'And the authorities never questioned Landreth's accident,' Lucas said.
'It all went very smoothly,' Irene assured him. 'Most things do if one organizes them properly.'
'You mean it went smoothly until Amaryllis started asking questions,' Lucas said.
Irene glared at Amaryllis with accusing eyes. 'A most unfortunate turn of events. A bit of bad luck that I could not have anticipated. Your encounter with Sheffield while he was focusing in what you considered an unethical manner led you back to the Department of Focus Studies.'
'You knew that questions about a Landreth-trained prism focusing in an unethical manner for a powerful politician could lead to questions and speculation,' Amaryllis whispered.
Irene sighed. 'Eventually that speculation would have led to questions about the professor's death. It was inevitable because you were bound to realize that you had uncovered a possible murder motive. It was the wrong motive and the wrong suspect, of course, but your persistence could have led you to me.'
'Why did you send me to Vivien?'
'I tried to nip the whole thing in the bud by demonstrating to you that Jonathan Landreth was not worthy of your loyalty. I thought perhaps you'd let the entire matter drop once you realized what he was.'
'You sent me to talk to Vivien of the Veils thinking that I would be shocked and disgusted when I learned about her relationship with Professor Landreth.' Amaryllis gritted her teeth as power spiked on the psychic plane. 'You thought I'd drop my investigation into his death because he was seeing a syn-sex stripper?'
'If you had possessed a proper sense of values, you would have done so. You'd have understood that Jonathan's death was nothing less than what he deserved. He had consorted with a creature of low morals. Justice had been done.'
Rage flashed through Amaryllis. 'You have no right to condemn poor Vivien for her morals. Yours are a lot lower than hers ever were. You're a murderer.'
The rush of talent energy dimmed. Hope sparked in Amaryllis. But as her own red-hot anger receded, Irene's crude power surged once more.
Irene shook her head. 'I thought you and I had a great deal in common, Miss Lark. I believed your standards to be as high as my own. You seemed like such a nice young lady. Obviously I was mistaken.'
Lucas shifted slightly on the sofa. 'When you realized that Amaryllis intended to continue pushing for answers, you took another step. You tried to point the finger at Gifford Osterley. He had a motive, after all. Everyone knew that he and Landreth had quarreled.'
'When Miss Lark inquired about the appointments Jonathan had made on the last day of his life, it occurred to me that it might be useful to bring that dreadful Gifford Osterley into the picture,' Irene agreed.
Fury erupted like a geyser inside Amaryllis. And again she thought she detected a slight weakening of Irene's energy flow. 'You set out to frame Gifford. You wrote down that three o'clock appointment in Professor Landreth's calendar.'
'After all these years, it was a simple matter to imitate his handwriting,' Irene said.
Lucas watched her intently. 'But you changed your mind about framing Osterley. You set Madison Sheffield up for the fall, instead. Why the switch? I thought you were a big fan of his.'
Irene's eyes blazed. 'I discovered that Madison Sheffield was no better than Jonathan.'
'How?' Lucas asked.
'Natalie Elwick,' Amaryllis said.
'Indeed.' Irene's mouth tightened. 'Gifford Osterley's secretary is an old acquaintance of mine. We worked together for years before she left the department to manage Unique Prisms' new office. She confided to me that Sheffield demanded only beautiful, young, female prisms who were willing to sleep with him as part of their services. He got some sort of perverted sexual thrill out of it, Natalie said.'
'No wonder Gifford was worried about having his firm dragged any deeper into the investigation,' Lucas said softly. 'He's running a full-spectrum call girl operation.'
'Can you believe it?' Irene's voice rose. 'Madison Sheffield was the Founders' Values candidate. The next governor of this city-state. He would have been president if I hadn't stopped him.'
'So you decided to destroy his career by framing him for Vivien's death,' Lucas said.
'I had already planned to punish the syn-sex stripper. She was the one who led Jonathan astray, after all. I could not allow her to live. But I had not yet finished organizing the arrangements for her death when everything started to fall apart.'
'Because Amaryllis started asking questions,' Lucas said.
'She was a threat to all of my plans.' Irene tightened both hands on the grip of the gun.
'Professor Landreth had no file on Sheffield, did he?' Amaryllis managed tightly. 'You created it as part of your plan to dispose of Vivien, me, and Sheffield in one neat package.'
Lucas looked at Irene. 'You left that phony file, half-burned, in Vivien's dressing room after you killed her.'
'I singed it just enough to make it appear that Sheffield had tried to destroy blackmail evidence,' Irene said. 'I thought it was a nice touch.'
'What did you tell Sheffield to get him to Vivien's dressing room that night?'
'I was with Vivien when she placed the calls to both you and Sheffield. I held a gun on her and forced her to read the script I had prepared before I killed her.'
'The guard,' Amaryllis said. 'How did you get rid of the stage door guard?'
'I paid a street person to offer the man a bribe to leave his post for an hour. Really, one simply cannot get reliable help these days.'
'You, planned to kill me after I discovered Vivien's body. You waited for me in the hall outside her dressing room, didn't you? You wanted it to appear that Madison Sheffield had shot both me and Vivien.'
'That was the way I had organized it, but you ruined that plan, too.'
'How dare you?' Amaryllis's anger soared above the psychic pain. The energy gushing through the Prism slowed discernibly.
Out of the corner of her eye she saw Lucas glance at her. She knew that he had sensed that Irene's grip had wavered for a instant. He was a detector, after all. And he was very powerful. He had demonstrated before that he had enough control of his own talent to marshal it for brief flashes of energy.
Irene frowned. 'Why did you go back into Vivien's dressing room that night? Why didn't you run for the stage door entrance after you discovered her body? I was sure you would dash for help. I had turned out the corridor lights so that you wouldn't see me. I knew that you would be silhouetted against the light from the dressing room. A clear target. But you leaped back and slammed the door before I could pull the trigger. Why?
'I felt you.' Amaryllis sat very still on the edge of the sofa. 'I sensed your talent sputtering like oil in a frying pan. You were not in full control of it.'
'That's not true,' Irene hissed. 'I am in full control of my talent at all times.'
'You must have been nervous that night,' Amaryllis whispered. 'Not surprising, given the fact that you had just committed murder and intended to kill again.'
'You're wrong. My talent is always under my complete control.' Irene's voice rose. 'But you upset all my plans when you didn't come out into the hall. I was trying to decide what to do next when Madison Sheffield arrived. He was the one who was nervous. It was his talent you felt leaping about out like... like hot oil.'
'Later, yes, when I was hiding from him in the backstage tunnels. But not at first.' Amaryllis forced a derisive smile. 'At first, it was you, and you were definitely out of control.'
'No, it was Sheffield,' Irene shouted. 'It must have been him. He's weak.'
The energy pouring through the prism shimmered and slowed. A human being had only so much power of any kind on which to draw, Amaryllis reminded herself. Irene's rage had briefly siphoned off energy from her psychic efforts. Not enough to allow Amaryllis to break free, but enough to give her hope.
Somewhere in the distance, at the very edge of her awareness, she sensed Lucas's talent stirring. It prowled there in the shadows, a psychic beast of prey watching for an opening.
'Sheffield never even noticed me in the darkness.' Irene calmed herself with a visible effort. 'For a terrible moment I thought everything had gone wrong. I was afraid that when he was unable to find the hall lights, he would turn and run back out into the alley. Instead, he used the glow of that ridiculous star on Vivien's door to guide him. Foolish man. He was too scared to turn back. Vivien had told him on the phone that she had information that
