Running Hot

trafficking.
    She risked a peek at Luther’s aura. Her heart sank. He believed parts of her story but not all of it. Maybe it was time to pull out one of the handful of identities she had constructed from the Society’s genealogy files and disappear. Good thing she hadn’t gotten a dog. She was surprised by how much the thought depressed her, though. One night with Luther and she had begun building a fantasy of happily ever after. She, of all people, should have known better.
    “I’m going to call Fallon,” Luther said.
    He took out his phone.

FIFTEEN
    “You’ve got three Nightshade operatives under surveillance?” Fallon demanded. The fierce excitement in his voice vibrated through the phone. “Eubanks is one of them?”
    “Three possible Nightshade operatives,” Luther said, clamping a lid down on his own adrenaline rush. “Plus their bodyguards. There is also that unidentified hunter in the vicinity, the one we ran into last night. Don’t forget him. Looks like we have a regular little convention of psychics here.”
    “You say that you and Grace can both identify the Nightshade people by the patterns in their auras?”
    “Slow down, Fallon. I’m telling you that we can see some very unusual energy in their fields, and Grace says that the psychic aspects of all of the profiles are abnormal. We think the effect is caused by some kind of drug. That’s all we know for certain at this point.”
    “Any drug that has such a consistent effect on psychic talent in several different people has got to be based on the founder’s formula.”
    “Okay, I agree that sounds like a reasonable assumption. But what if there’s another drug out there that produces similar effects?”
    “That would be one hell of a coincidence,” Fallon said. “No, this is Nightshade. Don’t forget, Eubanks is a respected member of the Society. All the evidence indicates that the Nightshade organization has some high-ranking, well-connected talents planted within the Arcane community. That’s probably how they got their hands on the formula in the first place, and that’s how they’ve managed to stay one step ahead of us.”
    “Wait a second. Are you telling me that you think Nightshade still has people planted within the Society?”
    “Yes. What’s more, Zack Jones agrees with me. We’ve been talking about the problem damn near every day since he took over the Master’s Chair a few weeks ago.”
    Fallon had been known to leap off the deep end occasionally when it came to his beloved theories. But Zack Jones, the new Master of the Society, was, by all accounts, cool-headed, smart and highly intuitive. If he was on the same page with Fallon when it came to Nightshade, there was a good chance Fallon’s conclusion was right.
    “Okay,” he conceded. “Here’s something else to chew on. Grace has seen similar waves before.”
    “Shit. Where ?”
    “In the aura of her old boss, Martin Crocker, and in the auras of two men with whom he had dealings.”
    “Son of a bitch,” Fallon said softly. “So Crocker was Nightshade.”
    “You’re leaping to conclusions again.”
    “It’s what I do. Damn. You know, I was getting suspicious of Crocker. He was high profile and he was Arcane so he popped up on my radar occasionally. I had started to wonder if he was into some dirty side business. Figured it was either arms dealing or drugs, though. Never made the Nightshade connection.”
    “What happened?”
    “He died before I decided whether or not to fire up an investigation. Do you realize what this means? If we’ve got a way of identifying Nightshade’s people on sight, we’ll have a huge advantage. There are a lot of aura talents registered with the Society. I need to start recruiting some and get them trained.”
    “It’s not going to be that easy,” Luther warned. “Grace thinks that only high-level auras will be strong enough to see the dark energy. Most people with the talent can perceive only vague stuff like whether or not the person is ill or mentally disturbed.”
    “Which means I need you and Grace to keep up surveillance there on Maui until I can get people in place.”
    “You’ve got me,” Luther said. “But I want Grace off the island as fast as possible.”
    “Put her on the phone.”
    “No,” Luther said.
    “Figured you’d get stubborn.”
    Luther heard Grace’s phone burble. Startled, she opened her purse.
    “You’re a real SOB, Fallon,” Luther said.
    Grace had her phone open.