4


“THADDEUS WEBBER INDICATED THAT YOU HAD SOME EXPERIENCE with this sort of thing,” Abby said.

“Obsessed collectors who send online blackmail threats to innocent antiquarian book dealers?” Sam Coppersmith leaned back against his desk and folded his arms. “Can’t say that I have. But an extortionist is an extortionist. Shouldn’t be all that hard to find the one who is bother­­ing you.”

“I’m glad you’re so optimistic,” Abby said. She drummed her fingers on the arm of her chair and glanced uneasily at her watch for the third or fourth time. “Personally, I’m getting a bad feeling about this meeting. I think there may have been some mistake. Thaddeus Webber must not have understood my problem.”

“Webber wouldn’t have sent you to me if he hadn’t thought you needed me.”

Sam had said very little during the short drive from town. But she had known that his senses were slightly jacked for the whole trip because her own had been fizzing. They still were, for that matter. It was an unfamiliar sensation. She wondered if her intuition was trying to send her a warning. Or maybe she was simply sleep-deprived. Regardless, she was quite certain that Sam was assessing her, measuring her reactions, testing her in some way.

Her first view of the gray stone mansion that was the Copper Beach house had not been reassuring. The place was a true gothic monstrosity. It loomed, bleak and shadowed, in a small clearing on a bluff overlooking a cove and the dark waters of the San Juans. From the outside, the windows of the old house were obsidian mirrors.

She had concluded immediately that Sam and the house deserved each other. Both looked as if they belonged in another century, one in which it was considered normal for mysterious men to live in dark mansions that came equipped with attics and basements that held scary secrets.

Her sense of unease had deepened when she had gotten out of the SUV and walked to the front door with Sam. She had watched while he did something with his ring that unlocked the door.

“I’ve never seen a security system like that,” she said. “Some kind of variation on a card-key security system?”

“Something like that.” Sam opened the door. “My own invention.”

She had anticipated another tingle of alarm, or at the very least uncertainty, when he ushered her into the shadowy front hall. But to her astonishment, the ambient energy whispering in the atmosphere had given her a small, exciting little rush. She knew that Sam noticed.

“I’ve got a lot of hot rocks down in the lab,” he explained. “After a while, the energy infuses the atmosphere and gets embedded in the walls.”

“That happens with hot books, too,” she said.

“Not everyone is okay with the sensation. Gives some people the creeps, I’m told.”

“Don’t worry about my reaction, Mr. Coppersmith. I’m accustomed to being in the vicinity of paranormal energy.”

“Yeah, I can see that.” Something that might have been satisfaction had edged his mouth. “Call me Sam.”

She had not offered her own first name. This was a business arrangement. The safest thing to do was to maintain at least minimal formality, at least until she figured out how to handle Sam Coppersmith.

He had removed his dark glasses at that point, revealing eyes that were a startling shade of gemstone green.

When he closed the door behind her, she had taken another look at his ring. It was made of some darkly gleaming metal and set with a small crystal. The stone was a deep, fiery red in color.

Sam had led her along a hallway and opened a door to reveal a flight of stone steps.

“Lab’s in the basement,” he had explained. “We can talk there.”

She still could not believe that she had followed him downstairs into a windowless basement lab like some naive gothic heroine. Maybe she had been dealing with eccentric collectors for a little too long.

The cavernous, dimly lit chamber below the house was unlike any lab she had ever seen. It was crammed with display cases and drawers filled with crystals and stones and chunks of raw ore. If it were not for the low simmer of energy in the room, she could have been in the hall of gems and minerals of a world-class natural history museum.

But unlike the specimens in a museum, most of the stones around her were hot. The vibes in the atmosphere were unmistakable. She was no expert in the field of para-rocks, but like most strong talents, she could sense energy that was infused in objects, especially when there was a lot of it in the vicinity.

In addition to the crystals and stones on display, there were a number of state–of–the art instruments on the workbench. There were also some devices made of iron, brass and glass that she was certain qualified as antiques. Several appeared to be from the seventeenth or eighteenth century, but a couple of the objects looked as if they had come from the laboratory of a Renaissance-era alchemist.

The low lighting in the room added to the weirdness factor. Unlike most modern labs, there were no overhead fluorescent fixtures. The stone chamber was lit only by the desk lamp and the faint paranormal glow of some of the charged rocks. Abby got the impression that Sam preferred the shadows.

She cleared her throat discreetly. “No offense, Mr. Coppersmith, but are you a real investigator?”

“Depends on how you define real.”

“Do you have a private investigator’s license?”

“No. But I do a lot of consulting work, if that makes you feel any better.”

“What kind of consulting?”

“Technical consulting.”

That did it, she thought. Thaddeus had sent her on a wild-goose chase. She did not have time to waste on mad scientists and gothic mansions. She gave Sam a cool smile and got to her feet.

“I’m afraid there’s been some mistake,” she said. “I need a real private investigator.”

“You need someone like me. Webber wouldn’t have sent you here otherwise.”

“You’re a technical consultant, for Pete’s sake.”

“Trust me when I tell you that technical consulting covers a lot of territory. You’re here now; you may as well sit down and tell me about the blackmail threats.”

She did not sit down. But she did not grab her shoulder bag and jacket and head for the door, either. As a compromise, she walked to stand in front of a glass display case and looked down at a chunk of what looked like blue quartz inside. With her senses still slightly heightened, she could perceive some of the energy locked deep inside the crystal. She wondered what the lab looked like to Sam. With his strong psychic sensitivity to para-rocks, the place probably glowed as brightly as if it was lit by sunshine.

She made her decision. Sam was right. She did not know where else to turn. She had to trust Thaddeus Webber’s judgment. He had been her friend and mentor for years.

“Here’s the situation,” she said. “I’m a freelancer in the underground hot-books market. Collectors in that market tend to be somewhat eccentric, especially those who possess some real talent.”

Sam looked amused. “Are you saying those who collect paranormal books are crazy?”

She gave him what she hoped was a quelling look. “What I’m saying, Mr. Coppersmith, is that there are some collectors who are obsessed to the point of being quite dangerous. Others are just plain weird. And then there are those who actually believe in the occult. Witches, demons, sorcery, that sort of nonsense.”

“Your clientele must be very interesting.”

“For obvious reasons, I have to be careful. At the start of my career, Thaddeus Webber advised me to work only by referral. I have stuck to that advice. I do not accept commissions from collectors I don’t know unless they are referred to me by someone I trust. And even then, I always check them out with Thaddeus. I go out of my way to keep a low profile. But word gets around in collectors’ circles. The result is that once in a while a determined person manages to get my email address.”

“That’s how clients contact you?”

“Yes. I use a false name with that email address, of course.”

“What name?”

“My clients know me as Newton. And that’s all they know about me. When I do get a message from someone seeking my services who has not been properly referred, I never respond. That’s usually the end of the matter. People who don’t hear back from me tend to conclude either that I’m something of a myth or that I’m a complete fraud. But yesterday morning I received the first blackmail note. The second one came in last night. Both were sent to my Newton address.”

“How hard would it be for someone to dig up that address?”

“Probably not hard at all if they hang out in the right chat rooms and hot-books sites. That’s not what worries me. What freaked me out is that the blackmailer knows way too much about me. When I contacted Thaddeus to ask for advice, I got a one-line email back from him. He told me to contact you, and he gave me your email address.”

“Let me see the notes.”

“I printed them out for you.” She turned away from the blue quartz and went back to her chair. Leaning down, she reached into the large shoulder bag, took out the manila envelope and handed it to Sam.

He opened the envelope and removed the two printouts inside. He studied the first one without comment. He read the second one aloud. “In addition to knowing what you did in V’s library, I also know about your past and why you attended the Summerlight Academy.”

Sam looked up from the page. “I assume V is Hannah Vaughn and that the incident referred to is the home invasion at her house that took place a couple of days ago?”