by Jayne Castle
This past year she had tried her hand at the magic business. It seemed like the perfect career for a woman with her skill set. As it happened, however, any halfway-experienced magician could routinely make objects disappear on stage. The fact that she used psychic energy to achieve the effect did not impress anyone in show business. She was a one-trick wonder.
Still, the ability to disappear at will, along with whatever she happened to have physical contact with at the time, did have its benefits.
“Shit,” Tattoo Head yelped. He halted abruptly and stared at the place where Alice had been seconds earlier. “Where’d she go?”
“I don’t know,” Stocking Cap said. He was clearly jittery. “This is too weird. Maybe that last dose of green dust was bad, man. Gotta find a new dealer.”
“It’s not the dust,” Tattoo Head said, edging back toward the entrance of the alley. Fear shivered in the atmosphere around him. “Maybe that magic act of hers is for real. Maybe she’s a witch or something.”
“No way. Are you crazy? No such thing as a witch.”
Alice hurried toward the alley entrance. She could not remain invisible for long, not now. She had used a lot of energy on stage. Psychic energy was subject to the laws of physics, just like any other kind of energy. Use a lot of it and you needed time to recover. But she was sure she would only have to bend light for another minute or two. Stocking Cap and Tattoo Head were starting to panic.
On her shoulder Houdini chortled gleefully. The sound echoed eerily in the night. So did her footsteps and the rattle of the suitcase wheels on the pavement.
“Shit, I can hear her,” Tattoo Head said. “It’s like she’s a ghost.”
That proved too much for Stocking Cap.
“I’m getting out of here,” he said.
He whirled and fled toward the alley entrance. Tattoo Head was hard on his heels. They nearly trampled Alice in their haste. She got out of the way, hauling the suitcase to one side, and she stood with her back to the brick wall as the pair thudded past.
They did not get far. A man materialized in the shadows at the front of the narrow passage. Moving with the swift, efficient speed and agility of a specter-cat, he did something fast and ruthless to Tattoo Head and Stocking Cap. Alice could have sworn that she saw a spark of dark paranormal lightning flash in the night, but it winked out before she could be certain.
She blinked and saw Tattoo Head and Stocking Cap were on the ground. Neither moved.
The newcomer walked to where his victims lay and collected their knives. Then he crouched and went swiftly through the pockets of the unconscious men.
Just when you were convinced that a day could not get any worse, Alice thought. She stood frozen, her back to the alley wall, suddenly afraid to make any noise. She held her breath and struggled to keep the invisibility shield wrapped around herself, Houdini, and her burdens.
For his part, Houdini no longer appeared concerned. He was alert and watchful but he was back in dryer-lint mode. She was not sure what to make of that. On the one hand, it was reassuring to know that he did not sense another threat. Then again, maybe he was simply relishing the extended performance.
Evidently satisfied with his search, the man who had taken down Tattoo Head and Stocking Cap rose easily to his feet and started walking toward her.
As he came into the full glare of the alley door light, she saw that he was wearing wraparound, mirrored sunglasses.
Mirrored sunglasses. At midnight.
She just had time to realize that the stranger looked somewhat familiar before it dawned on her that he was looking directly at her.
“You must be Alice North,” he said. “Your great-grandfather and mine were partners in a seafaring business a long time ago. My name is Drake Sebastian.”
That explained a lot, she thought, including the sunglasses-at-midnight thing. The Sebastians kept a low profile, but given her personal interest in the family, she paid attention when a member of the clan occasionally appeared in a rez-screen video or in the newspapers. Drake was the heir to the corporate throne—the man slated to take over the helm of the family empire—so lately he had been showing up more than any of the other Sebastians.
Drake was never seen in public without his mirrored glasses. They were his trademark. According to the media, he did not wear them for effect. The unique mirrored lenses had been developed specially for him in a Sebastian company research lab. It was no secret that following a lab accident three years earlier he had developed a severe sensitivity to light from the normal end of the spectrum. Now, without his special sunglasses, Drake was even blinded by a low-watt lightbulb.
For the past year there was only one thing Alice had feared more than her obsessive ex-mother-in-law’s unrelenting harassment. Her worst nightmare for months was that the powerful Sebastian family might figure out that something very bad had happened on Rainshadow Island a year ago and that she was responsible.
Now it appeared the clan had, indeed, sent someone to track her down—and not just some low-ranking security agent. It was the next president and CEO of the family empire standing here in the alley. And he was looking straight at her even though she was bending light with all of her talent.
No doubt about it. This is officially a really, really bad night, she thought.
“You can see me,” she said.
The overhead light glinted on Drake’s mirrored glasses. His mouth curved in a mysterious smile, an edgy combination of masculine satisfaction and anticipation that sent shivers of awareness across her senses.
“Oh, yeah,” he said. “I can see you, Alice North.”
“Crap.”
“Nice to meet you, too.”
Chapter 2
ALICE LOWERED HER SENSES. NO POINT WASTING ANY more energy, she thought. She was close to exhaustion. It was clear now that she was going to have to make another run for it soon. In the meantime, she needed to conserve her talent.
She called on her other talent, the kind she used to conceal her emotions on stage. She was pretty good when it came to acting. She had learned the art early in life. It was one of many useful life lessons she had been schooled in at the orphanage. Rule Number One: When in doubt, brazen it out. The corollary of which was, Fake it ’til you make it.
“Got some ID?” she asked coolly.
It didn’t seem likely that one of Ethel Whitcomb’s minions would take the enormous risk of using the Sebastian family name as a cover. But when it came to Ethel you could never be sure. Revenge was a powerful drug for some people, and Ethel was a true addict. To get a fix she would take any chance, pay any price—even if that price meant pissing off a powerful business rival.
Drake didn’t miss a beat.
“Driver’s license or Sebastian, Inc. ID?” He smiled again, gravely polite this time.
“Company ID,” she said. “Fake driver’s licenses are ten bucks apiece anywhere here in the Quarter. But a Sebastian, Inc. ID card would be a little harder to come by.”
“What makes you think you’ll know a piece of genuine Sebastian, Inc. ID?” he asked, reaching inside his leather jacket.
“Give me a break. Everyone knows that Sebastian, Inc. is in the high-tech security business, among other things. I’m betting their ID cards are very hard to forge.”
She was on thin ice and she knew it. How would she recognize a false ID when she had no way of knowing what the real thing looked like?
But Drake merely nodded once in approval and opened his wallet to remove a card. She took advantage of the brief moment to examine him more closely in the glare of the stage door light. Her first impression had not been wrong. Sleek as a specter-cat, and a lot more dangerous because she was very certain that, unlike the big cat, he didn’t operate entirely on primal instinct. The mirrored glasses made it impossible to read his eyes, but she could sense the mag-steel control that electrified the atmosphere around him. Her intuition told her there was only one reason a man would need to develop that kind of self-mastery—to con
trol a powerful talent or powerful passions. Or both.
Everything about him looked as if it had been honed for the hunt. His dark hair was cut in a short, crisp, no-nonsense style. The hard, unyielding planes and angles of his face could have landed him a role as a professional assassin in the movies—or in real life. The fact that she could not read his expression because of his sunglasses only served to heighten the aura of power and danger.
He handed her the ID card. It showed a photo of Drake complete with the glasses. In addition to a brief personal description and a phone number to call for verification, there was a small sliver of amber embedded in the plastic. The amber was hot. It resonated faintly when she touched it with her fingertip. It wasn’t absolute proof that the document was authentic, of course. She had been in show business long enough to know that, for a price, you could buy fake verification chips as easily as mag-rez guns in any of the Old Quarters. Still, it seemed unlikely that one of Ethel’s private investigators would risk carrying a document that could get him locked up for a very, very long time.
Besides, she thought, there could not be two men in the world who looked like the man in the photo. Drake Sebastian was definitely one of a kind.
“You can call that number if you’ve got any doubts,” Drake said. “It goes straight to the security department at company headquarters.”
“That won’t be necessary.” She handed the card back to him. “I’ve seen you in the media a few times. You’re Drake Sebastian and, according to the business press, you and your family are still in the pirate business. The only difference these days is that you do your plundering legally.”
He startled her with a wicked smile that sent another disturbing frisson across her senses.
“You know, Alice, you aren’t in any position to insult my ancestor,” he said. “Your great-grandfather was Harry Sebastian’s business partner out there in the Amber Sea. They did their pirating together.”
She raised her chin. She had known nothing about her family history until last year, but now that she finally had some knowledge of her roots she was fiercely determined to protect the North family honor. She was, after all, the last of the line.
“They were partners in a shipping business,” she insisted. “But somehow, when the partnership ended, your ancestor came out of it a rich man. My great-grandfather got screwed.”
“We can argue about ancient history later. It’s modern history that we need to talk about tonight. If our conversation goes the way I’m hoping it will, I’ll have a business proposition for you that I think you’ll find interesting.”
Well, at least he wasn’t threatening to have her arrested for theft and/or murder, Alice thought. And evidently he was not in the employ of Ethel Whitcomb. Instead he had specifically used the words business proposition. But that still left a lot of questions. She did not know whether to be somewhat relieved or downright scared.
“Damn it, I knew someone was watching me today,” she said.
“Took me a lot longer to find you than I thought it would.” Drake sounded impressed. “You do a good disappearing act.”
“I’ve had some practice.”
“A few days ago I traced you to a magic act here in the Quarter, but when I got to that theater I discovered that you had vanished again. Took me another three days to figure out that you hadn’t left town like everyone seemed to think. Instead, you changed your name again and set up your own show here at this theater.”
“Alien Illusions closed tonight. Mind telling me why you’ve been following me around?”
“It’s a little complicated. Why don’t we go someplace where we can talk? Don’t know about you but I’m not keen on holding a serious business discussion in an alley in the Old Quarter at this hour of the night.”
“Where do you suggest we have this business chat?”
“I vote for your apartment.”
“Forget it,” she said. “If you want to talk, we’ll do it in public. There’s a tavern a couple of blocks from here. I’m hungry and I could really use a drink.”
“Okay, that works for me.” Drake studied Houdini. “Does the local Board of Health allow dust bunnies into food-and-beverage establishments?”
Houdini chortled encouragingly, clearly aware that he was the topic of discussion. Alice took heart from the realization that he was not showing any indication that he viewed Drake Sebastian as a direct or immediate threat. Houdini’s instincts were reliable when it came to that sort of thing. He had saved her from a close encounter with more than one Whitcomb investigator during the past year.
“In this neighborhood, the restaurant owners aren’t too particular,” Alice said. “Besides, everyone at the Green Gate knows Houdini. We always drop in for a bite after the show.”
She started toward the alley entrance again, towing the suitcase.
“I’ll take that,” Drake said.
He gripped the handle of the suitcase and deftly slipped it out of her grasp before she could decide whether or not to accept the offer. Then again, it hadn’t exactly been an offer, she thought. More like an order. Nevertheless, the suitcase was heavy and she was tired. It had been a very long night and it wasn’t over yet. She released the suitcase without further argument.
“I guess you probably aren’t going to steal a bunch of costumes and props,” she said.
“Probably not,” Drake agreed.
She glanced at the two men on the pavement. “What did you use on that pair? I thought I saw a little flash of dark lightning.”
“I used a gadget that came out of one of the company labs. It’s still experimental. We’re calling it a light spear. It uses ultralight to temporarily freeze the target’s senses—all of the senses, normal as well as paranormal.”
“Sounds useful.”
“Not yet. It was designed as a law-enforcement weapon but it’s still in development. There’s a major hurdle that has to be overcome before we can go into production.”
“What’s the problem?” she asked.
“Currently only someone with our kind of talent can activate a light spear.”
She gave him a searching look. “You’re a light-talent, too?”
“Yes.”
“I’ve never met another light. I’ve heard there aren’t a lot of us around.”
“No,” Drake said. “There aren’t. To further complicate matters, no two light-talents are the same, so each spear has to be individually tuned to the person who will use it. I’m the only one who can operate this particular spear. Once I’ve exhausted the charge it will have to be re-tuned.”
“What happens to those two guys that you took down?”
“I don’t know and I don’t give a damn. I’m not here on a mission to clean up the Old Quarter. I’ve got other things on my to-do list tonight.”
“Clearly you are a man who knows how to prioritize,” she said.
He ignored the not-so-veiled sarcasm. “That pair just happened to get in the way. Sorry I got here a bit late.” Drake looked at the two men without much interest. “Not that you weren’t handling things just fine all by yourself.”
“My version of light-talent isn’t good for much, but occasionally it comes in handy.”
“I noticed,” Drake said. “Same with my version.”
She shot him a quick sidelong glance, trying to read his unreadable face. “You could see me when I did my invisibility thing. I’ve never met anyone who could do that.”
“My version of the talent is as rare as yours.” Drake’s mouth quirked in a brief, humorless smile. “But not nearly as useful. It would be handy to be able to become invisible once in a while.”
She pondered that for a moment. “I’m not so sure that yours is less useful. You see things that other people don’t see.”
“There is that,” he agreed.
He did not add the obvious, she noticed, which was that ever since the lab accident, he no longer saw things the way other people did. She wondered how the world looked to him.
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“Perpetual night,” he said.
Startled, she gave him another swift, searching glance. “You read minds, too?”
“Sadly, no. That would be another useful talent. But it was a good bet that you were wondering what the world looks like to me.”
“Oh. Sorry. I didn’t mean to get so personal.”
“Don’t worry about it. You’re not the first person to be curious.”
“Perpetual night, huh? So the world is always dark for you?”
He smiled slightly. “I said it was always night. I didn’t say it was always dark.”
“I don’t understand.”
“The night is illuminated with a million shades of paranormal energy,” he said quietly. “I see light from that end of the spectrum the same way you see light from the normal end.”
“What kind of light-talent are you?” she asked.
“Still trying to figure that out,” Drake said.
They moved out of the alley and onto an empty sidewalk. Like all of the Old Quarters in the four major city-states on Harmony, the Colonial section of Crystal City dated back two hundred years to the era of the First Generation settlers from Earth. The founders had built the first towns around the ancient walls that surrounded the ruins of the large Alien cities.
The para-archaeologists estimated that the Aliens had vanished at least a couple of thousand years before the colonists from Earth had arrived, perhaps even earlier. But the unique green quartz the ancients had used to construct most of their urban sites as well as the vast array of underground passages that honeycombed the planet was virtually indestructible. And all of it glowed with an eerie green radiance that was noticeable to the human eye only after dark. There was no need for streetlights in the Old Quarters. The massive walls that surrounded the ruins cast an otherworldly radiance over the human-built scene.
In addition to the glow, the currents of psi that emanated from the towering walls and wafted up from the underground catacombs infused the Quarter with a little paranormal heat. Most people, even those with a low level of talent, found the sensation to be a bit of a rush. Alcohol and music enhanced the sparkly, slightly euphoric buzz. The background energy in the atmosphere was one of the reasons why many of the trendy nightclubs were located in converted warehouses and other Colonial-era buildings near the walls. But in spite of the clubs and theaters in the vicinity, the Crystal City Quarter, like all of the Old Quarters in the city-states, had a distinctly seedy atmosphere.
