"Do you have a talent for tuning?" Gloria asked Jeff, looking him up and down in a blatantly appraising manner.
Jeff turned a darker shade of red. "No, ma'am. Miss Dore hired me to take care of paperwork and the packing and shipping of the mail-order stuff."
Gloria smiled. "I'm glad to see she has such excellent taste in employees."
Jeff might have been a tough, highly trained bodyguard, but no one had prepared him for Gloria Ray. He looked as if he wanted to sink down through the floor of the shop into the tunnels below.
Lyra took pity on him.
"What can I do for you, Gloria?" she said.
Gloria studied Lyra with a knowing expression. "I have a new piece that I want tuned. By the way, I saw your picture in the papers. You were with Cruz Sweetwater. Is that good news or bad news, honey?"
"It wasn't news at all," Lyra said firmly. "It was business."
"Of course it was." Gloria smiled, her heavily made-up eyes gleaming with cool speculation. A lot of people—including, no doubt, her current lover, a powerful member of the Frequency Guild Council—took her at face value. They assumed that she was nothing more than the fluff-brained, big-bosomed, big-haired blonde bimbo she appeared to be.
The bosom and the hair might be seriously enhanced, but Lyra had dealt with Gloria often enough to know that her IQ was a lot higher than most people gave her credit for, certainly higher than that of her Councilman lover. She was also a woman of talent, although she went to great lengths to pretend otherwise.
There was a saying among professional amber tuners: "Only your tuner knows for sure." Tuned amber—like a finely tuned musical instrument—did not remain clear indefinitely. Over time and with use it gradually blurred and lost its focusing power. It eventually required retuning to restore maximum efficiency. Generally speaking, a properly tuned stone lasted the average user for several months, sometimes as long as a year.
But those who generated a lot of energy burned through their amber much more rapidly. Gloria was a frequent customer of Lyra's, bringing one or more pieces of tuned amber in for retuning every few weeks. That meant that she was a lot stronger than most people were aware.
As was common with a lot of above-average talents, Gloria preferred to keep her personal paranormal assets confidential. Like all smart, professional tuners, Lyra was always discreet about such matters. There was no quicker way to lose a client than to gossip about his or her psychic range. Those who generated the least wattage were always trying to make it appear that they were stronger. At the other end of the spectrum, the strong ones usually wanted to conceal their true power levels as well as the exact nature of their talents.
"What have you brought me?" Lyra asked.
"Take a look," Gloria said. She placed a green velvet jewelry box on the counter.
Lyra picked up the box and opened it. She gave an appreciative little whistle at the sight of the necklace inside. A brilliant carved stone of standard resonating amber glowed with the unmistakable luster characteristic of superior quality and resonating power. It was set in gold.
"Nice, Gloria." Lyra drew the necklace out of the box. "Very nice. Congratulations."
"Thanks." Gloria laughed with soft satisfaction. "Dear Hubert has been in a generous mood lately."
"I thought the bracelet he gave you last month was his personal best, but this tops that piece. What put good old Hubert into such a gracious frame of mind?"
Gloria offered Vincent another cookie. "He thinks that now that Benson Landry is out of the picture, the Council will move to choose Douglas Drake as the new Guild boss."
"And that's important to Hubert?" Lyra asked.
Gloria winked. "Very important. He and Drake are friends from the old neighborhood near the South Wall. They joined the Guild together, and they've watched each other's backs in the organization ever since they were first-year hunters down in the catacombs. They've clawed their way up through the ranks, each one helping the other. Hubert's daughter is engaged to Drake's son. If Drake gets the top job, you can be sure he'll make certain that his good pal Hubert will be well taken care of."
Lyra rolled her eyes. "Gotta love Guild politics. Talk about democracy in action."
"There's another angle. Wilson Revere is trying to make it appear that he's above meddling in Guild politics, but the truth is he wants Drake to get the top slot. Figures it will give him an edge against Amber Inc." Gloria met her eyes in a very direct look. "Word is that Amber Inc. would prefer to see just about anyone other than Drake at the top of the Guild."
Lyra nodded. "Thanks for the update, Gloria."
"Any time. Now, about my lovely new necklace. I want the full treatment."
"I'll take care of it right now," Lyra said.
She held the pendant in her hand and focused delicately through the amethyst amber of her charm bracelet. The majority of tuners used standard resonating amber because that was the only kind they could activate. Gloria and Jeff would naturally assume that she was using the amber that she wore so obviously in her earrings. But she had learned early on in her career that she could achieve an extra degree of clarity and focusing power in any piece of amber if she worked through amethyst.
She channeled psi delicately, feeling her way into the natural energy patterns of the stone. All amber—even a rough, raw chunk straight out of a mine—was capable of some focusing ability if you had enough talent to rez it and if you knew what you were doing. But the results were wildly unpredictable if the amber had not been tuned.
It did not matter how beautifully a piece of amber was carved and polished. If you wanted to use it to focus psi, tuning made all the difference. And the very finest tuners were those who could feel their way into the currents of latent power in a particular stone and align and stabilize them without loss of strength or clarity. A little distortion or a lack of full concentration on the part of the tuner at the critical moment, or simply insufficient talent, could ruin even the best amber.
It didn't take much to destroy the superior resonating power of a good stone such as the pendant. But it took real talent to bring out the full potential of such a piece.
She used dainty pulses of psi lightning to jump-start the currents of the pendant. The stone grew warm to the touch as she sent power into it. Once activated, the currents had to be carefully stabilized in a state of suspension. After that process was complete, anyone with even minimal psi, regardless of the type of talent, would be able to use the stone to focus.
But Gloria did not come to her just to get her amber tuned. If that was all she had wanted, she could have taken her business to any of a number of tuning shops in the city. It was the quiet word-of-mouth rumors of the very special services offered by Dore Tuning & Consulting that had brought the mistress of one of the most powerful men in the city into Lyra's shop.
She could do what very few other tuners were capable of doing, because it required nonstandard amber such as amethyst and a unique talent.
"Okay," she said. She held out the stone on her palm. "Touch the pendant."
Gloria obediently put one beringed and elaborately manicured fingertip on the amber stone.
"Ready?" Lyra asked.
"Say when."
"Focus," Lyra ordered softly. She jacked up her own senses, gently pushing more psi through amethyst, and concentrated on the pendant.
Virtually everyone possessed some degree of latent psychic talent, even if they weren't aware of it. But everyone's paranormal currents were unique to that individual, like fingerprints and DNA. Using her own talent, Lyra picked up the nuances of the wavelengths and intensity of Gloria's energy patterns and fine-tuned the pendant to resonate with them.