cared deeply about his well-being. But sometimes a boy needed a man’s firm hand.

“Coming into a talent can be a little scary sometimes,” Slade said. “You don’t always understand what’s happening to you. And other people will think you’re strange. That’s why I’m advising you not to talk to anyone else about it, at least not for a while.”

“Can I talk to you?” Devin asked softly.

“Yeah, sure.”

Having this conversation was probably a mistake, Slade thought, just like inviting Charlotte to dinner tonight. He had established a strict rule for himself when he took the job. The rule was simple.
Don’t get personally involved with the locals
. He wanted no strings attached when he finally got his act together and boarded the ferry six months from now to leave for good. But today he had broken the rule twice. Not a good sign. He never broke his own rules.

“There’s someone else you need to talk to, and soon,” he said.

“Who?” Devin asked.

“Miss Enright.”

Devin looked uneasy. “Why?”

“Why do you think?”

Devin’s mouth tightened. “You want me to tell her that I was the one who went into her shop last night?”

“What I want doesn’t matter here. What matters is that you need to do what’s right.”

“I told you, I didn’t take anything,” Devin insisted.

“She knows that. But how would you like it if someone you and your grandmother didn’t know walked through your house sometime when neither of you was home.”

Devin looked alarmed. “That would be illegal.”

“Yes, it would. Even if all the guy did was look around.”

Devin processed that for a moment. His mutinous expression morphed into tight-lipped resignation.

“Okay, okay, I’ll tell her it was me,” he grumbled.

“Good plan.” Slade reached into the pocket of his shirt and took out the small, wire-bound notebook and a pen. He opened the notebook, clicked the pen, and wrote down a website and a password. “Next time you’re on your computer, check out this address.” He tore the page out of the notebook and handed it to Devin.

“Arcane?” Devin’s brow furrowed. “Is it some kind of game site?”

“It’s not a game. But if anyone asks you about the Society, it’s okay to pretend that it’s just some whack-job website. Lot of those online.”

“How do you know all this stuff?”

“Because I’ve got a little talent, too.”

“Yeah? Prove it. Tell me what I’m thinking. Or better yet, let’s see you fly up into the air.”

Slade smiled. “There’s no such thing as mind-reading or levitation, although I know an illusion-talent who could make you believe that both are possible. We’re not talking superhero abilities. We’re talking psychic sensitivities and, sometimes, the ability to manipulate some of the energy in the ultralight regions of the spectrum.”