All Night Long (41 page)

Y
ou know,” Irene said, “I think your father actually looks younger this year than he did last year on his birthday.”

She looked across the crowded room to where John and Vicki stood with Gordon, talking to some guests. Luke followed her gaze, amused.

“Probably because he’s no longer worrying about me,” he said. “I hear stress can really age you.”

“I thought he looked pleased when he came to our wedding, but tonight he seems even happier.”

Luke grinned. “That’s because he’s looking forward to his first grandchild. Expect he’s already making plans to bring the kid into the business.”

Instinctively she touched her very pregnant shape, mildly astonished that she wasn’t glowing as brightly as one of her own flashlights. “I think John and Gordon will have more than one grandchild to work on soon. Katy told me that she and Hackett intend to start a family right away.”

“Boy, howdy,” Jason said, coming up beside her. “At this rate, there are going to be little rug rats all over the place.”

“Your turn next, little brother,” Luke said.

“All in due time,” Jason said, munching on a canapé.
“Life is like making good wine. You don’t want to rush it, or you’ll miss all the nuances.”

“Wow,” Luke said. “Listen to Mr. Philosopher.”

Jason grinned. “I thought that was pretty good, myself. Speaking of academic stuff, when does your book get released?”

“Next month,” Irene said before Luke could respond. She was barely able to restrain her excitement. “The publishers say that advance orders have been very good. They think that
Strategic Thinking, Lessons from Philosophy and War
will not only find an audience among people who read military and business books, but may even cross over into the general market.”

Hackett and Katy appeared out of the crowd.

“Nice going,” Hackett said. “Looks like you’ve found another career for yourself.”

“It lacks some of the zest of the innkeeping business,” Luke said, “but I think it suits me better. The best part about the job is that I get to work at home.”

“Which is good,” Irene added, “because he is going to make an excellent father.”

Jason nodded with an air of great seriousness. “Sure glad you got past your little ED issue, Big Brother.”

“You know,” Luke said, looking both dangerous and thoughtful, “with all the new offspring on the way in this family, you can probably be replaced one of these days.”

Irene and Katy dissolved into laughter. Luke, Hackett and Jason exchanged grins.

On the other side of the room John, Gordon and Vicki turned their heads to look. Irene could see the satisfaction and pride radiating from the two men. Vicki gave her a warm, knowing smile and winked before she turned back to her guests.

Joy, bright and full of promise, flooded through Irene. Luke tugged her closer, his arm around her waist.

“What are you thinking?” he asked.

“I’m thinking that this is how it feels to have a family.
That with a love like ours and a family like this one, we can handle whatever comes along in the future.”

He smiled, looking satisfied and certain. “Talk about your astonishing coincidences. I was just thinking the very same thing.”

Late in the reign of Queen Victoria…

T
he skeleton lay on an elaborately carved and gilded bed in the center of the ancient laboratory that had become the alchemist’s tomb.

The two-hundred-year-old bones were still draped in tattered robes that had been fashioned of what had surely been the most costly silks and velvets. Gloves and slippers embroidered with gold and silver thread shrouded the bones of the hands and feet, giving an eerie appearance of flesh and blood.

“His tailor must have loved him,” Gabriel Jones said.

“Just because the client is an alchemist it doesn’t follow that he cannot possess a keen sense of fashion,” Caleb Jones remarked.

Gabriel glanced at his cousin’s clothes and then surveyed his own attire. The trousers and linen shirts they wore were covered in dust and grime but the garments as well as their boots were handmade and fit to perfection.

“A family trait, it seems,” Gabriel said.

“Makes for a nice addition to the Jones legend,” Caleb agreed.

Gabriel moved closer to the bed and raised the lantern higher. In the flaring light he could make out the cryptic alchemical symbols for mercury, silver and gold that decorated the wide hem of the skeleton’s robes. Similar designs were carved into the wooden headboard.

A heavy strongbox sat on the floor next to the bed. Two centuries of rust encrusted the sides of the box but the lid was covered with a thin sheet of some metal impervious to corrosion.
Gold,
Gabriel thought.

He leaned down and used a still-spotless handkerchief to wipe away a bit of the dust that coated the lid. The light glinted on a leafy, decorative design and some cryptic Latin that had been etched into the thin sheet of gold.

“It’s astonishing that this place was never discovered and looted at some point during the past two hundred years,” he said. “By all accounts, the alchemist had a number of rivals and enemies during his lifetime. To say nothing of all the members of the Arcane Society and the Jones family who have searched for it for decades.”

“The alchemist had a well-deserved reputation for cleverness and secrecy,” Caleb reminded him.

“Another family trait.”

“True,” Caleb agreed. There was a decidedly grim edge to his voice.

He and his cousin were different in many ways, Gabriel reflected. Caleb was inclined to brood and sink into long silences. He preferred to spend time alone in his laboratory. He had no patience with visitors, guests or anyone else who expected a modicum of civility and a few social graces from him.

Gabriel had always been the more outgoing and less moody of the two of them, but lately he found himself retreating into his personal library for extended periods of time. He knew that he was seeking not only knowledge but distraction, perhaps even escape, in his studies.

They were both running, each in his own way, from those
aspects of their natures that could only be classified as
not normal,
he thought. He doubted that either of them would find whatever it was they were searching for in a laboratory or a library.

Caleb examined one of the old books. “We’ll need assistance packing up these relics.”

“We can hire men from the village,” Gabriel said.

Automatically he began formulating a plan of action to take care of the crating and shipping of the contents of the alchemist’s laboratory-tomb. Formulating plans of action was something he did well. His father had told him on more than one occasion that his ability to craft strategy was closely related to his unusual psychical talents. Gabriel, however, preferred to think of it as a manifestation of the part of him that was
normal
rather than paranormal. He wanted desperately to believe that he really was a logical, rational man of the modern age, not some primitive, uncivilized throwback to an earlier stage of evolution.

He pushed the disturbing thoughts aside and concentrated on his scheme to transport the relics. The nearest village was several miles away. It was very small and no doubt owed its survival over the centuries to the smuggling business. It was a community that knew how to keep its secrets, especially when there was money involved. The Arcane Society could afford to buy the villagers’ silence, Gabriel reflected.

The remote location on the coast that the alchemist had chosen for his small fortress of a laboratory was desolate even today. Two hundred years ago it would have been even wilder and more isolated, he thought. The laboratory-tomb had been concealed underground beneath the remains of an ancient, tumbledown castle.

When he and Caleb had finally succeeded in opening the door of the laboratory a short while ago they had been met with a foul, dead-tasting wind. It had sent them both reeling back, coughing and gasping.

By mutual agreement, they had decided to wait for the
atmosphere inside the chamber to be refreshed by the crisp ocean breeze before entering.

Once inside, they had discovered a room furnished in the manner of a scholarly study. Ancient leather-bound volumes, the spines cracked and worn, lined the bookshelf. Two candlesticks stood at the ready, awaiting tapers and a light.

The two-hundred-year-old apparatuses that the alchemist had used to pursue his experiments were neatly set out on a long workbench. The glass beakers were caked with dirt. The metal implements, burner and bellows were clogged with rust.

“If there is anything of great value in here it will no doubt be in that strongbox,” Caleb said. “I don’t see a key. Shall we force the lock now or wait until we get it back to Arcane House?”

“We had better find out what we are dealing with,” Gabriel said. He crouched beside the heavy chest and examined the iron lock. “If there is a fortune in gems or gold inside this box, it will be necessary to take extra precautions to protect the contents on the journey home.”

“We’ll need some tools to pry open that lid.”

Gabriel looked at the skeleton. An iron object lay partially concealed beneath one gloved hand.

“I think I see the key,” he said.

He reached down and carefully lifted the gloved fingers to remove the key. There was a soft rustling sound. The hand separated from the wrist. He found himself holding a glove filled with bones.

“Damn,” Caleb muttered. “Talk about a chill of dread going down one’s spine. Thought that sort of thing only happened in sensation novels.”

“It’s just a skeleton,” Gabriel said, putting the glove and its morbid contents down on the old bed. “A two-hundred-year-old one at that.”

“Ah, but it happens to be the skeleton of Sylvester Jones, the Alchemist, our ancestor and the founder of the Arcane Society,” Caleb said. “From all accounts the man
was both very cunning and very dangerous. He may not like having his laboratory discovered after all these years.”

Gabriel lowered himself beside the strongbox again. “If he felt that strongly about his privacy he should not have left clues to the location of this place in that series of letters he wrote before he died.”

The letters had sat moldering away in the society’s archives until he had dug them out several months ago and succeeded in deciphering the alchemist’s private code.

He tried the key in the lock and knew at once it was not going to work.

“Too much rust,” he announced. “Get the tools.”

Ten minutes later, working together, they managed to pry open the strongbox. The lid rose reluctantly. Harsh grinding groans emanated from the hinges. But there were no explosions, flashes of fire or other unpleasant surprises.

Gabriel and Caleb looked down into the box.

“So much for the notion of finding a hoard of gold and jewels,” Caleb said.

“Fortunately we did not carry out this expedition with the hope of discovering a treasure,” Gabriel agreed.

The only object inside the strongbox was a small leather-bound notebook.

He picked up the book and opened it with great care. “I suspect this will contain the formula that the alchemist hinted at in his papers and letters. He would have considered it vastly more important than gold or jewels.”

The yellowed pages were filled with the alchemist’s precise handwriting, all in cryptic Latin.

Caleb leaned forward for a closer look at the seemingly meaningless jumble of letters, numbers, symbols and words that covered the first page.

“It’s written in another one of his damned private codes,” he said, shaking his head.

Gabriel turned one of the pages. “A love of secrecy and codes is a tradition that the members of the Arcane Society have maintained with great enthusiasm for two centuries.”

“I have never encountered a greater bunch of obsessive,
reclusive eccentrics in my life than the members of the Arcane Society.”

Gabriel closed the notebook with great care and met Caleb’s eyes. “There are some who would say that you and I are just as eccentric if not more so than any of the members of the society.”

“
Eccentric
is probably not the right word for us.” Caleb’s jaw tensed. “But I’d just as soon not try to come up with a more appropriate term.”

Gabriel did not argue. When they were younger they had reveled in their
eccentricities,
taking their special sensitivities for granted. But maturity and adulthood had given them a different, far more cautious perspective.

Now, to make life even more difficult, Gabriel thought, he found himself dealing with a modern-thinking father who had become an enthusiastic supporter of Mr. Darwin’s theories. Hippolyte Jones was determined to see his heir married off as soon as possible. Gabriel had concluded that his sire secretly wished to discover if the unusual sort of paranormal sensitivity his son possessed would prove to be an inheritable trait.

Damned if he would allow himself to be coerced into participating in an experiment in evolution, Gabriel thought. When it came to finding a wife, he preferred to do his own hunting.

He looked at Caleb. “Does it ever concern you that we are members of a society that is populated by secretive, reclusive eccentrics who are obsessed with the arcane and the uncanny?”

“Not our fault,” Caleb declared, bending to study one of the old instruments on the workbench. “We were merely fulfilling our filial obligations when we allowed ourselves to be inducted. You know as well as I do that both of our fathers would have been outraged if we had refused to join their precious society. Besides, you are in no position to complain. You were the one who talked me into agreeing to go through with the damned ceremony.”

Gabriel glanced down at the black-and-gold onyx ring
that he wore on his right hand. The stone was embossed with an alchemical symbol for fire.

“I am well aware of that,” he said.