JANAE DE RAISON stepped out of her mother’s office and eased the door closed behind her, satisfied by the soft click of the latch when it engaged. Williston stood near his white desk in the atrium.
“Sit down, Williston,” she said. “The answer is no, I won’t be needing anything else. Maybe a sandwich, but I would rather fetch that myself if you don’t mind.”
He dipped his head.
She walked across the travertine floor, cool on her bare feet thanks to the conditioned air. Living in Southeast Asia could be a humid affair without the hum of electricity to suck water and heat from the atmosphere.
“You don’t mind me robbing you of that pleasure, do you, Will? I know how much you enjoy it, but I would like to do it.” She glided up to him and let her eyes wander over his tie, his black jacket. A handsome man with dark hair, graying at the edges. How many times as a child had she fantasized about having a passionate affair with their butler? Too many to remember.
She put her hand on his cheek and withdrew it slowly, allowing her fingernails to graze his skin. “Is that okay, dear Will? Just this once?”
“Of course, madam. Whatever pleases you.” He smiled. It was a game they played often and both managed to take some enjoyment from it, she in tempting, he in pretending to be tempted, though they both knew that he wasn’t always pretending.
She drew her hand down his tie, pulled it away from his shirt, then let it fall back into place as she turned away. “Where is he?”
“Where is who, madam?”
“Our fascinating little visitor?”
“In the guest quarters where I left him, I assume.” He sounded as if he wanted to say more, so at the twelve-foot arched entry to the hall, she turned back.
“You’d like to add something else?”
“No.”
“You don’t trust our guest?”
He hesitated. “He is a bit unnerving, madam.”
“Hmm. Then perhaps he and I will get along just fine.”
Again he dipped his head. “Yes, madam.”
Janae made her way to the kitchen, ignoring the servants, who moved like ghosts through the twenty-thousand-square-foot mansion that doubled as the world headquarters for Raison Pharmaceutical. Dusting, always dusting the crystal chandeliers and candle holders, the period paintings, the marble tables, anything that had a smooth surface. They were mostly Filipinos who spoke perfect English, and a few Malaysians. Janae had grown up trilingual, fluent by age eight in French, English, and Thai, but she’d also picked up enough Tagalog and Malay to get by.
She walked through the dining room toward the kitchen, mind on the visitor, on this Billy Rediger who’d waltzed into their home and sent both Monique and Kara into a tailspin, although they would never admit it.
“I’m making a couple sandwiches, Betty,” she said, stopping the cook across the kitchen. “Could you get me a tray and two glasses of very cold milk?”
“Yes, madam.”
She pulled out a white ceramic plate and made two peanut-butter and strawberry-jam sandwiches, each with a healthy side of Russian caviar.
With each wipe of her knife and dip of her spoon into the caviar jar, her mind went to the man. To Billy. Her mother had been unmistakably direct in her instructions to Janae. Kara had been even more forceful.
“Of course there’s no blood!” Kara said, dismissing the whole business with a sweep of her hand. She jabbed at the door. “But there is him. And as long as there’s someone out there with this foolish notion, particularly someone who can read minds, we can’t possibly be safe.”
“Why?” Janae asked. “If there is no blood?”
“Because there once was,” her mother said. “What he said is partially true. We did take a vial of Thomas Hunter’s blood and kept it safe for several years. But we feared an event exactly like this, so I sent it to our old lab in Indonesia, where it was destroyed. Neither the lab nor the blood exist today.”
“But as long as this fool thinks it exists, he’ll be a problem,” Kara added.
“So you want me to what? Distract him?” she asked, but she was thinking, Oh my goodness, what if Billy’s right?
“Is that a problem?”
“No. I think he could be the distractible kind. He really can read minds?”
“Please, Janae. Keep him close, but keep your guard up. He could be a rather dangerous character.”
Let’s hope so.
Janae picked up the loaded tray, refusing Betty’s assistance to carry the lunch. She left the kitchen and wound her way down the hall to the guest quarters.
There were things Mother trusted her with and things she did not. Send Janae de Raison into any plant or laboratory in the world that was slipping, and she would return it to full production within a week. But at times Mother treated her with the same scrutiny she’d showed her enemies. Keep your friends close; keep your enemies closer.
Monique and Kara had no intention of trusting Janae with Billy. They intended to keep both as close as needed to monitor every move.
The large white door that led into the guest suite was closed. She thought about knocking but decided against it. Balancing the tray on her left hand, she turned the knob and pushed the door open.
The guest atrium was round, surrounded by windows that overlooked manicured lawns and the jungle beyond. A gilded dome rose at the room’s center, supporting a huge iron chandelier. Thick lace drapes swept across the top of each window and hung to the marble floor.
The furniture was mostly old English, wood painted in antiqued creams and browns, nothing too dark. Monique preferred light colors to dark stain here in the tropics, unlike her house in New York, which made ample use of cherrywood and mahogany.
No sign of Billy. He was either in the bathroom to her right, down the hall that led to the bedrooms, or in the parlor that doubled as a library. Janae considered the bedrooms with some interest but quickly decided that he would probably be more interested in books than beds even after a long flight. She angled for the library.
Her bare feet padded lightly across the tile. Giovanni had given her a full manicure and pedicure yesterday in New York, painting her nails a delectable deep ruby red that still looked dripping wet. Her short black dress was formfitting but loose below the waist so it could sway across her thighs.
She’d earned a black belt in jujitsu by age seventeen and had kept it up as a form of exercise over the eight years since. “You can seduce many men with a pretty face,” Monique used to say. “You can get them slobbering with a pretty face and a powerful body. But you can turn most men into idiots with a pretty face, a powerful body, and a bank account that earns enough interest to pay for jet fuel.”
So far Mother had been right, although she’d missed one: a potent mind was a more powerful aphrodisiac than all of the others combined.
She found Billy in the parlor with his back to her, staring at a bookcase loaded with leather-bound books. His fingers traced their spines slowly, as if he expected to read their contents like he’d read her mind. Her family had always been fascinated by books, and it appeared Billy might also be.
“Hungry?”
He spun around, startled.
She walked to a leather ottoman and set the tray down. “Hope you like peanut butter and jelly with caviar. A taste I picked up in Poland last summer.”
Billy held her in his green-eyed gaze. He’d been places, this one. For a few seconds she felt as though she was the lesser here, that he’d come to seduce her, to win his way into whatever prize he sought.
Was he really reading her mind? It seemed preposterous. She couldn’t feel anything that suggested his mind was probing hers, peeling back the layers of her thoughts, her deepest secrets.
“No, not yet,” he said. “Those I’ll save until later.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Your secrets.”
So it was true, then.
“Of course it is.”
Janae turned back to the ottoman and lifted one of the glasses. And now can you?
No response.
No, not when my eyes are averted or covered. How fascinating.
She drilled him with a long stare and slowly brought her glass to her lips, allowing him to crawl as deep as he wanted into her mind.
She sipped at the cool liquid, felt it slip down her throat. “And what do you see now, hmm? Anything you like?”
“I see evil,” he said.
“Oh?” She suppressed a stab of alarm. “Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”
“Depends.”
“On whom, me or you?”
“On us,” he said. “It depends on us.”
She knew then that she liked this redheaded man named Billy. She liked him very much.
“Sit with me, Billy. Eat with me. Tell me why you’ve come into my world.”
THEY TALKED for an hour, and with each passing minute Janae’s anticipation for the next grew. From the moment Billy had climbed inside of her mind and found this so-called evil in her, she knew there would be no hiding from him.
More to the point, she didn’t want to hide from him.
They talked about a host of topics, taking their time to slowly unravel each other’s lives. He’d spent his childhood in Colorado, though he didn’t share many details, before becoming a defense attorney in Atlantic City. He then went on to Washington with an old flame of his named Darcy Lange.
“Darcy Lange, huh? You serious?”
“You know her?”
“She was all over the news a few years back,” Janae said, curling her legs back on the Queen Anne chair. She took a teaspoon of caviar and brought it to her mouth. “Stunning creature.”
“Yes. Can’t deny that. We were . . . you have to understand about Darcy and me. We both started young, in the . . . the . . . you know, the libraries below the monastery.”
“Monastery? You met her in a monastery?”
“In a manner of speaking.” He was hiding something. “We were kids, and we drifted apart until this whole Tolerance Act thing, when these gifts of ours came out. We had a thing, but it’s different now. Our interests have . . . aren’t exactly in line.”
“Look, my beloved little redhead, if you expect me to open up my mind to you, I expect you to quit hiding yours.”
“I’m not.”
“You’re lying with every other word.” She stood up and moved away from the chairs. “Maybe this isn’t such a good idea. Honestly, I have enough on my plate. The last thing I need is some guy playing games with me.”
“No, it’s not like that.”
“Whatever. Are you finished? I’ll send a maid to collect the tray.”
“What?” He stood, spilling some crumbs off the napkin on his lap. “No, that’s not what—”
“Why, Mr. Rediger, should I give you even an ounce of my attention?” She knew why, but they had to find a way onto a level field of play.
“It’s worth it, trust me.”
“I’m not in the mood to trust a man who can glance into my eyes and see things I can’t even see myself. You’ll have to do better.”
“How?”
“For starters, come clean. Tell me how you came to read people’s minds.”
“I will.”
She walked back toward him. “Tell me about Thomas’s blood.” Even as the words left her mouth, she could taste her desire for whatever Billy might bring her.
She didn’t understand the desire herself. As a child she’d always been fascinated by red blood, whether in a movie or from a cut or in the laboratory, vials of blood used for endless tests.
Billy had gone rigid. “You know about the blood?”
“You mentioned it in my mother’s office, remember?”
His eyes searched hers. “So that’s all you know.”
He’d expected more, had searched her mind already and found nothing. But she wasn’t finished.
“I have some secrets that not even you can extract, at least not without skills far more seductive than reading a mind. Tell me about this blood.”
He slowly sat. Crossed one leg over the other. Janae stood before him, arms folded, challenging.
“You’ve heard of the Books of History?” he asked, then answered himself after a glance in her eyes. “No, you haven’t. They are a set of books that recorded the truth of all happenings, exactly as they happened. Pure history. The books of life, you might call them. But they aren’t ordinary books. Whatever is written in blank Books of History will actually happen. The wills of humans can be bent by them, but not forced. Inanimate objects, on the other hand, can be manipulated at will. You could write, ‘This room is red,’ in one of those books, and the room would instantly become red.”
“Now you’re—”
“Patronizing me,” he finished for her. “Yet it’s true. How else do you think I can read your mind?”
What was he saying? Reading minds was one thing, turning a room red with a few words written in a book was another thing.
“Another thing, yes, but true. Sit.” Then, “Please, just sit down and let me explain myself to you.”
She eased herself into the chair but didn’t bother relaxing her arms.
“From what I’ve been able to piece together, the blank books came from another time, presumably two thousand years in our future. They were brought here by Thomas Hunter and they turned up many years later in a monastery, where I found them and wrote in them. Long story, a kind of showdown that would take a few days to explain. Regardless, one of the things I wrote was that I would have special powers. Twelve years later they began to manifest themselves. So now I can read your mind. It’s that simple.”
She unfolded her arms and set her hands in her lap. There was a finality to his voice that robbed her of any objection. “You’re serious,” she managed.
“Dead.”
“And you want to know about the blood.”
“It was said that Thomas Hunter’s blood allowed him to . . . travel, shift, whatever you want to call it, between here and there. Anyone whose blood came in contact with Thomas’s blood could make the shift as well, at least in their dreams. And I do believe that both Kara Hunter and your mother know this as fact. I think they’ve both done it.”
“With the blood?” Janae’s heart started to beat more deliberately. “They . . . you’re saying they used this blood to cross into another reality?”
He eyed her. She was betraying her deep attraction to his suggestions, but she couldn’t hide from him, could she? So she didn’t try.
“You’re saying that’s possible?”
“I think it’s been done. I know they kept a vial of his blood for just this reason.” He stood and walked in a small circle, fingers scratching his cheek. “You have to know, these Books of History are my history. I’m who I am because of them. My life is ruined because—”
“Where are these books?”
He looked at her, apparently put off at having been interrupted.
“You’re sure the blood is still around, that it exists?” she asked. “I mean, what if they did destroy it like they claim? My mother said she sent it to our lab in Indonesia, where it was incinerated. The lab doesn’t even exist today.”
“Slow down. Take a deep breath. Do you think I would’ve come halfway across the world if I wasn’t sure?”
Janae stood, unable to hide the desire to know what he knew, to strip this knowledge from his history and to own it. Why? But even as the thoughts whispered through her mind, she was aware that he was also aware of them.
Billy blinked at her. “What are you hiding from me?”
“Nothing. How can I?”
“You can’t. So why are you so desperate to know what I know?”
“I . . .” What could she say if she herself didn’t know? “I don’t know. What would you do if you learned that your mother had a vial of blood that could take you to another world?”
Her pulse was now a steady hammer in her ears.
“You’d think it was preposterous,” she answered for him. “But then what?”
“Then you’d want to possess it,” he said.
“Assuming it exists.”
“It does.”
She looked away and tried to still her irrational eagerness to stand here while he reeled her in like a helpless fish.
“Until today I was convinced that I was the only person on this planet who was qualified to find and use that blood,” Billy said. “But now I think you may be another.”
“Because you need me?”
“Because there’s something inside you that I’ve never seen. And I’ve probed the minds of a lot of people.”
“What’s that? Evil?” She walked away from him. “I can’t believe I’ve never heard of any of this before today. She hid it from me all this time?”
“It’s not exactly the kind of thing you want anyone to know.”
She spun back. “I’m her daughter!”
“Even more reason to protect you.”
He really did believe all of this, and the idea was becoming only slightly familiar to her. Familiar, not reasonable, not in the least, because what Billy was suggesting made no sense at all. Who’d ever heard of such a thing?
But it did have a ring of familiarity to it.
“Give me a few hours and I’ll tell you a few things that will remove any doubt from your mind,” Billy said. “The books exist. There’s a journal that talks about them, written by a Saint Thomas hundreds of years ago. They called him the beast hunter. Never saw the book, but I’ve interviewed two people in Europe who have. I’m telling you there’re connections between our worlds that would make your head spin.”
“Beast hunter,” she repeated.
“Saint Thomas the Beast Hunter,” he said. “But it’s the blank books that interest me more. Like the ones I wrote in during my life in the monastery. I believe they still exist, probably in the safe keeping of Thomas Hunter. His blood is a sure way to get to him. I want you to help me find the blood.”
The notion overtook her with such savagery that she felt compelled to turn her face away. Such raw desire was unbecoming.
“Will you?”
I will, Billy. I will use you to feed my own needs.
The thought surprised her. At least it had been guarded. She cleared her mind and faced him again.
“Maybe.”
Janae walked up to him and allowed a smile to caress her face. She placed her hand on his chest and ran it up over his head, through his unkempt hair.
“Might be fun.”
“I don’t care if you do use me,” he said, cutting to the heart of the matter. “I have to do this, with or without you.”
Interesting. Her deception didn’t bother him. This alone increased her admiration of him.
Janae stood on her toes, leaned forward and touched her lips to his. Then she turned and glided back to the chair.
“Tell me more, Billy. Tell me everything.”