“I was in the basement stairwell, using it for cover. The stone walls shielded me from the worst effects of the explosion but not from the gas that was in the canister. There was no way I could avoid inhaling some of it when I made a run for the door.”
“What kind of gas was it? Some sort of illicit drug?”
“No one knows what it was,” he said. His hand tightened around the flashlight. “A team went into the ruins of the lab later but they didn’t find anything aside from traces of a few chemicals known to have some psycho- pharmaceutical properties. The assumption is that the gas was a new experimental drug.”
“What effect did it have on you?”
“It didn’t do any damage to my lungs but it acted like acid on my senses.”
Charlotte came to an abrupt halt. “You were psiblinded?”
He stopped because he didn’t have much choice. “Temporarily. Couldn’t use any of my talent for a couple of weeks.”
“How awful. But your senses recovered, thank heavens.”
“Only partially,” he said. “The experts tell me they probably won’t come all the way back.”
“I don’t understand. You used your talent to determine that Jeremy Gaines was murdered by paranormal means and you can navigate here inside the Preserve.”
“For now I’m at a Level Seven on the Jones Scale.”
“That’s very strong. Well above average, certainly.”
“I used to be a Nine,” he said.
“I see.”
She was silent for a moment, taking in the full meaning of what he had just said. She understood, he thought. The loss of two full points on the scale was dramatic. Now she would feel sorry for him. That was the last thing he wanted.
“Are you sure that the new measurement is accurate?” she asked finally.
Might as well tell her the rest, he thought. She would continue to feel sorry for him but she would also realize that she had to put some emotional distance between them. The sex had been great but he knew that in spite of her decision to enter a no-strings-attached relationship, deep down she wanted something a lot more intimate and enduring. That meant a lover who was psychically compatible. He could not promise her that kind of bond. He might as well get to the bottom line and get it over with before any real damage was done.
“According to the parapsych doctors at the clinic there’s an eighty-five percent chance that I won’t remain a Seven for much longer,” he said. He started walking again. He kept his tone calm and clinical. “They warned me that my aura is unstable in the regions that are linked to the psychic senses. I was told that in all likelihood my condition will continue to deteriorate.”
She hurried to fall into step beside him. “What does that mean?”
“It means that I have to find a new line of work, among other things,” he said. “Which, as I mentioned, is what I’m trying to do here on Rainshadow.”
“Please don’t try to brush me off, Slade. I want to know what’s happening to you.”
“Why?”
“Why?” She spread her hands wide in a gesture of frustration. “Because of what we just did back there in that meadow, for heaven’s sake. We’re lovers now.”
Okay, this was where things were going to get dicey, he thought. He realized he wanted the lovemaking to mean something to her, something important. But he also knew that it would be infinitely better for both of them if she stuck with the resonate-with-the-moment approach.
“Look,” he said, “the truth is, no one knows what’s going to happen to my talent. The experts don’t know if I’ll stabilize at some point or if I’ll lose my para-senses altogether. I was told to plan for the worst-case scenario. Any other questions?”
“No.” She touched the pendant at her throat and then she shook her head firmly. “But I think the experts misread your aura. Or maybe they couldn’t see far enough along the spectrum. Or maybe they just did not understand what they were viewing. That happens a lot when it comes to analyzing high-end talents, you know.”
“So now you’re a trained aura-reader?”
“No,” she said. “But I know what I see in your rainbow. I’ve told you that rainbows are a reflection of the primary ultralight colors in a person’s aura.”
“Are you saying that you can see something in my aura that none of the experts saw? Thanks, but no thanks. I can’t afford to waste time with that power-of-positive-thinking crap.”
“That’s the spirit,” she shot back. “Think negative. That way you’re never disappointed.”
The sharpness of her tone caught him by surprise. She was usually so cheerful, so sunny and warmhearted. Like a dust bunny, he thought. But dust bunnies had teeth. He thought about that night fifteen years ago when Charlotte had tried to fight off a bigger, stronger attacker with only a flashlight. Underneath all that sweetness and light, Charlotte was a fighter.
“I’m just trying to be realistic,” he growled, feeling defensive now.
“What happens when you push your talent to the upper limits?”
“I was told not to risk it.”
“Why?”
“The theory is that the more I use my talent, the harder I push it, the faster it will deteriorate,” he said.
“I don’t understand. Everyone knows that if a strong talent runs in the red zone for a prolonged period, he or she can certainly exhaust his or her senses temporarily. But it takes only a couple of hours to recover completely.”
“The folks at the clinic warned me that I probably wouldn’t recover from a serious burn,” he said quietly.
“But knowing you, you have experimented a bit, right?”
She knew him too well, he thought. How had that happened? He had never let anyone get close. But somehow she was right next to him, physically and psychically. She had somehow slipped through the invisible barricades he had spent a lifetime building and shoring up.
“I had to see for myself,” he admitted.
“And?”
“Let’s just say that I learned my lesson. I saw my future and there’s nothing good waiting there. All I can do is try to buy as much time as possible.”
“What, exactly, did you experience when you rezzed your talent to the max after the explosion?”
They were inside the trees again. The silver meadow disappeared behind them. The thick darkness dropped like a shroud. He jacked his talent up just enough to guide her through the trees and summoned the scenes of his recent nightmares.
“A storm of energy,” he said. “It was like looking at an advancing hurricane or a tornado.”
She touched the mirror pendant. “That’s not what I saw reflected in your rainbow earlier tonight when you took me into the night canyon.”
“I was only partially jacked then.”
“It was enough for me to see your true colors. I saw them the other night when you kissed me and I saw them again tonight when you made love to me.”
He studied the tiny mirrored pendant at her throat. Moonlight glinted on it. He was uncomfortable with the knowledge that Charlotte seemed to be able to dig out his secrets. But he knew a few things about her, too. One of the things he knew was that she would not lie to him.
“What, exactly, did you see?” he asked.
“A lot of powerful ultralight. I can’t put a name to all of the various primary colors because I’ve never seen them before, but I can tell that they come from the far end of the spectrum and that the frequencies of the radiation are rock steady. There was no sign of instability.”
“What does that mean for me?”
“Well, for one thing, it means that you’ve got some serious talent you don’t seem to be aware of,” she said.
