Fired Up

her big reading chair, Hector on the floor beside her, Rose fussing around her. Jack went into the kitchen to make another pot of herbal tea.
    “What the hell happened night before last?” Fallon demanded.
    “Well, let’s see if I can summarize,” she said. “A woman named Victoria Knight somehow got hold of the journal of Adelaide Pyne. Knight teamed up with Humphrey Hulsey to see if the lamp was the solution to the problem of the inherent instability of the formula.”
    “Ninety-eight percent probability that Victoria Knight is our missing para-hypnotist,” Fallon said. “It fits.”
    “You may be right. At any rate, Hulsey’s boss, Nash, was also involved. They had me kidnapped because they wanted to see if I could work the lamp to stabilize a very unstable talent they had created with the formula.”
    “Larry Brown?”
    “Right. I can light the lamp, of course, but only Jack or someone with his particular psychic genetics can access the deep power in the thing. So, to buy some time I sort of faked the whole lamp scene. I’m a Harper, remember? I can do fake. Anyway, after Larry went to sleep—”
    “Hang on,” Fallon cut in. “Are you telling me you saved Brown without using the lamp?”
    “The formula, like the lamp, works by opening up channels between the dreamstate and the waking state. I have an affinity for dream psi.”
    “I know, but—”
    “I resealed the dreamlight channels that had been opened by the drug, but I didn’t have a chance to study Larry Brown’s entire spectrum, so I don’t know how much damage the formula did. Hulsey told me that Larry was a Level Three before they injected him. The poor kid might not have any talent left when he recovers. I’m so sorry.”
    “Brown was flown down to L.A. this morning,” Fallon said. “He’s being tested in the Arcane lab there. Early indications are that he’s now a Level Two. The techs think it’s possible he might recover to a Level Three. They’re running around in circles like a bunch of hamsters on a wheel trying to figure out how some of Brown’s para-talent survived both the heavy dose of the formula and the subsequent withdrawal. By all rights, the kid should be certifiably insane by now.”
    Relief washed through her. “Larry will be okay, then?”
    “Looks like it, thanks to you. You’re a walking antidote, Chloe Harper. Hell, you’re better than the antidote we’ve been using because you can get rid of the effects of the drug without destroying the victim’s senses. Not that I’m expecting a big rush of people looking to get off the Nightshade drug.”
    “Because of the cult mentality?”
    “And because when the drug works, it does deliver a higher level of talent. How many people are going to want to give up real power?”
    “Yes, but the long-term complications—”
    “Most folks don’t think long-term. Just ask the cigarette companies. I’m sure Nightshade is aware that we have an antidote but we haven’t exactly had a run on it.”
    “In other words, they’re selling the perfect drug.”
    “The perfect poison, as Lucinda Bromley called it in her journal.”
    “Bromley? Wasn’t she the woman who married your ancestor, Caleb Jones?”
    “Right. My multi-great grandmother. The second J in J&J. And don’t say it.”
    “Don’t say what?”
    “Lately people keep telling me that I need a partner, too. But it would have to be someone I could trust completely, the same way Caleb Jones trusted Lucinda. Someone with a high level of intuitive talent so that she could almost read my mind because I can’t explain everything that I do. Not a nine-to-five type who takes vacations, either. I need someone who is available twenty-four/seven. I’m not interested in a partner or a wife, but I’m starting to think that maybe an assistant might work.”
    She smiled. “An assistant who can read your mind, who will be available twenty-four hours a day and who never takes vacations. Good luck with that, Mr. Jones.”
    “Thanks,” he said, oblivious. “Getting back to the antidote, do you think you could help someone who has already received it to regain her para-senses?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “A couple of months ago we used the antidote for the first time on a woman named Damaris Kemble. Long story. Let’s just say we saved her life and her sanity, but she hasn’t recovered her para-senses and the experts tell me that she probably never will.”
    “What was she before she got the