Free The Perfect Poison by Amanda Quick Page B

Caleb, eyes wide and feverishly bright with rage. “Tremble in terror, phantom. You will soon feel the wrath of the Demon.”
    Spellar looked at Kit. “I think it’s far more likely that this gentleman will soon find himself in an asylum.”
    Some of the heady energy that had been resonating through Caleb faded. An icy chill took its place.
    “A fate worse than death,” he said quietly.
7
    Caleb let himself into the front hall of the darkened house and went upstairs. When he reached the landing he walked down the hall and unlocked the door to his library-laboratory. Inside, he turned up the gas lamps and surveyed the vast room that was either his refuge or his private hell, depending on circumstances and his mood. Lately the resemblance to the netherworld had been growing stronger.
    The majority of the Society’s collection of paranormal relics and artifacts were kept in Arcane House, a remote mansion in the country. But many of the ancient records of the organization, some dating back to the late 1600s when the Society was founded, were housed here. His branch of the family had been responsible for them for generations.
    The most valuable items in his collection, including several of the private journals of Sylvester Jones, were secured in the large vault built into the stone wall of the old house.
    The laboratory that adjoined the library featured the very latest apparatus. He was not a psychically gifted scientist; his true talents lay in another direction, but he was fully capable of carrying out a large number of experiments. He knew his way around the various instruments and devices arrayed on the workbench.
    He had always been drawn to the mysteries of the paranormal. Lately, however, what had once been a keen intellectual interest had become what he knew his closest relatives and friends considered an unhealthy obsession.
    They whispered that it was in the blood; that in this generation of Joneses, he was the true heir to the brilliant but darkly eccentric Sylvester. They worried that the founder’s lust for forbidden knowledge had passed down through Caleb’s branch of the family tree, a dark seed waiting to take root in fertile ground.
    The dangerous plant did not flower in every generation, they said. According to family legend, it had appeared only once after Sylvester, in Caleb’s great-grandfather Erasmus Jones. Erasmus had been born with a talent like the one Caleb possessed. Less than two years after marrying and fathering a son, however, he suddenly started to exhibit increasingly odd eccentricities. He sank swiftly into madness and finally took his own life.
    Caleb knew that everyone in the Jones clan believed that the changes they were witnessing in him had begun with the discovery of Sylvester’s tomb and the journals of alchemical secrets it had contained. Only he and his father knew the truth, however. Even within the extensive and psychically powerful Jones family, it was still possible to keep a secret if one grasped it tightly enough.
    He walked through the maze of shelving that held the old leather-bound volumes and came to a halt in front of the cold fireplace. There was a cot and two chairs near the hearth. He usually slept here and took his meals here. This was where he received the occasional visitor. He rarely used the other rooms. Most of the furniture in the household was shrouded in dust covers.
    A small table held a decanter and two glasses. He poured himself a measure of brandy and went to stand at the window, looking out at the darkest hour of the night.
    His thoughts took him back to another very dark night and what everyone had believed was his father’s deathbed. Fergus Jones had dismissed those keeping the vigil around him—the nurse, an assortment of relatives, the servants—all except Caleb.
    “Come closer, son,” Fergus said, his voice weak and hoarse.
    Caleb moved from the foot of the bed to stand at his father’s side. He was still stunned by the suddenness of the