Jayne Castle: Canyons of Night

“I shouldn’t have done it.”

“No,” she said. “Why did you?”

“I dunno. I just wanted to. Anyhow, I’m sorry.”

“Okay. Apology accepted. But don’t do it again.”

“Do you want the compass back?”

“No.” Charlotte smiled. “We have a deal. See you next week.”

“Okay.”

He ran for the door before she could change her mind.

“SO, WHY HAVEN’T YOU EVER MARRIED?” SLADE ASKED.

Charlotte sipped some of the white wine and considered her answer while she watched Slade arrange the salmon on the outdoor grill. He dealt with the salmon and the fire the same way he seemed to do everything else: competently, coolly, with a minimum amount of fuss. Rex, perched on the porch railing, was watching the activity around the grill with rapt attention.

“You’re really interested?” Charlotte said finally.

“Damn curious,” Slade admitted. “Over the years, whenever I thought about you, I told myself you’d be married by now.”

“Remember me telling you that my talent had a few downsides?”

He paused, the metal spatula in midair, and looked at her. “Fifteen years ago you said something about having panic attacks when you run hot for any length of time. Didn’t you outgrow those?”

“Not entirely. I have much better control now. But I still get them if I get super jacked for too long.”

He shook his head. “Definitely a downside. But what does it have to do with the fact that you’ve never married?”

“It’s complicated.” She swallowed some more wine. “Let’s just say that, as far as professional matchmakers are concerned, I’m a difficult match.”

“So you did go to an agency?”

“Oh, sure, I went with the best, at least the best one for a member of the Arcane Society.”

“Arcanematch?”

“Yes.”

“I take it that didn’t go well?” he asked.

“I was reminded that no match is ever one hundred percent guaranteed perfect and that goes double for strong or extremely unusual talents. Turns out I fit both categories. Evidently that makes for a parapsych profile that has too many unknown or unpredictable elements.”

He frowned. “You told me that your ability was useless for anything except reading aura rainbows and tuning antiques.”

“That’s all it is good for. I happen to have a heck of a lot of talent for doing it.” Time to change the subject, Charlotte thought. “What about you? Ever try a matchmaking agency?”

“Remember that Marriage of Convenience I mentioned?”

“Yes.”

“We met through a matchmaker. The counselors said we had an eighty-two percent compatibility rating.”

“Not bad for a strong talent,” she said.

“But not exactly a slam dunk, either. Susan and I didn’t want to take any chances. We decided to try an MC first.”

“Good plan, since it turned out you two weren’t a great match. What happened?”

“Things changed,” he said. “I changed. Let’s just say I no longer fit the profile that I had registered with the agency.”

“I see.” She didn’t but it was obvious she wasn’t going to get any more information out of him. Fair enough. This was a first date, after all. There were protocols.

For some reason she’d had a hard time making up her mind about what to wear to dinner that evening. It should have been a simple decision, given the venue—a backyard barbeque. Slade’s weather-beaten cabin stood in a clearing on a tree-studded bluff overlooking a rocky beach and the dark waters of the Amber Sea. In the near distance a scattering of islands, some so small they were no more than oversized rocks, floated in the mist.

The temperature had been in the mid-eighties all day. It was just now starting to dip down into the seventies. The sun would not set for another three hours. Her wardrobe selection should have been a no-brainer. Jeans, a pullover top, and maybe a sweater to wear when she walked back to her own cottage later in the evening were the obvious choices. But she had dithered, rummaging around in her small closet far too long before choosing jeans, a dark blue pullover, and a sweater to wear on the way home.

First-date syndrome, she thought. A woman never outgrew it. She wondered if men had the same issues. If Slade had agonized over his own attire this evening, there was no evidence of it. At least he was not wearing his uniform. That boded well, she thought. He was dressed in jeans, a dark shirt with the sleeves rolled up on his forearms, and a pair of low boots. She was pretty sure that he had shaved again, too. There was no sign of a five-o’clock shadow.

“No such thing as a hundred percent in anything, I guess,” Slade said. Satisfied that the salmon was off to a good start, he put the spatula aside and picked up the bottle of beer on the table. “Are you good on the wine?”

She glanced at her half-full glass. “Fine, thanks.” She picked up the glass and took a small sip. “Something I’ve always wondered.”

He looked at her. “Yeah?”

“How did things work out for you at the FBPI?”

Slade lowered himself onto one of the picnic table benches. “Good, for the most part. You could say I had a talent for the work.”

“What, exactly, did you do for the Bureau? I realize you were a special agent, but what kind of bad guys did you go after?”

He was silent for a time. Then he started to talk. “Here’s how I work, or how I used to work. Set me down in the middle of what appears to be the perfect crime or an old cold case and I can tell you if the perp committed the crime by paranormal means. I could usually find the evidence, too. I was so good at it that I eventually wound up working for a special department within the Bureau. It was known as the Office.”

“Never heard of it.”

“Which is exactly the way the Bureau wants it. The Office exists for the exclusive purpose of profiling and taking down the worst of the worst, rogue psychics who use paranormal talent to commit crimes.”

“The Ghost Hunters’ Guild is rumored to have an agency that does something along the same lines.”

“It does but its agents work almost exclusively down in the catacombs and the underground rain forest. The Office handles the aboveground cases. But in the past few years a solid working relationship has developed between the two. Some situations require coordination.”

“Makes sense. Bad guys who commit crimes on the surface sometimes try to escape into the Underworld.”

“And vice versa,” Slade said. “It’s not uncommon for a bad actor who violates the law underground to try to hide in a city or town where he knows the Guild can’t easily track him.”

She raised her brows. “Or apply its own brand of justice if it does find him.”

Slade smiled his rare, fleeting smile. “I can see you’re not a great admirer of the Guilds.”

“They do have a certain reputation,” she allowed.

“Things are changing. You should know that. You’re from Frequency. That Guild had the most notorious reputation of all. It will be different now that Adam Winters is in charge, trust me.”

“You know Winters?” she asked.

“We’ve worked together a few times in the past. Good man.”

“Well, he’s certainly a local hero back in Frequency, I’ll give you that. If you can believe even half of the news reports, he and Marlowe Jones apparently saved the Underworld from certain destruction. Their wedding will be the biggest social event of the season.”

“One thing’s for sure, by marrying into the Jones family, Adam has forever linked the Guild to Arcane.”

“For better or worse,” Charlotte said dryly.

“I can see the Frequency Guild has some public relations work to do, at least in your case.”