Selected praise for the heart-stopping debut by
bestselling author
CAMERON CRUISE

“A first-class thrill ride from a top-notch talent. Cameron Cruise is going to be around for a long time.”

—John Lescroart

“Ms. Cruise delves deep into these two characters and comes up with pay dirt. Seven and Erika are phenomenal. Complex and edgy, The Collector is a wild, twisty ride into a dark, creepy terror. As a post note, [it] will have a sequel—maybe even become a series. I hope so. I am not ready to leave Ms. Cruise’s wonderful characters just yet.”

—Romance Reader at Heart

“Cameron Cruise is a phenomenal new talent. The Collector is compulsive reading! The details are rich and meaty, the pace brisk and the edge razor sharp.”

—New York Times bestselling author Suzanne Forster

“The Collector is an extraordinary multi-faceted novel…Intriguing…a story you cannot forget.”

—The Mystery Reader

“Cruise’s debut has a serpentine, impossible-to-adequately-summarize plot and a wealth of interesting characters. But what really makes an impression is the story’s sense of time, place and culture.”

—Romantic Times BOOKreviews

“A check-under-the-bed read from Cameron Cruise! Talent and dramatic instinct conspire in this powerful novel.”

—Bestselling author Stella Cameron

Dark Matter
Cameron Cruise

www.mirabooks.co.uk

For Jonathan.

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

1

The first thing Jack heard was the drip-drip of water. The first thing he felt was metal biting into his wrist.

Handcuffs?

He felt groggy, like maybe he was dreaming, stuck in those magic moments right before his eyelids fluttered open and he woke up. He tried hard to hang on. Sometimes, he could do it…fall back into the story in his head.

Jack didn’t like to wake up. Waking up meant being cold and hungry.

He felt cold, but not hungry. That was different.

“Jack?”

The voice sounded far away. Jack looked around the room, squinting in the dim light. He shivered. Someone there? Standing over him?

He tugged at his hand and heard metal rattling. Handcuffs—the real kind. A rush of adrenaline hit.

Not a dream.

He felt sick. He was going to throw up. Shit! What had he gotten himself into?

He hadn’t done a lot of drugs. Sure, there was always the occasional john who wanted to get him a little loose, giving him a few drinks. Men didn’t like to think they could hurt a kid. Jack always assured them he was seventeen, but could pass for a lot younger. He’d never tell them his real age, fourteen.

He yanked the hand strung up by the handcuff, trying not to freak out.

“You’re awake.”

The voice sounded familiar. Jack blinked up at the blurry image hovering over him and tried to focus. He remembered going to dinner last night, some fancy Italian place where he’d eaten his fill. But he’d only drunk a soda. So why did he feel so weird?

“You know what they used to call it in the old days? You’ll get a kick out of this. They called it a Mickey Finn. I slipped you a Mickey, Jack.”

Jack reached up to rub his eyes, only to have his hand stop dead, his wrist tethered to something solid and heavy. He realized he was propped up against some piece of furniture, a desk maybe.

The guy, the john from last night, leaned closer. His breath smelled minty fresh with Altoids.

“These days, they call it a roofie. You know what that is, don’t you, Jack?”

The guy said roofie like he was having fun with it. His lips wrapped around the word, giving it a slight whistle. Through the haze in his head, Jack remembered that smile. Last night, he’d thought it was nice.

They were in some kind of basement. There was a musty, earthy smell and a naked lightbulb hung in the middle of the room, giving off a bleary glow. The guy was close enough that Jack could see his even, white teeth.

A roofie was a well-known date-rape drug. Basically, it knocked you out. Eventually, when you woke up, you never knew what hit you.

“How do you feel?” the man asked.

“Like an ice pick is having a go at my head,” Jack answered.

“An ice pike? Yikes.”

The fuzzy image gelled into longish red hair that feathered around the man’s face, vivid blue eyes and a strong nose. And dimples; Jack remembered those from last night, too.

The guy was young, maybe in his early twenties. Even though he had red hair, he didn’t have a freckle on him. Jack remembered thinking he could be one of those models on the billboards; he was that good-looking. And tall, like maybe six feet five or something. Nothing like his usual john.

The sights and sounds from the night before flooded Jack’s brain. The guy standing over him—last night he’d told Jack his name was Adam—had picked Jack up at his usual corner at Hollywood and Vine. He’d taken him to dinner. A real dinner, like Jack was someone who deserved a menu and a waiter with a tie.

They’d both ordered sodas. Adam had asked for a root beer, Jack, a Pepsi.

In the old days, they called it a Mickey Finn.

“You slipped me a roofie?” Jack said, his tongue thick and tired around the words.

“Had to.” The guy stroked the side of Jack’s face.

Jack pulled again on the handcuffs. He was having trouble catching his breath.

“What are you gonna do to me?”

Immediately, he regretted the question. When he’d first hit the street six months ago, the more experienced kids had let him know what was what. To get out of a mess like this, he had to act all cool, like he was in the know. The worst thing he could do was get all scared. The bad ones liked you scared.

Only, he felt so funky. Woozy and like he’d been sucking on a stick of chalk. With a hammer having a go at his head. He had to concentrate—raise your right hand—but still there was this time delay.

“It’s the drug,” Adam explained. “It makes you feel…disjointed. Try not to worry, Jack. I promise. It won’t hurt too much.”

Jack knew he’d landed in some serious shit. Here this guy was smiling at him, looking like nothing was up. Sure, Jack was handcuffed in some dark, damp cellar and this weirdo was talking about pain. So what, that smile seemed to ask? Nothing wrong here—not with such a beautiful face shining down on him.

But then Jack saw that Adam was holding a needle, the kind doctors used to give flu shots, only bigger. He plunged the tip into a glass medicine bottle. The syringe filled with a milky-white liquid. Jack blinked, forcing his eyes to work, focusing on the handsome redhead and his smile.

“What are you doing?” he asked, the words slurring.

“Something very special. I’m going to make you a superhero, Jack. Give you special powers. You’d like that, wouldn’t you? No more cold nights on the street, pimping yourself out. I’m going to make you someone.”

The man named Adam winked, then leaned in close and whispered in Jack’s ear, “Trust me, Jack. It will be worth it.”

Jack didn’t even see the needle coming when the guy jabbed the syringe into his neck and sunk the plunger.

2

Gia Moon woke to the sound of screaming.

It took her a moment to understand she was actually awake. Screaming was a normal part of Gia’s sleep; her dreams were often filled with the hideous imagery of bloodied body parts and faces contorted in pain. It didn’t necessarily mean anything. It didn’t have to be real, portents of things to come.

Only, tonight was different. Tonight the screams weren’t Gia’s.

She glanced at the digital clock on the nightstand: 3:07 a.m.

More screams. This time, she registered the source. The sounds clearly emanated from her daughter’s room.

“Stella,” she said, throwing back the covers.

Gia raced for the door and careened into the hall. She stumbled across the living room, bumping into the coffee table with her knee and sending last night’s board game crashing to the floor.

Not so long ago, her daughter slept right alongside Gia in her king-size bed. Only recently had Stella started to flex her newly minted teen muscle, choosing to sleep in her own room. After a lifetime curled up next to her mother, her daughter had proclaimed her independence shortly after her thirteenth birthday.

“Stella?” Gia cried, pushing open the bedroom door.

She found Stella sitting upright in bed. She looked like a puppet, her arms stiff at her sides and her legs sticking out like two planks of wood. In the dim glow of the nightlight, Gia could see the sheets and quilt bunched at Stella’s feet. She imagined her daughter kicking the covers aside as she swam up to the surface of her dreams.

Even with her eyes wide open, Stella kept screaming.

Gia swept her daughter up in her arms and held her tight. She made soft soothing sounds intended to help Stella transition out of her nightmare. Stella eventually quieted down, but her eyes remained fixed on something across the room.

Gia followed her daughter’s gaze. She was staring at the stool in front of the Queen Anne vanity as if someone were sitting there.

“What is it, baby?” Gia whispered. “What do you see?”

But instead of answering, Stella buried her face in her mother’s neck.

In a normal family, waking up screaming in the middle of the night might be explained as a simple night terror. No big deal. Any cause for concern would be temporary, nothing a kiss or a cup of hot cocoa couldn’t fix. But normal didn’t describe the lives of Gia and Stella Moon.

Gia felt her daughter trembling against her. Stella was small for her age, her tiny size a contrast to her great spirit. Stella had been born an old soul, not prone to hysterics. Waking up in the middle of the night, that would be Gia, the woman haunted by her gifts.

“I’m okay,” Stella told her, all too soon pushing Gia away. “It was just a nightmare—a real nightmare,” she assured her mother. “The normal kind.”

The normal kind.

Not a vision, Gia thought with some relief.

Her daughter crawled back under the covers, pulling the quilt up to her chin. Tucked in her bed, her inky curls and vibrant blue eyes contrasted dramatically with her flawless white skin. Lying there, Stella presented a virtual Renaissance painting. Gia’s artistic sensibilities appended the dewy full lips and cheeks, heightened in color from the nightmare. The antique sleigh bed with its starburst-pattern quilt in shades of blue was a fitting background. It wasn’t quite chiaroscuro in the glow of the nightlight, but close.

Gia brushed back a curl from Stella’s face. There was this perceived resemblance between mother and daughter. Goodness, Gia, she’s a mirror image. A clone.

But Gia knew better. The dramatic coloring—black hair, blue eyes, translucent skin—deceived. Those curls, that delicate nose and dimpled chin, these were all Stella…Stella and Gia’s mother, Estelle.

“Geez, Mom, you’re freaking out for no reason, okay?” Stella added.

Gia hesitated, knowing when she was being dismissed. Suspicious of just that.

Sealing it, Stella closed her eyes and turned onto her side, giving her mother her back. “Don’t be weird. I’m fine.”

Which meant she was hiding something.

It happened more and more often these days: Stella shutting her out. Gia knew it was a normal part of growing up. She’d read all the books; teenagers needed space.

But tonight felt different. Secretive. And not in a good way.

She glanced back at the empty stool in front of the vanity. Only Gia and her daughter atop the sleigh bed reflected back in the mirror.

There wasn’t even a glimmer of a presence.

Gia nodded toward the opened door and the hallway beyond. “Sure you don’t want to crawl into bed with me? I could use the company.”

Stella rolled her eyes, giving her a mental puhleeze! She settled deeper under the covers. “I just want to go back to sleep, okay?”

Once again, Stella gave her mother her back, but not before Gia caught her daughter’s nervous glance toward the vanity and the empty stool.

Gia took a breath and held it. But in the end, she rose to her feet and stepped away from the bed. “All right, sweetie.”

Out in the hall, Gia felt torn between her desire to run back into Stella’s room or allow her daughter to set the pace for her revelations.

She knew Stella was lying. The question was why?

She froze at the entrance to the living room, her hand on the light switch, trying to shake off her fears. That look Stella had given the empty stool…there’d been a presence there. A presence Gia couldn’t see.

Gia Moon, psychic artist and mother to one very precocious teenager, hadn’t seen a damn thing.

She hit the light switch. The floor lamp glowed to life, spotlighting the Scrabble tiles scattered across the Navajo rug under the coffee table and the oak floor boards beyond.

The living room showcased her eclectic tastes. The top of the coffee table, a mosaic of broken pieces of china, served as a foil to the green papier-mâché leaves sprouting from the arms of the burgundy cloth sofa. The leaves crept up the wall behind as if some wayward philodendron had managed to take root and thrive in the darkened room.

Opposite the sofa stood a love seat covered in Mexican serape cloth. There was quite a bit of religious art—a hand-painted crucifix with the bleeding heart, a Greek icon of the virgin, a statue of the elephant-headed Ganesha, the wise and gentle Hindu god known for removing obstacles.

But to Gia’s eye, the focus as always was on her daughter. There were drawings, from stick figures to watercolors, matted and framed like great works of art. And photographs, each documenting cherished moments, snapshots of the tiny miracle that was Stella.

On her hands and knees, Gia picked up the lettered tiles and tossed them back into their box. She told herself she’d talk to Stella first thing in the morning. She’d learned the dangers of keeping secrets and she’d remind her daughter of just that. Gia suspected she knew what was bothering her daughter—Stella was just the right age. Gia needed to convince her that whatever changes Stella faced, they’d face them together.

That’s what she’d been thinking—tomorrow, I’ll lay down the law, no secrets—when she stopped herself in the act of scooping up the game pieces.

On the rug under the coffee table she saw five tiles from the Scrabble set. The game pieces formed a perfect half circle. She stared, realizing the letters spelled a word.

Seven. Just like the number.

Gia frowned. She reached for the S.

As her hand reached for the tiles, a static charge like the snap of a rubber band shocked her fingers. She sat back on her heels, stunned.

Seven.

“Don’t,” she told herself, grabbing the Scrabble pieces in a sweep of her hand and throwing them into the game box with the others.

Back in her room, she dropped onto the bed and stared at the phone on the nightstand. The last two months, the desire to call him had been a dull ache inside her. Like a toothache, she’d learned to ignore the pain—part and parcel of a past that had trained her well to deal with regrets.

But now, that desire burned in her chest. She rubbed her hand, recalling the shock of static electricity.

She glanced at the clock: 3:17 a.m.

When she’d first heard Stella screaming, she’d checked the hour, as well. The time had been 3:07.

Seven, Seven, Seven.

She shut her eyes. “No,” she said out loud.

She shoved aside the covers and massaged her pillow into a ball before settling in. She told herself her gift didn’t work like that, cute little signs that could easily be mistaken for coincidence. That’s how the heart worked; it looked for meaning where there was none.

She’d had a scare tonight. Of course, she’d think of the man who had once saved her life.

Gia woke up three more times that night. Each and every time—by coincidence—the digital clock showed the number seven.

When the door shut behind her mother, Stella threw back her bedcovers and sat up in bed.

“Go away,” she hissed at the boy sitting on the vanity stool.

She recognized him from her dream. She’d seen him so clearly during that horrible nightmare that waking up had been this weird business: the image in her head seemed to crash into her dimly lit bedroom.

The whole thing reminded her of one of those overhead projection sheets her geometry teacher sometimes flashed on the wall. You had to stare at it awhile before anything made sense.

The dream had been a bad one, like nothing she’d ever had before. The kid sitting on the vanity: she was pretty sure that, in her dream, someone was torturing him.

She could still remember the cold bite of the handcuffs on her wrist. She’d even caught the scent of shadow-man’s cologne as he’d bent over the boy.

When the guy stuck the needle in the boy’s neck, she’d felt that, too.

The pain of that needle, she’d felt it as if it were happening to her. Not the boy, but her. That’s why she’d woken up screaming, bringing her mother running.

Only now, the kid—she guessed he was about her age, tall, maybe as tall as five feet eleven, with gray eyes and dark blond hair—was sitting on her vanity stool, the nightlight shining at his feet. To Stella, he looked completely real, the living breathing version of the boy in her dream.

Of course, she knew he wasn’t really there. He couldn’t be. No live kid was sitting in her room, creepy eyes watching her.

He was a ghost.

And Mom hadn’t seen him.

Mom—the lady who talked to ghosts, who painted portraits in order to pass along messages to loved ones left behind—hadn’t even known he was there.

In Stella’s life, it was Mom who did the woo-woo thing. Her mother had these dreams. Visions. A lot of times, the awful stuff her mother saw came true.

“Go away!” she said, louder this time.

The ghost just stared back at her.

She told herself she wasn’t like her mother. Sure, she’d get a weird vibe every once in a while, mostly about her mother’s paintings. But the really scary stuff, like waking up in the middle of the night and seeing someone who wasn’t there, that was Mom’s gig.

“Please,” she whispered. “I can’t help you. Just leave me alone, okay?”

Stella slipped back under the covers, tucking the sheets and quilt under her chin, using them like a protective shield. She concentrated on a giant sunflower painted on the wall across from her, part of a mural her mother had painted in Stella’s room, turning it into a kind of English garden. She tried to forget that awful basement and the sound of the boy’s screams.

When looking at the flower didn’t work, she squeezed her eyes shut. What did people do to fall asleep? Count sheep?

Suddenly, she felt a cold touch on her neck. She opened her eyes.

The kid, he was right there, standing next to the bed.

“Get out!” she said.

She pulled the covers over her head, breathing hard. How many times had her mom told Stella how to banish a bad spirit? Why hadn’t she paid attention?

Get a grip, Stella! She tried to even her breathing, telling herself that if she’d had anything to do with bringing him here—some weakness a loose spirit might glom onto—she should have the strength to make him disappear.

After a few minutes, she lifted the sheet, scared of what she’d find.

He was gone.

She let out the breath she’d been holding. She knew her mother could get in touch with some pretty gnarly things. She’d heard Mom explain it once, how the really bad spirits were drawn to powerful psychics. And that’s what her mother was. A superpsychic. Last year, she’d even helped the police catch two serial killers, a woman and her son who’d targeted other psychics.

Her mom had a very powerful gift—the kind of gift Stella didn’t need.

The only thing Stella wanted was to be normal.

She glanced back at the stool in front of the vanity. It was still empty.

He was really gone.

Stella lay back on her pillow, staring at the ceiling. Funny how that fact didn’t make her feel better.

3

There was blood everywhere—on the mats, on the cage itself, in the men’s hair and dripping down their bared skin. And the noise…the sounds of violence washed over Evie, drugging her.

The Junoesque redhead with striking blue eyes sat near the front row of the MGM Grand’s Garden Arena. Tonight, the stadium housed a near-record crowd, each and every fan mesmerized by the battle on the raised platform, center stage. The caged enclosure called The Octagon housed two fighters locked in a human cockfight.

Suddenly, the champ, Curtis “The Native” Santos, felled his opponent with a double-leg takedown. The crowd went insane as Santos scissored his legs around the challenger’s midsection. There were two minutes left in the final round.

Sweat mixed with blood as the two warriors remained locked against the cage’s vinyl-coated fencing. Wearing only shorts and light gloves with the fingers cut off to allow for grabbing, both gladiators heaved for breath. The challenger, Teri “The Greek” Dupas, defended against the champ’s relentless attack, now pinned in a rear choke. The men’s muscles clenched and gleamed under the white-hot lights.

That’s exactly what she wanted, Evie thought. Those hands on her. That battle for life embracing her.

With just under a minute left in the match, the crowd began to get antsy, screaming for a standup. The referee complied, bringing both fighters to their feet. Santos didn’t waste any time, nailing Dupas to the canvas with a killer left hook.

The crowd went ballistic as more blood sprayed from the challenger’s nose. The round before, Santos had hammered Dupas to the mat with a straight right, opening the floodgates.

Men and women chanted “San-tos!” jumping to their feet as the champ landed punch after punch. Santos maneuvered Dupas into a mount and scored yet another takedown. The crowd began counting down the last seconds of the fight as if it were New Year’s Eve in Times Square. When the bell sounded, marking the end of the fight, Santos, bald and tattooed, paraded around the ring, pumping a fist in the air.

Ten minutes later, the redhead’s long-legged stride took her out to the casino floor. Popping gum and listening to “Fergieliscious” on her iPod nano, she pushed past the minions working the slots and video poker machines.

As she walked past, each and every slot hit.

The clatter of falling coins accompanied by the bells and whistles of the machines was almost deafening. Chaos ensued as men and women jumped to their feet in disbelief. The redhead kept walking, unfazed, a faint smile on her lips.

She stepped out the entrance made famous by a forty-five-foot bronze statue of the MGM lion. She’d been playing hooky coming here, blowing off the VIP ticket Zag had given her to see the new Lance Burton wannabe at Mandalay Bay. The magician’s final act featured the band Do It To Julia vanishing off the stage after performing their new hit single.

Zag had masterminded the gig for his charity du jour. He’d be pissed that she’d missed it. Still, she was in Vegas, the land of don’t-ask/don’t-tell.

She was showgirl tall and wore black leather pants and Gucci boots. Her cherry wraparound silk blouse displayed a nice amount of midriff—Evie worked out. But it wasn’t just her looks that turned heads. There was an air about her, as if here was trouble, but not the kind most people wanted to avoid.

She caught the eye of the doorman and signaled for him to hail a cab. The instant she stepped off the curb, a gray Bentley swerved to a stop, blocking her path. The tinted window rolled down.

She took out her ear buds and leaned down to the window. “Hello, Zag,” she said with a smile.

He lowered his leopard print Dolce & Gabanna shades. He looked absolutely furious.

“You missed the show.”

“Did I?” She glanced back at MGM’s entrance. “And here I thought I caught the main event.”

The door opened. “Get in.”

It wasn’t a request.

“Someone’s feeling grouchy,” she said.

She slipped inside the Bentley next to him, throwing her Prada bag and iPod on the floor. Zag pushed her up against the white leather seats. Evie knew he’d been onstage with the band as a guest guitarist. He still wore stage makeup and was dressed in an electric-blue suit with tails but no shirt. She ran her hand through his spiked, bleached hair, staring into his eyes.

There were many unique things about Gonzague de Rozières, not the least of which was his name. Like a rock star, he went by the moniker Zag. He had the wiry frame of a long-distance runner but managed to appear imposing despite being a good two inches shorter than Evie’s six feet one. He had more money than God and just as many secrets. But to Evie, the most unique thing about him was his eyes.

The pupils appeared always enlarged, as if he lived on some perpetual high even though he didn’t do drugs. There was almost no pigment to the iris, either. The color changed depending on the light and his mood. At the moment, they appeared a steely-gray.

“You want a show?” he asked.

She leaned against the door of the Bentley. With the grace of a ballerina, she raised a Gucci-clad foot and pressed the stiletto against his bare chest, pushing just enough to know she’d leave a mark.

“What do you think?” she asked.

He took her boot by the ankle. He shook his head, smiling. “I told you to stay away from the cage.”

She pouted. “Why? Don’t you enjoy the effect?”

She kissed him, hard, and then bit his lip, almost drawing blood. He returned the favor by grabbing her arm and pulling it tight up her back.

“Now, now,” he whispered in her ear. “No fair biting.”

Evie was twenty-six. She’d been with a lot of men. But there’d never been anyone like Zag. He could take everything she handed him. And then some.

By the time they reached his suite at the Wynn, she knew she’d have bruises. It’s what she wanted. Seeing those men in the cage, drawing that energy to her, she needed the release.

Afterward, they lay naked on the Egyptian-cotton sheets of the California King Wynn “Dream Bed,” one of the hotel’s most talked about attributes. Like everything about the Wynn, the suite was opulence itself. At two thousand square feet, it was larger than some New York apartments and featured wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling windows with a gorgeous view of the Strip…which was why Zag preferred the salon suites to the more exclusive villas on the hotel’s golf course.

Zag covered her body with his, making that connection with his eyes that she only had with him. Despite a broken nose—a memento from a mountain-climbing expedition in the Himalayas—he possessed an almost striking beauty. He had a thick head of bleached white hair, but absolutely no body hair. A genetic condition, he’d told her.

He reached for the bottle of Cristal nestled in the bedside ice bucket. He took a drink from the bottle then offered her a sip, holding the bottle up to her mouth. Only, champagne wasn’t what Evie wanted.

She dropped the bottle on the carpeted floor. She heard it roll away as she pressed her lips to his with enough force that his head sunk into the down pillow.

She continued their kiss, forcing the issue when he tried to push her away. She didn’t stop to catch her breath, felt herself getting light-headed. She visualized the men in the cage—the blood—the idea of death making her feel so alive.

She felt her head yanked back by a fistful of her hair.

Zag stared at her, his eyes almost colorless now. Catching his breath, he said, “Be careful, Evie.”

She smiled, breathing just as hard as Zag. He kept his grip on her hair, but she didn’t care.

She brushed her thumb over his swollen bottom lip where she’d bitten him earlier. “Fuck that.”

Evie locked her legs around his hips and bit his lip again, this time drawing blood.

The next thing she knew, he rolled them both off the bed. He pinned her to the carpeted floor, straddling her.

“I said, be careful!” This time, he meant it.

That was another thing she enjoyed about Zag. He was one of only two men who could best her physically.

She turned her head and looked at the Cristal bottle and the champagne soaking into the confetti design of the carpet next to her face.

“Oops,” she said, smiling coyly.

“Gracious, was that almost an apology?” he asked, nibbling her earlobe, his anger easily forgotten.

He stood and held out his hand. Pulling her to her feet, he clucked his tongue at the empty ice bucket.

“Cristal.” He made a soft sound of disappointment deep in his throat. “What a waste.”

But Evie was already heading out of the bedroom toward the wet bar in the living room. The marble floor, in a deep shade of cocoa, felt deliciously cold under her bare feet. She passed the room’s most touted feature: a fifty-inch plasma screen set dead center against the wall of curtained windows. Anyone watching the high-def television would have the Vegas strip as background courtesy of the floor-to-ceiling windows.

The furnishings were chic and contemporary, the color scheme soothing. The russet grasscloth wallpaper served as the perfect foil for the cherry-toned furnishings. Two sofas bracketed the marble-topped coffee table and Andy Warhol prints graced the walls. Steve Wynn had spent two-point-seven billion on his namesake casino hotel. The opening had featured an exclusive with Vanity Fair magazine and a commercial during the Super Bowl. Zag prided himself in knowing all the right people, people like Steve Wynn.

In the living room, she took in the flotsam and jetsam of Zag’s other life. A curious array of scientific papers, business journals and scholarly tomes covered most every surface. Tucked among such lofty subjects as “string theory” and “dark matter” were the pseudosciences that so fascinated him—several copies of the Journal of Parapsychology, printed articles examining sundry paranormal phenomenon, a report on remote perception put out by PEAR, the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research program. One title in particular caught her eye: The Atlantis Generation.

She almost laughed. Apparently, Zag wouldn’t be satisfied until he reached his goal of becoming both man and myth. Evie knew she was an important part of his quest for the latter.

She picked up a bound copy of proceedings from the coffee table and weighed the heavy tome in her hand. She’d turned down his offer of the company jet, choosing to drive into Vegas the day before, presumably so they might spend some time together. But Zag had been in town for days attending one of his precious paranormal conferences.

She turned back toward the bedroom where Zag now stood in the doorway, his hands braced against the doorjamb. She took a moment to appreciate his naked body. The combination of alabaster skin and lack of body hair made him look like a Greek statue: his muscles were as clearly defined as sculpted marble. Even the broken nose served to give the refined, almost feminine features more gravitas.

She dropped the proceedings back on the coffee table, where it landed with a heavy thud. “Always mixing work with pleasure.”

“Always mixing pain with pleasure,” he countered.

“True. But my mix is ever so more fascinating, don’t you think?”

“Have I ever told you what a goddess you are?” he asked.

She preened in her naked glory, completely aware of her beauty. Despite her waist-length red hair, she didn’t have a freckle on her body. Any mark came from grueling practice fights in one of several martial-art disciplines she’d mastered.

As she turned away, Zag came up behind her. He cupped her breasts in his hands and kissed the nape of her neck. She reached back and dug her fingers into the hard muscles of his thighs, pressing back against his awaking erection.

“Not to mention all those boring charity events,” she continued. She pretended to snore loudly as she turned in his arms. “I forget. What was it this time?” She bit her lip in mock concentration. “The fur and diamond deprived of Beverly Hills?”

“Autism,” he answered. “And it was a fabulous success—which you’d know firsthand if you’d bothered to show.”

She gave him a quick kiss, then danced out of his reach when he tried to spank her. She headed for the bar where she did indeed find another bottle of Cristal in the refrigerator.

“And have my picture splashed all over the tabloids as your new mystery woman?”

She turned the champagne’s wire cage handle the requisite six half turns. The cork flew across the room with a satisfying pop. Champagne foamed over her hand, spilling to the marble floor.

“I can think of worse things,” he said.

“Pass,” she said, drinking from the bottle.

Innovator, playboy, bazillionaire philanthropist, Zag, Evie knew, liked the headlines, and not just on the ho-hum pages in Barron’s. Playing guitar onstage at Mandalay Bay was the sort of thing that guaranteed Zag a mention in People, a magazine that had already proclaimed him one of the sexiest men of the year, dubbing him the Mad Magician.

She took another drink from the bottle, letting the tiny bubbles fill her mouth. She walked back to Zag and pressed the bottle to his lips.

As far as Evie was concerned, Zag, the self-proclaimed Bill Gates of the psychic community, didn’t have anything to worry about when it came to making good press. His company, Halo Industries, provided paranormal services in sundry forms—employee evaluations, intuitive counseling to Fortune 500 companies, forecasting future trends for Wall Street firms. It was even said he’d been hired by certain sectors of the government, though Zag always pleaded “no comment” when asked.

Then there were those pesky rumors about his strange lineage—rumors he denied and cultivated with equal effort.

While the man could be a jack-of-all-trades, Evie knew his true passion. The bound proceedings she’d dropped back on the coffee table were as thick as the yellow pages. Playfully, she pretended to pour champagne on Indigo Children and the Evolving Brain. Zag grabbed the bottle away, shaking a scolding finger.

Indigo Children referred to a rare breed of kids singled out in the last ten years. Presumably, they were more highly evolved than the general population, many possessing psychic abilities. Some claimed they even used a higher percentage of their brain. The term had been published by Lee Carroll and his wife. Carroll channeled the entity, Kryon, who sent information through Carroll to help mankind ascend to a higher level of consciousness. But there were other theories about the origins of the Indigo phenomenon.

Synesthesia was a neurological condition that could cause a person to experience two physical senses simultaneously. A synesthetic might hear with their eyes or get a specific taste in their mouth whenever they heard a particular sound. A psychic by the name of Nancy Ann Tappe, who had the condition, had claimed to see auras—a New Age concept that argued the body was surrounded by a luminous field of color.

This same psychic began seeing an indigo aura surrounding these more highly evolved children. Eventually, the term became linked with certain conditions such as ADHD and autism.

She pushed Zag onto the couch and straddled him. “You know what they say. All work and no play.”

“I’m hardly that.”

She filled her mouth with champagne and kissed him, sharing the taste of the Cristal with their kiss.

Zag had his own theory about the Indigo experience, going so far as to claim the existence of “Halo-effect” children, a smaller, more select group of children who had “evolved.” Halo Industries now had schools where parents could send their special offspring to fine-tune their gifts. Their unique curriculum presumably helped hone psychic abilities. That’s where Evie came in.

On the couch, Evie rose up on her knees. Her hair fell like a curtain over her and Zag. But as she lowered her face for another penetrating kiss, she heard her cell phone in the bedroom, its ring tone, Handel’s “Water Music.”

Hearing the distinctive ring, she broke off their kiss, handed Zag the Cristal and rose to her feet.

There was only one reason he’d call her at this hour.

Back in the bedroom, she grabbed the cell phone and stepped over to the floor-to-ceiling windows. She stared at the phone, allowing it to continue ringing in her hand.

“Aren’t you going to answer?” Zag asked from the door.

She glanced down at the street below. “Isn’t it funny how, here in Vegas, it doesn’t matter if it’s day or night? The lights are always on.”

Of course, Zag would recognize the ring tone.

She was trying to decide if she should take the call here with Zag listening in or risk his censure by asking for privacy.

“Let him leave a message then,” Zag said, his voice in dulcet tones as he lay back on the Dream Bed. “Come back to bed, cherie.”

Only, they both knew she wouldn’t.

Evie flipped open the phone. She whispered into the cell, “Hello, lover. How’s our boy doing?”

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