Emma Holly (23 page)

"Differently how?"

"You'd have to stop calling yourself stupid, for one thing. You'd have to stop thinking of yourself as a mess. You are a quantum being, Charity. That means you contain all possibilities, including the possibility of being wonderful."

"Uch," she exclaimed with an intensity of disgust that took him aback. "That's positive-thinking crap. My mother was always doing that stuff, and let me tell you, it didn't work at all."

"Are you sure?" he said. "Maybe she wasn't actually—"

"I do it myself," she interrupted angrily. "Despite knowing it's a bunch of hooey. 'Don't be late,' I tell myself. 'Don't be late.' And am I ever on time? I don't think so. Instead, I'm the Queen of Late."

"Unnaturally late?" he said, his heart picking up a beat.

"Huh?"

"What you say to yourself is only part of the equation. Where your true belief lies, where you direct your emotional energy, matters most. Wolfgang Pauli—he was a Nobel prize—winning physicist—and psychologist Carl Jung collaborated on this very theme. They concluded that the emotional component of thought—love, grief, fear—packs more of a wallop than thought alone. It is our emotions that cut through the sea of probability waves, collapsing them into what we experience as reality. If you fear a thing too intensely—like being late—you may well bring it to pass."

"Come on. Just because the guy won a prize doesn't mean—"

"Isn't it true you're late more often than seems statistically possible? Aren't you late even when you've done everything a reasonable person would in order to be on time? Doesn't it occasionally seem as if the universe is in league against your success?"

"I—"

Her confusion was priceless, the way her expression telegraphed how precisely he had hit the nail on the head. He smiled to himself, knowing he had her now.

"I use these methods," he said quietly. "No one understands how, time after time, I come up with solutions other brilliant people miss. I understand, though: I do it because I believe I can. Emotionally, I feel as if I have the answer before I do."

"But you're a genius," she said, her objection weak. "That's what geniuses do. They think up smart stuff."

"If you knew more geniuses, you'd know that wasn't the case. Some of us are virtually useless." He brushed his fingers down her dove-soft cheek. "Just say it for me once: 'I am a quantum being, and I might be wonderful.' "

She threw up her hands. "Fine. I am a quantum being and, who knows, in some alternate universe, I might be wonderful."

He chuckled at her idea of compliance. "All right. I'm less than dazzled, but you can progress from this starting point."

He offered her his arm. With a grimace, she took it and began to walk beside him again. Triumph made his steps as light as air. Her next comment didn't bother him in the least.

"You have got to be the strangest genius there ever was."

"I've heard that before."

"I bet you have. Of course, since I like you anyway, it could be my taste in men isn't as sucky as I thought."

"Now
that's
an improvement."

"I wasn't doing anything!"

"Yes, you were." He was enjoying himself too much to hide his glee. "Face it, Charity. You can't stop the process now. The moment you said the words, your life began to change."

B.G.
Grantham was a freaking Svengali.

Without any assistance, Charity made it to lunch on time, where she participated in a conversation about world events. The meal was once again just the three of them, and B.G. and Eric were knowledgeable.

All the same, not once did she betray her ignorance. Whatever topic came up, it seemed she had, coincidentally, happened to pay attention to it on the news. Facts that usually escaped her popped into her mind.

It was enough to make a pessimist eat her hat.

At one point, B.G. winked at her grumpy expression. "First flush of success," he said. "Keep it up."

Because Eric squinted at him, perplexed, she assumed B.G. hadn't told him about their experiment. She was tempted to deny she'd done anything but was too embarrassed to bring it up.

Besides, she had to admit she'd enjoyed not looking dopey for once.

To add insult to noninjury, even though she dawdled and refused to watch the clock, she was early for the appointment B.G. had scheduled for her with Sylvia. Considering how awkward she felt about seeing the masseuse after their woodland encounter, her punctuality was perverse.

"Bastard put a hex on me," she mumbled under her breath.

Hexes seemed like perfectly rational explanations with the weird pyramid room rising around her. The walls followed the shape of the underside of a flight of steps, with subdued modern lighting beneath each rank. The glow increased the strange atmosphere. Eric's boss sure liked his surroundings exotic.

When Sylvia arrived to set up her table, her disposition wasn't any sunnier than Charity's. In short order, Charity learned B.G. had talked with the masseuse since morning, ordering her to perform her duties without "extras."

"You'd have thought walking up on you was a crime," she huffed as she pushed her magical hands up the slope of Charity's back. The oil she used smelled like jasmine tea. It amazed Charity that a person as uptight as Sylvia could make someone else mellow. "He didn't even listen when I said it was an accident."

"His decision might be temporary," Charity said. "He doesn't seem like the kind of person to hold a grudge."

"He's a boss," Sylvia declared, as if she hadn't nearly cried when he sent her away. "Not to mention a man. Give him a taste of power, let him discover a few secrets, and he forgets all about the little folks.

You and I have to stick together, Charity. Bigwigs like B.G. Grantham can't be trusted to care about us."

Charity wasn't sure she agreed, but because Sylvia was doing something spine-meltingly marvelous to the back of her legs, she didn't waste energy on debate.

"Well, he certainly won't fire you," she said into the pillow of her forearms. "He'd never find another pair of hands like yours."

"Hah!" said Sylvia, but the bark sounded satisfied.

When
Eric found B.G., he was in his private suite. He barely turned at Eric's entrance, his attention occupied by a delivery from his personal shopper that was spread across his French-style, four-poster bed. Considering all the people on B.G.'s payroll, he never had to leave Mosswood. Everything he wanted came to him. With an inner nudge of worry, Eric realized he couldn't recall the last time his boss had traveled off the grounds. That couldn't be good. B.G. used to go out at least once a month.

True, B.G. seemed perfectly content. Maybe this sudden worry was nothing but Eric stalling. He couldn't help his reluctance to share Dana's news—not when it threatened to disrupt their latest game.

Whatever the conflict in his feelings for their guest, Eric didn't want their play cut short.

"What do you think of this dress for Charity?" B.G. asked, lifting a brocaded cream-and-gold sleeveless sheath from a tumble of pink tissue.

It was a fancy thing—stiff and shaped by darts, suitable for anything from the theater to dinner at an embassy. The tailoring combined sexiness and class in one package. B.G. was often eerily intuitive, so Eric shouldn't have been surprised, but this was exactly the sort of dress he pictured Charity wearing in his fantasies.

He struggled to answer casually. "I think Charity brought her own clothes."

"Yes, but she didn't pack any similar to the outfit you picked for her. I know you like that ladylike retro look." B.G. turned from the bounty on the bed with a long, flat box balanced on one palm. Lifting the lid revealed a length of cream-colored satin. "Raoul tells me evening gloves are back in style. I think I'd enjoy seeing Charity in these myself."

Eric would enjoy it, too, especially if he stripped her down to nothing but.

"Dana called," he said abruptly. "There's been some trouble at her office."

B.G. set the glove box behind him, suitably serious. Dana would probably be surprised—and vaguely offended—to discover her old nemesis bore her no ill will. "Is she all right?" he asked. "Can I do anything to help?"

With a sigh, Eric related his sister's conversation. To his dismay, his boss was not as surprised as he should have been.

"Central Intelligence Agency?" B.G. mused. "I don't know anyone who works for them."

"But you do know what they're concerned about?"

"I
might
know," B.G. clarified. "But if it's what I think, they're wasting their time. No more than a dozen people in the world would even suspect I'm working on this project. You know how I am about security."

Eric knew. He also knew no system was foolproof. "Even the White House has leaks."

"There's nothing to leak. Thus far, the results of my research have been unpredictable, impossible to replicate, and are—as far as I can see—bereft of practical applications."

B.G. looked so frustrated by this, Eric couldn't doubt he believed what he said. Hoping he was right, he put his hand on B.G.'s arm. "They're not investigating you over nothing. They're not afraid you might be a traitor because they believe whatever this is has no practical use."

"I hope
you
know I'm not a traitor."

"Of course I do." Eric touched B.G.'s mournful face. "I trust you to protect this country's interests—hell, this world's interests—more than anyone I could name. That doesn't mean I think your safeguards, however good, are impossible to crack. Human error is always a factor, as is human curiosity. Rumors

get around, B.G., even among scientists."

"Especially among scientists," B.G. said with a muffled laugh. Despite his amusement, he seemed a little startled by the strength of Eric's faith in him. "I'll give the security team a heads-up. Have them nose around the staff, maybe double-check Dave Massey's profiles for our last few guests. If they find anything, I'll call your sister myself."

The crooked grin that accompanied this offer said B.G. had at least a suspicion of Dana's attitude.

Charity
wasn't late, but she was lost. Though she'd found the pyramid room just fine, reversing the directions was a bigger challenge. Now she stood in an underground passage paneled in dark wood that made her feel like she'd stumbled into Queen Elizabeth's country manse.

Had she been in a better mood, she might have marveled at the expense of shipping all this junk from ye olde England. She couldn't doubt it was the real deal. Two suits of dented armor challenged her from either side of a cold fireplace, while the head of a long-dead stag cast gloomy shadows down its mantle.

The deer's tapestry twin hung, moth-eaten, on the opposite wall. The lords and ladies who chased him displayed none of Charity's doubts about where to go. To make matters worse, the lights only turned on when she was beneath them. Charity needed to see farther to
get
her bearings.

Too bad B.G. hadn't put a quantum hex on her for this.

"It's okay," she murmured to herself, resisting the urge to curse. "Just retrace your steps. You'll be fine once you get back to halls that are lined in stone."

She bit her lip, gazing reluctantly into the darkness from which she'd come. She'd been having creepy feelings ever since leaving Sylvia—skin-crawly sensations like she'd had the first time she explored Mosswood, as if someone kept slipping just beyond her field of view. Back then she'd thought it was funny. This afternoon, she'd have been grateful for even Sylvia's company. When something skittered across the parquet ahead of her, she let out a shriek.

Mouse
, she thought through her jumping nerves. A rodent seemed preferable to most of the "anomalous phenomena" she could imagine happening in B.G.'s house. She couldn't calm herself, though she knew she was being too suggestible. No way was her supposedly freaky brain creating real monsters.

Warily, she turned back the way she'd come. If she'd had her druthers, B.G. would have been banned from sharing his theories with people like her.

She froze a second later, every cell trembling. What was that swishing noise? Didn't it sound like a dragging skirt and petticoats? B.G. said she shouldn't fear being accidentally sucked into the Middle Ages, but that didn't rule out the chance of ghosts.