Amaryllis stirred in his arms.
"Lucas? Is something wrong?"
"Hobart Batt, my counselor at Synergistic Connections, called today. He gave me an appointment for the personal interview. Two days from now. At four in the afternoon."
"What a coincidence." Amaryllis sat up slowly and wrapped her arms around her knees. Her eyes were dark and mysterious in the moonlight. "I got a call from my counselor, too. Mrs. Reeton made my interview appointment for Friday also. Clementine said I could take the afternoon off from work."
It was all happening too fast, Lucas thought. In the beginning he had signed on with Synergistic Connections because the company had a reputation for efficiency as well as for working with high-class talents. But the matchmaking firm was proving to be too efficient for his taste.
"It will take the agency a while to find some suitable candidates for us," Lucas said. "Everyone knows class-nine talents and full-spectrum prisms are difficult to match."
"It might take weeks or even months," Amaryllis said on a hopeful note.
But eventually the agencies would find a man for her, Lucas thought. He had another painful vision of Amaryllis's future. In this one she lay in bed, waiting for the faceless stranger who was her husband. It was worse than any nightmare.
"Lucas?"
Desperation gripped him. He was cold. Ice cold. He needed Amaryllis's warmth or he would surely freeze to death.
Lucas reached for her, pulling her down beside him, easing her onto her back. Wordlessly she raised her arms to enfold him. He sprawled on top of her with rough urgency. He sought her mouth, found it, claimed it.
His hand went to her soft breast. He felt the nipple tighten at his touch. She gripped his shoulders as though she would never let him go. Her legs parted for him, wrapped around his waist.
He moved his hand lower and splayed his fingers across her belly. The tensed muscles beneath the silken skin signaled her readiness, as did the warm dampness between her legs. He drove himself slowly into her, hungry for the welcoming heat.
She was tight and hot and slick. She seemed as desperate for him as he was for her. The response should have banished the ghosts of his dream, but it did not. It only served to make them all the more vivid.
He was going to lose her.
In a last, despairing effort to drive the visions from his head, Lucas silently groped for the mind link. She was waiting for him there on the psychic plane.
There was a flicker of vertigo and then he saw the prism. It was a strong, brilliant crystal construct created from Amaryllis's psychic energy. Lucas poured energy through it in a torrent. He made no effort to focus the bands of light. Instead, he allowed them to dance and shimmer in endless, rippling waves.
The ebb and flow of energy pulsed with the rhythm of the lovemaking, building swiftly in intensity. Lucas could feel Amaryllis in every part of himself, mind and body. For this moment in time they knew each other in every sense of the word.
The startling intimacy of the link meshed with the physical intimacy of their passionate embrace. The combined power of both psychic and sensual energy succeeded at last in driving out the icy chill that had invaded Lucas's bones.
But even as he gave himself over to his shuddering climax, Lucas knew the joy was very temporary.
The jungle waited.
"Lucas?"
"Yeah?" Lucas roused himself just enough to tighten his grasp on Amaryllis.
"I've been thinking about what happened at the Sheffield reception tonight." Amaryllis propped herself up on one elbow. "We haven't talked much about it."
"What's to discuss? Sheffield's a very strong talent, and he's got the ability to project charm and charisma. He's chosen a career path well suited to his psychic skills. His high school counselor would be proud of him."
"Lucas, this is not a joke."
He exhaled heavily. "You still don't have any proof that he or Unique Prisms is operating illegally."
"Sheffield wasn't just radiating charisma tonight, he actually tried to manipulate us with it."
"I hate to be the one to tell you this, but there's no law against that."
"Because the issue has never arisen," Amaryllis retorted. "It's supposed to be impossible to use psychic energy the way Sheffield used it tonight." She frowned. "Although Professor Landreth was always reminding us that there was still a lot we did not yet understand about the whole phenomenon. He said psychic powers were evolving so quickly in humans that there was no way to predict what directions the trend would take."
"Amaryllis--"
"Professor Landreth said that the volatile evolutionary situation is just one more reason why the Code of Focus Ethics is important. The code is the only way to govern the effect of psychic powers in society."
"Yeah, yeah, I've heard that rationalization before."
"It's a justification, not a rationalization," Amaryllis said. "And I'll tell you something else, the prism who worked with Sheffield tonight must have known that what she was doing was wrong."
"True. But don't be too hard on her. Sheffield burned her out within a minute or two once he started pushing her limits. You see? Nature took care of the problem. You don't need to put Sheffield or Osterley in jail to deal with the situation. Furthermore, they're both smart enough to know that."
"It's hard to believe."
"What is?"
"That Sheffield burned out a full-spectrum prism trying to get through the wall of energy you created. How did you do it?"
"You want the truth?"
Her eyes widened. "Yes, of course."
"I haven't got the foggiest idea how I did it," Lucas said. "It was an experiment."
"What do you mean? You deliberately created some kind of barrier by scrambling the talent you put through the prism. I felt it. Saw it happen on the psychic plane. It was very effective."
"I guess you could say that it was all done with mirrors."
"What are you talking about?"
"I'm an illusion-talent, remember?"
"So?"
"In the old days illusionists worked a lot with mirrors," Lucas said. "Tonight I created a psychic mirror in an attempt to reflect Sheffield's own energy straight back at him."
"What a concept." Amaryllis was genuinely awed. "Sheffield went down under a concentrated dose of his own charm. Talk about having an inflated opinion of himself."
"I think he sensed what was happening." Lucas folded his arms behind his head. "That's why he tried to rev up his own output to break through my mirror. But he lost his prism when he went too far."
Amaryllis frowned. "You've never done anything like that before?"
"Never." He took a handful of her long hair and made a fist in it. He savored the silken feel of the stuff against his skin. "But, then, I've never encountered a psychic attack of that nature."
"Psychic attack. What a scary thought." A shudder went through Amaryllis. "That's something else that's supposed to be impossible, except in psychic vampire romance novels."
"You know what they say about truth being stranger than fiction. But I'm not so sure it's as impossible as you assume. A very strong hypno-talent might be able to pull off something similar to what Sheffield did tonight."
"Whatever it was, Sheffield's talent is not a form of hypnosis," Amaryllis said with great certainty. "I've worked with hypno-talents. Trust me, I recognize the effects when I see them in action. Remember when you insisted that Miranda Locking must have been under the influence of a strong hypno-talent?"
"Don't remind me."
"I told you then that even the most powerful talent couldn't get her to act against her will or against her own strongly rooted principles."
"So?"
"Neither you nor I is a strong Sheffield supporter, yet tonight both of us responded to the effects of Sheffield's charisma. We had to actively resist him in order to keep him from overwhelming us with his wonderfulness. Psychic hypnosis just doesn't work like that."