Burning Lamp (37 page)

Griffin felt oddly stunned. “
Houseguests
?”

“Arcane has a small office on the East Coast but Gabe feels it’s past time that we paid attention to the rest of the country, especially the West. He wants me to study the situation there and devise some long-term plans for setting up additional branches of the Society as well as regional offices for Jones and Jones
.
”

Griffin looked at Adelaide. She smiled at him through the open window of the carriage. Entertaining houseguests was one of the things that normal, married people did, he thought.

“I’m sure we’ll be able to find room for you and Mrs. Jones,” he heard himself say.

“Excellent. In that case, plan on seeing us on your doorstep in a few weeks.”

Griffin smiled. “I’ll do that.”

He went down the steps and got into the carriage. Jed flicked the reins. On the other box, Leggett did the same. The two vehicles set off down the street.

“What were you and Mr. Jones discussing a moment ago?” Adelaide asked. “You had a rather strange expression.”

“Jones and his wife are planning to visit San Francisco in a few weeks. They’ll be staying with us.”

“Of course they will,” Adelaide said. “They are practically family, after all.”

“I wouldn’t go that far.”

She laughed.

He pulled her off the seat and into his arms. “What you and I will build together will be a real family.”

“Yes,” she said.

He was aware of the dark energy of the artifact leaking out of one of the trunks on the roof of the carriage. The paranormal forces infused into the artifact were forever linked to him. The connection to the lamp was in his blood and could not be denied. But the bright, strong love he shared with the woman of his dreams was far more powerful than the dangerous currents trapped in the Burning Lamp, more powerful than any curse.

“I love you, Adelaide,” he said.

“I love you, Griffin, with all my heart.”

He was holding his future in his arms, Griffin thought. He would hang on to what was his.

 

 

 

The lady from Jones & Jones looked very good in black leather.

Adam Winters waited for Marlowe Jones in the shadows of the ancient ruins. He had heard the trademark growl of the big Raleigh-Stark motorcycle for almost a full minute before the bike rounded the last curve of the narrow, winding road. Sound carried in the mountains.

The nightmares and hallucinations that had struck a few weeks ago had destroyed his sleep. He was living on the edge of exhaustion these days, fighting off the worst of the effects with short bouts of edgy rest, a lot of caffeine, and a little psi. But in spite of the toll the change had taken on him, a surge of exhilaration coursed through him when the newly appointed director of the Frequency City offices of J&J brought the bike to a stop and derezzed the engine.

She was close enough now for him to feel the power in her aura. Her energy sang a siren song to his senses. Too bad she was a Jones. He would just have to work around that awkward fact.

She kicked down the stand with a leg clad in leather chaps, planted one booted foot on the ground, and raised the faceplate of the gleaming black helmet.

“Adam Winters,” she said.

It was not a question. He was the new boss of the Frequency City Ghost Hunters Guild. Anyone who had bothered to glance at a newspaper or watch the evening news in the past month could recognize him.

“You’re late, Miss Jones,” he said. He did not move out of the quartz doorway.

“I made a few detours.” She unfastened the helmet and removed it. Her hair was the color of dark amber. It was caught in a ponytail at the nape of her neck and secured with a black leather band. “Wanted to be sure I wasn’t followed.”

He watched her, trying to conceal his fascination. Objectively speaking, she certainly qualified as attractive, but she lacked the bland symmetry of real beauty. Marlowe Jones did not need a cover model’s looks to rivet the eye, however. She was striking. There was no other word to describe the strength, intelligence, and passion that illuminated her features. Her eyes were a deep, mysterious shade that bordered on blue, almost violet.
The color of midnight,
he thought.
Midnight and dreams
.

And just where in hell had that poetic image come from? He really needed to get more sleep.

She was watching him now with those enthralling, knowing eyes. Energy shivered in the atmosphere. He knew that she was checking him out with her talent. Everything inside him got a little hotter in response to the stimulation of her psi.

When she had called him that morning to request the clandestine meeting, she had explained, in passing, that she was a dreamlight reader. She had no way of knowing just how much that information had stunned him.

A small chortling sound distracted him. For the first time he noticed the passenger on the bike. A small, scruffy-looking creature studied him from the leather saddlebag with a pair of deceptively innocent baby blue eyes. A studded leather collar was draped around its neck, half buried in the fluffy, spiky cotton-candy fur.

“You brought a dust bunny?” Adam asked.

“This is Gibson,” Marlowe said. She held out her arm to the dust bunny.

Gibson chortled again and bounced out of the saddlebag and up the length of her arm to perch on the shoulder of her leather jacket. He blinked his baby blues at Adam.

“Didn’t know they made good pets,” Adam said.

“They don’t. Gibson and I are a team. Different relationship altogether.”

“Looks like you’ve got a collar on him.”

“The folks at the gear shop where I buy my leathers made it for him. Gibson likes studs. He takes it off when he wants to play with it.”

People, even smart, savvy people like Marlowe Jones, could be downright weird about their pets, Adam reminded himself. Then again, being a Jones, she was bound to be a little different anyway. Not that he had any room to criticize. During the past few weeks he had become pretty damn weird himself.
Always Nice to start off with something in common,
he thought.

“I’ll take your word for it,” he said. “So, you were worried about being followed?”

“I thought it best not to take any chances,” she said, very serious.

He got the feeling that she did very serious a lot. For some reason that amused him. “Sounds like you’re as paranoid as all the other Joneses who ever ran a branch of J-and-J.”

“It’s a job requirement. But I prefer to think of it as being careful.” Her voice was rich, assured, and infused with a slightly husky quality that heated his senses like a shot of good brandy. The edgy thrill of anticipation that he had experienced when he’d taken her call early that morning became crystalline certainty.

She’s the one,
he thought.

This was the first time he had met Marlowe Jones in person, but something deep inside him recognized and responded to her. He knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that this was the woman he had been searching for these past few weeks.

As fate would have it, in the end she had found him. That was probably not a good sign. She was potentially a lot more dangerous than the people who had been trying to kill him lately. But somehow that did not seem to matter much at the moment. Maybe a few weeks of sleep deprivation had started to impact his powers of logic and common sense.

“I wasn’t criticizing the paranoia,” he said. “I’m a Guild boss. I consider paranoia to be a sterling virtue.”

“Right up there with frequent hand washing?”

“I was thinking more along the lines of obsessive suspicion and a chronic inability to trust.”

“Which explains why you got here early,” she said. She surveyed the heavily wooded forest that surrounded them. “You wanted to check out the terrain. Make sure you weren’t walking into a trap.”

“It seemed a reasonable precaution under the circumstances. I have to admit, I got nervous after I discovered that these ruins are situated over a vortex.”

She looked skeptical. “Can’t picture you nervous.”

“Everyone knows standard resonating amber doesn’t work underground in the vicinity of vortex energy. Even the strongest ghost hunter can’t pull any ghost fire when he’s standing on top of that kind of storm.”

“I am well aware that Guild men don’t like to go anywhere near a vortex,” she said.

“It’s like asking a cop to leave his gun at the door. After I arrived it struck me that if I were inclined to take out a ghost hunter, I’d sure like to lure him to a vortex site.”

“If you were really that worried, you wouldn’t have stuck around.”

He smiled. “Guess I’m more trusting than I look.”

She eyed his smile with a dubious expression. “Somehow I doubt that.”

At that moment Gibson chattered enthusiastically and tumbled down from Marlowe’s shoulder to the ground. He hopped up on the toe of Adam’s boot and stood on his hind paws. There was more chortling.

“He wants you to pick him up,” Marlowe said. “He likes you. That’s a good sign.”

“Yeah? Of what?”

She gave a small, graceful shrug. “Never mind. Just a figure of speech.”

Like hell,
he thought. The dust bunny’s reaction to him was important to her. When he leaned down to scoop up Gibson, the hair on the nape of his neck stirred. The heightening of energy in the atmosphere was unmistakable.

“See anything interesting?” he asked, straightening.

Marlowe blinked, frowning a little, as though she did not like the fact that he had realized that she was using her talent.

“How did you know?” she asked.

He plopped the dust bunny on his shoulder. “When it comes to talent, it takes one to know one.”

She walked toward him, her boots crunching on the rough ground. “When I spoke with you this morning, I explained that I’m a dreamlight reader.”

“Yes, you did. Not often I get a call from the head of J-and-J. Can’t remember the last time, in fact.”

“Your family hasn’t had much connection with Arcane since the Era of Discord,” she said.

“According to the legends, things have always been somewhat rocky between our two clans.”

“I’m hoping we can put the old history behind us today,” she said.

“Hard to do when there’s so damn much of it. How did you get the job as the head of Arcane’s Frequency office of J-and-J? Your predecessors at the agency were mostly chaos-theory talents of one kind or another, weren’t they?”

To his surprise, she flushed a little as if she’d taken the comment as a personal affront.

“Yes,” she said. “Most of them were chaos- theory talents. But it turns out that the ability to read dreamlight is also a very useful talent for an investigator.”

She was definitely on the defensive. Interesting.

“I’m sure it is,” he said.

Wistful regret came and went in her expression. “Besides, it’s not like the old days. Things have been very quiet for J-and-J since the Era of Discord. Mostly we handle routine private investigations for members of the Society. I’ve been on the job for nearly three months and I haven’t had to deal with a single rogue psychic. It’s not like there’s not a lot of competition out there. Anyone with a little sensitivity thinks he can go into business as a psychic PI.”

“The glory days of J-and-J are in the past, is that it?”

“That’s certainly what everyone in Arcane says.”

“You think that’s why they put you in charge,” he said. “Arcane doesn’t need high-end chaos-theory talents running J-and-J these days, so they went with a dreamlight reader.”

Her brows snapped together. “I didn’t come here to discuss my career path.”

“So why all the secrecy?”

“I’m afraid that you are not going to be happy to hear what I have to tell you.”

“Believe it or not, I figured that out about a second and a half after you informed me that you wanted to hold this meeting in the middle of nowhere. Speaking of which, why don’t you come inside the gate?”

For the first time she seemed to realize that he had not emerged from the shadows of the narrow opening in the green quartz wall. She looked puzzled, but she walked through the gate and stopped just inside the ancient compound.

The design of the ruins followed the pattern that had characterized most of the other outposts built by the long- vanished aliens. The only feature that distinguished it was the fact that it had been constructed over a vortex. Then again, Adam thought, unlike humans the aliens probably hadn’t had any problems with vortices. Their paranormal senses had been far more powerful than those of the descendants of the colonists from Earth. On the other hand, the humans had survived, he reminded himself. The aliens were long gone.

A high, fortresslike wall marked the perimeter of the compound. The handful of graceful towers inside the barricades were windowless. Narrow openings provided access to the various buildings, but it was obvious that the former inhabitants had not been keen on sunlight and fresh air, at least not the kind that was available aboveground.

Like the vast majority of the other ruins left by the long-vanished people who had first colonized Harmony, everything in the compound from the protective outer wall to the smallest building had been constructed of solid psi-green quartz. Even the ground was covered with a thick layer of the stone.

The quartz was impervious to everything the human colonists had thrown at it. Heavy construction equipment could not put a dent in the stone. Fire had no effect. Neither did the most violent storms. A bullet from a mag-rez gun could not even chip it.

Nothing grew on or within the walls or around the outside perimeter. The structures had stood for aeons, but there was no moss, no creeping vines, no vegetation on any of the emerald surfaces. The same went for animal life. No insects or snakes had ever invaded the sites that had been discovered to date. Even the rats stayed clear.