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The body on the crystal platform did not move. For a moment no one moved. It was as if the room had been locked in ice.

“Well, this is interesting,” Oliver said, shattering the silence. He was in his Museum Guy mode, but Leona could feel his battle-ready tension. Keeping his grip on her, he guided her calmly across the room to study the motionless figure on the platform. “If this individual thought he was climbing into a paranormal enhancement or preservation chamber, I’d say that what we have here is a case of failed expectations.”

An agitated murmur swept over the crowd. Roxy rumbled.

Oliver reached up to touch her lightly with his free hand. “Not yet,” he said very softly.

Roxy stilled but she kept all four eyes on the crowd at the entrance.

Leona used one hand to partially shield her eyes against the blazing crystals and tried to examine the corpse inside the chamber with a detached, academic eye. Because it was definitely a corpse.

The body was that of a man who appeared to have been in early middle age when he died. There was no obvious injury. For whatever reason he had apparently lain down in the chamber, sealed the lid—and died.

The most disturbing thing about the dead man was that he was chillingly well-preserved—a testimony to the power of the crystals, perhaps. But the effect had been a form of mummification, not hibernation or cold storage.

There was no mistaking death, she thought. The dead were truly silent in every sense. A corpse had no energy field, because the life force was gone. But the act of dying left traces behind—a forensic psychic stain that provided evidence of the manner and time of death. In this case, the interior of the chamber was saturated with a dark energy. The man inside Vortex had not died quickly.

His eyes were wide open, as if he had gazed at some unseen horror in his final moments. His face was a true death mask, the mouth drawn back in a terrible grin. Leona shuddered. Her intuition told her she was looking at a man who had realized too late that he had locked himself inside a coffin and that there was no escape.

She turned away from the grisly sight. Roxy took no interest in the body at all. She was still keeping watch on the crowd.

Oliver switched his attention to the audience. Leona sensed another shift in his energy field. Between one heartbeat and the next, he was in command of the room. In some indescribable way he had metamorphosed from glasses-polishing Museum Guy to the Guy in Charge.

The crowd stared at him, riveted, and awaited his verdict.

“I’ve got good news or bad news, depending on your point of view,” he said. “I can assure you of two facts. The first is that this man is very dead. The second is that it is not Vincent Lee Vance.”

That news produced gasps of disbelief, followed by confusion. Leona thought that at least a few people looked relieved.

Harp recovered first. She fixed Oliver with a suspicious glare. “What makes you so sure it’s not Vance?”

Oliver gestured toward the figure on the platform. “See for yourself. The body is well preserved, so it’s obvious he looks nothing like the images of Vance in the photos and videos from the Era of Discord. The clothes this individual was wearing when he went into the Vortex machine are definitely post–Era of Discord. I’d say they date from about forty years back—definitely not from a century ago. Finally, there is no sign of Vance’s signature crystal pendant.”

“Face it,” Leona announced. “You’ve all been scammed. In fairness, it’s not because you are natural-born dumbasses—at least not entirely. Someone has been using the crystals in those pendants you’re so proud of to hypnotize you.”

Fury roiled through the crowd.

“Pissing off the people with the pitchforks was not part of the plan,” Oliver said in low tones.

Leona ignored him because the crowd was in the process of turning into a full-blown mob.

“That’s a fucking lie,” Burt yelled. “No one could hypnotize me. I’m too strong.”

Harp grunted. Her eyes narrowed. She touched the pendant that dangled around her neck. “For all we know, you two are the ones who are trying to hypnotize us. You don’t want us to know the truth. That’s it, isn’t it?”

“They’re both lying,” the bartender shouted.

“She’s still got the key,” Edith said. “We need to get it.”

Baxter aimed the camera at Leona. “Darla, are you getting all this?”

Darla did not respond. She stared at the dead man, stunned.

Harp raised the flamer, aiming it at Leona. “Give us the key.”

“I suggest we all calm down,” Oliver said in his Guy in Charge voice.

But this time it had no discernible effect on the crowd. There was too much energy churning the atmosphere, Leona realized. The powerful human emotions of rage and confusion were being enhanced by the paranormal atmosphere and the senses-blinding glare of the Vortex crystals.

“Get the key from her,” Edith shouted.

The crowd, with Harp at the forefront, surged forward.

“This is not going quite the way I had planned,” Oliver said. “We need a distraction.”

He plucked the pyramid crystal from Leona’s fingers and tossed it into the Vortex chamber.

“It’s all yours,” he announced to the crowd.

Harp swung toward the machine. The others followed. Mob mentality was a powerful force, Leona thought.

“This is our cue to exit,” Oliver said.

He released his grip on her shoulder, seized her hand, and hauled her toward the entrance, which was no longer clogged with people. She felt a shiver of heavy energy envelop her and recognized the vibe of Oliver’s aura. She knew he had gone into his nothing-to-see-here persona and had wrapped her and Roxy inside the invisible cloak of his talent.

The crowd ignored the three of them, intent on recovering the pyramid crystal.

She glanced back once just as Oliver was pulling her through the doorway. It seemed to her that there was something different about the energy pouring out of Vortex. The instability was rapidly growing worse. She could feel the mounting danger in the wildly oscillating currents.

And then they were through the doorway and racing down the glowing green quartz corridor. Roxy, riding high on Oliver’s shoulder, fluffed out and chortled.

“We need to find a better hobby,” Oliver said. “Running away from the bad guys is getting old.”

“This is plan B?” Leona asked, breathless. “We run for our lives? I was expecting something a little more sophisticated in the way of an exit strategy.”

“Actually, this is plan C,” Oliver said. “Plan B went to green hell when you pissed off the crowd by calling everyone dumbasses and informing them they had been scammed and hypnotized.”

“It was the truth.”

“That’s not the point.”

Screams and panic-stricken shouts interrupted Leona before she could defend herself. She turned to look over her shoulder and saw a gaggle of frantic people scrambling through the doorway.

The intensity of the glow at the entrance of the Vortex chamber was stronger now.

The explosion sounded as if it came from the depths of the sea, but the light show and fireworks cascading through the entrance were dazzling. Roxy chortled approval and bounced up and down on Oliver’s shoulder.

Oliver halted, dragging Leona to a stop. They turned to survey the disaster. The stampeding crowd swept toward them, intent on escape. They flattened themselves against the tunnel wall to avoid getting trampled. Roxy chortled again, evidently cheering on the runners.

When the last of the stampeding herd had passed, they turned back to look at the entrance of the chamber. The explosion was slowly diminishing, but a nerve-rattling energy continued to illuminate the entrance.

They watched in silence until the doorway abruptly went dark. Well, not technically dark , Leona thought. The energy emanating from inside the chamber was once again the familiar acid green of Alien quartz.

Silently they walked back to the doorway and contemplated what was left of Vortex.

The machine had melted down into a huge lump of molten metal.

“The body—” Leona said. She stopped.

“Incinerated by the explosion,” Oliver said.

Jagged shards of crystals littered the floor. None of the pieces glowed with energy. What was left of the pyramid stones had not been simply flatlined, Leona thought; they had been shattered.

She released Oliver’s hand to bend down and pick up a chunk of crystal. It felt like a piece of glass in her hand.

“Dead,” she said quietly. She chucked it back down onto the floor. “No one could tune it, not even my sister.”

Oliver looked satisfied. “Good.”

She glanced at him. “You knew this would happen when you tossed the pyramid crystal into the machine, didn’t you?”

“There was no guarantee,” he said. “But it was obvious the energy inside was unstable. Figured it wouldn’t take much to push it over the edge.”

“Don’t get me wrong, I’m very glad we escaped that mob, but now you don’t have a machine to study.”

“It would have been interesting to examine it, and I would give a great deal to know the identity of the body inside. But the end goal was always to render the damn thing inoperable.”

She looked at the small mountain of still-molten steel that had once been Vortex. “In that case, mission accomplished.”

“Definitely. Now, we can only hope that Starkey came through on his promise to fix the bridge. If so, we’re getting the hell out of this burg. The FBPI and the Guild will take charge of the scene. That’s their job.”

“Fine by me, but we need to pick up our things at the inn and then we have to make one stop before we leave town.”

“I know where this is going and it’s a bad idea.”

“You came here on a mission and you’ve been successful,” she said. “I came here for a purpose, too. I’m not leaving until I accomplish my goal. One thing is clear: a man named Willard kidnapped my sister, and we know he was involved with the yellow crystals. I need to get a look at the document Thacker mentioned, the one he said was linked to someone named Willard.”

“I was afraid you were going to say that.”

“I just thought of a potential problem.”

“Only one?”

She ignored that. “What if Burt and the others try to stop us? Maybe they will sabotage your car or something.”

“The Slider has good onboard security. I doubt if they can damage it. But if necessary we’ll steal a car. Burt’s truck will work fine.”

“Have you ever actually stolen a car?”

“No, but I’ve got you, and you’re pretty good with locks.”

“Just so you know, I’ve never had any practical experience in car theft.”

“How hard can it be?” Oliver checked his locator, hitched his messenger bag on his shoulder, and started walking. “Let’s go.”

“Wait,” she said. “That’s the wrong direction. According to my locator, the entrance to the cave is behind us.”

“I don’t think it would be a good idea to exit the way we came in. If the locals are still pissed off at us, it would be the ideal location for an ambush.”

“Good point.” She hurried after him.

“The locator is showing another exit up ahead,” he said. “Maybe a half-hour hike.”

“There’s no way to know where it comes out,” Leona said, falling into step beside him. “It might be somewhere deep in the mountains.”

“Exactly. Which means that Burt and the gang won’t bother to cover it. They’ll assume we’ll do the obvious and leave the way we entered. After all, we’re not from around here, remember? We don’t know the territory.”

Roxy chortled, enjoying the new adventure. From time to time she catapulted off Oliver’s shoulder to briefly explore a glowing chamber or a chunk of quartz that she spotted on the floor. But she never disappeared for more than a moment.

“Everything’s a game to you, isn’t it?” Leona said to her at one point when she tumbled out of a vaulted chamber waving a small unpolished crystal in one paw.

“Until it’s not,” Oliver said, watching Roxy dash ahead to check out an intersection.

Leona remembered Roxy sleeked out and ready to rumble when the three of them were confronted by the mob of townspeople. “They’ve definitely got a live-in-the-moment mindset. Humans could probably learn a lot from dust bunnies.”

“That mentality works fine for them, but humans need plans,” Oliver said. “And backup plans.”