The Lost Night (3 page)

“Ridiculous. There is no such talent.”

“I didn’t expect you to believe that, but think about this, sir: Why would a guy who wears designer suits and watches that probably cost more than the entire city-state budget wear a cheap ear stud?”

“Probably because it has sentimental value,” Ian snapped, exasperated.

“Trust me, there isn’t an ounce of sentiment in Marcus Lancaster.”

“What makes you think that you are qualified to offer an opinion on Lancaster’s para-psych profile?” Ian said. “You were selling tea and giving aura readings when I found you at the Crystal Rainbow.”

“Yes, I was, and I think I’ll go back to that career. I don’t seem to be cut out for clinical work or for the mainstream world, come to that.”

She tightened her grip on her notebook and stepped around Ian.

“Rachel—”

Surprised by the hesitation in his voice, she paused and turned back.

“Yes?” she said.

“Even though you were technically here on probation, I’ll see to it that you receive two weeks’ severance pay,” Ian said quietly.

“Thanks. I appreciate that. I
spent a fortune on new clothes for this job. I’ll be paying off the credit card for a while.”

“I suppose you’ll be going back to the Crystal Rainbow Tearoom?”

“No,” she said. “I think it’s time for plan B.”

“You’re going to return to the Harmonic Enlightenment Academy?”

“No. The truth is, I don’t belong there, either. Ever heard of Rainshadow Island?”

“No,” Ian said.

“Not many people have. It’s one of the islands in the Amber Sea. It’s not even on most maps. My great-aunts ran a bookshop and café there for a couple of decades. Several months ago they retired and moved to the desert. They left Shadow Bay Books to me. I’ve just let the shop sit, closed up, until I could decide what to do with it. In the back of my mind the shop was my fallback plan in case things didn’t work out for me here in Frequency City. Good thing I didn’t sell it.”

She started walking again, heading toward her office.

“One more thing,” Ian said.

She paused and turned back to face him again. “What now?”

“You said you’d seen stones like the one in Lancaster’s ear stud.”

“Yes.”

“Where?”

“On Rainshadow Island. As far as anyone knows, that’s the
only place they have ever been found. They’re called rainstones.”

She hurried away down the hall to the tiny office that had been allocated to her. Two months ago when she had accepted the position at the clinic she had been so excited at having her very own office that she had taken dozens of photos of the small, spare space and emailed them to everyone in the family. She shook her head at the naïve memory. As if an office was proof that she had found her place in the world.

“I should have known this wasn’t going to work out,” she said into the silence. “Not like I wasn’t warned.”

It took ten minutes, not fifteen, to gather up her personal possessions and dump them into a cardboard box. Carl was waiting at the door. He looked unhappy.

“I’m really sorry about this, Miss Blake,” he said. “It’s been nice having you here. The patients all like you. So do I. Things seem more cheerful and sunnier here when you’re around.”

She smiled. “Thank you, Carl, but Dr. Oakford is right. It’s best that I leave. I don’t belong here.”

Carl cleared his throat. “I don’t suppose you happen to have any more of that tea that you blended for me, do you?”

“Not here in the office but I’ll mix up another batch and send it to you.”

Carl brightened. “Thanks, I appreciate that.”

Five minutes later she was alone on the street, the cardboard box containing her things tucked under one arm, her purse slung over her shoulder. The low, dark clouds opened up as she walked quickly
toward the bus stop. Naturally she would get caught in the rain without an umbrella today, she thought. Some days were just flat-out unharmonic from start to finish.

The cold, sleeting rain plastered her tightly pinned hair to her head and soaked her new black low-heeled pumps. The shoes would be ruined. Not that it mattered, she told herself. No one wore black low-heeled pumps on Rainshadow. Boots, athletic shoes, and sandals were the norm there. And she just happened to own a new pair of boots.

She waited for the bus, chilled to the bone but aware that she felt a lot better now that she was away from the Chapman Clinic.

She would survive the rain and the loss of the job. What mattered was that she would never again find herself alone in a therapy room with Marcus Lancaster. Because she was quite certain it was no coincidence that he had manipulated the situation so that they had wound up together today. If she remained on the staff at the clinic, he would manipulate things to ensure that there were more such encounters. She knew that as surely as she knew the Principles.

Another shiver of apprehension swept through her. Rainshadow was Plan B, but the thought of returning to the island made her uneasy. Something had happened to her the last time she was there—something unnerving. Twelve hours of her life had vanished.

She had gone into a psychic fugue late one afternoon and wandered into the forbidden territory of the Preserve. Somehow she had not only survived
the night in the dangerous woods, but she had also done what most people who knew the island considered almost impossible—she had managed to find her way out of the Preserve.

She had emerged at dawn the following morning but she had no memories of the night.

She had, however, collected some souvenirs along the way—dark dreams that now haunted her sleep, the faint memory of ethereal music being played somewhere in the night, and a handful of rainstones.

His name was Harry Sebastian
. He materialized on her front porch in the middle of a raging thunderstorm. He was dressed in a long black raincoat that he wore over black trousers and black boots. Rain streamed off the coat. His near-black hair was plastered to his head. The flashes of lightning illuminated the hard, sharp planes and angles of his face and the sleek, powerful silhouette of his shoulders. The energy of his dark aura blazed with ultrasilver light and midnight shadows.

It would have been all too easy to believe that Harry was Lucifer, himself, come to collect her soul. But Rachel knew better. Harry was no angel, fallen or otherwise. Harry was the kind of guy who would walk into hell to rescue you from the devil—or send you to the inferno himself, if he thought that you deserved it.

She watched him through the screen door, instinctively slipping a little higher into
her other senses. The gentle chiming of the silvery metal charms on her bracelet was drowned by the rolling thunder. The faint glow in the small stones went unnoticed in the white-hot crackle of lightning.

He looked at her with eyes that burned with smoky green fire, the same way that he had looked at her yesterday when they had been introduced by the new police chief, Slade Attridge. Her intuition had warned her then—as it did tonight—that the heat in Sebastian’s eyes was a dangerous mix of sexual attraction and the aroused curiosity of a top-of-the-food-chain hunter. Yesterday she had been stunned by the thrill of awareness that had slammed through her senses. But that was nothing compared to the excitement effervescing in her blood tonight.

He was here—right here—at her door.

“Sorry about this,” Harry said. “I was on my way into town to grab some dinner at a café. When the rain started, I decided to turn around and go back to the old gatekeeper’s cabin, but there’s a tree down across Gatehouse Road. Your place was closest, so I thought I’d see if you’d let me wait out the storm here.”

On Rainshadow, neighbors looked after one another, Rachel thought. But Harry Sebastian wasn’t exactly a neighbor. He had arrived two days ago, but she knew very little about him aside from the fact that Slade had summoned him to investigate some problems in the Preserve. The Sebastian family owned the Preserve and, therefore, most of the island, but none of them had ever spent much time on Rainshadow. Probably because they were all too busy making money, she
thought. Sebastian, Inc. was a highly successful business empire. In some quarters the Sebastians were still considered to be pirates.

Before she could respond she heard an enthusiastic chortle at her feet. She looked down and saw Darwina. The dust bunny was fully fluffed and in full-cute mode. She resembled a large wad of dryer lint with two baby blue eyes. Yesterday she had made it clear that she liked Harry, flirting outrageously with him in the café at Shadow Bay Books. The attraction was of a somewhat superficial nature in Rachel’s opinion. She was pretty sure that it was based almost entirely on the fact that Harry’s big SUV with its powerful flash-rock engine promised a much more exciting ride than Rachel’s bicycle or the little Vibe buggy that she borrowed from Brett at the service station when she needed something larger in the way of transport.

Darwina was new in Rachel’s life, but it had already become apparent that she was something of an adrenaline junkie.

Fortunately for Harry, he had another, more solid character reference. Slade Attridge, a former Federal Bureau of Psi Investigation agent with excellent cop instincts, had made it clear that he approved of Harry as well.

Rachel pulled herself together, gave the situation about a half second’s thought, and concluded that she had no alternative other than to play the gracious hostess. The little frissons of excitement feathering her senses warned her that she did not really want an alternative. It seemed as if fate had brought them together tonight. Not that a good Harmonic Enlightenment
girl believed in fate, of course. But there was such a thing as the raw power that went with the energy of mutual attraction.

“Of course you’re welcome to come in.” She lowered her talent, unlocked the screen door, and stood back. “But I don’t think you’ll be going anywhere until morning. This storm looks like it will be hanging around for a while.”

“Thanks.”

Harry moved over the threshold and into the tiny front hall, filling the space with his intensely male presence. The cottage suddenly seemed a lot smaller and more intimate.

He stood dripping rainwater on the floor. For a heartbeat, she just stared at him, uncertain what to do next. Common sense and good manners came to her aid.

“Give me your coat,” she said. “I’ll get you a towel. You can dry off by the fire.”

“I appreciate this.”

Harry shrugged out of the long black coat and handed it to her. He wore a black crewneck pullover with black trousers. She looked at his wet boots.

“You had better take those off, too,” she said. “I’ll put them in the mudroom with your coat.”

“Good idea.” He sat down on the wooden bench and tugged off one leather boot. “I was only outside for the length of time it took me to get from the car to your front porch, but it’s really coming down out there.”

“People who have lived on the island for years are saying this is the most severe storm
season they’ve ever seen and the weather seems to be getting worse.”

“I know.” Harry went to work on the second boot. “Slade told me.”

When he got the boot off she caught a glimpse of what looked like a leather sheath strapped to his leg just above his ankle. The sheath disappeared beneath his pant leg almost immediately.

“Backup,” he said calmly. “I’m in the security business, remember?”

“Right.” She cleared her throat. “Go on into the living room. I’ll be right back.”

Balance in all things
. She chanted the mantra silently while she hung the coat on a peg in the little mudroom off the kitchen. She positioned the boots on a wooden rack and zipped back through the kitchen and into the living room, heading for the stairs.

When she went past the hearth she saw Harry warming his hands in front of the fire. Darwina was on the mantel, chortling to him. Little flirt, Rachel thought, amused. Darwina made it look so easy. But skilled flirtation was a talent that Rachel was afraid she did not possess. It was not one of the subjects taught in Harmonic Enlightenment schools, where the focus was on inner balance.

But it was hard to maintain her inner equilibrium around Harry. Something about his energy seemed to push her ever so slightly off balance. When he was in the vicinity she felt as if she was teetering precariously on some psychic high-wire—without a net.

She came back downstairs
with a towel in time to see Darwina showing off her favorite toy, an old Amberella doll.

“She loves that thing,” Rachel explained. She walked across the small living room and handed the towel to Harry.

“The doll, I assume, belongs to you?” Harry asked, smiling a little as he used the towel to blot water from his hair.

“Yes. I got it as a birthday present when I was a little girl. At the time I wanted it more than anything else in the world but my parents felt that the dolls were not suitable, harmonically enlightened toys for young girls. I had to do a lot of fast talking to convince them that Amberella was actually a fine role model.”

“Slade mentioned that you were raised in an HE community and trained at the Academy of Harmony and Enlightenment,” Harry said.