Fired Up (Dreamlight Trilogy #1)(77)
Author: Jayne Ann Krentz

“The new Master of the Society lives up there near you.”

“Oriana Bay. Yes, I know, but what does that have to do with it?”

“Zack and his wife, Raine, don’t want to move, either. Given that Zack is now in charge of Arcane, he gets what he wants. Arcane has rented office space in the Seattle area and is getting ready to set up a lab. Meanwhile, I don’t see any reason why you can’t work out of your office. It’s not like you’re going to be overwhelmed with ex- Nightshade clients.”

She took a breath. “Okay, I guess.”

“I’ll have Damaris Kemble in your office before noon tomorrow. Give me a complete report after you talk to her. And don’t forget, I want all time and expenses itemized. Oh, and tell Jack I’m sending another team to pick up the lamp tomorrow.”

The phone went dead in her ear.

She looked at Jack. “He’s sending someone to pick up the lamp tomorrow.”

“Is he, now?” Jack handed her a mug of tea. “Isn’t that nice of him? And after Arcane did such a swell job of taking care of it last time.”

She sipped some of the tea and lowered the mug. “Well, at least he doesn’t know exactly what the lamp can do.”

“This is Fallon Jones we’re talking about. He’s going to be wondering how I took down all those hunters at the gym. If he hasn’t already figured out that the lamp was a factor, he will soon enough.”

She studied him. “What are you thinking?”

“I’m thinking that it’s probably a good idea that everyone, including Fallon Jones, the Council and Nightshade, believe that the lamp is safely back in Arcane’s hands.”

56

“THE FORMULA MADE ME SO GHASTLY ILL,” DAMARIS KEMBLE said. She spoke in a monotone, as though just the act of talking was no longer worth the effort. “I thought anything would be better than feeling that sick. But after I recovered I began to realize what I had lost.”

Fallon Jones had not wasted any time. Damaris had arrived at ten o’clock the following morning. She was not traveling alone. A J&J hunter accompanied her. Rose and Hector were presently entertaining him in the outer office.

“I think I understand,” Chloe said gently. “It would be like waking up one day and discovering that you had lost one or more of your normal senses.”

Damaris squeezed her eyes shut to stop the tears. “Sometimes I dream that I’ve recovered my sensitivity. But as soon as I open my eyes I realize that nothing has changed.”

“You said that you didn’t just lose your para-senses. You also lost your father and your sister at the same time. That would be a terrible blow for anyone.”

“I’m seeing one of the Society’s psychologists, but I don’t think it’s doing much good. I feel so overwhelmed. If I could just get back to feeling normal I think I could deal with the rest of it. Do you really feel you might be able to help me recover at least some of my talent?”

Chloe looked at the floor. The faint oil-on-water sheen of the antidote radiated subtly in Damaris’s footprints.

“Let me see what I can do,” Chloe said.

She got to her feet, walked around the desk and took Damaris’s hand. Carefully, lightly, delicately, she went to work.

57

“I NEVER FOUND OUT WHY DAMARIS KEMBLE NEEDED A BODYGUARD,” Chloe said.

It was five o’clock. She and Jack were accompanying Hector on his evening patrol. It was that mysterious time in a Seattle winter day, the hour when the city was enveloped in the strange half light of deep twilight. The streets glistened with rain, and the streetlights glowed like crystal balls in the mist.

“Didn’t Fallon tell you?” Jack asked.

“It’s remarkably difficult to get information out of Mr. Jones.”

“He’s not much of a conversationalist,” Jack agreed. “The reason Damaris Kemble needs a bodyguard is that she’s the daughter of the founder of Nightshade.”

“Good grief. She’s Craigmore’s daughter?”

“He had her on the latest version of the drug. It was making her violently ill, probably killing her. After her father died Arcane offered her the antidote. She agreed to take it. In exchange she’s been telling J&J and the Council everything she knows about Nightshade.”

“So the concern is that Nightshade might try to silence her.”

“Right. Unfortunately, according to Fallon, she doesn’t really know all that much about the upper management of the organization.”

“Because her father didn’t tell her much?”

“William Craigmore was a secretive bastard. When he established Nightshade, he planned the organization so that no one individual or even a handful could bring down the entire operation. It’s damn brilliant when you think about it. Fallon says Arcane still knows next to nothing about the others at the top of the conspiracy.”

She glanced at him. “But you said the money trail is a weak point.”

“Money is always the weak point. It’s the blood of any organization. Cut it off, and things start to die.”

“How are you doing tracking the cash flow from the gyms?”

“Looks like the LLC that owns and operates them was, in turn, receiving funding from another privately held company located in Portland, Oregon. Cascadia Dawn. It’s a regional wholesaler that distributes nutritional supplements and health food products.”

She smiled at the cool satisfaction in his words.

“Sounds like a good cover for an organization that is making an illicit drug,” she said.

“It’s a hell of a cover. Fallon isn’t rushing in this time. He’s going to put Cascadia Dawn under surveillance for a while. See if he can learn anything useful. But it’s probably just one more Nightshade lab like the others that J&J took down a couple of months ago. We might get some information, but I doubt that it will give us the guys at the top.”

She smiled. “We? Us? As in you are now officially on J&J’s payroll?”

“Are you kidding? J&J can’t afford my consulting fees. This is strictly pro bono work.”

“But you like it.”

He shrugged. “It’s a challenge.”

“Which is just what you’ve been needing. Now what?”

“Now we have to talk.”

She froze in midstep, her fingers tightening around Hector’s leash. He halted and looked back politely to see why his routine had been interrupted.