Page 2 of It takes a Psychic

“Well, crap,” Leona said. “This is probably not a good idea.”

The dust bunny trembled. It took a lot to frighten a dust bunny.

“All right,” Leona said. “I’ll open the door, but I swear, if this is allabout getting you inside that room so that you can find a shiny new toy, I’m going to be very annoyed. You do realize I will be arrested if I get caught, right?”

The dust bunny scratched at the door.

Leona took a deep breath. There was no point in dithering. She had made her decision a moment ago when she had followed the dust bunny into the hallway.

She touched the lock with her fingertips and focused her senses. The vibe of the paranormal mechanism registered immediately. She found the pattern and gently probed for the anchor vibe. It took only a few seconds to flatline it.

There was a faint click as the hidden bolt slid aside. The dust bunny bounced up and down, more agitated than ever.

“Shush,” Leona said. “No noise. We don’t want anyone to hear us.”

She eased the door open. The dust bunny squeezed past her and fluttered into the darkened room. She heard muffled chortling—but not from her newfound companion. There were more dust bunnies inside the chamber.

She could make out only the shadowy outlines of what looked like a couple of laboratory benches. She took her phone out of her purse, rezzed the flashlight, and swung the beam around the room.

Her initial impressions were confirmed. She was in a laboratory stocked with state-of-the-art equipment and instruments. She recognized the various items immediately. She worked with similar devices in the lab at Hollister University.

It was not surprising that the Society possessed its own antiquities research lab. The shocking discovery was the large glass cage on one side of the room. There were three dust bunnies inside. They were sleeked out, all four eyes and a lot of teeth showing. When she went toward them, they immediately fluffed up and chortled hopefully.

“Keep it down, guys,” she whispered. “Don’t worry, I’ll get you out.”

The dust bunnies evidently got the message. They went silent, shivering with anticipation as she approached the cage.

“How in the world did they manage to catch you?” she asked. Then she saw the empty pizza carton on the bottom of the cage. “Okay, I guess that explains a few things.”

The psi-lock was relatively simple. It had been designed to keep the dust bunnies inside, not to keep humans from opening it. She touched it with her fingertips, rezzed her senses, and unlocked the door.

The dust bunnies tumbled out. They bounced up and down in front of her—she got the feeling she was being thanked—and then all of them—including the one that had gotten her attention in the gallery and led her to the lab—dashed out the door and vanished into the dark hallway. Evidently they didn’t need her help to escape the mansion.

“Guess my work here is done,” she said under her breath.

But the discovery of the imprisoned dust bunnies put a new light on the Society. She had been well aware that the organization was one of the university’s major donors—that was why she had been sent to the gala—and she’d suspected that several of the members dabbled in the gray market. Avid collectors were obsessive by nature. They rarely went out of their way to ensure the legal provenance of valuable artifacts.

But discovering that the Society was conducting research using dust bunnies as test subjects was too much. It could not be overlooked. She would report the news to the director of the para-archaeology department when she met with him in the morning. Morton Bullinger might be willing to ignore issues of sketchy provenances, but even he could not ignore this. He would have to take the information to the university’s board of directors and they would be forced to confront the endowment fund people. There was no way the institution could continue to accept money from the Society.

She started toward the door. She was tempted to examine some of themore interesting artifacts on the workbenches, but she had taken enough risks. She could not afford to get caught inside the lab.

She changed her mind when the beam of her flashlight swept across a gracefully curved black crystal bowl in a glass case. She could feel the disturbing vibe of power in the object from across the room.

Curious, she went closer and rezzed her senses a little. The bowl was definitely Alien in origin and there was a lot of energy locked in the object. Fascinated, she put her fingertips on the lock of the glass case.

A sharp frisson of awareness sparked across her senses, rattling her already tense nerves. She was no longer alone. She whirled around, struggling to come up with a believable explanation for her obviously illicit presence in the lab. She was good at thinking on her feet but there were not a lot of options here. Something along the lines of the classicI was looking for the restroomwould have to do. It was weak, but combined with hertemporarily famousstatus and her connection to the university, it might work.

She opened her mouth to start talking very fast but she went blank when the beam of her flashlight illuminated the man in the slightly rumpled tux standing in the doorway. She recognized him immediately. She had picked him out of the crowd earlier in the evening when she realized she was being watched. Somehow she had known he was the one who had been keeping an eye on her. She had concluded that he was either undercover security or a professional antiquities thief. The one thing she had been certain of was that he was not the boring, harmless-looking collector he was pretending to be.

Oh, shit.

“Good evening, Dr. Griffin,” he said. He adjusted his black-framed glasses. “I thought I’d lost you. Are you selecting a little souvenir to take with you when you leave tonight? I don’t blame you. There are some very nice items in the Society’s collection.”

Chapter Two

He thought she was athief.

Under the circumstances, that made sense—after all, she was not supposed to be in the lab. But that left his own status unclarified. Was he a security guard, or did he plan to steal one of the artifacts himself? If she were a betting woman, she would have put her money down on the latter possibility. She was quite sure she was dealing with a professional thief. He probably saw her as competition and, maybe, a threat.

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