“What kind of crystal?”

“Doesn’t matter. You just have to be able to generate a little energy through it. Find a resonating frequency, and the lock will open.”

Sam moved his hand, calling subtle attention to the fire crystal in his ring. “Will this do?”

Grady studied the copper stone. Abby felt energy hum briefly in the atmosphere.

“Sure, that will work,” Grady said. “Nice stone. I don’t recognize it.”

“Synthetic,” Sam said easily. “It was grown in one of the Coppersmith labs.”

“Awesome.”

Abby rose before Grady could ask any more questions. “We’ll report back as soon as we have some information.”

“That would be cool,” Grady said, brightening. “I don’t get many visitors. In fact, you’re the only ones I’ve had.”

Abby frowned. “You don’t have any family?”

“Not that you’d notice. I think there are some people on my mom’s side somewhere, but I never heard from them after she died.”

“What about your father?” Abby asked.

“He skipped out before I was born.”

A chill of intuition twisted through Abby. “Did you go into the foster-care system after your mother died?”

“For a while,” Grady said. “But everyone decided that I was on the crazy side, so I ended up in a special school for wackos.”

Abby stopped breathing for a couple of heartbeats. Her talent flared. She was aware that Sam was motionless. His eyes were a little hot.

“Was the name of the school by any chance the Summerlight Academy?” Abby asked.

“Yeah.” Grady widened his eyes. “How’d you know?”

“I’m a graduate, too.”

“No kidding?” Grady sighed. “Well, I guess we both survived.”

“Yes,” Abby said, “we did. And when this is all over, I will introduce you to some other graduates. You can join our alumni club if you like.”

Grady started to smile. The smile stretched into a grin. “A club for graduates of the Summerlight Academy? That would be sort of cool.”

Outside, in the parking lot, Abby got into the SUV and fastened her seat belt. She waited until Sam climbed in beside her.

“Given what we know of the laws of para-physics, what are the odds that Grady Hastings and I both have the Summerlight Academy in common?” she asked.

“Realistically, the odds probably aren’t all that bad, given your psych profiles and the diagnosis that you both got when you were in your teens,” Sam said. “I doubt that there are a great number of boarding schools in the Seattle area that accept students with your unusual issues.”

“Okay. What are the odds that both of us wound up together in Vaughn’s library that day by sheer luck or coincidence?”

Sam started the SUV and snapped it into gear. “Zero.”

“I was thinking the same thing. Where does that leave us?”

“Looking for a psychic who knows how to locate other genuine psychics in the Seattle area. Someone who has access to the Summerlight Academy records.”

“If he has access to the records,” Abby said, “he would have a lot of information about the students’ psych profiles and their personal situations. I’ll bet that bastard picked poor Grady because he knew he was not only a talent but also alone in the world. There is no family to worry about him or to protect him.”

“The son of a bitch would also know that you have a complicated relationship with your family. I’m guessing he would have preferred to use someone like Hastings, a loner, to break the psi-code, but he doesn’t have much choice. There aren’t a lot of sensitives with your kind of ability running around the Pacific Northwest. There are others who can find the lab book for him, but it would be almost impossible to find another code breaker.”

“In other words, he was stuck with me.”

“Something like that, yes.”

“It’s always nice to be appreciated for one’s talent.”

40

THE HOUSE GRADY HASTINGS HAD LEASED WAS A RUN-DOWN bungalow in West Seattle. The rental looked as sad and depressed as Hastings had looked sitting in the locked ward at the psychiatric hospital, Sam thought. The place was in desperate need of a fresh coat of paint. The small lawn was patchy and studded with weeds. Yellowed shades were pulled down to cover the grimy windows.

Sam went up the concrete steps and set down the stack of packing boxes he had picked up at a container store. He checked the lock. Grady was right. It was standard-issue and probably original to the house. It took less than thirty seconds to open it.

“Doesn’t look like Grady’s landlord has put much money into upkeep,” he said. He twisted the old-fashioned knob and opened the door.

“No.” Abby followed him up the steps. She had a large roll of Bubble Wrap tucked under one arm. “Why bother? I doubt if Grady was a demanding tenant. All he cares about is his work with crystals.”

“True. As long as he had his lab, he was probably content.”

Abby smiled a secret smile.

He eyed her with suspicion. “What?”

“Nothing. It just occurred to me that Grady isn’t the only person around who is content so long as he has his lab.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not the one sitting in a psychiatric hospital.”

“There is something to be said for that.” Abby followed him into the house, put down the roll of Bubble Wrap and closed the door. When she turned around and saw the nearly empty space, she froze. Outrage heated the atmosphere around her.

“There’s hardly any furniture left,” she yelped. “Someone stole Grady’s stuff.”

“It’s possible,” Sam said. “Empty houses are magnets for thieves. But I think it’s more likely the landlord jumped the gun and started clearing out Grady’s things.”

“Bastard. I hope he wasn’t able to get into the shed in back. Grady will be crushed if his lab stuff is gone.”

Sam walked through the kitchen and opened the back door. The shed sitting in the yard looked like a ramshackle wooden fortress. The one window was boarded up. The gleaming new metal door was closed.

He walked across the weed-infested yard and examined the lock on the door. Abby followed him.

“Doesn’t look like anyone has gotten inside yet,” he said. “But it’s probably a good thing we’re here. Got a hunch the landlord will be taking a blowtorch to this door when he figures out that a regular locksmith can’t open it.”

He raised his ring to the dull, gray crystal embedded in the metal on the wall next to the door. Cautiously, he focused a little energy through the Phoenix stone. He sensed the familiar tingling current of power. The lock crystal began to heat with violet-hued ultralight.

There was a sharp click as the lock disengaged. Sam opened the door.

“The kid’s good,” he said. “Very, very good.”

“And certainly not as crazy as everyone, including me, believed,” Abby said.

“Maybe not.”

He found a switch on the wall. The lights came on, revealing a battered metal workbench and a number of old metal cabinets. The concrete floor was bare.

He examined the lab with professional interest. The small space did not gleam with steel and polished equipment like the Coppersmith labs. There were no state–of–­the-art computers. The chemistry equipment on the workbench looked as if it had been assembled from various do–it–yourself science kits and then seriously modified. An old burner designed for heating the contents of test tubes sat on one corner. A cumbersome, obviously hand-built laser occupied the far end of the bench.

“You know,” Abby said, gazing around the crowded room. “If anyone else, members of the media, say, or the shrinks at the psychiatric hospital, saw this place, the first words that would spring to mind would be mad scientist.”

“I was just thinking that this lab looks a lot like mine,” Sam said.

Abby cleared her throat. “­Mmm-hmm.”

He went to the bench to examine the laser. “Not as high-end, but most of the basics are here.”