Sizzle and Burn

suppressed. He could never dampen it entirely; no level-ten sensitive was capable of shutting off his or her paranormal senses altogether. It would have been the equivalent of deliberately going deaf or losing his sense of taste. But it was possible to minimize one’s parasenses.
    “What are you working on?” Elaine asked.
    “At the moment I’m finishing a paper for the Journal .”
    Among the curators and consultants associated with the Arcane Society’s museums there was only one journal, The Journal of Paranormal and Psychical Research . Like the Society’s museums, neither the print nor the online edition was available to the general public.
    “I feel like a detective trying to interrogate a suspect who is waiting for his lawyer to arrive,” Elaine said drily. “But I will persevere. What’s the topic of this paper you’re finishing?”
    “The Tarasov camera.”
    She tilted her head slightly to look at him, her attention caught. “Never heard of it.”
    “According to the records, it was acquired in the 1950s during the Cold War. It was discovered in a Russian lab and brought back to the States by a member of the Society.”
    “Discovered?” she repeated, amused.
    He smiled faintly. “A polite euphemism for stolen. That was back in the days when the former USSR was doing a lot of paranormal research and experimentation. Someone inside the CIA got nervous and wanted to find out what was going on. J&J was quietly asked to see if it could get an agent inside one of the Russian labs.”
    There was no need to explain what J&J stood for. Every member of the Arcane Society was aware that Jones & Jones was the Society’s very private, very low-profile psychic investigation firm.
    “J&J was successful, I take it?” Elaine said.
    “The agent managed to get the camera out of the country. Brought it back and turned it over to the CIA. Their technicians examined it but concluded that it was bogus. They couldn’t make it work.”
    “Why not?”
    “Evidently it requires an operator who possesses a unique type of psychic talent. The Society wound up with the camera after the CIA decided it was a fraud. Our techs weren’t able to make it function, either, so it went into a vault. That’s where it’s been sitting all these years.”
    “What made the camera unusual?” Elaine asked.
    “The Tarasov camera was supposed to be able to photograph human auras.”
    “Nonsense.” Elaine gave a disdainful sniff. “Human auras have never been successfully photographed, not even by the experts in the Society’s labs. Something to do with the location of aura energy on the spectrum, I think. Auras can be measured and analyzed in oblique ways and some people can see them naturally, but you can’t take pictures of them. The technology just isn’t available yet.”
    “It gets better,” Zack said. “According to the notes of the agent who brought the camera out from behind the Iron Curtain, the Russian researchers believed that a unique type of psychic photographer could not only take pictures of auras, he could use the camera to disrupt them in ways that would cause severe psychic trauma or death.”
    Elaine frowned. “In other words, it was meant to be some sort of psychic weapon?”
    “Yes.”
    “But the experts say that no modern technology can interface successfully with human psychic energy. That’s why no one has ever been able to build a machine or a weapon that can be activated by paranormal powers or one that can produce that kind of energy.”
    “True.”
    “In other words, the camera really is a fraud?” She sighed. “That’s a relief. The world is already armed to the teeth. The last thing we want to do is introduce a new psychic technology designed to kill people.”
    “Uh-huh.”
    She beetled her brows at him. “What is that supposed to mean?”
    “I was able to determine that the Tarasov camera had been used to kill at least once, possibly twice. The vibes from the first murder were murky, though.”
    Elaine’s eyes widened a little. “In other words, the Russians had at least one sensitive who could operate the camera?”
    “Looks like it.”
    She moved one hand in a small arc. “How is that possible?”
    “The J&J agent speculated in his private notes that the Russian operator was probably a one-of-a-kind exotic. Some type of unusual level-ten talent that has never been classified by the Society.”
    Exotic was the Society’s slang for those endowed with rare, extremely