In Too Deep

“Wait,” Isabella said. “Let me get this straight. Your uncle assigned you but not your partner to conduct the more detailed investigation?”

Fallon looked down at the ring. “I think my uncle had his suspicions about Tucker by then. Once I started looking, though, I could see the connections myself. Just a few things at first, but it didn’t take long before they formed a pattern. Should have seen it much sooner.”

“The pattern pointed to your friend, Tucker?”

“I couldn’t believe it. Didn’t want to believe it. I had trusted Tucker with my life in the course of some of our investigations. But in the end I had to face the truth. He was the secret owner of the club. He was responsible for the magic-lantern deaths.”

“Something tells me you did not go straight to your uncle with the results of your investigation.”

Fallon frowned. “Why do you assume that?”

She waved off the question. “Because he was your friend and partner. You had to be absolutely certain.”

“I should have turned things over to my uncle at that point. But you’re right—I needed to be sure. I confronted Tucker. I hoped that I was missing some piece of the puzzle that would exonerate him. Like everyone else I know, he had been warning me that my talent gave me a skewed vision of reality, that it made me inclined to see conspiracy fantasies where there was nothing but random chance. He told me more than once that some day I’d go too deep into the darkness and never return.”

“So you gave him a chance to convince you that you were wrong. I’ll bet he had a really good explanation.”

“He laughed at me,” Fallon said, sounding resigned. “He told me that I really had lost it. He said he could prove that he was innocent. He asked me to give him twenty-four hours. I said okay.”

“What happened?”

“He tried to kill me.”

“With his talent?”

“With an overdose of magic-lantern psi.”

“Oh, crap.”

“I had dinner with my fiancee that night.”

An odd little chill fluttered through Isabella. “I didn’t know that you were engaged.”

“I was at the time,” Fallon said. “Obviously I’m not now.”

“Right.” She did not know how to take that. The thought of Fallon Jones having had his heart broken by another woman left her feeling slightly unnerved for some inexplicable reason. She did not want to think that someone else had ever had the power to hurt him in that way. “Go on.”

“We had dinner at Jenny’s condo. Tucker must have used his talent to slip into her place and conceal a magic-lantern lightbulb in one of the floor lamps. The visible light waves given off by the crystals look normal. You don’t notice the paranormal effects of the lanterns until it’s too late. The radiation hit both Jenny and me, of course, but I’m a more powerful talent than she is.”

“So it hit you harder.”

“It slammed my senses straight into overdrive.” Fallon’s jaw tightened. “Never felt anything like it in my life. I went into what I thought was an enlightened state. Suddenly I could see all the mysteries of the cosmos. I was sure I could comprehend them if only I looked a little deeper.”

“What happened?”

“I was in a state of altered reality, completely disoriented. It was as if I was moving through a dream. I went out onto the balcony of Jenny’s condo, convinced that I would be able to see the heart of the universe. While I was in that condition, Tucker entered the apartment. He tried to force me over the railing. Actually, he tried to talk me into going over under my own willpower.”

“What?”

“I was hallucinating,” Fallon said. “Out of my head. He tried to convince me that there was a crystal bridge that connected the balcony of Jenny’s condo with the roof of the building across the street.”

“I think I saw that movie.”

“So did I. According to Tucker, all I had to do was step out onto the bridge. When that didn’t work, he resorted to force. There was a struggle. In the end, I . . . killed him. He went off the balcony, instead of me.”

“Dear heaven. How on earth did you manage to save yourself when you were in such a disoriented state?”

“This is going to sound weird,” Fallon said. “Even though the magic lantern affected my talent, I think it was my talent that somehow saved me.”

“Nah, it was your willpower and self-control that saved you, not your talent.”

He looked at her. “You think so?”

“Sure. You’ve got more self-control than any talent I’ve ever met. When push came to shove, it was that ability that saved you, not your talent.” She paused. “Then again, the two are sort of linked, I suppose. The fact that you can handle such a powerful talent means that you’ve got a lot of built-in control. Chicken-and-egg thing, I guess. If you didn’t have a lot of control, you’d have gone crazy by now.”

“Thanks for that visual,” Fallon said.

“Just trying to clarify here.”

“You have a way of doing that.”

“Doing what?” she asked.

“Clarifying.”

“Oh. Okay.”

“The bottom line is that I survived and Tucker died.”

“You did what you had to do,” Isabella assured him.

“Maybe. Maybe not.”

“What do you mean?”

“I was out of my head,” Fallon said. “Who knows how I might have handled the situation if I’d been in a normal state of mind? Jenny started screaming and crying. She was hysterical with grief and rage.”

“Why was she so upset? Because of the hallucinogenic light of the lantern? Surely when she came back to her senses, she understood that you had been forced to fight for your life.”

“Tucker Austin was her brother.”

Isabella sighed. “I see. Well, that certainly explains her distraught reaction.”

“Tucker was her older brother. She idolized him. Hell, he was the golden boy of the Austin family. Jenny and her parents have never believed that Tucker was running the club or selling the magic-lantern light. They have what you might call another theory of the crime.”

Understanding hit her hard.

“They think you were the one running the Arcane Club and dealing the magic-lantern light.”

“Their version of events is that after J&J fired up the investigation, I decided to cut my losses, shut down the club and set Tucker up to take the fall. Literally, in this case.”

“To cover your tracks?”

“Yes,” Fallon said evenly. “They also believe that my family protected me.”

“Of course they can’t prove that because there is no proof, so they comfort themselves with their own version of history. It’s actually a pretty solid conspiracy theory, because within Arcane the Joneses wield a lot of power. It would be easy to believe they would circle the wagons around one of their own.”

Fallon’s eyes were bleak. He said nothing.

“That’s one of the hallmarks of conspiracy theories, isn’t it?” She shook her head. “As someone once said, they are the losers’ version of history.”

“Never thought about it like that.”

“Probably because you weren’t raised in a family of dedicated conspiracy freaks.” She glanced down at the ring. “So every year on the anniversary of Tucker’s death someone sends you a nasty little memento mori. Who is it? Jenny?”

“Probably, although I suppose it could be Tucker’s mother or father.”

“You’ve never tracked down the sender?”

“Didn’t seem to be much point. I got the message.”