Текст книги "Dream Eyes"

Автор книги: Jayne Krentz

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Six

Buddy Poole, proprietor of the Wilby General Store, leaned on the counter and peered at Gwen over the rims of gold-framed reading glasses.

“So, you took Evelyn’s cat, eh?” he said. “That’s mighty noble of you, but I’d better warn you up front Max is used to the expensive stuff. The high-end cat food, canned wild salmon and the good tuna fish. Evelyn always bought him the best—same brands that people eat. Gotta tell ya, my dogs don’t eat nearly as high on the hog as that cat.”

“He’s going to have to modify his gourmet tastes if he hangs around me,” Gwen said. “Buddy, I’d like you to meet Judson Coppersmith. He’s a friend of mine.”

“Nice to meet you,” Buddy said. He stuck out a big hand. “Welcome to Wilby. Sorry it’s such sad circumstances that bring you here.”

Judson shook hands across the counter. “Call me Judson.”

“You bet. Heard Gwen had a friend with her. You’re stayin’ over at the inn?”

“That’s right,” Gwen said. “Trisha has very kindly allowed me to keep Max in my room, but I need some cat litter and food for him. I don’t suppose you know anyone who might like a nice cat?”

“Nope. I’m a dog man, myself. Got a couple of Rottweilers that would probably view Max as a chew toy.”

The Wilby General Store had changed little in the two years that she had been away. The grocery aisles and the small fresh produce section occupied the left-hand side of the premises. Shelves and tables displaying the wares of the local artisans were arranged on the right.

Buddy Poole hadn’t changed, either, she thought. He was a sturdy, stocky man with a bushy gray beard and a receding hairline. He wore a plaid shirt and a pair of pants held up by red suspenders.

“Real shame about poor Evelyn,” Buddy said. He exhaled heavily and shook his head. “We’re all gonna miss her. She was a fixture here in Wilby.” He looked at Gwen. “Heard you were the one who found her body.”

“Word gets around fast,” Gwen said.

“In this town it does. Sorry it had to be you. I know the two of you were friends.”

“Thank you,” Gwen said. “About the cat food, I’ll go with the expensive stuff for now. I think Max has been traumatized enough. You know how cats are when you take them out of their territory.”

“Heard they don’t settle well into new surroundings,” Buddy said. “With dogs, it’s different. Long as they’re with their pack, they’re happy campers.” He bustled around the end of the counter. “You’ll be wanting the wild salmon, then. And fresh eggs. Evelyn always fed him eggs. Got a refrigerator in your room? If not, I’m sure Trisha would let you store a carton of eggs in her kitchen.”

“I’ve got one of those minibar refrigerators,” Gwen said. “There’s enough space for a half-size carton of eggs.”

“We’ll need a can opener, too,” Judson said, “and the cat litter.”

“Aisle three.” Buddy started back toward the counter with a couple of cans of salmon and the eggs.

Two people, clearly summer visitors, not locals, ambled into the store. The subtle draft created by the opening and closing of the front door sent a faint shiver of all-too-familiar music through the atmosphere. The melancholy sound iced the back of Gwen’s neck. She knew that from now on whenever she heard wind chimes, the image of Evelyn’s body lying on the carpet would drift like a ghost through her thoughts.

She saw that Judson was studying the small display of crystal wind chimes suspended from the ceiling.

“Sell a lot of those?” he asked Buddy.

“Sure do,” Buddy said. He set the cans of salmon on the counter. “Local lady named Louise Fuller makes ’em. Very popular with the tourists. Just about everyone around here has one of her little musical sculptures hanging on the front porch or somewhere inside the house. Couple of other craftspeople in Wilby make chimes, but no one makes ’em the way Louise does. The sound is unique. I sell a lot of ’em at the crafts fairs, too.”

“You’re still doing the crafts fair circuit?” Gwen asked.

“Oh, sure.” Buddy punched in numbers on the antique cash register. “I try to hit five or six a year. Lot of the craftspeople and artists here depend on the cash I bring back from those fairs. Nicole, the florist, looks after my dogs when I’m gone. You remember Nicole Hudson, Gwen?”

“I remember her,” Gwen said.

Buddy winced. “Sorry. Forgot that you and Nicole had some words after what happened out at the falls a couple of years ago.” He cleared his throat and looked up from the cash register. “Will that be all?”

“Yes,” Judson said. He fished out his wallet and put some cash on the counter.

“Wait,” Gwen said. “I was going to pay for those things.”

“We’ll settle up later,” Judson promised.

Buddy slipped the money into the till and handed back some change. He looked at Gwen above the rims of his glasses. “Don’t want to get personal, but people are saying that Oxley gave you a hard time because of what happened to Evelyn.”

“I think it’s safe to say that Chief Oxley would prefer that I leave town as soon as possible,” Gwen said. “And he’s not the only one. But it’s going to take a while to decide what to do with Evelyn’s house and her old lab.”

Buddy’s bushy brows bounced up and down a couple of times. “Also heard that the television guy Evelyn used to do some work for is back. Any idea why he’s hanging around?”

“He’s looking for more ideas for his show,” Gwen said, deliberately vague. “He left town a short time ago.” She collected the sack of cat litter, food and eggs. “Thanks, Buddy.”

“You bet.” Buddy exhaled. “Just so damn sad about Evelyn. Really gonna miss her.”

“So will I,” Gwen said.

Seven

Evelyn’s small house was huddled in the trees at the end of the road. The windows were dark, just as they had been that morning when Gwen arrived. She felt the hair lift again on the nape of her neck. A shiver went through her.

Judson eased the SUV to a stop in the drive. He sat quietly for a moment, studying the house. Energy shifted in the atmosphere. The stone in his ring heated a little.

“You feel it, too, don’t you?” she said.

He did not ask her for an explanation.

“Like a shadow over the house,” he said. “You just know something bad happened inside.”

“I knew this morning when I got here, before I even opened the door,” Gwen said.

“Yeah, it usually hits me that way, too.” He paused. “But only if serious violence was involved.”

“Same with me.” She did not take her eyes off the house. “But at least in your business you get to do something constructive. You find justice for the victims.”

“I hate to disillusion you, but most of my consulting work is—was—done for an intelligence agency. Justice wasn’t the objective.”

“What was the objective?”

“Information. I’m good at gathering that.”

She turned her head and gave him a disturbingly insightful look. “But you don’t find it very satisfying, do you?”

He hesitated. “Sometimes I think Mom was right. I should have joined the FBI.”

“So that you could hunt bad guys? But you don’t like to take orders or work as a member of a team. You and the FBI would not have been a good fit.”

“No.” He paused, frowning. “Did Sam tell you about my preference for working alone?”

“No.”

Judson’s irritation was palpable. “You can read that kind of personality trait in an aura?”

“I didn’t get that information from your aura.” She unbuckled her seat belt and opened the door. “Five minutes in your company was more than enough to reveal that aspect of your character, believe me.”

She jumped down and slammed the car door a little harder than was necessary.

* * *

JUDSON CRACKED OPEN the driver’s-side door and got out. Together they went up the steps, crossed the porch and stopped at the door.

He watched her take the key out of her tote. When she got the door open, he moved into the front hall ahead of her. Energy whispered in the atmosphere, cold and intense. She knew that he had heightened his talent.

“The electricity is still on,” she said. She stepped into the hall behind him and flipped a switch, illuminating the small space. “No need to work in the dark.”

“Which way?”

“Down the hall to your right.”

Judson moved along the hallway. “What happened to the Ballinger study?”

“Evelyn stopped it after the second member of the study group was found dead. She realized that something awful was happening, and she sensed that it was connected to her research.”

“I’m going to want to hear about the three people who died two years ago,” he said. “Especially how you came to find the bodies.”

She had known this was coming, she reminded herself. She was prepared.

“I assumed you would want the details,” she said.

He looked back over his shoulder. “Show me where you found Ballinger’s body.”

“All right, but I think I should show you this picture first.” She took a photo out of her tote and handed it to him. “I found this on the floor beside her this morning. I’m not sure what to make of it but I think it might be important.”

Judson studied the photo. “I recognize you. Who are the others?”

“It’s a group shot of the members of Evelyn’s research study. She kept it thumbtacked to her bulletin board. The fact that it had been ripped off the board and dropped on the floor bothered me for some reason.”

“Ballinger is not in the picture.”

“She was the one who took the photo. Three of the people in that picture are dead. Mary Henderson, the blonde on the left, Ben Schwartz, the man standing next to her, and Zander Taylor. Taylor is the good-looking dark-haired man in the first row.”

“You’re standing next to a serial killer.”

She shuddered. “Don’t remind me. His goal was to take us down in the order in which we were posed in the picture. It was all a game to him. He was annoyed because he had to make me his third target. He said I had interfered with the proper sequence of play.”

Judson’s eyes heated. So did his ring. “He told you that?”

“Shortly before he went over the falls. Yes.”

“All right, we’ll finish this conversation later. Let’s take a look at the scene.”

Gwen kept her talent tamped down so that she would not see the ghost in the mirror. She reached around the corner of the door frame, found the wall switch and flipped it.

Shock lanced through her when she registered the chaos inside the office. Desk drawers and cupboard doors stood open. Books had been swept off the shelves. Files had been pulled out of the metal cabinet and dumped on the floor.

“Good grief,” she whispered, stunned.

“I take it things didn’t look like this when you got here this morning?” Judson said.

“No,” she said. “Someone searched this room sometime after I left today.”

She was already tense and on edge. Her startled response to the scene in the office kicked up her talent. It was an intuitive reaction. Before she could suppress it, she was looking into the mirror.

The ghost appeared in the glass.

“Well, you knew that this was going to get a lot more complicated, didn’t you, dear?” the ghost said. “That’s why you brought along your very own psychic investigator. I must say, he looks interesting. Definitely a high-end talent. I do hope he’s competent.”

“You and me, both,” Gwen said under her breath.

“What did you say?” Judson asked.

“Nothing.” She dragged her attention away from the mirror, lowered her senses and looked at him. “Talking to myself. I do that sometimes. Bad habit.” She swept a hand out to indicate the overturned office. “What happened here?”

“I’ll go out on a limb here and say that it sure looks like someone was searching for something he expected to find in Evelyn’s office.”

“No kidding.” She paused, frowning. “Maybe the killer didn’t find whatever he was after on her computer so he came back to take another look.”

“I don’t think so.” Judson prowled deliberately through the office, stopping briefly to brush his fingertips across the top of the desk. “I think we’re dealing with someone else. Doesn’t mean there isn’t a connection between the second person and the killer, though.”

“What makes you think that there was a second person here?”

“There’s a lot of desperation and growing rage in this space. Whoever conducted the search started out with a high level of urgency and left in a frustrated fury.”

Gwen was fascinated. “You can sense all that?”

“Sure,” Judson said, “providing the emotions were laid down with a lot of intense energy as they were in this case. It’s what I do, Gwen.”

“All right, let’s think about this. If there was a second intruder, maybe he was searching for whatever was on the computer or the cell phone, in which case he didn’t find it because the killer got to the information first.”

“That’s a reasonable assumption.” Judson crouched on the floor and shuffled through the folders that had been dumped on the carpet. “Some of these files go back thirty years.”

“I told you, Evelyn devoted her life to the study of the paranormal. But in the end, she was never able to prove anything to mainstream science.”

Judson opened several folders and examined the contents. “Looks like most of her research was focused on dreams.”

“Much of it was, yes. That’s why she and I became so close. I met Evelyn when I was in high school at the Summerlight Academy. She was a counselor there, the only one who really understood my psychic side. My aura vision is linked to my lucid-dreaming ability.”

“Yeah?”

She flushed, remembering how bad things had gone that night in Seattle when she had made the mistake of offering to fix his dark dreams.

“Never mind,” she said quickly. “It’s complicated, believe me.”

“I believe you.” Judson got to his feet with the languid grace of a tiger. “You and Ballinger stayed in touch after you left Summerlight?”

“Yes.” She watched Judson move through the room. “Well? What do you think? Did Evelyn die of natural causes because of the shock of a random home invasion? Or was she murdered?”

Judson stopped in the vicinity of the space where Gwen had found Evelyn’s body. Energy heated the atmosphere.

“She was murdered,” he said quietly. “No question about it.”

Gwen thought she was prepared for that answer. It was the same conclusion that she had arrived at that morning. Nevertheless, Judson’s matter-of-fact certainty made her catch her breath.

“By paranormal means?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Damn, just like last time.” Gwen made fists with her hands. “I was hoping I was wrong.”

Judson did not respond to that. Instead, he did another short circuit of the room and stopped again near the desk.

“What?” she asked. “I can tell that something isn’t coming together for you.”

Judson met her eyes. “Ballinger died here, where I’m standing. But I’m almost positive that the killer was not physically close to her when she died. He was standing over there, near the door.”

“Oh, crap, are you sure?”

He gave her a politely patient look. “Analyzing crime scenes is what I do, Gwen.”

“Yes, I know. Sorry, it’s just that—never mind. I think I see where you’re going with this.”

“In my experience, it takes a very strong talent to overwhelm another person’s aura and stop the heart,” Judson said. “I’ve met very, very few psychics who can generate that much firepower and even fewer who can focus their talent so that it can be used as a lethal weapon. In those rare situations, the killer almost always needs to have physical contact with the victim. But there are exceptions.”

A chill feathered her senses. “Yes, I know. You think that whoever murdered Evelyn used a paranormal weapon of some kind, don’t you?”

“That’s the only explanation that works for this scenario. According to what Sam and his lab techs have discovered, psi-based weapons have to be used at fairly close range. They aren’t very powerful or accurate beyond a range of about twenty feet.”

Gwen took a long breath and let it out slowly, with control. “I’ve heard the Coppersmith R-and-D lab does research in that field.”

“Paranormal weapons have other limitations, as well. They can only be activated by someone who possesses some talent. And if they are crystal-based technology, they have to be tuned to the wavelengths of the individual who intends to use it. There are other issues, as well. Naturally occurring crystals that can be weaponized are extremely rare. Sam has tried growing them under lab conditions, but he’s had only limited success.”

Gwen wrapped her arms around herself. “Still, such weapons do exist.”

Judson met her eyes across the room. “You sound like you’ve had some personal experience.”

“Two years ago Zander Taylor used a paranormal weapon to murder Mary and Ben.”

Judson frowned. “Are you certain of that?”

“Yes,” she said. “Because he tried to use it on me, too. Now it looks like Evelyn has been killed in the same way. It’s as if Zander Taylor has come back from the grave and brought his damned camera with him.”

“What camera?”

“That’s what his dreadful device looked like, a small camera. Just point and shoot.”

Judson watched her for a long moment.

“How did you escape?”

“We were in the lab. There’s a great deal of energy in that place. Something went very wrong when Zander tried to use his camera. The device sort of exploded, I think.”

Judson gave her a politely skeptical look. “Sort of exploded?”

“It’s hard to explain. All I know is that he suddenly started screaming. He ran for the falls and jumped.”

“That’s all there was to it?”

“Pretty much.”

“You’re a damn good liar,” he said. He smiled. “I like that in a woman.”

Eight

“When did you start talking to yourself?” Judson asked.

He’d held the question back until after the waiter had brought two glasses of wine to the table. The name of the restaurant was the Wilby Café. It featured a typical Pacific Northwest menu that ran the usual gamut from salmon and Dungeness crab cakes to steak. The establishment’s most outstanding virtue in his opinion was its convenient location. The café was located within walking distance of the Riverview Inn.

He could tell his question caught Gwen off guard. That had been his intention. She was expecting to be interrogated on the subject of Zander Taylor and the camera weapon. He’d get around to that eventually but he preferred the indirect route. It was usually easier to get straight answers out of people if they didn’t see the questions coming. He’d spent enough time in Gwen’s company now to know that she had long ago learned to keep secrets.

When it came to keeping secrets, he thought, they had a lot in common.

Gwen paused, her wineglass halfway to her lips, and looked at him for a long, considering moment. He didn’t care about the delay. He could sit here and look into her eyes forever. He realized that he was still a little jacked. Not like he could shut down completely around her, he thought. Something about Gwen kept him on edge and heated his blood as well as his senses.

For a while he wondered if she was going to answer the question. She had a right to her privacy, but, damn, he wanted to know more about her. And he knew that the talking-to-herself thing was not just an old habit.

She reflected a moment longer. In the end she took a sip of wine and set the glass down very precisely on the table.

“I wasn’t talking to myself today,” she said. “I was in a waking dream, talking to Evelyn’s ghost in the mirror.”

She watched him, waiting for his reaction.

“Huh.” He ran through the possible scenarios. “The ghost is some sort of dreamstate image manifested by your intuition?”

Gwen relaxed visibly. Her eyes cleared and she smiled. “Yes. That’s exactly what happens when I see the ghosts. But it’s almost impossible to explain that to people because it sounds like I’m claiming to have visions.”

“Which is exactly what is going on, when you get right down to it.”

“Sort of, yes.” She eyed him, once again wary. “You don’t appear too freaked. Most people look at me funny when I tell them about the ghosts. My aunt said I mustn’t ever tell anyone about the visions. She said I should learn to ignore them. But after she died, I went into the foster care system. Eventually I made the mistake of confiding in a counselor. Everyone concluded that I was seriously disturbed. The next thing I knew, I landed in the Summerlight Academy. By the time I graduated, I had learned to keep my secrets, believe me.”

“When did the ghost visions start?”

“When I was about twelve. They got stronger as I went through my teens.”

“That’s about the age when Emma, Sam and I came into our talents,” he said.

“I’d see the ghosts in unexpected places, almost always on some reflective surface,” Gwen said. “The first time it was a mirror in an old antique shop. I was terrified. Somehow I knew that it was not a real ghost, but in a way, that just made the experience more unnerving.”

“Because you wondered if you were crazy.”

“For a time, yes,” she said. “So did everyone else around me. But it was Evelyn who helped me to understand that the visions are actually lucid dreams that occur when I’m awake. I can go into a lucid dream on purpose. But the energy laid down at the scenes of violence seems to trigger the ghost dreams.”

“A lucid dreamer is someone who knows when he or she is dreaming, right? The dreamer can take control of the dream.”

“Yes.” Gwen took another sip of wine. “It’s not an uncommon experience. A lot of people occasionally have lucid dreams. But in my case, the talent is linked to my psychic intuition and my ability to see auras. I’ve come to the conclusion that seeing ghosts at old murder scenes is actually just a side effect of my type of paranormal sensitivity.”

“How did you figure out that the ghosts were always at old murder scenes?”

“After the first few instances, I went online and researched the locations where I had seen the ghosts. It didn’t take long to find out that in most cases there was a record of a murder or unexplained death in the vicinity. My intuition was picking up some of the psychic residue and interpreting it as a vision of a ghost.”

“The energy laid down by violence is powerful stuff,” he said. “A lot of people are sensitive to it, even those without any measurable talent. Almost everyone has had the experience of walking into a room or a location that gives off a bad vibe.”

“I know. But in my case the reaction is a little over-the-top.”

“How bad was the Summerlight Academy?” he asked.

“I was miserable at the time, but looking back, it was the best thing that could have happened to me. I was very lonely at first and I was scared, but I soon met Abby and another talent, Nick Sawyer, there. The three of us bonded. I’m not sure why. We just did. We stuck together until we graduated, and we’re still very close. We’re family. The other good thing about Summerlight was that I met Evelyn there. She was the one who helped me deal with my talent.”

“But most of the time you use it to do your psychic counseling work.”

“I prefer living clients.” She smiled over the rim of the glass. “They pay better.”

That surprised a laugh out of him. “I can see the upside.”

She stopped smiling and wrinkled her nose. “But living clients are also incredibly frustrating. I can pick up a lot of impressions when I view their auras, but those impressions are not helpful if I can’t get context. To obtain that, I need cooperation from my clients. That isn’t always forthcoming.”

He raised his brows. “Are we, by any chance, talking about me now?”

“We are.”

“I’m not one of your clients,” he said very softly, very deliberately.

“True,” she agreed. “But that could change. I’ve got room on my schedule.”

“Not a chance in hell.”

“Fine. Be like that.” She finished off the rest of her wine and set the glass down. “Your dreams, your problem.”

“That’s how I look at it.”

“At least you’re not one of those clients who pays for dream therapy and then fails to take my advice.”

He smiled. “Does that happen a lot?”

“Oh, sure, all the time. Clients book a session, spend forty minutes telling me about their dreams to give me context, I do an analysis, put them in a trance and help them rework the dreamscape until we discover the unresolved issues involved. Then we talk about the issues and I offer advice. The clients go away and return a month later complaining about the same problems.”

“Because they didn’t follow your advice?”

“It’s very frustrating.” Gwen shook her head. “I suppose I should be grateful for the repeat business but—”

She broke off because he had started to laugh. She watched him, her eyes widening with a mix of curiosity and bemusement.

He was even more surprised by his laughter than she was. It had been a while since he’d been able to laugh like this. A couple of people at a nearby table turned to look at him.

He finally settled into an amused smile and reached for a chunk of bread.

Gwen narrowed her eyes. “What’s so funny?”

“You, the psychic counselor, wondering why people pay you for advice and then ignore the advice,” he said around a mouthful of the bread. “Talk about naive. But it’s rather sweet when you think about it.”

“Excuse me?”

“People ask for advice all the time. They go to their friends for it. They talk to virtual strangers at the gym. They pay doctors, shrinks, therapists and psychics for advice. But very few people actually take the advice unless that advice happens to be something they are already inclined to do.”

“That’s a very insightful comment.” She wrinkled her nose. “Still, it’s one thing to have a person reject my help flat-out like you did. It’s something else altogether when people pay you for expensive dream therapy and then ignore it. Do you know how disheartening that is?”

“Sure, I’m a consultant, remember? The pay is good in my line, but almost no one ever follows a consultant’s advice.”

She furrowed her intelligent brow. “I hadn’t realized that.”

“Look on the bright side: at least we both get paid for the advice we give.”

“There is that.”

The waiter put the plates of broiled salmon down in front of them and departed.

Gwen examined the salmon for a few seconds and then looked up.

“Do you think we’ll be able to find Evelyn’s killer?” she asked.

“Sure.”

“You sound very certain of that.”

He shrugged. “The case looks simple enough. It will take a while to sort out, but it’s just a matter of following up on the leads. Plenty of those.”

“I wish you had been around two years ago when Zander Taylor was stalking the people in Evelyn’s research study. Maybe he could have been stopped before he killed Ben and Mary.”

“One thing I’ve learned in the consulting business. Don’t look back. Not unless there is information in the past that can be used to figure out what is going on in the present.”

“It’s a good rule.” Gwen picked up her fork. “But in my line, I’ve learned that the past always impacts the present.”

“Yeah,” he admitted. “I’ve run up against that problem a few times, myself.”

They ate in silence for a while. He tried not to watch Gwen overtly but it was hard to take his eyes off her. It was good to be here with her, basking in her delicate feminine energy. This was what he had needed ever since he had returned from the island, he thought. Gwendolyn Frazier was the fix he craved.

“It’s usually better if you don’t ask,” she said matter-of-factly. She speared a tomato slice and ate it.

He went very still, vaguely aware that his ring was suddenly infused with a little heat.

“Better if I don’t ask what?” he said, feeling his way as cautiously as he had when he had escaped the underwater cave.

“You’re wondering what I see when I view your aura.” She munched the tomato and swallowed. “I was just warning you that it’s better not to go there.”

He had known he would have to deal with this sooner or later. She was not the type to let go.

“You do realize that you’ve left me no option,” he said. “Now I have to ask.”

“I was afraid of that. Promise you won’t get spooked?”

“I’m a talent. I take the paranormal as normal.” He forked up a mouthful of fish. “Why would I get spooked?”

“My aura readings sometimes have that effect on people, even those who accept the reality of the paranormal,” she said.

“What do you see in my aura?”

She hesitated. He could see the uncertainty in her eyes.

“Okay,” she said. “But remember that my visions involve all sorts of misleading symbols and metaphors. When I go into my talent, I essentially slip into a trance, a waking dream. Those kinds of dreams can be just as hard to interpret as regular dreams unless I have context.”

She paused to give him an encouraging smile.

“No context,” he said. “Let’s see what you can do without any hints or clues.”

She stopped smiling.

“I was afraid you were going to say that,” she said. “You don’t believe that I can actually see anything useful, do you?”

“I don’t doubt that you can see auras, and I’m convinced you’re sensitive to heavy energy like the kind laid down at crime scenes. But read my dreams? No. I don’t think anyone can do that.”

She sat quietly for a moment, her incredible eyes luminous with a little psi. Energy shivered in the atmosphere. Two men at the nearby table glanced around uneasily and then went back to their meal.

Gwen lowered her talent. Her mouth tightened at the corners. “Your aura looks the same as it did a month ago when I met you in Seattle. You’re stable. But I can tell that the dreams are getting more powerful. They aren’t nightmares—not exactly—but there is a rising sense of urgency linked to them. You’re not sleeping well, either. But there’s something else going on, too, something I can’t figure out without more context.”

He made himself put his fork down with no outward show of emotion. “Is that the best you can do? Because any storefront fortune-teller could pull that kind of analysis out of a crystal ball. Everyone has a few bad dreams from time to time.”

“I know,” she said.

Her voice had gone flat and cold. He felt like he had just stomped on a butterfly.

“I apologize,” he said. “I shouldn’t have implied that you were a storefront fortune-teller.”

“I’m aware of what the general public thinks about psychic counselors. Most people assume that we are entertainers at best and scam artists at worst.”

“I know that your talent is genuine, Gwen. I shouldn’t have said what I did. I’m sorry.”

She relaxed. “Apology accepted. Do you want me to finish telling you what I saw in your aura?”

“Sure.”

“There’s not a whole lot more to tell. It’s all that hot radiation in your dream currents that I find difficult to interpret. I’m sure it’s psi. But the ultra-light is the same color as the energy I see from time to time in your ring. Did something happen to you that involved that amber crystal? Were you caught in an explosion? A fire, maybe?”