Copper Beach

11

“Help me.” Grady Hastings was barely visible in the swirling mist. He reached out a pleading hand. “Please help me.”

Abby looked at him through the eerie light that illuminated the dreamscape and knew that she was dreaming. The strange fog that ebbed and flowed around Grady was different tonight. It burned with an inner radiance that she had not noticed in the previous dreams. She could move through it, get closer to Grady.

She was dreaming, but she was aware that she was dreaming. Her psychic alarm clock had gone off right on time. She could take control.

“Tell me what you want from me,” she said, speaking in the silent language of dreams.

The mist thickened around Grady. It was getting harder and harder to see him, but she sensed his desperation and despair.

“Help me,” he said. “You’re the only one who can.”

She tried to grasp his hand.…

AND CAME FULLY AWAKE IN A RUSH OF ENERGY, HER SENSES sparking and flashing like dark fireworks in the night. The primordial instincts of childhood kicked in. She tried to hold herself utterly still, not daring to move, but she could not stop the shivering that racked her body.

Heart pounding, she opened her eyes, searching the shadows. No one leaped out of the closet. No monster crouched at the foot of her bed. Newton was not there, either. That was not right, because she could feel his warm weight pressed against her leg.

In the next heartbeat she realized that she was on her feet beside the bed. At least her psychic alarm had awakened her before she had actually started to walk out of the bedroom.

There was something very wrong with the shadows in the room. They seethed and shifted. It took her a few seconds to figure out that the pulsing, roiling ultralight was coming from the small, hot storm brewing on her dresser.

“Oh, crap,” she whispered to Newton. “It’s the herbal. I accidentally ignited it in my sleep.”

Newton growled softly.

She rushed to the dresser. Hot currents from the herbal were seeping out of the wooden box. She realized that she had inadvertently tapped some of the encryption energy in the old book when she tried to take control of the dream.

She looked at the box with a sense of dread. Currents of hot psi from the darkest end of the spectrum twisted and wreathed around it. Any minute now she would start to smell charring wood. And then the smoke alarms would go off. If the condo building’s fire-detection systems were activated, the fire department would be called automatically. Even if no real damage was done, her neighbors and the condo board of directors would want to know what happened.

Disaster loomed.

She opened the box very carefully. Energy flared higher. Gingerly, she put her hand on the leather cover of the herbal. Shocks of paranormal electricity crackled through her. She ignored them and channeled her talent, dampening the currents. She could only hope that Sam was a really sound sleeper.

The last of the hot energy had almost winked out when the bedroom door opened abruptly. She looked over her shoulder and saw Sam’s shadowy frame silhouetted against the city lights that illuminated the living room. Icy energy chilled the atmosphere. The room was suddenly very cold.

“What’s going on?” Sam asked. His eyes burned. The strange crystal in his ring glowed with an inner fire.

Newton spared him a brief glance, ears sharpened, and then returned his full attention to Abby and the hot book.

Abby winced and stifled a groan. So much for the faint hope that Sam would sleep through the disturbance.

“Nothing is wrong,” she said. Her voice sounded half an octave too high, even to her own ears. The book was almost dark now. She got the lid back on the box and turned to face Sam. “I had a bad dream and got up to walk off the energy. You know how it is with nightmares.”

“Yes,” he said. His tone was as cold as the energy that enveloped him. “I know how it is with nightmares. I also know that you’re lying through your teeth. Why are you trying to hide the herbal?”

“Excuse me,” she said. Her voice was firmer now. It would have been easier to pull off stern and deeply offended if she had not been standing there in a plain, unadorned cotton sleep shirt that fell to her knees. “In case it has escaped your notice, you are in my bedroom and I did not invite you in here.”

He ignored her and glided toward the dresser. When he moved into the light slanting through the windows, she saw that he was barefoot but still partially dressed in his trousers and a black T–shirt that molded to his sleek, strong shoulders. She felt very vulnerable, not to mention seriously underdressed. She was aware of another sensation as well, an excitement that was decidedly sensual in origin. Just the fallout from all the energy that you were using a minute ago, she assured herself.

A heavy dose of adrenaline and psi often had a stirring effect on all the senses, although she could not recall feeling sexually aroused when she had gone into the zone on previous occasions. Usually, she just felt jittery and agitated afterward.

It was Sam’s fault, she decided. All that powerful masculine energy emanating from him was messing with the natural wavelengths of her own aura. It was annoying. It was also unaccountably exciting.

Sam came to a halt and looked at the open box. She was intensely aware of him and the heat coming off him. He was so close now. It took an enormous amount of willpower not to touch him.

“You did something to the book, didn’t you?” Sam said. “I can sense some of the residue of the energy. You’re still jacked, too. What the hell were you doing?”

She abandoned the attempt to kick him out of the bedroom. The man was very focused.

“The book was a little hot, yes,” she admitted. She cleared her throat. “But it has gone cold now, as you can tell.”

Sam glanced at her, his eyes still burning a little with psi. His ring continued to heat with a fiery light.

“What triggered the energy in the book?” he asked.

“You know how it is with old objects that are infused with a lot of encryption energy,” she said smoothly. “It doesn’t take much to kick up a little heat.”

“This thing didn’t switch on all by itself. You got it hot, didn’t you?”

“That’s not exactly what happened.”

“What the hell were you doing? Running an experiment? Trying to break the code? You should know better than that. You’re the expert on para-books. Tests on objects known to be infused with unknown energy should be done under carefully controlled conditions, and never at night.”

He was right, she thought ruefully. As a rule, paranormal energy was usually more powerful after dark. It could also be a lot more unpredictable at night, something to do with the absence of normal daylight energy waves. But the fact that Sam was quoting one of the laws of para-physics to her while she was engaged in putting out a fire was infuriating. She was so not in the mood for this.

“You are correct, I’m the expert here,” she said, in her coldest voice. “You have absolutely no right to lecture me on the care and handling of old books.”

“So you figured you were qualified to conduct a night experiment on a highly encrypted book?”

“I was not running an experiment.” She angled her chin. “For your information, I did not deliberately trigger the energy in that thing. I was sound asleep. I woke up and saw that it was giving off some psi-light, so I got up and shut it down.”

“If you expect me to believe that book ignited all on its own, you can forget it. Tell me what the hell is going on here.”

“It’s complicated…”

Sam clamped his hand across her mouth. Furious, she glared at him. But he was not looking at her. He was watching the bedroom doorway.

The room was suddenly much, much colder. Sam’s energy, Abby thought. He was running very hot, but the bedroom was deathly cold. Something sparked at the corner of her eye. Sam’s ring.

She realized Newton had gone very still, very alert. He, too, was gazing fixedly at the doorway, looking down the short hall and into the living room.

Sam put his mouth very close to her ear. “Keep Newton quiet.”

She nodded once to show that she understood.

He took his hand off her mouth and gripped her shoulder. He squeezed gently, silently warning her to stay put. She nodded again to show she had got the message. When he took his hand off her shoulder, she was once again aware of the icy chill in the atmosphere.

She crouched beside Newton, wrapped one arm around him and put her hand over his muzzle. Newton shivered, not with fear, she thought. The energy crackling through him was the tension of the hunter.

Sam crossed the room and disappeared through the shadowed doorway.