Page 8 of It takes a Psychic

Reluctantly she stopped at the top of the steps and looked back at him. “What now?”

“To celebrate the occasion and to thank you for your professional opinion, Candidate Number Five requests that you have the honor of opening Pandora’s box for us.”

An icy chill stopped her breathing. This was not good. She was not certain what was happening but her intuition was slamming into the redzone. Not many people knew she had a talent for locks. It was not the sort of skill you advertised.

“I appreciate the gesture,” she said. “But while that artifact is Old World in origin, it’s sealed with a rather sophisticated psi-lock. I’m afraid you’ll need a quartz-tech lock pick to open it.”

Tripp chuckled. “Which I just happen to have with me.” He plucked a pen-shaped device out of his pocket and held it aloft for the crowd to see. There was a roar of appreciative laughter and applause. “If you please, Dr. Griffin.”

Anger flashed through her. She thought about the dust bunnies in the cage and the illegally acquired antiquities in the Society’s collection and then she gave Tripp an icy smile.

“Open it yourself,” she said.

She turned and went quickly down the stage steps before anyone could react. Her intuition was flashing warning signs. She needed to leave. Immediately.

Her instinct was to run, not walk, to the front door and escape in the limo. She had a fleeting vision of herself fleeing down the steps, long skirts whipping out behind her as she dashed to her carriage before it turned into a large orange squash. But that particular scenario required a Prince Charming standing in the doorway of the castle, a high-heeled crystal shoe in his hand.

Mentally she stomped on the romantic scenario she had conjured. Her Prince Charming tonight was an antiquities thief. People in her profession did not have romantic fantasies about antiquities thieves.

The sensible thing to do would be to slip through the crowd while it was paying attention to Tripp and then exit through a side entrance.

A few heads turned her way as she reached the edge of the crowd, but most of the audience was focused on Tripp.

“I have just been informed that Candidate Number Five, who presented us with Pandora’s box, will not be going through the ceremonywith the others,” he announced. “The individual has retracted the application for membership and has withdrawn the artifact from consideration. Therefore, Pandora’s box will not be opened.”

There was an audible gasp from the crowd, followed by a tide of disbelief.

Okay, that was weird,Leona thought. Membership in the Society was highly coveted in the collecting world. But everyone knew collectors were frequently off-the-charts eccentric. She hated to see the box vanish back into someone’s private vault, but if the Society had taken possession of it, its fate would have been the same. It would have ended up in a private vault.

She took one last look around to make sure no one was paying attention to her and then slipped into the shadowed hallway markedRestrooms. Earlier, when she had used the facility to freshen up, she had noticed an emergency exit sign at the end of the corridor. She would override the alarm system long enough to slip outside without being noticed, make her way around to the sweeping driveway in front of the mansion, and locate the limo that had been booked for her.

She reached the end of the hallway, turned the corner, and saw the exit. There was a large sign.Opening Door Will Sound Alarm.

She was almost at her destination when she saw the stream of blood on the floor.

Stunned, she stopped short and traced the crimson river to its source. It was seeping out from underneath a closed door. She stilled. The very last thing she wanted to do was open the door. But she had no choice. Someone was inside, someone who desperately needed help.

Trying to keep her shoes out of the blood stream, she gripped the handle and opened the door. She found herself gazing into a large vintage pantry. There were no canned or packaged goods on the shelves, but there was an array of dishes, kitchen utensils, and cutlery.

The body of a woman was sprawled on the floor. She was wearing a caterer’s uniform. A bloodstained knife lay nearby.

Chapter Three

With a furious effort ofwill, she yanked herself out of the shock-and-horror-induced trance and edged into the pantry, trying to avoid the blood trail. She crouched beside the body and felt for a pulse, not expecting to find one.

She felt nothing but cooling skin and the utter stillness of death. Given her own pounding pulse and shaking fingers, however, she could not be sure. She fumbled with the buttons of the blood-soaked jacket, got them undone, and raised one edge to search for the wound.

She was startled by the sight of the metal disc that hung from a chain around the woman’s neck. The disc was emblazoned with a notorious emblem familiar from history books and old videos. A transparent crystal was embedded in the pendant. The wordsVincent Lee Vance Will Returnwere inscribed around the outer edge.

The waiter had evidently been a member of a Vance return cult.

Focus,she thought. There were two terrible slashes in the bloodywhite shirt. The bleeding had stopped. The energy laid down by violent death was already soaking into the floor beneath the body. It would remain there indefinitely, evident to those who possessed the psychic sensitivity to detect it. There was no scrubbing away that kind of evidence.

She let the jacket fall back over the pendant and the wounds and got to her feet. So much for slipping away from the reception unnoticed. She had to alert the security staff.

She took a step toward the door and froze. Muffled yells and shouted commands erupted from the direction of the ballroom, reverberating down the hallway. She could hear sirens now as well as the thuds of stampeding feet.

Out in the ballroom someone bellowed through a bullhorn.

---