The Adept Book 2 The Lodge Of The Lynx by Katherine Kurtz, Deborah Turner Harris Read Free Book Online Page A

then gave an affirmative nod. “All right,” she said tremulously. She squared her shoulders and transferred her attention to Adam. “I’ve never been hypnotized before, Dr. Sinclair. What do you want me to do?”
    Adam had already made a survey of the room. It was cosily furnished, its old-fashioned cast-iron fireplace tastefully altered to accommodate a modern gas fire. The glow from the grating reflected warmly off the flowered print upholstery of an overstuffed three-piece suite arranged around the hearth. The assortment of small ornaments in the room included half a dozen small crystal prisms strung up across the right-hand window on transparent strands of nylon thread.
    “First of all,” he said, “I suggest we all make ourselves comfortable. May I call you Helena?”
    “Yes, of course.”
    “Thank you. Then perhaps you’d care to take a seat in that armchair to the right of the fireplace, Helena, and I’ll ask for the loan of one of these lovely prisms in the window. Yes, this should do very nicely.”
    Watching as Adam set the stage for the work he was about to do, Peregrine was reminded of his own initial experience with hypnosis. Like Helena Pringle, he had been bedeviled by fears and spectres—until Adam had helped him discern the gift beneath his fears. He hoped that Helena’s case would end as happily as his own.
    Carrying the prism by its nylon thread, Adam brought it back from the window frame and hung it temporarily over a candlestick on the mantel, so that it dangled over the edge and could catch the light.
    “Now, we’ll just draw the inner curtains tofilter out some of the light,” he said, heading back to the windows. “You’ll find it much easier to relax with the lighting a bit more subdued.”
    Helena watched him closely, her manner stiff with shrinking uneasiness, and Christopher moved closer on the adjacent settee.
    “There, there,” he murmured. “Nothing to be afraid of, I promise you. Here—hold my hand, if it will make you feel better.”
    He reached out and took one of Helena’s small, tense hands firmly between his own. When her fingers tightened on his, he moved closer yet, so that they were almost touching knee to knee.
    Peregrine, meanwhile, had selected a straight-backed chair between the windows, where he knew the light would be best for sketching. It would also put him outside Helena’s peripheral vision, and therefore less likely to distract her. He sat down and was just arranging his sketchbook and pencils when something about Christopher’s apparently casual double handclasp with Helena struck him as being somehow significant.
    He took a closer look. Then his gaze focused sharply on the priest’s right hand. The ring had not been there before—Peregrine was certain he would have noticed. The gold-set sapphire was square-cut rather than oval like those Adam and McLeod sometimes wore, and somewhat smaller, but Peregrine suddenly had no doubt that the ring served the same purpose.
    Good God, he’s one of them! Peregrine thought, hardly knowing whether to be scandalized or impressed by his discovery, though somehow it did not really surprise him. He’s doing the same sort of thing Adam does—helping him, starting to guide that girl safely into a hypnotic trance, so she won’t be afraid. And it isn’t the first time they’ve worked together this way!
    The priest had brought two fingers to rest lightly over the pulse-point in Helena’s wrist, and was speaking to her in a voice too low for Peregrine to make out the words, but his expression was serenely distant, almost as if he were listening to faraway music.
    Even as enlightenment settled into acceptance in Peregrine’s mind, a greyish film seemed to pass in front of his eyes. Itwas like looking through some sort of heavy, semi-transparent veil, like a shower curtain. Six weeks earlier, such a clouding of his vision would have terrified him—and had terrified him. Now, thanks to Adam, he knew what it meant,