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She broke off because Ambrose had finished the pizza and was watching her with an unnerving intensity.
“I’m listening,” he said when she fell silent.
“Right.” She took a deep breath and regrouped. “Talia, Amelia, and I were instructed to meet at the site of the project. When we arrived we were greeted by a representative of the corporation. He said he would show us around. He opened the lobby door for us and explained that we would need flashlights because the windows were boarded up. We walked into the hotel, and that’s the last thing we remember until the earthquake woke us at about four o’clock the next morning.”
“That’s when you found yourselves on gurneys inside an old clinic.”
“We were dazed, trying to understand what was happening, when we realized the place was burning down around us. We barely made it out alive. By the time the first responders arrived most of the structure had been gutted.”
“I’m betting the authorities didn’t buy your story.”
“No,” Pallas said, pushing aside memories of the infuriating conversations she and Amelia and Talia had endured with the Lucent Springs police in the wake of the fire, “they did not. And we had no one to back up our version of events. The representative of the corporation who had met us at the hotel vanished. So did the corporation. The email addresses and phone numbers we had used disappeared without a trace.”
“How did the fire start?” Ambrose asked.
“We don’t know, but the local officials made it clear they thought we were responsible. They graciously allowed that it might have been an accident.”
“What about the gurneys and the medical equipment?”
“There was some evidence left of the gurneys because they were made of metal. There was also a lot of old medical equipment from the hotel’s days as a sanatorium. None of it proved our story. In the end everyone concluded that the three of us had lost a night either because of drugs and booze or because we were trying to perpetrate a scam in an attempt to get publicity and attention.”
“Given that attitude, it naturally follows that you did not mention the fact that you came out of the wreckage of the hotel with an enhanced sensitivity to the paranormal,” Ambrose said.
“Nope.”
“Did your friends experience similar changes?”
“Each of us got a somewhat different version of sensitivity, but yes, we were all... changed by whatever happened that night.”
Ambrose watched her. “Did you all possess some sensitivity before Lucent Springs?”
“Yes,” she said. “Nothing major—at least, nothing that we thought was a big deal. But looking back, we realize we each possessed what could only be termed a psychic vibe. For the most part we took it for granted. Called it intuition.”
It occurred to Pallas that it felt good to be able to talk openly about the lost night to someone who understood, a man who had gone through a similar experience. She and Amelia and Talia had been turning to each other for support and reassurance for months, but they had been forced to hide the truth from their families and friends. Now there was someone from outside their little group who believed that something very weird had happened in LucentSprings, someone who claimed to have gone through a similar experience. In spite of herself she smiled.
“What?” Ambrose asked.
“I’m just thinking that it’s nice to be able to tell you about Lucent Springs,” she said. “I expect this is how people who believe they have been abducted by aliens feel when they get together with others who are convinced they were abducted by aliens.”
“I’m okay with that analogy so long as there are no anal probes involved. It’s not a good look for an author.”
Pallas was in the process of swallowing the last of her coffee. The deadpan comment caught her off guard. She choked on the laughter that welled up out of nowhere, sputtered, spewed, and grabbed a napkin. Ambrose watched, amused.
“I can’t believe you made me laugh about Lucent Springs,” she said when she finally recovered. “I’ve raged about it. Been depressed and frustrated about it. I’ve had nightmares about it and obsessed over it. But this is definitely the first time I’ve managed to laugh about it.”
Ambrose surprised her with a quick grin. “Can’t say I’ve done much laughing lately, either.”
He collected the empty coffee cups and the pizza box and rose to dump them into a nearby recycle bin. By the time he returned to the picnic table and sat down, all traces of amusement had disappeared.
“It’s the medical equipment connection that worries me the most,” he said. “I have no solid memories of the night I lost in San Diego, but I know for certain there was medical equipment involved at the Institute here in Carnelian. I also know that my sensitivity to auras got a lot stronger after the San Diego episode. I started sleepwalking and having intense nightmares, and things got even worse after Carnelian.”
Pallas held her breath, waiting for him to come to the sameconclusion she and Talia and Amelia had reached, the conclusion that gave them all nightmares.
“Got a theory about what happened to all of us?” she asked.
“I think someone is running experiments with a drug that affects our sixth sense, our intuition, and for whatever reason chose you and your friends and me as research subjects.”
Pallas shivered. “You do realize how weird that makes us sound.”
