St Helens 01 Amaryllis

by Jayne Castle

  "Dear God." Amaryllis sank deeper into the sofa.

  "Afterward I tidied up and came home alone," Irene said. "It was the saddest day of my life, but I felt good about it. I knew I had done the right thing."

  "And the authorities never questioned Landreth's accident," Lucas said.

  "It all went very smoothly," Irene assured him. "Most things do if one organizes them properly."

  "You mean it went smoothly until Amaryllis started asking questions," Lucas said.

  Irene glared at Amaryllis with accusing eyes. "A most unfortunate turn of events. A bit of bad luck that I could not have anticipated. Your encounter with Sheffield while he was focusing in what you considered an unethical manner led you back to the Department of Focus Studies."

  "You knew that questions about a Landreth-trained prism focusing in an unethical manner for a powerful politician could lead to questions and speculation," Amaryllis whispered.

  Irene sighed. "Eventually that speculation would have led to questions about the professor's death. It was inevitable because you were bound to realize that you had uncovered a possible murder motive. It was the wrong motive and the wrong suspect, of course, but your persistence could have led you to me."

  "Why did you send me to Vivien?"

  "I tried to nip the whole thing in the bud by demonstrating to you that Jonathan Landreth was not worthy of your loyalty. I thought perhaps you'd let the entire matter drop once you realized what he was."

  "You sent me to talk to Vivien of the Veils thinking that I would be shocked and disgusted when I learned about her relationship with Professor Landreth." Amaryllis gritted her teeth as power spiked on the psychic plane. "You thought I'd drop my investigation into his death because he was seeing a syn-sex stripper?"

  "If you had possessed a proper sense of values, you would have done so. You'd have understood that Jonathan's death was nothing less than what he deserved. He had consorted with a creature of low morals. Justice had been done."

  Rage flashed through Amaryllis. "You have no right to condemn poor Vivien for her morals. Yours are a lot lower than hers ever were. You're a murderer."

  The rush of talent energy dimmed. Hope sparked in Amaryllis. But as her own red-hot anger receded, Irene's crude power surged once more.

  Irene shook her head. "I thought you and I had a great deal in common, Miss Lark. I believed your standards to be as high as my own. You seemed like such a nice young lady. Obviously I was mistaken."

  Lucas shifted slightly on the sofa. "When you realized that Amaryllis intended to continue pushing for answers, you took another step. You tried to point the finger at Gifford Osterley. He had a motive, after all. Everyone knew that he and Landreth had quarreled."

  "When Miss Lark inquired about the appointments Jonathan had made on the last day of his life, it occurred to me that it might be useful to bring that dreadful Gifford Osterley into the picture," Irene agreed.

  Fury erupted like a geyser inside Amaryllis. And again she thought she detected a slight weakening of Irene's energy flow. "You set out to frame Gifford. You wrote down that three o'clock appointment in Professor Landreth's calendar."

  "After all these years, it was a simple matter to imitate his handwriting," Irene said.

  Lucas watched her intently. "But you changed your mind about framing Osterley. You set Madison Sheffield up for the fall, instead. Why the switch? I thought you were a big fan of his."

  Irene's eyes blazed. "I discovered that Madison Sheffield was no better than Jonathan."

  "How?" Lucas asked.

  "Natalie Elwick," Amaryllis said.

  "Indeed." Irene's mouth tightened. "Gifford Osterley's secretary is an old acquaintance of mine. We worked together for years before she left the department to manage Unique Prisms' new office. She confided to me that Sheffield demanded only beautiful, young, female prisms who were willing to sleep with him as part of their services. He got some sort of perverted sexual thrill out of it, Natalie said."

  "No wonder Gifford was worried about having his firm dragged any deeper into the investigation," Lucas said softly. "He's running a full-spectrum call girl operation."

  "Can you believe it?" Irene's voice rose. "Madison Sheffield was the Founders' Values candidate. The next governor of this city-state. He would have been president if I hadn't stopped him."

  "So you decided to destroy his career by framing him for Vivien's death," Lucas said.

  "I had already planned to punish the syn-sex stripper. She was the one who led Jonathan astray, after all. I could not allow her to live. But I had not yet finished organizing the arrangements for her death when everything started to fall apart."

  "Because Amaryllis started asking questions," Lucas said.

  "She was a threat to all of my plans." Irene tightened both hands on the grip of the gun.

  "Professor Landreth had no file on Sheffield, did he?" Amaryllis managed tightly. "You created it as part of your plan to dispose of Vivien, me, and Sheffield in one neat package."

  Lucas looked at Irene. "You left that phony file, half-burned, in Vivien's dressing room after you killed her."

  "I singed it just enough to make it appear that Sheffield had tried to destroy blackmail evidence," Irene said. "I thought it was a nice touch."

  "What did you tell Sheffield to get him to Vivien's dressing room that night?"

  "I was with Vivien when she placed the calls to both you and Sheffield. I held a gun on her and forced her to read the script I had prepared before I killed her."

  "The guard," Amaryllis said. "How did you get rid of the stage door guard?"

  "I paid a street person to offer the man a bribe to leave his post for an hour. Really, one simply cannot get reliable help these days."

  "You planned to kill me after I discovered Vivien's body. You waited for me in the hall outside her dressing room, didn't you? You wanted it to appear that Madison Sheffield had shot both me and Vivien."

  "That was the way I had organized it, but you ruined that plan, too."

  "How dare you?" Amaryllis's anger soared above the psychic pain. The energy gushing through the Prism slowed discernibly.

  Out of the corner of her eye she saw Lucas glance at her. She knew that he had sensed that Irene's grip had wavered for a instant. He was a detector, after all. And he was very powerful. He had demonstrated before that he had enough control of his own talent to marshal it for brief flashes of energy.

  Irene frowned. "Why did you go back into Vivien's dressing room that night? Why didn't you run for the stage door entrance after you discovered her body? I was sure you would dash for help. I had turned out the corridor lights so that you wouldn't see me. I knew that you would be silhouetted against the light from the dressing room. A clear target. But you leaped back and slammed the door before I could pull the trigger. Why? Why?"

  "I felt you." Amaryllis sat very still on the edge of the sofa. "I sensed your talent sputtering like oil in a frying pan. You were not in full control of it."

  "That's not true," Irene hissed. "I am in full control of my talent at all times."

  "You must have been nervous that night," Amaryllis whispered. "Not surprising, given the fact that you had just committed murder and intended to kill again."

  "You're wrong. My talent is always under my complete control." Irene's voice rose. "But you upset all my plans when you didn't come out into the hall. I was trying to decide what to do next when Madison Sheffield arrived. He was the one who was nervous. It was his talent you felt leaping about out like . . . like hot oil."

  "Later, yes, when I was hiding from him in the backstage tunnels. But not at first." Amaryllis forced a derisive smile. "At first, it was you, and you were definitely out of control."

  "No, it was Sheffield," Irene shouted. "It must have been him. He's weak."

  The energy pouring through the prism shimmered and slowed. A human being had only so much power of any kind on which to draw, Amaryllis reminded herself. Irene's rage had briefly siphoned off e
nergy from her psychic efforts. Not enough to allow Amaryllis to break free, but enough to give her hope.

  Somewhere in the distance, at the very edge of her awareness, she sensed Lucas's talent stirring. It prowled there in the shadows, a psychic beast of prey watching for an opening.

  "Sheffield never even noticed me in the darkness." Irene calmed herself with a visible effort. "For a terrible moment I thought everything had gone wrong. I was afraid that when he was unable to find the hall lights, he would turn and run back out into the alley. Instead, he used the glow of that ridiculous star on Vivien's door to guide him. Foolish man. He was too scared to turn back. Vivien had told him on the phone that she had information that could damage his campaign, you see."

  "When he went into the dressing room and turned on the light, you went out through the stage door entrance," Lucas concluded. "And then you locked the alley door so that Sheffield would be forced to wander blindly around the backstage tunnels looking for another way out."

  "I knew that sooner or later he would blunder into someone who would recognize him," Irene said. "And then the body and the file would be found, and everything would be neat and orderly again. It was true that Amaryllis would not be dead as I had intended, but I thought that surely she would stop asking questions once Sheffield was arrested for murder. Surely that would satisfy her."

  Amaryllis stared at Irene while she fought the psychic pain. "But the day before I left the city to visit my family, I told you I wasn't satisfied and I had a few more questions."

  "You had become obsessive," Irene raged. "It was obvious that you were never going to quit. I understood then that nothing would stop you. You would continue to poke and pry until eventually you stumbled onto the truth. It has become clear to me that both you and Mr. Trent must die. Then things will be tidied up at last. Everything will be back under control."

  "It's too late for everything to be made neat and orderly." Amaryllis summoned every ounce of emotion she could find: righteous anger at the grave injustices that Irene had perpetrated; fear for Lucas's life and her own; and love. The love she had for Lucas was more powerful than the other emotions combined. She would not let him die. She had to save him.

  For some reason, she suddenly recalled the visit to Elizabeth Bailey. Some walls were too high to climb. But there were other ways around them.

  Irene must be distracted so that Lucas could act. The easiest way to divert the attention of a high-class talent was to force her to use more power. Extreme power required extreme concentration.

  Amaryllis consciously tore down the civilized barriers of self-control that had been built up over a lifetime. A flood of emotion and passion poured through her. She fed the fierce feelings of the moment with all the stored anger, righteous indignation, and sheer determination she had ever known. And then she threw in the will to survive and to save Lucas.

  A witch's brew boiled through her bloodstream, a heady, intoxicating drug that affected everything, even events on the psychic plane.

  The focus shifted and dimmed.

  Irene fought back, using more energy to hold the link. Amaryllis screamed silently as the bands of talent brightened visibly. Then she forced Irene to use more power.

  "Stop it." The gun trembled in Irene's hands. "Stop this this instant, do you hear me? You'll only burn yourself out you keep it up."

  Burning out would be a blessing, but Amaryllis sensed that might not happen, at least not in time. She braced herself against the mounting fear of being driven insane am concentrated on what she had to do.

  "What's the matter, Irene?" she said. "Afraid you'll be the one to burn out first? Professor Landreth had a theory that it was possible to actually destroy a talent this way. Did he ever tell you about it?"

  "That's a lie. You can't destroy my talent." Irene took a step closer. "I'm too strong for you. Jonathan said I was too strong for him. I was too strong for my husband. I'm stronger than any talent who ever lived. That's why everything must be organized, don't you see? That's why I must be in control."

  "But you're not in control, are you, Irene? You're crazy."

  "No."

  Lucas moved slightly again. But Amaryllis knew that as. long as Irene had the gun aimed at her, he would feel pinned down. Irene could not miss at this close distance.

  Amaryllis closed her eyes against the rising tide of pain. And then she deliberately fed the pain into the fiery river that flowed through ever vein and artery in her body.

  Her muscles went rigid. There was a prickling sensation on her skin. Her mouth was as dry as dust. But she knew that Irene was finally beginning to realize how great the price of control over the focus link would be.

  She wondered when Irene would lose it altogether and pull the trigger.

  The icy wind howled across the psychic plane. It was as strong as the violent talent that had seized control of the link. A dark fog gathered.

  Amaryllis was astonished to see Professor Landreth in the mist. His head was a gory horror. He was covered in blood. She opened her mouth to ask him what he was doing in her living room.

  Irene screamed. "No, you're dead. You're dead."

  There was a roar of sound in Amaryllis's ears. More screaming. High, shrill, it seemed to go on forever.

  At the edge of her fading vision Amaryllis saw Lucas come up off the sofa in a fluid, lethal movement.

  The talent that had surged so steadily and so painfully through the prism was cut off abruptly. Amaryllis was suddenly free. The abrupt release was too much for her overloaded system. An endless wave of unconsciousness rolled toward her.

  She slipped headfirst into the waiting darkness. The last thing she saw was a river of blood coursing across the carpet. She wondered vaguely whose it was.

  Chapter 20

  "Irene Dunley, psychic vampire." Clementine propped one hip on the edge of Amaryllis's hospital bed and shook her head in wonder. "Who would have believed it?"

  "Sort of takes the romance out of the whole psychic vampire thing, doesn't it?" Byron said. "Irene Dunley doesn't quite fit the image. Not exactly the lethally elegant, sophisticated, world-weary type. I wonder if Orchid Adams will change genres when she learns about this. Maybe she'll decide to write mysteries or Western Islands adventure tales instead of psychic vampire romance."

  "She's not going to hear the truth about Irene Dunley from us." Amaryllis lounged against a mountain of pristine, white pillows and glowered at both of her visitors. "And neither is anyone else. We all agreed that the fewer people who know about this, the better. The police are satisfied that Irene was a nutcase who murdered her lover when she discovered that he had a relationship with a syn-sex stripper."

  "Hey, sure, no problem," Byron said quickly. "Staid secretary murders lover and then kills syn-sex stripper. Big-time politician gets caught up in the mess and campaign falls apart. End of story."

  "Exactly," Amaryllis said. "We certainly don't need Nelson Burlton doing a lot of cheap, tabloid-style stories about psychic vampires on the ten o'clock news. It would only make people nervous about high-class talents."

  Clementine grinned. "Kind of a shame not to let Burlton have the story. Just think what he could do with it."

  "The first person who calls Burlton answers to me," Lucas growled from the doorway.

  Amaryllis turned her head to look at him. It was the first time she had seen him since the police had hustled both of them off to the emergency room the previous night.

  Lucas smiled at her. He had a fistful of yellow rose-orchids in one hand. His other arm was in a sling.

  "Whatever you say, Trent." Clementine held up a copy of the New Seattle Times to display the headlines. "Local Prism Solves Murder." "This is the best press Psynergy, Inc. has had in years. It's going to do amazing things for the bottom line."

  "I wonder what would have happened if Amaryllis had not gone to that reception with you that night, Mr. Trent." Byron looked thoughtful. "If the two of you hadn't accidentally detected Sheffield while he was working t
he room with his focused charm and charisma, none of the rest would have come to light."

  Amaryllis shook her head. "No, the truth would have eventually surfaced, one way or another. Irene was getting crazier by the day. When she killed Professor Landreth, she murdered the only person who could help her control her talent. She had already planned to murder Vivien, and when she learned about Sheffield's penchant for sleeping with his prism, she was determined to take him down, too. Eventually she would have gone too far."

  "Yeah, but how many more people would have died before she committed a mistake and finally got caught?" Byron said.

  "Hmm." Clementine propped her square jaw on her hand. "I wonder if Psynergy, Inc. should put more of an emphasis on security work. I'd hate to lose the momentum here."

  "If Psynergy, Inc. goes into the security business in a big way, I can guarantee that you'll have one less employee," Lucas said grimly. "Amaryllis will be looking for another job. My nerves can't take any more of her investigations."

  "Now, Lucas, don't get excited," Amaryllis murmured.

  "I'm not the one lying in a hospital bed." Lucas crossed the room, bent down, and kissed her. "You're the one who's supposed to be resting." He handed her the flowers. "How are you feeling?"

  "Fine." She sniffed the yellow rose-orchids. "In fact, I'm going to get sprung from this joint today."

  "You're sure you're ready to come home?"

  "More than ready. I was just suffering from temporary shock and exhaustion. You were the one who took the bullet."

  "Yeah, well, you may not want to rush home," Lucas said. "Your uncle called an hour ago. He said that he and your aunt are driving into the city today to find out, and I quote, just what in the five hells is going on."

  Amaryllis grimaced. "I was afraid of that."

  Byron glanced at Lucas with interest. "What will happen to Irene Dunley?"

  Lucas looked down at Amaryllis. "The doctor says they're processing paperwork to commit her to a mental institution."

  "No trial?" Clementine was obviously disappointed.