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“We didn’t find any, and neither did the doctor.” Pallas waved a half-eaten slice of pizza in a small arc, remembering the frustration of knowing something bad had happened but being unable to find any evidence of it. “There was absolutely nothing wrong with us except that we had lost several hours of our lives. One afternoon we walked into the lobby of the Lucent Springs Hotel. Early the next morning we woke up on gurneys in what looked like a vintage medical clinic. Everything in between is a blank.”
Ambrose went still. “You woke up in aclinic? Ongurneys?”
“Anoldclinic,” she said. “It was housed in a section of the hotel that had been closed for decades. The walls were covered in dirty white tiles. The metal cabinets and fixtures were rusted out. I didn’t have a lot of time to look around. There had just been an earthquake, and the hotel was on fire.”
Ambrose looked stunned. “An earthquake and a fire?”
“The earthquake was small as such things go out here in California. The fire was pretty impressive, however. Anyhow, I remember thinking the interior reminded me of photos I’ve seen of 1930s-era tuberculosis sanatoriums. There were a lot of them built in the deserts of Arizona and California.”
“Were you hooked up to any machines?”
“No, but we were groggy and dizzy. Our vision was blurred.” Pallas hesitated. “For the next few days we thought we were seeing things.”
“Hallucinating?”
“Yes. We were sure we had been drugged, but we couldn’t prove it.”
“You said you remember entering the hotel?” Ambrose pressed, very intent now.
“Yes, just as you recall getting into the car that met you in San Diego.”
“Did you and your friends know each other before Lucent Springs?” Ambrose asked.
“No. But afterward we decided we had to stick together. We realized we were on our own.”
“Because no one believed your story,” Ambrose said. His jaw tightened. “I know the feeling.”
A chill of understanding went through her. “It was different for you,” she said. “Worse, because you were alone. At least I had Talia and Amelia for support. We could assure each other that we weren’t going mad.”
Ambrose looked as if he wasn’t sure what to do with the sympathy. “What happened to the architect?” he said instead.
“As I told you, our personal relationship had begun to deteriorate before Lucent Springs. It fell apart altogether a few weeks afterward. But the business side of things is proving more complicated. He’s been texting me lately, asking for a meeting. He doesn’t see any reason why we can’t work together even though we are no longer dating.”
Ambrose nodded in understanding and finished the last of his side of the pizza. He looked at the remaining slice on her side.
“Are you going to eat that?” he asked.
“No, help yourself.”
“Thanks.” He picked up the slice and took a bite. “Did you and your friends go back to Lucent Springs to see if you could find any evidence?”
“Yes, a few times. Amelia is there now, as a matter of fact. So far we haven’t found anything we can use. The fire that followed the earthquake did a lot of damage.”
“What about your energy-sensing talent?”
“I’ve discovered that fire doesn’t destroy the kind of energy I sense, but it does alter the vibe. That’s the thing about energy, you see. You can’t erase it but you can manipulate it. When I go back to Lucent Springs I can pick up some negative energy, but when I try to draw all I get are scenes of storms that I can’t interpret, at least not in a meaningful way.”
“Go back to the beginning,” Ambrose said. “Why were you and your friends at the Lucent Springs Hotel in the first place?”
“It was supposed to be a job.” She folded her arms on the table. “The hotel was architecturally interesting, an interpretation of the Frank Lloyd Wright style. But it was never very successful. According to the research Talia did, I was right. It started out as an expensive sanatorium for wealthy people who contracted tuberculosis. It didn’t attract many patients, so the owners sold it to a developer, who converted it into a resort. That failed, too. From time to time new owners have come along, picked it up dirt cheap, and then wasted a lot of money trying to restore and reopen it. Nothing seems to have worked. Maybe its history as a sanatorium left too much bad energy around.”
“Where is the hotel?”
“Outside the small town of Lucent Springs. About a hundred miles from San Diego. When it was first resurrected as a resort, it was pitched to attract the Hollywood crowd and East Coast vacationers, but it was never able to compete with Palm Springs and Phoenix.”
“Location, location, location,” Ambrose said. “Go on.”
“About seven months ago a privately held corporation purchasedthe hotel with the intention of restoring it to its original glory days. The plan was to make it a destination spa resort. I was asked to submit a proposal for the interior design work. Talia said she had been contracted to research the history of the hotel. Amelia was supposed to document the project with before and after photographs.”
