Being Madame Ariadne, Psychic Dream Consultant, wasn’t Prudence Ryland’s ideal gig, but it paid well which was reason enough to do the work—until she realizes that her latest client intends to kill her. But Prudence, a master at reinvention, finds a new job and home as far away as possible and is finally able to relax—which turns out to be a big mistake. Letting her guard down means being kidnapped and drugged and waking up in a bloodstained wedding dress in the honeymoon suite next to a dead man. With the press outside the hotel, waiting with their cameras and police sirens in the distance, it’s obvious she’s being framed for the man’s murder. Prudence knows who is responsible, but will anyone believe her?
It doesn’t seem likely that rumored crime boss Luther Pell or his associate, Jack Wingate, believe her seemingly outrageous claims of being a target of a ruthless vendetta. In fact, Prudence is convinced that the mysterious Mr. Wingate believes her to be a fraud at best, and at worst: a murderer. And Jack Wingate does seem to be someone intimately familiar with violence, if going by his scarred face and grim expression. So no one is more shocked than Prudence when Jack says he’ll help her. Of course, his ideas for helping her involve using her as the bait for a killer, but Prudence feels oddly safe with Jack protecting her. But who will protect Prudence from her growing fascination with this enigma of a man?
Tapson stiffened violently as if he had touched a live
electrical wire.
In a sense, that was exactly what had happened.
Tapson stared at her in disbelief and mounting horror. He
began to tremble. The tremors became spasms. The knife fell to the carpet,
landing with a soft plop.
“No,” he said. “You can’t do this to me.”
His eyes rolled back in his head. His right hand went limp.
He no longer had a death grip on the rim of the bowl—he was incapable of
gripping anything. He collapsed on the floor and lay still.
She took a shaky breath and yanked her hand off the
crystal. The pain of the psychic burn wasn’t from a physical injury—her fingertips
had not actually been singed—but her nerves were severely rattled. She could
not afford to succumb to an anxiety attack, not now. She needed to stay focused
on survival, because it was obvious her entire world had just been turned
upside down.
“Damn you, Tapson,” she whispered to the unconscious man.
“I hope you are trapped in a nightmare. I hope you are locked in it for the
rest of your life.”
She had to think. She had to concentrate on the next move.
She took a step and then stopped and put a hand on the
table to keep from losing her balance. When she had her nerves under control,
she made her way around the table. Crouching beside Tapson, she groped for and
found a faint, erratic pulse. He was alive, but she was sure he would never be
the same.
There was no way to calculate how much damage she had done
to his nerves and his senses. The technique of channeling energy through
crystal with enough force to destabilize the source of a person’s dreams was
highly unpredictable. It was hardly the sort of skill one could easily practice
and refine, at least not in an ethical way.
The talent for doing what she had just done was rare, even
in a family with a long history of psychics who could read dreams. But the few
accounts left by her ancestors who had possessed the ability had been clear on
one point—disrupting an individual’s dream energy was guaranteed to cause
considerable damage.
First things first. Her own survival was at stake. She had
to get rid of Tapson. She could not let him continue to lie there on the floor
of her reading room. What if he woke up and was still capable of killing her?
What if he never woke up at all?
She briefly considered trying to hide the unconscious man.
Even if she could manage the process—doubtful, because Tapson was large and
powerfully built—there was no practical way to haul him any significant
distance in the busy city.
There was really only one solution to her problem. She
would call an ambulance and explain that Tapson had suffered a stroke during a
reading. If or when he woke up, there was a good chance he would not remember
exactly what had happened. Even if he did remember what she had done to him, he
would have a hard time convincing the police she had tried to murder him with
psychic energy.
For her part, she had no way to prove that he had tried to
murder her, let alone that he had killed others.
Regardless of what happened to Tapson, her reputation would
be destroyed if the press got hold of the story. The rumors alone would ruin
her. Clients would certainly not be eager to book appointments with a psychic
known to have had a client collapse during a reading. That sort of thing did
not make for successful marketing.
She did not believe in omens and portents, but this situation was about as close as one could get to a sign from the universe informing her that it was time to move on.
Excerpted from The
Bride Wore White by Amanda Quick Copyright © 2023 by Amanda Quick.
Excerpted by permission of Berkley. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt
may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the
publisher.
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| Credit: Marc von Borstel |
