Gift of Gold (22 page)

“What makes you think you have a gift for psychometry?” she asked cautiously.

“I don’t think I’ve got it,” he rasped, “I know it.”

“Please, Jonas, don’t snap at me. I’m trying to understand.”

He muttered something and sighed. “I know. Verity, I don’t have any good, easy, simple way of explaining this.”

“When did you first begin to think you might have this, uh, ability with psychometry?” she probed gently.

“You don’t have to treat me as if you think I suffer from delusions. I started wondering if there was something wrong with me during my junior year in college. It was no big deal at first. Just a flicker of awareness when I handled something that was very old or had a lot of violence associated with it.”

“Something like an old rapier?”

He nodded grimly. “I hadn’t been exposed to museums or collections of old objects much when I was growing up. In my neighborhood you worried more about the present than the past. My mother raised me by herself after Dad split. She worked as a secretary and money was always short. As a result, I grew up focusing on the present and the immediate future. The big questions in life revolved around matters such as whether the power company was going to turn off the lights if the electric bill went unpaid another month.”

“I know what you mean,” Verity said with sudden, unexpected empathy. “That kind of lifestyle tends to focus one’s attention on the here and now, all right. Dad never worried too much about money. Not that there was ever enough of it around to worry, except when he sold
Juxtaposition.
Even that went pretty fast, as I recall. When I was growing up I was always the one who had to figure out how to put the landlady off for another month or so.”

Jonas gave her a brief, wry smile. “I’m not surprised. That explains some of your current problems.”

That annoyed her. “I don’t have any current problems except the one I’m trying to figure out at the moment, which is what happened to you tonight.”

He held up a hand. “Sorry. As I was saying, I don’t know whether my gift, as you call it, was something that I always had and it just hadn’t had a chance to come into full bloom because of a lack of stimulus or whether it was a naturally late-developing ability. That question was one of many the guys in white lab coats were trying to answer at Vincent College.”

That interested Verity. Maybe there was more than Jonas’s imagination involved here. “You were tested?”

“Over and over again. Some eccentric alumnus of Vincent, a guy named Elihu Wright, gave a huge endowment to the college and stipulated it had to be used for psychic research. The trustees were horrified but they weren’t about to turn down cold, hard cash. At any rate, research flourished for a while. Where there’s money, there’s never a lack of researchers ready and willing to spend it, no matter how bizarre the subject matter. While it lasted, Vincent’s Department of Paranormal Research was the best equipped in the nation. But then, there wasn’t much competition.”

“While it lasted?”

Jonas’s mouth twisted sardonically. “I heard they dissolved it a couple of years ago. Wright died and the college was losing other sources of funding because too many people thought any school that was wasting money on paranormal research must be a flaky sort of institution. All in all, I guess the trustees decided to junk the project. No loss, as far as I’m concerned. Those researchers were a bunch of ghouls.”

“Go on,” Verity said when he stopped talking for a long moment.

“The problem with the testing I was undergoing was that it seemed to be directly influencing the development of whatever ability I had,” Jonas said at last. “I got picked for the test program because I showed a few vague traces of psychometric ability. By the time I got out of the program I had a full-blown talent.”

“How did you get chosen as a subject?”

“The researchers routinely tested all students and faculty, looking for subjects who showed hints of paranormal talent. I agreed to be tested because I was curious, myself. As I said, in the beginning, all I could do was pick up a faint sense of awareness
when I was given something to touch that had a violent history and that dated from an era to which I’m attuned. But as the testing continued, my ability got stronger.”

“You think the testing process was honing it and developing it?”

“That was the only explanation anyone could think of. It caused quite a furor in the department. I started getting nervous because I could feel something very strange was starting to happen every time I ran through a test. But no one cared about my concerns. Every researcher in sight wanted a piece of me. I was the most important thing to hit the lab since they’d bought their first bunch of white mice. As things progressed I had about as much say in the research being done on me as the mice did.”

“That would have irritated me severely,” Verity avowed feelingly.

“I was irritated, all right. In fact, I raised hell a few times. But I always came back for more. I couldn’t resist. I started losing sleep and missing meals and classes. My social life was almost nonexistent. I admit that at that point, I was as fascinated as everyone else was. I wanted to know what was going on. More than that, I wanted to learn how to master this weird ability I had. Hell, it was part of me. I had a vested interest in finding out what it was all about.”

“What do you mean, master it?”

“You have to understand, Verity. The stronger my gift or curse or whatever you want to call it got, the less control I had over it. It began to feel as if the past was just waiting out there beyond a fragile barrier.”

“Waiting?”

“Waiting to pounce on me or swamp me or possess me. I sensed that all it needed was an access route, a way through the barrier.”

“Do you get this reaction from just any old object?”

“No. I have a special affinity for a period that ranges from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century.”

“The height of the Renaissance,” Verity mused.

Jonas shrugged. “Objects from that era hold the strongest attraction for me. I suppose I was always attracted to that time period. Hell, I chose it as a major in college and then concentrated on it in grad school for some reason. There was nothing in my upbringing that predisposed me to be intrigued by that time period. But the talent, whatever it is, isn’t limited to that time zone. I could sense the authenticity of those dueling pistols of your father’s, for instance, and they’re nearly two centuries younger. But anything out of the prime time zone feels a lot weaker and has a lot less impact on me. I can handle my reactions to objects from other historical periods. It’s only stuff from the Renaissance that’s really dangerous.”

“Can you sense things about contemporary objects?” Verity asked, deeply curious despite her doubts.

“The eighteenth century is about my limit. I’ve never had any particular sensations from modem objects. Thank God.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Just think of how many objects there are lying around today that I’m liable to run into that might trigger the talent. Guns, knives, cars that had been in accidents, you name it. The list is endless. The object has to have been associated with violence, but that limitation still covers a lot of territory.

“Yes, I can see that.”

“The testing got more dangerous. More and more often it seemed that every time I picked up an object that carried a load of old, violent emotion, I was carving out an access route, making it stronger and more defined. For a long while I was arrogant enough to think I could control it and whatever tried to come through it. But gradually I realized I was in danger of being completely overwhelmed. And if that happened…” He broke off abruptly. “One day it did happen.”

Verity watched him for a moment. Whatever the reality of the situation, there was no doubt that Jonas believed everything he was telling her. Something had gone very wrong back at Vincent College; something that had shaped the past five years of his life.

“You say you were in danger of being overwhelmed. What would that mean to you?” she asked quietly. Unwillingly she remembered the corridor in her mind. “Did it feel as if something or someone was trying to suck you back into the past?”

Jonas closed his eyes and leaned his forehead against the arm he had braced on the edge of the window. “No. It wasn’t like that. It was as if the forces I tapped in to in the past were trying to use me as a conduit into the present. I had the feeling that if I lost control, I would be lost, too; swamped by the emotions associated with whatever object I happened to be holding at the moment. It would be like being possessed or something. Maybe like losing my soul. Dammit, I told you this was going to be hard to explain.”

“I’m listening, Jonas.”

“Sure. But you’re not believing any of it, are you? Thinking of having me fitted for a straitjacket?”

“At the moment, I’m reserving judgment. One of the many things I learned at my father’s knee was not to jump to intellectual conclusions about things I don’t understand. Tell me how you responded when you realized you might be losing control over your psychometric ability.”

He lifted his head and stared at her, his gaze hard and steady. “I started testing myself, touching objects that had the most powerful attraction for me, pushing myself and whatever was trying to get through me into the present. I fought back whenever I felt in danger of being overwhelmed. I made some progress, but that progress turned out to be a two-edged sword. I got to the point where I could control the talent when dealing with things that weren’t too saturated with violence. But if I picked up something soaked in old blood or hate or anger, the emotions generated around the object seemed stronger than ever. I finally realized that I might be able to fight back but the cost was high. Sooner or later the battle would cost me my life or, worse, my sanity. Then one day I nearly killed a lab technician.”

“Oh, my God, Jonas.” Verity’s fingers tightened around the sheet. “You almost killed someone during a test?”

He nodded, saying nothing.

“Tell me about it,” she pressed.

He exhaled slowly. “I had started doing work for some museums and private collectors. Word had spread from Vincent that I had the touch, as everyone called it. What’s more, there was a rapidly accumulating pile of laboratory proof to back up the claim that I could verify the authenticity of a variety of old objects. People who worried about that kind of thing started checking with me for a second opinion when they had doubts about an item in their collection or about something they were considering for purchase. Then one day someone set up an experiment with a fifteenth century Italian sword. The researchers had a theory.”

“What kind of theory?”

“One of them thought that if the present was made to resemble a scene from the past—a context that suited the sword in this case—the connection between me and the past might be more direct. With a little help from the drama department, some whiz fixed up a setting that resembled a street in a Renaissance town. It wasn’t hard to do. They just used some stuff borrowed from a production of
Romeo and Juliet.
”

“What happened?”

“I stepped onto the set, picked up the sword, and before I could take another breath I was swamped with the emotions of someone else.”

“Who?”

“All I know was that he lived in Florence during the time of Lorenzo de’ Medici and his name was Giovanni. I only got a glimpse of him. Sometimes there are…pictures,
images in
the corridor. He was in a street fight. Not an uncommon occurrence in those days. He was in the act of killing a man. I could feel all the emotions he must have been generating a few hundred years ago when he fought for his life with the sword I was holding.”

“You could sense all this?” Verity questioned.

“I was literally awash with everything he had felt in those minutes when he thought he was probably going to die. All the fury and the desperation and the adrenaline poured through me as if I were the one caught in the fight. I was holding the sword he had held. I looked around the set and saw a dark, rainy street in Florence. In my mind the lab techs around me were converted into a bunch of would-be assassins and they were closing in on me. I reacted instinctively when one of them came at
me with a hypodermic needle. I saw it as poison about to be delivered on the tip of a sword.”

“You went for one of the lab techs thinking he was a fifteenth-century assassin,” Verity concluded softly. She was awed by the realization that Jonas believed every word he was saying. Whatever had happened in that lab at Vincent College, one thing was certain: Jonas really had tried to kill someone. “Good lord, Jonas. Did you hurt him?”

“I almost gutted him. You could do that with a broadsword, you know. It’s not like a rapier, where all the attack is done with the point. Fifteenth-century swords made bigger messes than sixteenth-century rapiers.”

“Jonas, stop it. Did you kill him?”

Jonas hesitated. “No.”

“He got out of the way in time?”

“No. He got hurt. Badly hurt. But before I could finish him off someone got close enough to jab me with another needle. I turned on him and nearly got him before the drug took effect. When I came to, I was tied to a hospital bed and everyone was looking at me with a kind of excited horror. I’ll never forget those expressions. I was completely out of it for nearly two days, they told me later. They don’t know how far out of it I really was. Only I knew I had nearly lost my mind in the struggle to control whatever had reached from Giovanni to me. I had the feeling that if I’d actually killed that lab tech, whatever was invading me would have taken over completely. When I recovered I knew I couldn’t take any more chances. I also knew those damn scientists couldn’t wait to get me back into the lab.”

“So you walked away from everything connected with the experience at Vincent.”

“I didn’t just walk. Verity. I ran. For my life. For five long years.”

“What do I have to do with all this, Jonas?” It took courage to ask the question. She realized she was frightened of his answer.

He looked her, his face harsh. “Don’t you understand? You’re the reason I’ve stopped running.”