Gift of Gold

yourself in a corridor whenever you go into one of your trances or whatever you call the condition you were in last night?”
    Jonas nodded once. “A long, dark tunnel, like a tube that connects the past and the present. I didn’t know if, when you joined me there, you would see the same thing, but apparently you do. That should help, Verity. It gives us a point of reference. The experience is similar enough for both of us that we should be able to share certain aspects of it.”
    Verity searched frantically for some logical explanation. “Maybe you’re telepathic or something. Maybe that corridor is a construction you’ve invented in your own mind and you can somehow make me see it, too. Maybe this has nothing to do with psychometry.”
    “You’re telling me it would be easier for you to accept telepathy than psychometry?”
    “Well, there are a lot of instances of people believing they’ve seen or heard things that they couldn’t have sensed in any normal way.” Verity picked her way painfully through the words. “I don’t know, Jonas. As dumb as it sounds, I think it’s easier to believe in some form of telepathy than in psychometry. When you talk about psychometry, you’re talking about the forces of the past. To be honest, that gives me the creeps.”
    He smiled wryly. “Compared to that, telepathy looks normal, right?”
    “More acceptable, maybe,” she admitted. “Were you ever tested for that while you were at Vincent College?”
    “Yeah. Sorry to disappoint you. I showed absolutely no trace of telepathic ability, not even after the psychometry started getting so strong.”
    Verity sat in silence, trying to come to terms with a host of strange concepts. “You really believe everything you’re telling me, don’t you?”
    “It’s almost killed me, Verity, or worse. And it almost made me kill another man. Yeah, I believe it. I’ve been forced to accept the reality of it.”
    “And now that you’ve got me to hold on to, you want to test yourself and see if the talent is more controllable, is that it?”
    “Yes. I wasn’t going to rush you. To be honest, I didn’t know how to go about explaining the whole thing. But last night you were exposed to everything, so there’s no point pretending any longer.”
    Verity sighed. “By all means, Jonas, let’s stop the pretense.”
    He flexed his fingers on the wheel and glanced over at her. His lashes hooded his narrowed eyes. “You’ll help me run some tests?”
    She must be the crazy one in the car, Verity decided. “All right. I know I’ll probably live to regret this, but good help is hard to get. I don’t want to have to advertise for another dishwasher. I’ll let you run some experiments with me, if that’s what you want.”
    “Gracious as ever, little tyrant.”
    But when she looked over at him, she saw that he was grinning.
     
    Tavi poured more coffee for her employer and carried it to where Caitlin sat staring out the window. “Do you really think you can control his actions the night of the ball?” she asked.
    “You saw the way the rapier affected him last night.”
    “What we saw was a man who almost collapsed. When he did manage to pull himself together he went charging out of the room as if he intended to murder someone. I think he was close to being out of control, Caitlin. You said he was not a danger as long as the current context did not resemble the past associated with that rapier.”
    “His reaction was a little stronger than I expected,” Caitlin admitted. “But he eventually did control himself.”
    “You’re lucky he didn’t put that blade into Verity’s throat. Or yours, for that matter. He looked crazed when he picked it up.” Tavi stood beside Caitlin and stared stonily out to sea.
    Caitlin shook her head. “It doesn’t work that way. Believe me, I know what I’m talking about. I studied all the research reports. Every last one of them. I know more about Quarrel than he knows about himself.”
    “You’re sure that you can get him to kill Kincaid for you?”
    “Very sure. He’s been tuned to that particular rapier now, you see. The next time he touches it, he’ll fall far more quickly under its spell. That’s the way it works. Once the connection has been established between him and a certain event or emotion from the past, especially the Renaissance era, it gets easier and easier to reconnect. On the night of the ball I will see to it that the present will strongly resemble the