Page 27 of It takes a Psychic

That meant that Pandora’s box had been opened and the pyramid was now resonating with another Vortex crystal. According to the readout on the screen, both stones were now at Leona Griffin’s address.

Success.

Leona had not only made it out of the chaos of the FBPI raid, she had somehow managed to steal the box. That was amazing. It was also another unexpected twist in an evening full of them.

But at least one thing had gone right tonight.

For a devastating time she had been on the verge of succumbing to rage and despair. The beautiful, intricate spiderweb she had woven hadbeen threatened by a couple of unforeseen events. It had been beyond infuriating. She had spent days on the elaborate strategy.

But the end goal had been achieved after all. She now had proof that Leona Griffin was the key to Vortex.

The next step was to lure her to Lost Creek. That shouldn’t be too difficult. She would come up with a plan in the morning. She was good with plans.

Yes, things were finally back on the right track.

It just went to show that she truly did have an incredible talent for manipulating events. She should never have doubted her own abilities or her own power.

She lifted her palms off the desk, straightened, and shrugged out of her calf-length trench coat. Tossing the garment over the foot of the bed, she snagged the plastic liner out of the trash can and went down the hall to the bathroom.

The sight of the bloodstained caterer’s uniform in the full-length mirror ignited another brief flash of rage. The last thing she had wanted to do at the reception was kill the woman. Dead bodies were always a potential problem. They attracted attention and raised questions. On the rare occasions when it was necessary to remove an individual who had become a problem, she almost always found a way to use someone else to do the job. But tonight she’d had no choice. The silly fool had tried to blackmail her.

Fortunately, that potential disaster had been handled. She had retrieved the pendant. The authorities would assume the dead woman had been involved in an artifact theft that had gone awry. No honor among thieves, et cetera, et cetera. Nevertheless, it was unnerving when an unanticipated event interfered in one of her elegantly designed strategies.

She peeled off the bloody shirt and trousers and stuffed them into a garbage bag. In the morning she would decide how to get rid of them. Yet another unscheduled twist in her grand strategy. She could have avoidedthe blood spatter problem if she had been able to use a mag-rez, but that had not been an option. She’d been obliged to use the only weapon available—a knife.

So messy. She hated messy.

If she were home in Frequency, she could have used her secret hole-in-the-wall to dispose of the bag of bloodstained clothing in the Underworld, where it would never be found. But this was Illusion Town, and she was in unfamiliar territory.

She showered and got into her pajamas and the robe with the hotel’s logo on it. The extortion attempt had been a serious inconvenience, and Griffin’s refusal to open Pandora’s box for the audience had been deeply alarming. But the FBPI raid had been the last straw. She had barely managed to escape undetected. It had been a close call, and in the end it had required her to use her talent for hypnosis to make the Bureau agent look away.

Really, the entire evening had been hard on the nerves. She needed to center herself and regain her focus.

She took the newly purchased self-help book out of her suitcase.Achieving Inner Resonance: A Guide to Finding Your Focus and Channeling Your True Potentialwas getting five-star ratings all over the rez-net. She had some serious reservations about the author’s techniques but she was determined to give the program a fair chance.

She turned to chapter six, “Opportunity Is a Flower That Blossoms in the Shadows.”

She paused, doubts welling up immediately. In her experience, events that were concealed in the shadows usually brought disaster. Even a tiny glitch could destroy the most carefully constructed strategy. But according to the book, that was precisely the sort of rigid mindset that made it impossible to perceive opportunity concealed in the shadows.

She read the short chapter. When she had committed the newaffirmation to memory, she set the book aside, de-rezzed the lights, and opened the blinds.

The hotel, one of a long line of glittering hotel-casino towers, was in the Amber Zone. She had requested a room that faced the glowing ruins. The Dead City gave her a visual focus, which, according to the book, made it easier to achieve inner focus.

I will put aside negative thoughts and focus on the positive aspects that will allow me to move forward. I will see the flower of opportunity that blossoms in the shadows.

The problem was that she had let the roller-coaster twists and turns of events tonight rattle her. Time to focus on the positive. The bones of the strategy were still in place. That was the important thing.

It was obvious now that, in the chaos of the raid, Leona Griffin had managed to steal the artifact. Although she had refused to open the box onstage, she had eventually done so, and the pyramid had resonated with another yellow crystal—almost certainly the one that Leona wore. She had recognized the significance of the pyramid. There was no other reason she would have risked her career—not to mention her life—by stealing such a high-profile artifact from a powerful organization like the Antiquarian Society.

No ordinary para-archaeologist could have pulled off such a daring heist and escaped the FBPI the way Leona had tonight. She had to be a high-level talent, maybe even a true triple. What’s more, she was clearly stable.

“Like me,” Melody whispered to the shadows.

She had been hiding her own multi-talent status since she had come into her psychic senses in her teens. The urge to lie low had been instinctive. A survival mechanism. No one trusted triples. They were assumed to be dangerous and, most likely, insane. But she was as stable as her notorious ancestor, Vincent Lee Vance.

Vance had failed in his quest to take control of the colonies, but she was going to succeed. She had inherited his talent and she was going to fulfill his unfinished destiny.

The key to the golden future she envisioned was Vortex, a machine that was capable of enhancing human paranormal talent. It was fundamentally Old World tech, and unfortunately there were still some flaws in the design—the version she had been working with currently produced highly unstable human monsters who either self-destructed or had to be destroyed. But she was convinced the basic theory was correct. Vincent Lee Vance had been living proof of that.

---