Canyons of Night

Chapter 24

SLADE AWOKE TO THE FIRST LIGHT OF DAWN AND THE realization that he was not alone in the bed. That was the good news, he decided. The bad news was that there was something very wrong about the size and shape of the other occupant. He put out a hand and touched a warm body covered in fur.

“Rex,” he said into the pillow. “What did you do with Charlotte?”

Rex nuzzled his arm, rumbled a greeting, and then jumped briskly down to the floor. Slade opened his eyes in time to watch him flutter through the bedroom doorway. A moment later the front door opened.

Charlotte’s voice floated down the hall. “Take your time. No need to hurry back. I’m about out of zucchini bread, anyway.”

Slade groaned and sat up on the side of the bed. Charlotte appeared in the doorway. She wore a pink terrycloth robe and a pair of matching slippers. Her hair stood out in a variety of interesting angles. She looked like she had spent a less than restful night.

“Hi,” he said.

“Hi, yourself. How do you feel?”

He thought about the question. “Good. Real good.”

“Lucky you. I’m stiff and sore from sleeping a goodly portion of the night on the couch.”

He winced. “Rex?”

“He came back late, made me feed him, and then took over my side of the bed.”

“You should have shoved him out.”

“Easy for you to say. Personally, I try not to get into arguments with anything that has more teeth and sharper claws than I do.”

“Rex wouldn’t hurt you.”

“Are you sure of that? I saw his hunting eyes. They tell me that is not a good sign when it comes to dust bunnies.”

He looked down and was reassured to notice that he was wearing his briefs. He got to his feet.

“Pretty sure,” he said.

“He’s a feral animal, Slade. He appears to have formed some kind of psychic bond with you but I don’t think you or anyone else can predict how he’d react if someone else tried to push him around.”

She had a point, he realized. He rubbed his jaw. He needed a shave.

“I apologize for Rex’s behavior,” he said. “Would you mind if I took a shower before we finish this conversation?”

“You can have the bathroom after me. I’m the one who had to sleep on the couch.”

“You know, we could shower at the same time. That way we wouldn’t have to worry about running out of hot water.”

She gave him one of her radiant smiles and for a couple of seconds his hopes soared.

“It’s a very small shower and I’m not worried about using up all the hot water because I’m going first,” she said sweetly. “By the way, would you mind stripping the bed while I’m in the shower? I want to wash the sheets.”

For some obscure reason, that hurt. He reminded himself that the sex had been hot and wet. The sheets probably did need washing.

“Sure,” he said.

“There will be dust bunny hair on my side of the bed,” she explained. “And on my pillow.”

He relaxed. It was Rex she wanted to wash out of her sheets, not him. Rex could take care of himself.

“No problem,” he said. “I’ll get right on it.”

She turned on her heel, went halfway down the short hall, and vanished into the bathroom. A moment later he heard the shower running.

He looked at Charlotte’s pillow. There were a few scruffy gray hairs but the damage didn’t look all that bad to him. Still, he knew enough about women to know that they could be picky about that sort of thing.

He bundled up the quilt, tossed it onto a chair and went to work stripping the sheets off the bed.

THE ENERGIZING AROMA OF BREWING COFFEE GREETED him when he emerged from the bathroom sometime later. He followed it into the kitchen and found Charlotte at the stove. She drew a long-handled spatula slowly through a large pan of creamy-looking scrambled eggs.

For a moment Slade stood in the doorway, allowing himself the luxury of watching Charlotte make breakfast for the two of them. She was dressed in black trousers and a deep blue pullover that skimmed her gently rounded breasts. Her hair, still damp from the shower, was tucked behind her ears and secured with a thin black headband.

It felt good just being here with her, he thought. She probably didn’t feel the same way about him, though. He’d seen his face in the steamed-up mirror a few minutes ago. He looked like he had just walked out of a disaster movie. True, he had showered but he’d had no way to shave and the clothes he had on were the ones he’d worn last night.

He made a note to bring a fresh shirt, a change of underwear, and a razor the next time he came to dinner at Charlotte’s. The fact that he hadn’t remembered to bring a few necessities last night only went to show how long he had been out of the dating world.

Charlotte raised the spatula in greeting and smiled. “Ready for breakfast?”

“Sure,” he said. He looked around. “Did Rex come back?”

“Not yet. Just as well. There aren’t enough eggs for all three of us.”

He glanced at the small table. It was neatly set with two green placemats, silverware, and mugs. Butter and a jar of marmalade were arranged in the center.

“Can I do something?” he asked.

“You can pour the orange juice and the coffee.”

“I should be able to handle that.” He opened the refrigerator and took out the bottled juice. “We need to talk.”

“I thought you wanted to rez with the frequency,” she said lightly.

He tried not to let the touch of frost in her voice bother him.

“Not about us,” he said. He closed the refrigerator door and looked at her. “About my talent.”

“Oh, right, your talent.” She hefted the pan off the stove and spooned the eggs onto two plates. “Well? What about it?”

“I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t say anything about it to anyone else, especially the members of your family.”

She glanced at him, brows lifted. “Why not?”

“Because your family is well-connected with Arcane and I don’t want J&J or anyone else getting curious about the effects that gas had on me.”

“Got it.” She set the pan down. “I understand and I agree.”

“You do?”

“My family may be well-connected within the Society but that doesn’t mean that I don’t know how things work in the organization. I’m well aware that rare and unusual talents make some members of the Society uneasy. That goes double if those talents are powerful. I don’t think there’s any doubt but that you are now off the charts. Level Ten with a very large asterisk.”

“Off the charts with an unknown talent,” he added quietly.

“A heretofore unknown aspect of your core talent,” she corrected.

“Doesn’t matter.” He poured the juice into two glasses. “Arcane gets nervous when the words unknown and off the charts appear in the same sentence. The same is true in the Guilds and at the Bureau.”

“I’m aware of that. Don’t worry, I have no intention of discussing your talent with anyone else, including the members of my own family.”

He was glad she was not going to argue with him. He put the bottle of orange juice back into the refrigerator and picked up the coffeepot.

“You were right about one thing, I’m going to need time to figure out just what has changed in my talent,” he said.

She carried the plates to the table and sat down. “You probably won’t figure it out until the first time you use it intuitively. We both know that’s how psychic abilities manifest themselves.”

He sat down across from her. “And sometimes people find out the hard way.”

She picked up a fork. “Don’t worry, you know now that you’ve got the control you’ll need to handle the energy you’re capable of generating.”

“You’re sure of that?”

“Absolutely.”

He ate some eggs, thinking. “What was it like for you?”

She gave him a wicked smile. “Are we talking about last night or my talent?”

He grinned. “I was thinking about your talent but if you’d rather discuss last night—”

“Forget last night. I spent a good portion of it on a lumpy sofa because there was a dust bunny on my side of the bed.”

He groaned. “Don’t remind me. It won’t happen again. By the way, I left your sheets on top of the washing machine.”

“Thanks. I’ll take care of them before I go to Looking Glass.”

“I don’t know why Rex took over your side of the bed last night. At my place, he never sleeps on the bed. In fact, he’s usually gone most of the night. Shows up around breakfast time.”

“Got a hunch he was guarding you,” she said, very thoughtful now.

“From you?”

“No.” She paused. “I think he was watching over you while you slept off the burn. Somehow he understood that you weren’t in a normal sleep state. He must have sensed that you were vulnerable until you woke up. He’s your buddy. He was watching your back.”

“You know, they say we shouldn’t anthropomorphize animals.”

“True. But Rex’s relationship with you is certainly odd.”

“I can’t argue that.” He slathered butter on a slice of toast. “You were going to tell me what it was like coming into your talent.”

“When I was thirteen, I started seeing faint rainbows in various reflective surfaces but only whenever there was someone else in the vicinity. I didn’t realize what was happening for the first few months, although I soon discovered that if I concentrated hard, the rainbows got brighter.”

“You didn’t realize you were seeing ultralight rainbows?”

“Not for some time. And neither did anyone else because it is not only a low-rent talent it is generally a very weak talent. A lot of people with the ability never realize what they’re seeing. They catch a glimpse of an ultralight rainbow in a mirror or a window and assume it’s just a trick of the light. Also, because the talent is not exactly impressive, it hasn’t been studied. It is poorly understood and not adequately described in the literature.”

“So how did you figure out what was going on and what you could do with your ability?”

“It was a long process,” she said. “When I mentioned the rainbows to my mother, the first thing she did was take me to an ophthalmologist who concluded that there was nothing wrong with my eyes. Aside from the fact that I needed glasses, that is.”

“But you kept seeing rainbows.”

“Of course. And they got increasingly vivid. My parents finally started to wonder if there was a link to my psychic senses because I certainly wasn’t showing signs of developing any other kind of talent. Everyone in my family has some talent, you see.”

“They say there’s a strong genetic component in some families.”

“Yes, but psychic genetics are extremely complicated. My talent doesn’t appear anywhere on the family tree. At any rate, the next appointment Mom made for me was with some experts in rare talents at one of the Arcane labs. They ran a lot of tests on me and eventually announced that I was an unusually strong rainbow-talent.” Charlotte waved one hand. “And that was the end of it, as far as everyone was concerned because, as everyone knows, the talent is just a novelty at best.”

“You seem to have parlayed it into a good career as an antiques dealer.”

She looked at him over the top of her mug, her eyes shadowed with darkly luminous mysteries. He felt the hair stir on the back of his neck, as it always did when he sensed secrets.

“Yes,” she said. “It has worked out well for me from a financial point of view.”

He looked at the mirrored pendant she wore. “Tell me about that necklace.”

“This?” She touched the pendant with her fingers. “I came across it a few years ago in an estate sale. I had no idea what it was but I knew that I had to have it. Later I figured out that it works a bit like tuned amber. It helps me focus my talent more precisely.”

“Interesting.”

She looked hesitant. He got the feeling that she was about to tell him something else about the pendant but in the next moment she changed her mind. She glanced out the window.

“Brace yourself,” she said lightly. “We have a visitor.”

He followed her gaze and saw Thelma Duncan striding briskly along the drive toward the cottage. She was dressed in her standard uniform, an oversized denim shirt heavily embroidered with colorful flowers, sturdy trousers, and a pair of well-worn boots. Her gray hair was covered by a broad-brimmed straw hat. She carried a basket on one arm.

“Something tells me you’re going to be eating zucchini bread for another week,” Slade said. “Rex will be happy.”

Charlotte set down her mug and got to her feet. “I admit I’ve had enough zucchini bread to last me until next summer’s crop comes in but I hope she brought more of those incredible tomatoes and basil. I could eat those all year long.”

Under other circumstances, her enthusiasm for the free produce would have been amusing, he thought.

“You do realize that Mrs. Duncan is going to see me here having breakfast with you,” he said. “She will draw the obvious conclusions. The news will be all over town by noon.”

Charlotte paused in the kitchen doorway and looked at him. “So what? Everyone assumes we’re sleeping together, anyway.”

“Assuming is one thing. Having the facts confirmed by a witness who actually saw us at breakfast takes the quality of the gossip to a whole new level.”

Charlotte winked. “The locals will conclude that their cunning plan to keep you happy here on the island is working.”

He thought about that for a beat and smiled slowly. “They’ll conclude right.”

She looked surprised and then she turned a delightful shade of pink and disappeared into the living room. He picked up his mug, got to his feet, and went to stand in the doorway between the two rooms.

Charlotte opened the door to a beaming Thelma Duncan.

“Good morning,” Charlotte said. “Won’t you come in? You’re just in time to join Slade and me for coffee.”

“Oh, goodness, is the chief here?” Thelma looked at Slade and managed to feign a start of surprise, as if she had not noticed him filling the kitchen doorway. “Why, so he is. Good morning, Slade. Lovely day, isn’t it?”

“According to the weather report there’s a storm coming in tonight,” Slade said.

“Yes, well, of course there is.” Thelma smiled serenely. “That’s the thing about life, isn’t it? Always something dark out there on the horizon. The trick is to enjoy the sunshine while you’ve got it.” She handed the basket to Charlotte. “I brought you a few things from my garden and another loaf of the zucchini bread. I know how much you like it.”

“Thank you so much.” Charlotte took the basket and examined the contents with enthusiasm. “More tomatoes, oh and the peas are coming in, I see. Fabulous. The basil is absolutely gorgeous. I should display it in a flower vase.”

Thelma looked pleased. “I must say the tomatoes and basil have been especially good this summer.”

“I’ve never seen garden produce as beautiful as what you grow,” Charlotte said. “You’re an incredible gardener.”

Thelma chuckled. “I don’t know about incredible, but I do enjoy my little hobby.”

“Come on into the kitchen and have some coffee,” Charlotte said.

“Thank you, dear, but I really don’t want to interrupt your breakfast.”

“Nonsense, you’re not interrupting anything,” Charlotte said.

She started toward the kitchen, basket in one hand. Slade got out of her way.

“Well, if you’re sure,” Thelma murmured. She fixed Slade with her twinkling gray eyes. “Where is Rex?”

“Who knows?” Slade said. “He took off at dawn. Haven’t seen him since.”

“I’m sure he’ll be back. He seems to have adopted you. Very odd behavior, really. I didn’t know dust bunnies made good pets.”

“They don’t,” he said.