Fired Up

Gardens Motel?”
    “The word yuck comes to mind.”
    “Okay, be that way. Forget the hot tub. We’ll just get a room. But don’t say I never take you anywhere.”
    At the front desk of the Tropical Gardens, there was no need to bother with the Carter ID. He just gave a fake name and paid in cash. The Vegas Way.
    The bored clerk handed him a key. “Enjoy your stay, Mr. and Mrs. Rivers.”
    They went through the small, grimy lobby, past the two senior citizens perched on the stools in front of a pair of slot machines and climbed a flight of stairs to the second floor.
    “I can feel it, too, you know,” Chloe said quietly.
    He knew what she meant. “It’s not just that I’m picking up on the energy coming from the lamp. The weird part is that I recognize the vibes. They’re familiar. It’s like looking into a foggy mirror.”
    They stopped in front of room twelve. He shoved the key into the lock. She followed him into the shabby room. The tang of stale smoke and bleach greeted them. Chloe wrinkled her nose, but she made no comment.
    “That makes sense,” she said instead.
    He closed the door behind her and locked it. “It makes sense that I would recognize the energy coming from the lamp?”
    “Sure.” She put down her carry-on and the satchel. “You said the lamp was created by Nicholas Winters and was later used by at least one of his descendants, Griffin Winters.”
    “Right.” He set the crate on the stained, threadbare rug.
    “Both men would have left their psi prints on it. You’re related to them. It’s a genetic thing.”
    He looked down at the wooden box. “Can you sense the age of whatever is in this crate?”
    “I can’t be absolutely certain until I see it, but the dreamlight that’s leaking out is very strong and, yes, I think that the object inside could date from the late seventeenth century.”
    “Stone was so sure it came out of a modern lab.”
    She shook her head, frowning a little in concentration. He felt energy shift in the atmosphere and knew that she had just pushed her senses a couple of notches higher.
    “No,” she said. “The object in that box is definitely not modern.”
    He met her eyes. “Is it dangerous?”
    “I just sense power, Jack. Energy in and of itself is neutral. You know that.”
    He studied the crate. “Just raw power?”
    “A lot of it. And not all of it is masculine. Some of it is feminine.”
    He looked up again at that. “Dream energy has a gender?”
    “Probably not but people who leave traces of it behind certainly do. I can’t always perceive it distinctly because that kind of energy often gets muddled, but in this case some of it is very clear. At least two women of talent have handled that lamp.”
    He thought about that. “Eleanor Fleming was the woman who worked the lamp for Nicholas. Adelaide Pyne was the one who worked it for Griffin Winters.”
    Chloe smiled faintly. “They must have been very interesting women.”
    Like you, he thought. Not just interesting. Fascinating.
    “According to the records and the legends, they were,” he said instead. “It’s a fact that Eleanor worked the lamp to give Old Nick his second talent. Later she deliberately fried his para-senses with it. Figured destroying his talent would be the ultimate revenge.”
    “Why did she want revenge?”
    “You don’t know the tale?” he asked.
    “Hey, until I met you I assumed the Burning Lamp was just another Arcane Society myth. You know, like Sylvester and his talent-enhancing formula.”
    “Right, the formula. Just another legend. Okay, here’s what I know about the curse. Nicholas and Sylvester started out as friends. They were both alchemists, both strong sensitives, and both were convinced that they could not only enhance their talents but also develop additional powers by using the secrets of alchemy.”
    “I do remember that much of the story,” she said. “Sylvester took the chemical approach. He studied herbs and plants looking for a drug that would do the job.”
    “Nicholas took the engineering approach. Alchemists were notorious for trying to transmute metals with fire.”
    “Ah, yes,” Chloe said. “The ancient dream of turning lead into gold.”
    “Old Nick took it a step further. His goal was to forge a device that would produce powerful waves of dreamlight that could force open the channels between the dreamstate and the waking state and keep them open. Figured that would allow him to access the additional paranormal