Page 35 of It takes a Psychic

“Because I’m an illusion talent? I get it. A lot of people have a problem with my kind of psychic vibe. They figure we’re all con artists, magicians, or crooks.”

“No,” she shot back, annoyed. “My lack of trust has nothing to do with your talent. I’m being cautious because it’s clear you’re trying to tell me as little as possible about the pyramid. You’re keeping secrets.”

His mouth became a hard line. “What would you say if I told you it was for your own good?”

She rezzed up a cold smile. “I would say that’s ghost shit.”

“Figured you would.” He folded his arms on the table. “I’m telling you the truth. Pandora’s box belongs to the Rancourt Museum. It disappeared a few days ago. I contacted one of my connections in the artifact gray market.”

“I’m not surprised to hear you dabble in that market.”

“Name me a museum that doesn’t.”

She winced. “Fair point.”

“I picked up the rumor that the box was going to be submitted by an anonymous collector who was applying for membership in the Antiquarian Society. I knew the FBPI had a task force investigating the Society and that it was getting ready to conduct a raid. I offered to assist the Bureau in a coordinated action. I knew the box would be one of the objects on that stage. I was as surprised as you were when it turned out the pyramid was inside.”

She raised her chin. “Now you’re telling me that it really was all a coincidence?”

“No,” he said, “I don’t think it was a coincidence, but like you, I don’t know what is going on.”

“Sounds like we both have questions and we both want answers,” she said.

“Yes, it does. You said your sister found the crystals when she was a kid?”

“That’s right.”

“Tell me more about that.”

She had known he would want details, so she had prepped for the question on the way to the café. She had a version of the truth ready to go.

“Molly and I were left on the doorstep of an orphanage. That’s where we spent the first six and a half years of our lives. Then one day, when we were playing in the garden, Molly was grabbed by a deranged man named Nigel Willard. He was a chemist who evidently wanted to run some bizarre experiments on my sister. He took her down into the tunnels, where he had a lab. Thankfully Charlotte and Eugenie Griffin were able to rescue her before he could hurt her. While she was held prisoner, she saw some yellow crystals on a table and took two of them.”

“Why?”

“She was just a little kid.” Leona shrugged. “She was attracted to them. We didn’t know it then, but she was a budding crystal talent.”

“Are you and Molly biological sisters?”

“No, but we are sisters in every way that counts.” She fixed him with her chilliest glare, daring him to deny the bond. “And we are the daughters of Eugenie and Charlotte Griffin.”

“I understand,” he said.

Maybe he did, she thought. Orphans and children born outside of marriage were protected by the law. They were cared for and usually adopted at some point. But their lack of close blood relatives and a respectable family tree inevitably affected their status in society—in subtle ways when it cameto careers and social connections, and in not-so-subtle ways when it came to marriage.

“Can I ask how you and your sister wound up in an orphanage?” he said.

“The usual way,” she said, once again prepared to skate on the surface of the facts. “We were abandoned as infants. We found out later that our birth mothers died soon after they left us at the Inskip School. There is no record that either of them was married and no next of kin. No one was able to identify our fathers.”

His jaw tightened. “Tough road.”

“Molly and I got lucky.”

“Because the Griffins adopted you?”

“Yes. My turn. Why are you obsessed with the yellow crystal?”

“I am notobsessedwith it.”

---