"Vincent. Where are you?"
When she realized that he was scuttling up her sleeve, she cried out with relief. He arrived on her shoulder, murmuring anxiously and huddled close. The physical contact steadied her. She dropped the bag and reached up to touch him.
The nightmare dissolved as swiftly as it had coalesced. Just like that, she was out of the dark Alice in Amberland world and back on a normal-looking street. Her pulse was racing, and her palms tingled. She was breathing much too quickly, and she still felt nauseous, but she was no longer hallucinating.
A retired hunter she saw frequently in the neighborhood peered at her with concern. Harvey Wilkens always took a morning walk at this time of day. He no longer looked as if had just arisen from a grave.
"You okay, Miss Dore?" he asked.
"Yes. Yes, I am. Thanks, Harvey. I didn't get much sleep last night. Guess I'm a little jumpy this morning."
Harvey nodded. "Heard how you went down to the jungle to rescue that AI team."
"You saw the morning papers?"
"Nah. I never read the papers. Papers lie. I heard the rumors on the streets."
"Already?"
"There were a couple of hunters trapped in that ruin," Harvey said "Word travels fast in the Guild. Also heard that you and the new CEO of Amber Inc. Security have patched things up. Glad to hear it. Sweetwater is Guild, you know."
She went cold. "No, I didn't know that. I knew that the Sweetwaters maintained close relationships with the Guilds, but I was not aware they were a Guild family."
"Sort of depends on how you define Guild."
"I define it by whether or not some or all of the men in a family are ghost hunters," she said very carefully.
"Yeah, well, it gets complicated when it comes to the Sweetwaters," Harvey said. "But I can tell you this much. There were Sweetwaters fighting side by side with the Guilds back during the Era of Discord."
"Have you ever noticed, Harvey, that the farther away we get from the Era of Discord, the more people claim they had family members present at the various battles?"
"This ain't no made-up family legend, I can tell you that much. Sweetwaters was there."
"So were Dores," she said with a flash of pride.
"Right. I'm just trying to tell you that the Sweetwaters' connection to the Guilds goes back all the way to the founding of the organizations. But that family likes to keep a real low profile. Word is, they've got some unusual talents in that line."
Now, that was interesting, she thought. The Sweetwaters made no secret of the fact that there were a lot of powerful talents in the family. But they were supposedly all amber talents, like hers. Being an amber talent was not considered weird or threatening. It simply meant that you had a highly developed affinity for amber. That ability was useful for discovering and tuning amber but not much else. But if Cruz and his relatives possessed other kinds of paranormal abilities—especially if those abilities were powerful—it would explain why the family had a reputation for secrecy.
It was true that a variety of talents were appearing more and more frequently in the population, but social attitudes toward the paranormal changed more slowly. It was one thing to have a common, socially accepted talent such as the ability to work ghost energy or illusion traps or tune standard amber. It was another thing altogether to possess a rare or dangerous ability. Such talents made others nervous.
Her grandfather had explained the facts of life to her as they applied to those who possessed nonstandard talents. He'd followed the brief lecture with an even briefer piece of advice: "You're one of them, girl. Keep your head down. Let 'em think the only thing you can do is tune amber."
As it turned out, the advice had been of little use. She might be a very strong talent, but tuning amber and prospecting had proved to be the only practical application of that ability. At least, it had been the only application until she had found the amethyst chamber.
"Is that so?" she said politely.
"Yes, ma'am, lot of stories about Sweetwaters," Harvey said with a knowing air.
"Really? I was under the impression that the only talent the Sweetwaters possessed was an affinity for amber. That's not so unusual."
Harvey gave her a conspiratorial wink. "Right you are, Miss Dore. Just an affinity for amber. Nothing unusual about Cruz Sweetwater or anyone else in that family. No, siree. Absolutely not. Don't you worry, I know how to keep a secret. I'm a Guild man, after all."
"I think we've got something of a misunderstanding here," she said.
"Don't worry, I can take a hint. I won't say a word about the Sweetwaters to anyone else. The only reason I mentioned their talents is because I figure you already know all about 'em, what with you and Cruz Sweetwater being so close and all." Harvey chuckled and gave Vincent a friendly pat. "You and the little varmint have a good day now. See you later."
"Bye, Harvey."
Harvey moved off briskly. She watched him until he turned the corner at the end of the block. When he was gone, she went warily on her way, every muscle and nerve tensed in case the sidewalk started to twist and heave beneath her feet again.
To date, she had never had more than one of the hallucinatory nightmares in a twenty-four-hour period, but there was no way to know when that pattern might change. The lawsuit had taken her bank account so low that she could no longer afford flash-rock tune-ups and routine maintenance for her car. But even if she had been able to drive, she would not have dared to get behind the wheel for fear that one of the dreams would strike.
"They're affecting my quality of life, Vincent," she said. "I think that's when you're supposed to get help. But how can I explain the dreams to a para-shrink? Any decent doctor will assume I'm suffering psychotic episodes and blame it on some kind of psi trauma. Then I'd have to explain that my senses aren't entirely normal to begin with, and it will be all downhill from there."
Vincent mumbled encouragingly.
"Thanks, pal. I knew you'd understand."
Two blocks later she halted in front of the Hole in the Wall, a small restaurant that occupied the ground floor of the building that housed the Harmonic Meditation Institute. She pushed open the door and was greeted with the fragrance of warm muffins and strong coffee.
"Good morning, everyone," she said.
There was a round of "Hey, there, you made the morning papers," and "What's up with you and Sweetwater?" and "You two back together?" from the regulars.
The early crowd in the Hole was a mix of small-time, independent tunnel and jungle treasure hunters and local shopkeepers who catered to the low end of the alien relics trade. They had welcomed Lyra into their midst three years earlier right after she had moved into the neighborhood and fired up Dore Tuning & Consulting.
"For the record, there is nothing between Cruz Sweetwater and me except a little business," Lyra said firmly. "One of his teams got into trouble at my ruin last night, and he had to come to me to get them out of the trap."
Someone snorted. "Hope you made Amber Inc. pay big-time."
"I intend to," Lyra said.
"The papers implied that you and Cruz Sweetwater are an item again," Josie Taylor, the proprietor of Taylor's Relics, said.
"Don't believe everything you read in the papers." Lyra glanced at her watch and then smiled at the grizzled cook. "I'm on my way upstairs to class. Okay if I leave Vincent down here with you as usual, Adele?"
"You bet." Adele waved her spatula. "I've got a muffin with his name on it."
Vincent chortled with his customary enthusiasm. After three years, he knew the routine. He fluttered down from Lyra's shoulder, drifted across the floor, and tumbled up onto one of the vacant stools. Ben Symmington, owner of Symmington's Colonial Collectibles, was seated on the neighboring stool. He grinned.