Shadowlight by Lynn Viehl Read Free Book Online Page A

criminal. Corporations wrote off their losses and tightened their security measures. No one really got hurt by embezzlement, and often the crimes resulted in better business practices.
    What no one but Max and now Jessa knew was that someone would die this time: Ellen.
    Because Ellen had been having sex with Max when Jessa had looked into her soul through the shadowlight, the connection of their bodies had also allowed Jessa to see into his. As soon as Ellen finished this last job, her boyfriend planned to kill her, frame her for all the crimes they committed together, and then leave the country for the islands, just as he had seven times in the past. There he would transfer the stolen money into a fat numbered bank account, where he kept another $20 million from his past crimes before moving on to find and groom and teach the game to his next victim.
    “I can stop doing it,” Jessa told the fountain as if it were listening. “Step back and let my people do their jobs. They have the talent and the resources. They don’t need me.”
    The water splashed, merrily indifferent to her quandary. But there was something else there, an unseen presence, like a lost soul hovering somewhere just out of sight.
    Imagining he was there brought Jessa’s emotions out of the tight, small place where she kept them secreted away. They were mirror twins, the desperate regret and yearning grief, born in agony, nurtured in silence. She protected them from the world, and in return they had grown to become her oldest friends, her closest companions.
    Jessa felt tired of it, all of it. She’d done her best to save the Ellen Farleys of the world, and prevent the Max Grodans from hurting anyone else. If by now she hadn’t paid for her mistakes, she never would. There would always be an endless supply of Ellens and Maxes in the world, and they would never stop, so maybe it was time she did.
    “I’m not spending the rest of my life in this park. I don’t have the nightmares anymore. I was glad when they went away.” She glanced down at her hands. “There has to be someone else. Someone I can touch. Someone you’d like. If I’d died that day, and you had lived, I know I’d want the same for you.”
    Talking to a man who wasn’t there, who could never be there, made little sense. Jessa didn’t believe in an afterlife. She knew he was gone forever. A therapist would have told her she was talking to herself, nothing more. But if by slim chance she was wrong, and the souls of the dead lingered around the living, she wanted him to know. He had always been the love of her life—and he would understand.
    Her wireless chimed in her pocket, and she tasted something salty on her tongue. Jessa reached up to wipe away the tears that had trickled unnoticed down her cheeks before she checked the sender ID: Aphrodite.
    The text, as always, was short and unsweetened: You fucking off in the park again, Jez?
    Jessa popped out the tiny keyboard and thumbed a brief reply: Not now, Di.
    Talk to me. The woman she knew only as Aphrodite sent a small graphic of a smiley face brandishing a bouquet of virtual roses between the lines she typed. Or I’ll start texting you about the last episode of Grey’s Anatomy. Scene by scene.
    The joke threat tugged a smile out of her. Oh, God, anything but that. Bad day here, but I won’t whine. What’s up?
    She forwarded an e-mail from Vulcan, tagged with the words, Vulcan thinks he’s found another Takyn. Wants to sched a group chat.
    The man they knew as Vulcan served as their chief scout. In the three years since Jessa, Aphrodite, and the other members had formed the Takyn, their very private online support group, he had been searching for others like them. Vulcan wouldn’t kid about something like this; the unique problem they all shared was too dangerous.
    I told you, Aphrodite wrote when Jessa didn’t reply. There are more out there. A LOT more. At least forty or fifty.
    I’ll read the e-mail. That was as far as