Page 105 of It takes a Psychic

“Not as sweet as I expected,” Leona said. “It was kind of a letdown, to be honest. But that chapter of my life is definitely closed. I saw the flower of opportunity blossoming in the shadows and I grabbed it.”

“What does that mean?” Eugenie asked.

“It’s advice from a book I’m reading,” Leona said.

She tucked Roxy under one arm, jumped into the back seat of the vehicle, and closed the door. She focused on her phone, waiting for the photo.

“You made good time,” she said to the driver without looking up from the screen. “I’m glad because I’m—” She broke off because the photo had appeared on the screen. “Oh, shit.”

“What is it?” Charlotte asked, her voice sharpening.

“I recognize Agnes Willard’s niece,” Leona said.

The phone went dead as the car pulled away from the steps. Roxy was suddenly sleeked out and growling. Leona looked up. For the first time, she saw that a glass window separated the driver’s compartment from the rear seat.

She grabbed the door handle but the automatic locks had clicked shut, trapping her. She could unlock them but it would take a moment.She needed her talent to pull off that particular trick, and her talent was seeping away like water down a drain.

An unfamiliar, unpleasantly herbal scent wafted in the atmosphere. Roxy was no longer growling. She had gone limp. Not asleep, Leona realized. Roxy was unconscious.

She would be soon, too, because the scent was growing stronger. She tried to cover her mouth and nose with the sleeve of her jacket but it was too late.

The driver did not turn his head to look at her, but she could see his eyes and a portion of his face in the rearview mirror. Baxter Richey was no longer playing the role of naïve, enthusiastic paranormal investigator. He drove like a robot at the wheel—or as if he were in a hypnotic trance.

He was not alone in the front of the car. There was a woman in the passenger seat. A baseball cap concealed her hair. She turned around to peer through the glass barrier. Her eyes glittered with barely controlled fury.

“Darla Price,” Leona whispered, her voice thick from the effects of the drug.

“That name was for the Lost Creek portion of the project, the part you fucked up. You can call me Melody Palantine.”

Chapter Forty-Nine

She came awake to thefamiliar radiance of green quartz. That answered two questions. She was alive and she was in the Underworld.Gotta think positive.

It took her a moment longer to realize that she was lying on the floor of a tunnel chamber. She pushed herself to a sitting position and looked around with blurry eyes, trying to orient herself. Hope sparked briefly when she realized she still had her nav amber in the form of her bracelets and earrings, but when she pulsed a little energy, she realized they had been flatlined.

Her crystal pendant was gone.

She looked around. “Roxy?”

Melody Palantine appeared in the doorway. She had a flamer in her hand. The fierce, volatile energy of her fury charged the atmosphere.

“Forget the fucking dust bunny,” she said. “I told Baxter to get rid of it.”

“If he hurts her—”

Melody snorted. “You’ll do nothing. And if you’re thinking of making a run for it, forget it. I used a handy little gadget fresh out of my company’s labs to flatline your amber and the yellow crystal in your pendant.” She pulled the necklace out of her pocket and held it up. “Your sister did a very good job of locking in the codes, by the way. She’s definitely a high-rez tuner—I’ll give her that—but she’s a failure as far as Uncle Willard’s experiment goes.”

“How do you definefailure?”

Melody dropped the necklace back into her pocket. “She’s not a multi-talent. A double, at best. Certainly not a triple.”

“Do you think I’m a triple?”

“That’s what I’ve been trying to decide. But it’s difficult to measure psychic energy, especially if someone is concealing a third talent. And that’s what any smart, stable triple does, right? Conceal the full range of their profile? We all know how society fears people with high-rez talents. People like us.”

Leona managed to push herself awkwardly to her feet. A wave of dizziness almost overwhelmed her. She took a few deep breaths in an effort to steady her senses. “What makes you think I might be a triple?”

“No need to play dumb. According to my dear dead aunt’s journal, you and Molly are the results of her brother Nigel Willard’s experiments. He developed his own version of the enhancement process, you see. His goal was to create stable multi-talents. I need to know if he was successful with his approach. You and Molly are the only evidence available. He never got a chance to run any more experiments after he irradiated your mothers.”

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