Gloria gave Vincent one last cookie and closed her purse. "See you all next time."
She waltzed out the door on her sky-high heels and disappeared.
Jeff absently patted Vincent and looked at Lyra. "Excuse me, Miss Dore, I know I"m just the bodyguard, but is there any chance you might tell me what that was all about?"
She smiled. "I"ll explain, but you have to promise you"ll honor the code."
"Yes, ma"am, what code would that be?"
" "What happens in an amber tuning shop, stays in an amber tuning shop." "
His face fell. "Uh, well, the boss will probably ask me for a full report. And much as I"d like to know what you did for Miss Ray-"
"You"re more afraid of what Cruz Sweet.w.a.ter will do to you if you don"t tell him the whole truth and nothing but, right?"
Jeff made a face. "The boss is what you might call a little inflexible when it comes to some things."
"Yes, I know. He operates under a code, too."
Jeff exhaled heavily. "Yes, ma"am."
She smiled. "And so do you?"
"Guess you could say that"s part of what being a member of the family is all about."
"You make being in the Sweet.w.a.ter clan sound like being a Guild man or a member of a crime family. Lots of secrets and a private code."
Jeff flushed. "Yes, ma"am. Guess there are some similarities."
"Tell me. Don"t you ever find it just a trifle stifling to be part of such a close family?"
"Yes, ma"am." Jeff shrugged. "But you know how it is with family."
"Not really."
Jeff was beyond red now. He was thoroughly chagrined. "Sorry, ma"am. I know your situation is a little, uh, different."
She took pity on him. "Hey, don"t worry about it. I"m used to being on my own. Besides, I"ve got Vincent."
At the sound of his name, Vincent mumbled and fluttered down from the counter to the floor. He scampered to his painting, picked up the paintbrush, and went back to his favorite game.
"Yes, ma"am," Jeff said. He watched Vincent splash paint on the canvas with a slightly puzzled expression.
She did not need to be a mind reader to know what he was thinking. It was odd enough to be without any close relatives. Claiming a dust bunny as your next of kin was downright eccentric.
"And I"ve got friends," she added quickly. "Especially one very close friend. But never mind. I"ll explain what I did for Gloria Ray a few minutes ago, and you can feel free to tell Cruz. Heck, it might be good for my business. I rely on word-of-mouth advertising to bring customers in for my special services, you see. It"s not like I can advertise in the newspapers."
Jeff grinned, clearly relieved. "Thanks. So what did you do to Miss Ray"s amber?"
"Essentially, I aligned the frequencies to her personal focus wavelengths. Other people could use the pendant, but they wouldn"t be able to do what she can with it."
He frowned. "I don"t get it. What can she do with her amber that someone else can"t do?"
"Because the amber is tuned to her personal psi, its clarity and focus are greatly enhanced. The process doesn"t make a person more powerful, but it does mean that the individual can use his or her talent with far greater precision. And that can sometimes be even more useful than a lot of raw psi talent."
Jeff made a face. "It sure can."
"The extra fine-tuning is especially important to people who possess strong talents, of course. They not only get better control; it takes less energy to work the amber. That, in turn, means that they are less likely to melt amber when they focus the full strength of their psi through a stone."
Jeff was definitely impressed. "So you"re saying that Miss Ray has some kind of high-grade talent?"
"Let"s just say that I do a lot of repeat business with Miss Ray."
Gloria Ray possessed an unusually strong level of intuition. She had confided to Lyra that it was an extremely useful a.s.set in her career as the mistress of a wealthy, powerful man. Women in her position, she"d said, required an edge in order to stay on top of their games. They needed to know when they were in danger of getting dumped for a newer, younger model. More crucially, they needed to know when they were in real physical danger. Women who hung out with men like dear Hubert frequently learned the secrets of their lovers. And men with secrets sometimes concluded that the women they were sleeping with knew too much.
Gloria had come into Dore Tuning & Consulting the day after she had discovered that Hubert"s former mistress had vanished under mysterious circ.u.mstances. Lyra had a hunch that Gloria was making plans to disappear under her own steam sometime in the near future.
Jeff glanced toward the door. "And here I thought she was just some councilman"s arm candy."
"Never underestimate a woman, Jeff."
He nodded, very serious. "Yeah, the boss has been saying that a lot for the past three months." He frowned. "She paid you with cash. She didn"t want a paper trail, right?"
"That was a very good observation. I"m impressed. As it happens, a lot of my special services customers prefer a degree of anonymity and discretion."
"Because they don"t want others to find out about their talents?"
"Right."
"But why don"t you want to advertise your special services in the usual way? It would give you a compet.i.tive advantage. There are a lot of tuners out there."
"The thing is, if I advertise, I"d have to offer the service to everyone who came through the door and asked for it."
He raised his brows. "I get it. You don"t think everyone deserves the extra juice."
"There are some strange and dangerous people out there, Jeff. The last thing I"d want to do is fine-tune some amber for one of the bad guys and find out later that he used it to commit a crime or hurt someone."
He nodded somberly. "I"m with you."
"This way I get to vet my clients before I offer the service. If someone comes in asking about it, and I don"t get good vibes, I can always say that the rumors about me are false."
He eyed her thoughtfully. "You can tell the good guys from the bad guys?"
"I can when I tune amber for them," she said. "There"s another old saying in my business: "It"s in the psi." "
"Like it"s in the blood?"
"Yep. Every time a person uses amber, he or she leaves his psi prints in the stone. Bad psi isn"t hard to sense."
"Any chance I could talk you into giving my amber your special service?"
"What"s your talent?"
He shrugged. "Officially, I"m an amber talent, like the other men in my family. And it"s true, I use a nonstandard amber."
She glanced at the blue green ring on his hand. "Tourmaline."
"Right. But the truth is, I use tourmaline to focus my real talent. I"ve got a variation of the para-hunter talent."
"Cruz explained it to me."
"Figured he would have by now."
She frowned. "What does that mean?"
Jeff looked embarra.s.sed. "Sorry. Didn"t mean to get personal. It"s just that everyone in the family knows that you"re the woman who broke the boss"s heart, so it figures the two of you are pretty close."
She was so stunned she could hardly speak.
"What did you say?" she finally managed.
"I said, I a.s.sumed the boss had explained about the family talent."
She waved both hands to stop him. "Not that. The bit about the broken heart."
He shrugged. "It"s no secret in the family."
"It"s ridiculous. Some kind of stupid joke."
"We don"t joke about that kind of stuff in my family," Jeff said.
"I don"t know what Cruz told you, but I can a.s.sure you, I did not break his heart."
Jeff just looked at her, not speaking.
She sighed. "For Pete"s sake. Forget it. Tell me about your version of the family talent."
"Right." Jeff was eager to change the subject. "I"m a para-hunter, so I"ve got the good night vision and the reflexes and all the rest. But what I"m really good at is reading a crime scene. I can walk you through the series of events that took place there. Something about the way psychic energy gets thrown off by acts of violence."
"Really? That sounds interesting."
A spark of excitement gleamed in Jeff"s eyes. "Don"t laugh, but I"d like to apply to the FBPI academy and become an agent."
"The Federal Bureau of Psi Investigation? Why would I laugh? Sounds like a fine and n.o.ble career goal to me."
Jeff made a face. "Not as far as my dad and the boss and Big Jake and everyone else in the family is concerned. We"ve always had sort of a weird relationship with official law enforcement. I can"t figure it out, to tell you the truth. It"s not like AI Security doesn"t occasionally do favors for the FBPI, just like we do for the Guilds and the Arcane Society."
"Favors?"
"Well, sure, those agencies only come to us when they know they can"t deal with the problem on their own, and they pay for the work we do, so I guess you can"t really call it doing favors, but you get my point, right?"
"Uh, yes. Yes, I think so."
"The thing is, AI Security is a business. Bottom line is we work for people who can afford us. I want to be a part of real law enforcement, the kind that tries to get justice for everyone, even people who can"t afford high-priced security agencies. I want to make a contribution."
"I understand," she said.
"More and more I feel like it"s something I was meant to do."
"A calling."
He thought about that. "Maybe. In a way."
"Well, why not quit the family firm and follow your bliss? Apply to the FBPI academy."
He stared at her as if she had just suggested that he fly. "Quit Amber Inc.?"
She spread her arms wide. "It"s a big world. Lots of opportunities for a motivated young man. Who says you have to stay in the family business for your whole professional career?"
"Well, that"s sort of how things are at Amber Inc. If you"re in the family, you work for the family firm. One way or another."
"Surely a few of your relatives have gone out on their own."
Jeff thought for a moment. "Well, there"s my great-uncle Ned. He opened a travel agency."
"There you go."
"But mostly his company just handles corporate travel for Amber Inc."
"Oh."
Jeff cogitated for another moment. "The boss"s father is a lawyer. So is his mother."
"Really? I didn"t know that. Okay, it sounds like they didn"t toe the family line."
Jeff sighed. "Their law firm has only one client."
"Let me guess. Amber Inc."
"Yeah." Jeff pondered briefly and suddenly brightened. "Aunt Brenda."
"What happened to her?"
"She"s a doctor, a pediatrician at the Frequency Medical Center."
"The Frequency Medical Center was built by Amber Inc. Right. Well, Jeff, looks like you"ve got a problem. I"ll tune some amber for you, but if what you really want is to become a genuine FBPI agent, you"re going to have to kick over the traces and take a stand against family pressure."
He gave her a morose look. "You don"t know my family."