“Actually it can be very inconvenient,” Nick said. “It isn’t always easy to find the right woman. To tell you the truth, the family was starting to become concerned about Owen.”
“Why?” Virginia asked.
Tony shifted uneasily. “We think he has started nightwalking. It’s not a good sign.”
“I don’t understand,” Virginia said. “What do you mean by nightwalking?”
Once again Nick, Tony and Matt exchanged looks. This time she knew she would not get any answers.
“It’s hard to explain,” Nick mumbled.
Charlotte fixed him with a glare. “What does a Sweetwater man do if he doesn’t find the right woman? Does he content himself with a string of mistresses?”
Nick was looking ever more uncomfortable. Matt and Tony had evidently concluded they were out of their depth. They lurched toward the door.
“I think I need a cup of Mrs. Crofton’s excellent coffee,” Tony said.
“And perhaps another muffin,” Matt added.
They went through the door and disappeared out into the hall.
An acute silence settled on the bedroom.
Charlotte peered at Nick. “Exactly how does a Sweetwater know when the right woman comes along?”
Nick blew out a deep sigh. “My father says it is a side effect of our talent. Something to do with our hunter’s intuition.”
Virginia looked at him. “But not necessarily something to do with love?”
The hunter in Nick must have sensed a trap. He glanced toward the door, as if longing to escape the room as Matt and Tony had done. But manfully he turned back.
“‘Love’ is a rather mushy word,” he said weakly. “Hard to define, don’t you think?”
Charlotte glared at him. “Not at all. One knows love when one experiences it. Isn’t that right, Ginny?”
“Quite right,” Virginia agreed. “We may never encounter true love, but that does not mean that women such as Charlotte and myself won’t know it if we do run into it. Right, Charlotte?”
“Absolutely,” Charlotte said.
Nick scowled. “But what will you do if you never discover what you believe to be true love?”
“Until then there is always Dr. Spinner’s treatment for female hysteria,” Virginia said.
THIRTY-FOUR
Sometime later Virginia found herself alone with Owen in the bedroom. His temperature and the overheated energy of his aura were rapidly returning to normal.
She released his hand. Rising to her feet, she crossed the room to the chest of drawers. The velvet sack containing the mirror was on top of the dresser. When she picked it up a ghostly frisson of glasslight shivered across her senses.
She opened the sack and took out the mirror. The silver-and-gold handle was unnaturally warm in her hand. She carried the mirror to the window and examined the back of it. Strange crystals glittered ominously in the moonlight. An intricate Baroque design had been worked into the metal. It was too dark to make out the alchemical markings, but she could feel them with her fingertips. Small lightning flashes of power crackled through her.
Glasslight, a lot of it, was held in stasis in the mirror. All that was required to release the energy, she thought, was will and talent. It was a true paranormal weapon, one that was activated by the human mind, not by a clockwork mechanism.
Slowly, drawn by a compulsion that went far deeper than mere curiosity, she turned the mirror over to look at the glass. In the deep shadows of the bedroom she could not see her own reflection, but with her senses heightened she could perceive the energy that shifted in the surface of the artifact. It was as if she gazed into a pool of mercury. The Quicksilver Mirror seethed with the forces locked deep inside.
Dread and fascination consumed her. She looked deeper. Terrible afterimages appeared and disappeared like moving photographs trapped in the strange glass. She caught fleeting glimpses of the dead and the dying.
She saw fire as well, hot flames of silver and gold. The scorching, dazzling flames crashed and cascaded in the depths of the mirror. Her senses sang in response to the wild energy, urging her to unleash the forces in the glass.
She knew then with her glass-reader’s intuition that any strong talent could use the mirror to blind or even kill. For a person with psychical abilities, the artifact was the equivalent of a gun. But someone endowed with a very special kind of talent could do much more with the device. She could set free the full power locked in the looking glass.
Someone with her kind of talent.
But what would one do with the strange energy that burned in the Quicksilver Mirror, she wondered. Then she thought about the weak energy that the killer had infused into the mirrors on Ratford’s and Hackett’s dressing tables and in the looking glasses on the walls of the terrible chamber beneath the Hollister mansion. Again the question arose in her mind. Why would anyone try to lock power into a looking glass?
From out of nowhere she recalled something her mother had said a long time ago: Power is power, whether it is normal or paranormal. It is always potentially dangerous, and there will always be those who seek to manipulate it for their own ends.
“Virginia.”
Owen spoke in his sleep, uttering her name in a raw, rasping voice that shattered the spell of the mirror.
She closed down her senses. The mirror darkened to an opaque gray. She inserted the artifact into the sack with shaking fingers and tied the cord.
Setting the sack on top of the chest of drawers, she went back to the bed and gripped Owen’s hand. His fingers tightened around hers, but he did not awaken.
She contemplated the moonlit night on the other side of the window and thought about what she had seen in the Quicksilver Mirror.
THIRTY-FIVE
At ten minutes to five in the morning, Virginia sensed the subtle but distinct change in Owen’s energy that told her he had surfaced completely from the depths. His breathing was relaxed, and his pulse was calm and steady. He was still asleep, but now his sleep felt entirely normal.
She released his hand.
“Virginia,” he muttered. He did not open his eyes.
“I’m here,” she said gently. “All is well. Go back to sleep.”
He stirred, turned on his side and did as she instructed.
After a while she let herself out of the room and walked down the hall. She knew that Charlotte was asleep in the bedroom at the far end. She thought she heard Mrs. Crofton in the kitchen.
When she reached the foot of the stairs Matt spoke softly out of the shadows.
“Is Uncle Owen all right, Miss Dean?”
“He’s quite well but still asleep. Where are Tony and Nick?”
“Tony’s watching the back of the house. Uncle Nick is asleep in the parlor. Mrs. Crofton is in the kitchen. She came down a few minutes ago. Said she wanted to get an early start on breakfast because there were so many of us to feed.”
Virginia winced. “It is very decent of her to make breakfast for all of us before she gives notice.”
“She didn’t say anything about handing in her notice. Are you still certain that Uncle Owen will awaken with all of his senses?”
“Quite certain.”
“That is very good news, indeed,” Matt said. “We weren’t looking forward to dealing with him if that turned out not to be the case.”
Matt’s obvious relief made her pause. “I understand your concern about the possible loss of his talent. It would be deeply disturbing for any strong sensitive to wake up and discover that his para-senses were blind. But what do you mean when you say that you weren’t looking forward to dealing with him?”
Nick spoke from the shadowed door of the parlor. “You’ve said enough, Matt.”
“Yes, sir,” Matt said quickly. “Sorry. I keep forgetting that Miss Dean isn’t family yet.”
And that was all she was going to get out of him for now, Virginia realized. She turned toward Nick. “Good morning, sir.”