Fired Up

words. “You’ve fallen in love with him, haven’t you?”
    “I can sleep with him, Aunt Phyllis.”
    Phyllis laughed. “Under most circumstances that would not be much of a testimonial. But in your case I think that says it all. And when do I get to meet Mr. Winters?”
    Jack walked into the sunroom. “How about today?” He crossed the floor to the chair and offered his hand. “Jack Winters. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Miss Harper.”
    Phyllis examined him from head to toe and then she glanced at the floor he had just crossed. She smiled and took his hand. “I am delighted to make your acquaintance, Jack. I hope you’ll stay for tea.”
    “Yes,” Jack said. “I’d like that.” He looked at Chloe and smiled.
    Chloe sensed the dreamlight swirling in the sunroom. Waves of energy danced invisibly between the two of them. The light was strong and steady. She knew it would link them for the rest of their lives.
    “We would both like that,” she said.

60
    THE OPERATION HAD NOT BEEN AN UNQUALIFIED SUCCESS. The lamp was back in an Arcane vault, and she knew that it would not be easy to steal it a second time. But there was no point taking that risk again, anyway. It was clear that the experiment had failed. Larry Brown had survived but only because of something that the dreamlight reader, Chloe Harper, had done to him. He certainly had not come out of the situation with a second talent or even an enhanced version of his original ability. He had no doubt lost all of what little talent he had possessed.
    Conclusion One: Her grandfather’s theory was wrong. The Burning Lamp could not take the place of the formula. It appeared to work only on someone with the Winters psychic DNA.
    Conclusion Two: The lamp could not be used to stabilize the effects of the enhancement formula.
    Conclusion Three: Judging by the fact that Jack Winters and Chloe Harper had escaped from the gym, it appeared that there was some truth to the legends and rumors that had always swirled around the lamp. It was some kind of psi weapon, but it appeared extremely likely that only a Winters could access the full power of the artifact.
    She’d had two major objectives when she conceived the plan. Although it was disappointing to discover that the lamp could not be used to enhance her own talent or to protect her from the effects of the formula, her second goal had been achieved. And in a spectacular fashion, if she did say so, herself.
    John Stilwell Nash had been destroyed.
    Her only regret was that Nash had died without ever having had a chance to appreciate the irony involved. He could not have known that the person who had set him up for the fall could trace her own family roots back to the same ancestor, John Stilwell.
    The alchemists Sylvester Jones and Nicholas Winters were not the only ones who had fathered offspring after subjecting themselves and their genes to dangerous experiments designed to enhance their psychic powers. Back in the Late Victorian era, her own ancestor John Stilwell, a powerful talent enthralled by the new theories put forward by Darwin, had run a few breeding experiments of his own. Generations later, she and Nash were both the result of two of the experiments.
    It was Stilwell who had stolen the secret of the enhancement drug from Arcane. Although he had never used Sylvester’s formula himself, fearing its dangerous side effects, he had managed to produce some highly talented offspring, using his intuitive understanding of the laws of psychical genetics. Stilwell had died at the hands of Gabriel Jones before seeing any of his children grow to adulthood. But his bloodline had survived. She was living proof.
    She walked to the window of her office and looked out over the rain-soaked city of Portland. This morning John Stilwell Nash’s superior had offered her the position that Nash had recently vacated. Tomorrow she would walk into Nash’s old office at Cascadia Dawn, the cover business for one of the organization’s few surviving drug labs.
    From there she would work her way into the Inner Circle. Her ultimate objective was now clearly in sight. In due course she would become the Mistress of Nightshade.
    The knock on the door made her turn around.
    “Come in,” she said.
    The door opened. Humphrey Hulsey skittered into the room. He removed his glasses and began polishing them furiously.
    “I know that you are disappointed with the outcome of the experiment, Miss Knight,” he said earnestly, “but