Free Nightshine: A Novel of the Kyndred by Lynn Viehl Page A

know if he can hear us, but still, watch what you say.” She reached for some clothes hangers and in a normal voice said, “These look like they’ll fit you.”
    He pulled on the denim cutoff shorts and the thin, bright blue tank top, and surveyed himself. “I look like a Beach Boy.”
    “Sorry there aren’t any Valentino suits.” She took the robe and hung it from a hook. “Ready?”
    He nodded and followed her out. She picked up a short length of polished, carved teak propped beside the arched doorway and held it like a club. “Where did you find that?”
    “It used to be part of a chair downstairs.” She gave it a test swing. In a lower voice she added, “I played softball in college. If he comes at us, just give me some room.”
    “If he comes at us,” he countered, “hand it to me.”
    She gave him a skeptical look. “You ever mix it up with anyone, rich man?”
    “One can use a cane for more than walking, honey,” he assured her.
    Charlotte guided him to a narrow, spiral staircase made of tiled steps and sided in glass panels suspended between bamboo supports. As they descended he noted the display of primitive animal masks inlaid with turquoise, gold, and bone.
    “Mesoamerican,” he murmured, pausing beside one likeness of a snarling jaguar. “Not a relic, however. Quite new.” He reached out to touch it before he stopped and glanced at his bare hand. He had been bare-handed since waking up and somehow had not noticed. That discovery shook him down to his heels. “Charlotte, please lend me your bat for a moment, if you would?”
    She handed it over, and Taske closed his eyes as he curled his fingers around it. Since childhood he’d never had to consciously use his ability; it manifested the moment he touched anything. Upon contact he could see the entire history of any object, from the moment it was created until the present date, no matter how old it was. His ability had enabled him to become one of the foremost experts on antiques in the world, but it had come with a heavy price. Just as King Midas had been cursed to turn anything he handled into gold, Taske saw the history of literally everything he touched.
    Gradually an image came to him of Charlotte lifting a small chair and repeatedly striking it against a stone pillar until one of the legs snapped off. Beyond that he saw nothing, no image from the past, no vision of who had brought the chair to this place, or who had purchased it, upholstered it, carved or assembled it.
    Taske opened his eyes, unsure of what to think as he handed it back to her. “Thank you.”
    “Nice artwork,” she said, her eyes briefly shifting to the camera overhead watching them. “I can’t wait to see what’s outside.”
    Another glassed-over water floor, this one stocked with circular green leaves and pale white lilies, led them to a wide entrance hall with towering walls. Taske noted the display of odd-looking weapons, hung far out of reach, which had the same ancient design yet new appearance as the masks by the staircase.
    Charlotte inspected the teak door before she tried the ornate brass latch and slowly opened it. An exterior stepped platform led down to a walkway of shell-studded polished coral, which wound around through tumbleweed-shaped agaves and billowing mounds of white sweet alyssum before it disappeared.
    The area beyond the house stood lush, green, and entirely deserted.
    Taske heard the sound of the sea clearly now. “Perhaps we’re somewhere on the coast.”
    “This isn’t California.”
    “How do you know that?”
    “I just do.” She turned around, and for a moment the glory of her sun-gilded features took his breath away. “None of it rings a bell with you? Maybe it’s someplace you went to work on your tan?”
    “I fear our whereabouts are a mystery,” he said, “and alas, the tan is congenital.”
    “‘Alas’?” She shook her head. “No one says ‘alas’ anymore, Sam. Not for at least the last hundred