Sizzle and Burn (The Arcane Society #3)(54)
Author: Jayne Ann Krentz

“I said, why did Zack leave you here with me this evening?” Pandora shouted.

“I told you, he’s an investigator. He’s off investigating. Couldn’t take me with him this time. Didn’t want to leave me alone at the condo.”

They were sitting in a black vinyl booth in Café Noir. Pandora was drinking espresso. Raine had ordered an herbal tea. The club’s name was no accident. Just about everything inside was draped in black, including the walls and the ceiling. Glowing neon sculptures in strange shades of green, purple and red provided an otherworldly lighting effect. It was one-thirty in the morning and the place was crowded. Raine was very aware of the fact that she was the oldest person in the room. Even the bouncer out front and the bartender were younger.

She was pretty sure she was also the only one in the place wearing earplugs. The young people would regret not taking care of their hearing when they got older, she thought, feeling elderly and righteous. On the other hand, the crowd was having a lot of fun, at least as much fun as a group of goths could allow themselves.

Like the clientele at the Alley Door, everyone in Noir wore a lot of black. The difference was that instead of the traditional coffeehouse/ jazz-club style of attire favored at the Alley Door, the denizens of Noir went in for black leather accented with steel jewelry. There were a lot of elaborate tattoos. Hair color tended to be either jet black or platinum white, although electric blue showed up here and there.

Heavy metal music boomed out of the speakers. The members of the band were dressed a lot like the audience. The lead singer wore an unfastened leather vest that displayed the coiling demons and snakes on his arms and chest to interesting effect.

Raine felt decidedly underdressed, as usual, in a pair of black pants and a black pullover but Pandora was a work of goth art in a long, flowing gown that would have graced any vampire queen. The dress was slit to mid-thigh to display her black fishnet stockings and sky-high black platform heels. The high, flaring collar framed her artificially pale face and dramatic makeup.

Pandora raised her pencil-thin black brows and put her mouth close to Raine’s ear. “Sure glad they caught that freakazoid in Shelbyville.”

“Not nearly as glad as I am.”

“Lots of times those serial killers get away with murder for years. They would never have caught this one if it hadn’t been for the information you gave them. I still say you should get more credit.”

“No thanks.”

“Gordon and Andrew are going to have a fit when they get back and find out what’s been going on.”

“Tell me about it. I’m already working on my story for them.”

“You know,” Pandora said, “I used to think it was cool working for a psychic who helped the cops find murderers. Never really considered that there was a possible downside to your little hobby.”

“Neither did I,” Raine said.

Forty-two

St. Damian’s was a reasonably secure facility but the emphasis was on making certain the patients did not get out. Zack quickly discovered that far less consideration had been given to preventing unauthorized intrusions. With the assistance of a small J&J alarm-negating tool, he had no trouble slipping into the building through a basement window.

In spite of the reassuring news from Shelbyville, he had not been comfortable with leaving Raine on her own tonight so he had deposited her with Pandora at a goth hangout she seemed to know well. Perhaps he was feeling a little overprotective. So what?

He hoped that the hospital laundry would turn out to be in the basement and luck was with him. At that hour of the night the facility was not staffed. He borrowed a set of freshly washed gray scrubs, pulling the top over his black T-shirt. The loose-fitting pants felt bulky and awkward over his trousers but with the hospital lights dimmed for the night, he didn’t think anyone would notice. His soft-soled running shoes and a plastic ID badge finished the look. The badge was on backward, concealing the fake ID. Just an accident. Could have happened to anyone dressing in a hurry.

St. Damian’s maintained a large staff. In addition, a little research earlier in the evening had turned up the fact that, like most hospitals, it occasionally relied on temporary agency help to fill in when there was a staffing crunch. It seemed reasonable that an unfamiliar orderly in the hall would not cause undue concern. The plan, however, was to avoid any such encounters, if possible.

The most serious problem was that he was running hot, all his senses jacked up to the max. That meant there was no way to tune out the background static that infused the entire building. He was primarily sensitive to the darker passions—violence and fear and the adrenaline rush that came with the anticipation of the kill—but other stuff sometimes seeped in as well, stuff like despair and psychic pain. There was plenty of that in a psychiatric hospital.

He knew that once he got upstairs into the wards, just walking across the floor would be uncomfortable. The thick soles of his running shoes would not be able to block out all the bleak energy that would cling to every surface.

Tensed against the psychical shock waves that awaited him, he loped up the stairs to the third floor. At the door he paused, listening intently. He heard no sound in the corridor. When he stepped out into it, he found it empty.

Bright lights marked the small nurses’ station at the far end of the corridor. All but a few of the overhead fluorescents in the corridors were off, however, as he had anticipated. The doors to the patients’ rooms were mostly closed, although one or two were open partway.

Raine had told him exactly where 315 was located. Luckily it was at the end of the hall farthest from the nurses’ station. He started toward the room and found out immediately that he had been right about the floor.

Some sensitives claimed that walking through a hospital or a police station or any other highly charged environment was like walking through a graveyard and discovering that the occupants were still partially alive. He disagreed. He always found graveyards to be relatively peaceful places. Hospitals, on the other hand, were anything but.

The door to 315 was closed. He opened it as quietly as possible and walked into the room, moving with the confidence of an orderly who has just entered to do a routine check. He closed the door gently behind him.

Moonlight spilling through an uncovered window revealed a figure in the bed. Zack could see that the patient, a teenager, was watching him with wide, frightened eyes. It didn’t take a psychic to pick up the raw energy of terror. For some reason the kid was looking at him like he was the monster from under the bed.