Free The Hot Zone (A Rainshadow Novel Book 3) by Jayne Castle

with mag-steel laws that were only now starting to loosen ever so slightly.
    Why in the world was she thinking about the marriage laws tonight? Marriage was the last subject she wanted to contemplate. Her track record in the romance department had been deplorable even before she had metamorphosed into some kind of weird multi-talent. In a culture where family was everything, a person who could not claim strong clan relationships was something of an outcast. In theory, those born of an illicit union were not supposed to pay for the sins of their parents, but the reality was that a bastard faced a very difficult time socially, and that went double when it came to finding a lifetime marriage partner.
    And now, of course, she wouldn’t dare register with a matchmaker. If being a bastard was a problem when it came to finding a match, being an unstable multi-talent bastard made for impossible odds. She would likely find herself hauled off to a para-rez psych hospital as soon as she completed the questionnaire.
    Her phone rang. She picked it up and glanced at the screen. FENWICK NASH REED . She’d lost count of the calls she’d had from the law firm. Her grandfather’s lawyers did not give up easily, she reflected. Then again, they were well-paid to follow Robert Snow’s orders. She disconnected the call without answering and put the phone down on the end table.
    She finished the brandy, got to her feet, and went back into the tiny kitchen where she rinsed out the glass and set it on the counter.
    When she crossed the living room and looked out the windows she saw that the mist had blanketed the entire town of Shadow Bay now. Even the lights of the Halloween lanterns and the Haunted Alien Catacombs attraction near the marina had been swallowed up by the dense fog.
    She walked into the short hallway that led to her bedroom, reaching out to rez the light switch.
    The light did not come on. She made a note to install a new bulb in the fixture first thing in the morning.
    She felt her way into the bedroom doorway and groped around the edge of the door for the light switch. She found it and rezzed it. Nothing happened.
    Just her luck that both bulbs had failed at the same time. What were the odds?
    The damned wind chimes clashed, loud and discordant.
    She felt a small object under the carpet.
    “What in the world?”
    Her first thought was that Lyle had hidden one of his toys under the small rug. She bent down, intending to lift one corner to retrieve the object.
    Dark energy feathered her senses.
    “Crap.”
    Instinctively she backed away toward the living room, her talent flaring wildly. But by then it was too late. Currents of cold, heavy dreamlight energy exploded in the atmosphere, plunging her into a nightmare.
    Terrible images of formless horrors materialized around her. Ghostly, nerve-shattering voices called to her.
    She tried to retreat but she was off-balance and already badly disoriented. Strange images from a landscape lit with a freakish, psi-green radiance swirled around her, trapping her.
    The dangerous dreamlight worked rapidly. Hallucinations seethed in the shadows. She tripped, staggered, and nearly went down. At the last instant she managed to flatten one hand on the wall to steady herself.
    She knew that the only reason she was not already unconscious was because of her powerful talent. But it could not protect her for long. At least, she thought, her old talent could not hold out against the trap energy.
    Frantically she groped for the flicker. It took a huge amount of concentration just to get it out of her shirt pocket. But at last she had it clutched in one hand. She rezzed it with a desperation she had not experienced since the night she escaped from the lab.
    A paranormal firestorm erupted in the hallway, forming a protective circle of energy around her. The dream images receded. Then she smelled smoke and realized that some of the fire energy in the atmosphere was coming from the normal end of the