Amaryllis

Chapter 19

"I've been dreading that visit to Elizabeth Bailey." Amaryllis watched the scenery flash past the leer's window. "But in the end, after all was said and done, I realized that, although I'm never going to actually learn to like the woman, mostly I just felt sorry for her."

Lucas flexed his hands on the steering bar. "She screwed up a lot of lives."

"She believed that she was doing the right thing. But she was rigid, inflexible, and proud."

Lucas said nothing.

Amaryllis grimaced. "I know, I know. I have a lot in common with her. What can I say? She's my grandmother."

"She's your grandmother, all right, but you don't have very much in common with her. Elizabeth Bailey is one cold eel-fish. Five seconds after meeting her this afternoon, I could have told you that she's spent a lifetime coercing others into doing what she thought they should do."

"I'm sure she had her motives."

"Yeah, right. Motives like trying to control everyone and everything around her."

"Is that a fact?" Amaryllis smiled blandly. "What about me? What would you say motivates my actions?"

Lucas did not hesitate. "Loyalty. A sense of justice. Family."

"Elizabeth Bailey could claim that her actions were based on those same three principles."

"I have a hunch that for Elizabeth, her principles stand alone in a vacuum. There is no place in her rigid little world for friendship, compassion, and love. Your values, on the other hand, are sunk deep in that kind of bedrock."

"Hmm. Well, in that case, I guess you and I have a few things in common, after all, don't we?"

Lucas shot her a derisive glance. "Oh, no, you don't. I'm no modern-day version of one of your idealized founders. Don't you dare try to pin a halo and some wings on me."

"Nobody ever said the founders were angels. But I do think that you work much too hard at concealing your own virtues."

"Amaryllis, I'm warning you."

"Just look at all the fine, altruistic things you've done since we met." Amaryllis held up one hand and ticked her points off on her fingers. "You let that thieving vice president, Miranda Locking, get away with her crimes because you felt sorry for her. You helped Dillon Rye out of the mess he got himself into because he was your disloyal ex- partner's kid brother. You helped me track down a murderer because you wanted to protect me."

"Funny how hard it is to distinguish between my virtues and my weaknesses," Lucas muttered.

"Oh, I don't know. Most of the time the distinction is as clear as prism crystal to me."

"Yeah?" Lucas glanced at her. "What about those occasions when it's not quite that clear?"

"I'm learning not to worry too much about the vague stuff." Amaryllis grew thoughtful. "But there are a couple of things I'd like to see cleared up."

"About me?"

"No. About Professor Landreth's death."

"Damn. You never give up, do you? Now what?"

"I'd still like to know how Madison Sheffield discovered that he was the subject of Professor Landreth's hot file."

Lucas exhaled deeply. "Just so you'll know in the future, tenacity is one of those vague virtues you mentioned a minute ago. It's not always a good thing."

An hour and a half later, Lucas drove into the night- darkened city. It was raining. The light from the streetlamps glimmered on the wet pavement and reflected in the shop windows.

Amaryllis roused herself from thoughts of the meeting with Elizabeth Bailey just as Lucas turned a corner and drove slowly down the quiet street to her house. The answer to the problem that she had been mulling over during the long drive suddenly crystallized.

"Irene Dunley," Amaryllis said.

"Hub?"

"I've been thinking about my grandmother."

"What's Elizabeth Bailey got to do with Irene Dunley?" Lucas asked as he brought the leer to a stop at the curb.

"There's something about my grandmother that reminds me of Irene."

"What?"

"It's hard to explain." The excitement of intuitive discovery hummed through Amaryllis. She was suddenly seething with impatience. "They've both spent a lifetime controlling everything around them."

"I'll go along with that conclusion." Lucas deactivated the ignition and turned slightly in the seat. He rested one arm on the steering bar and watched Amaryllis from the shadows. "Where does it lead?"

"I'm not sure." Amaryllis tapped one finger on the seat. "To tell you the truth. I'm almost afraid to think about it. Irene was one of Madison Sheffield's staunchest supporters. She believed in him. Lucas, what if Irene was the person who told Madison Sheffield about Professor Landreth's file?"

Lucas thought that over. "Okay, it's a possibility. But so what? We've already decided that the person who told Sheffield about the file was probably connected to the Department of Focus Studies."

"Of all the people in the department, Irene would have been the one most likely to know about the contents of the file. She had worked with Professor Landreth forever, and he trusted her more than anyone else. She was fiercely loyal to him. I think she even loved him. But what if she learned about the file and was torn between what she felt was her duty to the future of New Seattle city-state and her loyalty to Professor Landreth?"

"Hard to tell what she would do."

Amaryllis shook her head. "No. I think I know Irene Dunley well enough to believe that in a situation like that, she might very easily have concluded that she had a responsibility to inform Sheffield about the threat to his campaign."

"And then what?"

"Why, she would have felt guilty for having betrayed Professor Landreth, of course. Just as Elizabeth Bailey felt guilty for having ruined her son's chance of happiness. That kind of guilt would have eaten at Irene. Tormented her. Even though she knew she had done what she felt was the right thing."

"You think that's why she tried to help you when you decided to solve the mystery of Landreth's death?"

"Yes." Amaryllis watched the rainfall on the leer's windshield. "I think she must have begun to wonder if she had inadvertently signed Professor Landreth's death war- rant when she told Sheffield about the file."

"She did sign it. But it's over now. She'll have to live with it." Lucas opened his door. "Come on, let's get the luggage inside."

Amaryllis tugged the hood of her raincoat up over her head and got out of the car. Lucas hauled the suitcases out of the trunk and joined her on the sidewalk.

Together, they hurried to the shelter of the small over- hang above the front steps. Amaryllis unsealed the lock, pushed open the front door, and stepped inside the darkened hall.

The whisper of talent brushed against her senses and raised the fine hairs on the back of her neck.

Someone was inside the house.

"Lucas."

"I felt it." He dropped the suitcases and clamped a hand around her arm. "Let's get out of here." He started to pull her back out onto the steps.

Amaryllis did not resist. She swung around, ready to run. There was a familiar tingling on the psychic plane. Lucas was reaching for a focus link even as he drew her to safety. He no doubt wanted to use his detector-talent to try to learn something about the intruder.

Amaryllis opened herself to the link. Felt the instant of disorientation, the jarring seconds of complete vulnerability as her mind constructed a prism...

...And then she staggered and nearly fell as an impossible surge of talent seized her in an iron fist. Alien, powerful, and brutal.

This was not Lucas. Amaryllis panicked. Not Lucas.

She tried to pull back but she was trapped. To her horror, the prism took shape on the psychic plane.

Someone or something else took control of the energy construct. Power poured through it. Torrents of dark power.

Amaryllis screamed. She clutched her head with both hands and tried to cut off her own flow of psychic energy. "No. Stop it. Stop it."

Nothing happened. She could not shut down the link. Lucas had her outside on the steps. Rain whipped at her coat. Frantically she tried to blank her mind. The link held strong.

"What is it?" Lucas pulled her to him. "What the hell is going on?"

"Another talent." Amaryllis collapsed against him.

"Five hells." He caught her. "I can feel the bastard."

"Strong. So strong." If she did not get free, she would go insane, Amaryllis thought. A fresh wave of panic crashed through her.

Lucas picked her up in his arms. "Break the link. Destroy the prism."

"I can't. Lucas, I can't release the focus. I'm trapped." Distance would help, Amaryllis knew. The strength of any talent was directly affected by proximity. "Get me away from here."

"As fast as I can," Lucas vowed. He started toward the car with Amaryllis in his arms.

Talent slammed through the prism. Amaryllis looked fearfully back over Lucas's shoulder toward the open door- way of her house. She expected to see a monster lumber into view.

Instead, a familiar figure emerged from the shadows of the hall and moved out onto the front step.

The weak light from the jelly-lamp above the door gleamed on the gun in Irene Dunley's hand.

"Come back inside at once," Irene said in the same tone of voice that she used to give instructions to student assistants. "Really, some people don't know enough to come in out of the rain."

"Lucas, she's got a gun."

"Stop right where you are, Mr. Trent, or I shall be forced to shoot."

Lucas halted halfway down the walk. He turned slowly to face Irene. Amaryllis sensed that he was weighing the odds of getting her to safety before Irene could pull the trigger. She felt the precise instant when he accepted the fact that he could not outrun a bullet.

"Come here," Irene said.

Lucas carried Amaryllis slowly back up the steps and into the house. Irene rewarded him with a smile of cold approval.

"That's better. Now, kindly sit down." Irene trained the nose of the gun on Amaryllis as she gave the order. "Over there on the sofa will do."

Lucas said nothing. He carried Amaryllis into the living room and set her carefully on her feet. He searched her face.

"Are you all right?" he asked.

There was no trace of emotion in his voice, but the bleak chill in his eyes frightened Amaryllis almost as much as the assault on her sanity that was taking place on the psychic plane.

"No." Amaryllis reached for the arm of the sofa to steady herself. "I'm not all right. I can't get free." She lowered herself gingerly down onto the cushions. "Lucas, I'm going crazy."

Lucas looked at Irene. "Let her go."

"I don't think that would be wise." Irene moved slowly toward them. "She would be free to link with you, then, Mr. Trent and I suspect that you are a very strong talent. As I am uncertain about the exact nature of your psychic abilities, however, I would prefer to keep them neutralized by restricting your access to a powerful prism."

Lucas shrugged as if the matter were not all that important, but he never took his eyes off Irene's face as he lowered himself to the arm of the sofa.

"Don't worry," Irene said pleasantly. "I expect she'll bum out any second. No prism is strong enough to handle my full range of power. Even Jonathan burned out when I used the complete spectrum of my talent."

Amaryllis sagged on the sofa cushion. She held her head in her hands and fought for her sanity. She'd never been trained for anything like this. What Irene was doing was supposed to be impossible.

Nothing she did seem to alter the flow of talent that roared through the prism. As far as she could tell, Irene was not using the thundering flow of energy for any purpose other than to chain the focus so that Lucas could not seize it. She wondered fleetingly what sort of talent Irene possessed.

"You murdered Landreth, didn't you?" Lucas said casually to Irene.

Amaryllis felt the whisper of a cold, motionless wind. She lifted her head, fighting back waves of psychic pain to stare at Lucas. Then she turned toward Irene. "You killed Professor Landreth?"

"I had to kill him." Irene sounded vaguely regretful. "In the end, I realized that it had to be done. There was no choice."

"Was it because Landreth had figured out that you were capable of doing this to a prism?" Lucas touched Amaryllis's shoulder.

Pain exploded through her confused senses. Her seared nerve endings did not know how to interpret the feel of Lucas's hand. He withdrew his fingers instantly when Amaryllis cried out. She huddled on the edge of the sofa.

"Oh, no, you don't understand." Irene's expression was one of modest pride. "Jonathan was very respectful of my power. He worked with me for many years, teaching me to control it. We were always testing, training, and exploring the possibilities of my talent together. He said he'd never encountered anything like it. Those were glorious hours. I shall treasure them forever."

"He served as your prism, didn't he?" Amaryllis managed to ask.

"Yes, indeed. He was my only prism after my husband died. Jonathan did not want to use anyone else to provide a focus for me because he said it was too dangerous."

"For the prism?" Lucas asked.

"No, no. For me." Irene chuckled. "Jonathan felt that for my own safety, no one should know the extent of my talent. It was our little secret, he said. It bound us together more surely than any wedding license."

"So why did you kill him?" Lucas asked. "Because you didn't want him to know about your little secret any longer?"

"Oh, no, that wasn't the reason."

"Why?" Amaryllis got out hoarsely. "Why did you murder him?"

"Because he was not the man I had believed him to be." Irene's mouth tightened. "I thought he was made of the very stuff of our founders. Instead, I discovered that he was perverted and corrupt. He betrayed me."

"Oh lord," Amaryllis whispered. "This had nothing to do with politics or Gifford. You killed Professor Landreth because of those standing appointments with Vivien, didn't you?"

"Jonathan proved to be just as weak as my husband had been. No moral fiber at all. It was very disappointing."

Pain flared on the psychic plane. Amaryllis flinched and tried not to move. "He left that Friday to go to his mountain cabin. You met him there and pushed him off the cliff."

"We often went to the mountains together," Irene said. "No one else knew of our weekend rendezvous at his cabin, naturally."

"Another one of your little secrets," Lucas said.

Another eddy of cold wind moved in the room. Amaryllis took heart. She probed cautiously, trying to dampen the clarity of the prism. It stayed sharp and precise, providing a focus for Irene's raging talent.

"Jonathan and I were always very discreet." Irene sighed. "But on that last occasion, I was obliged to end our relationship. We took a walk along the cliff path after dinner as usual. Formed a last prism link. I took him to his psychic limits and then, just as he was about to burn out, pushed him over the edge. I don't think he even knew what had happened."

"Dear God." Amaryllis sank deeper into the sofa.

"Afterward I tidied up and came home alone," Irene said. "It was the saddest day of my life, but I felt good about it. I knew I had done the right thing."

"And the authorities never questioned Landreth's accident," Lucas said.

"It all went very smoothly," Irene assured him. "Most things do if one organizes them properly."

"You mean it went smoothly until Amaryllis started asking questions," Lucas said.

Irene glared at Amaryllis with accusing eyes. "A most unfortunate turn of events. A bit of bad luck that I could not have anticipated. Your encounter with Sheffield while he was focusing in what you considered an unethical manner led you back to the Department of Focus Studies."

"You knew that questions about a Landreth-trained prism focusing in an unethical manner for a powerful politician could lead to questions and speculation," Amaryllis whispered.

Irene sighed. "Eventually that speculation would have led to questions about the professor's death. It was inevitable because you were bound to realize that you had uncovered a possible murder motive. It was the wrong motive and the wrong suspect, of course, but your persistence could have led you to me."

"Why did you send me to Vivien?"

"I tried to nip the whole thing in the bud by demonstrating to you that Jonathan Landreth was not worthy of your loyalty. I thought perhaps you'd let the entire matter drop once you realized what he was."

"You sent me to talk to Vivien of the Veils thinking that I would be shocked and disgusted when I learned about her relationship with Professor Landreth." Amaryllis gritted her teeth as power spiked on the psychic plane. "You thought I'd drop my investigation into his death because he was seeing a syn-sex stripper?"

"If you had possessed a proper sense of values, you would have done so. You'd have understood that Jonathan's death was nothing less than what he deserved. He had consorted with a creature of low morals. Justice had been done."

Rage flashed through Amaryllis. "You have no right to condemn poor Vivien for her morals. Yours are a lot lower than hers ever were. You're a murderer."

The rush of talent energy dimmed. Hope sparked in Amaryllis. But as her own red-hot anger receded, Irene's crude power surged once more.

Irene shook her head. "I thought you and I had a great deal in common, Miss Lark. I believed your standards to be as high as my own. You seemed like such a nice young lady. Obviously I was mistaken."

Lucas shifted slightly on the sofa. "When you realized that Amaryllis intended to continue pushing for answers, you took another step. You tried to point the finger at Gifford Osterley. He had a motive, after all. Everyone knew that he and Landreth had quarreled."

"When Miss Lark inquired about the appointments Jonathan had made on the last day of his life, it occurred to me that it might be useful to bring that dreadful Gifford Osterley into the picture," Irene agreed.

Fury erupted like a geyser inside Amaryllis. And again she thought she detected a slight weakening of Irene's energy flow. "You set out to frame Gifford. You wrote down that three o'clock appointment in Professor Landreth's calendar."

"After all these years, it was a simple matter to imitate his handwriting," Irene said.

Lucas watched her intently. "But you changed your mind about framing Osterley. You set Madison Sheffield up for the fall, instead. Why the switch? I thought you were a big fan of his."

Irene's eyes blazed. "I discovered that Madison Sheffield was no better than Jonathan."

"How?" Lucas asked.

"Natalie Elwick," Amaryllis said.

"Indeed." Irene's mouth tightened. "Gifford Osterley's secretary is an old acquaintance of mine. We worked together for years before she left the department to manage Unique Prisms' new office. She confided to me that Sheffield demanded only beautiful, young, female prisms who were willing to sleep with him as part of their services. He got some sort of perverted sexual thrill out of it, Natalie said."

"No wonder Gifford was worried about having his firm dragged any deeper into the investigation," Lucas said softly. "He's running a full-spectrum call girl operation."

"Can you believe it?" Irene's voice rose. "Madison Sheffield was the Founders' Values candidate. The next governor of this city-state. He would have been president if I hadn't stopped him."

"So you decided to destroy his career by framing him for Vivien's death," Lucas said.

"I had already planned to punish the syn-sex stripper. She was the one who led Jonathan astray, after all. I could not allow her to live. But I had not yet finished organizing the arrangements for her death when everything started to fall apart."

"Because Amaryllis started asking questions," Lucas said.

"She was a threat to all of my plans." Irene tightened both hands on the grip of the gun.

"Professor Landreth had no file on Sheffield, did he?" Amaryllis managed tightly. "You created it as part of your plan to dispose of Vivien, me, and Sheffield in one neat package."

Lucas looked at Irene. "You left that phony file, half-burned, in Vivien's dressing room after you killed her."

"I singed it just enough to make it appear that Sheffield had tried to destroy blackmail evidence," Irene said. "I thought it was a nice touch."

"What did you tell Sheffield to get him to Vivien's dressing room that night?"

"I was with Vivien when she placed the calls to both you and Sheffield. I held a gun on her and forced her to read the script I had prepared before I killed her."

"The guard," Amaryllis said. "How did you get rid of the stage door guard?"

"I paid a street person to offer the man a bribe to leave his post for an hour. Really, one simply cannot get reliable help these days."

"You, planned to kill me after I discovered Vivien's body. You waited for me in the hall outside her dressing room, didn't you? You wanted it to appear that Madison Sheffield had shot both me and Vivien."

"That was the way I had organized it, but you ruined that plan, too."

"How dare you?" Amaryllis's anger soared above the psychic pain. The energy gushing through the Prism slowed discernibly.

Out of the corner of her eye she saw Lucas glance at her. She knew that he had sensed that Irene's grip had wavered for a instant. He was a detector, after all. And he was very powerful. He had demonstrated before that he had enough control of his own talent to marshal it for brief flashes of energy.

Irene frowned. "Why did you go back into Vivien's dressing room that night? Why didn't you run for the stage door entrance after you discovered her body? I was sure you would dash for help. I had turned out the corridor lights so that you wouldn't see me. I knew that you would be silhouetted against the light from the dressing room. A clear target. But you leaped back and slammed the door before I could pull the trigger. Why? Why?"

"I felt you." Amaryllis sat very still on the edge of the sofa. "I sensed your talent sputtering like oil in a frying pan. You were not in full control of it."

"That's not true," Irene hissed. "I am in full control of my talent at all times."

"You must have been nervous that night," Amaryllis whispered. "Not surprising, given the fact that you had just committed murder and intended to kill again."

"You're wrong. My talent is always under my complete control." Irene's voice rose. "But you upset all my plans when you didn't come out into the hall. I was trying to decide what to do next when Madison Sheffield arrived. He was the one who was nervous. It was his talent you felt leaping about out like... like hot oil."

"Later, yes, when I was hiding from him in the backstage tunnels. But not at first." Amaryllis forced a derisive smile. "At first, it was you, and you were definitely out of control."

"No, it was Sheffield," Irene shouted. "It must have been him. He's weak."

The energy pouring through the prism shimmered and slowed. A human being had only so much power of any kind on which to draw, Amaryllis reminded herself. Irene's rage had briefly siphoned off energy from her psychic efforts. Not enough to allow Amaryllis to break free, but enough to give her hope.

Somewhere in the distance, at the very edge of her awareness, she sensed Lucas's talent stirring. It prowled there in the shadows, a psychic beast of prey watching for an opening.

"Sheffield never even noticed me in the darkness." Irene calmed herself with a visible effort. "For a terrible moment I thought everything had gone wrong. I was afraid that when he was unable to find the hall lights, he would turn and run back out into the alley. Instead, he used the glow of that ridiculous star on Vivien's door to guide him. Foolish man. He was too scared to turn back. Vivien had told him on the phone that she had information that could damage his campaign, you see."

"When he went into the dressing room and turned on the light, you went out through the stage door entrance," Lucas concluded. "And then you locked the alley door so that Sheffield would be forced to wander blindly around the backstage tunnels looking for another way out."

"I knew that sooner or later he would blunder into someone who would recognize him," Irene said. "And then the body and the file would be found, and everything would be neat and orderly again. It was true that Amaryllis would not be dead as I had intended, but I thought that surely she would stop asking questions once Sheffield was arrested for murder. Surely that would satisfy her."

Amaryllis stared at Irene while she fought the psychic pain. "But the day before I left the city to visit my family, I told you I wasn't satisfied and I had a few more questions."

"You had become obsessive," Irene raged. "It was obvious that you were never going to quit. I understood then that nothing would stop you. You would continue to poke and pry until eventually you stumbled onto the truth. It has become clear to me that both you and Mr. Trent must die. Then things will be tidied up at last. Everything will be back under control."

"It's too late for everything to be made neat and orderly." Amaryllis summoned every ounce of emotion she could find: righteous anger at the grave injustices that Irene had perpetrated; fear for Lucas's life and her own; and love. The love she had for Lucas was more powerful than the other emotions combined. She would not let him die. She had to save him.

For some reason, she suddenly recalled the visit to Elizabeth Bailey. Some walls were too high to climb. But there were other ways around them.

Irene must be distracted so that Lucas could act. The easiest way to divert the attention of a high-class talent was to force her to use more power. Extreme power required extreme concentration.

Amaryllis consciously tore down the civilized barriers of self-control that had been built up over a lifetime. A flood of emotion and passion poured through her. She fed the fierce feelings of the moment with all the stored anger, righteous indignation, and sheer determination she had ever known. And then she threw in the will to survive and to save Lucas.

A witch's brew boiled through her bloodstream, a heady, intoxicating drug that affected everything, even events on the psychic plane.

The focus shifted and dimmed.

Irene fought back, using more energy to hold the link. Amaryllis screamed silently as the bands of talent brightened visibly. Then she forced Irene to use more power.

"Stop it." The gun trembled in Irene's hands. "Stop it this instant, do you hear me? You'll only burn yourself out if you keep it up."

Burning out would be a blessing, but Amaryllis sensed that might not happen, at least not in time. She braced herself against the mounting fear of being driven insane and concentrated on what she had to do.

"What's the matter, Irene?" she said. "Afraid you'll be the one to burn out first? Professor Landreth had a theory that it was possible to actually destroy a talent this way. Did he ever tell you about it?"

"That's a lie. You can't destroy my talent." Irene took a step closer. "I'm too strong for you. Jonathan said I was too strong for him. I was too strong for my husband. I'm stronger than any talent who ever lived. That's why every- thing must be organized, don't you see? That's why I must be in control."

"But you're not in control, are you, Irene? You're crazy."

"No."

Lucas moved slightly again. But Amaryllis knew that as long as Irene had the gun aimed at her, he would feel pinned down. Irene could not miss at this close distance.

Amaryllis closed her eyes against the rising tide of pain. And then she deliberately fed the pain into the fiery river that flowed through ever vein and artery in her body.

Her muscles went rigid. There was a prickling sensation on her skin. Her mouth was as dry as dust. But she knew that Irene was finally beginning to realize how great the price of control over the focus link would be.

She wondered when Irene would lose it altogether and pull the trigger.

The icy wind howled across the psychic plane. It was as strong as the violent talent that had seized control of the link. A dark fog gathered.

Amaryllis was astonished to see Professor Landreth in the mist. His head was a gory horror. He was covered in blood. She opened her mouth to ask him what he was doing in her living room.

Irene screamed. "No, you're dead. You're dead."

There was a roar of sound in Amaryllis's ears. More screaming. High, shrill, it seemed to go on forever.

At the edge of her fading vision Amaryllis saw Lucas come up off the sofa in a fluid, lethal movement.

The talent that had surged so steadily and so painfully through the prism was cut off abruptly. Amaryllis was suddenly free. The abrupt release was too much for her overloaded system. An endless wave of unconsciousness rolled toward her.

She slipped headfirst into the waiting darkness. The last thing she saw was a river of blood coursing across the carpet. She wondered vaguely whose it was.