“Because they didn’t follow your advice?”

“It’s very frustrating.” Gwen shook her head. “I suppose I should be grateful for the repeat business but—”

She broke off because he had started to laugh. She watched him, her eyes widening with a mix of curiosity and bemusement.

He was even more surprised by his laughter than she was. It had been a while since he’d been able to laugh like this. A couple of people at a nearby table turned to look at him.

He finally settled into an amused smile and reached for a chunk of bread.

Gwen narrowed her eyes. “What’s so funny?”

“You, the psychic counselor, wondering why people pay you for advice and then ignore the advice,” he said around a mouthful of the bread. “Talk about naive. But it’s rather sweet when you think about it.”

“Excuse me?”

“People ask for advice all the time. They go to their friends for it. They talk to virtual strangers at the gym. They pay doctors, shrinks, therapists and psychics for advice. But very few people actually take the advice unless that advice happens to be something they are already inclined to do.”

“That’s a very insightful comment.” She wrinkled her nose. “Still, it’s one thing to have a person reject my help flat-out like you did. It’s something else altogether when people pay you for expensive dream therapy and then ignore it. Do you know how disheartening that is?”

“Sure, I’m a consultant, remember? The pay is good in my line, but almost no one ever follows a consultant’s advice.”

She furrowed her intelligent brow. “I hadn’t realized that.”

“Look on the bright side: at least we both get paid for the advice we give.”

“There is that.”

The waiter put the plates of broiled salmon down in front of them and departed.

Gwen examined the salmon for a few seconds and then looked up.

“Do you think we’ll be able to find Evelyn’s killer?” she asked.

“Sure.”

“You sound very certain of that.”

He shrugged. “The case looks simple enough. It will take a while to sort out, but it’s just a matter of following up on the leads. Plenty of those.”

“I wish you had been around two years ago when Zander Taylor was stalking the people in Evelyn’s research study. Maybe he could have been stopped before he killed Ben and Mary.”

“One thing I’ve learned in the consulting business. Don’t look back. Not unless there is information in the past that can be used to figure out what is going on in the present.”

“It’s a good rule.” Gwen picked up her fork. “But in my line, I’ve learned that the past always impacts the present.”

“Yeah,” he admitted. “I’ve run up against that problem a few times, myself.”

They ate in silence for a while. He tried not to watch Gwen overtly but it was hard to take his eyes off her. It was good to be here with her, basking in her delicate feminine energy. This was what he had needed ever since he had returned from the island, he thought. Gwendolyn Frazier was the fix he craved.

“It’s usually better if you don’t ask,” she said matter-of-factly. She speared a tomato slice and ate it.

He went very still, vaguely aware that his ring was suddenly infused with a little heat.

“Better if I don’t ask what?” he said, feeling his way as cautiously as he had when he had escaped the underwater cave.

“You’re wondering what I see when I view your aura.” She munched the tomato and swallowed. “I was just warning you that it’s better not to go there.”

He had known he would have to deal with this sooner or later. She was not the type to let go.

“You do realize that you’ve left me no option,” he said. “Now I have to ask.”

“I was afraid of that. Promise you won’t get spooked?”

“I’m a talent. I take the paranormal as normal.” He forked up a mouthful of fish. “Why would I get spooked?”

“My aura readings sometimes have that effect on people, even those who accept the reality of the paranormal,” she said.

“What do you see in my aura?”

She hesitated. He could see the uncertainty in her eyes.

“Okay,” she said. “But remember that my visions involve all sorts of misleading symbols and metaphors. When I go into my talent, I essentially slip into a trance, a waking dream. Those kinds of dreams can be just as hard to interpret as regular dreams unless I have context.”

She paused to give him an encouraging smile.

“No context,” he said. “Let’s see what you can do without any hints or clues.”

She stopped smiling.

“I was afraid you were going to say that,” she said. “You don’t believe that I can actually see anything useful, do you?”

“I don’t doubt that you can see auras, and I’m convinced you’re sensitive to heavy energy like the kind laid down at crime scenes. But read my dreams? No. I don’t think anyone can do that.”

She sat quietly for a moment, her incredible eyes luminous with a little psi. Energy shivered in the atmosphere. Two men at the nearby table glanced around uneasily and then went back to their meal.

Gwen lowered her talent. Her mouth tightened at the corners. “Your aura looks the same as it did a month ago when I met you in Seattle. You’re stable. But I can tell that the dreams are getting more powerful. They aren’t nightmares—not exactly—but there is a rising sense of urgency linked to them. You’re not sleeping well, either. But there’s something else going on, too, something I can’t figure out without more context.”

He made himself put his fork down with no outward show of emotion. “Is that the best you can do? Because any storefront fortune-teller could pull that kind of analysis out of a crystal ball. Everyone has a few bad dreams from time to time.”

“I know,” she said.

Her voice had gone flat and cold. He felt like he had just stomped on a butterfly.

“I apologize,” he said. “I shouldn’t have implied that you were a storefront fortune-teller.”

“I’m aware of what the general public thinks about psychic counselors. Most people assume that we are entertainers at best and scam artists at worst.”

“I know that your talent is genuine, Gwen. I shouldn’t have said what I did. I’m sorry.”

She relaxed. “Apology accepted. Do you want me to finish telling you what I saw in your aura?”

“Sure.”

“There’s not a whole lot more to tell. It’s all that hot radiation in your dream currents that I find difficult to interpret. I’m sure it’s psi. But the ultra-light is the same color as the energy I see from time to time in your ring. Did something happen to you that involved that amber crystal? Were you caught in an explosion? A fire, maybe?”

He thought that he was prepared for whatever vague analysis she came up with—prepared for anything except the possibility that she might actually be able to see into his dreams. There was only one way she could strike that close to the truth.

“I told Sam something of what went down on that last case,” he said. “He told Abby and Abby told you. So much for keeping some things private within the family.”

“You mustn’t blame Sam or Abby. Neither of them told me anything about your dreams. As for what happened on your last case, it’s no secret that you nearly got killed and that you had to swim out of an underwater cave—which does explain some of the urgency in your dream, of course. But there’s something else going on. You’re revisiting the same dreamscape again and again. My reading tells me that you’re searching for something.”

A dark chill whispered through him. “And you can help me find it?”

She smiled, her eyes filling with a wistful regret, as if she had just acknowledged to herself the loss of something she had longed to possess.

“I fix bad dreams, remember?” she said gently.

“I’m not interested in therapy. I can handle my own damn dreams.”

“Right.” She took a breath and pulled her cloak of cool, polite reserve around herself. “Now you see why I lead a very limited social life.”